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TEEN: The Long Walk

Coming back with a clearer head - I'm not going to respond point-by-point, but pick up a couple of things. So. Regarding:

When there was an off-handed mention of an aqueduct later on, I couldn't tell if it was some historical ruin for flavor or if aqueducts were seriously still being used

For a moment I thought I'd made a silly mistake and confused aquaduct with viaduct. Checking my work, aqueduct is correct. An aqueduct can also carry a waterway, as well as water supply. Hence the aqueduct here carries the canal over the train line- the implication being, that like other aspects of Mulberry Town, the canal is now-defunct industrial infrastructure that was never dismantled.

The title does deliberately riff off historical book titles. I can't claim it has any clever intent, I just felt like being playful. I had forgotten I'd put the Awards banners there. The story had a good run at one point. Never did manage to clinch the Best Story award, but that's just the way things go. I may remove them sometime, since they're not intended to be an advertisement of the story's quality. Almost all the judges who've read The Long Walk have also posted reviews summarising their thoughts afterwards - I doubt you have the time or the inclination to find them, but they are there somewhere.

I've had my doubts about tafl, and I may come back to it sometime when I have, well, time for edits. It could be replaced by chess, and indeed the Cinder Bank Bathhouse is in small part inspired by the Széchenyi thermal bath in Budapest, where you can play chess in the waters. I chose tafl (Also known as hnefatafl, or Viking chess) as part of general worldbuilding to give this "English" more Anglo-Saxon cultural heritage at the expense of Latin. I think in England tafl lost its popularity shortly after the Norman Conquest ... anyway I'm aware that the scene could do with some polishing
 
Chapter 17: Violet City

Violet violence

Hello, finally reviewing again. I've elected to skip reviewing chapter 16, as I've read the damn thing four or five times and been interrupted during my attempts to review it so often that I honestly can't bear to read it again. It's also been so long since I've put together a proper review that I'm out of practice. As such, this is mostly going to be a reactionary take on the chapter, rather than something deeply profound.

Grammar/Style
His thoughts idly turned to the imminent Gym battle. The Violet City Gym was a Flying-type Gym; and that posed an awkward problem.
This semicolon seems a little oddly placed. I'd replace the semicolon with a comma, and then put one at the end to bridge to the sentence afterward.

The morning outside was dull, and overcast.
Honestly? This feels pretty out of place. I'm commenting as I go here, but this seems like it'll be an entirely indoor battle, so the weather outside doesn't seem important.

At the very last minute Meditite dodged the barrage of wisps,
I think a comma needs to be added in here.

Meditite made a grabbing gesture with both hands, its eyes shining blue again. It made a whirling motion, psychically wrenching Screwball towards itself. Up came its palm, as if commanding a halt. Screwball made contact with a soft thud. For a moment, nothing happened.

“Mag?” Screwball buzzed uncertainly.

“Thunder -” Josh started. There was a dazzling blast of greenish light. The dark silhouette of Screwball spun drunkenly, wailing in distress. Josh hurriedly shielded his eyes against the glare.

“Aargh! Charge Beam!” he roared.

There was a blaze of yellow light, the crackling fizz of an Electric attack followed by a dull boom. Black smoke billowed up.
I'm not sure exactly what is happening here. I'm assuming that Screwball is attempting to blow Meditite up with a contact-based electrical attack, and I'm sure that's what happens, but who is shouting for Charge Beam? Tyler? Or is it Josh, changing his order mid attack? Why is Thunder producing green light? If it is Josh re-ordering a Charge Beam instead, why is the final attack described like it is Thunder? I'm so confused.

Uncurling briefly, Harley built up some speed with a few quick bounds before curling into a Rollout.
This description might benefit from an expanded vocabulary. Uncurling and then immediately recurling does describe things accurately, if a little boringly.

The phosphor-glow burned bright and healthy, yellow firefly-motes swirling around his bulb.
Swirled?

Thoughts and Musings
This Club Battle between Tyler Bradshaw of Dewford Island and Joshua Cook of Mulberry Town is about to begin!
I don't know if it's something that you're doing because the anime seems to have solidified it ("I'm Ash, from Pallet Town!") but it does seem a little odd that trainers' home towns are so important in this sport. It almost feels heraldic and archaic in a modern setting. Not necessarily something you need to change, but I thought I'd point ou the thought I had on the matter.

While reading the battle between Josh and Tyler, a thought came to mind: the focus character limited narrative really does a disservice to the battle flow. As it stands right now, and this is something I've noticed across most of your battles, we get wonderful strategy out of Josh or Eve, while the opponent makes a quick descriptive reaction and then just parrots off attack names. I don't know what can be done to fix that, as the limited narrative works so well in other parts of the story, and changing between limited (for the interaction scenes) and omniscient (for the battle scenes) would probably breech some sort of rule of the language.

Reactions
“Hey, hey!” Josh objected, both annoyed and embarrassed. “Single gender here, push off!”
Josh, you idiot! You missed a chance to see boobs!

“We've got better,” Josh said shortly, trying not to pay him much attention. He was beginning to wish he wasn't so naturally observant.
I bet :V

"You know he actually rated my ass when I left the spring? Hey trainer, five outta ten!”

“Don't know. Strip your 'jamas off and I'll give you a second opinion.”

“Eve!” Josh complained.

“Oh alright,” Eve said. “I agree, it was a barbarous way to behave.
I very much appreciate Eve's catty behavior here. She's so unapologetic about being a hypocrite.

Eve smiled weakly at him. “Listen, um … the Tigerlily Tourney's going to be held in Goldenrod City soon, and I want to compete in it.”
Uh oh, say no Josh! Don't participate in tournaments!

Sand boiled up from nowhere, lifting in the sudden wind and filling the battlefield with whirling, stinging particles. The thick brume of sand quickly obscured Bulbasaur from sight; Josh could hardly see Tyler on the other side of the battlefield.
Boy do I feel bad for the janitors in this place. They'll be cleaning out the sand for days.

One of the watching girls threw a paper airplane down to him – the Sandstorm caught it and shredded it, the pieces circling the field several times before they were tossed aside.

Josh stared at them. Thank you.

“Release Sleep Powder, Bulbasaur. Make it a big one.”
Sure, Josh, roofie the whole building by dispersing sleep powder with the aid of an unnatural sandstorm. Those janitors are getting paid overtime tonight.
 
Ch. 29 - Invicta
Chapter Twenty Nine – Invicta (Version 1.0)

Evelina

Amphitheatre light glinted hard off Bailey’s armour, laser-sharp. She detonated with a crunchy blast, deep-throated like a snarl. A terse belch of flame. Smoke and earth erupting in a black cloud swallowing her from sight. The ground shook tremulously like first date butterflies.

Bailey never said much. But there was something about the sheer zest of her Self-Destructs that suggested she loved explosions. The blast broke over them as a hot wave, every leaf rattling in its teeth; chunks of her armour flashed past like a shoal of serrated fish; flowers were scythed down, some still burning; shrapnel thudded heavily into the trees. Eve saw Heatmor go down spurting pallid flames of his own.

Gotcha, you little devil!” she whooped in undisguised triumph. Assistant referees were jogging down the sidelines, Lovelace was swearing lavishly, Winters somehow silent and inscrutable. It was like the Self-Destruct had shattered most of their supporters’ enthusiasm – the cheerleaders were valiantly trying to rally them.

“Forretress and Heatmor are both unable to battle!”

“What the hell?” A scowl usurped the smile on her face. What about Galvantula?

Galvantula answered that for her. It appeared from behind the shrapnel-studded trunk of a tree, calmly waving its pedipalps as if nothing had happened. A rising wave of applause broke out as everyone else saw it was hale and unharmed. Eve could see an impassive Winters through the trees, gold beads sparkling in her dreadlocks, tan blazer sharp and clean as a fresh set of scrubs. The bitch had style, damn her. A splash of hot anger flared in her chest. Panic! Make a mistake, damn you!

Eve licked her teeth thoughtfully, inwardly fuming at Winters’ unbreakable calm. But Heatmor was down. She’d knocked out Lovelace’s ace, the Fire-type that would have ruined everything. She scowled up at the scoreboard. Beneath Lovelace’s portrait the pictures of Krokorok and Heatmor were greyed out, leaving only Leavanny. Now Lovelace was vulnerable. But Winters still had a complete team … with that eelektross lurking in reserve.

She could see that EVELINA NICE KILL! banner again.

“Right, I’m sending Lyra back in for Light Screen,” she told Josh. “That leavanny’s in my way.”

“Ivysaur, possibly,” Josh answered laconically. “He knows how to deal with bugs.”

“Leavanny, back to battle!” Lovelace snapped. Safeguard swirled beneath its feet, protecting it from the Toxic Spikes hidden in the grass. A moment later it stumbled heavily to one knee as Bailey’s Spikes made a reappearance.

Eve flung Lyra’s Poké Ball into the cover of the trees so Galvantula couldn’t instantly fry her with Thunderbolt. “Light Screen, girl!”

[There’s only room for one bug on this field!] Lyra shrieked.

“Fionn, enveloppez Galvantula avec Feu Follet. N’arrêtez pas!”

Fionn took a theatrically deep breath and smothered Galvantula with Will o’ Wisp. Safeguard materialised to block it. Galvantula backed away, unburned but still blinded by the flames splashing off Safeguard.

“What you gonna do, Winters …” Eve sang. To Fionn’s delight Safeguard timed out, the pearlescent dome imploding, Will o’ Wisp rushing in to engulf Galvantula. Lyra immediately attacked it head-on and ruthlessly tried to batter it senseless with Comet Punch. A wave of supporting yells for Galvantula broke out. Somehow it kept its nerve, sparks crawling across its abdomen. Lyra sensibly took to the air, throwing a farewell punch.

“You’re doing fine, girl!” Eve yelled encouragingly as Lyra disappeared into the cover of the trees. Fionn reappeared to spit a harassing streamer of Will o’ Wisp at Leavanny.

“Heal Bell, come on!” Lovelace demanded. Leavanny skidded to a halt – the high, sweet chime of Heal Bell rang out across the field.

She was an obvious target. Lyra edged from behind a branch to fling down an Air Cutter. Leavanny dodged suspiciously quickly, danced daintily around a Psywave, turned, and swiped at Fionn with X-Scissor. Hardly a second later it sidestepped another Air Cutter, the crowd cheering in time with every dodge.

[Bloody stand still!] Lyra yelled.

“Did you see that? It stops moving when it uses Heal Bell,” Josh said.

“A trap,” Eve breathed. Josh recalled a dismayed Fionn and flung a Poké Ball at Galvantula.

“Poudre Dodo!” he ordered. Ivysaur materialised a few feet away from it. Galvantula pounced -

“No!” Winters suddenly yelled. Galvantula wrestled with Ivysaur for a moment, and went torpid when he loosed a cloud of Sleep Powder.

Josh gave him a curt wave. Ivysaur slammed his full bodyweight into it, before thrashing it with his Vine Whips.

Come on, come on … take the bait.

“Heal Bell, again!”

“Now Lyra, finish it!

[I’ve got you this time!] Lyra snarled. She ducked low under the branches, closing in on Leavanny.

“Quick Leavanny, Agility, Agility!” Lovelace yelled. Lyra’s Air Cutter missed, chopping a muddy furrow in the grass. A Vine Whip snapped shut around Leavanny’s leg, and Ivysaur easily pulled it to the ground. With a shriek of effort Lyra threw down another Air Cutter.

That one didn’t miss. The attack sliced through Leavanny’s thorax, shredding its leafy clothing. Its arm spasmed and went still.

Nice kill!” the crowd roared even before the referee had finished declaring Leavanny out. Her supporters leapt from their seats in a wave of noise. Eve realised she was laughing savagely and applauding Lyra.

“You’re finished this time, Lovelace!” she crowed. Lovelace recalled her last pokémon. She was looking decidedly shaken, as if she’d never genuinely expected to be defeated by a nurse, of all people.

“Who’s domestic now?” she said half to Josh, remembering Lovelace’s comments on Brightwater Mile. “You may compliment me for my tits, but you’ll respect me as an opponent,” she added quietly, watching her ace buzzing in triumph and threatening Galvantula.

This could be a turning point. It felt like she was winning. Their isomorphic cheerleaders wasted no time in taking back control of the atmosphere, defiantly belting out their “Invicta!” chant.

“Begin!” referee Averill declared.

“Leech Life: Ivysaur!” Winters instantly barked.

Her battered galvantula pounced. Ivysaur seized it, growling with the effort of restraining its determined thrashing. He planted a cluster of Leech Seeds onto its cephalothorax, binding it tighter with a mesh of tendrils. Lyra flickered back and forth restlessly, obviously itching to get at Galvantula but holding back for fear of hitting Ivysaur.

Galvantula kept pausing between struggles – Ivysaur withdrew his Leech Seeds. It fell into a faint, critically drained by the parasites.

“Yes!” Eve whooped. Gotcha!

One more kill! One more kill!

Invicta! Invicta!

Eve could see Winters fiddling with a Poké Ball. For a moment her heart leapt as she guessed Winters was running low on ideas.

“Elgyem!” she called with apparent confidence. “To battle!”

Elgyem let out a squealing burble, perforated by both Spikes and Toxic Spikes. Lovelace visibly blenched, covering her eyes as if she couldn’t quite bear to watch. Winters, without looking round, laid a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

“Cosmic Power,” Winters ordered. Lyra was already closing down the distance. Elgyem threw a Psybeam at her but Lyra jinked contemptuously around it.

“Comet Punch!” Eve bellowed.

Eve blinked and Elgyem was gone, teleported across the field leaving Lyra to overshoot with a shriek of rage.

“Psybeam!”

“Whip it,” Josh ordered unexpectedly. Ivysaur slammed Elgyem into the grass with all four vines. The crowd groaned sympathetically, Lovelace swore again and covered her mouth in shock. Maybe they’d underestimated ‘Melissa’ after all, but the swift attack seemed to strike them as a real surprise.

But Winters was unfazed. “Recover.”

De-nied! Try agaaain!” her cheerleaders taunted, to a ripple of laughter from the stands.

Josh sighed heavily. “She’s going to make this round a proper siege.”


*​

“A wall is a weird choice for Winters, don’t you think?” Eve had said, idly swilling the remains of her tea around the mug. That was four days ago, when they were talking strategy at Millennium Centre. “Given that she usually likes big cannons, I mean.”

There was no immediate answer from the bunk above. Josh was thinking.

“The way I see it, there are really two ways to use an ace,” he began slowly. “One: throw them at the fiercest resistance and smash through to victory. That’s your way. Two: keep them in reserve, until they deliver the knockout blow.”

He paused again. “It’s the latter method that worries me – because that way the ace hits hardest when you’re least able to receive it.”

Breaking the sharp edges off the resistance first, keeping the greatest threat in reserve … yeah, that seemed to be Winters’ way. Eve wondered if that played on the minds of her opponents, eroding their composure, driving them towards panic. Having your opponents batter themselves to pieces against Elgyem made sense in that context. What worried Eve was that she thought Winters’ pawniard was her ace.

Tynamo were difficult to find and harder to raise, evolving late, possessing gelatinous muscles and a timid temperament. Raising tynamo was a lot like dragon taming in that respect. But eventually, you got something with no type-weaknesses, that could routinely discharge two thousand volts at a time: a creature of the abyss with no fear of what lives in the sunlight.

What kind of woman uses an ace like that? Someone intelligent, someone patient. Someone with an eye for power.


*​

[Bastard bloody Teleport!] Lyra shrieked in rage, her fists swiping at empty air. She landed for a couple of seconds, panting harshly. Eve had never seen Lyra this furious. With Recover and teleportation Winters was making her chase Elgyem all over the field.

This was stupid. Lyra was wasting all her energy in this pointless duel. “Lyra, that’s enough. Return.”

Lyra wouldn’t like that, but she needed to calm down before she became completely tunnel-visioned.

Josh sighed. “Maybe we can trap it.”

This was stupid. Who was walling who out here, anyway? Time wasn’t on Winters’ side – it was on theirs.

“We don’t have to. Gail! You have the honour!” she called, flinging up her Fast Ball. “Here’s your favourite concept: patience. Elgyem’s poisoned, we don’t have to do anything.”

Gail glided up and alighted on a high branch. The scale of the battlefield made her look ridiculously small and dull, but for her vibrant tail feathers. She watched Elgyem with ambiguous intent.

“Listen up, Gail! I want a clean kill!” Eve yelled, trying to appeal to her instincts.

It worked. Gail had an obsessive mind; once an idea got in it tended to stay there. She incessantly circled at the edge of Elgyem’s vision, swooping and feinting as she tested reaction times. It kept Teleport-dodging prematurely. Ivysaur all but disappeared into the flower thicket, only the faint phosphorescence of Growth betraying his presence. Eve glanced past the skirmishing pokémon to Lovelace arguing with Winters. I don’t like passive battling either, she thought, and smiled, because Winters was left with no real choice.

“Elgyem, take cover,” Winters ordered. Elgyem teleported into the thick of the trees. A reasonably intelligent move, Eve thought, but it doesn’t change anything.

“Grab it, throw it,” Josh said. Elgyem was looking the wrong way – Ivysaur’s vines looped out from the flowers and grabbed it from behind. It panicked, firing off a Psybeam, sending it zig-zagging wildly into the branches. Ivysaur effortlessly flicked Elgyem fifty feet into the middle of the field. Gail descended, talons spread, snatched Elgyem out of the air and slammed it into the grass. She had a foot locked tight around the back of its neck. Elgyem wasn’t struggling.

“Elgyem is unable to battle!”

One more kill! One more kill!

Hey, Joy, better watch out! Here comes the ace!” the cheerleaders chorused, refusing to be forgotten. Eve scoffed at their tacky choreographed frolicking. Bringing your own cheer squad, how full of yourself, how Unovan. Their captain caught her eye, stopped what she was doing – and actually blew her a kiss!

You insolent bloody -

“We’re nearly there,” Josh murmured.

“What?” Eve snapped, distracted from a fantasy of kicking their glittering captain right in her golden arse. Fucking puppies. She turned her attention back to the field. Gail still hadn’t weakened her grip.

“Let go, Gail!” Eve commanded. She did, albeit sulkily, allowing Winters to recall her pokémon. Winters didn’t seem too put out. It was a minor set-back, and they all knew it.

It had been a hard battle. Fragments of Bailey’s shell glinted evilly in the grass, centre field was scorched and cratered from her Self-Destruct. Clouds of black smoke rose from burning flowers. A snaking scar cut down the height of the lightning-struck tree, feathery grey ash lying at its roots. This point of a battle was hard on trainers too, Eve was learning. The mental fatigue sunk in, thoughts became lethargic – it became harder to battle intelligently, until the battle turned into a contest of mental fortitude.

With a thrill Eve savoured this complex moment. Chants showered down from the crowd of ten thousand, more yells of ‘Invicta!’ than of ‘Cherrygrove!’. The Sinnoh Champion was talking to Madam Pemberton – Cynthia herself was a former Tigerlily Champion. Madam Pemberton looked like she was at the opera rather than a sporting tournament, saying little and signalling approval with light applause.

Eve studied Josh surreptitiously. He was tired, too, she could tell by his expression. Tired, but concentrating hard anyway.

“What do you think?” he said.

“Hm,” Eve started. She was surprised by how confident she felt. Five out of six pokémon down, and now only the eelektross lay between her, and the championship. “There’s no point going on the defensive. Eelektross’ll blast right through us anyway.”

Josh thought for a moment, weighing it up. “We ought to be cautious.”

Lovelace and Winters briefly clasped hands. Winters hurled the Ultra Ball into centre field. “It’s all down to you!” she declared. “Charge your batteries! Let nothing withstand you!”

Eelektross returned to the field, and it commanded attention. It writhed into the air with a flick of its tail, as if struggling free of the Ultra Ball. The markings along its head rippled with a harsh electric luminescence. Small red eyes focused on the roosting pidgeotto.

“Fly, damn you!” Eve yelled. “Show them who rules the air!”

Gail, undaunted, took flight with a yell. Ivysaur began a cautious advance, firing up another bout of Growth as he went. His eyes were fixed on Eelektross slowly coiling six feet above him. It suddenly lashed out with Thunderbolt, blinding Eve with the flash. When her eyes cleared she saw a black burn in the grass. Ivysaur had managed to dodge it.

“Twister!” Eve called. Gail churned up a fierce attack, pinning Eelektross in place for a few seconds but otherwise dealing no apparent damage.

“Poudre Dodo.”

“Ascend six feet,” Winters responded. Ivysaur spouted Sleep Powder, much too low to effectively engulf it, the powder merely sticking to its tail as it drifted up out of range. The cloud twisted gently in the residual Twister. Eelektross abruptly aimed a rope of Dragon Pulse at Gail, chasing her through the air. Despite herself Eve was impressed – the dragonfire was perpetually right at her tail.

The violet dragonfire was jerked off-target, sent flaming up towards the ceiling. Ivysaur had twined a pair of vines around its arm and was patiently reeling it in.

“Thunderbolt,” Winters ordered quietly.

Ivysaur’s vines turned into wires. You couldn’t see much of the effect, but Eve could imagine it. The strike seared into his back, crisped the edges of his leaves; a random discharge of bolts crackled in a halo from its extremities.

“Boom! Thank you very much!”

“Arse,” Josh breathed. “Should have foreseen that.”

“I remember how you’ve got round this problem before,” Eve countered. “With the aid of a little gale.”

He looked up at her circling pidgeotto. “Winters’ll work that out the moment we issue orders.”

“Unless I set the timing,” Eve objected.

Josh went quiet for a moment. “Ok. Ivysaur, tu retrais, en arrière, bon?”

Ivysaur backed off a few feet, crunching onto burned grass as he went. Eve shouted up to Gail, pointing her down into position.

“Charge,” Winters ordered.

Eve realised she wasn’t sure whether Josh had told Ivysaur to follow her lead. Augh, safe strategies don’t win finals. “Gail, give me a gentle Gust! Ivysaur, Sleep Powder!”

His scorched leaves fluttered and snapped in the Gust. Fuck, if he doesn’t respond right now, then -

Gail’s Gust caught the Sleep Powder and unfurled it into a glittering tide, smothering Eelektross’ gills in the powder. It didn’t seem to make an immediate difference. How can you tell when an eelektross was asleep?

“Thunderbolt: Ivysaur!” Winters barked. Nothing. Not even a spark.

“Thank you very much!” Eve hooted, grabbing Gail’s Fast Ball. “That’s why you’re an ace, Ivysaur! Gail, come back!”

She flung the next Ball right at Eelektross still drifting in mid-air. “Lyra, smash it!”

Manifesting like a scarlet bullet, Lyra fell on it with an eager fury. Lyra really relished having Iron Fist as her Ability. She was in no mood to give quarter, either, given her determination to beat a sleeping opponent bloody.

“Nature Power,” Josh said, slightly behind the beat. On the burned grass Nature Power turned into Tri Attack.

A white-hot lightning-bolt split Eve’s vision in two. The Thunderbolt’s tearing crash drowned out Ivysaur’s bellow of pain and surprise; Lyra screeched as she got caught and zapped by secondary discharge leaping from eelektross’ arms.

“Aqua Tail: Ivysaur!”

With dreadful inevitability Eelektross unrolled itself, swung its tail around, and slammed into Ivysaur’s flank. A wave leapt up from its tail, engulfed Ivysaur and broke over the field. Josh stifled a cry as Ivysaur was hurled back into the flowers.

Whoo! Kiss the ace!” the cheer squad chimed out. In unison they licked their fingers, touching them to their butt-cheeks with a vocalised sizzle. Ivysaur’s portrait on the scoreboard went grey, to general applause. Lovelace joined the crowd in congratulating Winters on that spectacular move, and threw her arms around her neck. Eve was pretty sure Eelektross couldn’t control that discharge – though Winters didn’t seem at all surprised, immediately capitalising on it. That was a façade, Eve was sure of it, no-one’s mental fortitude was that strong -

Both assistant referees were holding up yellow cards.

“Final warning: excessive force,” referee Averill announced.

Josh had been keeping his face carefully dispassionate. Now Eve could see anger in the lines around his eyes and in the set of his jaw. He recalled Ivysaur without a word, taking a few steadying breaths before drawing Fionn’s Love Ball.

“Hey. Forget about that for now. He’ll stabilise in the Poké Ball,” Eve said mollifyingly.

“And – begin!”

“Fionn. Do me proud, kidda,” Josh called, throwing her towards centre-right field. She melted into the smoke still rising from the far side of the field. Eve quickly recalled Lyra in favour of Gail. She rose steeply, frenetically, instinctively trying to take the highest position.

“Thunderbolt: Pidgeotto!” Winters demanded almost eagerly. Gail tried to side-slip, failed, and got lost in the blinding glare of another lightning-bolt.

Boom! Aaaaah, sweet!” the cheerleaders recited jubilantly – but Eve just laughed as Gail kept flying regardless. The squad stopped bounding out of embarrassment as they realised they’d cheered a failure.

“What the hell?” Lovelace burst out.

“Fionn, Feu Follet.”

Fionn detached herself from the smoke, closing in on Eelektross as fast as she could. It must have seen her out the corner of its eye, because it discharged a huge halo of lightning. Fionn shrieked in alarm and backed away. Eelektross lurched sideways as Gail Tackled it with a sound like a steak being whacked with a mallet, before taking flight again.

Thunderbolt!

Eelektross struck her just as she was re-gaining height. Unperturbed she soared buoyantly over the trees, limned with Motor Drive’s golden haze. Eve clapped her hands in glee. She could feel the change in the atmosphere – suddenly everyone was feeling uncertain, and off-balance.

“Charge!” Winters snapped.

“She’s oddly slow to learn this time,” Eve said.

“It’s for the Special Defence,” Josh said quietly, watching Fionn opportunistically blast Eelektross with Ominous Wind.

“Whatever. Fly, Gail!”

She called just once – complaining about the lack of wind – a harsh, barbaric sound. Motor Drive fizzing in her breast muscles, she climbed quickly anyway, eating up the height with deep, rippling wingbeats. One hundred feet up and Gail hit the apex of her climb. One hundred feet, close enough to effective attack height. She hung on the air, wings splayed, then slid gracefully into a dive.

“Shoot it down. Flash Cannon,” Winters ordered. For a moment Eve thought she’d ordered that out of desperation, expecting one powerful shot. But Eelektross unleashed a vicious hail of slender beams, like splinters of light. Gail tried helixing around it, refusing to give up her attack. A stray Flash Cannon round snapped away one of her tail feathers – she veered off in panic, skimmed low over the field like a taillow, Eelektross’ chasing Flash Cannon chewing up the grass behind her.

“The misdreavus is in your shadow. Defend yourself,” Winters said.

Eelektross didn’t interrupt its fusillade. It didn’t even look down. It just zapped its own shadow. Fionn screamed as the damn chanting started again – first in genuine pain, then in a vengeful banshee-wail that stabbed through the chants like an icicle.

Oh Great Rhia, give me an edge! Eve prayed. Fionn probably couldn’t take many hits like that.

“Its defence is a powerful offence,” she breathed. The strategy would only work with casual raw power, but that’s why Winters had chosen Eelektross. Ironically Eelektross’ raw power had given Gail the raw speed to out-fly Flash Cannon. She sprinted daringly through the trees on the far side of the field, screaming with the frustration of the hunter being hunted. Smoke billowed in her wake – Flash Cannon close behind – the trees turned into a boiling storm of light and shredded leaves whirling like confetti. And Gail disappeared from sight.

“Where the hell are you?” Eve whispered.

Glancing right, Eve spotted Whitney’s pointing arm, her voice lost in the battle noise. Gail was ascending back to attack height. Eelektross was too busy ripping apart the trees to notice.

“Up, up, adjust your aim!” Winters yelled. Her pokémon followed her gaze, zeroed in, and fired. For a moment it looked like Gail was going to fly right into it. She somehow executed a tight J-turn, arresting her climb, Flash Cannon fizzing hardly a foot above her, then descending like a comet. Eelektross was thrice her length and over ten times her weight. But Gail could crush bone with her grip.

She slapped into Eelektross behind the head, squeezing hard. It actually thrashed around in pain, undulating its glistening body like it meant to throw her off, while Gail simply screeched in defiance and sank her talons in deeper. People were cheering ‘K-O! K-O!’ but who the hell for Eve didn’t know.

“Hang in there!” Eve yelled. It couldn’t zap her off; it couldn’t dislodge her through flailing; it was going to tire eventually.

Gail’s obsessive mind was a double-edged sword. The idea of attacking from a height was wedged in her brain. She suddenly disengaged, beating hard for height. She should have dived off, Eve realised, climbing up from a standing start was too slow -

“Too slow, too slow,” she murmured. “Gail -”

Flash Cannon!

Splintered light stippled across Gail’s flank. She wrenched aside, trying to confuse Eelektross with a sudden drop in altitude. It didn’t work. Flash Cannon showered across her back. A hit to her wing punched her out of the air – she fluttered desperately and crashed into the grass.

Eve recalled Gail as the referee made the inevitable ruling. “Well done, girl. You had a good match.”

And then there were two. Eve was left with Lyra, Josh with his misdreavus. Neither one could really withstand a Thunderbolt,.

“What do you think?” Josh said. “How much more damage?”

That was difficult to assess. Eelektross was bleeding stickily from multiple wounds – an Air Cutter laceration, punctures from Gail’s talons. Some of its ribs must be broken. Usually when you couldn’t tell from the pokémon, you watched the trainer. But Winters was giving nothing away as usual, and anyway she had every reason to believe she was two attacks away from victory. That thought was written all over Lovelace’s expression.

“I don’t know,” Eve admitted.

“Begin!” referee Averill called.

Eve hurriedly unsnapped Lyra’s Poké Ball from her gilet. “Stay sharp! Keep a clear head! Show them why you’re the ace!”

“Future Sight,” Josh said – trying, no doubt, to land a decisive blow.

“Thunderbolt: Ledian! Do not stop until you defeat it!” Winters ordered balefully.

Lyra didn’t have Gail’s aerial speed or her elegance. Eelektross must somehow have telegraphed its first attack – it missed and blew an unlucky sapling into kindling. The second slammed into a Protect. With the third Thunderbolt Lyra’s Protect failed. The glare of three Thunderbolts had already blotted her from sight, the crowd and Lyra’s yell alike drowned out by rending thunderclaps. Lyra crashed into the field, having the good sense to take flight again, trailing smoke from her singed wings.

Invicta! Invicta! Invicta!

Eve’s ears rang and her eyes ached. She had no doubt Eelektross could throw Thunderbolts again and again, as many times as it took. It would only take one more. Twice, to finish off the misdreavus as well -

Eve realised she had one trick left.

“Fionn, Astonish!” Eve ordered.

“What are you planning?” Josh hissed.

“Stay sharp, Lyra! Show them why you’re the ace!” Eve yelled, ignoring him. She was watching Eelektross carefully. All eyes on Lyra now …

The cheerleaders were watching her. Lovelace was watching her, Winters was watching her. Fionn materialised just behind Eelektross’ head. Sparks started to spit and jump along its arms.

Destiny Bond!” Eve ordered.

With a last effort Lyra raised a Protect-bubble. A second later the Thunderbolt hit it, lighting the Protect up like a miniature sun. The secondary discharges, which Eelektross could not control, crackled madly from its extremities. Some of them speared right through Fionn.

Fionn melted into an inchoate fog. Eelektross collapsed into the grass like a puppet with its strings cut. The thunderclap boomed.

Inv-

A moment of silence, like the eye of a storm. Eve didn’t dare breathe, didn’t dare assume.

“Eelektross and Misdreavus are both unable to battle! The victory and the championship goes to the team of Evelina Joy and Melissa Evans!”

A peal of ordnance blasted from the sidelines. Cannons fired a dazzling blizzard of orange and white confetti as the last portraits on the scoreboard went grey. A storm of applause joined the storm of confetti, showering down onto the field from almost ten thousand pairs of hands. More than half of it was the polite acclaim of disappointed a supporters. But there was also a growing cheer of “Cherrygrove! Cherrygrove!” and banners hoisted in vicarious victory.

“- she’s done what no-one expected and caught Winters with her trousers down, a textbook example of never giving up and being prepared to make tactical sacrifices where it really counts! The Unovan’s disappointment is palpable -”

Lovelace was sobbing openly into Winters’ arms. Their reversal of fortune had been brutally abrupt.

A recall beam flickered fitfully across the field. Josh recalled Fionn with some difficulty while Eve tried to squeeze him to death. She paused her attempt at euphoric murder when the subdued cheer squad, resigned to the result, caught her eye. Spotting Eve in turn they dipped their LOVELACE WINTERS INVICTA banner in salute.

“We’ll be back in fifteen minutes, for the Awards ceremony, as the Tigerlily Tourney ends, in joy, for Joy. This is Hassan Ali, for Metro FM.”

Eve turned to the stands, an exhausted Lyra hovering at her shoulder. Obscured by a myriad floating flakes of confetti, the Goldenrod Gym trainers, Whitney, Champion Cynthia, the Imperial Champion Madame Pemberton, were all applauding sincerely. The sight was glorious. It was validation. They both raised their fists, as much in victory as in salute.


Next Chapter: The Wailing of the Gulls
 
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She detonated with a crunchy blast, deep-throated like a snarl. A terse belch of flame. Smoke and earth erupting in a black cloud swallowing her from sight. The ground shook tremulously like first date butterflies.
This prose is certainly more purple than what I normally expect from you... not sure if it's just because I haven't read TLW in so long, or because your style has evolved so much since you wrote the last chapter. For the most part I'd say it works, although I didn't fully understand what you meant by "crunchy" here. And -- and I know it's rich coming from me -- I think the "shaking like first date butterflies" is a bit much here. It's a metaphor of a metaphor; butterflies in your stomach is already an abstract concept, so transmuting it to describe anything else manes that there's really not much describing how the ground is actually shaking here. You do a lot of metpahors in these opening lines that I think convey the term well (there was a good one about a blazer and a set of scrubs), but this one was a bit far.

Bailey never said much. But there was something about the sheer zest of her Self-Destructs that suggested she loved explosions.
I quite like this detail. Again, not sure if style evolution or if I've forgotten, but I do like that you're adding in little hobbies for the side pokemon -- Lyra and Fionn, for example, have easy personalities either because their faces are expressive or they are able to talk, but your less emotive team members don't often get a chance to shine like this, so it's nice.

Eve realised she was laughing savagely and applauding Lyra.
I like these little asides. Your narration is pretty tight on the battle itself, so it's really good to see Eve getting sucked in. This and the crowd reactions make for a nice subplot so that it isn't 1000% focused on the battle, and you use that to give the action time to breathe. Nicely done.

pedipalps
cephalothorax
not sure how many insect SAT level words are allowed in one chapter but we're getting close

Tynamo were difficult to find and harder to raise, evolving late, possessing gelatinous muscles and a timid temperament. Raising tynamo was a lot like dragon taming in that respect. But eventually, you got something with no type-weaknesses, that could routinely discharge two thousand volts at a time: a creature of the abyss with no fear of what lives in the sunlight.

What kind of woman uses an ace like that? Someone intelligent, someone patient. Someone with an eye for power.
This was a really good set of paragraphs, and I liked where it came in the story -- although I do wonder why it comes out so far away from when Eelektross takes the field. Winters is already established as a dominant strategic force, so it's not like we don't know (nor could have reasonably forgotten) that she's intelligent and patient; what this snippet confirms for us/Eve is more that Eelektross is indeed an excellent choice for Winters to capitalize on that intelligence and patience.

“Final warning: excessive force,” referee Averill announced.
This one was a little strange to me, as the Aqua Tail seems pretty tame and the Thunderbolt seemed in-line with what had happened previously. I think using some of your more dramatic phrasing at the more dramatic parts of the story would help with this -- if this attack is supposed to be excessive, make it feel like it should be.

Anyway, the battle this chapter was really quite well-done. I think you kept the scope reasonable, and despite it becoming a 2v1 relatively early into the chapter you're still able to keep the stakes high and realistic. My favorite bit was how you foreshadowed Eve commanding Josh's pokemon successfully with the Sleep Powder/Astonish before going in for the final upset; it was an excellent way of setting up realistic rules and following them to victory.

Not much else to say here; things are pretty clean and I expect the post-battle fallout to have the true meat on it. It's really good to have this back; hope there's more soon!
 
Ch. 30 - The Wailing of the Gulls
Chapter Thirty – The Wailing of the Gulls (Version 1.0)

Joshua


Tuesday dawned crisp and bright. The thin Millennium Centre curtains cheerfully let the morning into the room and washed the bunk bed in May sunshine. Reluctantly, Josh abandoned his attempt at sleep, admitted that it was morning, and awoke.

He had been exhausted last night – they both had. It was surprising how hard the fatigue had hit after the final. A whole day of rest and still, last night, he’d been as tired as he ever was after exam season. Somehow they’d fallen asleep together, with Josh as big spoon to Eve’s little, despite her being taller. Which meant he woke squinting at her shoulder, with – damn it – a dead left arm. On the bright side, though, no more tits …

It wasn’t just his arm that was uncomfortable. His – oh, no. Not now, Ostaro, why now, you bastard! His drowsy haze instantly cleared as he realised morning had also brought a fine, firm morning wood. Hard as a seasoned holly stave it lay right next to her – well, he could faintly feel her cheek. And if he could feel her, she could feel him. And if she hadn’t noticed already, she would if he moved. Oh, fuck.

Bad choice of curse.

Ok, ok, don’t panic, think! Eve was still asleep. If he moved slowly and carefully maybe he could back away. Right. He patiently started to slide his hips back -

Eve stirred. “Morning luxio.”

Fuck! “Uh, yeah, morning!”

“What’s the matter?” Eve murmured sleepily.

She’ll figure it out anyway. “Eevee, I’m sorry, thissen ay usual,” he stammered incoherently, “uh, the thing is, I just – I’m sorry.”

Eve peered at his acutely embarrassed expression over her shoulder for a moment.

“Oh sweetling, I don’t mind. I know you can’t help it,” she said casually. She gave him a playful nudge with her bum. “Besides, I’mma lucky girl. It’s been a while since I last woke up to a cuddle and a cock.”

“What?” he said helplessly, not at all sure how he ought to feel. That was such a … an Imogen Joy thing to say.

“’M sorry, I’m just being silly. Hey, lie down bud. On your back.”

She gently pushed him down and shuffled up next to him, arm-to-arm so she could lean her head on his shoulder. “There. More comfortable for both of us.”

Josh immediately seized the opportunity to do some swift re-arranging when Eve closed her eyes again. Silence for a while, but for Eve’s relaxed breathing.

“I trust you, you know,” Eve said quietly. “I mean, I’m not quite ready to cuddle with your hard-on on my ass -”

“Nor me -”

“- but they happen sometimes. It’s part of cuddling. I don’t want you feeling self-conscious about it.”

“… I’ve just realised this isn’t a normal friendship,” Josh said half-seriously.

“Oh, shush,” Eve replied half-seriously. “It happens to girls too, you know.”

“Does it?”

“After a fashion. Same sort of thing, anyway.”

Silence again, but for Eve’s relaxed breathing.

“I wo-on!” Eve sang softly, lying in happy triumph, a lazy feline smile on her face.

“What will ye do today?”

“I am going to challenge Whitney. It’s been a short rest period, sure, but psychologically they’re fired-up and ready for battle. They know they’re champions.”

“I’d come to watch, but I’m going to lie low for a while. Besides, I’ve got one last thing to do as Melissa.”


*​

Josh couldn’t help but feel exposed and out of place, seated on an expensive-looking sofa in an expensive-looking office, ignoring the cup of expensive-smelling coffee the secretary had brought him. He looked out of the window at all the other high-rise offices and condos, towards the docklands and GTS Plaza. He missed the comfort and continuity of Five-and-Six Cottage.

“Miss Evans?” the secretary said. “You can go through now.”

Josh had expected Madam Pemberton’s office to be furnished with a lot of oak and brass, like an old university library. Instead he found something minimalist, somewhat cold, dominated by maple. A glass tigerlily sitting on the desk added a splash of vibrancy.

Madam Pemberton rose to greet him. “Miss Evans. Please, sit down.”

Josh didn’t accept that invitation. He placed an unopened box on her desk. “I just came to return this.”

Pemberton looked at it for a moment, as if she’d never seen it before. She sat back down, looking at him expectantly.

Josh unwisely tried to fill the silence. “I only entered for Eve’s sake.”

“And you’re not a girl.”

This time Josh did sit down. Half a dozen questions were strangled off before they could spill out of his mouth. If Eve had to give up the honour of the Championship, her glory was the whole point of Melissa – and he was completely out of clever ideas. He really didn’t want to see her disappointed, no, devastated face. But a small, calculating voice said: If she knew, then why is she bringing it up now?

“You knew,” he said.

“Yes, I knew. Since, oh, your Quarter Finals match,” Pemberton said calmly.

Wait for it.

“Did you think you were the first to try this? Although, I wouldn’t panic. You most likely fooled the rest of them.” She laughed dryly. “People look but they don’t see.”

“What are you going to do?” Josh asked carefully.

“Do? Nothing. A talented young woman won. The man who assisted her gains nothing. And so shines a good deed in a weary world,” she added wryly.

Josh was pretty sure he could work this one out. “You were waiting to see what I would do.”

“Clever boy. Had you not returned, then Ostaro himself could not have helped you.”

“I only entered for Eve’s sake,” Josh repeated, not entirely sure Ostaro would try.

Madam Pemberton leaned back in her seat, and sighed. “They say gender doesn’t matter in pokémon training any more … maybe they’re right. Do you know how many spectators used to attend this tournament? Fifty thousand. Fifty thousand! Once every woman Master was a Tigerlily Champion. Nobody cares about my little tourney now.”

“Eve absolutely does,” Josh said, gesturing curtly to his tits to reinforce his point.

“Courteous of you to say as much,” Pemberton admitted. “But times change, probably faster than most of us realise. They say I have to accept them now, transsexuals, transgenders, whatever I’m supposed to call them. That’s the way the wind is blowing, in any case. Vive la différence.”

Josh didn’t say anything to that. He didn’t know what to say.

“Yes, times change,” she said meditatively. “Keep your prize.”

“Can you do that?”

“It’s my tourney. The Pokémon League has no say in it. Call it a gift, if that assuages your conscience.”

Josh looked at the unobtrusive white box on her desk. Inside, $3000 of Champion’s winnings. A Pokédex he couldn’t possibly afford on his own. Hitherto he’d never thought about what he’d do with the Champion’s prize; deep down he’d never seriously expected it would even get this far. In hindsight, that was silly.

Josh had entered the tourney for Eve, true, but if he took the prize what did that mean? But Pemberton’s grudging attitude towards, towards transgender people didn’t sit right with him, though he couldn’t begin to explain why. So was it ethical to take the gift? The gift that he would never have been offered had he not come here today to return it.

He tentatively picked up the box. “I understand that this is between us.”

“Mmm. She’s a better trainer than you anyway,” Pemberton said with a dismissive wave.

He didn’t argue with that. Nor did he push his luck.

“Thank you, ma’am.”


*​

Unsurprisingly, he’d ended up in the Underground again. It wasn’t difficult to find somewhere airing Eve’s Gym battle. Goldenrod Gym battles often found their way onto the mainstream channels, but being able to casually watch them live in a bar appeared to be a Sunshine City thing. Most of the patrons were really there to watch Whitney. Behind the ditzy persona she was a tenacious, wilful trainer. But then again, so was Eve.

Josh was perched on a bar stool, picking at a bad hot pork sandwich. Screwball hovered at his shoulder, obediently ignoring the electronics in the bar. It was too tired for mischief.

The battle had hit a tense lull. Eve’s meowth and Whitney’s clefairy watched each other carefully. That thing might look like a giant plushie, but you underestimated clefairy at your peril. Josh sighed, reminded of why he shouldn’t trust these hipster joints. This was not a hot pork sandwich. There was salad on it, for one thing – Josh evicted a piece of lollo rosso with weary contempt – and made with a stupid soggy brioche bun for another. A real Townie hot pork sandwich involved inch-thick slabs of crusty bread, served up with greasy shards of crackling like fatty shrapnel.

Meowth suddenly made a dash for clefairy. Using Meowth was a smart choice, Josh thought without surprise. He hadn’t taken part in the final and was eager to get his claws into something. Clefairy swiped at him with a Mega Punch. Mere ferocity obviously wasn’t going to overwhelm Whitney.

“Want te bost thissen, Screwball? Should be an easy battle for ye.”

[Directive issued, confirm?]

“No, Screwball.”

[Tired.]

“Yeah, me too.”

Eve didn’t look at all tired for someone who’d just spent a week on the battlefield. The camera was mostly ignoring her in favour of focussing on Whitney. Even though Eve looked like she belonged on that stage. Josh still felt rather like a fraud: not a natural trainer at all, but one who wins through cunning and appropriating strategies, klefki-like, from better trainers. He wondered how far cunning could really take him. Bugsy had said he didn’t have any passion for battle. Josh lightly touched the four Poké Balls at his belt. Bugsy was probably right.

He ought to spend more time with little Meg, now the Tourney was over.

Meowth managed to get his claws into Clefairy, bowling her over with a flying leap. A blow cracked the battlefield as she flung a Mega Punch and ended up pounding the concrete. Ferocity might overwhelm clefairy.


*​

Eve was in an effervescent mood.

“Check out the bling! Badge number three! Right off the back of a tournament win!” she crowed like an unfezant. “I am just. The. Cat’s. Pyjamas, daddy-o.”

Josh was more-or-less ignoring her. You had to, when she was bragging. He was feeling like himself again; enjoying the feeling of walking by the river without strange weight on his chest, just the heft of his bag across his shoulders again. The bag he’d bought in Azalea was more fit for purpose, but he missed his mother’s hazel-framed backpack.

You almost wouldn’t know the river was tidal here. The marina was rather charmingly named Mirabelle Wharf, a name reminiscent of the tropical Ultramarean Sea, albeit redeveloped without mercy into corporate blandness. The marina was populated with the sleek soulless yachts of the city’s bourgeoisie. An avenue of mature plane trees at least lent it a pleasant leafiness. In defiance of the neatness a few food vendors had managed to bring their vans down to the riverine boulevard.

He could smell the sea on the breeze. He was a weird paradox, he knew, a Townie boy most at home in the forest. But there was something about the sea -

Eve called to Gail, soaring easily on that breeze. Wherever she soared, the wingull soared higher, trying to keep above her reach. They might have good reason to. Eve insisted she was becoming tame, but he saw a wildness in her eyes that said different. She pointedly ignored the call for a moment before reluctantly returning to the fist. Light exercise after hard battle was Eve’s way. It probably was necessary for a raptor, admittedly, but it wasn’t his way. Ivysaur had barely left his Poké Ball other than to eat; there was no way he’d let Fionn out before nightfall.

“Whoza pretty girl, den?” Eve cooed at Gail, as if she were a chatot. “I know that look. You’re hungry. I’m going to find somewhere selling meat.”

Josh kept wandering along the river. Much as he loved the sea, unlike the forest it was an enigma. He didn’t understand the sea. He fussed around the margins, along the coast, trying to read it the way he read the wildwood. He couldn’t, of course. But the sea-longing never left his heart.

Eve was catching him up, with Gail still on her fist. “What’s the face for?” she said.

“I think I’ve had enough of Goldenrod.”

“That’s why we’re leaving tomorrow.”

“We could have left today, I don’t need to get used to the weight again.”

A quarter-mile downriver, near the obnoxiously shiny bulk of the Silph building, he saw the masts. Not the masts of modern yachts, but the masts of a great sailing ship, like something teleported through time from the eighteenth-century city. It was obviously not antique, built of smooth oak – and obviously a merchanter from its tubby profile and sparse gunports. She loomed almost majestically, a Middle Kingdom flag lazily flapping from the mainmast 180 feet above. Painted in gold across her stern was her name: Karego Rose.

“What a strange and wonderful thing it is, to see a Lemuriaman here,” Josh said.

“Glad you think so.”

The voice was coming from the quarter-deck. A cheerful middle-aged man looked down on them as he leaned on the gunwale. His face was roughened from sun, salt, and wind. He was dressed to match the ship in a cravat and bright yellow waistcoat. Behind him another sailor strode by with his hair plaited into a queue beneath a tricorne hat.

“Where’m ye bound?” Josh called up.

“Cianwood City, by way of the Orange Archipelago.”

“Pity ye don’t tek passengers,” Josh joked.

“Who says we don’t?” The man gave him a searching look. “Haven’t I seen you before?”

“He was on JPLN a few weeks ago,” Eve quickly deflected.

“No, no …” he said pensively. “The Regatta, two, three years ago! You were on the Mulberry crew!”

“Yes!” Josh said relief. “Yes. I was the architect. Iron King was my design.”

“Including the ram?”

“Especially the ram.”

The man laughed at that and slapped the gunwale. “Townie, we do take passengers, and there is most certainly a berth aboard for the man who sunk the Goldenrod Uni crew. Or one of them. Julian Livesey, captain of the Karego Rose.”

Mum always said we were originally from Valencia Island. Maybe he could see it from the bow of a real ship, a ship of oak and canvas and ironwork. To wake up, and hear the sea, smell the salt, feel the sun of his ancestral homeland on his shoulders! A gust of sea air blew from the west, cutting through the ambient petrochemical smell of the city.

He belatedly realised this wasn’t completely his decision. Eve was looking at him was that patronising expression women reserved for when men were feeling passionate about something. Gail glowered, because falcons glower at everything.

“No!” Eve said automatically, then paused. Her expression was a conflicting mixture of reluctance and amusement. “You do at least have a shower, don’t you?” she called up to Livesey doubtfully.

“By law, yes. Most of us live here,” Livesey added.

“… oh, alright then,” Eve relented, which were such sweet words to Josh’s ears.

To the sea! Josh was so excited he forgot to hug her. A wingull started to call, then another and another as squadrons of them suddenly made for the west.

“Come aboard!” Livesey called. “We sail on the flood tide!”


Next Chapter: The Port of Crashing Waves
 
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Hard as a seasoned holly stave it lay right next to her – well, he could faintly feel her cheek.
Yup, this is how the golden rod arc ends. I am neither surprised nor disappointed.

“Yes, I knew. Since, oh, your Quarter Finals match,” Pemberton said calmly.
Was this meant to be a callback? I wasn't sure -- skimmed the quarter finals chapter to see if there were any slips in Josh's cover that I'd missed, but I don't think those start happening until later? Not that it'd be necessary; it just feels like the kind of detail I'd expect you to have included.

“Yes!” Josh said relief. “Yes. I was the architect. Iron King was my design.”
I feel like this is a callback but I'm not fully sure to what?

Not much else to say here. Overall, this serves as a nice wrap-up chapter. There are the main loose ends -- the conclusion of the Tigerlily Arc, Josh and Eve -- that get knotted off neatly, and hints for next steps, but otherwise, things are pretty introspective, and it's a bit harder to comment on where I think plots and such are going. Your prose is on point as usual, and I think now that we're out of tight descriptions of different pokemon body types, you don't get to flex your thesaurus as aggressively. From a narrative perspective I'm a fan of having things in neat little bows, so I think that this type of chapter works well; I also appreciated breezing through the Whitney battle since the past chunk has been pretty battle-heavy.
 
I've just realised it's been about a month since I did responses, and since it seems unlikely there'll be any more to respond to soon, I may as well now.

I quite like this detail. Again, not sure if style evolution or if I've forgotten, but I do like that you're adding in little hobbies for the side pokemon -- Lyra and Fionn, for example, have easy personalities either because their faces are expressive or they are able to talk, but your less emotive team members don't often get a chance to shine like this, so it's nice

I do wonder whether this partially explains the prevalence of some species in fanfic. Setting aside the fact that I'd realised Bailey had very little screentime, something as unexpressive as a a forretress doesn't give many obvious ways to show personality. I'll probably come to regret making Bailey quiet as well

This was a really good set of paragraphs, and I liked where it came in the story -- although I do wonder why it comes out so far away from when Eelektross takes the field. Winters is already established as a dominant strategic force, so it's not like we don't know (nor could have reasonably forgotten) that she's intelligent and patient; what this snippet confirms for us/Eve is more that Eelektross is indeed an excellent choice for Winters to capitalize on that intelligence and patience.

Well. Part of it is down to pacing issues. Two chapters of a long battle demands more than one point to rest, or at least try to give the audience a break from the action. So I decided to re-establish the threat here, hoping that borrowing a trick from visual media would translate reasonably well into a serial fanfiction. The narrative of the battle may conceivably be off - in St. Elmos Fire you get a preview of Eelektross with the intent of it hanging around in the background as a constant threat. So in that sense it's logical to be more dramatic about it here, where it takes a proper part of the battle. But that's only relevant if I pulled off that feeling of background threat well enough.

This one was a little strange to me, as the Aqua Tail seems pretty tame and the Thunderbolt seemed in-line with what had happened previously. I think using some of your more dramatic phrasing at the more dramatic parts of the story would help with this -- if this attack is supposed to be excessive, make it feel like it should be.

I apparently didn't get the point across well enough. The intended take away was that the referee deemed an Aqua Tail immediately on top of Thunderbolt unnecessary.

Yup, this is how the golden rod arc ends. I am neither surprised nor disappointed.

Not with with a bang, but with. There is a point to this, beyond playing around with language, incidentally.

Was this meant to be a callback? I wasn't sure -- skimmed the quarter finals chapter to see if there were any slips in Josh's cover that I'd missed, but I don't think those start happening until later?

No, but perhaps it should have been.

I feel like this is a callback but I'm not fully sure to what?

It occurs to me that you may not have read the fully revised Prelude. It's not fully elaborated on there, but for the sake of brevity, I'll quote it:

Prelude said:
Did it remember when he and Grey brought together eight Uni friends and built the longboat they named Iron King, right here in workshop #6? They’d sailed her down to the annual Regatta to terrorise the Tri-Universities teams. He imagined the spirit of the river telling the canal how they’d rammed Goldenrod Imperial’s Gold Standard and left her sinking in their wake, and her cox screaming with rage.
 
Ch. 31 - The Port of Crashing Waves
Part Two - Growing Up

  • Strong language - mild slurs

Chapter Thirty One – The Port of Crashing Waves (Version 1.0)

Evelina

Eve tried to shade her eyes against the sun reflecting off the sea. The wind blew briskly from the Great Western Ocean, plucking mischievously at the flyaways in her hair. This spot on the forecastle of the Karego Rose had become her favourite place to watch sea and sky. There near the horizon was Cianwood Island, blue and hazy with distance. Further off, if she squinted, Eve could see the most southerly of the Whirl Islands, Blue Point Isle.

After a month aboard the Rose Eve was privately glad they’d be making landfall by the afternoon. The Rose was the last working merchant ship under sail in the Empire, though ‘working’ was stretching the definition rather thinly. Captain Livesey paid for the ship from his investments and only ever did any trading when he remembered to. At times it had been, well, silly. They were all big boys, really, playing dress-up with the biggest toy ever.

Oh, the voyage hadn’t been unenjoyable, by anyone’s metric. The five days they’d spent in the Orange Archipelago had been like a holiday. On Pummelo Island they’d been spectators for once, and watched Supreme Gym Leader Drake’s ditto tear through half a challenger’s team, and his dragonite tear through the other half. West of Tangelo Island one evening they watched in wonder as a pod of almost thirty wailord cruised by, spouting and calling with plangent voices. On Trovita Island they’d both won a Spike Shell Badge from the unctuously flirty Gym Leader. With Eve watching, Rudy had the direst trouble paying attention to his battle with Josh; it wasn’t flattering, the man was a clear pussy-hound. After her victory Eve had tried to triumphantly squeeze her badge in her fist, and Josh had nearly pissed himself laughing when she yelped in pain. And then on to Valencia Island, beautiful, butterfree-strewn Valencia, an island which made Josh especially contemplative.

Speaking of silly. She watched Josh patiently descend barefoot from the rigging. She’d managed to pester him into keeping his wavy, ringletty hair. Not that she’d really seen much of him, at least when they were aboard. It hadn’t taken long for her big kid to make the transition from passenger to would-be crew. There was something hopelessly dorky about the sight of him helping the master’s mate at the wheel, or perched inelegantly somewhere at the top of the mainmast. Eve realised she was smiling. He didn’t seem to know or care how dorky he looked.

She remembered that night off Tangelo Island, which had turned into an impromptu piss-up on deck. Josh had been unusually drunk, goaded into it or trying fruitlessly to keep up. Eve had been standing right here, watching him joining in the singing:

“What do we do with a drunken sailor?
What do we do with a drunken sailor?”

“You pack of bloody clichés,” Eve murmured.

“It’s an authentic work-song, you know. Makes a better drinking-song, mind,” 1st Mate Lawrence had commented, joining her on the forecastle. Eve watched the drinking critically for a while with growing disapproval. They were laughing a lot, clapping and egging him on.

“Are you making fun of him?” she said accusingly.

“What? No! Perish the thought!” Lawrence said, raising his hands defensively. “No, he reminds us of why we all joined the Rose in the first place.”

Josh fell over, again, splattering his rum onto the deck. The 2nd Mate was just as badly affected, legs buckling beneath her – three or four crew caught hold of each of them and hoisted them up.

“Put him into bed with the captain’s daughter!
Put him into bed with the captain’s daughter!”

“They don’t mean her,” Lawrence said hurriedly, catching Eve’s expression. “It’s a joke. The captain’s daughter is, was, a whip. They won’t use that either.”

“Shame,” Eve said sharply.

I didn’t mean that, Eve thought, with some regret, coming back to the present as Josh climbed up to the forecastle.

“Well, hullo stranger,” she said, and hugged him. “Didn’t you say you’ve been to Cianwood before?”

“Been a few years since I was last here. But yeah, almost every summer once. Cianwood Island used to be cheap for families.”

“Time to spill it, daddy-o,” Eve said. “What’s your plan?”

“Well my idea is,” Josh started, probably knowing she’d insist on signing-off on it, “we follow the coast path southwest along Route 47 and 49. There’ll be plenty of opportunity to catch a Water-type, that goes without saying -”

“Which is too simple for you,” Eve interrupted. That did make sense, though. They both could do with a stronger Fire counter, and Eve had been considering the relative merits of a cloyster.

“We’ll head for Towan Bay,” Josh said. “There’s an invasive population of vibrava there, and a bounty on their capture. Double the reward.”

“Hold on, does this mean there’ll be a lot of steep cliff paths?”

Josh shrugged. “It’s Cianwood Island.”

“Well, I’m not climbing up and down forty-five degree cliff paths with a loaded backpack on my back. We’re hiring a pack pokémon. And don’t say it! We’ve got more than enough hoarded Gelt from Gym victories.”

“Oh, fine. Actually, I do need to talk to the captain about the weather. Back in a moment.”

Eve looked back at the sea. She would have liked to stay longer in the Orange Archipelago, but the blunt fact was winning Orange League badges, though good practice, wasn’t going to get her closer to the Silver Conference. Besides, the tropical sun made her face not so much tan as freckle. An exultant cry drew her attention to the rigging. Gail was up above the second set of sails, her small brown body silhouetted against the blue. She leapt off into the sea wind like she was born to it. Perhaps she was. Gail loved the wide freedom of that wind and sky. Often Eve had caught her swooping at wild wingull in mock attacks, trying out different aerobatics, different strategies. She’d grown strong in this time. Rudy sure as hell wasn’t prepared for the kind of Twisters Gail could whip up now.

Gail had also duelled and subsequently crushed the 2nd Mate’s fletchinder, which was thoroughly satisfying. The 2nd Mate was the captain’s daughter, and Eve believed Miss Francesca Livesey deserved a defeat. 2nd Mate Livesey had soft grey rainwater eyes. 2nd Mate Livesey had satin smooth hair despite all the damn salt in the air. 2nd Mate Livesey had a glorious figure improved by climbing the rigging all day. Eve scowled up at Livesey scaling the ratlines, giving her an excellent view of her best assets.

2nd Mate Livesey had spent most of the month teaching Josh all about the sea. He was somewhat overawed by her, hanging on her words and trying to learn unfeasibly quickly to impress her. And Josh didn’t normally talk much about what he could do, not by way of anecdotes or stories, unless you coaxed it from him. Every night 2nd Mate Livesey had done just that. Smug little tart.

The captain took Josh up to the quarterdeck. Eve followed as some of the crew started to assemble on the deck – 1st Mate Lawrence, the Master, fifteen or twenty of the others. Eve made a point of standing by Josh.

“It’s been a pleasure having you aboard, Mr Cook,” Captain Livesey said cheerfully. “All good voyages come to an end, but we couldn’t let you leave without a small memento. Mr Templeton?”

It was a green bandana, embroidered with the name Karego Rose. About half the crew were wearing similar bandanas in shades of red.

“Yours is the only green one,” Templeton said. “We thought it appropriate.”

“… I know I’m no sailor,” Josh admitted.

They had the decency not to confirm that one. “They’re only made for crew,” someone else said.

Josh smiled gratefully, tying his hair back with the bandana with practised ease. Eve remembered his mother’s complaints about not wearing headscarves. Somehow he looked more obviously Native Orange with it on. It occurred to Eve that she hadn’t seen Josh smile like this in … she’d never seen him smile like this. Well, that was ok. After Goldenrod City he deserved it.


*​

As she approached the island, from the deck of Karego Rose you could see most of Cianwood City. A city of narrow streets and golden sands wedged into the shelter of the bay like a krabby in a rockpool, divided in two by a rocky, steep-sided point. It was called a city mostly as a courtesy – it was smaller than Cherrygrove, smaller than Azalea Town even. There was a white lighthouse sited near the head of the point, decoratively crenellated, with beacon windows flashing in the western sun.

The harbour was in the rivermouth on the northern side of the point, defended by a stout breakwater. They had to take the ship’s launch in. The busy harbour was altogether too small for a ship the size of the Rose. As they rounded the breakwater Eve saw, through the forest of fishing boats, the Ranger station converted from the old harbour chapel, flying a weathered Middle Kingdom flag from the tower. A couple of sea rangers were industriously hosing down their lifeboat. After they said some final goodbyes they crossed over the headland to the south side of the city. June was very much the holidaying season. The beach was full of people, a mass of bright parasols, windbreaks, tents, and towels; amid the sandcastles and games of cricket girls sunbathed optimistically; the sea teemed with surfers, a few pokémon-mounted lifeguards floating at the peripheries.

Despite the crowds Cianwood City was endearing itself to her. The town was awash with surf culture, with the laid-back, positive vibes that connoted. Eve noticed a few people giving one another the shaka sign as they passed in the street. The Pokémon Centre wasn’t far from the beach. Eve enjoyed herself exercising bragging rights over her cousin while Josh haggled over the hire of a pack pokémon. Arguing over sixpences might put him in a better mood, which had been getting steadily darker since they’d landed. Maybe it was the crowds winding him up.


*​

The afternoon was wearing on by the time they left Cianwood City for Route 47. Evidently, the coast path didn’t start where it ought to start. Josh had tried to join it from the south side of the city, only to find a spa hotel had been built there and the path co-opted for the use of the guests. He’d been in the mood to walk through the grounds anyway, private land or no, and probably would have done had Eve not refused. Another path, the Cliff Edge Gate, had been cut through to Route 47 nearly half a mile away.

The cliff path above the city was bright and breezy. Blended with the voice of the sea was the strong sound of a waterfall tumbling its waters more than a hundred and fifty feet down to the sea. Route 47 was much quieter than the beach. There were a few trainers heading inland to the Safari Zone, a few couples out for a romantic stroll in the afternoon sun. An easy few hour’s walk away was the next village, Porth Cian. There might be a room available in a surf lodge, there might not, it didn’t really matter.

A clatter of hooves behind belonged to the gogoat Josh had hired. He didn’t have a name – his trainer just called him #14. He waited patiently, oblivious to his burden. Two backpacks was no more difficult than carrying a laptop was for her.

Westwards the coastline stretched, craggy and lonely, to the distant horizon. Eastward Eve could still see the lighthouse on the point, and beyond, the Karego Rose setting sail.


Next Chapter: Shipwreck
 
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Ch. 32 - Shipwreck
Chapter Thirty Two – Shipwreck (Version 1.0)

Joshua

There were some advantages to partnering up with a Joy, especially when her star was in the ascendant. They arrived in Porth Cian that evening expecting to have to camp somewhere, but there was a Pokémon Clinic here, and of course Eve got a room even in holiday season. Whichever one of her multitudinous cousins ran the place didn’t like him, as usual, and he decided not to care.

The weather had the feeling of a coming storm. From a bench sat next to Eve he half-watched Ivysaur play-fighting with Megaera. She kept throwing Bullet Seeds at him, rather like a small child flicking peas at a tolerant older sibling. Meg really wanted to start battling, which wasn’t going to happen, but he’d reluctantly allowed her to playfully spar with the others. Ivysaur didn’t even need supervising, obviously, but Josh didn’t trust Fionn’s idea of fun and Screwball was being difficult.

“Screwball,” he tried.

[Invalid directive.]

“Screwball!”

[This pokémon has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down,] Screwball said obstinately.

Josh decided to let that one go, and went back to his Pokédex. He was still fighting the default settings. It kept trying to give him the information it thought he ought to want, not the information he’d actually asked for.

Settings > General > Mode > Expert

There.


#329 Vibrava
Ammodraco bombilator

Typology: Ground/Dragon (Frazer-Edricson classification)
Junior morph: Trapinch (Ammodraco myrmeleon)
Senior morph: Flygon (Ammodraco transcendentis)

Vibrava are predatory insect pokémon of the family Myrmeleontidae, known as the Vibration Pokémon for the ultrasonic waves produced by its wings. A rare species, its natural range is limited to the Mirage Desert of Hoenn and the coasts of the Maroc States. Primary typology is disputed, with some authorities placing vibrava among the Bug-types -

In hindsight it might have been more sensible to have bought that cumulonimbus swablu back in Goldenrod during the Hoenn Festival. A tiny raindrop plipped onto the screen. Josh looked darkly at the sky. The sun was setting between a restless sea and a black blanket of cloud.

“Livesey was right. Looks like a storm’s coming. We’d better get under cover,” he said out of habit. Between May Day and Lammas it was believed to be unwise for men to be caught outdoors during a storm. By some, anyway.

“There’s plenty of time yet,” Eve said.

“Easy for a girl to say.”

Eve gave him a sly look. “You’re afraid of the Wild Hunt, aren’t you!”

“I ay frit o’ -”

“You are!” Eve crowed triumphantly. “There’s a storm coming and you’re afraid of spectral huntsmen coming howling over the cliffs and using your head as a volleyball!”

“Men get swept up into joining the Hunt, too.”

“Sometimes,” Eve said pointedly, winking at him.

“So supportive. Time for little weeds to get under cover as well!” he said archly. “Ivysaur?”

Ivysaur casually picked up a protesting Meg with his vines. [In,] he said.


*​

The next morning felt clean and refreshed. The storm had passed overnight with a mad fury, leaving behind scraps of fleecy cumulus and the scent of petrichor. Further than a mile or so beyond Porth Cian, Route 49 became sublimely romantic, in a wild and lonely sort of way. It was ruggedly beautiful, jigsawed by wind and wave into seemingly hundreds of coves, zawns, and skerries. The sea was mostly what you could hear, the crash and break of the surf plashing persistently against the rocks far below.

Eve was quiet this morning. That was entirely ok, because it wasn’t a morning for conversation. They’d simply held hands for the past half-mile or so. #14 delicately picked his way along as he followed at a discreet distance. The gogoat reminded him a bit of Ivysaur. For now, he had Screwball at his shoulder. He gave the route map the most cursory of looks. Obviously the path only went in one direction, two if you were being philosophical, but he wouldn’t really need it anyway – the shape of this coastline was coming back to him. The path here ran through a carpet of flowering heather and broom, soft purple and yellow, as it curved around the rim of a secluded cove.

“Hullo,” he remarked. “Woss this oddling.”

There was a shipping container washed up on the beach. Josh let go of Eve’s hand and looked for a way down.

“Where are you going?” Eve said.

“To see what this oddling is.”

There were rough steps cut into the rock. They were partially hidden beneath the stubborn coastal grasses, but they were there. He realised you’d have difficulty seeing them unless you were right on top of them. Old smuggler’s steps, possibly.

The container had got caught on the rocks, the ebb tide lapping at its flanks. It was painted pidove grey, an incomprehensible serial number stencilled onto one side. The door was buckled and very slightly ajar.

“Screwball?”

[Standing by.]

“Rip the doors off.”

[Initialising magnetic protocols.]

Josh stood aside as Screwball turned its magnets on the container’s doors. The bars slowly bent with a drawn-out groan, bolts popped, the doors screeched and bulged outwards. The locks were ripped out of the steel. Containers were built to be strong – evidently, not strong enough to withstand Screwball’s relentless magnetic pressure.

There were pallets stacked with cardboard boxes inside, wrapped in plastic sheeting. Seawater had found its way in through the buckled doors. Some of the lowest boxes were damp at the edges.

“What the hell are you doing?” Eve complained from somewhere outside. Josh was only half-listening – he’d spotted the text on the boxes. SILPH MANUFACTURING. He found his knife, cut through the sheeting on the nearest pallet, and carefully opened a box. It was full of Ultra Balls.

“The storm … it must have been washed overboard during the night,” Eve said. Josh wasn’t listening at all now. He stepped back onto the beach. The high-water mark was about thirty feet away – there was still a few hours left of the ebb tide. He took a photo with his Pokédex.

He released Ivysaur. “Right. Ivysaur, Screwball. We’ve got about six hours till the flood tide gets into that container. That’s six hours to move as many boxes out and above the high-water mark as we can.”

[Affirmative.]

[As you like.]

“What the hell are you doing!” Eve almost screamed.

“Beachcombing,” Josh explained calmly. “We’ll start with that pallet,” he added to the pokémon.

“That’s stealing.”

“No it ay. Jetsam or derelict found on the foreshore, finders-keepers.”

“You made that up!”

“Believe what you want,” Josh said coolly. He ignored Eve’s disapproving scowls. After a while she gave up trying to burn holes in him, and stalked off to train with her pokémon.

It was quite hard work unloading the container. Fortunately it wasn’t stacked to the rafters, and it was easier to get at the smaller, lighter boxes from the top half of the pallets, anyway. The boxes near the bottom seemed to be mostly medicines, some bikes and backpacks among them.

The sea was threatening to flood the container when Josh called it quits and started to inventory what he’d found. Poké Balls, Ultra Balls, cameras of various types, some TMs, Solar Beam among them. Expert Belts, Spell Tags, Hard Stones, Red Cards, Absorb Bulbs, etc, and etc. Josh stowed a handful of Ultra Balls in his jacket pocket. He was tempted to keep two or three Expert Belts for himself as well. The other battle items might not sell for much, but the cameras were a gold mine.

“How precisely do you plan on transporting all of your pieces-of-eight?” Eve demanded. Meowth was lurking behind her legs.

Capra pathocaballus.”

“You’re not using the gogoat!”

“Yes, I bloody am!”

“No, you’re bloody not!”

“Back off, Eve!” Josh retorted. “Half that hire fee came out of my Gelt!”

“You bloody pirate. You made, what, three hundred dollars at White Lake, a Champion’s purse worth three thousand dollars from the Tourney! Why do you even want the money?”

Josh stared at her. What kind of question was that? Obviously having more money was good. Money was options. Money didn’t rust.

“See! You don’t even know!”

“Thass a moot point, don’t ye think?” Josh said, getting to his feet. “Because there’s only one woman in this world who can talk te me like that, and you’re not her! So back off, woman!”

Meowth leapt forward, claws unsheathed and spitting rage at him. Screwball instantly appeared at his shoulder. [Charging capacitors.]

Meowth glared at Screwball. Sparks crackled from Screwball’s magnets.

“Meowth, enough,” Eve commanded. “Mama fights her own battles.”

“Screwball, stand down,” Josh commanded. He went back to sorting through the boxes. “And you can stop glaring at me like that. You look like your mother.”


*​

Eve wouldn’t talk to him all day the next day. And that was entirely ok, because he wasn’t going to put up with another round of moral indignation. His Landranger Pokégear had shown its worth, and given him a headache, by managing to receive a call even out here.

He’d never been this far west along Route 49 before. The sea was in a serene mood today, embossed with waves like rippling sapphire. The wind had faded to a mere zephyr, leaving the cliff path feeling strangely calm.

This serene sea had a name: Landunder. Josh remembered being taken to a henge near Megavessiy one Midsummer’s Eve, to see a mystery play called The King Under Water, or something. Legend had it that Cianwood Island was once the size of Hoenn, a rich and powerful kingdom. It was said the capital city of Prospero was once the envy of the Sunset Isles, with its temples and gardens, canals and hundred bell towers. But the lords of Prospero offended the gods, somehow, and so for their sins the gods sunk the land beneath the sea in a single night. It was said that on calm days like this, you could still hear the drowned bells of Prospero, ringing beneath the waves.

They made camp that evening with minimal talk in a sheltered bay, where a little river ran down from the Safari Zone and made its estuary between the arms of the bay. Josh was beginning to regret this fight. He lit a fire out of sheer habit, left Ivysaur to bask in the last hours of the sun with Meg, and wandered off down to the beach in search of shellfish. He hesitated at the edge of the foreshore, gazing doubtfully at the muddy sand, speckled with tidal puddles shining like glass in the late sunshine. From here, the surf was a distant line of blue crested with white.

Josh didn’t trust it. It wasn’t the threat of hidden shellder he was worried about – with Screwball at his belt an aggressive shellder would end up as a fried clam very quickly. Rather, this was just the sort of beach to hide quicksand. The sea might be far out now, but the tide was a sly thing, and would flood deceptively quickly over that flat intertidal zone. It was a spring tide, too, or near as made no difference. Reluctantly, he turned away. Having fresh shellfish at hand for breakfast was a fine thing, but not so fine as to be worth a risk on an unfamiliar beach.

At sunset he recalled the Grass-types for the night – Ivysaur, Megaera, and the hireling #14. As the dusk deepened he released Fionn for a while. Josh sat watching the tide come in, occasionally re-reading scraps of vibrava’s Pokédex entry. This would be a difficult capture. Vibrava were already strong by the time they evolved. Apparently they were shifty bastards, too. Dad had pointed out he might have avoided the problem if he’d caught something at White Lake. Josh had pointed out, unconvincingly, that Water-types were the most obvious Fire-type counter there is. Well, fine, a Water-type would have worked, but he wanted something subtler and harder to predict.

Eve somehow managed to fall asleep, wrapped in her hoodie dress in front of her tent. The fire was down to dully glowing embers. Melissa Evans was Tigerlily Champion, too, but her weeks of battle weren’t something he could report home. The Tourney had taught him some valuable lessons. Cunning and patience could circumvent type advantages. And a powerful Electric attack could dominate a battlefield.

Josh smoothly rose to his feet and padded off along the beach to find a bush to piss in. Scuds of inky cloud, darker than the indigo of the summer night’s sky, drifted steadily in from across the sea. As he set to his task he watched the stars of Ursa Major, shining bright and hard as diamonds, disappear behind cloud. He ought to have won more than one Badge in the Orange Archipelago. A Spike Shell Badge wasn’t much tangible to show for the two months since winning a Zephyr Badge. His breath misted in front of his face in the cold air. A blink later and it was gone. Just his imagination.

No it wasn’t. No it wasn’t! Something was amiss. Zip up, zip up -

Feeling foolish and paranoid, he hurried back to the camp. His skin prickled. Not psychic power … something else. Something was amiss.

The moon came out.

There was a small girl in a white sundress hunched over Eve, licking industriously at her face. Eve was shuddering violently. The girl looked up at him with a flawlessly symmetrical, too-perfect face, and grinned mirthlessly.

Rage bubbled up in his stomach, rising red and acidic and righteous, fighting for control, demanding to be let out, to be used. Before he knew it his fingers had closed around the hilt of his knife. Aron steel flashed in the moonlight.

The girl pounced at him. There was a blur of white cotton and flying hair – Josh instinctively raised his knife. The girl impaled herself on the blade. Vanished.

Thoughts sizzled in his mind faster than he could make conscious sense of them. He carefully turned his knife into a reverse grip. She wasn’t gone, merely disappeared. He didn’t fight the rage, he let it sharpen his thoughts, let it do this -

He stabbed out right. Ghosts always thought you’d assume they would attack from behind. The steel thumped into the girl’s chest with a puff of dark ectoplasm. She let out a startled shriek, writhed on the blade, and vanished.

“Cold be heart and hand and bone,” a cold voice growled from the darkness.

A knife wouldn’t be enough. He wasn’t even sure why the knife had worked at all. “Fionn!” he commanded. She wouldn’t have gone far, she -

She was floating over the dead fire, semi-conscious and semi-corporeal. The ghost must have ambushed her, Fionn would have harrowed her with her screams otherwise. He had to recall her. Soon.

The ghost reappeared, gazing steadily at him, still wearing her little girl guise. She licked the air with a soft, pink tongue, a gesture of contempt and a threat.

“Let’s have it, then,” Josh snarled. “I’ll carve that thing from your head.”

He moved his knife to his left hand, waiting. The ghost’s patience failed first. She made her move – Josh threw an Ultra Ball at her. She disappeared in a flash of red. As the Ball frantically leaped and rattled he recalled Fionn. Safe. You’re safe now.

The Ultra Ball’s capture lock gave in. It wasn’t a sham girl that escaped from the Ball. Gone was the cute veneer, the faux innocence. The wraith was all mirthlessly grinning mouth and gleaming eyes and disarticulated hands like curled talons. Josh might have felt intimidated even through the red mists of his rage – but now he had a Poké Ball in his hand.

“Screwball! I’m relying on you!”

[Charging capacitors. Initialising magnetic protocols. Target identified and locked.]

Haunter flung a Shadow Ball, the roiling globe almost invisible in the night. Screwball destroyed it with a burst of Charge Beam – a retaliatory flicker of Night Shade caught it a glancing blow.

“Magnet Bomb!” Josh snapped. Screwball hammered Haunter with a dazzling fury of steel-blue explosions. Josh tried to blink away the glowing afterimages. Haunter was gone again.

“Cold be heart and hand and bone …”

Josh’s head snapped round. Haunter was stealthily sliding towards the sea, trying to get behind him.

“Magnet Bomb!” he commanded.

[Confirm target.]

“What? There, there, left!

Screwball just stared wildly into the night. Night Shade, red-edged and malign, slashed across the moonlight. The impact sent Screwball whirling away with a wailing drone.

Haunter fixed her attention on Josh. Her Jack o’lantern grin stretched wider. He stepped back uncertainly. A cold shiver of dread was trying to struggle up through the anger. She was looking at him like food. Like prey! Josh changed his knife back to his dominant hand. How dare she look at him like prey! Haunter started to conjure a Shadow Ball.

To me!” he roared. “Thunder Wave!

Haunter threw the Shadow Ball. Somehow Screwball appeared right in front of him. The Shadow Ball broke over them both in a deluge of dark energy. It was like being smothered in black fog; stars like diamonds wheeled overhead; there was a sensation of falling …

The world returned with a jolt as he thudded onto the grass. An inexorable, bone-deep, chill had seized hold of his right arm. His knife had slipped from his grasp.

The battle was a confusing amalgam of blazing attacks. Josh tried to will his chilled and deadened fingers into gripping his knife. Out the corner of his eye he saw Eve shuddering in the mouth of her tent. Amid a bursting Shadow Ball there was a pure white light. Screwball was evolving.

It smoothly divided, mitosis-like, into three. A triumphant halo of electricity thundered from its triple body.

[I am three. We are one,] it declared. [Directive?]

Kill.

[It will be done.]

Infused with new power Screwball burned into Haunter with Charge Beam, electricity searing her like a laser. The Charge Beam transformed Haunter into a jagged shadow bathed in incandescent light, her cries of rage and her cries of pain fused into one long scream.

Charge Beam snapped off as abruptly as if something had thrown a power switch. [Charge Beam offline.]

Disable. Not a problem.

Hands wreathed in flame, Haunter seized hold of Screwball in a double-grip. Crackling strings of Thunder Wave made it look like she was squeezing electricity between her fingers. There was a sharp tang of hot metal and ozone and as its steel skin started to glow red Josh realised Haunter meant to kill Screwball.

No! Screwball, return!”

Haunter’s attention turned to him. There was something like contempt in that steady gaze. She bore down on him, taking her time, as if she knew he couldn’t go anywhere. He couldn’t release Ivysaur into the fire. Eve’s pokémon were out of reach on her gilet. He managed to pick up his knife. How dare she look at him like prey …

“Cold be heart and hand and bone …”

Haunter’s mirthless Jack o’lantern grin eclipsed the moon. The last of the red mist of rage cleared. He was in real trouble. Josh desperately fumbled left-handed for an Ultra Ball.

A sudden ache pressed at his temples. Haunter froze. Witchfire limned her with a dancing blue glow.

“Calidore, Assurance!”

Something black-furred tackled the ghost in a smear of luminous yellow, snarling as it swiftly and thoroughly savaged her. Hardly a moment later its unseen trainer threw a Dusk Ball and captured her.

“Operations: CG 156 Madison, hostile in custody. Are you hurt?”

Josh could only just feel the hilt of the knife in his right hand. Every other limb was trying to quiver like a poplar leaf. He realised his breathing was ragged. Josh looked up. There was a pokémon ranger standing over him – stocky figure, austere haircut, slight frown on her face. The sergeant’s insignia on her shoulder boards glinted a dull bronze. Her pokémon appeared at her side, an umbreon, with the Dusk Ball in its mouth.

“It’s gone,” Madison said, shrewdly. “You’re safe.”

“No, damn it, not me!” Josh almost burbled. “Eve, over there, help her!

Madison took one look at Eve and knelt at her side. Josh bullied his legs into behaving, rose unsteadily to his feet and followed suit, cradling his deadened right arm. Eve was still trapped in a deep sleep, shivering as if terribly cold.

“What’s your name?” Madison asked quietly.

“Cook. Joshua Cook.”

“And her name?”

“Evelina Joy.”

“Tell me what happened.”

Josh took a breath. “Eve was asleep. I went to take a piss, felt apprehensive. When I got back the haunter was – was there. I battled it, I lost. Then you showed up.”

“And what happened to your arm?”

‘Nothing’, Josh was going to say. “Shadow Ball,” he said shortly.

“I see,” Madison said. “I wonder if it used Dream Eater,” she murmured.

“It didn’t.”

“How do you know?”

“I would have felt it,” Josh replied flatly.

The sergeant gave him a brief, searching look. “Britomart,” she commanded.

The pokémon that emerged from the night was a waif-like humanoid, pale skirts floating gracefully with telekinesis, almost luminous in the moonlight. Its huge, red, feline eyes stared from a delicate face.

“Heal Bell,” Madison said. Britomart bowed elegantly. It began a lilting plainchant, high and sad. Josh felt his arm regain some feeling, little needles of pain shooting in his fingertips. The violence of Eve’s shudders subsided to a constant fluttering shiver.

“She needs to go to the hospital,” Madison said decisively. “Operations, Operations, this is CG 156 Madison, I need an immediate hospital Teleport, priority one. Two patients, one stable, one critical. I will. Understood.”

“Do you need to take anything with you?” Madison asked Josh abruptly.

“Er, no!” Josh said.

“Good. Calidore, guard the camp. You’ll feel disoriented for a moment after teleporting. That’s normal, it’ll pass. Britomart, in five seconds, if you please.”

Britomart bowed again. Josh felt the psychic pressure building in his temples. His skin tingled with witchfire.

“… three, two,” Madison counted sotto voce. Josh grabbed Eve’s hand.

“One.”


Next Chapter: Nowhere Girl
 
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Ch. 33 - Nowhere Girl
Chapter Thirty Three – Nowhere Girl (Version 1.0)

Evelina

She could hear the sound of waves breaking on the shore.

Or at least, she thought she could – a brief, vivid figment of her imagination, because this inn was far from the sea. It was probably the painting that gave her the idea. It was the only charming thing in the otherwise generic room. The painting looked original rather than a print, a gorgeous Impressionist seascape depicting a city of narrow streets and golden sands, dramatically cut in two by a rocky, steep-sided point. The eye was drawn to the head of the point, to a white lighthouse with bright, glittering windows.

There was something about it. It wasn’t just that the rest of the room was so hopelessly bland. Something about it …

Well, perhaps a shower could change her mood. She padded into the bathroom, shedding clothes along the way, glanced into the bathroom mirror -

Fuck!

She was blonde. Not an exciting blonde, like honey or gold, just a dull, commonplace, wheaten blonde. Her curled fringe was gone, her long looped tresses were gone. She hadn’t been blonde since she was four years-old.

The mirror was hung right opposite the shower, the reflection apparently doubling the size of the bathroom. She kept catching glimpses of herself. That girl in the mirror was like a stranger. Without the pink hair we really are just moderately pretty girls. Nobody would give me a second look.

No matter what she tried the water remained stubbornly lukewarm. Unobscured by any steam she caught sight of her bum reflected in the mirror. Nobody’d give that a second look, either, she thought, and sighed. Various friends had generously called it ‘athletic’ or ‘heart-shaped’, in the same way that ‘beige’ could be called ‘champagne’. She knew it was simply uninteresting to look at. Her ex had lost interest in it, in her. It was amazing how lonely you could feel when you technically had a boyfriend but he only reluctantly paid attention to you. Usually, she’d later learned, when he’d failed to pick up a more interesting girl.

The shower didn’t really change her mood. Eve redressed sullenly, buckling on her belt. There were no Poké Balls clipped to it. What the hell? They weren’t in her pockets. They weren’t in her backpack. They weren’t in the pockets of her spare clothes, they weren’t in her backpack, they weren’t in the drawers, they weren’t under the bed, they weren’t in her backpack!

She hadn’t lost them. Eve stormed down the stairs to the bar, crossed the room in four strides, and waylaid the manager at the till.

“My pokémon have been stolen!” she burst out.

“Sorry, what?”

“My pokémon have been stolen,” Eve repeated firmly.

The manager smiled at her indulgently. “There are no pokémon in Qara.”

Eve yanked her wallet from her back pocket. She flipped it open, intending to slap her trainer card down on the bar, but her trainer card wasn’t there. Neither was her debit card, nor her driver’s licence. There was a university ID card in the name of Evangeline Vreugde. The photo on it was her own.

“You couldn’t have even entered Qara with pokémon, or checked in here with them,” the manager said, in a strange overly gentle tone. Eve didn’t say anything. That uni ID had her photo on it.

“Don’t you remember checking in?”

No. No, I don’t. She realised she couldn’t remember anything about this town.

“Excuse me,” Eve said coldly. She pulled out her phone – but there was no signal. “Fucking hell!”

“Oh, yes, signal’s hard to come by in this town,” the manager said. “You can usually get one by the fountain at the cross.”


*​

Dusk was settling on the town, a few dim streetlamps flickering on. There was something at once exotic and familiar about the town – it was handsome, in a faded sort of way. It was Esteday evening, a weekend night, and yet there was hardly anybody about. Where was everyone? She crossed a terrace paved in terracotta and cream and carried on through a fragrant garden.

It was a chilly evening. The fountain was in a square in the middle of a crossroad, its dry bowl spotted with lichen. The wind shivered through the empty streets. She managed to get a lousy bar or two of signal. She decided she wanted answers, about her pokémon foremost. But Josh didn’t pick up, even after she called four times in twenty minutes. Eve knew she shouldn’t be surprised, and in point of fact she wasn’t. He wouldn’t be the first boy to lose interest and disappear just when she needed him.

Night was now fallen. There was nothing else she could do.


*​

She sat at the end of the bar, nursing what was left of a glass of wine. Her doppelgänger in the mirror behind the bar looked as morose as she felt. Occasionally a couple of locals would enter, and glance at her. Eve was used to being glanced at, but these were unwelcoming glances, as if they were trying to figure out why she was there, and wished she weren’t.

“Another merlot!” Eve said, pointedly. It was bad etiquette not to catch the barman’s eye first, but he had been assiduously trying to ignore her all night. She flicked through her wallet – no debit card, several hundred dollars in cash, and that damn uni ID card. Wherever the hell it had come from. She was beginning to get a nasty suspicion she was, in some way, Evangeline Vreugde. Who’s to say she wasn’t? She couldn’t remember yesterday. She couldn’t remember why she was here. Everything else was wrong.

For the third time that evening she did a double-take, and realised the strange girl was her own reflection.

I want to go home.


*​

Eve hefted her fully-loaded backpack, and tapped her hand restlessly against her chest. She stepped up to the ticket window. She was, nevertheless, a Joy. She was pretty sure what that bloody well meant, though everything else in this town contradicted her, including her own wallet. “Single to Cherrygrove City, please.”

“The train doesn’t run to Cherrygrove City,” the ticket officer said, his tone bored to the point of mechanical.

“Fine, then just give me a ticket to the nearest town.”

“Can I see your passport?” he said, his tone barely changing.

“Passport?”

“You can’t go beyond the wall without a passport.”

“… this damn town,” she sighed.

“You can apply for a passport at the Guildhall,” he said, not unkindly.

She left the train station with a heavy heart. There wasn’t even a Departures board in sight. Qara, she thought bitterly. She knew a Kara at uni, Karas were always trouble -

She saw the wall. It tried to dominate the sky. It inspired one word above all others: monolithic. It was like a cliff of cold, pale yellow stone, stark and unadorned, stapled to the earth with square towers. She stopped and stared at its immensity. She’d seen giants of trees in the Heartwoods, and high-rise buildings in Goldenrod City that were taller, but none that bridled the horizon.

Try to keep me in, Eve thought, with habitual defiance.

Qara was built on a hill, streets winding back and forth across the hillside like honey drizzled on baklava. This was a town of stone and plaster, the cool creams and pechas of the walls offset with accents of coral, cinnabar, and burgundy. They seemed to like round arches here, for their doorways and windows, and the ends of streets. The signposts, the lampposts, were all of wrought iron. At another time, in other circumstances, the old-fashioned aesthetic might have been charming. But always, out the corner of her eye, was the brooding presence of the wall.

The Guildhall was in the centre of town, somewhere near the summit of the hill. The iron signposts were frustratingly ambiguous, seeming to point the way in two directions at once. This one pointed through the souk. The Sunday morning market was just opening. Awnings crackled in the wind. Rubbish drifted down the street like tumbleweeds. People here wore slightly strange clothes. Almost all the women were in dresses or skirts; some of the men went by in light cloaks. Nobody wore denim. And not a pokémon in sight. She tried asking a few people for directions. The first muttered something equivocal, the second just stared, and the third ignored her entirely.

On the other side of the souk the Guildhall was by a leafy plaza. Eve really expected the passport office to be closed, but the place had the air of an office where there’s never that much to do, so nobody minded doing it on a Sunday.

“Passport application, is it?” the clerk said, pulling out a form. “It’s quite a simple process. If I could just see some photo ID?”

Her heart sank. ID? University ID cards were never anything like official enough. But then it hit her. A registered Pokédex was as good as a trainer card. She pulled the slim, brushed-silver oblong from her back pocket.

“Ah, I’m sorry, that’s not valid.”

“… my other ID is missing,” she admitted.

The clerk spotted her crestfallen expression. “Do you have a permanent address in Qara?”

“No. No, I’m staying at the inn on the high street.”

“It would be easier if you had a job … but it would probably be quicker to find your ID.”

Whose ID? Evelina’s or Evangeline’s?

She found herself meandering the town, trying to remember. In this town I might as well be Evangeline.

All the while she hoped with growing anxiety that her phone might ring, and she’d hear a friendly voice. Hoping, in a silly way, that it would be Josh’s voice.

It didn’t ring. She missed her pokémon. On sunny mornings like this, when she was a young bug, Lyra would be her constant company. Lyra wasn’t just her loyal ace – she was her most purely uncomplicated companion, as well.

After a couple of hours she dropped into a chemist. There didn’t seem to be anything other than natural shades among the hair dyes.

“Excuse me? Do you have any bright pink?” Eve called to the shop assistant.

“Pink? Oh dear,” she answered. “We have some pretty sassy reds.”

“No. No, never mind,” Eve sighed. The wrong shade of pink she could put up with.


*​

She spent the morning wandering the countryside with no aim in mind. The wall completely encircled this country in a dozen miles of cold stone. Sometimes you almost forgot it was there, until you looked up and saw it across the fields looming pale and grey with distance. The Qarans didn’t pay any attention to it, as if to them it was just there.

Somehow, her wanderings led her to the foot of the wall. Something about the colour remained sullenly dull in spite of the ascending sun. The sunlight merely dispelled the morning’s shadows. The austere geometries of a tower jutted from the wall, not ominous, but stern, as if the stones were already strong beyond memory and intended to remain standing for an age.

An archway at the foot of the tower led to a stairwell. On a whim, she climbed hundreds of feet of stairs, to the parapet. From the top of the wall she looked out and saw – a world.

With the sun at her back she could see for miles and miles with wonderful clarity. From this high vantage point you could perceive the ancient basin of an astrobleme in the landscape. Long acres of green meadows, rippling in the breeze, blended into wildwood. Maiden wildwood marched up to evergreen highlands, or else faded from the high places to reveal craggy, heather-swept hills. The silver flash of a waterfall tumbled over the brow of the astrobleme, falling to the crater floor where it wound away like a dropped ribbon. And there at the furthest reach of sight, blue mountains rising to enclouded peaks. The land was wild, and it was beautiful – and it was empty.

Empty, all the way to the horizon, as if the meadow had never known the plough, nor the forest the axe. No roads scored the land, not a tumbledown stone or brick was there to say ‘people had been here’. It was so quiet, so very lonely, here on the edge between worlds. There was no sound but the wind, whistling about the tower. She glanced down at the outer face of the wall, and stifled a gasp. As high as the wall was, its depths were far deeper. On the eastern side it cast an immense shadow.

She walked along the wall, trying to remember. Occasionally she looked back inwards, in the hope she might recognise something. It was too quiet. The countryside within the wall was a patchwork of fields, hamlets, little streams, and wooded odds and ends. The willowy vale of the river watered this narrow land, springing from apparently nowhere and disappearing the same way.

At first sight it was reminiscent of Cherrygroveshire. And yet on second sight it wasn’t a Cherrygroveshire she recognised. There were no shrines, either, or henges, or any sacred groves. Few people drove, and those that did owned vehicles that looked about fifty years-old. Nobody seemed in a hurry to do anything. And the absent pokémon … Eve sighed. On a reasonably fine, breezy morning there should be skiploom floating above the grass, with butterfree fluttering between them. There should be mareep grazing on the downs.

She didn’t know a soul in Qara. Maybe she ought to give up. Maybe she ought to just get a job, settle down, and be a stranger in this town.


*​

It was still only six o’clock, the obscure boundary between afternoon and evening, but she sat at the end of the bar anyway, stoically working her way through a second glass of wine. It wasn’t like she had anything better to do. She watched her reflection gloomily, trying to calculate how long her money would last, and resenting that this was even a relevant consideration.

How long had it been since she’d last seen Cherrygrove City? Mum wouldn’t stand for this, Eve reflected. She had always been quick to browbeat anyone in authority being malicious, petty, or stupid at her. Including her supervisor at her first job, which at the time was mortifying, but Mum meant well.

“Oh, this came for you this afternoon.”

The bar maid was thrusting an envelope at her. It had the inn’s address printed on it, but no name, just her room number.

‘Your driver’s licence may be found in the Shillingwood. Look for that which is out of place.
P.S: When the time comes, accept the call.’

The letter was written in a neat, round, female hand. There was still plenty of daylight left. Eve abandoned her wine. And she was still a Joy, damn it. She shouldn’t stand for this, either.


*​

People kept giving her strange looks as she left the town. Perhaps they thought it an odd time of day to head into the countryside, but to her a mile of country lanes was an evening stroll.

The Shillingwood lay across a clear stream. She crossed it via a plank bridge. A rather tangled, bushy margin gave way to a dark and still interior. The trees were ancient-looking things, with gnarled, grey limbs and foliage dark as holly leaves. The silence felt tense, and watchful. The woods seemed to disapprove of her presence, but that was irrelevant because the people at the inn didn’t approve either. The path became ferny, turning into a narrow road of waist-high bracken. Old, dry stems from previous seasons cracked underfoot. Then she saw something that had no earthly business being in a wood like thus. It was an iron signpost not unlike those that stood in the streets of Qara. There was only one arm, pointing west, towards some place called Ercledoune.

Her phone buzzed in her back pocket. There was a weak phone signal out here for some reason. She scanned through the notifications. Missed calls, three of them. They were somehow, surprisingly, all from Josh. He hadn’t disappeared.

Eve stood staring at the screen. A tiny bar of signal flicked uncertainly on and off. But she’d called him four times! She resolved to be really bloody huffy with him at the next opportunity.

The signpost pointed towards the ruins of a castle. It was easy enough to find a way in. The woods had demolished most of the outer bailey. The roof of the keep had long since fallen in, leaving the Great Hall open to the elements, like a glade hemmed by stone walls. She wandered down the length of the hall. Grass was usurping the mossy flagstones.

There was something on the dais, a plastic card half-hidden beneath a spray of wildflowers. It was a driver’s licence with her photo on it, in the name of Evelina Joy. It was really hers.


*​

A chilly breeze cut down the station platform, but Eve was feeling both optimistic and determined. The third morning in Qara was going to be her last. The clerk at the passport office was obviously perturbed by her insistence, but she was getting that passport today, hell or high water. The ticket office was closed, but a melancholy soul making his way to the platform said she could get a ticket from the conductor.

The train rested at the platform, a sleek high-speed electric liveried entirely in midnight black. The conductor stood in the lee of a carriage, uniformed in a neat black suit and cap. He looked distinctly gaunt about the face, but the polite smile he gave her was almost avuncular. Eve hefted her fully-loaded backpack, and handed over her brand-new passport. He inspected it carefully through a pair of reading glasses.

“Single to Cherrygrove City, please,” she tried.

“The train doesn’t run to Cherrygrove City,” he replied kindly. Eve’s phone started to ring. “A single will be $8.50.”

Eve fumbled in her wallet for the money, her phone still ringing loudly. She handed over a note and rejected the call. There was a signal here; she could call back.

The conductor handed Eve her ticket. She glanced at it - ‘STANDARD SINGLE. From Qara. To’. She glanced at it again. There was no destination listed on the ticket. “Where does this train stop?”

“Beyond the wall.”

Her phone started ringing again. There wasn’t a departure time listed on the ticket, either. “Hang on, when does this train leave?”

“In a minute’s time,” the conductor replied. “You ought to board now.”

Eve’s phone kept ringing insistently. The conductor blew his whistle. “All aboard!

“But – where does it stop?”

“Beyond the wall.”

“That’s not an answer!” Eve yelled, her phone still ringing and ringing. She ripped it from her pocket and answered in one movement. “What!


Next Chapter: The Long Midnight
 
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Hi there. Here is my much-delayed Secret Santa review of the prologue.

For starters, I quite like the very beginning. As an opening, it doesn't exactly pitch the premise, but it lets me know this fic is going to spend some time in the heads of at least moderately sapient pokémon, and it's a nice piece of prose. The "gimmick" is pretty interesting, too, nice mood to it, although the "I." at the beginning and end felt like a numeric I all by its lonesome.

The "real" opening with Joshua is good stuff, with good description, but whether it's down to taste or not, I felt like it wasn't quite sharp enough at a few minor points. First in that you've a couple slight instances of doubling up, by using rider/cyclist epithets in short order, and by using two different ways of mentioning Spring showers also in short order. Also, I'm really not sure about "Elohim" which seems a very specifically Jewish word to me rather than synonymous with small-g "god," also "ethnic" feels a little strange. Still wonderful to read really solid prose in fanfic, but I know you want a serious take on this! Also, I usually prefer to gather information such as "the town is a former industrial zone in sharp decline" from descriptions of it or incidental dialouge, rather than expository interjections from the narrator, but I don't really mind it and it's well-written expository interjection.

The regional dialect is nicely executed! Perfectly readable to my eye despite being totally unfamiliar, and I can discern the meaning easily. Sets the tone of the relationship well, too. In fact, the sparing way in which you deliver the dialogue so far suits my tastes well.

Nice bit about the faded Alto Marean design. Surprised I haven't heard of tafl. It's a good setting for the conversation - let's them do something else while they talk, and call eachother cocks. I feel I'm getting a good angle on them both already. Funny how the Britishness of the sense of place and dialogue feels deeply familiar to me despite being most of the country away from where I've spent my own lifetime and despite being about a very different life circumstance.

The bit in which Joshua recalls his lifetime spent at Five-and-Six is lovely. The description, and the blending of character thoughts into it, are top notch. The bit about the river, canal, and road having a kind of spirit is weirdly touching. Also, I'm loving the placenames. The vibe from the closing paragraphs, and the Bilbo quote, is wonderful. The latin plant name is an odd addition, and feels more like Beth Pavell than Joshua Cook, but maybe I'm wrong. Anyway. If this is the style I can expect going forward, I expect to enjoy the fic. I can't promise I'll get stuck into it before the middle of the year, but I'll certainly try. This was a pleasure, with few real criticisms to drop.

Great stuff. Merry belated Christmas, mate.
 
Ch. 34 - The Long Midnight
Chapter Thirty Four – The Long Midnight (Version 1.0)

Joshua

Josh was immediately blinded by the light: hard, artificial, fluorescent light. He felt himself being pulled gently to his feet – Eve’s hand was dragged out of his own. Sergeant Madison was rapidly relaying medical details. As his vision started to clear he realised he was standing on a plastic dais. Four nurses were lifting Eve up onto a stretcher.

“- psychosomatic hypothermia, Shadow Ball, localised in the right arm,” Madison finished.

“Take her to the ICU,” someone was commanding, “where’s Dr Chakravarti? Take Mr Cook through to the ED.”

“What? No I’m bloody not, I’m staying with her -” Josh said, shaking off a nurse.

Madison laid a firm hand on his shoulder. “Not the time. Not the time. Let them work.”

He found himself being taken through a door as Eve was wheeled in the opposite direction, surrounded by medics. The nurse guided him to a bed between two drawn curtains. He saw a couple of paramedics bustle past the partition with a chansey in tow. Someone was alternately groaning and crying in the next bay over. The place was lousy with arcane machines and dispensers and paperwork.

“Ok, then,” the nurse said cheerfully. She was a Native Orange lady with a robust, lilting accent that reminded Josh of his grandma. “Don’t you worry about ye girl, now. They look after her, now I look after you. Alright? You call me Nurse Sophie.”

Madison appeared by the partition. She pointed to a chair questioningly. Josh shrugged.

“How your arm feeling?”

“It’s just numb,” Josh said. He realised he was cradling it again.

“Only numb, now?” she said, unconvinced. “Ok, straighten out your arm, nice and gentle -”

His arm moved only reluctantly, like it didn’t want to respond to what his brain was demanding. Sharp pains shot through it at random. He hardly paid attention as Nurse Sophie guided him through some range-of-motion exercises. Less than an hour ago his biggest concern was finding a suitable bush. And ten minutes ago … they’d wheeled her out so fast, leaving him of no particular use.

The suddenness of it reminded him of a beginning.

Eve? Something wrong?” Josh asked. They were the last two people to walk down Old Village high street that evening. Eve had walked into one of the overflowing flowerboxes.

Oh, erm, no!” she said unconvincingly. “Come with me!”

“… what?” Josh said, trying to keep up.

Come with me,” she repeated. “On my journey. Our journey. I’ve really enjoyed spending time with you and I don’t want to leave.”

It had been a golden afternoon, giving way to a warm evening as the sun set in splendour. Eve almost seemed to be framed with hundreds of magenta, orange, and white azaleas nodding in the late breeze.


Yes,” he answered before he could even think. What other answer could there be?

Josh didn’t know what he would have done if she hadn’t asked that.

“When can I see Eve?” he tried.

“Ye just sit quiet, Shadow Ball is no laughing matter,” said Nurse Sophie. “Ye gonna need some Aromatherapy to set that right, ok? I be right back.”

“I need your help,” Madison said.

“Why?”

“I need to contact Evelina’s next-of-kin, for a start.”

“She’s from Cherrygrove City,” Josh started wearily. “Her mother’s name’s Gabriella. Call the Centre, believe me, they’ll find her.”

“I’ll contact her shortly, then,” Madison said, leafing through a notepad. “Right … for my report, can you walk me through what happened again? In as much detail as you can.”

Reluctantly, Josh recounted his way through the whole incident, starting from that moment his breath had fogged suspiciously in the warm night air. Occasionally Madison interjected to quiz him in detail: How did he feel just before he swung the knife? Had he been affected by illusions before? After a while Nurse Sophie returned with a chikorita for the Aromatherapy.

“- so I recalled Screwball, and … oh, fuck.” He stopped dead in the middle of his account with the realisation. “My pokémon still need treating.”

“That’s alright. I’ll see if I can get someone to come down from the Pokémon Centre to pick them up,” Madison said, shutting her notepad. “And we’ll have you come to the Ranger Union in the morning so you can strike camp.”

“I should go up to the ward. Y’know, to be a friendly face if she wakes up.”

“Just sit quiet!” Nurse Sophie insisted. “Let the Aromatherapy do its work.”

And then he was left alone. Left sitting in the indifferent glare of fluorescent lights, ignored by people chattering incomprehensibly at each other in medical jargon. ‘Of no particular use’ was right. Here he was, asked to do nothing but wait. He knew which way was north without ever needing to consult a compass, and yet, here he was. Relying on Sergeant Madison to control the haunter and on nameless doctors to treat the aftermath …

Don’t we look dashing tonight,” she commented. It had been years since he had last waltzed, but his feet somehow remembered the steps. Eve was wearing a black cheongsam patterned with sinuous dragonair designs in glittering gold brocade.

The night breeze showered them with cheri blossom, each petal dancing with the others. Eve giggled, and slapped Josh’s arm playfully with her free right hand. “You said you couldn’t dance!” she said accusingly.


The chikorita seemed to have gone to sleep. He felt like something was dammed up in his chest. He felt brittle as deadwood.

Well he wasn’t going to allow it to crumble here. Josh got up, and disappeared into the lobby. Nobody took any notice. The hospital’s corridors all looked very much the same. Any hospital of this size ought to have one. He slipped through an automatic door, into the godswood.

This sacred space was secluded, at least. The moon peered down between the branches, conjuring a stark chiaroscuro of moonlight and deep shadow. A few benches lurked beneath the nodding leaves. He quietly circled the wood, to make certain he was alone.

There was nobody else here. Right. He sat down on a bench in the shadow of a linden tree, staring at a moonlit dandelion until something cracked and tears blurred it. Once one tear arose, there was no stopping the others. Despite everything, somehow it had all gone wrong. He cried because he was tired and overwrought and a damn spare part. He cried because his last conversation with Eve had been a pointless argument over salvage and now she wasn’t even conscious. He cried because he wasn’t supposed to need rescuing.

He didn’t know how long he sat there sobbing. But tears wouldn’t solve anything. He methodically dried his face on a sleeve, mentally trying to pull himself together. Right. That’s enough of that.

Nobody noticed him return to the ED, except perhaps the chikorita, which ignored him anyway. The pains in his arm gradually diminished, while he just gazed at the wall.

“Excuse me, are you, uh, Joshua Cook?”

Josh looked up, expecting to see a nurse. They were actually a youngish fellow in a worn hoodie, straw-coloured hair glinting in the harsh light. He looked inquiringly at him – there was a familiar shade to his blue eyes – and Josh realised his own were red. Don’t you dare comment.

“Theobald Joy,” he said. That explained the eyes. “Whatsername, Madison, said your pokémon are in need of treatment.”

“You’re here in the small hours of the morning just for that?”

“It would seem you’re to be given special concessions,” Theobald said sardonically. “I’ve come to collect my niece’s pokémon, too.”

“Imogen’s behind this, isn’t she?”

“Gabriella, actually,” Theobald said. It wasn’t until much later that Josh thought about that.

“Listen, you can’t live in this hospital,” Theobald said, somewhat more gently.

“But if Eve -”

“They’re not going to let you in to see her. You’re not next-of-kin. Come back to the PokéCentre. You can have the guest room.”

“The Pokémon Centre …”

“Gabriella will be here in the morning. I’m sure she’ll let you in to see her.”

“I suppose,” Josh said reluctantly, “there really isn’t any sense in staying here.”


*​

Somehow, Josh caught a few hour’s shallow sleep, floating on the delirious boundary between true sleep and waking as the sun rose. He hadn’t really slept, and it wasn’t really a new day, but he still waited till about six o’clock to take a shower, for a semblance of normality. At this hour the Joys were either asleep or working in the Centre below. Feeling a bit like an intruder, he knocked on the kitchen door before he went in. Oh. Someone had let most of the pokémon out for breakfast.

There wasn’t a cacophony of greeting. For a moment Josh thought he would somehow have to explain it all – but something in that quiet look they gave him said they all knew very well what happened. Screwball swivelled two out of three eyes to observe him. He’d almost forgotten it was a magneton now.

“Er. Thank you. For everything,” he began lamely. “I wish I’d known it could use a Fire-type attack.”

Screwball didn’t say anything. It just swivelled its third eye round, and stared.

[It will be done,] it said eventually.

Ivysaur was quiet, lying in the sun with Megaera, which wasn’t in itself unusual. But he wasn’t looking at him, either. “What’s wrong, Ivy?”

[… I’m the ace.]

“I couldn’t release you after I saw that Fire Punch.”

[I battled the fire in the Tourney final for you,] Ivysaur countered flatly. It wasn’t about petulance, or a demand for praise. It was, Josh realised, a point of pride.

“Heatmor wouldn’t have tried to kill you.”

A pressure against his leg made him look down. Meowth was haughtily rubbing up against his legs. He was almost purring. Meowth wasn’t stupid. He knew exactly how Josh felt about him. This was just bizarre.

“What’s got into – ok, Ivysaur. Screwball, Meg, you’re with me. Soon as we can we’ll all go up to the hospital.”

Cianwood City in June felt like a holiday. It was holiday weather, sunny, promising a hot afternoon. A few morning surfers were strolling down to the beach through the otherwise quiet city centre. Not that Josh ever surfed, but even so it felt incongruous to be heading away from the sea.

The Ranger Union was across the street from the cathedral, inhabiting the old town hall. Odd that he’d passed by the Union several times before, but he’d never really seen it. The ranger on reception duty left him waiting for Sergeant Madison on a superbly uncomfortable metal bench. Come on, Madison, damn it. He kept glancing at his Pokégear, though he couldn’t say why. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he really ought to be at the hospital. But somebody had to strike camp.

Madison appeared through a side-door. “Ah, Joshua. Come on through.”

Josh wasn’t sure what he’d expected from the Ranger Union. Probably he ought to have expected this fairly banal office, staffed with rangers in boring sweater vests, complaining about the Wi-Fi and threatening the printer. Admittedly in most offices the staff didn’t all have collapsible batons clipped to their belts. A lot of those rangers greeted Madison as she went by – Josh could have sworn one sergeant addressed her by rank despite being peers. None of it seemed to be forced respect.

They ended up at a large double-door with a wicket gate set into it. The sign stencilled across the door read: TELEPORTARIUM.

The teleport hall was brightly lit and slightly echoey. A row of circular platforms dominated the space.

“Wait here a minute,” Madison said, heading off to an office partitioned off to one side. Above that was a big electronic board that looked rather like an Arrivals & Departures board. The information it carried was strange:

Deck III: Standby
L-0:00
Assigned: Outbound

Deck IV: Refraction
L-2:53
Unassigned

There were three natu stationed around each platform. One of them hopped around on the spot to watch him more closely. A couple of fully-equipped rangers suddenly burst through the door. “Deck Three!” one of them shouted. They pounded up onto a platform and seconds later disappeared in a flash of witchfire.

Josh could hear some of the conversation at the office door. “You can have Deck Four,” the ranger in the office was saying. “We’re about to change the impellors anyway.”

“Come on up, Josh! Deck Four,” Madison called to him.

The natu watched him as he went past, in unison. Josh noticed the top of the platform was marked with a double pentagram. Madison motioned something in the direction of the office.

“Five seconds. Try to visualise the bay,” Madison said. “It may help with translocation.”

Teleportation didn’t really feel like anything. One instant, stark white light and the smell of floor cleanser. The next, living sunshine, golden-brown strand, the smell of the sea. A moment of irrational panic seized him, like waking up suddenly in a strange room.

It passed, almost as fast as teleporting. He was faced with, well, the campsite. Madison’s umbreon sat stiffly in the shady lee of Eve’s tent.

“Thank you, Calidore,” Madison said. “I’m going to have a look inland. I’ll be back in a while to teleport you back.”

Josh rubbed his eyes, and looked around wearily. You’d struggle to find any sign that a battle had happened here at all. In that moment he hated that the pokémon to attack was a haunter, a thing that left no trace of its violence behind. There ought to be something visible, something to say what had happened.

Josh started to take down the tents, working methodically without really thinking. He let out Ivysaur to help, who began to work as methodically.

“I’m a-still a trainer. I have responsibilities,” he said after a while.

Ivysaur apparently ignored that, gathering up tent pegs.

“I know you’m the ace, but ye have your limits.”

[So do yow.]

Josh decided not to answer – he did not need reminding of that particular detail. “Lyra had a cob on her,” he said.

[Lyra is an ace, too,] Ivysaur explained patiently. [More than that, she’s Eve’s ace. And she day get te fight.]

“Do they blame me?”

[Of course not.]

Josh was fastening bags onto #14 when Sergeant Madison returned with her gardevoir floating beside her.

“So. Er,” Josh said, feeling obliged to make small talk. “How long have you been on duty?”

“Oh, about eighteen hours.”

“Eighteen hours?”

“It’s not that unusual for a ranger,” she said casually. “After we teleport back I’ll get a break. Ah, you may well see me soon in any case. I’m liaison for her family on this one.”


*​

They were going to let him see her, and it was all Josh could do not to run down the corridor to the ward.

There was a reception desk, nurse’s station, whatever it was, in the middle of the ward, patient rooms on either side. There was a nurse at the desk, and he was the simplest way to find out where Eve was -

Halfway there he found himself enveloped in a forceful hug. “You’re here!” Gabriella said.

Like mother, like daughter. It was much the same kind of hug. When the hug eventually broke, there was Gabriella appearing almost un-Joy-like. It wasn’t just that she was out of uniform. She was looking worried. He glanced over Gabriella’s shoulder, and there was Imogen, without a trace of smirk on her face.

“Mrs Joy,” Josh said politely. There was no point in acrimony.

“Gabriella. Please,” she said. She sounded tired.

“Woss happening.”

“She’s still asleep,” Imogen said. “The shaking’s subsided.”

“They say, um …” Gabriella started awkwardly.

“How’s your arm?” Imogen asked.

“What? Oh. Slightly stiff, thass all.”

“Good. Good,” Gabriella sighed. “Come on in.”

She looked like she was deeply, peacefully, asleep. Eve peacefully asleep was something he’d seen before. But there were electrodes trailing from her scalp, and a monitor loaded with information he didn’t understand by her bed. They must have given her Aromatherapy as well. The citrus cocktail tang, like neroli oil and bergamot, competed with the ambient hospital smell.

But there was nothing to do but wait. Nothing to do but watch Eve’s chest rise and fall. None of them said much. Sleep itched at the back of Josh’s eyes. Fatigue was blurring his thoughts, which was just as well, because he didn’t want to think. At one point he went down to the hospital cafe to fetch coffee and sandwiches for the three of them. Gabriella disappeared for half an hour on some opaque errand. A doctor brought in a meganium for another round of treatment.

By late afternoon the room was warm and stuffy from lingering Aromatherapy. Until his Pokégear buzzed with an incoming text message. This had bloody better be good.

Call me on videophone. ASAP

It was Mum’s number. Reluctantly, he headed down to the videophone bank near the lobby. With any luck it wouldn’t take long. It wasn’t only Mum answering – Dad was there as well, in his work clothes. He must have finished early today, which he never did lightly.

“Oh, thank heavens you’m alright!” Mum immediately cried.

“What?”

“The nurse told us everything,” Dad said.

“Everything?” Josh said. A penny dropped. “It was Gabriella, wasn’t it?”

“Ye should have called!” Mum chided.

Josh waved his hands in a hopeless ‘What’s the big deal?’ gesture.

“How am ye, son?” Dad said.

“My arm was stiff fer a while, but thass about it.”

Mum raised a sceptical eyebrow. “Ye tried to go mano-à-mano with a hungry haunter and your arm was just numb?”

“I had my knife,” he said, which wasn’t an answer. Wait a minute. They seemed to know a lot about what happened; which meant Gabriella knew a lot about what happened; which meant that Madison had been talking.

“How is she?” Dad asked.

“Still asleep. No-one seems te want te explain what that means.”

“Do you want us to come out?” Mum asked. “You don’t have te be there alone.”

“No, no … there’s no need for that,” Josh said.

His Pokégear buzzed again. “She’s woken up.”


*​

Hospitals had a way of taking the urgency out of drama. He’d resisted the urge to run back up to the ward – and yet straight away he was left outside to anxiously shuffle his feet while doctors conducted tests and family time followed. It can’t be bad news. I can’t hear any crying, Josh told himself. It didn’t help much.

It seemed like hours till the two older Joys emerged. “Your turn,” Imogen said. “Come on, Gabby, let’s get some proper food.”

He opened the door almost cautiously. Eve was sitting up in bed. She was looking oddly tired, and subdued. They’d removed the electrodes from her head.

She gave him a distant look, as if she’d never seen him before. “You’re here.”

“Of course I’m here.”

He retrieved Eve’s Poké Balls from a pocket and put them on the side table. He hesitated for a moment, before perching on the edge of the bed.

“Guilty conscience?” she said frostily.

“… how are you feeling?” he tried, taken aback.

Eve gave him a complex look. A confusion of emotions battled across her face.

“I had a dream. I was scared, I think. Still am,” she said with a brittle smile. “Don’t tell anyone.”

Josh didn’t know what to say. Eve stared at his navel, like it was neutral ground. Part of him wanted to hug her till she started giggling again. But he didn’t, and he didn’t know why not.

“I’m sorry,” she said abruptly.

Afterwards, he couldn’t say where this had come from. But he meant it all the same.

“I love you.”

The slightest of pauses. “I love you too.”


Next Chapter: Two Perspectives
 
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Interlude - Two Perspectives
Interlude – Two Perspectives

Her niece didn’t look ill, but Imogen could see Eve wasn’t at all herself. She was quiet, that was it. She hadn’t asked for anything to eat. Hadn’t insisted on seeing her pokémon, either.

“Has Mum driven him off again?” Eve demanded, without any real fire.

“Even your mother’s prepared to admit he’s not a Townie lout.”

“She called him a semi-literate lout,” Eve pointed out. “Did he really attack it with his knife?”

“Apparently.”

Eve giggled weakly. “So like him.”

That wasn’t Eve’s giggle. Gabby’s already hugged her half a hundred times. Aha. I have it.

“By my reckoning your literate Townie boy has earned a reward.”

“Yeah, he has,” Eve said. “Don’t know how I’m gonna do that while I’m, well, here.”

“I can think of one way,” Imogen said brightly. “Oh, look, you already have a bed!”

“Get out!”

“I’ll stand guard, make sure the nurses give you some privacy. How long do you need?”

“Get out!” Eve yelled, her cheeks flushing.

That reanimated you all right, Imogen thought, smiling to herself. She cheekily flounced out before Eve took it into her head to start throwing things. She almost walked into her sister, who immediately sized up the situation.

“Nothing!” Imogen lied sweetly. Gabby’s face said she didn’t believe it as she closed the door behind her.

Josh was sitting outside, by himself. A serious boy, Imogen thought. A little guy, which had been unexpected given her niece’s predilections. That had been her first impression, when Eve had introduced him in Goldenrod City. Tended to be scruffy, too, and that had probably been Gabby’s first impression. Not without reason – Imogen took in the ragged tears in his jacket where the ninetales had attacked him, the vaguely hand-shaped bloodstain on the sleeve, legacy of gods-knew-what.

She liked him considerably better than that blockhead Eve had dated in high school. Nevertheless -

Imogen took a seat next to him. “We don’t have to take our clothes off,
To have a good time, oh no,” she quietly sang.

Josh scowled at her with undisguised irritation. “You never give it a rest, do you?”

“You might want to be a bit nicer to me, Joshua Cook,” Imogen said.

“I’m not trying to fuck your niece,” he replied sarcastically.

Imogen just smiled, because she rather liked that feistiness, and because she wasn’t insulted anyway. Ninetales, haunter, Gabriella, it was apparently all the same to him. The little guy’s a cliché, she thought, her thoughts circling back around to Eve.

The doctors said there was a high chance that Nightmare could recur, but. It was a good sign she was well enough to be vibrantly annoyed and embarrassed by her dirty jokes. The psychosomatic hypothermia was over, the pseudo-coma was over. The worst of it was over.


*​

RS Madison poked her head around the door to the CID office. “Where the hell is Josselin?” she said. The nearest detective just shrugged and went back to sifting CCTV footage.

“Well, if you see him, tell him I’m going home at seven whatever happens. I’ve done enough bloody overtime this month.”

Damn that Josselin, Madison thought, he’s like a damn ghost the moment he gets back to the nick. She headed off in the direction of the break room, searching through her pockets after painkillers. And thus almost walked right into two senior officers, the Area Captain, whom she hadn’t seen for a while - and the Region Commander.

“Captain. Commander Heartwood.”

“Looking for me, eh?” Heartwood joked, smiling genially.

“Looking for Josselin,” Madison replied flatly. “Actually, do you have a minute?”

“Always do for you. Excuse me,” he told the captain briefly. “This a big talk?”

“Break room. I hear someone’s been baking.”

The break room was pretty typical of places like this – battered furniture, scuffed floor, half-washed kitchenware. Somebody’s wife had been baking, and already there was next to nothing left of the cake.

“So what’s up, Ruth?” Heartwood said, trying to find a clean mug.

“Did you hear about the incident I attended a couple of nights ago? Cliff Edge Gate Reserve?”

“Something about a rogue haunter?”

“That’s it. A Joy and her travel companion,” Madison said. “She got the worst of it. Now he wants to be a Ranger.”

“No he doesn’t,” Heartwood instantly said.

“That’s what I told him.”

“He’s just tired and emotional and looking for control.”

“I told him that, too. And yet I think he really means it,” Madison said.

“So why are you telling me this?”

“He tried to attack the haunter with a knife. Before he released a pokémon.”

Heartwood stopped rummaging through the tea bags.

“He shows a remarkable, well, willingness to personally confront pokémon. Twenty-one. No formal qualifications as such, but by all accounts a good woodsman.”

“No formal quals?” Heartwood said. He folded his arms. “Come on Ruth, what’s the money shot?”

“I’m certain he’s a latent psychic. He has Foresight, that’s rare, even among psychics. He Teleports like he was born to it. Arthur, I know how the Chancellor feels about outside applicants, but -” Madison stopped, sensing she was overselling it.

“Is he collecting Badges, or what? I can’t just order Fairholme to accept him into the Academy.”

“He’s got a couple. Wouldn’t say much else about that.”

“Arsing about on the Gym circuit … but you say he’s serious?”

That was rhetorical. Madison said nothing, and let him think.

“Alright, how’s this,” Heartwood said. “If he wins five Badges before the September intake I’ll have Fairholme admit him. No – tell him I’ll have Fairholme consider him. See what he does.”

“Alright. Thanks, Arthur. Now I’m going home.”

“Alright. Get some sleep from me! Oh, and tell him this comes from me.”

You’d better not prove me wrong, Joshua Cook.


Next Chapter: When It Alteration Finds
 
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All right, returning with a vengeance! Now that the fic is back on track, let's get right back into it!

The rest of The Long Tournament Arc:
I already mentioned some of the issues way back. And you mentioned some of them on the 'cord that one day. Having blazed the hell through these...main issues besides the length. The biggest one being that little actually happened throughout it all. You probably could've glossed over or condensed some of it without losing too much. The main two points seemed to be Eve's anxiety over a loss and Josh's worries over being discovered. So two battles near the end, possibly even in the same battle if you perspective flipped. Or just the one, the latter got dropped partway through the last fight.

Mostly shoved through it all instead of reading and taking notes in detail hence that above. Well it's done and over with now, at least. Onward!

C31
- As I thought. To Cianwood! Skips backtracking...except it's needed anyway as Josh never fought Whitney.
- Speaking if well can't say I've ever seen a badge gotten so unceremoniously before. Lots of adventures got glossed over, in contrast to the Long Tournament Arc. Prolly for the better to get on with it
- She sure seems to call 2nd Mate Livesey 2nd Mate Livesey a lot.
- Nothing more really to note here.

C32
- [This pokémon has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down,] <- I did not know Pokemon knew Windows 98
- They’d simply held hands for the past half-mile or so. <- awww
- What's with Josh's weird thick sporadic accent?
- Well this is random and abrupt out of him. Just grabbing goods
- Now this is the Walk I remember, full of random lore of British Johto
- Before he knew it his fingers had closed around the hilt of his knife. <- Trying to stab a ghost. Dude.
- The throwing an Ultra Ball to distract it bit is a written bit confusingly
- Nice showing an actual evil Pokemon
- Teleport medevac? Sounds unorthodox and dangerous.

C33
- She hadn’t been blonde since she was four years-old. <- Wait is there a genetic defect that makes Joys blonde temporarily? Or is it just forced pink dye?
- of her bum reflected in the mirror - Took me a sec to realize this meant butt
- Neon Genesis Evangeline? Certainly seems a Gainax sequence right now
- He wouldn’t be the first boy to lose interest and disappear just when she needed him. <- Big oof. Was her being damaged goods hinted at before?
- Guildhall? What is this medieval times?
- Lots of talking about how there's no Pokemon here.
- What a rude way to answer a phone

C34
- where’s Dr Chakravarti? <- One hell of a name
- Nice revisionism in your flashback Josh
- Oh hey a male Joy
- I get the feel you're using next-of-kin a bit awkwardly here. It's usually used in a death context in my experience
- Wait how did Ivysaur find out about what happened
- Huh. I forget was Josh on good terms with Gabriella?
- That ending tho damn. :3 Well for one OTP. For two props on not dragging it out. For three it's rare to see an active developing relationship so that'll be cool.

I
- Dang the joking already heh
- Lots of game Ranger allusions here I see with Area leaders and such.
- Well huh, a twist with Josh having powers. Interesting.

So the OTP is pretty much official now. Woo! The psychic revelation is interesting. It has the potential to be a Problem, though knowing you you'll write it okay at absolute worst, so I'm unworried. Also have a goal for Josh now, if a rash one brought on by soiled pride. And whatever fallout from Eve's experience. Lots of stuff to look forward to in the coming chapters, so standing by for the next one!!
 
Ch. 35 - When It Alteration Finds
Chapter Thirty Five – When It Alteration Finds (Version 1.0)

Evelina

“Why don’t you come home?” Mum had tried.

“Why should I come home?” Eve had retorted.

That’s how it had started, but it had ended, more or less, with Eve glaring out the window. This wasn’t really about her health, which was back to normal. A hungry haunter was a good excuse, that’s all. She didn’t want to look at her any more. The room overlooked a quiet residential street, lined with palm trees along the grass verges. There were some surfers heading back from the beach, looking tired and exhilarated, damn them. She wished she’d been surfing this morning.

“I don’t need looking after!” Eve reiterated for the sake of it.

“Maybe I should just go, then,” Mum said, sounding sad and defeated. “Since I’m clearly not wanted here.”

“Maybe you should.”

Eve refused to turn around. In the tense atmosphere she could hear the door opening and closing with crystal clarity. The latch snicked back sharply.

“That wasn’t called for,” Aunt Immey said.

Yeah, well, I don’t appreciate the ‘poor me’ tactics, Auntie.

“You ought to apologise for that.”

It took a moment for Eve to register that one. “You’re taking her side now?” she demanded disbelievingly, finally turning round.

“That was silly and childish,” Imogen said bluntly. She sighed, and gave her a disappointed look. “Whether you believe it or not your mother has only your best interests at heart.”

Eve looked away angrily, and caught a glimpse of herself in the bathroom mirror. For a moment she wanted to slam the bathroom door shut.

“I never get this kind of nettling bollocks from Josh,” she karped.

“That’s because he’ll never really challenge you on anything important,” Imogen said. “You do what we all do: make it too dangerous a subject. What do you argue about, hmm? Beachcombing bullshit.”

“Whatever.”

“Have it your way, hun,” she said. “I’m going to find your mother.”

Eve, my girl, time to get the hell out of this hospital. She fished around in her gilet, looking for her phone. And found out Josh’s number, still high on her frequent contacts list.

“Hullo, Eevee,” he answered.

“What are you up to, sweetling?”

“I’m a-down on the beach – sixty-five? For a brand-new Silph compact? One hundred, and not a shilling less.”

“I’m busting out. There’s no point hanging around this hospital.”

“So you’re feeling ok, then?”

“I need to be out. In the sun, in the sea breeze, y’know?” Eve said. “I’m going to challenge the Cianwood Gym, too.”

“Do you want me to meet you there?”

“You’re not too busy? Sounds like you’ve got momentum.”

“I can fence the load later,” he teased.

“Stop that,” she admonished half-heartedly. “I’ve got to go by the Centre first. I’ll text you.”


*​

The only indication the building was a Gym at all was the Poké Ball symbol above the gate. Eve had never seen such a discreet Gym. From the outside you’d be forgiven for thinking it was an austere mansion, enclosed with a high wall with a suggestion of gardens beyond. There wasn’t any indication of which way challengers should go, either. From somewhere inside Eve could hear the sound of someone bellowing. It seemed like as good a direction to go as any.

Inside there was an open set of double doors leading to a battlefield. Five or six Gym trainers were observing their peers fighting a practice battle. Their machop were sparring doggedly – it looked like they’d been at it for a while. The Gym Leader was watching them all with a paternal air. Even by Gym Leader standards he stood out, an ursaring of a man, powerfully built even if he was running to fat. Wild tufts of whiskers sprouted from his craggy cheeks like lichen.

“Ah! Challengers!” he roared happily.

“Challenger!” Eve insisted, resisting the urge to roar herself.

“Cedar, Antonio, clear the field. Come on up, sport, you can fight your qualifier here.”

“Qualifier?” Eve raged. “I have four Badges and I’m Tigerlily Champion, damn the qualifier!”

Gym Leader Chuck just laughed, as if she were terribly precocious. “Confident, eh? Better hope that’s not false confidence!”

“I -” Eve began, but Chuck wasn’t listening.

“Battlefield 2! You, go grab my third team. Edmund, you’re refereeing.”

Battlefield 2 was an open-air field within the mansion grounds, sited on a hill with the exuberant noise of the beach filtering up on the wind. Nothing special, nothing clever, just a basic rectangle of hard-packed dirt in the midst of a lawn. The Gym trainers strung out along the sideline to watch the battle.

Josh caught hold of her arm. “You sure you’re ok?”

Eve stared at him for a moment, trying out responses in her head. “Don’t ask again,” she said as gently as she could.

Well why the hell not? She’d endured the pressure of the Tigerlily finals. No damn Gym battle was going to faze her. Chuck grinned at her across the battlefield. Far cry from the ice queen of Unova.

“This will be an official Gym battle between the challenger Evelina Joy, and the Gym Leader Chuck of the Cianwood City Gym! Each trainer will use three pokémon! The challenger will release first and only she may make substitutions! A Storm Badge is at stake!”

“You ready, sport?” Chuck barked.

“Why, do you need a minute?” Eve taunted. There was no doubt as to who to lead with. Not because of her double resistance, not because of her Flying-type attack, but because she was the ace. “Lyra! You have the honour!”

“Get out there, Heracross!”

Lyra seemed unusually serious, manifesting without her usual flair. She alighted near centre field and clacked her wing cases belligerently. Heracross firmly planted his feet on the dirt and leaned forward, flexing his muscles methodically.

“Begin!”

The battle opened with a blur of competing orders.

“Double Team!”

“Air Cutter!”

It was a sharp Double Team, but Lyra was conversant with this tactic – Meowth liked it, and was good at it. Her attack destroyed a clone, the other four heracross moving in four different directions. Lyra furiously cut another two apart in a ripple of wing beats, her flurry of missed attacks carving up the dirt. The remaining pair of heracross split left and right in a pincer manoeuvre.

Eve looked over her shoulder to make sure Josh was still there.

“Bring the fight to them with Seismic Toss!” Chuck hollered.

“What?” Eve said, and then remembered what she was supposed to be doing. She spun round in time to see Heracross fly low over the ground, seize Lyra and hurl her to the dirt. She flailed to her feet, cursing, as Heracross droned over her head and landed heavily.

“Lyra, stay sharp -” Eve started. Forget that, she knows. “Circle and attack!”

“Keep it cool and wait for your moment!”

“You beat a fucking eelektross!” Eve yelled. “Circle and attack!”

There was a savage little glint in her eye as Lyra took flight, snarling incoherently. She circled Heracross in quick, tight little orbits, impatiently hunting for an opening. Maybe it was fighting another bug that was bringing out her atavistic side. Heracross didn’t try to chase her, pivoting back and forth to keep himself guarded. He suddenly lashed out with his horn – Lyra threw herself into reverse and clipped him around the head with a Thunderpunch.

[Too slow, you bastard!]

The wind picked up, pushing a ripple across the lawn. Long acres of green meadows, rippling in the breeze, blended into wildwood marching up to evergreen highlands. The land was wild, and it was beautiful, and it was empty, empty all the way to the horizon. At her back was a strange country where she had the wrong name. It was so very lonely, lost on the edge between worlds.

“Eevee?”

Through blurred vision Eve saw the ledian hammered aside with Mega Punch. This land wasn’t empty. This was Cianwood City. A forlorn hollowness lingering in her chest.

“Uh,” she called, trying to blink away the welling tears, “uh, Protect! Break off!”

Where were you? Why didn’t you call? she thought, and didn’t know why. The ledian – Lyra – Protected herself from being overwhelmed by an explosion of Fury Attack. She circled round, hooking out with a Drain Punch even as Heracross spun and blocked it with surprising grace.

The wind gusted again. She could see for miles and miles with wonderful clarity. She was alone. From blue mountains at the furthest reach of sight, to sun-drenched meadowland, it was beautiful, but achingly empty. Not a tumbledown stone or brick was there to say ‘people had been here’. There was no sound but the wind, whistling about the tower.

[Oh, fucking hell!] Lyra shrieked breathlessly. Heracross’ Counter tumbled her the length of the field, like a kicked pebble.

The first thing Eve thought was: this was Cianwood City. The second thing she thought was: that just happened because I wasn’t paying attention.

She realised she was in the middle of a circle of judgemental attention. Half a dozen Gym trainers all watching her and wondering how a Tigerlily Champion could be so obviously incompetent. The Gym Leader was watching her, after she’d insisted so stubbornly on waiving a qualifier battle. Lyra had taken another hit because of her.

“Lyra, return!” she blurted. She realised she was fleeing the field, as if running could somehow erase that moment from history, through the main courtyard and into the gardens lining the Gym walls. She stopped at random in what appeared to be a secluded corner, shaded by a thick cypress hedge.

“Eevee?” Josh said, appearing from around the corner. Eve turned her back to him, tears welling inexorably in her eyes. She gritted her teeth, willing herself to keep it together.

“Go away, Joshua Cook!” she commanded.

The voice didn’t work. “Why?”

“Because!”

“Because why,” he persisted.

Eve rounded on him like a pouncing luxio.

“This is what you love! Isn’t it!” she screamed, her composure collapsing in a flood of tears. “Evelina Joy! Supremely confident! Bulletproof! Not some nutcase who can’t even finish a battle!”

She subsided, cheeks burning with a mélange of embarrassment and fury. “There! Satisfied?”

That’s it. That’s it, you’ve done it this time Eve, he’s not going to stick around, and why should he? But Josh just sighed, and gently pulled her into a hug, saying nothing while she sobbed onto his shoulder.

“You don’t have to prove anything to me.”

“So I’m still awesome?” she mumbled.

“So awesome I still don’t quite understand why you’re hanging out with me,” he said. Eve wasn’t sure whether he was joking or not. She giggled weakly, but squeezed him a bit tighter as the sea breeze grew stronger.

“Let’s go back to the Centre,” she said. “You can push your pickings, Daddy-o.”

“Er. I can dig it?”


*​

Eve spent the rest of the day with her pokémon. Not training or battling, just being with them. How long had it been since they’d last done this? Lyra tried to spar anyway, but Eve overruled her – Lyra’s pride was goading her to irrational aggression. She tended to forget or ignore that she was really nocturnal now. It would be good for her to spend some time under the stars. She’d insisted that Josh head back down to the beach to carry on selling off his ‘salvage’. She was pretty sure he was calmer when he was chiselling someone.

Later on she went for an evening walk. Josh said on the Rose that seaside towns have a moment of human slack tide at about this time. She could see what he meant now – the families had packed up for the day, but it was still too early for the nightly piss-up. And so, slack tide, when only the wingull were still ebullient, and the streets were unassailably peaceful.

Eve hadn’t intended to go anywhere in particular, but her subconscious had other ideas. There was the Gym gate, for the second time that day. She padded through the gate, enjoying the silence.

“Couldn’t keep away, eh, sport?”

For such a big man, Chuck could be surprisingly stealthy when he wanted to be. Eve hadn’t noticed him at all, cross-legged by a rhododendron bush.

“Eve,” she corrected.

“You know, there’s something I’ve been trying to figure out. What happens for a champion, a real go-getter, to tap out in the middle of a Gym battle?”

Careful fat man – Eve started thinking. She might have said something like that, but she was too tired for sass. Besides, there was a compliment in there. “It’s complicated.”

“Well, suit yourself,” Chuck said. “But you know, this is a Gym. We improve trainer’s minds as well as pokémon bodies.”

Eve slumped down against a tree, sighing. She was too tired to dissemble, either. “A couple of days ago. Capital-N Nightmare. They said it would recur but I didn’t really believe it till the battle.”

“What are you going to do now?” he said. There was something about the quiet way he said it. He had a reputation for being an archetypal Fighting-type master: incurably loud, boisterous to the point of boorish. Calls everyone ‘sport’ with a blithe disregard for gender. But then … she’d read magazine articles claiming he’d break into bouts of sentimental tears post-battle, whether he’d won or not. What really went on behind those wild moustachios?

“Recuperate, whatever the hell that means,” she said. “I can hardly fight a damn Gym battle anyway …”

“I have another proposal,” Chuck said. “Come to train at my Gym.”

“At a Fighting-type Gym? When I have no Fighting-type pokémon?”

“Weren’t you listening? It’s as much about the mind as it is the body,” he said abruptly. “Just you, mind. The other one will have to make his own arrangements.”

“What will you teach me?”

“Depends what you’re willing to learn. But it would be a terrible thing for your skills to go to waste, champion.”


*​

Eve never liked being alone on a beach at sunset. Sunset was for walking on the beach as a couple. There were a few of them now, wandering along by the foaming surf of the incoming tide. Islands of cumulus cloud hovered out to sea, and as the sun set behind them they turned to shades of copper and rose.

But sitting on the beach with a best friend was a sweet substitute. “You had a good day, then,” she said.

“It’s always a good afternoon when you make some dollar,” he replied, just a bit smugly. “Delicious, nutritious money.”

Eve threw him a subtly disapproving look. She still wasn’t convinced that glorified piracy was legal, but it wasn’t worth an argument.

“So what did Madison say?” Eve asked.

“I’ve got to win five Badges before September,” Josh said. “In order to apply to the Academy.”

“Oh, you’re halfway there!”

“Five Johto League Badges,” he clarified.

“Is that all she said?”

“Most of it. She did have one other piece of advice. ‘Open your eyes, then open them again’.”

“What?"

“I don’t know either.”

They sat in comfortable silence for a moment.

“She thinks I’m latently psychic,” he said.

“Madison?”

“She thinks that’s why I’m psychosensitive. Why I could see Haunter. Why I saw through Ninetales.”

“Do you suppose that’s why she supported your application?”

“I don’t know. All I know is for the first time I can remember, I know exactly what I want to do.”

Eve tried to tuck a hair back into place that had been loosened by the sea breeze. She kept feeling lonely, and didn’t know why. Josh suddenly put his arm around her. She wondered whether he was reacting to her mood.

“I’ve decided to take a break,” she admitted. “I’m not well, yet. And, um, Chuck’s offered me some training at the Gym.”

“Well,” Josh said resignedly. “Maybe they haven’t found that container yet. I could at least earn a Badge here. And there’s that Gym on Red Rock Isle, now.”

Eve picked at a crispy piece of seaweed. Josh had every reason to keep going without her. But he wasn’t contemplating it. She realised they hadn’t talked about the I love yous. She wasn’t quite sure how she was supposed to react, now. Usually, she expressed affection, well, physically and enthusiastically. It had been a different kind of I love you.

She compromised with a kiss on the cheek.

Five Badges before September.

“Sweetling. I’ve made a decision,” Eve announced. “Go to the Whirl Islands. Without me.”

Josh gave her an almost startled look. “… why?”

“You can’t put your whole life on hold for me. Not when I could be here for … I don’t know how long.”

“Are you trying to say goodbye?”

“No! No. This isn’t forever.”

“Eevee, are you sure about this?”

“Yeah. Yeah, this is the right thing.”

“Oh …” He went quiet, staring at the sea. “I guess I’ll find a ferry in the morning.”


Next Chapter: Alone
 
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I said I had started up my engine. Said I was revving it too. Now that I'm up and awake and read it when I was out, here I am! Because of it too now I can go into more detail than usual. Which is way way more because there's a lot of detail! Let's get started.

C34
- This argument at the start sounds like a typical teenager throw things back in yoir face. Then again it almost seems like Eve is being treated like one, or even a child.
- Snicked is a weird verb.
- Kind of bizarre situation here I noticed: Eve at no point is said to move during the argument. She looks out a window and into the bathroom mirror. It's unclear where she is standing.
- Adorable (and sensible) how Eve views Josh at this point.
- Yeah, isolation in hospitals is a very real thing. You can't go anywhere, you can't see anyone, you're generally stuck in the one room, and so on. It's just like being in prison. In fact I've heard people describe it exactly as prison. Learned recently too that there's a specific name for cases of severe instances where there isn't even any stimulation in an ICU, too.
- Odd way to interpret the Cianwood Gym.
- What was her fourth badge again that wasn't one of the first three?
- Also a fun interpretation of Chuck. So professional it all just comes natural easy peasy
- Eve looked over her shoulder to make sure Josh was still there. <- Eyes forward, you don't need to show off to him.
- and the remembered <- Typo spotted!
- Rare to see her get so frustrated so easy. Outside factors I know but dayum the f-bomb.
- Cianwood City not empty of all things? I think you're thinking way too hard on the metaphors, Eve.
- And now is not the time to ask whoever why they didn't call.
- That gym battle got cut abruptly short. But it led into more OTP scening so. Good to see that wasn't just random at the end of the hospital, it's on!
- “So I’m still awesome?” <- Well this is a funny thing to specifically ask. Almost haha funny.
- Well technically in DPP (and SS), Ledian is still morning exclusive, not night. And in SM it's day exclusive.
- Piss-up is a funny term. Maybe too funny.
- Well Chuck is more chill than I thought he'd be from first impressions.
- We improve trainer’s minds as well as pokémon bodies. <- Well in this gym it seems they improve trainer's bodies and Pokemon minds too! Also typo here, trainers should be plural.
- “ A couple of <- Errant space.
- Oh, so it was a nightmare. Taking place waking a la a war flashback.
- Hey shoutouts to that one offhand mention of Chuck crying after battle.
- “What will you teach me” <- Got a question, where is the mark?
- Calling him a best friend? Guess she's not fully ready to admit things yet. Or is careful because of being burned in the past, more likely.
- Good to see a bit of Johto pride with the specific badges. The games, some fics which includes even yours makes it out as Kanto's you-know-what. Neat to explore but can be frustrating. Also lets you cut back on some gym battles repetition, maybe.
- “What? <- Missing end quote.
- Especially can cut back on gym repetition when you put in new ones.
- Well maybe I was wrong. Maybe she really is not ready to admit things yet. Or both.
- If you love something, let it go...if only for a little while!

Stuff keeps chugging along, and good to see the love yous were followed up on. Sitting back and waiting for the next installment of The Long Walk to True Love! And oh dear god given talkings on the 'cord please let what's happening with Eve in Cianwood not be another Long Tournament Arc[/i]
 
Just read the prologue. Really enjoyed it!

I adore your portrayal of the world here. You really bring it to life. The worldbuilding’s incredibly satisfying across the board; from the history of the area to the relationship between the two cousins, it feels very authentic.
I liked the setup as well. I’m not sure I feel too attached to Josh yet, but I think that’s natural for a prologue. I need to see him in action to get behind him – something to get my teeth into. That said, the writing’s so strong that I’m excited to read more anyway.

The concept’s very satisfying too. Although I don’t mind Pokémon stories starring children on the whole, it’s fun reading an older character with a bit more history and maturity behind him. It’s quite refreshing to see an adventure story without the boundless optimism of a child. I’m curious to see if Mulberry’s economy will be an ongoing concern, or whether it’s just background for Josh. Either way – fun!

The only thing I found a bit tricky was the characters’ accents. This may well be my issue – I find Hagrid in Harry Potter just as tricky. But it feels like I’m being spoon-fed the accent, and it’s a bit alienating. Instead of feeling like I’m being invited into this world, it feels like I’m on the outside, struggling to understand the way they speak. The constant reminder that these characters are “foreign” to me means I’m not relating to them.

But again, maybe that’s my problem rather than the fic’s – and I’m happy to see if it works better once the story gets going properly.

Oh, and one last thing - the prose is so rich. You must have worked so hard on this, and it's really paid off. I can practically smell that canal.
 
Ch. 36 - Alone
Chapter Thirty Six – Alone (Version 1.0)

Joshua

Josh wished he were making landfall on the Karego Rose. More than that, he wished he were making landfall with Eve.

He’d spent the day on Cianwood Island, selling off the heavier merchandise from the container haul. He could have headed west to capture a vibrava as per his original idea. But the equation had changed. Now he wasn’t going to take a team to the Silver Conference there was no reason to insist on balance. That being the case there were four Gyms he could target with his current team – Red Rock Isle, Olivine City, Ecruteak City, and Cianwood City.

Cianwood City was a last resort. The sea was in a playful mood today, lively and yet foreboding real danger, like a litleo pouncing at butterflies. Josh watched Blue Point Isle approach off the port bow. It occurred to him he’d only ever seen these isles from the deck of a ferry. Nothing is quite as it seems southwest of Olivine City. Legends girded them like sea mist – these magical islands of wreckers and smuggler’s coves, shapeshifting sorcerers and storm-raising pokémon.

The southernmost of the Whirl Islands arose smoothly from the deeps like a surfacing wailord. It had the same rugged beauty as Cianwood Island, granite cliffs diaphanously veiled with sea spray. At the mouth of the largest bay the waves foamed at the startlingly blue skerry that gave the island its name. It was rumoured to be full of Water Stone. Josh disembarked at Porth Trelawne with a dozen other trainers. He tapped out a text on landing, deleting and retyping it twice before settling on:

Reached Blue Point just now. Hope you’re ok – 11:52

From the quayside, he looked up at the island. Beyond the port the interior was a patchwork of field and moor rising to the ancient caldera of a dead volcano. The Pokémon Centre overlooked the beach from behind a line of windswept palms. There were a lot of Water-type trainers hanging around the common room, the floor gritty with tracked-in sand. The Joy on duty smiled at him like he was an old friend.

“There’s a double room available,” she announced without preamble.

“No, it’s just me,” Josh said. “Eve stayed on Cianwood.”

“Oh, you don’t have to take a Centre room – you can have the guest room, it’s much cosier.”

“Well, only if you have space …” Josh said blandly.

“There’s always room for boyfriends and partners.”

Josh assumed that was supposed to be welcoming and heartwarming. He was not heartwarmed. Josh hadn’t forgotten it wasn’t so long ago that they were a family of suspicious ice sculptures. That hard-nosed bitch Riley was just the most blatant. Well, he didn’t want to be clasped to the Joy’s collective bosom.

He could have coldly insisted on a Centre room anyway. He could have sourly pointed out that a man shouldn’t have to take a Shadow Ball to earn some basic trust. But somehow, being rude to nurses didn’t seem important any more.

Settling into Whoever Joy’s guest room didn’t seem an oddling, given that Eve wasn’t there anyway. Strange how accustomed you could become to a girl’s companionship in the space of a couple of months. Or not so strange, after being used to … solitude. He sent off another text before he headed down to the common room:

At Centre now. Which one of your relatives runs Blue Point – 12:16

Where had that ‘boyfriends and partners’ non-sequitur bubbled up from? None of them had seen him on the beach with Eve, surely? Besides, that kiss on the cheek had been a companionable one, obviously. Girls like Eve didn’t kiss him any other way.

Actually, girls like Eve didn’t kiss him at all.

For want of a better idea, Josh wandered over to the Centre bulletin board. There was some sort of weekend training fair in the next town along the coast. It was about time Megeara started training for battle. She was growing like a dandelion, growing stir crazy come to that. He checked his Pokégear – no texts.

Lizpetroc was only a couple of miles northwards. Josh took the landward route along the lane. The air smelled of warm earth and cool salt. A dry stone wall divided the lane from the mareep-strewn fields. It was almost hot to the touch in the afternoon sun. Forget-me-nots and little Stellaria holostea grew between the stones. After an hour’s easy stroll the lane dropped down a hill into a fishing village, all narrow, cobbled streets and unexpected corners. The character of the village was rather different to somewhere like Porth Cian. The tourist trap elements were half-hearted and slightly sad, like a banker wearing an Alolan shirt. There was less of the pilfered and faintly inappropriate surf culture that was trying to take over Cianwood Island these days. The chain coffee shops had made it here, but on the bright side the chain pubs hadn’t. There was no beach – the seaward side of the village was a long harbour wall.

Maybe I can get rid of some of those damn Absorb Bulbs, Josh thought, watching the sparring. Most of the trainers here were using Water-types, a lot of those either freshly-caught or callow juveniles. Well, fair enough, Meg was a bit callow too. Some of those callow pokémon seemed to be taking cues from their trainers. Meg’s afternoon training got off to a distinctly false start. Josh quickly got in a shouting match with some idiot teenager who thought it wasn’t at all irresponsible to use a hatchling horsea with Dragon Rage. The boy not only didn’t care but tried to argue, till Josh was an inch from slapping the arrogant contempt right off his face. He didn’t, but he did explain the impulse, at volume and at length.

Afterwards he wondered whether he’d gone too far. The commotion had attracted a sizeable crowd. A few of the looks he’d got were approving, but more trainers were giving him a wide berth. He hadn’t meant to have that effect.

One of the approving trainers did challenge him. Well, he seemed to be approving. The first thing he said was: “Hey, you got a Grass-type? Cedar, from Olivine City”, all in one breath. He was a somewhat chubby fellow in a fishing vest, who carried around a camp stool rather than stand during battle. It wasn’t so much a battle as an extended sparring session. His krabby was a lazy tiddler, inclined to scuttling off rather than putting any effort into fighting. That habit was getting on Meg’s nerves – she kept firing off Bullet Seeds in an attempt to goad him.

“Oi! Concentrate, Meg! Now, little jumps, when I shout!” Josh said. He nodded to his opponent.

“Alright, Snips, try to grab her,” he said. “Vice Grip!”

Snips reluctantly advanced and started snapping at Meg, while she gamely hopped about more or less in time with Josh’s shouts. She’d got the idea in principle, he thought. The clumsiness would likely pass with practice. Her randomised enthusiasm, though, would be harder to focus.

“Switch?”

“Yeah. Meg, Bullet Seed this time. I want to see accuracy!

Accuracy was still far from Meg’s strong suit. She often somehow managed to fire off sprays of Bullet Seeds like buckshot. After half an hour of that both of their pokémon were tired and rebellious and refusing to cooperate.

“What do you think?” Cedar said.

Josh considered the question for a moment. “He keeps trying to scuttle behind something. He still thinks he’s in a rockpool somewhere.” He picked up Meg. “What do you think? I’ve got a spare Solar Beam TM knocking about.”

“Solar Beam,” he said. “She’ll have trouble picking it up – spare TM?”

“Ah. Got some Expert Belts, Ultra Balls, few other things. You want one?”

“I’ll have a look at some of them Ultra Balls, yeah. You know there’s a move tutor on Yellow Rock Isle who teaches Synthesis. Your roselia might pick up Solar Beam better with that.”


*​

Josh couldn’t help but sell off some more of the Silph merchandise. It was a distraction, but carpe diem. There wasn’t a lot of it left now, anyway. With twilight approaching the fair was theoretically winding down. All the pep and overconfidence from the trainers was getting a bit much. They seemed to be taking turns to shout things like “I’m so totally psyched!” into each other’s faces. He decided to wander along the narrow lanes near the quayside while the light faded.

The cottages were built almost up to the water’s edge, so the sea capriciously appeared and disappeared from view. Josh stopped at the edge of the harbour wall, and wondered what it must be like here in the winter, with the storms rolling in from the Great Western Ocean. The guard rail was rusted out of the stonework – but it was a short six foot drop down to the waves. Screwball stared over his shoulder. Screwball was a great companion for times like this, since it rarely said anything.

“That way! After her, quick!” a male voice blared. Josh glanced around, irritated at the interrupted peace. White hair streaming behind her like a silvery banner, a girl ran past and disappeared down an alley. A moment later three or four men followed in pursuit.

Well. Wasn’t that odd, now. They were dressed for the beach, but any idiot could see there was no beach here. And if it were flirtatious larks, then why no flirtatious giggling? Four men giving chase to one girl. Not odd, suspicious.

Something black-furred tackled the ghost in a smear of luminous yellow, snarling as it swiftly and thoroughly savaged her.

‘Someone should do something’ was all too easy to simply say.

He followed the pursuit at stalking distance, back the way he’d walked. The sound of opening Poké Balls popped from around a corner. They were in a courtyard, dead space between houses – Josh could see a slice of the eastern side, where its fourth edge was the harbour wall. One of the men was shuffling closer to it, almost as if he were trying to cut off an escape route. The red rage bubbled up again. Not so urgent as last time, nor so vicious, but colder, clearer. He unsnapped Ivysaur’s Poké Ball from his belt and moved it to a jacket pocket. The battlefield was essentially blank. They didn’t yet know they were fighting. Hm. How serendipitous. There was a bundle of brand-new steel poles lying in arm’s reach. Railing repairs. Quarterstaves, in a better light.

“Screwball,” he said quietly. “Target left. Eliminate the pokémon. Thunder Wave the men if they draw a Ball.”

“Quit stalling! Bloody well grab her!” someone demanded. Josh’s hand closed around an impromptu staff.

Screwball at his shoulder, he stepped into the courtyard. No-one noticed. The girl was backed up against a wall opposite. She looked hunted, almost panicked.

[Aggressor(s) identified. Discharging capacitors!]

Electricity flared off at his left as Screwball lasered through the opposition. Something canine yelped, the men were shouting, the one by the harbour wall was turning. Josh hefted his borrowed stave into two hands and swung it like a bat. The rail caught him hard in the stomach – he staggered away a few paces, lost his footing, and tumbled into the sea.

A wave of cold prickled at his left arm. He spun round, came face-to-face with a leering Ghost-type spilling Will o’ Wisp from its red eyes like burning tears. The girl looked up at him with a flawlessly symmetrical, too perfect face. He brought the rail down hard. The banette fell cursing through the flagstones and disappeared.

“Take it out!” one of them demanded.

“With what?” another yelled in exasperation.

[Four hostiles,] Screwball intoned. He felled a mightyena with a contemptuous Magnet Bomb. [Three hostiles.]

Two men, and a shiftry. There were more Poké Balls at their belts. Josh’s hand hovered over his jacket pocket while Screwball slowly rotated in place. Your move.

The girl whimpered in a strange sing-song fashion. She leapt into the air and hung there, hunched and fierce as a hungry dragon. Her eyes blazed with witchfire. She swept her arms forward – a sudden gale caught one man and blasted him screaming down an alley. His shiftry slammed back into the wall and cracked the brickwork. Josh felt the sharp pain of psychic power unleashed. The last man was backing away in horror.

Alien sensations poured into his mind. The dull boom of waves breaking overhead – the taste of fresh-killed squid – fish shoaling in silver millions – anoxic ocean desert, the triumph of the medusae – endless blue gloom – stares of nightmare pokémon sleepless under deep, the crushing black -

He remembered where he was, or maybe he stopped remembering the world under wave. The girl was gone. He was on his knees, trembling in the sunlit world. He ran his hand through his feathers, gazing about to regain his bearings. Three unconscious pokémon – the shiftry, a mightyena, a crawdaunt. The banette seemed to be hiding, and wisely so. Josh was prepared to hit it again if it hadn’t given up, assuming Screwball didn’t hit it first. How long had that delirium of psychic power lasted? Well, it had driven off the last of them. One man fled, another splashing and clawing vainly at the harbour wall. Josh ignored him.

“Screwball. With me. We’ve finished here.”


Next Chapter: Rejection
 
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- Man poor guy's been away from Eve just briefly and he's already missing her.
- Why is Cianwood a last resort for a gym for him, anyway?
- Thank you for not forcing "Butterfrees" into the analogy that involves Litleo.
- Now I want to see actual modern-day shapeshifting magic users in your setting.
- full of Water Stone. <- Non-pluralar?
- Somehow with how you've built them and that line there, I can imagine the term "in-laws from hell" being a relatively light way of putting a relationship with a Joy in your world.
- My working theory on the non-sequitur: the Joys are very assumptive.
- Actually, girls like Eve didn’t kiss him at all. <- Frickin' burn. Self-burn. Dang...kinda sad, actually.
- What's there to be irresponsible about using a Pokemon move, anyway? The fic, or at least Josh's viewpoint in the fic, says it is, but doesn't go into detail on the why.
- The mental image of Josh shouting as a means to time jumping is hilarious. Would make him look adorkable.
- Oh boy we gonna see some Move Tutorage up in the fic?
- I got another funny mental image of Josh standing there with a deadpan look on his face while two people scream "I'm so totally psyched!" / "No, I'm so totally psyched!" at each other.
- Well given the Windows 98 reference when Screwball does talk it is among the most annoying companions to have.
- Hey shoutouts to anime hair. Because a lot of people forget that Pokemon is set in an anime world and that characters have all sorts of fancy hair colors, so it really shouldn't be that crazy to see an original character (do not steal) come with say, silvery white hair like this random girl here.
- Quarterstaffs? What is this, suddenly Josh imagining himself this big hero in a Dungeons and Dragons game, now? Actually, can conceivably see him as having a minor hero complex.
- No-one noticed. <- Wait what is this supposed to have a dash between it?
- What's with the random italics with the part where the girl is looking at him?
- Also did Josh just OHKO a Pokemon with a goddamn steel beam? Freaking badass.
- Wait what in the hell is going on here? Now we suddenly have a magical girl who can fly blasting a guy with wind? Why didn't she fly away to begin with?!
- endless blue gloom <- Uh are you talking about dark and spooky things or Gloom?
- For a moment I thought that was just some random mental trip, but no, it seems to actually have happened

That just happened. What? Well. Credit where it's due. Of all the places I was expecting this story to turn, this was not one of them. It was organic enough. Still though, what the hell!? I have so many different questions about this and so little answers about it either. It's like the fic did a hard turn from slice of life adventure into full on modern day fantasy. Which, thinking about it and making that remark about modern-day magic users, I guess is exactly what I asked for. >_> Minus the shapeshifting part, but that's not precluded yet.

Well, the madness train has departed the station. Not that it's a bad thing, to make it clear, just abrupt - but I suppose it's in-part tied to the new part. Looking forward to see where this locomotive goes!
 
That just happened. What? Well. Credit where it's due. Of all the places I was expecting this story to turn, this was not one of them.

A fuller response is on the cards for a later date, but for the time being, the interlude Young Marisa from the beginning of the Tigerlily arc may recontextualise this chapter
 
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