TEEN: The Long Walk

[Beth Pavell]

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

 

[Beth Pavell]

Chapter Thirty Seven – Rejection (Version 1.0)

Evelina​

The conductor blew his whistle as a chilly breeze cut down the station platform. “All aboard!”

Aboard to where? Where, damn you! Her phone would not stop ringing. Eve stared blearily at the wall, wondering where the midnight black train had gone. Her phone’s alarm was piping incessantly. She focussed on the plain dojo uniform hanging behind the door. Oh. Cianwood Gym.

She cancelled the alarm, the dream only evaporating in detail, leaving her feeling unaccountably cold and angry and alone. She must have been redreaming the Nightmare again. Her sleeping cell was sparse, spartan even. No-one had actually called it a cell, but it had that character. Plain magnolia walls. Windows, desk, mattress. No wardrobe – everything had to be hung on the wall. She’d moved into the Gym yesterday, shortly after Josh left for the Whirl Islands, but she hadn’t yet started training of any sort. Chuck wouldn’t tell her what this would entail.

She dressed slowly, starting with her hair. The loose cotton felt a bit like she were changing into pyjamas. The quilted dojo jerkin looked a little warm for June, come to that. Not much in the way of pockets, either, she thought, trying to decide where to put her phone. There were a couple of texts she hadn’t replied to yet.

She stuffed her phone into a shallow pocket, texts unanswered.

The Gym had much the same monastic aesthetic as her cell. It was easy to take a wrong turn – the corridors looked pretty much the same, with an ambiguous attitude towards indoor and outdoor spaces. And yet the bones of the building reminded her less of a monastery than a mansion, or an Alto Marean villa. Some of the floors were decorated with mosaics, beautiful if austere. The corridors tended to open suddenly onto verandas beside strips of tranquil gardens, accented with fragrant berry trees. In the middle of all this, she found the central courtyard. This garden was also a henge – the path crossed a shallow moat before it passed between the menhirs. At the centre of the stone circle was a fountain, the holy water bubbling over pebbles. Narrow stone benches ringed it. Leppa and cheri trees partially shaded it.

Chuck was waiting there along with the Gym Master, whose name she couldn’t remember.

“Eve. Sit down, sport,” Chuck said. “Are you ready?”

“Yes,” she said bluntly.

Chuck said nothing for a long moment, apparently enjoying the sound of the fountain. “Cianwood Gym was training pokémon masters long before there was a Pokémon League. Ours is a noble and honourable tradition. Furio?”

Furio, that was it. He was a stocky man, not yet running to fat as Chuck was, but with a receding hairline and a sad ponytail.

“These are our fundamental rules,” he said, soft-spoken. “Break any, and you may be asked to leave the Gym. One: students will treat one another with respect. There will be no brawling, whether with words, fists, or pokémon. Two: we are the masters of the Gym, and you will refer to us as such. A third rule: we will ask nothing of you that is dishonourable – you will give your obedience. Four: within the bounds of the Gym, you will remain in uniform.”

So far, so anodyne, Eve thought, deciding to be obedient entirely at her own discretion.

“Five: you will not take care of your pokémon.”

“What? At a Gym?” Eve said incredulously. “Are you completely insane, Master?”

“Why, do you think there’s something more we can teach you?”

“Pokémon will be distraction,” Chuck said. “So I’ll ask you again: are you ready?”

“Fine,” she agreed, reluctantly.

“Alright then,” Chuck said, grinning. “Breakfast!”

Breakfast was served communally in the refectory. Eve sat herself at the foot of the table, saying nothing to any of the Gym trainers. She didn’t intend to make friends here.

“Good training starts with good food!” Chuck declared. Breakfast was otherwise a quiet affair – everyone concentrated on the business of eating. The food was uncomplicated and straightforward. The sort of food Josh would have approved of, Eve realised, the thought bringing a weak smirk to her face. Everyone had a sardine or three on a round of wholewheat toast. Eve would have passed on the fish and just had the toast, but Chuck’s wife insisted. The Gym didn’t believe in small portions. It didn’t believe in caffeine, either. She had to make do with green tea, as if that were a substitute.

“Can we get the hell on with it? What am I going to do today?” Eve asked.

“All in good time,” Furio replied, sipping at his tea. “And all things in their proper time.”

*​

Furio held out a broom. “Sweep every hall and corridor till it’s spotless.”

Eve glanced around the apparently random stretch of corridor. The rich, dark lacquer of the wood floor stretched to either side. She’d seen a lot of it this morning. “Sweeping?”

“Take all the time you need.”

“Every hall?” she said doubtfully.

“If it’s too much for you, you can always leave the Gym,” Furio said mildly.

Eve snatched the broom from his hand. “Every. Hall.”

With Furio gone, Eve was left alone in the hallway – silent apart from the sound of her own footsteps and the shushing of the broom on wood. At first she swept in broad strokes, but after a while she started to methodically quarter the floor in an attempt to occupy her mind. Even so, it was almost purely physical work. Once she hit a rhythm she started to zone out, leaving her mind free to wander. Sweeping, for fuck’s sake. I don’t need a Gym to teach me how to sweep a floor! The great and famous Cianwood Gym training – I’ve done dirty work before. Evelina Joy is not a delicate orchid. Scrubbing down an exam table, now, that was noble work. The professions, get pregnant, or win something …

Where were you? Why didn’t you call? The thought a memory – maybe it augured something -

Sweeping, come on, that was janitor’s work. Gods, if Sonia, Riley, any of them saw me now. I’d been on such a high, the golden sheep for once. Myriad flakes of blizzarding confetti, orange and white, like petals. Lovelace sobbing openly into Winters’ arms. Invicta vanquished. Tigerlily Champion. Tigerlily Champion. Tigerlily Champion who can’t battle.

The dark-coloured wood managed to hide an annoying quantity of dirt. She’d watched Lyra bounce the length of the field like a kicked pebble. It was just a Counter. It should have been obvious. Tigerlily Champion who can’t even battle. You didn’t call, Joshua Cook. I needed you.

Loneliness, bubbling up from deeps of Nightmare. Gusting wind against her skin. Rippling meadows at the edge of the mind’s eye. Loneliness wild beauty hollow loneliness - Eve angrily brushed away a tear.

Furio hadn’t given her a dustpan, so she had to keep sweeping and resweeping the same pile. The corridor opened onto a veranda overlooking a rock garden.

[Killing something always cheers me up,] Meowth suggested. Eve turned round – there he was, lounging on the floor like a dandy on a divan. [That, or f-]

“Get the hell off that! I just swept!” Eve snapped, literally sweeping him right off the veranda onto the gravel. “Have you escaped from somewhere?”

[The big fat bloke gave us the run of this place. What happened to the other one?]

“I made – Josh went to the Whirl Islands. What, do you miss him?”

[No.]

“Yeah, right. Now piss off. And stay off my floors!”

The morning seemed to stretch out relentlessly. She unearthed a dustpan in an unguarded cupboard. The clock was finally creeping past noon when Furio turned up again. Eve ignored him. She hadn’t finished sweeping yet.

“Why do you suppose we had you sweep the floors?” he asked eventually.

“Because the floor is filthy.”

“Well, that’s one good reason.”

“To teach me discipline,” Eve sighed half-sardonically.

“What were you thinking all this time?” he continued calmly.

Loneliness, just a Counter, Tigerlily Champion who can’t battle. “Everything.”

“Everything but sweeping, hm? Thoughts swirling? Anxiousness? Never concluding your train of thought?”

“… how did you know?”

“Wisdom,” Furio said gnomically. “Come.”

Furio led her back through to the now-empty refectory.

“We are not training you to be a Gym Master,” he said. “We are certainly not training you to be a Champion. We are giving you everyday tasks because we are training you for the everyday.”

He pushed open the door to the kitchen at the back of the refectory. “You can find healing within the everyday, if you have the proper perspective.”

With a different perspective will this kitchen look like a clinic? Eve thought. Chuck’s wife was faffing around in the pantry.

“Second pair of hands, Laurel!” Furio declared.

“Oh. A fresh spit girl,” she said dryly.

“She can peel spuds as well,” Furio said. “As you work, focus on the task at hand. As to your negative thoughts, merely allow them to be. The goal is not to block them out, but to acknowledge their existence.”

“A-ok,” Eve replied blandly.

Such a short reign as the golden sheep. A short, golden reign as Tigerlily Champion. Tigerlily Champion, not one of the professions. The professions, get pregnant, or win something. Get pregnant! Rosemary from Olivine City got pregnant by her idiot boyfriend on prom night, but the family had just rallied around her like candyfloss, just because she had a girl -

Damn it. Concentrate on prepping those vegetables. She shoved the intrusive thoughts aside and unceremoniously hacked a carrot into randomly-sized chunks.

Tigerlily Champion who can’t even battle, she thought, lopping the end off another carrot. It was just a Counter. She’d watched Lyra bounce the length of the field like a kicked pebble, and it was just. A Counter.

“There,” Eve said, as much to distract her own brain, “that’s the last of them – what do I call you?”

“Master Laurel. What else? Not ‘Mistress’,” she added.

One bad night, and this is where I end up? What was it Lovelace said? Being a Joy was ‘really domestic’. Maybe it is, I’ve just spend the day sweeping and cooking -

This isn’t working. Eve sighed in frustration. Domestic. And she’d been the best trainer in the pressure of that Finals struggle. Myriad flakes of blizzarding confetti like petals. Outfoxed Winters in the eleventh hour, turned Eelektross’ Thunderbolt against it. Could it be that this was all just the goddesses’ blessing? Did you raise me up Rhia? How high did you raise me?

Tigerlily Champion who sweeps floors. She didn’t know anyone here, either. The memory of a Nightmare – or was it a recurrence? Wild. Beautiful. Empty, lonely land!

A hot prickle of tears stung her eyes. The knife somehow slipped and cut the flesh of her index finger.

“Ow! Damn it!” she snarled. A bright bead of blood rapidly welled up.

“For heaven’s sake, girl, don’t stand there and drip!” Laurel snapped.

*​

Later that evening Eve sought out the solarium on the west side of the Gym, for her final lesson. Summer light streamed through the clerestory windows, turning the drifting motes of dust into golden firefly-lights. The noise of the Gym, muted to a relaxed murmur. Incense sticks on a wooden shelf. A couple of wheat-coloured cushions laid on the otherwise bare floor.

It wasn’t Furio waiting for her, but Chuck.

“Sit. Get comfortable,” Chuck said, selecting a cushion. His voice was surprisingly mellow for such a brash man. Eve settled onto the other cushion.

“On Route 42, by the Borderland Water, there is a Dharmic monastery,” Chuck said. “There, the monks practice fishing meditation to emulate and honour the slowpoke. Do you know why?”

Eve shrugged.

“A slowpoke is a creature of the now. It recalls much as it needs to; predicts as much as it needs to. Herein lies a noble truth,” he continued. “The key to inner peace is to live in the present.”

There was a moment of silence. “Slowpoke,” Eve said.

“Have you ever known a slowpoke to be depressed?”

“Well, no, but …”

“Out with it, sport.”

“I have a medical problem, not a spiritual one. Master.”

“If you thought a pill would cure you, why didn’t you stay at the hospital?”

She didn’t have an answer to that.

“We call slowpoke’s state of mind ‘mindfulness’. What comes naturally to a slowpoke, for us is no easy skill to master. As you have discovered, the mind will seek to wander. Meditation will help you bring your mind back to the present moment. Let us begin. Hands resting on your thighs. Mind relaxed, but attentive,” Chuck said, his voice slowing in tempo. “Focus your awareness on your breathing …”

Drifting dust motes meandered softly towards the floor as if through warm oil. Somewhere, other trainers were sparring, honing their skills, mastering the Fighting-type. This is supposed to stop me from remembering that night? Eve suppressed an angry sigh. Doing nothing changes nothing, which was damn silly.

Chuck seemed to notice her inattention. “When your mind wanders, simply allow those thoughts to be, and focus again on your breathing. The object is not to control.”

This is so self-indulgent. She stared at the slightly coarse texture of her cushion. A bland shade, the colour of ripe wheat. Or dull blonde. Something about it -

Chapter Thirty Three – Nowhere Girl

Evelina​

Fuck!

Her heart thumped, her hands trembled. She was blonde. Not an exciting blonde, like honey or gold, but a dull, commonplace, wheaten blonde. Her curled fringe was gone, her long tresses were gone. How did this happen? She hadn’t been blonde since she was four years-old. Her heart thumped, her hands trembled. She just didn’t look like herself.

No matter what she tried, the shower remained stubbornly lukewarm. Unobscured by any steam she kept catching sight of her body in the bathroom mirror. Just a moderately pretty girl. The ass was the dull, uninteresting epitome of it. Her ex had lost interest on it. Her. The feeling hit as a wave, that strange loneliness when you technically had a boyfriend but he only reluctantly paid attention to you. Eventually he’d only come round to see me as Plan B.

She glanced at her clothes puddled on the floor. There was no tell-tale smooth glint of plastic. Oh no. Where were her pokémon? She leapt out of the shower, still dripping. They weren’t under her clothes. They weren’t in her pockets. She ran back into the room, leaving wet footprints on the carpet. She ransacked her backpack in rising panic, rifled madly through the drawers, the pockets of her spare clothes, the bedclothes -

They weren’t there. They weren’t anywhere! She pressed the tips of her fingers into her eye sockets. There were no pokémon in Qara.

Smell of incense. Incense.

Chapter Thirty Seven - Rejection

Evelina​

Drifting dust motes meandering as through warm oil. A cushion the colour of ripe wheat. A thin streamer of smoke twirling upwards.

“Eve? You with us, sport?”

Blood still pounding, hands still trembling. She felt somehow blurred, as if in two places at once. Her heart insisted her pokémon weren’t anywhere. Even Lyra, who was first. She thought Chuck was saying something, his voice somehow distant and irrelevant, like a murmuring TV set.

She reached up to her hair and twitched out a strand. Pink. The feeling of spatial dissonance blurred away. Cianwood Gym. Not an inn on the hill of Qara. But the isolation and sense of loss lingered.

“I can’t do this!”

*​

Eve sighed heavily. It was still a lovely June evening, but she’d had enough. She stared listlessly at the plain magnolia walls, the faux pine desk, the mattress bed. Monastic asceticism. She undressed slowly, starting with taking down her hair, almost absently tugging out another strand of hair. Pink. Her phone dropped out of her pocket and clattered on the floor. It occurred to her it hadn’t rung all day. Where were you? Why didn’t you -

Damn that boy. Having fun are you? Maybe 2nd Mate Francesca bloody Livesey was still in the islands, the smug satin-haired, tight-arsed tart -

Seized with a sudden fury she hurled it at the wall. It merely bounced unsatisfyingly instead of bursting into fragments. Fuck the meditation. That night had been at the forefront of her mind all day.

Vision blurring, she made damn certain the door was locked before she wrapped herself in the duvet. It was bad enough the Gym had seen her fail.

Next Chapter: The Wandering Barque

Spoiler: Author Note

Normally I prefer to leave it up to the reader to decide how to read my stories, without me explicitly laying out my intent. In the case of this coming arc, I'll make an exception. Eve's problems in this chapter are inspired by real conditions. Her reaction to them is informed by real experiences of anxious thoughts, flashbacks, and disassociation. However, the cause is essentially supernatural, and on this basis I have decided to take some creative liberties in their treatment.

I shall return to this subject again at the end of the arc

 

[Beth Pavell]

Chapter Thirty Eight – The Wandering Barque (Version 1.0)

Joshua​

“You do realise he’s a rogue, don’t you?”

Joy shrugged, lazily chewing on a wad of gum. “So are you, they say.”

Josh gave her a tired look. The Yellow Rock move tutor was a barefaced rogue tradesman. Yesterday he’d refused to allow him to sit in on Meg’s training, on the basis that Josh might steal his techniques. Then he’d tried to charge double when Josh insisted Ivysaur sit in instead.

“I think you’re more common than roguish.” Joy shrugged again. “He helps pay the bills, what the fuck.”

Josh looked down at Ivysaur sitting at his feet. “Look after the babby.”

Ivysaur just grunted. He didn’t like the move tutor either. The small class of pokémon were gathered around him in a loose knot, Meg trading Absorbs with an oddish.

“She’ll be fine. I’m sure your girlfriend wouldn’t let me forget it if she weren’t,” Joy said flatly.

“Friend, actually.”

They all see what they want to see. Well, at least this one wasn’t trying to be heartwarming. Ordinarily he quite liked time to himself – or at least, he didn’t mind it any more. He remembered the beginning of this journey in March, when he’d gone more than twenty four hours without speaking to anyone.

“I’ll be back this evening,” he said curtly.

He hadn’t said much since leaving Cianwood City – most of it arguing with people – it occurred to him as he left the Clinic. The streets had that narrow, claustrophobic quality of an old fishing village. The road was hardly wide enough for one-way traffic. A van was trying to inch its way trough the milling pedestrians towards the sweetshop on the corner.

Eve had been strangely … taciturn, come to that. He had been expecting her to relay stories of lording it over the Gym trainers and sundry other exaggerated exploits. If not frequently, then at least enthusiastically.

He found himself looking back, again, at the text thread.

Hey, settled in yet? How’s the training going? Mon 20:38​

Yeah I’m settled in. It’s fine. Rhe 06:54

With Meg at the Clinic he didn’t really have anything to do with the day. Josh wandered aimlessly through the village, letting his feet lead the way. Everywhere in the Whirl Islands was at least a bit of a tourist trap, for good reason, really. Ok, so admittedly there was the usual cream-tea-and-fudge tat here, but Yellow Rock Isle also had some genuine character. The island boasted an inordinate number of jewellers, almost all of them working in corsola coral. He browsed them with amateur interest. Some pieces were on the flamboyant side, but others – often the ones worked with smaller or irregular shards – were really rather beautiful.

Yeah I’m settled in. It’s fine. Rhe 06:54​

You’d love this corsola jewellery. x. Rhe 10:11

He hesitated over the text for a moment, finger hovering doubtfully by Send. Was it too much? Too, for want of a less loaded word, intimate?

He sent it anyway. They all see what they want to see, he tried to remind himself. Except. In the corner of his heart he wasn’t entirely sure what they should be seeing. Most of them were someone’s wife or girlfriend, right? Ergo, they had a greater breadth of experience in these matters, logically?

He bought a pasty from a bakery and headed down to the beach to think. This far from the bucket-and-spade holiday coasts it was an unusually calm beach. He sat down on a gabion, watching the sea roll and break onto sand gritty with bits of pulverised krabby shell, striped with stringy green threads of Chaetomorpha linum exposed by the falling tide. The calmness of the scene coyly belied the wildness of the Johtoan west coast.

Open your eyes …

The pasty was piping hot beneath the crust. He did say ‘I love you’. But he remembered it was, for want of a better concept, easy. No nagging fear of immanent rejection.

Open your eyes, then open your eyes again. Just what did that mean? Obviously I was something to do with Madison’s belief he was latently psychic. He’d tried the obvious solution but the internet stubbornly refused to give up the answer. Psychics are a secretive lot. Almost all the forums he could find required you to prove membership of a guild to join.

Open your eyes … was it a riddle, or advice? An idea occurred to him.

Do you remember whether that psychic, Warbeck, ever said anything about opening eyes? Rhe 10:33

I need space. Leave me alone. Rhe 10:35​

That was stupid, he told himself. One text too many. He shouldn’t have sent that. Obviously she wouldn’t be interested. He just thought that, maybe, after everything that happened, if they weren’t together she’d at least want to hear from him. Hopefully.

10:35. Josh velcroed the Pokégear from his wrist.

“Hey Ma, how ye doing, I bin ettin ok,” Mum answered.

“Hey Ma, how ye doing, you’m a cliché.”

“How was it, a-seeing Valencia Island? Ye never said.”

“I dun know,” he said vaguely. “It’s a long way from Five-’n-Six.”

“We should’ve gone together.”

“Yeah. I’m sorry,” Josh said, and meant it. “It wor a planned visit.”

“I saw it once, when I was a little girl. I remember being disappointed it wor like coming home.”

“Mum, am there any psychics on the Valencian side?”

“Psychics? Well, they said things about your great-grandma, but I dun think so. Besides, ye know what kind of people they were. Who would have taught them?” Mum said. “Why do ye ask?”

“Oh … just trivia.”

“Kiddo, woss the real reason you’m calling?”

“ … Ma, ye know how you always used te ask me what I wanted te do?”

Mum didn’t say anything. She was always good at warm silences.

“Well now I do. I’m a-going te the Ranger Academy.”

“Is this ‘cause o’ what happened on Cianwood Island?”

“This ay a passing phase.”

“I know it ay. But don’t yet have te enrol in Uni or something?”

“The Region Commander says if I win five Badges by September I can apply.”

“Kiddo, what’s the matter?”

“Nothing at all,” he said unconvincingly, he knew. “I’m fine Mum.”

*​

Josh didn’t speak to Eve all evening. Or this morning, either. He supposed he would have to get used to it … somehow. And somehow concentrate in spite of it. He eyed the opposing pokémon - a young totodile showing off his teeth.

“Are you sure about this?” he asked.

“Perfectly sure,” the totodile’s trainer said, a tomboyish-looking girl in a check shirt. “He’s stuffed himself with rindos.”

Josh glanced at the sky. Overcast, but not dark. Not ideal for battle, but it would probably do for practice.

“Alright, Meg, come on,” he said. “Try your Solar Beam.”

Meg eagerly hopped forward, her brighter pink-white flower raised to the sun, the other, white-pink, aimed at the totodile. There was, perhaps, a brightening of the fuchsia of her flowers, a slight luminosity at the edges of her petals – followed by a desultory spark, like a blown lightbulb. Josh wasn’t really surprised. Meg was never going to get it right first time. The second attempt wasn’t much better – the genesis of a beam, but still too dispersed to be of practical use. Again and again Meg tried to charge and fire at the same time, her beams flickering and spitting. The more she failed the more enthusiastic her attempts became.

“Ok, Megaera, that’s enough,” he started. “Meg, Meg! Knock it off.”

He knew Solar Beam worked by converting adenosine triphosphate back into photons. In theory, the reaction should be finely balanced, as many photons released as absorbed. He didn’t pretend to understand the chemistry, but the upshot was that Solar Beam could make the user especially thirsty.

He tapped at his Pokégear, halfway along to texting Eve about Meg, before he realised: ‘I need space. Leave me alone.’

*​

The sea was a rich, inky black. Unseen waves plashed gently against an unseen shore. The breeze feather-light, coyly rising and falling. Red Rock Isle was just visible in the northwest, a shape above the horizon just darker than the night. And so many stars. The more he looked, the more he saw. Vega in Lyra. Altair, the Pidgeot Star. So many more whose names he’d ever learned. Gauzy wisps of cloud drifted north.

Josh wandered down from the cliff path, boots hushing through the fine coastal grasses growing on the dunes. A long strand ran east, narrowed by the high tide. The rhythmic euphony of the waves, the clean-tasting air, the clear unblemished horizon … he’d missed this. Josh looked out towards that horizon as he headed down the beach. There was a faint red flash beyond the breakers, almost obscured by the rippling waves. Another one. And another.

The sea was twinkling. Thousands of red stars, flashing like some form of cryptic Morse code. Something glinting in the shallows caught his eye. A staryu had somehow washed onto the beach, its core blinking lazily. Then, for no apparent reason, it evolved.

Spots of shimmering light bloomed beneath the sea’s surface. The pure light of evolution transformed the water into a lucent, sparkling aquamarine glow. The evolving staryu seemed to mirror the patterns of the stars in the sky.

“C’est beau ça!” he breathed.

“It’s something, isn’t it?”

The beach wasn’t quite empty. There was a middle-aged bloke a few yards away, receding hairline, with a camera on a tripod.

“It’s gorgeous.”

“You’ve got good timing,” he remarked. “I’ve been waiting four nights for this.”

Josh fumbled for his Pokédex one-handed.

“Staryu, Gemmaria secobrachia. Staryu is among the most common and widespread of benthic pokémon species, and also among the least understood. On clear nights staryu may gather in huge numbers in the infralittoral zone. On rare occasions, these gatherings may preclude mass evolution.

Starmie, Gemmaria celestris. Typically found inhabiting the abyssal plain, starmie occasionally migrate to the euphotic zone. At these times starmie broadcast radio waves into space. The reasons for this are not understood.”

“Why now? Why all together?” Josh wondered. He realised he was crying. Because ‘Why?’ was the most wonderful question you could as at this moment.

“Nobody really knows. Personally I think the answer is in these islands.”

“I wish Eve were here to see this.”

“What about a photo, then,” he said, tapping his camera.

Josh wanted to say ‘yes’. He was certain Eve would love to see this sight in normal circumstances. But … Eve’s phone ringing from another text. No. Not again.

“… do you have a printer, or something?”

“For your girlfriend?”

“Not my girlfriend. But I wish she were here.”

Next Chapter: Low Tide

 

[Beth Pavell]

Chapter Thirty Nine – Low Tide (Version 1.0)

Evelina​

The thought had somehow morphed into a poisonous little mantra. Tigerlily Champion. Tigerlily Champion. Tigerlily Champion who can’t even battle.

Every morning she swept the Gym’s floors from seven in the morning till lunchtime. Furio never seemed to care whether she finished or not. This morning she started on Battlefield 1 – there’d been a challenger last night. She pushed the broom around some splintered flooring. Chuck was particularly hard on battlefields. He’d used Growth-reinforced teak for his floors but his machoke had smashed it like balsa wood anyway.

Tigerlily Champion who can’t even battle …

After eight days of that she was … she was tired. Sleep didn’t help. She didn’t want to think. Or emote. Or let the damn thoughts be.

Her phone had been quiet for days now. She’d told him to leave her alone, and he had. She’d asked him to stay once, and he’d stayed. That was a perfect moment. Rare and treasured, like seeing a shooting star. First out he’d found, he’d taken. No, that wasn’t true. She’d given him permission to leave. Well thought-through, Evelina Joy.

She was hardly getting anywhere. A vacuum cleaner would have made better progress. The challenger’s gligar had left a coating of fine sand on the floor. It drifted and floated almost like smoke under the bristles. She was so tired. She’d dreamed of Qara so many times she could remember the town in the waking world.

Sometimes she had to remind herself it was nothing more than a phantasm. Qara. That city on the hill, all fading beauty and old stone. Prisoned by a vast and empty world. Where everything was subtly alien.

There were no pokémon in Qara.

… if Qara was a phantasm, then surely waking loneliness was a phantasm. And yet.

She’d brooded on Qara for too long. There was the increasingly-familiar sensation of imminent unreality itching at her eyeballs. The insistent sense that this world was not real, no more than a vivid dream. It was like standing inside the TV screen, like dreaming whilst still being awake. Loneliness hit as a wave. Eve hurriedly dropped to a knee, running a palm over the sand, trying to concentrate on the exfoliating roughness of it, that this thing is real. Her eyes insisted that it was not, but her hands disagreed.

For a moment, she could hear the sound of the wind swirling around stone towers.

The world appeared to solidify in some ineffable way. This world was real. Of course. Obviously. Qara was nothing more than a bad dream.

Lunchtime had crept up on her. How long had that, well, moment lasted for? She leaned the broom against the wall and trudged off towards the refectory, leaving the sweeping unfinished. Eve was last to the table. The waiting gym trainers all gave her the same expectant look. Lateness earned her a gentle rebuke from Chuck – he took the communal part of mealtimes as seriously as everything else. Today it was rice tossed with lentils, edamame, and chopped eggs, seasoned with chilli flakes and black pepper, still piping hot and fragrant with coriander.

Eve picked at it listlessly, while the others laughed and joked in-between wolfing down theirs. Sometimes they engaged with her in a polite, cursory sort of way. They weren’t ignoring her, but she wasn’t one of them and they all knew it.

Garden chores were supposed to follow lunch. Eve sat on the verandah, ignoring her scheduled work. She was wondering where her pokémon were – she hadn’t seen much of them, almost as if they were avoiding her. Bailey was lurking near a rhododendron bush, the sun glinting off her armour. She probably knew why they were being elusive, and wasn’t telling.

The decking needed sweeping yet again. Little blue and pink flowers were sprouting from the edge of the planking. Josh would have known what they were, common name and binomial probably. It was a shame. They were supposedly weeds, but they were pretty weeds.

Eve squinted up at the sky, almost painfully clear and blue. Gail was soaring high on the wind, taking no notice of her. She’d hardly seemed to be come back down to earth since leaving Goldenrod City. The wind rippled the glossy emerald green of the lawn – the forretress pivoted slightly to stare at it.

Chapter Thirty Three – Nowhere Girl

Evelina​

Long acres of green meadows that had never known the plough. Sound of the wind whistling about the tower. She was standing on a cliff of cold, pale yellow stone stapled to the earth with square towers. The wall, which inspired one word above all others: monolithic. The wall, which was the end of her world. Within its confines, she was alone, where even her name was not her own.

I want to go home.

Somewhere, a wingull called. But there were no pokémon in Qara.

Chapter Thirty Nine – Low Tide

Evelina​

She was seated on a verandah in the Cianwood City Gym. Eve pulled out a hair and stared at it for a moment, shining in the sun. She sank her head into her hands. Tigerlily Champion who doesn’t even know what’s real. Tears welled, but she was too tired to even cry. This was ridiculous. Tigerlily Champion! A Joy who can’t cope, for gods’ sake!

Eve didn’t know what she would do when everyone found out.

*​

“The object,” Chuck repeated, “is not to control.”

The smell of incense drifted through the solarium, mingling obnoxiously with the smell of teenager. Strange how you don’t notice it till you get a touch older, Eve reflected dully. The thought might have been distracting if she seriously thought the meditation would make a difference. During these group meditations she’d learned to simply sit quiet and still.

“You might be feeling frustration. Anticipation. Worried, anxious. Any number of distractions. Let those feelings be. Let them be and accept them. Do not attempt to control your feelings, and they will not control you.”

Chuck had been saying a lot of things like that. Eve couldn’t fathom out the line of logic. Doing nothing changes nothing.

“- in your own time, open your eyes … and come back … to normal alertness.”

There was a general sussuration and stretching of muscles.

“Good,” Chuck continued. “Now to put your new state of mindfulness to use. To your evening chores, students. Go on, get! Eve, front and centre, sport.”

Chuck shut the door before settling back down. “So. How have you been feeling?”

“I’m bored rigid from sweeping and I haven’t slept soundly in over a week,” Eve flatly replied.

“And in your heart?”

“I’m coping.”

“You know, this room is also a sanctuary. Whatever’s said in this room, stays in this room.”

“Physician confidentiality applies to Gym Leaders.”

“I have a moral obligation,” Chuck replied. “It’s up to you whether you want to believe it.”

Eve said nothing for a long moment. “I’m tired,” she said, rather more honestly.

Chuck gave her a long, thoughtful look. “Tell me about your starter. I’d guess it was … the ledian?”

“Er. Yes,” said Eve, taken aback. “Um. Lyra found me, I think. It was a rainy summer, I remember … her egg just appeared one day under the cherry tree. Don’t ask me why it wasn’t guarded by the swarm because I never found out. Nobody complained when I decided to hatch her – it’s the sort of undirected compassion everyone thinks we’re supposed to have. Nobody really thought of her as a starter. I didn’t either, for a while.

I suppose an atypical starter is appropriate for an atypical start. I didn’t have that big family send-off with tears and ‘I’m-so-proud-of-yous’ - what’s the point of all this? I have a recurring Nightmare and I want it gone!”

“Ah. Could it be that the student does not wish to know the Way of Master Chuck of the Cianwood Gym? Does she now wish to follow the Way of the Evelina of Cherrygrove Pokémon Centre?”

“I didn’t say that, but -”

“Tell me about your Nightmare,” Chick said abruptly.

Eve growled with suppressed frustration. “I’m always in a town. Qara. There are no pokémon. My pokémon are missing. Nobody knows me and I don’t know anyone. And there’s always a mirror, or a reflection, where I see my hair’s undyed. Sometimes I see it when I’m awake. Then I’m not sure whether Qara is a dream or Cianwood is,” Eve sighed. “What difference does it make what I dream?”

“Sport, everything you practice here is relevant – your work, your meditation, your sleep therapy -”

“What sleep therapy?”

“… didn’t the hospital tell you to sleep with something living?”

“No.”

“Can it be that the old lore has been forgotten?” Chuck murmured disbelievingly. He shook his head as if to clear it. “Right. When you go to sleep tonight, take one of your pokémon with you. But for now, back to your Nightmare.”

*​

Eve huddled her knees to her chest, and contemplated going back to the Gym. It was getting chilly as the sun slipped towards the horizon. She’d wandered along the point, where the cliff path looped around the boundary of the lighthouse, sitting in a hollow among the coarse coastal grasses. The Great Western Ocean evoked memories of the Orange Archipelago; hot days and warm nights on tropical seas. Pestering Josh into an impromptu waltz on Trovita Island. Sailing by that pod of wailord, their spouting making the water sparkle and shimmer in the sunset. Victory against Livesey, Gail snatching her fletchinder from the sky. Memories far removed from Qara or Cianwood Island.

She gazed listlessly at her phone. So much for being the golden mareep for once. Tigerlily Champion who can’t even battle. Wouldn’t that just be a gift to the likes of Riley? The little bitch.

Eve thought of the cheers, the banners, the chants of the Tigerlily finals. It had been a hard battle. Fragments of Bailey’s shell had gleamed evilly in the grass. Clouds of black smoke rising from burning flowers. Eelektross writhing into the air with a flick of its tail, as if struggling free of its Ultra Ball. Its Thunderbolt lighting up Lyra within her Protect like a miniature sun. Eelektross collapsing like a puppet with its strings cut, hoisted on its own petard. Lovelace sobbing openly into Winters’ arms. Whitney, Champion Cynthia, and best of all, Imperial Champion Pemberton applauding through a veil of confetti.

Tigerlily Champion who can’t even battle.

The one thing she could hold over everyone. It wasn’t one of the professions. She didn’t get pregnant. She’d won a pokémon tournament. It didn’t matter what you won so long as you were the best. It was hers, on her terms. Tigerlily Champion who can’t even battle. Reduced to beating the likes of 2nd Mate Livesey. 2nd Mate Livesey was a second-rate trainer. 2nd Mate Livesey didn’t care that she’d lost. She still had soft grey rainwater eyes. She still had satin smooth hair despite all the salt. She still had a glorious figure from climbing the rigging all day.

Eve focused on her phone screen. No new texts. No missed calls, either. She’d told him to leave her alone, and he had. Not a word, for almost a week. He wouldn’t ever call now, she realised. The person who saw Eve and not just some nurse. And who wanted to know about her and what she wanted. Who … she could trust.

She’d managed to drive him away. Oh gods, are you stupid, Evelina Joy.

Eve wasn’t sure how long she sat crying into her own arms. She looked up at the sound of wingull screaming. Gail was practising mock attacks over the retreating tide, scattering them all before her.

“Reckon I could still catch her,” Meowth bragged. He was sitting primly on an outcrop of rock, all four paws together.

“I need you with me tonight,” Eve said sharply. “You’ll have to cancel your debauchery.”

Meowth completely ignored her tone. “I thought you’d never ask.”

*​

Eve cancelled the piping alarm. Meowth, curled up at her navel, lazily opened up one eye. She took in the rumpled dojo uniform hanging behind the door. It occurred to her she’d need to do a load of washing today -

There was no hint of Qara.

She still felt tired, wrung-out, like she could sleep for days. She still didn’t want to be near the Gym trainers at breakfast. But for the first time in days, she didn’t have a terrible loneliness clinging to her bones.

“Sweet Eostre.” It actually worked.

There was an envelope wedged under the door. The address had been carefully stencilled on: EVELINA JOY, CIANWOOD CITY GYM, CIANWOOD CITY, CIANWOOD ISLAND, CN1 8GD. It wasn’t a letter, but a single photo. It showed the sea at night, the waves glowing a gorgeous blue from mass evolution. Josh was standing in the surf. There were tears on his face, but she’d never seen him look so happy.

Eve turned the photo over. There was a single, handwritten, sentence - ‘Wish you were here x’

Next Chapter: Flood and Flame

 

[Beth Pavell]

Chapter Forty – Flood and Flame (Version 1.0)

Joshua​

It was midday, and on Red Rock Isle it felt like Summer.

In Scarlet Town there was hardly a pub or café that wasn’t full to bursting, or a grass verge without a picnic. Almost every battlefield had trainers sparring on it. Ostaro alone knew how much ice cream was being sold. Josh was giving Meg a bath with the hose outside the Pokémon Centre - battling down by the Amphitheatre had exposed her to a lot of salt water. The Centre sat on a headland above the town, a stream of trainers heading up and down the slope. Red sandstone cliffs beyond dropped down to a sheltered cove where the Whirl Amphitheatre rose from the waves. Outside of the Whirl Cup tournament it was being used as a Battle Club venue.

Meg was cheerfully babbling some nonsense song, enthusiastically waving her arms as if she hadn’t spent all morning practising her Solar Beam. Full power was still completely beyond her, but she could charge and fire swiftly and incessantly. Nothing seemed to tire her. Ivysaur was sitting nearby, watching her with a kind of tired amusement, drying out after his shower.

“Are ye ready fer this?”

[I’m the ace,] Ivysaur replied bluntly. [Are you ready for this?]

“Touché,” Josh said. He resisted the urge to check his phone again, as if somehow everything might have suddenly reverted to how it was before the haunter. That was stupid. His letter couldn’t possibly arrive till Monday at the earliest, though he’d made damn sure the address was legible. He was pinning a lot of hope on that photo.

“I ought te feel less pressure, considering a Gym ay a tourney,” Josh admitted.

[Ought te, eh?]

“Ought te.”

He was beginning to suspect he’d have to get used to being alone again. It was going to feel odd, battling without Eve as a supporter, or as a partner. Even though he could theoretically rechallenge the Gym if he lost, now he had a reason to win. Five Badges before September. The Gyms would get no easier from here. Olivine City, Steel. Mahogany Town, Ice. Blackthorn City, Dragon.

*​

On the outskirts of Scarlet Town, in another sheltered bay, was the Whirl Islands Gym. The Gym was housed in the old lifeboat station, a big, hangar-like building raised up out of the sea on concrete piles. A short bridge linked the cliff path to the station. It might still be the lifeboat station were it not for the sign – a stylised vortex above the name WHIRL ISLANDS GYM in gleaming aluminium letters.

Inside, the Gym was one large hall - a couple of practice fields and a full-sized battlefield. All empty. There were some store rooms off to the right, and offices above them accessible via a catwalk. A shutter at the back of the hall was open to the slipway down to the sea.

“Welcome to my Gym, Joshua Cook,” a woman’s voice said. “I’ve been wondering when I’d see you.”

She was leaning on the rail of the catwalk. She was a plump girl, perhaps late twenties, in a black Whirl Island Gym-branded hoodie. Her hair was styled in a random, asymmetrical quartet of ponytails. A blue gem glinted from her nose. Waverley. Water-type master, Whirl Islands Gym Leader.

“You’ve seen me at the Battle Club,” he said.

Waverley went quiet for a moment. “What else do you know about me?” she demanded.

I know you don’t televise matches. And I know you have no real signature pokémon.

“I challenge you to a Gym battle,” he said instead.

“You’ve got two Johto League Badges, but seeing as you have a Spike Shell Badge from Trovita Island, let’s say it’s three, shall we?”

Waverley grinned at him like a scheming vulpix.

“Sameera!” she called. A girl emerged from an office. “Show the challenger to the changing room. Oh, and find him a wetsuit.”

“Wetsuit?” Josh repeated. “I, I don’t do wetsuits.”

“Trust me, you’ll need one.”

*​

Open your eyes …

Josh stood on a granite platform, the waves lapping over his feet. Out of defiance and self-consciousness he’d kept his jacket on over the wetsuit.

The Gym’s main battlefield wasn’t in the Gym at all, but on the beach below the cliff. Half the battlefield was on the beach proper – the other half, in the sea. A series of circular granite platforms populated the middle third, some standing proud of the waves, some swallowed by the tide. The field was flipped ninety degrees, so the trainers stood at the long edges. This would be his first time battling for something since the Tourney, Josh realised. That Gym battle on Trovita Island had been glorified sparring; Azalea and Violet, killing time. At least this time he was battling as himself, rather than as Melissa. He wouldn’t miss Melissa. He did miss Eve. He sighed, segregating those emotions in a mental box for later. Forget the past and future. Now is what matters.

Josh switched his Pokédex to battle settings as the referee and linesmen took their places. On the seaward side to his left, the linesman was snorkelling with a seaking assistant. Waverley had changed into a wetsuit of her own, blazoned with that now-familiar vortex.

“If you would look on an unconquered wilderness, turn left. If you would look on an alien world, then dive,” she declared. “There has only ever been one ocean, did you know this? One ocean, spanning the world: a panthalassa, if you will. Panthalassa is not home. Panthalassa is no place for those who dwell on the land. Forget this at your peril.”

An especially big wave rolled in and broke on the rocks behind Waverley, throwing up a sheet of foam and spray. Grandstanding. Good grandstanding, but grandstanding.

“Are you ready for me, Mr Joshua?” Waverley called with a wicked grin. Josh shrugged ambiguously.

“This is an official Gym battle between the challenger, Joshua Cook of Mulberry Town, and the Gym Leader, Waverley of the Whirl Islands Gym!” the referee declared. “Each trainer will use three pokémon! The challenger will release first and only he may make substitutions! A Maelstrom Badge is at stake!”

“Ivysaur, take the lead,” Josh said. He flung the Poké Ball hard, releasing Ivysaur onto the wet sand at the edge of the surf.

“For my first choice – behold. The original cannonade!” Waverley called. “Octillery!”

Octillery emerged at mid-field behind the breakers, spreading its arms around the top of a granite platform as if bracing itself. There was a moment of quiet. Waverley and Josh watched each other across the field as the waves rolled by.

Waverley cracked first. “Hit it! Octazooka!”

It fired diabolically fast, a powerful salvo of shots half a second apart. Ivysaur barely dodged the first one. The second smacked into his flower, a streak of black ink splattering across his golden petals.

“Vine Whip.”

Octillery dropped into the sea and jetted out of reach just before Ivysaur cracked his whips down onto the platform.

“Rain chaos on him!” Waverley urged.

“Patience, Ivysaur,” Josh started to say, and stopped himself. Ivysaur knew how to deal with those tactics.

Octazooka splashed into the sand right by Ivysaur’s feet. Octillery dipped back under the waves and changed position. Josh could just about see it gliding sinuously through fronds of sunken oarweed. Again and again it fired off snap shots with surprising accuracy before moving off and sniping from somewhere else. Ivysaur struck back once or twice with Power Gem born of Nature Power, trying to dodge Octazooka at the same time. Each time he took a glancing hit for his pains.

“Alright, Ivysaur -” he started, reaching for his Poké Ball.

[I can hit it!]

He should substitute. It would be sensible to substitute. But he’d held him back from Haunter.

“Try it.”

Ivysaur dashed into the surf, and waited. This time he made no attempt to dodge. Octazooka hit him square in the face. Ivysaur extended his vines as far as they would go, grabbed hold of Octillery, and ripped it up off the platform, suckers and all. He swung it round, ready to slam it into the wet sand.

“Flamethrower!” Waverley called. Ivysaur howled and dropped Octillery as the flames washed over him. “The sea is not predictable, Mr Joshua!”

“Ivysaur, return!” Josh called before the set-back became a disaster. “I can’t lose my ace this early,” he told him.

Fine. Wriggle out from beneath this. “Screwball. Charge Beam.”

He wouldn’t have thought an octillery could move that fast. Charge Beam flashed the wet sand into steam and left glass glinting in the crater left behind. Amazing, the pressure a powerful Electric-type can generate. Thank you for that lesson, Winters. Screwball attacked Octillery with a chain of Magnet Bombs, driving it into deeper water.

“Rise! At least two feet!” Josh called. A spout of Flamethrower sniped up at it – Screwball split itself in three and let the flames pass through its centre.

“Strike and fade! Octazooka!”

“Tri Attack.”

The slender beam speared through the waves and struck Octillery before it could hide in the oarweed. Nothing seemed to happen for a moment – then Octillery bobbed to the surface, motionless. Its skin was glittering. Frozen. Checkmate.

“You can’t substitute,” Josh said. “Screwball can finish your octillery at its leisure. Do I really need to give the order?”

Waverley went quiet again. “Forfeit. And you got lucky.”

Josh shrugged.

“Hmm,” Waverley grunted. “Adapt to my second choice or fall, Joshua Cook of Mulberry Town! Corsola!”

Adapt? To a corsola?

This corsola was unlike any he’d seen. It drifted slowly across the platform, not standing on it but hovering close to the surface. It was chalk-white. Two little red eyes smouldering in deep sockets, gazing unfocused at nothing. Its branches were insubstantial, misty, seeming to waver as if in a breeze.

This was … unexpected. For a moment Josh almost forgot he had a Pokédex.

“Corsola, Metanthozoa russola subspecies ‘maledicta’: the Coral Pokémon. Typology: Ghost (Frazer-Edricson classification), Ghost/Water (Montfaucon classification).”

Ghost-type. That explained why Waverley thought this was the joker of the team. But why select a ghost to go up against a Steel-type?

“And begin!” the referee added.

Well, test the waters. “Thunder Wave!”

Corsola tried to leap into the water to escape. Not fast enough – Thunder Wave intercepted it mid-leap and dropped it into the sea.

“Charge Beam.”

[Confirm target.]

This again? “Er, two feet left of the platform!”

“Water Pulse, plenty of them!” Waverley ordered abruptly.

Water Pulses erupted from below the waves, bursting like liquid fireworks and showering them with fine salt spray. Screwball lanced a Charge Beam into the water, aiming for the Water Pulse. Josh couldn’t see whether it hit or not – he knew Corsola was still there, but the motion of the waves and the glare of the Charge Beam played tricks on the eyes.

“Water Pulse!” Waverley repeated in a sing-song voice. “Plenty of them!”

Nothing happened. Waves pushed a motionless, paralysed corsola into the shallows, its body scraping against the sand.

“Charge -”

“Curse.”

“Screwball! You ok?” Josh said.

[Hardware error at … reboot reboot reboot … systems online.]

That probably meant ‘yes’. There was an explosion of water as Corsola fired a Water Pulse into the sand, throwing itself back into the sea. The battle went calm as it drifted out into deeper water.

“Corsola, Rest,” Waverley said. It dawned on Josh that this was what Waverley had been waiting for all along. Screwball couldn’t see Corsola and Waverley could afford to simply wait it out.

“Screwball?”

[Core functionality at 50% integrity.]

“Screwball, return,” he commanded. No reason to double down on a losing strategy. “Ivysaur, take over.”

This time he released Ivysaur onto one of the platforms.

“Do what you do best, Ivysaur,” he said. “Be careful, be patient.”

There was a moment of calm as the battle effectively came to a halt. Corsola was there somewhere, Josh knew. Something told him it was hiding in the depths to the left of the field.

“As in our islands, so in our battle,” Waverley said cryptically.

Josh never did work out how Waverley knew Corsola had woken up. The Whirlpool formed so subtly that Josh didn’t notice anything untoward till the sea was a spiral of surging white water threatening to drown the mid-field platforms.

He was just reaching for Ivysaur’s Poké Ball when Waverley sprung her trap. “Water Pulse.”

The Water Pulse slapped Ivysaur from his footing, sending him head-first into the Whirlpool. The current immediately swept him into the torrent, dunking and throwing him around like a cork.

Oh, fuck. “Ivysaur, return! Return!” Josh commanded, futilely trying to catch him in the recall beam. If he could just hit once with the recall he could still salvage this round -

“Self-Destruct!” Waverley ordered cheerfully.

An almost lazy pulse of light glowed from the eye of the Whirlpool. A wall of salt water hit him – the next thing Josh knew he was thrashing to the surface, coughing, water stinging his eyes. His new vantage point showed little but bobbing sea.

“Ivysaur! Linesman!” he roared.

“On the beach, challenger,” they replied.

Josh hauled himself back onto his platform; kneeling, he spotted Ivysaur unconscious in the shallows. “Return!”

“I did tell you,” Waverley said. “The sea is not home.”

Well, how very clever of you, Josh thought, but he didn’t say it.

“Your release, Mr Joshua,” she said.

Sixpence says you can’t play that Curse trick twice. He flung Screwball’s Poké Ball as high up as he could.

“I thought you might do that,” Waverley said. “For my third choice. Arise! Slowking!”

It surfaced from the sea on a column of water. With a leisurely gesture it glided serenely over to mid-field like an ancient general riding his chariot, and settled down on a platform.

“Begin!”

“Trick Room!”

“Charge Beam!”

Josh doubted Slowking could have dodged if it wanted to. It was swallowed in a dense cloud of black smoke. Direct hit – it would have been steam if it had missed.

His head throbbed with psychosensitivity – Slowking somersaulted buoyantly from the smoke, gracefully landing on the sea’s surface as easily as if it were sand.

“Get out from its line of sight!” Waverley called, presciently, because a cloud of steam hissed up as Screwball zapped another Charge Beam at it. Slowking emerged from the brume, running on the water, trying to get into Screwball’s blind spot – from outside the Trick Room it didn’t look like Slowking was moving much at all, but then he’d blink and see how fast it was really moving relative to Screwball.

[Target confirmed,] Screwball droned. [Tracking.]

Magneton don’t have blind spots, Josh thought. Screwball disconcertingly rolled around individual eyes to follow it. Slowking started flinging Shadow Balls almost casually as it ran. Screwball fired back with Magnet Bomb, the bombs flashing in silver parabolas as they flew.

“No. Eerie Impulse!” Josh shouted, deliberately, to signal to Waverley she was running out of options. The Shadow Balls popped against Screwball like soap bubbles.

“Send it to the depths!” Waverley called. Slowking swept its arms down, witchfire pouring off it, psychically plunging Screwball beneath the waves. Josh wondered if she was panicking. It’s not as if it could somehow drown a magneton.

“Up and out. Magnet Bomb.”

“Fire Blast!”

“No! Down, dive!” Josh babbled.

Screwball rose from the sea, crackles of electricity arcing across its body, and was promptly enveloped in Fire Blast. It briefly turned into a bright ball of flame. It emerged blank-eyed and glowing cherry red.

“Magneton is unable to battle! Slowking wins,” the referee said.

Clever. A straightforward double-bluff. Repeat the same trick and exploit the element of surprise twice. Josh hefted Fionn’s Love Ball for a moment. “Do what you do best, kidda,” he whispered to her.

Waverley gave Fionn a critical look, her nose wrinkling in indecision. You don’t know what she’s going to do, Josh thought. I’m not completely sure either.

“… Whirlpool.”

The Whirlpool rose out of the sea and turned into a waterspout, visibly spinning faster and stronger. Fionn gazed at it innocently for a moment – and then shrieked, unleashing a pulse of psychic power. The Whirlpool started trying to spin clockwise/anticlockwise at the same time, and collapsed in a fountain of fine spray. Fionn promptly disappeared into the smoke and spray. She didn’t reappear. Josh blinked, and saw her silhouette lingering near the shallows. Waverley was scanning the field fruitlessly. He wasn’t sure whether Slowking couldn’t see her or whether it just hadn’t noticed her yet.

Waverley just laughed. “Surf, Slowking! Make it a tidal wave!”

Slowking raised a battlefield-wide Surf, the beach rapidly lengthening as Slowking sucked in water to build the wave. Just before it crashed over Fionn she parted the water in a neat circle. Slowking instantly hurled a Shadow Ball at it. Possibly only Josh could see it, but he hit her smack in the mouth.

Hmm. He didn’t like being out-manoeuvred by a pokémon. Fionn didn’t like being out-tricked either, howling and wailing as a disembodied voice. Slowking raised another waterspout with one hand, peering around for the sulking misdreavus, and charging a Shadow Ball in the other.

If Slowking can’t see her, then time is probably on my side. The Trick Room must be falling soon. “Future Sight!”

Something must have somehow tipped it off, because Slowking threw the Shadow Ball and sent the Whirlpool spinning downfield right afterwards, setting Fionn blinking in-and-out of sight as she dodged around it.

“Wait for it,” Josh called. The wind suddenly died. Future Sight was arriving early. “Wreak havoc!”

Bolts of psychic energy blazed down. None of them hit, Slowking deftly deflecting them into the sea with an assertive gesture. It was enough of a distraction to allow Fionn to move in close and loose a blast of Ominous Wind. With an effort it leapt into the sea to escape. From under the sea it kept speculatively lobbing Shadow Balls. One miss was one too many – she immediately faded away. The speed of the volley was strange. Josh aimed his Pokédex – he know where it was with an odd certainty, even if he couldn’t physically see it among the waves and oarweed.

“Trick Room, a Psychic-type -”

Ghostly laughter rang in everyone’s ears. The oarweed pounced at Slowking, trying to bind its limbs – Slowking just smacked Fionn with another Shadow Ball.

It does that every time she uses a Psychic-type move. Damn. Waverley was supposed to be running out of options.

Waverley primly folded her arms, a confident little smile on her lips. “Give up yet?”

Robbed of a target, Slowking had stopped throwing Shadow Balls. The pressure is artificial, Josh told himself.

The sea is not home. Waverley had given him clues once already. The sea is not home … the sea is no place for those who dwell on the land. But there were ghosts in the sea. Fionn only breathed for theatrical effect.

The sea is no impediment.

“No,” he replied. “Fionn, beneath the water. Ominous Wind.”

Nothing seemed to happen. Slowking … disappeared. He couldn’t tell where it was any longer. Both he and Waverley were watching the inscrutable sea.

The linesman’s flag went up.

“Slowking is unable to battle!” the referee declared, to the sound of Fionn’s shrieking delight. “Victory goes to the challenger, Joshua Cook of Mulberry Town!”

Fionn reappeared at his shoulder, hair waving lank and rubbery like tentacles. It wasn’t really wet, but the illusion was her idea of hilarity.

Waverley looked curiously disappointed for a defeated Gym Leader. “On the beach,” she said, pointing. Josh awkwardly splashed and waded to the shore – Waverley seemed to glide like a seadra through the waves.

“I’m not convinced you understand the sea at all,” she said.

“No, I don’t,” Josh flatly agreed. “But a win is a win.”

“A win is a win,” Waverley coolly agreed. “Therefore, in recognition of your victory, I present to you the Maelstrom Badge.”

It was the Gym’s vortex logo, small enough to hold between thumb and forefinger. One Badge closer to the Academy.

*​

Open your eyes …

After the battle, Josh didn’t have anything to do other than walk along the cliff outside the Pokémon Centre. The breeze did a lot to counteract the heat of the long afternoon. Midsummer was still a week away. Whenever he could hear the sound of waves breaking he wondered how he had ever lived without it. He’d been re-reading some sea-poetry, to fill these, these solitary days:

‘but he always had a longing,
he who strives on the sea.’

There was a ship out there, making its way northwards. The Karego Rose, her white sails hardly visible against the sea-shine. He wondered if the 2nd Mate was in the rigging somewhere, standing fearlessly on the fore yardarm. She probably wasn’t looking towards the island. Francesca Livesey was pretty well obsessed with the sea. Embarrassingly, poetry had made no impression on her whatsoever. So much for romance.

From the southwest to northeast, there was nothing but the Great Western Ocean, not the slightest shadow of land on the horizon. At moments like this, you could look out at the sea and pretend there was no further shore.

‘And now my consciousness flies,
out of my breast,
my thought,
amid the flowing sea,
over the whale’s realm.’

My thought – modseofa. Sometimes translated as ‘spirit’. Spirit, soul … the breath of life, in another language. Psyche. Psychic.

And now my psyche flies, amid the flowing sea, over the whale’s realm.

Open your eyes.

I saw that.

Hovering near the brow of the headland, like a shifty rookidee, was the girl with the silver-white hair. She immediately realised she’d been spotted and ran off out of sight. Without really knowing why, he followed her, watching her flit down the cliff path. She was a psychic, he’d felt it on Blue Point Isle. A powerful one.

There was nobody else in the bay – just another beach to the islanders, too far away to be of interest to the tourists. She glanced around, as if to make sure he was still there, then dashed along the beach and disappeared into the dunes beyond. Everything was so quiet. The breeze seemed to die down. The omnipresent wingull had ceased their crying.

He stepped into a hollow amid the dunes, surrounded by thickets of marram grass. There was nobody there. Sound of something brushing coyly against the sand and grass. The girl appeared from his peripheral vision. She stalked in close, head cocked on one side, giving him an intense, unblinking stare. Close enough to smell – sharp, briny, faintly musty, which was odd because most girls smelled basically flowery.

“You’re not human, are you?”

She didn’t say anything – not that he really expected her to. Instead he got a flash of psychosensitive pain.

“Ow!” he gasped. “Careful.”

She seemed to get the message, the pain receding as quickly as it appeared. She reached out and touched him lightly in the middle of the forehead. Alien sensations cascaded gently into his mind.

Sea shimmering diaphanously with sunbeams – coral gardens jewel bright – flying over the land under wave – calling a storm with a thought, calming it with a song – to be young, vigorous and perilous – the twilight zone, light soft like feathers – lie and sleep, under deep -

In that moment, he understood what it was to live in three dimensions; to see in total blackness with nothing but the power of his mind; to fly and dive as easily as a human walks; to be a creature of earth, wind, and wave.

His mind rose to the surface. He blinked hard as he remembered who and what he was. She was gone again. There was something soft cupped in his hand. A feather, with a bifurcated vane, so white it almost glittered like silver.

Next Chapter: Every Day, In Every Way

 

[Beth Pavell]

Chapter Forty One – Every Day, In Every Way

Evelina​

Silence, aside from the sound of muted brushing of the bristles and the faint tap of her feet on wood. Fine dirt piled up in front of the broom like seafoam. Tigerlily Champion who can’t even battle.

Three-quarters swept. The lacquered wood floor gleamed richly in the wake of the broom. It was still – Tigerlily Champion who can’t even battle – still a poisonous little mantra, and heavens knew she hated it. She sighed, just a little. Not to block it out. Not to embrace it. Merely to let it be, and sweep.

She was still tired. Mindfulness sounded like a wonderfully serene concept – the reality was, it was hard work. It would be perversely easy to give up on being in the moment and slip back into obsessing over Qara. Obsessing over Qara, and everything else. Chuck said mindfulness took practice. Eve had to just trust that, somehow, because it felt like it was barely working. He was right about the sleep therapy. It worked. The old lore made no sense, but it worked. Eve smirked to herself. I wish to know the Way of Master Chuck.

She’d come to a realisation, while sweeping through the halls. Something about Qara spoke to her, some fear she hadn’t hitherto understood.

Lunchtime had crept up on her again. She swept the dirt off the verandah into the garden and wandered off towards the refectory. This time she was second-to-last to the table, mostly because she took a wrong turn. Today lunch was steamed fish and mixed greens with cashews and sesame seeds. Eve applied herself to her food, more or less ignoring the Gym trainers. She wasn’t one of them, and they all knew it. She wondered what they did think of her, this strange trainer who wasn’t training in their midst. Why was a pokémon nurse meditating at the Fighting-type Gym? Who flipped out barely two minutes into a Gym battle like a bloody lunatic.

She almost didn’t notice she’d finished her lunch. And she felt a bit better.

*​

Eve was feeling annoyed. The solarium was too bright. The room was stuffy with afternoon heat. The air smelled of teenage sweat, cheap body-spray, and incense.

What a lovely place to meditate, she couldn’t help but think. But perhaps the point wasn’t to be tranquil.

“In your own time … come back to normal alertness,” Chuck said, and clapped his hands. “Once again, boys and girls, to your evening chores. Not you, sport.”

The Gym trainers filed out. A couple of them glanced back at her. Calm down. I’m not the new star pupil.

“How have you been feeling?” Chuck said.

“A little better, Master, I think.”

“Any thoughts on our last session?”

“I don’t think you really get what it’s like,” Eve replied patiently. “The best way I can explain is with a memory. I was … fourteen, I think. Maybe a bit older, something like that. I remember I used to wear hoodies a lot, hoping to blend into the background. Didn’t always work. Anyway, I was heading home from school when some lady comes running up, absolutely hysterical. Turns out her nidoran had tried to eat something it shouldn’t have and was in the middle of a hell of a reaction. Don’t tell me they have iron stomachs … she must have seen my hair, or recognised my face. A panicking trainer, a nidoran wheezing like a broken kettle, and she didn’t think twice about throwing it all on my shoulders, because nobody thinks for a second that a Joy can’t cope!”

“Did you help her?”

“Of course I did! Any one of us would. And that’s why she asked. But that’s what it’s like, your life follows a, a script. They don’t see you, they see an archetype! They don’t see someone tired or stressed or hurt – and you know what? That’s because we make damn sure people don’t see!” She paused for breath. “You can’t even trust boyfriends half the time! I thought I’d finally found someone who saw me and the moment he got bored I was plan B! A third wheel in my own fucking relationship!”

“So why not change yourself? Wear your hair a different way, a different colour. Stop treating pokémon. Everything?”

“Everything? Let me tell you about everything. Does anybody stop to think about everything? Once nobody took us seriously, our legacy is -” Eve paused. “We are sensible! We are self-reliant! We are capable! It’s been like that for every one of us for a hundred years!”

“In the Nightmare, you weren’t Joy. Nobody knew you, either. And yet this was not a good dream.”

“I was missing my pokémon as well; what’s your point?” Eve snapped. “No, no, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Master.”

Chuck didn’t say anything. Qara. Quaint, strange, lonely Qara. Her next words did not come easily. She could see the wall in her mind’s eye, a cliff of pale yellow stone.

“It.” She brushed away a tear. “It was lonely. My pokémon weren’t there.”

“Being left without a script is lonely, hmm?” Chuck said quietly.

“Haven’t you been listening to me? I don’t. Want. A bloody life script!”

“Really?” Chuck replied, suddenly direct. “You are sensible, self-reliant, capable. A lot to be proud of, and you wear it -”

“So self-reliant that I have to be here – do you have any idea how embarrassing it would be if people found out? You’ve never seen my cousin Sonia when she’s in a bitchy mood, have you? My cousin Riley? My aunt Adeliza?”

“You don’t want them to know because that would affect your prestige in the family pecking order.”

“Yes!”

“So you measure yourself up to the family standard.”

“No!”

“Could have fooled me, sport.”

“I am not happy with my life! I don’t fucking get to be me anywhere!”

“Then why do you insist on clinging to an identity you don’t even like?”

“Because what else is there?”

Eve scowled defiantly at Chuck, eyes stinging, throat tight. I will not cry. Not this time.

“What am I supposed to do?” she choked out.

“What I think you’re beginning to understand is that you’re defining yourself by your name,” Chick said calmly. “The opposite of acceptance is not rebellion; you became a champion because you wanted the glory of being the first of your family to do it. But here’s a question. You say your boyfriend hurt you because you’re a Joy, but what if he was simply a jackass?”

Eve took a deep, steadying breath. “If that’s so … I don’t know any other way to be.”

“You know, a Fighting-type will only evolve when it understands who and what it is. And herein lies another noble truth.” Chuck leaned forwards slightly, peering at her from beneath his bushy eyebrows. “You have one key question before you: what do you want? When you know that, you will know yourself.”

*​

Thankfully ignored by the handful of evening surfers, Eve sat on the sand, wrapped in her hoodie dress over her dojo uniform. Cianwood summer evenings were usually on the chilly side. Cupped in one hand she held the photo Josh had sent her. It was already curling at the edges. She’d kept the envelope too, just because there was something endearingly dorky about the way he’d stencilled the address, presumably to make sure it was delivered. Square. Square who could cry with joy in seeing staryu evolve en masse. The evening sky was changing from blue to indigo. A few early stars were peeping out.

Eve glanced at the back of the photo - ‘Wish you were here x’. She’d been convinced she’d pushed him away, and in a way, she had. But in the midst of that moment, which must have been so magical, he was thinking of her. Eve tapped out a text message.

I miss you. Thur 21:26

Gail was soaring on the evening breeze again, a darker shadow against a darkening sky. She shone piercingly white, illuminating the beach like a floodlight, and swept off to sea with an exultant cry.

I’ll be on Silver Rock Isle. Thur 21:28​

She’d tried to push him away, but for some reason he’d stayed. And the waves rolled in.

“Why?” Eve said to the sea.

“It’s under no obligation to answer you, you know,” Chuck said.

“Master -” Eve said, starting to get up.

“No, no, sit sport.”

Chuck sat down on the sand a couple of feet away, watching the sea, and apparently paying no more attention to her.

“I’m going to the Silver Conference. I want to finish what I started. I want to spend time with my friend before he goes to the Academy,” Eve said, eventually. The thought that Josh might not make it never occurred to her. “After that, I don’t know.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes!”

“That’s a good start,” Chuck said encouragingly.

“It is?”

“Did you think it would all come in a moment of golden clarity?” Chuck said facetiously.

“I think they call that enlightenment,” Eve mused, just as facetiously.

A joyous, raptorial scream floated in from the sea.

“Your pidgeotto evolved,” Chuck observed.

“She’s a simple creature,” Eve said, watching Gail wheel against the blanket of stars. “Pokémon are endlessly fascinating.”

“We can learn so much from them.”

Gail sounded so happy to be a pidgeot. Maybe there was a noble truth somewhere in that, too.

“What’s the photo?” Chuck asked.

Eve pointedly held it face-down against her leg. “Something for me.”

*​

As she had done every morning, Eve got up at six. She dressed in a dojo uniform. She made her way to the refectory for breakfast. This morning, for once, she was looking forward to it. After all, the Gym had a fine philosophy of food – generous portions, uncomplicated food with no rubbish in it.

But today, the refectory was empty. Furio was waiting patiently by the table.

“Er. I’m not late, am I?” Eve said.

“Breakfast is postponed today,” Furio replied, smiling faintly. “Come.”

Furio led her through the winding corridors, back to the central courtyard where she was first admitted into the Gym. He stopped at the edge of the henge, gesturing for her to go on alone. The early morning light was bright but clear, without the glare of afternoon. There wasn’t any sound but for the fountain babbling cheerfully. The branches of the leppa and cheri trees gently nodded, casting a shifting komorebi over the circle.

Chuck was waiting for her in the dead centre.

“Twelve days ago, I told you that ours is a long and honourable tradition. You came to us lost, angry, and fractured. The challenge before you was unlike that of any other student here. And now, perhaps, you are wise enough to find your own Way. Congratulations, sport.”

He held something out. Lying in the middle of his huge palm, a badge in the shape of a rounded fist.

For some reason, all she could think to say was, “Does this mean you won’t give me breakfast?”

Chuck’s booming laughter filled the henge, rich and irreverent and sincere. And Eve could not help but laugh as well.

Next Chapter: Have You Noticed I've Been Gone

Spoiler: Author's Note

I said at the end of Chapter Thirty Seven that I'd come back to the question of mental health and fiction at the end of the arc. I struggled with the question of how much to abstract, and how many creative liberties to take, over the course of Eve's chapters. I generally dislike and distrust 'neatness' in fiction that deals with mental issues and/or personal growth. There's a tendency to depict the understanding of why one is mentally ill as being the same as being cured. It's not. It's merely the beginning. And likewise, media tends not to present therapy in an especially positive light.

There are enough thoughts to work through to sustain many more chapters of many more words than this. And certainly, Eve's arc could realistically involve a longer, harder struggle than is depicted here. But what I wanted to put forward was perhaps a hard truth - that therapy can work, but you have to want it to work. Chuck's quasi-religious approach is, again, fictional, but the essence of it is intended to be relatable.

In an unusually apropos parallel with this chapter, discussing how to depict mental health in art, especially for an ethical goal, could sustain many, many more words than these. So in the interests of being pithy, I will leave these few words do the work of many more.

 

[Beth Pavell]

Chapter Forty Two – Have You Noticed I’ve Been Gone

Joshua​

The trouble with academic books, is that they never get the bloody point, Josh thought, trying to skim-read Myth and Legend of the Whirl Islands, 1859-1960. It reminded him of trying to prep for exams in the middle of May afternoons. The library had that same soporific warmth, the same charmless aesthetic. Some libraries were all gleaming mahogany and brass fittings. This one was full of crap MDF, facing south so the tall windows turned the room into a vivarium. At Uni he would have had a perpetual cup of coffee at hand, and possibly a peanut butter-and-honey sandwich, too. But she flatly refused to allow food to drink in the library.

When he landed on Silver Rock Isle the previous day, he’d naturally expected to find a public library or museum dedicated to lugia. It turned out the only real repository of information on either lugia or the Silver Wing on the island was privately owned – by Polyhymnia Joy.

When she saw him on her doorstep all she said was: “Oh, it’s you. Rain said you were in the islands.”

“Is she the one on Yellow Rock Isle?”

The second thing Polyhymnia said to him was: “Polyhymnia Joy, MSc, MLibArts, never call me Polly.”

“What do you know about Silver Wings?” he’d asked.

“… what is your highest diploma?”

“A BA,” he’d replied, “with honours.”

Polyhymnia had given him a vaguely surprised look. “Well, I have a double Masters in the science and legend of lugia.”

Not that this meant she’d tell him anything. Instead she just gave him a key to her library.

The whole thing was fairly typical Joy weirdness. Polyhymnia spent her life sequestered in a library researching esoterica and yet she was entirely up to date on gossip. She clearly didn’t like him and didn’t care to hide it, but she didn’t argue or deny him the use of her library.

Josh sighed and shut Myth and Legend of the Whirl Islands. The book was half-padding, half-academic bloviation. He looked back at his notes, haphazardly assembled from about twelve sources with a lot of asterisks and arrows. There were a lot of contradictions. The one common thread was that no-one really knew anything for certain about lugia. They were associated with the Whirl Islands, but not thought to be permanent residents. Their usual habitat was disputed, some experts vehemently insisting lugia aren’t Johto natives. Even their place in the National Pokédex was controversial given the paucity of evidence. Both the Frazer-Edricson and Montfaucon classifications categorised lugia as a Psychic-type. That merely confirmed what Josh already knew. That lugia-girl was obviously highly psychic. His dreams since then had been full of someone – something – else’s memories. Memories of wondrous things. Fish shoaling in silver millions. The light of the twilight zone, soft like feathers. Land under wave. Some mornings he woke with his mouth tasting of fresh-killed squid.

Josh sighed, again. There was still more of legend than of science about lugia. And legend seemed to be obsessed with the Silver Wing. A ship with a Silver Wing aboard would never sink. Silver Wings legendarily adorned the ancestral crown of Johto. Silver Wings hung over cradles to ward off evil. The legends weren’t confined to the Whirl Islands, either. Monanna kept appearing in the stories – and Josh couldn’t help but be familiar with that particular goddess, the Archer of Heaven, the virgin big sister to the younger goddesses, shooting her silver arrows that blasted their marks into ash. She was the first constellation he’d learned to recognise. The three stars of her belt were bright enough to be visible even against Mulberry Town’s light pollution. Across western Johto there were little mosaics in little shrines showing Monanna cloaked in Silver Wings.

Shrines, goddesses, and apotropaics, with silver threads running through it all. The sort of thing Eve would have loved. He remembered how happy she’d been on May Day, kissing the handmaidens, stuffing her face. He found the ritual annoying, but she’d been happy – later it had been his turn, on Karego Rose …

He dropped his pen onto his notepad and listened for footsteps or voices. After a moment he carefully unwrapped the Silver Wing from a handkerchief. He hadn’t told Polyhymnia, or anyone else, that he had it. The feather was about two inches long, palm-sized. The quill was oddly stiff, like spring steel, vane curling elegantly away in a ‘Y’ shape. In the afternoon light it looked almost literally silver.

Josh wondered quite what the lugia had expected him to do with it. Clearly it had value to her, but what value?

He stared at the thing for a while. It gave him an idea.

*​

Silver Rock Isle was higher and craggier than the other Whirl Islands. And also more remote. Porth Carrek was the only real harbour on the island. There were some pleasure boats moored up on the quay, but no fishing craft for once. The influx of day-visitors from the other islands hadn’t arrived yet. A little dirigible droned off in the direction of the mainland. Josh stared at an iron signpost on the quayside. Porth Carrek reminded him of Yellow Rock Isle, but with silversmiths rather than coral jewellers. The Silver Wing motif was everywhere. He found what he was looking for above the post office on a weather-beaten sign – WHIRL ISLANDS HERITAGE MUSEUM.

As museums went, it was a bit sad. Josh had seen bigger coffee shops. The room was simply crammed with bric-a-brac. Pinned-up photos, model ships, pieces of jewellery, faded newspaper pages. A disembodied lintel took pride of place, carven with the livery of Honourable Company of Silversmiths. The curator was squeezed behind a desk in the corner, an old fellow with a walrein moustache.

Josh dropped a few dollars into the donation box perched hopefully on the desk. “Who’s the best silversmith on the island?”

The curator gave him a doleful look. “That would be young Janero up at Trekellys.”

“Trekellys,” Josh repeated, turning to go. Just before he got to the door, the curator called out.

“Janero doesn’t do commissions, though!”

*​

Josh had quietly ignored that.

He headed into the hills shortly afterwards. Outside of Porth Carrek bay, the island became craggy, thickly forested with pine trees. The temperature grew warm to the point where Josh was rolling up his jacket sleeves. Sunbeams wheeled through the treetops, broken by the pines into a striated komorebi. The air smelled of warm rock and resin. He followed the north road as it wound along those crags and granite-sided hills, occasionally leaping a ravine via a bridge built of the island’s blue-grey bones.

Open your eyes … Josh thought. The phrase kept surfacing in his mind whenever he had nothing else to think about. He paused halfway across the span of a bridge, in the middle of a pool of sunshine. Soft drifts of old needles had found their way onto the footpath. In the dingle beneath, he could hear the bubbling chatter of a swift stream.

Open your eyes … perhaps it meant ‘pay attention’. He could see spearow picking their way along the branches. A scrawny-looking aipom raiding nests for eggs. A sudowoodo who thought he couldn’t see it following him. He gave it a wave because he was fed-up of being stalked - it panicked and tried to hide. The road seemed to be deserted. He hadn’t heard an engine since Porth Carrek.

He’d been alone in the forest before, but he’d never been lonely in the first till now.

Open your eyes. He shook his head. The riddle was no less cryptic for all that.

The walk up to Trekellys took a little over two hours. The village wasn’t that much more than a name on the map, perhaps twenty houses strung along the road, and a pub. He noticed a woman walking up a path towards a gate set in the garden wall.

“Excuse me!” he called. “Can ye tell me where I’d find Janero?”

“And why do you want to find him?”

“Because I’m told he’s the best silversmith in the islands.”

That got him an odd, almost critical look. “Come with me.”

She led him down the garden path towards a slate-roofed outbuilding, calling “Janero!” as she went.

“In here!” a voice yelled from inside. The outbuilding was a workshop. It had an air of a place visited by a short-tempered voltorb. Tools and materials were scattered any old how on every surface; storage bins stacked apparently at random; nothing was labelled. A row of modular metal shelves were pushed against one wall, stocked with finished jewellery in ziplock bags. Janero sat hunched over something, peering at his work through magnification goggles. He had on a leather apron over a rumpled flannel shirt. Sweat glistened on either side of his nose. He immediately scowled in annoyance, as if Josh were selling religion on the doorstep.

“Who’s this?” he demanded.

“I have a commission in mind,” Josh said. “And I need the best for it.”

“Damnit Ariene, you know I don’t do commissions!” Janero said hotly.

“Your dumb concept pieces aren’t making any money!” Ariene retorted. “Do what you do best for once!”

Janero scowled at her as she stalked out, without much conviction. “You know she’s really my biggest fan.”

“You know, I believe she is,” Josh replied. “I had one like that at school.”

“What did you make?”

“Jewellery, actually. Craft fair stuff. I miss it sometimes. It would have been nice to make beautiful things for their own sake.”

“I don’t know who told you I’m the best, but I’m really not,” Janero said, after a moment’s thought. He got up and snatched a bag from a shelf. “See!”

It was beautiful. A silver filigree ring worked in intricate leaf designs. They were recognisably hazel and ash leaves. The attention to detail was impressive.

“I finished that last week, and every time I see it I spot a new flaw.”

“What I have in mind isn’t so intricate.” Josh took the handkerchief from his pocket and let it fall half-open on his palm. The Silver Wing glinted from beneath the cotton. “But perhaps it’ll need as much care.”

“… is that?”

“I want this set into a necklace. Very discreetly. As far as payment -”

“My materials, nothing more.”

“You’re sure?” Josh said, taken aback.

“The payment for working on a Silver Wing, will be getting to work on a Silver Wing.”

Josh frowned at him. He hadn’t expected that. But … beautiful things for their own sake.

Janero held out his hand. “Seal it with a handshake?”

If Josh had any doubts, that dispelled them. “Deal.”

*​

It was gone five o’clock when they called it a day. After hours of talking through sketches, they’d settled on a final design. Josh didn’t suspect he’d renege on the agreement. They’d shook hands on it.

“I’ll be back in a few hours!” Janero called over his shoulder. There were three men hanging around in the lane outside. All three wore hard-worn work clothes and five o’clock shadows, sleeves rolled up against the afternoon heat. The youngest of them was Janero’s age, the oldest, sixty if he was a day.

“While we’re young!” the old boy said.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming, I’m coming,” Janero said. “I’ve got a new commission.”

“Mine,” Josh said redundantly. They all nodded at him. “Anyway, er, where can I get a bite to eat?” he added.

“Well, we’re all getting a bite and a pint at the pub,” the youngest one said. “Come and join us!”

“Oh, no, ye dun have te …”

There was a chorus of denials and encouragement.

“- no, no, can’t have you sitting by yourself -”

“- more the merrier -”

“- want to hear the story behind that bloodstain -”

Josh found himself mumbling polite acceptances amid the shower of hospitable warmth.

“Exhibit A is Cedar,” Janero said, waving a hand at his contemporary, “and this is Kittow.”

Kittow was bald as an egg, middle-aged, and wore canvas shorts like a schoolboy.

“And Alfred -”

“- Alf -”

“Cook. Joshua Cook, of Mulberry Town,” Josh interjected. “West of Mt Silver.”

“Ever done any slinging, Cook?” Kittow asked, as they ambled along the lane.

“Slinging?”

“A Whirl Island tradition,” Janero said. “Throwing things with a sling. We have a practice after work most days.”

“Alf, lend him your spare sling,” Kittow said.

The local pub was the kind of quaint country boozer that yuppies in Goldenrod tended to ape with cutesy names. They all bought a pint and a pasty at the bar before heading back outside. There was a large field with three targets in front of a strong net. One was a wicker scarecrow with a watmel for a head. On the near side, a large barrel of tennis balls.

The whole thing was deceptively simple. The slung was a length of cord with a leather pouch in the middle. One end of the cord had a small loop, the other, a small knot. The object was to slip the loop over the ring finger, whole holding the knot between thumb and forefinger. You swung the wrist, built up some momentum, and released the knot to fling the projectile. In practice, it was much harder than it looked. Knowing when to let go of the knot was tricky and aiming was harder – the ball had a nasty habit of coming out backwards.

There wasn’t a hint of standoffishness from the group. Kittow and Cedar were full of advice for his slinging attempts even if it didn’t seem to help. Everyone yelled an appreciative “OHHH!” after a hit, regardless of how accurate it was, Josh’s included.

It was his turn. Loop over the ring finger. Knot beneath the thumb. Load tennis ball, swing the sling, build momentum, release the knot. The ball glanced off the edge of the target and bounced up into the net.

“Bloody hell, Alf!”

Then Alf struck the scarecrow so hard he almost decapitated it.

“This is why we don’t let him use pebbles,” Janero said.

They were all craftsmen of one kind or another. Kittow was a silversmith, like Janero; Alfred, a carpenter; Cedar made knives. They treated him like a fellow craftsman, too, as if school clubs and eBay were the same thing. In the midst of the fellowship he ended up telling the story of how they’d built the Iron King – ten Townie scallywags, gleefully turning the Regatta into a farce. The others had rowed her, and trimmed her sails, but he’d designed her and it was tremendous fun winding up the Goldenrod Uni snobs when Iron King sunk their boat.

Load tennis ball, swing the sling, build momentum, release the knot. Miss. Damnit.

Halfway through his story it seemed to Josh that all this companionship was bittersweet. He’d had this once, at school, with the Workshop club. Building the Iron King, in hindsight, was the swansong of all that.

It would be worse without his pokémon, of course, but they weren’t the same.

“So what are you working on, Janero?”

“Oh, just a necklace,” he said breezily. “Straightforward commission.”

It was a distraction, and a fairly ineffective one. He hadn’t heard from Eve in a week. Nothing, not so much as a text. He had to assume the photo found its way to her at Cianwood Gym. He had to assume, no, hope, he wouldn’t be going back to being alone.

Spin the sling, build momentum, release the knot. Miss. He remembered vividly. A flawlessly symmetrical, too-perfect face. He’d stabbed her, aron steel flashing in the moonlight. Spin the sling, build momentum, release the knot. Hit the scarecrow’s arm. A yell of OHHH!, distant, as if from another field. Mirthless grinning of a sham girl. Licked the air with a soft pink tongue – how dare she look at her like prey! Spin the sling, build momentum, hurl it with a grunt. Hammered into the net. Smothered in black fog, stars like diamonds wheeling overhead. Falling. Cold down to the bone.

He thought about what he’d found in Polyhymnia’s library. Monanna cloaked in Silver Wings. The Archer of Heaven. Apotropaic silver.

He hit the target dead centre.

*​

The mossy remains of a stone circle sat on the breezy greensward, a rough meadow of coastal grasses on a stubby headland. There was a granite throne in the middle, looking out to sea. It was supposed to be Ostaro’s, but since he obviously wasn’t using it Josh considered it fair game.

The evening sky was changing from blue to indigo. A few early stars were peeping out. The Northern Cross was glimmering over the sea. He’d spent the morning pretty much just walking around the island. He’d spent the afternoon on the beach, slinging pebble after pebble at the rusted hulk of a fishing trawler in a vain attempt to occupy his mind. He shouldn’t have done – it was a waste of a day – but he couldn’t seem to concentrate on anything productive.

The sea breeze rippled through his hair, scented with salt and pine needles. He couldn’t help but wonder if the photo had arrived. Whether Eve cared that it had.

He has no thought for harps
nor the giving of rings
nor pleasure in women
nor anything at all
unless the tossing of waves
but he always has a longing
he who strives on the waves

He’d always thought that was about sea-longing. Maybe he was wrong – but he always had a longing …

The sky grew dark. Josh ignored it. The path from the henge led away from the cliff edge. Deneb shone blue in the Cross with its brothers Sadr, Albeiro, and the rest. A zubat flitted across the sky, hiding Vega for an eye’s blink.

His phone buzzed, to Josh’s dull surprise. He hadn’t expected to get a signal up here.

I miss you Thur 21:26​

Josh closed his eyes and leaned back into the throne. She misses me. In that moment, he realised that was what he’d hoped for the most. Just that she missed him.

I’ll be on Silver Rock Isle Thur 21:28

*​

“Up yours, Polly!” Josh retorted to Polyhymnia’s back. It wasn’t clever, but she deserved it. Polyhymnia’s rudeness was reflexive, like a meowth swatting at bugs. Not that he wanted anything much to do with her, he reflected, watching her walk away, but Porth Carrek was a small town on a small island. It wasn’t difficult to run into someone you knew, even if you only knew one person.

It was a warm evening at the harbour, gently baking in the sunshine bouncing off the tarmac. The island was quietening down – the last boat from Red Rock Isle had been and gone. And Josh had nothing to do but wait. He had decided to get dinner, such as it was, at a bakery near the quayside. A disappointing pasty filled with greyish meat and anaemic vegetables. It was the kind of evening for cold beer anyway.

He had his Pokédex open, trying to do some research on Steel-types. It wasn’t encouraging reading. The last thing he wanted to face at the Olivine Gym was a steelix. The bloody things might know Fire Fang. You couldn’t realistically out-range them. There simply wasn’t any such thing as a small steelix – their sheer bulk meant they could just brush aside lesser attacks.

Josh sighed, and gave up. He wasn’t learning anything anyway. He wandered off along the harbour, tossing the remainder of the pasty into a bin, hoping the walk might calm his mind. Tan lines were beginning to show up on his arms. It took a lot to get him to tan – two weeks in the Orange Archipelago summer had helped it most of the way along. When he did tan he went from ambiguously ethnic to ambiguously ethnic.

… nobody ever got that joke. On a whim he left the harbour, and stopped at the sight of a pub sign. The Silver Dragon. The painting on the sign didn’t look very much like a lugia. Or anyway, it did nothing to convey what a lugia was as opposed to merely what it looked like. Josh rubbed at his temple. Something told him a human shouldn’t know the difference.

“I knew I’d find you somewhere near a pub, you dork,” she said. Josh turned round without really thinking.

Eve was smirking at him.

“Eve!” Josh burst out, throwing his arms around her for the sheer joy of seeing her smile. And kissed her cheek, because he meant it. To his relief and elation she’d thrown her arms around him, too. He didn’t want to let go, stood there in the middle of the street, squeezing Eve just as fiercely as she squeezed him. Tears on her cheek blotted on his.

“I’ve missed you,” she said in a tight little voice.

“I missed you, too.”

Reluctantly, he let go. Josh glanced over Eve’s shoulder and spotted someone watching them like it was daytime TV.

Eve followed his gaze. “Finished?” she demanded.

A thought struck him, and right then Josh didn’t want to wait any longer. “Come on!”

He grabbed Eve’s hand and towed her down an alleyway between a couple of narrow houses. There was a secluded grassy space beyond that, with an abandoned shrine to one side, and no-one else around.

“I didn’t expect you to be that pleased to see me!” Eve commented, winking at him.

“Just shut up for a moment.”

It was wrapped, not in a handkerchief, but in a square of black satin. The Silver Wing, preserved in flawlessly clear resin without bubble or blemish, hanging from a strong silver chain like a moment frozen in time. A thin strip of silver bound the edge, etched with a runic inscription:

ᛗᚩᚾᚪᚾᚪ ᚾᚩᚹᛋ ᛁ ᚪᛗ ᚠᚱᛁᛚᛄ ᚷᛁᚠᛖᚾ​

“This is for you.”

“What on earth have you -” Eve started, already blushing. Then she realised what she was looking at.

“Is that really?” Eve breathed. “Josh, where did you get this?”

“It’s a long story.”

Eve gave him a look of blended wonder and disbelief. She reached out reverently to take it. And stopped short. “Why are you giving it to me?”

Ignoring her stuttering, her clasped the necklace around her neck, letting the Silver Wing drop lightly onto her chest.

“Because.”

Next Chapter: Gym of Steel

 

[Beth Pavell]

Chapter Forty Three – Gym of Steel (Version 1.0)

Joshua​

It felt odd to see Olivine City from the sea. It was the city he’d once tried and failed to get to as a virginal graduate, a city where he could have used all that hard-earned knowledge from three years of university. Back then he just didn’t have the savings to move and pay for rent while he found his first real job. It looked like it would have been a home away from home, an epithet no town in Johto would be proud of. Olivine was an unlovely city. From the seaward side it was all cranes, concrete wharves, warehouses and shipping containers, the famed lighthouse all but lost among the industry. A pale ochre haze lingered in the sky above the city. Beyond all that, you could see the green hill country of rural Olivineshire.

Olivine had somehow managed to hang onto her city walls through eight hundred years of war, industry, and population booms – now they were a pleasant walk with benches on the towers. Outside the medieval city walls, Olivine looked a lot like Mulberry Town, Josh thought, as they walked along the parapet. Inside the wall, it was more like Azalea Town. Olivine was built on a volcanic hotspot, the inner city crowded with traditional inns boasting hot spring baths. Some had medieval bones, others were little more than a century old.

They descended the wall at the west gatehouse into the general bustle of the city centre. Funny how life seemed to accelerate once you got to the mainland. The weather reports were full of news of a drifblim migration coming down from the Misho highlands -something that had gone ignored in the Whirl Islands. Josh glanced sidelong at Eve. That morning, she’d spent twenty minutes meditating before she’d even touch breakfast, which was strange. She’d been very cryptic about her time at the Cianwood Gym. All she’d say was that the food was good. He decided not to press the issue. Maybe she still needed space.

Olivine city centre was actually more like a gentrified Mulberry Town, Josh decided. A lot of the centre was red brick buildings of the ornate kind, with an abundance of arches and columns and lead-roofed cupolas. Mixed in among them were the steeply-pitched roofs and exposed beams of the medieval inns and townhouses. Even the pidgey cooed at each other more genteelly. In Mulberry the lead would have been pinched, the brickwork chipped, and the pidgey fighting each other.

But the Olivine Gym couldn’t look more incongruous – a windowless ziggurat of gleaming steel, surrounded by gardens of gravel and asphalt. A life-sized steelix sculpture of poured concrete formed an arch over the main entrance. The sheer inappropriateness of the architecture obviated the need for a sign. Beyond the main doors there was no atrium or foyer. There was no greeting of any sort, just a brightly-lit corridor leading deeper into the Gym. The corridor terminated in a pair of automatic doors. They seemed to delay for several second before opening.

The hall beyond was an unlit battlefield. There was a dais just visible in the shadows at the far end, a silhouette of someone standing at the foot.

“Who dares enter the Gym?” a voice boomed.

“Who dares ask?” Eve countered.

There was a click of snapped fingers. The hall lights came on with a thump-THUMP; illuminating a plain battlefield covered with a substrate of grey, feathery ash. Coils of gleaming barbed wire marked the field boundaries. The trainer at the foot of the dais was a tall, riffy sod, his close-cropped hair a clash of teal and orange. The studs on his leather jacket shone in the intense glare of the fluorescent light. He was holding out a Poké Ball at arm’s length.

“I am Zane, and I am steel!”

“I am Evelina Joy of Cherrygrove City!” Eve declared. “I am a Tigerlily Champion and I challenge Jasmine!”

Zane almost smiled. “If you want …”

He disappeared into the shadows at the back of the hall. Josh nudged Eve gently.

“Are you sure?” he murmured.

“I know the key to inner peace,” Eve said, stepping into the trainer’s box.

Jasmine stepped onto the dais. Josh had a sudden impression of a rose wilting in the heat. Most Gym Leaders were flamboyant types – you wouldn’t look twice to see Jasmine on the promenade. Shy, retiring, delicate – apparently delicate. She wouldn’t look directly at her challenger.

Jasmine nodded down at Zane.

“This is an official Gym battle between the challenger Evelina Joy of Cherrygrove City and Jasmine of the Olivine Gym! Each trainer will use one pokémon! The challenger will release first!”

“Lyra! You have the honour!”

Straight to the ace. Eve didn’t hesitate for a moment.

“Scizor,” Jasmine said.

Bug vs Bug, both of them gleaming scarlet. Lyra took to the field with a yell, rising eagerly to attack height. Scizor snapped into a taut fighting position, widening its stance, abdomen canted forward, pincers open. It was almost twice the size of Lyra, and probably over twice as heavy. At first glance Scizor looked the more dangerous, if you hadn’t seen how aggressive ledian could be. Scizor couldn’t actually fly, either.

“Begin!”

“Thunderpunch!” Eve immediately ordered. Scizor remained disciplined and motionless as Lyra closed to attack with two fists sparking.

“Bullet Punch,” Jasmine ordered demurely.

Both Lyra and Scizor tried to dodge – both lunging at their opponent and both missing. Scizor’s other pincer flicked out – Lyra struck back with Thunderpunch for another near-miss exchange. Scizor wasn’t actually all that quick, Josh thought, watching them skirmish back and forth, but its aim was sharp. Most pokémon eventually lost their cool with Lyra buzzing angrily around in front of their face. Jasmine’s scizor just reacted like it was nothing more than morning sparring, calmly stepping around a sparking fist and slamming a pincer into Lyra’s thorax, punting her across the field with a crack.

“Iron Defence,” said Jasmine.

“Air Cutter!” Eve yelled over Lyra’s frustrated shriek. “Cut it to bits!”

Lyra delivered a rain of Air Cutters with rather more fury than accuracy, Scizor stepping and dodging around most of them. The strategy seemed reckless to him – Lyra was steadily drifting closer with each Air Cutter.

“X-Scissor.”

“Thunderpunch!”

The next exchange instantly devolved into a brawl cloaked in a grey cloud of ash, all whirling fists and pincers. It was difficult to riddle out what was going on, but Josh had his doubts. Lyra didn’t do well in brawls, Iron Fist or no, and now she was trying to batter down an Iron Defence.

“Eve …”

She wasn’t listening, and Lyra had gone tunnel-visioned with fury. Something about fighting other Bug-types put the devil in her.

“Counter.”

There was the terrible rasp of a pincer’s tooth scraping across Lyra’s exoskeleton. The attack sent her flying into the ash – Scizor was on her in a flash of scarlet and a hail of Bullet Punches.

Protect! Josh urged.

“Drain Punch!” Eve insisted. Josh glanced at her. That move made no sense. Still the Bullet Punches shot out – slower now, more considered, like a man trying to knock in a nail with the fewest blows possible.

Protect!

Lyra tried to take off. Scizor smacked her back down. She returned a half-hearted swipe with Drain Punch.

Zane had seen enough. “Victory to the Leader. Hail the Steel Gym.”

His heart sank. Counter. Josh realised he’d seen this battle once before, at the Cianwood Gym, with another Counter, and a different Bug-type.

He reached out to put a hand on her shoulder.

“Tch, tch!” she said curtly, waving him away. She recalled Lyra and stepped out of the box, her back to him. Josh stared at her back for a moment, trying to work out what he was supposed to do.

“I challenge the Gym,” he said, at a loss. There was a flicker of red, pale and washed-out in the strong Gym lights, as Jasmine recalled Scizor. Josh stepped into the vacant trainer’s box.

“Zane,” Jasmine said.

He swaggered from the side line, not up to the dais, but to its foot, below Jasmine.

“A Gym battle is at stake!” he declared. “I am Zane and I am Steel.”

Josh took Ivysaur’s Poke Ball off his belt. He was tenacious and versatile, even if the Steel-type resisted him well. The ace, in other words. Besides, on this field his Nature Power would transmute into Earth Power.

“Forretress!” Zane barked.

Forretress in 1v1 … Self-Destruct would be pointless. It would be a wrecking ball … Forretress were not subtle pokémon.

“Ivysaur,” Josh said. “Battle’s on.”

Josh declined to make the first move. Zane showed more patience than he expected, and did nothing. Well, he knew the counter to that game. “Growth!”

“Rollout!”

Forretress locked its shell closed with a snap. Ash boiled up behind it as it revved itself up to speed.

“Sleep Powder!” Dodge around that.

Ivysaur vented a cloud of glittering blue powder into its path – Forretress just ploughed straight through and unceremoniously shunted Ivysaur aside. Josh realised he’d done something stupid. Its shell was locked down – Sleep Powder was never going to work. Ivysaur pushed himself back to his feet just as Forretress swung back round, extended his Vine Whips and cracked them down hard on its left-hand side. It wobbled with the impact and skidded through the barbed wire into the wall.

[Gotcha,] Ivysaur croaked in satisfaction.

This has to finish before it starts Rollout again, Josh thought. That tactic probably wouldn’t work twice.

“Rollout!” Zane ordered. Forretress curled back round to the attack.

No. “Nature Power!”

The floor erupted in a six-foot high geyser of orange and red flame. Little droplets of molten material splashed back down onto the field, smoking where they hit the ash. Forretress was a motionless ball, scorched black.

[Did I do that?]

Zane was glaring at him, as if he’d planned this. Josh wasn’t about to admit he didn’t understand what had happened.

“Fine. You’ve earned the right to challenge Jasmine.”

*​

Steam rose from the bath as a gentle mist, subtly softening the view of the rooftops of historic Olivine. Tiled roofs were capped with ornate chimney pots, decorated with the crowns of sycamores green and gold in the evening sun. They were staying at the Rose and Dragon, a former coaching inn. The inn sign was a dragonair coiled around a red and yellow rose. The upper rooms had bath-rooms open to the air, the hot water piped up from the spring.

Somewhere in the city, the clear tone of a clock tower’s bell was chiming out the hour. Josh lay back against the bath, soaking in the heat, enjoying this moment of doing nothing.

It had been an oddling day. It was the first time Josh could remember that he had been the better trainer. He took no pleasure in that. He couldn’t bring himself to challenge Jasmine, not after seeing the look on her face. Eve had spent hours after the Gym getting into silly battles – she won more than half of them, but they were bad victories. She was watching the trainers more than the pokémon, which she never usually did. Whatever training she’d been doing at the Cianwood Gym, she wasn’t quite back to her old self yet.

There was the sound of the door to the main room opening behind him. Eve was standing on the threshold, wrapped in a towel.

“Can I join?”

“Oi, wait your turn!” he protested.

“Come on, it’s been a long day. Please?”

It was hard enough hearing the tired, beaten little tone in her voice. He liked his alone time in the bath. It was relaxing. It was hard to see how relaxing it could be with the addition of a naked Eve. But it was the ‘please’ that really did it.

“Oh … alright.”

Josh kept his sight fixed on the trees and chimneys of Olivine as Eve demurely slipped into the bath beside him. The turquoise-green waters partially obscured the sight of their bodies beneath the surface. Josh wasn’t sure he wanted to see her naked, and he didn’t trust his body anyway. Eve said nothing for a while, soaking in the heat, her eyes closed.

“This is god weird,” he said.

Eve giggled at first, to Josh’s annoyance. Until she realised he wasn’t joking.

“Good weird?” she asked hopefully.

“No,” he said, immediately regretting his bluntness. “I don’t really know what thissen is.”

Eve stared ahead into the steaming water. “Whenever one of us had a really shit day, we’d all unwind in the bath,” she said slowly. “There were never any arguments then, you know? I’m sorry. I’ll go.”

“No, I day mean that, I meant, uh,” Josh burbled hopelessly.

“I just want to relax with my friend,” Eve said. “Is that so weird?”

“Well, no, it ay,” Josh admitted. Put like that, was it really that different to playing chess at the bathhouse with his cousin? He could feel her eyes on his face, watching his expression. “Just … dun know where te look.”

“You’m allowed to see me tits,” Eve said, and broke into a giggle fit.

Josh sighed. It was half a joke, and not a very good imitation of his accent. He wished she’d take something like this seriously for once.

The illogic of trying not to look at her was beginning to dawn on him. Eve didn’t take it seriously, but he always seemed to take it sincerely. Tentatively, he glanced to one side, and saw the outline of the bath water lapping around her tits. He wasn’t quite sure what he was expecting, but it was something of an anticlimax. There was something crashingly ordinary about the sight. It occurred to him that because of Ninetales-as-Eve he’d already seen most of what there was to see in the Deepwoods. The tendons in his fist hand twitched at the memory. One minute aggressively seductive, the next trying to tear his arm off.

For a while neither of them said anything, soaking in, all things considered, awkward silence. It wasn’t fair that Eve should remind him of ‘Maisie’. Through the gap in the roofline he could see the imposing blue silhouette of a container ship like a castle on the horizon.

“I’m not ready to challenge Jasmine yet, am I?” Eve said eventually.

“I don’t think your team is ready for a Steel-type Gym,” Josh replied, seizing on the ordinary topic. “You haven’t caught a new pokémon since the Ilex Forest, remember.”

Eve paused to consider this. “I’ve never really planned my team … I suppose you’re right.”

“There’s all those drifblim coming down from Misho,” Josh pointed out. “They’re rare in Johto. And drifblim are different to anything else on your team.”

“Maybe …”

Josh couldn’t help but remember that look on her face. It wasn’t far from that look she’d had after abrupt defeat at the Cianwood Gym. The parallel was obvious.

“I’ll never tell anyone that you lost,” he told her.

That didn’t have the effect he’d hoped for. He wasn’t certain if she’d even heard him. She had a strange look on her face, as though she was seeing through the water to somewhere else entirely.

“I learned something,” Eve said, very quietly. “I kept seeing it. Sometimes when I wasn’t even asleep. It was beautiful. And it was always lonely. But I sleep better when I’m with something living. The Nightmare doesn’t come back to me as much. I know it makes no fucking sense, but it works.”

For days she’d said nothing about the Gym. Now that it came to it, he didn’t know what to say.

“Let’s go into the hills tomorrow. I could do with some time to prepare for Jasmine,” he lied.

She punched him on the arm. “Liar!”

Next Chapter: Windblown from Sinnoh

 

[Beth Pavell]

Chapter Forty Four – Windblown from Sinnoh (Version 1.0)

Joshua​

#426 Drifblim
Borealis migrator

Typology: Ghost/Flying (Frazer-Edricson classification)
Junior morph: Drifloon (Borealis perambulatus)

Drifblim are primary Ghost-types within the Order Subnumina. Their closest relatives are thought to be the Middle Kingdom wraiths (See also: Gastly, Haunter, Gengar). Traditionally considered to be native to the Sinnoh region, their native range extends across the Sunset Isles and northern Kalos, and may migrate as far as the Unova region. Drifblim can be found at heights from 1,000 – 3,000m where they feed on aerial plankton.

Large migrations of drifblim, called blooms, occur in response to changing conditions. High population density, scarce food supply, and changes in the strength or direction of prevailing winds may all trigger a migration. The distribution of blooms are thus strongly correlated to changing weather patterns (See also: Breeding).

*​

The Melkfold Downs spread out north and west as far as the human eye could see, green hills rolling into the blue distance.

The landscape sweltered under the June sun. Melkfold Downs was meadow-and-chalkland, a land of wide skies and little rivers and miltank ice creams so thick you had to eat them with a chisel. Farmsteads and spinneys dotted the downland, while miltank mottled pink-and-black pastured in fields bordered with hawthorn hedges. The River Elfwell flowed lazily along its gentle valley, the grey water glimmering in the morning, through the town of Kesport in the middle distance. To the east, the downlands climbed up to the Beacon Hills. That was coal-mining country. The hills rose out of the downland like a rumpled duvet. Thick belts of woodland on the lower slopes gave way to stretches of heath on the heights. From there, with good eyes, you could just see the span of Kesport Bridge, the brightly-painted narrowboats at the marina.

Nobody mined coal there now. Nobody lived there now. People had left their mark behind in old roads, old canals, and abandoned villages inhabited only by pokémon. Josh squinted up into the sky. There, barely visible against the charcoal grey of a cloud, was the pear-shaped outline of a drifblim.

Not only drifblim, either. There was also Gail, soaring awkwardly on a thermal. It had been markedly startling to see her again. She’d gone from being a sleek, manic lightning-bolt of a hawk, to a majestic, powerful eagle, an empress of the clouds. She wouldn’t stop growing, even after evolving. Josh was sure her wingspan had been about twenty feet last week. She’d put at least another three onto that since then.

Gail wheeled across the sun, her shadow rippling over his head. Josh wondered how big she would get.

They summitted the hill by eleven o’clock, to a heathery field rough with bilberry and yellow-flowering gorse, silverweed colonising the edges of the paths. The wind blew steadily from the north-east, down from far distant Misho. The hill was almost as high up as you could get around here short of flying, and in theory would be the obvious landing place for any drifblim. If the weather reports were accurate, this is where they’d be.

There was no point in trying to be stealthy. Every diurnal pokémon on the heath would have spotted them already.

“Eye, eye,” Josh said. There was something drifting across the heather about a hundred yards away. The drifblim realised it had been spotted and tried to Minimise to lower its profile, shrinking itself down to the size of a watmel. That trick might have worked, if it hadn’t got caught on a sprig of gorse.

Eve was already racing through the heather like a hungry pyroar and bowling a Poké Ball overarm. “Lyra! Thunderpunch!”

Lyra emerged flying and raring for the attack, despite her midday lethargy. She was visibly sluggish in charging her Thunderpunch. For a moment Josh wondered whether Gail might not fare better -

She never got there anyway. The drifblim blasted a Gust into the heather, propelling itself wildly into the sky till it disappeared into a cloud.

“Bastard!” Eve screamed.

*​

A speckled wood butterfly skittered from the path, glowing chocolate and rust-yellow as it fluttered through shimmering noonlight and shade. Spots of sun danced as the breeze stirred the leaves of the overhanging trees. Butterfree ignored these high tangled woods, full of the little flowers of herb robert, buttercup, and Holostea stellaria, whose common name he could never remember. Some late harebells peeped out among the tree roots, pale violet, tissue-paper translucent.

Josh delicately stepped over an old rail, onto the sleeper. The soil was dark, ashy, full of chunks of blue-black rock. Intervening years had scattered much of the ballast, but it would still crunch underfoot like a gravel path. The tracks emerged from a tangle of holly and bramble and disappeared into a mine shaft. The rail was flaked and splintered where a skarmory had been at it for nesting material. He wasn’t looking for anything so much as just looking. Any drifblim should, in theory, be sluggish and sleepy at this time of day.

The hair on his arms prickled. He looked round, without moving his feet. There was something watching him from the deeps of the mine. It was the glower of a gastly. In the dark of the adit, it was hardly more than hungry eyes and fangs.

Not intimidated by the likes of you.

There was a crack and a curse behind him. Eve was busy tripping over brambles. Josh ignored her. He watched a paras crawling up a crab leppa – there was a semi-corporeal drifblim roosting in the branches.

He beckoned over his shoulder, carefully, trying not to alarm the drifblim. Eve must have noticed, because a Poké Ball whizzed past his head.

“Bailey!” she yelled. “Take Down that tree! Knock it the fuck down!”

Bailey slammed herself into the base of the tree – the shock of the impact cracked it nearly in two. It heeled over with a piteous creak, branches snagging on its neighbours. The drifblim spilled out of its roost, bouncing gently into some nettles. It blinked sleepily at them as if entirely unconcerned by the appearance of two humans.

“Right,” Eve said. “Meowth, it’s your turn.”

Josh suddenly felt a terrible compulsion to sleep. His eyelids felt leaden-heavy. Eve yawned hugely. There was only one logical reason why either of them would feel that way.

“Oh, bloody hell,” Josh managed before Hypnosis took hold.

*​

“This time we’re ganging up on it,” Josh grumbled, his head throbbing. He must have banged it against a sleeper when he passed out.

This drifblim was floating fifty feet above the meadow and had already seen them. Its outline was hazy and wan in the late afternoon sun.

“No,” Eve flatly refused. She took a run-up and flung a Ball. “Gail! You have the honour!”

She unfolded her great wings almost luxuriously. The coffee-and-cream span of her plumage was like a small airplane, her long crest shining scarlet and gold.

“Twister!”

The vortex formed reluctantly, cobalt flashes leaping from the translucent cloud and earthing themselves on the grass, vaporising individual blades. Drifblim slipped out of it using Phantom Force, lashing madly at Gail with its tentacles. Momentum lost, Gail hammered awkwardly at the air, trying to ascend with the same easy speed she had as a pidgeotto. Drifblim sailed off west in an attempt to make a break for it.

There was nothing awkward about her dive. She easily caught up with it, wrestling in mid-air as she tried to crush it in her talons. Drifblim flailed back at her with its tentacles, repeatedly blasting out useless Shock Waves. Gail screeched with frustration and powered up into the air. The downdraft of her wingbeats drove the drifblim into the grass. Eve watched her proudly, Fast Ball held loosely in her fingers.

Drifblim started to bloat and smoulder ominously. Fuck. Josh just knew what was going to happen. Breaking into a run Josh grabbed the first empty Ball he could find and threw it. The whoosh-snap of the Ball deploying sounded off to his left.

A few second’s grace, he thought, and tackled Eve into a ditch.

There was a tremendous detonation behind them. Shards of Ultra Ball whickered into the grass. A piece of scorched plastic bounced off his shoulder blade. Josh frowned down at Eve lying beneath him.

“That’s twice now you’ve almost been blown up by a pokémon,” he told her.

Eve was looking up at him with an intense sort of expression, as if she didn’t appreciate being tumbled onto a ditch. He hurriedly pushed himself off.

“I wouldn’t have had to if you’d paid attention,” he said defensively.

*​

The village had been called Holcombe. Perhaps it was still, but no-one had lived here since the Olivineshire coal-mining industry collapsed. It was empty, at least as far as humans were concerned, a ghost town. The village was sited in the midst of a valley, woodland hemming it in on either side. The branch canal flowed right through the middle, a chain of locks and basins zig-zagging the valley floor. Holcombe was a village of long streets of identical terraced houses slowly being reclaimed by the Beacons.

They pitched up in the garden of the abandoned inn on the eastern side of the valley. There was a very small hot spring behind a low hedge of a feral privet. Josh felt quite pleased about that after they’d been sweating into their clothes for the past few days – he was getting fed-up of girl-sweat.

Josh was sat idly whittling at a holly stave, as much to keep his hands busy as anything else, half-watching Meg playing with Bullet Seed. The other pokémon were lounging around. Screwball was hovering with the patiently blank expression of a magneton with nothing in particular to do. Meowth was lurking in the shade, too hot to make a villain of himself.

“Meg, knock it off.” She’d just fired off a spray of Bullet Seed buckshot at Ivysaur. He swatted her away with his Vine Whips.

Eve emerged from the relative shade of her tent, plucking at her shirt in a vain attempt to aerate it. She playfully flicked her towel at Gail, who clacked her beak reproachfully.

“Give me your towel after your bath, I’ll have Gail Defog-dry them both,” she said, picking her way through the privet.

“How exactly are you going to cover up with that travel towel?” Josh said, mock-serious.

“I told you, you’re allowed to see my tits,” Eve said over her shoulder, in what Josh was now thinking of as her Imogen tone.

“When do I get to see your arse, then?” he called after her.

Eve’s giggle sounded more like a snigger. “I’m not bending over for you.”

The smile faded from his face once she was out of sight. While it was somewhat forced, bantering did make things less … less … uncomfortable. That wasn’t the word he was looking for. He’d reluctantly decided, somewhere in the middle of a blazing afternoon, that he was being childish about her – though he would rather eat his own boots than admit it.

Josh looked up, and looked around. Meg had disappeared. “Where’s the babby gone?”

*​

Megaera practically jogged along the cracked and weathered asphalt, determined to explore before Ivysaur caught up with her. Meadows were thriving in long-abandoned front gardens, grass and weeds were breaking apart the road surface in the gutters. Rich scarlet poppies were flowering from between the cracks at the base of street furniture.

Swinging her left stem dramatically, Meg blasted a spray of Bullet Seed into the thicket of ragweed growing in the mouth of a garage. The weeds shredded most satisfactorily. She blasted again, feeling rather like she could do this all evening.

A long, yellow and purple leg reached delicately from the thicket, followed by a ruddy, fanged head, peering at her with interest.

Meg squeaked uncertainly. Ariados’ eyes shone darkly. She defiantly fired a volley of pale Solar Beams. The bolts spattered off its chitin armour to no noticeable effect. Ariados paused thoughtfully for a moment, fangs twitching. It seemed to come to a decision, starting to advance purposefully -

Ariados screeched like a buzzsaw. A chunk of brick ricocheted violently off his head, spinning end-over-end till it shattered a roof tile somewhere.

Josh tossed the sling aside and hefted his holly stave into both hands.

“Back off,” he said, “or I’ll smash you into paste.”

Ariados raised a foreleg, tapping uncertainly at the air. Josh stood almost motionless. Then Ariados made a fatal mistake.

It took a step forward.

Josh howled in fury. He raced past Meg in a red rage, bringing his weapon whistling round two-handed. One strike was not enough. He attacked again and again and again, raining down blows in an earnest attempt to smash its exoskeleton. Ariados lunged, trying to Poison Sting him to keep him quiet – Josh danced out of reach and brought his stick down hand on its knee joint. It flailed reflexively in pain, so he stabbed it in the mandibles.

His weapon suddenly felt absurdly heavy – Ariados had latched onto it with String Shot and was trying to drag it out of his hands. Josh hauled back, snarling, too marinated in fury to register he’d been effectively disarmed. The tug-of-war forcibly wound out more String Shot from its spinnerets. Josh’s arms started to ache savagely with exertion.

There was a whistling, rushing noise overhead. The String Shot broke – Ariados skittered away in panic.

Gail came rocketing out of the clear sky. She arrested her misaimed Quick Attack with one huge sweep of her wings, her involuntary Gust bowling Ariados down the street like a tumbleweed.

Gail took off with a shriek of frustrated bloodlust, leaving Josh shaking with rage and adrenaline that now had no outlet.

*​

“[size-5]You stupid bastard![/size]” Eve yelled.

She’d found out what had happened when Gail refused to eat anything, seeing as she’d already finished half an ariados. It hadn’t taken long for her to start shouting at him.

“It was threatening Meg,” he said sulkily.

“You have pokémon,” Eve retorted derisively. “You have a magneton! Half a Thunderwave would have been enough! Fighting a pokémon personally – gods, do you know what that venom could do to you? Did it never occur to you to simply recall Meg -”

Like you wouldn’t go completely Mama Bear if she was yours.

“As for you,” Eve snapped, rounding on Gail, “- I’m not done with you yet, Joshua Cook – if I ever catch you eating shit again -”

Josh tuned her out while she kept on shouting at Gail. He considered going for a quiet soak in the spring, but he had a shrewd feeling she’d actually follow him into the bath to finish telling him off. He considered Meg instead. She could plainly charge and fire Solar Beams with little apparent effort. Curious. He pondered what tactics would open up if she could charge those beams to a consistent power -

“Are you listening?”

Maybe he’d think about it after Eve started to get hoarse.