Thank you for reading. Hopefully you enjoy. If you REALLY like it, I have a P-a-t-r-e-o-n, under the same name, where you can read 5 chapters ahead.
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Remembering where Blaine had moved his Gym – primarily through a vague recollection of lava inside the building itself – was a great step 1, but it did raise a slight concern regarding step 2.
How, exactly, did one get inside a volcano without being incinerated?
"Hmmmm," I scratched my chin thoughtfully, craning my neck upwards to stare at the smoking summit through my binoculars. We were still a ways away, but as we got closer, I could see that it wasn't as large as the volcano above the Dragon's Den in Blackthorn.
That didn't make the magma any less melty, though.
"""""""Hrrrrrhhmmrrrmmrhhmmhh!"""""""
Seven Pokémon gave their best imitation hum, scratching their own necks with various appendages and differing levels of mockery. Newt, Herc, and Aurora were genuine, tail tips – arm for the Electabuzz – rubbing under their chins in honest, and very cute, confusion. Siren didn't join in either, on account of being a fish and the only nice one on my team of smartasses. Neither did Betty, who gave up on walking and wanted to stay in her ball, Zorua, since she was invisible and probably terrorizing some poor low-level local, nor Honedge, though the sword joining a team-wide joke might've given me a heart attack.
Also Sol, perhaps, who I think was just itchy, given how long he kept going.
"Don't make fun of me, I'm thinking!"
Hercules grunted excitedly, rounding on me, whirring with excitement. He held up a fist that shone with Fighting-Type energy. With the other, he gestured towards the overgrown magma tube. Then, he punched towards his own palm with the Brick Break.
SMACK!
"Bust our way through?" A mental image of Herc looking smug as he punched through the side of the hollow mountain, only for the whole team to be engulfed in a gush of magma, flashed through my mind. "... let's keep that one in the back pocket for now." He looked vaguely insulted at that.
Still, there were a couple of options worth considering first.
"Don't suppose flying is the most intuitive thing you've ever done?" In response to my question, Newt's face scrunched up with concentration.
For a solid second, nothing happened, random muscle groups tensing and relaxing as she tried to figure it out. Then, her tail started lifting. I'd have thought she just lifted it, but then her midsection started following, and then the upper part. Before long, only the very center of her belly remained on the ground as she swayed unsteadily in the air, wobbling around. She tried to correct herself and counter the undulations, only to oversteer and crash back down into an undignified heap of confused, embarrassed dragon trying to untangle itself.
"Oh, damn," I clapped, entirely genuine. "That's – actually, that's way better than I expected! We'll be soaring in no time!" I praised, though she looked disappointed in herself.
"Bah, it's fine! We're big girls; we can walk a bit." I patted her head as a consolation prize, and looked back up at the smoking summit, half hoping an obvious path had presented itself while I wasn't looking – no such luck. "Plan B it is. We're doing this the boring way. Sol, get to sniffing." His massive tail whipped up a minor sandstorm, each huffing breath sending a small cloud as well. Before long, he had something, barking loudly before he blurred, the sand beneath him exploding outwards in a large wave that threatened to swallow me. Would have, if not for a semi-circle of Psychic power holding it off.
I sighed, pressing my head against Espeon affectionately in thanks. Off in the distance, the yellow and black dot that was my Arcanine looked back in what I presumed was confusion that we weren't following him, before blurring again. That time, I got the honor of seeing him skidding to a halt to bleed off the overuse of Extreme Speed, sending another blast of sand at me for Espeon to defend me from.
It was going to be a long day.
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"I think… this is another mine," I mumbled, shining my flashlight over the uneven, yet clearly shaped walls of the corridor we walked down. Despite my words, we continued, Sol still stuck nose-to-floor as he followed the trail.
Which led straight into a dead end, pickaxes and mining equipment piled up where the work had paused.
"It's fine," I clapped Sol comfortingly when he whined at the mistake. "We're ruling out possibilities if nothing else." Tracking was still not Sol's best-trained skill. He was better than he was back when we got lost in Mt. Moon, by virtue of evolution and experience, but he still hadn't been actually trained in the art of tracking.
And lo and behold, there was more than one opening that had seen humans come through in the recent past. Hikers, miners, Trainers, randos who thought volcanoes were interesting – whatever the reason, there were dozens of scents scattered around, leaving us with no choice but to check every single one.
"Don't suppose you can pick up any humans nearby?" I asked Espeon as we walked back to the entrance to the mineshaft. The feline looked up with a small meow, the glowing buildup of power in her eyes starting to fade as she lost her concentration. Given how fast she got a grasp on Psybeam – and seeing that Detect was going to be a constant work in progress – I'd decided I might as well get her started on the next thing I wanted from her. It might also be her favorite, since it was something she could do while dangling around my neck like a scarf.
Other than glaring at Sol in particular with the intensity of a thousand suns whenever he Teleported.
It promised good things that she was able to take that vanishing build-up of energy and repurpose it as a psychic radar of sorts. The Espeon line wasn't known for their mental prowess – quite the opposite. For all their intelligence, their minds were… I kept using the word animalistic, but that wasn't necessarily true. It was just farther from a human's than something like an Alakazam's was. The finicky precision and fine touch that allowed the Abra or Ralts lines to bend reality to their whims just wasn't there. Techniques like Teleportation or the stronger mental arts were too delicate.
No Eeveelution was truly made for control. Instead, they were pure force barely constrained by flesh, the Type made manifest in a way very few Pokémon were.
As such, it wasn't a surprise that when Espeon's ears twitched and her head snapped to the side, it wasn't a human that jumped out from behind its rock cover and sprinted for the daylight. Rather, it was a small red mammal with fairly large ears and a bundle of furry tails standing straight as it ran for its life.
Aurora chased after the Vulpix for a bit, half hoping to play and half to chase away the source of my unease. Seeing it dart away, she huffed and hurried back to me, leaping up at me with no concern that I wouldn't catch her.
"How am I supposed to fake it when you see through me so well?" I mumbled into her fur. It wasn't the first Vulpix we'd seen – the warm soil and open plains with plenty of hidden nooks and crannies were the perfect environment for them, the mountainside littered with the tracks – but I didn't think I'd ever be truly unaffected by the sight of one.
Which was good, both for what it said about my mental health, but also because, again, there was quite a lot of them, and not all of the fire foxes were equally okay with vacating their territory as we moved through it.
Case in point, we found more Vulpix about twenty minutes later as we were making our way upwards, a loose pack of them sunning themselves on a stretch of black rock hot enough that I could feel it through my boot soles. The lead one, a particularly large male with a heavy build, stood up before his group, two smaller ones flanking him on either side. I held up my hands to try and prevent any unpleasantness, but their eyes quickly landed on Sol. As was so often the case, the Alpha Arcanine triggered the Fire-Types' fight-or-flight response on sight. Unfortunately, feeling surrounded by our numbers, they chose to fight rather than flee, and a barrage of smoldering Embers filled the air. The flaming pellets smacked harmlessly into Sol's fur in tiny puffs of flame as he stepped forward to take it for me, the rest of the team either dodging with ease or simply tanking it.
"Water Bullets."
Siren obliged, the vulpine Pokémon yipping and scrambling to get out of the way as the frigid water hissed and bubbled on contact with the hot rock, the surface exploding in a cloud of splinters from the sudden temperature drop. Between that and Sol wading in to absolutely bully them, the pack scattered into whatever crevices they could find, more annoyed than actually hurt.
"That was easy," I remarked as we kept going, feeling their eyes following us until we vanished around the cliffside. Those Embers had been pretty solid, good volume and spread. The Vulpix weren't weak, but it had been a while since something like that had been a threat to us. It wouldn't have taken more than two of us to take out all seven.
One, if I went with someone stronger, like Betty or Sol.
Speaking of Betty, I also took the chance while we were hiking to try something.
"I mean," I started, standing on an outcropping, Betty at my side as we stared out over the landscape, "what's the worst that could happen, right? It's not like it's going to hurt."
The Shelgon stared at me with displeasure, glaring eyes sunken as far into her cocoon as they could go, along with her neck. In fact, all of her extremities were retracted, letting her rest on the slightly flatter bottom of her round shell. Said scowling gaze never left me as Sol, tail wagging and panting with amusement, bent his knees to get under the slope in her shell and moved himself in close. Then, forcing himself against her, he straightened up and pushed at Betty's side as hard as he could, tilting her to the side where the cliff ended. For a moment, she balanced precariously on her side, attention never straying from me even as she finally tipped over and out of view, rocketing downwards like a stone.
"TRY SPINNING!" I screamed down after her, shading my eyes from the sun with my hand. It didn't help. Betty was still little more than a greyish-white ball, bouncing off the mountainside like a pinball until she hit a slope that acted like a ramp. Then, she soared like she hadn't since she was a Bagon, a distant roar of joy echoing out over Cinnabar before she hit the ground like a meteor, a column of dust rising that would be visible for miles.
I had no idea how to teach a Shelgon Rollout – I didn't even know it was possible until I saw the one in the Pit – but surely starting with the rolling part wasn't bad.
Betty certainly didn't think so. If I hadn't come up with the idea of giving Sol the PokéBall in his mouth and having him run down to collect her, I'd have been forced to stop her from indulging in her new-old hobby of launching herself off cliffs.
Between those factors, it took several hours, filled with plenty of water breaks and chasing off the various Pokémon we managed to piss off. But eventually, we did find something that looked promising. It appeared to be a sizable old lava tube, plenty large enough for even Betty to fit – not that she wanted to, but in theory. More tellingly, the ground around the entrance was dense with footprints, most old yet some fresh, and more than a few that seemingly just appeared on the doorstep.
It must be pretty important if people were Teleporting to the spot.
The air inside the volcano was less humid, which was nice, but the tiny breeze and open air were gone, leaving us stuck in the oppressive warmth of a furnace. Sol loved it, but the rest were visibly sweating in minutes, and before long, I was forced to carry Aurora, the Ice-Type's tongue hanging from her mouth as she panted. Not that I minded, her cool fur on my bare torso feeling great.
I was starting to question my certainty regarding the path we'd chosen as the tunnel got darker and darker. Rounding a bend, the light disappeared behind us almost entirely. I stumbled and nearly fell over a rock stuck in the ground trying to follow Siren's floating path, and I would've, if not for the orange, nearly red lighting that had started leaking from up ahead. Turning that corner, I smiled both at the sight and at the knowledge that at least we were going deeper inside.
"HA!" I laughed and pointed, a wide grin on my face. "Slugma balls!"
The red, liquid rock face of the strange snail-puddle-thing, with large, round, yellow eyes and small pupils, stared at me like it had heard that one a million times before, and it was somehow even less funny hearing it from me. The Lava Pokémon's head was an ovoid with flame-like extensions spreading upward from its eyes and round drops of magma dangling from its upper jaw, slowly dripping down to hiss against the stone beneath it.
Three of them oozed their way across the trail at a pace that made continental drift look quick, leaving a trail of softened, glowing rock behind them. At my words, they seemed to change targets, slowly curving around to come at us.
"Hehehehe, ahhhh, Slugma…" I chuckled to myself with a sigh. "We could just... walk around them," I pointed out, taking a large step to the side to avoid a burst of flame I thought might've been an Incinerate and led a wide path around the living piles of magmatic snot. One of them looked genuinely betrayed by that, completely unable to comprehend our devilish tactics.
The big Magcargo further in was less accommodating.
It had wedged itself directly across the narrowest stretch of trail we'd found yet, rocky shell semi-fused into the rock on either side like it had simply decided that it lived there for the rest of eternity, and it didn't so much as twitch when Sol trotted up and barked directly in its face, the force making the liquid 'skin' ripple. It looked much like the Slugma did, just bigger and with a rock on its back like a snailhouse.
"Hi there!" I started with a friendly wave. "Hope you don't mind, but-HEY, CAREFUL!" Despite keeping a close eye on it, the Pokémon's strange physiology hid the usual signs I'd be looking for, so I was completely unprepared for a gush of molten rock to spurt from its mouth in a bubbling stream. Luckily, Espeon was more alert than I, even without Detect, and with it, the Lava Plume never touched me before splashing limply to the ground, hissing away even as it slowly darkened and solidified. "That could've killed me, you dick!"
It did not move, blinking at me blankly.
"Espeon, could you-"
There was an awful scraping noise, the Magcargo's eyes slowly widening as its lava body began wavering and tilting towards us like gravity had changed. With a loud pop! noise, like a cork coming loose, the magma snail rocked towards us, a large chunk of wall stuck to the side of its shell. It didn't fail, necessarily, but it was clearly unhappy as Espeon put it down behind a large boulder, facing the wall. By the time it righted itself, we'd be long gone.
"Thank you." I went first, and regretted it almost immediately. The path continued to narrow, the tunnel closing in around me to the point that I had to double back and put the team – other than Siren, Espeon, and Zorua – in their PokéBalls. There was enough light that I could see fairly easily, a warm, flickering light that I didn't need to strain to guess the source of. The black rock around us threatened to burn my skin with more than two seconds of contact, the air heavy with the strange scent of burning rock.
Sure enough, when I got to the other side, the fissure greeted me, glowing orange-red and wavering with heat so great I had to shield myself with my arm and stay close to the wall.
The heat persisted, but the corridor widened again, enough for me to re-release the team as we fumbled our way through the volcano. Several times, we were forced to double back, either because Sol lost the trail, or because we somehow emerged outside, peeking out of a random hole in the mountain that happened to hit one of the tubes that seemed to spread throughout the medium-sized mountain. It was an absolute ecological marvel, too. Flora was scarce – since it was inside a volcano – but there were Pokémon damn near everywhere. Not a lot of the normal Zubat, but Fire-Types aplenty, and quite a few Rock and Ground-Types too. Rhyhorn and Rhydon were some of the more prevalent species despite what one would think; their monstrously thick hides were so tough they could withstand being submerged in the core of the volcano. They were better suited for the environment than most Fire-Types. I didn't see any Magmar, though, which was surprising, but I imagined they were inside the main chamber itself, or in the random pockets of magma spread around. I was perfectly fine not running into any big Magmortar, either.
Pokémon I could deal with, though – the heat, slightly less.
Those weren't the worst parts, however.
"... you're absolutely sure about this?" Zorua yipped again, rolling her eyes at my caution. "I know, but I honestly need you on my side for this, so can you not?" I didn't like the slight unsteadiness in my voice, but it was very real. Zorua didn't look impressed with my bravery, but refrained from making any more fun of me and simply took the lead, her fur seeming to absorb the illumination from my flashlight and start radiating it as she wove an illusion of light around her. Taking a deep breath, I braced myself and slowly pulled myself in after her.
The pathway was, at best, two by two feet, and that was only at the opening. Immediately, the walls were pushing against my shoulders, every slight outcropping banging against them. The ceiling rubbed the back of my head as I used my feet to push myself in. I'd tried to go hands first, to pull myself along, but that wouldn't work. So, there I was, forced to slug myself through like a worm, hands pinned to my sides and barely enough room to bend my knees so I could use my toes to push. I lifted my chin to try and get it over an elevated spot, only to smash it into the rock above me. Swearing, I flinched and banged my chin anyway, feeling the skin split on a sharp part.
"Fuck!" I hissed, hearing Zorua snickering ahead of me. It was annoying, but she was the only reason I could see anything, so I kept my mouth in check and took a short break to rest. I needed to keep my cool. Panicking was one of the worst things you could do when cave diving.
Making my way through the hole, I gritted my teeth as the elevation got worse and worse. Soon, the scraping against my back was constant, my shirt tearing as the sharp, hot rocks rubbed against my skin. My legs could no longer bend, forcing me to weirdly tip my feet back and forth while leveraging myself forwards with my bleeding chin.
And then I couldn't slide forward anymore. I was too big.
"Fuck me," I was breathing heavily at that point, sweat running down my dirt-smeared face. I tried to back out when it became clear that I wasn't going further in, yet one of the rocks I'd moved past pointed my way and acted like a hook, keeping me in place. "Fuck. Fuck! Z-Zorua, help." The black fox came sniffing, seemingly in no real hurry. Still, she bit down on my collar and tried to pull, yet only managed to rip it. Huffing, she chose a more firmly attached vantage point.
My hair.
"AAAAAWW-AWAWAWA!" I yelped, flailing with my legs as the Dark-Type pulled. I still wasn't moving despite our best efforts, my low yell of pain trailing off into a wheeze as my lungs ran out of air.
And then I slid forwards about two inches.
My mouth dropped open with surprise, and I went to say something, some words of encouragement, to tell Zorua that it was working. Instead, my jaw worked silently, a strangled noise leaving my clenched throat.
I couldn't breathe. Another strangled noise left me, my lungs trying to inflate yet prevented from doing so by the rock pushing tightly against my chest.
I couldn't breathe. I was choking.
Zorua realized that something was wrong when I started flailing for real and stopped playing around. Her grip on my hair tightened, and she started putting real strength behind it. If I had the air, I'd have cursed as more and more strands were ripped from my scalp. I didn't, though, so I kept struggling, shaking and worming as much as I could. I slid forwards, squeezing my way through with difficulty. My left shoulder burned as the skin was rubbed off, something cutting along my shin, but it didn't matter, not when black spots were starting to flash across my vision. The edges went blurry, darkness creeping in as I fought forwards, uncaring of the pain and just wanting to breat-
-air flooded into my lungs as they expanded to their max capacity, oxygen rushing into my blood and shooting to my brain. The relief was damn near orgasmic, right until I immediately collapsed into a coughing fit, poking out of the other side of the narrow passage up to my ribs.
"Aw, fuck! Awww-cou-cough!" Zorua sniffed at my face, clearly distressed at how serious that suddenly got. I tried my best to comfort her, but frankly, I was pretty out of it myself, and it ended up taking nearly 10 minutes before I managed to extract myself from the rest of the short tunnel.
That had been terrifying. It was thankfully the worst, by far, of the hard-to-pass passages, but the experience lingered, keeping me rubbing my chest throughout the rest of the trip.
I don't know how long we ran around inside that stupid, dumb volcano, but it was way too long. In fact, it was so long that I nearly missed the large, red double doors set into the wall in the low lighting, but thankfully, I had people around me with better senses than mine, calling attention to them. At another time, I'd have been interested in the heavy wooden, unautomatic doors despite Cinnabar's reputation as the scientific frontier of Kanto.
Blaine seemed weird like that the one time we'd met. I didn't know that much about him, admittedly, other than he was a high-ranking officer during Johto's rebellion alongside Walter and Giovanni, but other than that, not much. Well, there was the Dittos he made with Bill, but-
I stopped in the door opening, holding the heavy wood with outstretched hands.
Bill. Bill would know where the Gym was. He could probably have Teleported me straight there.
There was value in doing it yourself, I tried to convince myself. I'd held the way canon Ash got his Badges against him. The… the trip was part of the Badge challenge, right?... yeah… yeah. I wouldn't have accepted if Bill offered, because… because I was mad at him.
Yeah…
Clap! Clap! Clap!
The sound of applause broke me from the delusions and made me take in what could only be Cinnabar Gym. And if it wasn't, then I was going to force Blaine to show up by burning it down and fighting him in the ashes.
The reception area of Cinnabar Gym was… well, hard to call a reception area. It would be more accurate to call it a tiny room with two stone stools around a stone table on the left side and a simple stone desk at the far end – with a single man in a white lab coat over a button-up shirt that looked soaked through with sweat – standing in front of a single computer.
Oh, and he was clapping for me.
"Congratulations on making it! Not many do."
"Thanks," I mumbled, dragging myself forwards, having recalled most of the team before entering. I leaned against the desk and happily accepted the bottle of water he pulled out from under the counter top, pressing the cool container against my forehead with a happy sigh. Seems he had a fridge down there. "No offense, but that fucking sucked. The wild Pokémon were bad enough, but the tunnels…"
"You didn't fight through the exterior packs? You crawled through the mountain!?" The guy whistled, low and genuine. "Most people who make it this far come up through the maintenance tunnels, or just Dig."
"... there were maintenance tunnels?" The guy nodded sympathetically, patting me on the shoulder.
… whatever. I didn't have the energy to be mad, and just let him walk me through the signup. It was the usual fare: name, registration, current badge count, current roster, and which five I'd use to challenge for the Badge. Yet, for some reason, he hesitated, eyes darting up to my face as he stopped typing.
"... man, that's hell of a team!" He chuckled. "Uh, it looks like we're having some, uh, technical difficulties. It's the, uh, the heat, you know? Not… not really, uh, built for this, the computer, that is. Sooooo, I need to go, uh, actually see the big guy to get his schedule. Really sorry for the inconvenience, but if you could take a seat for a moment, I'll, uh, I'll be right with you."
"... right," I mumbled, narrowing my eyes at his retreating backside scurrying through the single door behind him, taking care not to let me see through it before he closed it behind him. "I'll do that."
That was unbelievably suspicious. I'd started developing a sixth sense for when someone was out to get me – definitely not my paranoia growing into a low-key, constant thing – yet even an infant would've been put off by that.
As such, I took up a place against the wall far away from the desk, right next to the door in case I needed to make a quick exit, and pulled Zorua out of my pocket. "Alright, let's see how well this works. If anything happens, make both of us invisible, would you, girl?" Zorua looked up at me with one of my fingers in her mouth and nodded around it. It wasn't really something we'd put a lot of training into, since I'd mostly focused on getting her comfortable with one-on-one fights, but it should be fine. The illusions got a little wonky when she stretched them that far, but as long as we moved somewhat slowly, it should be fine.
In that vein, I apologized to Espeon, but still had her go into her ball for a bit until we knew where the situation was going. Dark-Type illusions played havoc with her senses when she was completely enveloped, cutting her off from the outside world, and there was no need for that.
That taken care of, I settled in to wait, pulling out my PokéDex. While I'd been respecting Misty's wish for space, I'd been in contact with Ash and Brock during my stay in Blackthorn. Nothing crazy, just making sure they knew I was alive and maintaining the friendship. That was important, I reminded myself for the hundredth time. Friendship required upkeep, and I'd been shitty at that in the past.
Apparently, they were currently en route to Cinnabar themselves, having taken a long and scenic path from Fuchsia. Sending back my reply, I lightly teased Ash for having gotten there before him – even though the fucker had a Badge more than me – and suggested we'd meet up for lunch.
I also sent Misty a quick message with the same. I wasn't sure where she stood on the whole 'space' thing, but as much as I wanted to make amends, I wasn't going to avoid my other friends for her sake. Even Ash, who I noticed I'd mentally called my friend several times. I'd need to fix that before he heard; he'd be insufferable.
To distract myself, I turned to the news. Several articles caught my eye as I mindlessly scrolled with one hand, the other in my pocket to play with Zorua and be ready to give her the signal. People were still talking about Celadon, though it looked like Erika was going to keep her position. The Sisters had set a new record for tickets sold for a single show, something the talk show host appeared quite excited about, which was good to see. I made a mental note to congratulate them after whatever was about to happen happened. Mahogany had been attacked, half the city razed to the ground. A new crossbreed Berry had been grown, Citris and Leb-
Wait, what?
"–footage from Mahogany City, where officials confirm the city sustained significant damage during today's incident. Witnesses describe the assailant as a bipedal, human-sized Pokémon, supposedly of the Psychic Typing, wearing what several sources called 'high-tech armor' during the assault on one of Johto's oldest cities. The attacker was ultimately driven off by Mahogany's own Gym Leader Pryce and a team of Gym Trainers, though not before–"
I stopped listening to the words. I was too busy staring at the grainy, distant footage that the screen switched to, some fucking madman deciding that getting the shot was more important than his life.
A bipedal, humanoid shape, standing a little shorter than a grown man, based on the Poliwrath that leapt at it. The humanoid figure, clad in armor so dark gray it was nearly black, lifted a hand and flicked its wrist. Like the invisible hand of God, the Poliwrath suddenly shot sideways at such speed it was barely a blur, crashing into and through a building that collapsed around it. As soon as the Fighting-Type was out of the way, the snowy ground came alive. It exploded upwards, rising around the armored Pokémon like tidal waves a hundred feet tall before crashing down like an avalanche.
There was a split second where everything was silent, the mountain-worth of snow settling. Then, the center of the tons and tons of ice bulged outwards, shattering as the Psychic escaped the snowy tomb, surrounded in a bubble of cold blue energy. The sea of ice undulated and rose again like a geyser, trying to capture its prey, but the Pokémon merely gestured down at it. The torrent was ripped apart, sundered and flung aside as a telekinetic wave blew through it, destroying the attack before hitting the ground.
BOOOOOOOOOOM!
The screen shook with a muffled whomp! as a shockwave emerged from the site of impact. It tore the ground apart; dozens of houses ripped to smithereens in seconds, mangled timber exploded outwards like shrapnel. Whoever the cameraman was finally seemed to realize he was in danger, as a censored series of curse words played while everything began to shake and move as he took off running.
The last thing I saw was that mysterious Pokémon raising its arms, the forceful shockwave halting at the motion before, like time was reversing, it retracted and intensified. It swirling around the Psychic and blanketed it in an icy tornado as a massive shadow came charging out of nowhere, straight into the storm.
And then it cut back to the studio. The reporters gave numbers and statistics, but I heard none of it.
… that didn't happen in canon.
I knew that Pokémon. I'd known that shape by heart before I'd ever set foot in the Pokémon world, knew the exact silhouette of it, and every single memory I had of where, how, and why it existed said, with absolute certainty, that this was not a thing that happened. Not in Johto. Not to Mahogany.
What the fuck was Mewtwo doing in Johto? Why was it destroying-what!? What the fu-Where was Giovanni!? Who orde-WHAT!?
"That's not-" I said-
I didn't get to finish the thought as the doors next to me slammed open when someone stormed through them in a rush, the tall man panting from more than just the heat. Sweat ran down his face and into his scruffy beard, streaked with grey, while he looked around the room, raising a hand to push his somewhat greasy hair away from his light blue eyes-
-wait a fucking minute.
Was that fucking ADAM!? From Mt. Moon!? The Rocket Grunt that slipped his pals a secret code word, getting me locked up and nearly killed!?
I was so stunned at the last few minutes that I didn't even react when he looked at me. Our eyes met, and I braced myself for the recognition-
-which never happened, his gaze sliding right over me before he cursed and hurried through the door the receptionist had left through. In my pocket, Zorua was tense and ready, her illusion having gone into effect as soon as the doors opened.
I barely noticed that I was walking through the door, and what was on the other side. I had an impression of room after room filled with machines and Pokémon, scientists rushing around for some reason, but it didn't register. Instead, all I could hear was the voices coming from the far back, leaking through a crack in the door.
"-already left the city, t-that's the problem!" Adam's voice was tight with fear, but he was doing better than the last time I heard him speak. Less tears. "W-we tried to stop him, b-but there was nothing we could do! He's not talking to anyone who gets in the way!"
"Son of a fucking whore! He never has, stubborn old-!" Blaine's voice was rougher, and carried a weight of contempt that made the hair on my arms stand up even secondhand. "How!? How the fuck does he know!? Somebody must've talked, a Ratatta in the ranks!"
"W-what do we do?!"
There was a long pause, only interrupted by the shuffling of papers and banging.
"... this place is burnt. We need to move," Blaine said, finally. "Everything active, everything sensitive, all of it. Get it off this island tonight. The Sevii Lab can absorb the load; they've got the capacity now that the expansion's finished."
The floor seemed to tilt slightly under me, the two words that had just detonated somewhere behind my sternum echoing in my brain.
Sevii Lab. But…
I'd seen the inside of a lab like that once already. I'd walked out of the wreckage of it with Slowking, and most of what we'd found down there was burned into the backs of my eyelids permanently. Mutilated Pokémon, science of the worst sort, and that was before the local Pokémon, and I got down there. It was an absolute hellscape, one that had me waking, bathed in sweat due to nightmares for years – still did, sometimes. The only comfort I had was that it was destroyed.
It was. It was destroyed. So why-?
"-understood," Adam was saying, somewhere very far away from the sudden ringing in my own ears. "I'll get the transfer teams moving tonight."
"Don't fucking wait until tonight, do it quickly; start with the most sensitive! It'll take him a while to get through the mountain, but not long enough! Prioritize! Throw everything we have at the cunt, their sacrifice will be worth it!"
"W-we already did!"
"Then fucking do it yourself, I don't care! Just stall him!"
"Y-yes, sir."
"And stop stuttering, you damn fool!"
There was a soft displacement of air, a faint crack! that I recognized immediately. Fearing my chance was lost, I tore open the door and stepped inside. The office was nice, probably, but I didn't notice. The owner of the room, and the whole Gym really, wasn't there either – the source of the Teleportation sound, presumably. Again, I didn't notice.
All I saw was Adam, the Team Rocket Grunt spinning around with wide eyes. Eyes that widened even further when he saw my toothy smile.
"Adam!" I said, delighted, arms spread, every ounce of warmth I could fake flooding into my voice like we were old friends reunited after a long trip apart. "Buddy! It's been way too long!"
His face went through about four types of confusion before landing on genuine horror. He opened his mouth to say something – a plea, a warning, a scream, I honestly didn't care which – yet all that came from his mouth was spit and a strangled yell as my fist buried itself between two of his ribs, feeling both give and one snap entirely.
He folded. I hit him again on the way down, open-handed across the jaw to send one of his canines flying in a spray of blood. He hit the floor screaming.
"How you been, bro!?" I asked, grabbing him by the back of the collar and hauling him up to send him into Blaine's desk. It was a heavy and sturdy thing, probably expensive, given the massive annual rings in it.
Maybe that made it hurt less when Adam's head smashed into it. I did it extra hard, just to be sure.
BANG!
BANG!
BANG!
"Pluueass!" Adam garbled through a broken nose, another two halves of his teeth lying in the pool of blood. "Inm sowwy!"
"Sorry!?" Blood joined the spit that gushed from his mouth as I made sure I broke that other rib. And the one above it. "What have you got to be sorry for, Adam!? Have you wronged me!?" I brought my foot down on the side of his ankle.
CRACK!
"AAAAAAAHHHHHH!" It was amazing that nobody had come running to check out all the screaming. I'd been ready to release the team, but that didn't seem to be necessary.
"Huh!? Have you wronged me, Adam!? HUH!?" I slapped him over the eyes, the skin almost instantly starting to swell. I needed to stay away from his face, I recognized in the back of my mind, so he could still talk. "Sevii Lab, huh!? Where!? WHERE!?" Miraculously, he pressed his lips tightly together and shook his head. I'd be damned. He must've grown some serious balls since we'd last met.
I should check. With my foot.
THUMP!
"...!" There was an empty exhale as he collapsed to his knees when I let him go, hands slowly moving to cradle his nuts. He was completely still for a second. Then, he bent over and vomited all over the floor, and before he was done expelling his lunch, my foot was on the back of his head, forcing him down into his own mess.
"Say Graveler, bitch! SAY IT!"
"GRRRAVVVLLLL!"
"There you go!"
I was still working on that first question when there was a noise behind me. I ignored it, busy… getting to know Adam. But the sound persisted, a cracking noise that was quickly getting louder. As my attention was diverted and I regained some composure, I frowned. The Gym had been stiflingly warm, yet a chill shot down my spine, and my breath frosted in front of me. Unable to ignore it, I turned to the office door behind me.
Just in time to see it go white with frost in the space of a single breath, ice crawling across old wood and stone in branching, crystalline veins that spread faster than anything natural ever could.
Then it shattered.
Not broke – shattered, the entire door dissolving into a fine, glittering dust of ice that hung in the air like a cloud for one suspended second before gently drifting down like snow to settle atop the nice rug I only then noticed.
Frost crunched under brown, open-toed sandals, the point of a cane thumping down in front of it. Loose beige pants were held up by a simple brown belt, barely visible beneath a closed blue coat. Around his neck was an untied white scarf, the top of a white turtleneck sticking up from the navy, thigh-length jacket, alongside the edges of a brown vest. He wasn't a tall man. If anything, I'd say he was roughly my height, around 5'6-5'7.
Yet there was weight to him.
His face was a roadmap of a harsh life, etched with deep, severe wrinkles that converged around stern, unblinking brown eyes. His hair was a thin, close-cropped crown of stark white, matching the frost still hanging in the air, and the slight stubble on his weathered cheeks. He didn't look at the ruined doorway, nor at the ice dust settling on the rug. He simply gripped the gnarled top of his wooden cane with both hands – veined and spotted with age – his knuckles white, and fixed his freezing gaze directly onto me.
I recognized him. I should, since I'd seen a picture of him ten minutes earlier when he'd allegedly fought off fucking Mewtwo.
Gym Leader Pryce. Mahogany's Ice-Type Master.
His eyes moved past me, past Adam bleeding on the floor, and settled on the empty office beyond, and whatever he found there – or didn't find – made something in his weathered, ancient face go very, very still.
—-
Gasp! Team Rocket!?
Thank you for reading. Hopefully you enjoyed. If you REALLY like it, I have a P-a-t-r-e-o-n, under the same name, where you can read 5 chapters ahead.