The morning after Marcus's first full day as Cyrus was, by any reasonable standard, the worst morning of his life—and he was including the morning he'd woken up in this body, because at least that morning had come with the blissful buffer of confusion. Today, there was no confusion. There was only the cold, crystalline clarity of a man who knew exactly where he was, exactly what he was, and exactly how screwed he was, and had to get out of bed and face it anyway.
He had slept in Cyrus's bed, which was—predictably—the least comfortable sleeping surface he had ever encountered. It wasn't bad, exactly. It wasn't a plank of wood or a slab of concrete or any of the other surfaces one might associate with a man who viewed physical comfort as a moral failing. It was a perfectly functional bed with perfectly functional sheets and a perfectly functional pillow. But it was also aggressively spartan. The mattress was firm—not "supportive" firm, but "I believe softness breeds weakness" firm. The sheets were crisp and white and tucked in with military precision. The pillow was thin and flat, as if it had been compressed under the weight of Cyrus's enormous, universe-hating head for so many years that it had simply given up on being a pillow and accepted its fate as a glorified napkin. There was no comforter. No duvet. No fuzzy blanket. Just a single sheet, precisely folded, precisely positioned, precisely insufficient for the kind of warmth that a human body required during a Sinnoh night.
Marcus had lain there for approximately four hours, staring at the ceiling of Cyrus's spartan bedroom—which was, like the office, devoid of any personal touches, any decorations, any indication that a sentient being with preferences and memories and a soul lived here—and had tried to sleep, and had failed, and had tried again, and had failed again, and had eventually entered a state that was less "sleep" and more "conscious unconsciousness," a kind of waking torpor where his body rested but his mind continued to race like a hamster on a wheel that had been greased with anxiety and existential dread.
Crobat had slept on his head.
Not near his head. Not beside his head. Not on the pillow next to his head. On his head. Directly on top of his skull, wings folded, tiny feet gripping his blue hair, its small body rising and falling with the gentle rhythm of its breathing. It had positioned itself there the moment Marcus had lain down and had not moved for the entire night, and when Marcus had attempted—twice—to gently relocate it to a more appropriate sleeping location, such as literally anywhere else, it had made a small, pathetic chirping sound and gripped harder, and Cyrus's voice had said "your tenacity is noted" in a tone that somehow conveyed both exasperation and grudging affection, and Crobat had interpreted this as "please stay forever" and had settled in even more firmly.
So Marcus had slept with a bat on his head.
This was his life now.
When the alarm went off—not a pleasant alarm, not a gentle chime or a soothing melody, but a sharp, harsh beep that sounded like it had been designed by someone who believed that the transition from sleep to wakefulness should be as traumatic as possible—Marcus had risen from the bed with the mechanical precision of a man whose body knew the morning routine even if his mind was still figuring out where the bathroom was.
Cyrus's morning routine was, like everything else about Cyrus, efficient, joyless, and slightly terrifying.
He showered—quickly, precisely, with water that was exactly two degrees colder than comfortable, because Cyrus apparently believed that hot showers were for the weak and tepid showers were for the indecisive. He dressed—the same suit as yesterday, or an identical copy of it, because Cyrus's wardrobe consisted entirely of the same outfit repeated an unknown number of times, like a cartoon character, like a man who had looked at the concept of "fashion" and decided it was a waste of cognitive resources that could be better spent on plotting the destruction of the universe. He styled his hair—which required no effort whatsoever, because Cyrus's hair apparently existed in a state of permanent, physics-defying spikiness that could not be altered by sleep, or water, or gravity, or any force known to science. It simply was. It was spiky when he went to bed and it was spiky when he woke up and it would, Marcus suspected, be spiky at the heat death of the universe, assuming the universe survived long enough to experience heat death, which, given Marcus's current trajectory of accidentally accelerating evil plans, was not guaranteed.
He ate breakfast—delivered, once again, by a parade of Team Galactic grunts whose proportions turned the simple act of carrying a tray of food down a hallway into a logistical challenge roughly equivalent to navigating an aircraft carrier through a canal. This morning's delivery grunt was a woman with auburn hair beneath her bowl-cut wig and a body that looked like it had been designed by a mathematician who had gotten bored with normal curves and started experimenting with hyperbolic functions. Her hips were so wide that she had to approach the door at an angle, performing a kind of slow, deliberate rotation that allowed her to thread herself through the doorframe one hemisphere at a time. Her rear entered the room approximately two full seconds after the rest of her, like a separate entity with its own schedule and its own opinions about punctuality. Her chest preceded her by a similar margin in the opposite direction, arriving at Marcus's desk before the rest of her body had fully committed to the journey, each breast straining against the grey fabric of her uniform with a barely contained energy that suggested the suit had been through several emergency reinforcements and was running out of structural options.
"Good morning, Commander Cyrus!" she chirped, setting the tray down with a practiced grace that belied the complex physics involved in bending forward when your center of gravity was located in a place that physicists had not yet mapped. "I brought your coffee just the way you like it—black, no sugar, like the void of space that you wish to return all matter to!"
"Your description of my preferences is... unnecessarily poetic," Cyrus's voice said. "But accurate."
The grunt glowed. Literally glowed. Her face lit up with such pure, radiant happiness that Marcus half-expected her to start emitting visible light.
"He said I was accurate!" she whispered to herself as she left, performing the doorway rotation in reverse, her rear leading the exit this time. "That's practically a love confession!"
It was not. It was not even in the same galaxy as a love confession. But Marcus had given up correcting the grunts' interpretations of Cyrus's dialogue, because every correction came out sounding like another cold, clinical observation, which the grunts invariably interpreted as further evidence of his deeply hidden affection for them, creating a feedback loop of misinterpreted emotional signals that would have fascinated a psychologist and was currently driving Marcus insane.
He ate his breakfast. He drank his coffee. He sat in his uncomfortable chair at his immaculate desk with a Crobat on his head and stared at the wall and thought about what to do with his day.
And that was when the idea hit him.
Lake Verity.
The thought arrived fully formed, clear and sharp and insistent, like a notification popping up in his brain with a little ding sound.
Lake Verity. Near Twinleaf Town. Home of Mesprit—one of the Lake Trio. The Being of Emotion.
In the game, Cyrus visited Lake Verity early in the story—it was one of the first scenes, actually, one of the first hints that Team Galactic was interested in the legendary Pokémon of Sinnoh's lakes. He went there to observe, to study, to plan. It was reconnaissance. Groundwork. The opening move in a long game that would eventually lead to the capture of the Lake Trio and the forging of the Red Chain.
Marcus did not want to go to Lake Verity to do reconnaissance. Marcus did not want to go to Lake Verity to study legendary Pokémon. Marcus did not want to go to Lake Verity for any reason related to the evil plan that he was desperately trying to abandon but kept accidentally accelerating.
Marcus wanted to go to Lake Verity because—
Because maybe if I go there, and I see Mesprit, the Being of Emotion, the literal embodiment of feeling and sentiment and everything that Cyrus claims to despise—maybe it can help me. Maybe it can fix this. Fix the voice. Fix the filter. Fix whatever cosmic mechanism is preventing me from saying what I actually mean. Mesprit is the Pokémon of EMOTION. If anything in this universe can help a man who is trapped behind a wall of forced emotional suppression, it's the literal god of feelings.
It was a long shot. A very long shot. The kind of long shot that would have made a sharpshooter squint and say "I don't know, man, that's pretty far." But it was the only shot Marcus had, and he was going to take it, because the alternative was sitting in this office and waiting for his mouth to accidentally declare war on the Pokémon League or announce the annexation of Jubilife City or something equally catastrophic.
He stood up.
He straightened his suit.
Crobat adjusted its position on his head.
"I will be conducting field research at Lake Verity," his mouth announced to the empty room, and Marcus was surprised, because that was actually, genuinely, more or less what he had intended to say. The Cyrus filter had translated "I want to go to the lake and maybe talk to a legendary Pokémon about my feelings" into "field research," which was—not great, but also not evil. Progress. Incremental, barely perceptible progress, but progress nonetheless.
He walked to the door, opened it, and stepped into the hallway.
Immediately, a phalanx of grunts materialized around him, as if they had been waiting just out of sight, pressed against the walls like thicc gargoyles, ready to spring into action the moment their Commander moved.
"Commander Cyrus! Where are you going? Do you need an escort? I'll come with you! I'll come with you! Pick me, sir, pick me!"
The chorus of eager voices came from all directions, accompanied by the now-familiar sight of impossibly proportioned women jostling for position in a hallway that was not designed to accommodate the kind of hip-to-wall ratios currently being attempted. Bodies bumped against bodies, curves pressed against curves, uniforms creaked and strained as the grunts competed for proximity to their Commander with the fervor of fans at a concert and the spatial awareness of a herd of Snorlax in a broom closet.
"I require no escort," Cyrus's voice said flatly. "I am conducting solo field research. Your presence would be... counterproductive."
Fifteen faces fell simultaneously, a synchronized display of disappointment that would have been heartbreaking if it hadn't been accompanied by a synchronized display of everything else falling too—or rather, jiggling, which was different from falling but equally governed by gravity and equally impossible to not notice.
"But sir—"
"Solo," Cyrus's voice repeated, and the word carried a finality that brooked no argument, no appeal, no negotiation. It was the verbal equivalent of a brick wall. A cold, emotionless, extremely well-dressed brick wall.
The grunts parted—a process that took longer than it should have, due to the aforementioned spatial constraints—and Marcus walked through them, his stride long and purposeful, his expression blank, Crobat perched on his head like a purple, membranous crown, and he could feel their eyes on his back as he walked away. Thirty pairs of adoring, slightly desperate, completely inexplicable eyes, watching him go with the kind of longing that poets wrote about and restraining orders were designed to prevent.
Why do they LIKE me? Marcus wondered for the hundredth time. I am TERRIBLE to them. Not on purpose—I'm trying to be nice!—but the result is the same. Every word out of my mouth is cold and dismissive and cruel. I have never once thanked them. I have never once acknowledged their efforts. I have never once said a single kind thing to a single one of them. And they ADORE me. They look at me like I'm the second coming of Arceus. WHAT IS WRONG WITH THEM?
He made it to the ground floor. He made it to the front doors. He stepped outside into the cold Veilstone morning, and the city stretched before him, all angular architecture and grey skies and the distant silhouettes of the Sinnoh mountain range, snow-capped and ancient and indifferent to the existential crisis of the man standing on the steps below them.
Lake Verity was south. Way south. Near Twinleaf Town, at the bottom of the Sinnoh map, a considerable distance from Veilstone City. In the game, you could walk it in a few minutes, because games compressed geography into convenient, traversable chunks. In reality—or whatever passed for reality in this universe—it was a journey of several hours, through routes and towns and wilderness, and Marcus was going to have to—
He reached for his belt. Gyarados's Poké Ball.
I could fly. Honchkrow can learn Fly. I could—
His hand passed over Honchkrow's ball and went to Gyarados's instead.
Wait. Honchkrow can carry me, right? In the game, you can use Fly with—actually, no. I'm not in the game. I'm in the real—the pseudo-real—whatever. I'm HERE. Can Honchkrow actually carry a full-grown man? Honchkrow is like... three feet tall and fifty pounds. That's not going to work. What about Gyarados? Gyarados is twenty-one feet long, that could—no. Gyarados doesn't fly. Gyarados swims. And also rampages. Neither of those things will get me to Lake Verity efficiently.
He considered his options.
Crobat. Crobat can learn Fly in the games. And Crobat is... currently on my head. Where it always is. Where it has been since I arrived in this body. Could Crobat carry me? Crobat is... five feet, maybe? Wingspan of... I don't actually know. This is a bad plan. This is a bad plan and I should—
"A vehicle will be arranged," Cyrus's voice said, and Marcus blinked, because he hadn't been trying to say anything, which meant the Cyrus autopilot had kicked in and made a decision for him.
Sure enough, within three minutes of him standing on the steps—he didn't know how, he hadn't called anyone, he hadn't pressed a button or made a phone call—a sleek, black vehicle pulled up to the curb. It was somewhere between a car and a small transport, bearing the Team Galactic logo on its sides, and it was driven by—
Of course.
Another grunt.
Another impossibly proportioned grunt.
This one had platinum blonde hair tucked under her bowl-cut wig and was sitting behind the steering wheel in a way that defied automotive engineering, because the driver's seat had clearly been designed for a person of standard human proportions and she was not a person of standard human proportions. She was wedged behind the wheel like a cork in a bottle, her chest pressed against the steering column in a way that made Marcus wonder how she could see the road, her hips overflowing the seat on both sides, her thighs straining against the seatbelt—which crossed her lap at an angle that suggested the seatbelt engineers had not anticipated this particular body type and were, wherever they were, weeping into their blueprints.
"Commander Cyrus, sir!" she said brightly, leaning out the window—or rather, leaning her head out the window, because the rest of her couldn't fit through it. "Where to?"
"Lake Verity," Cyrus's voice said. "Directly. Without stops. Without conversation."
"Yes, sir! No conversation! Got it! I'll be completely silent! You won't hear a peep from me! Not a word! Starting now!"
She was silent for approximately four seconds.
"...It's just that I'm such a big fan of yours, Commander, and I've always wanted to be your personal driver, and when the dispatch said you needed transport I literally screamed, I screamed so loud that Commander Mars came running in and asked if there was an emergency and I said 'YES, Commander Cyrus needs a DRIVER and I'm going to be it,' and she said 'oh, that's nice,' and I said 'NICE? It's the greatest day of my LIFE,' and she said—"
"Silence," Cyrus's voice said, and it was a single word, a single syllable practically, but it landed with the weight of a continent, and the grunt's mouth snapped shut so fast Marcus could almost hear her teeth click.
She drove. In silence. For about twelve seconds.
"...Can I just say one more thing?"
"No."
"It's just—you look really good today, sir."
"I look the same as I look every day. Your observation is redundant and your continued vocalization is testing the limits of my tolerance."
She sighed happily. "So cool."
The drive to Lake Verity took approximately three hours.
Three hours of Sinnoh countryside rolling past the windows. Three hours of pine forests and mountain vistas and frozen rivers and wide, open spaces that were—Marcus noted with bitter satisfaction—decidedly not empty. There were things here. Details. Trees that looked like individual trees rather than copy-pasted assets. Rocks that looked like actual rocks. Wild Pokémon visible in the underbrush—a Starly flock taking flight from a tree, a Bidoof gnawing on a log by a stream, a Shinx prowling through tall grass with electric sparks dancing along its fur.
This, Marcus thought, staring out the window. THIS is what an environment is supposed to look like. Not the barren, soulless wasteland of Paldea, where you could walk for twenty minutes and the most interesting thing you'd encounter was a texture that hadn't loaded yet. This has LIFE. This has DETAIL. This has—
"We're approaching Twinleaf Town, Commander!" the driver announced, temporarily breaking her silence because apparently the urge to inform Cyrus of their location was stronger than her fear of his disapproval.
Marcus leaned forward in his seat. Twinleaf Town. The starting town. The place where, in the game, the player character—Lucas or Dawn, depending on your gender selection—began their journey. The place where Professor Rowan kept his lab. The place where Barry lived, the hyperactive, perpetually impatient rival who ran everywhere and fined you for being slow and was, despite everything, genuinely endearing in a way that Nemona could never—
Focus, Marcus.
Twinleaf Town was small. Smaller than he'd expected, honestly—just a handful of houses clustered together at the end of a road, surrounded by trees and grass and the quiet, pastoral stillness of a place where nothing exciting ever happened.
Except today. Today, something exciting was happening. Or was about to happen. Because if Marcus's mental timeline was correct—and it should be, given that he had played this game approximately forty times and could recite the plot beats in his sleep—then today was the day. The day. The day that Lucas and Barry went to the lake, encountered Professor Rowan's briefcase full of starter Pokémon, and began their journeys.
The day the protagonist's story started.
And I'm going to be there, Marcus realized, with a sinking feeling that started in his borrowed stomach and descended rapidly into his borrowed shoes. I'm going to be AT the lake. When they arrive. The villain. At the starting area. On day one. This is like... this is like Ganondorf showing up in Kokiri Forest. This is like Sephiroth walking into Midgar at the beginning of the game. This is NOT how the story is supposed to go.
But maybe that's good. Maybe I can just... observe. Quietly. From a distance. I'll look at the lake, see if Mesprit shows itself, and leave before anyone notices I was there. In and out. Clean. Simple.
"Stop here," Cyrus's voice said as they reached the outskirts of Twinleaf Town. "I will proceed on foot. Wait with the vehicle."
"Yes, Commander! I'll be right here! Waiting! For you! For as long as it takes! Even if it takes forever! I once waited six hours for a table at a restaurant so this is nothing! Although that was a really good restaurant, they had this pasta that—"
Marcus closed the car door and walked away before she could finish the sentence.
Lake Verity was beautiful.
Marcus had seen it in the games, obviously—the small body of water surrounded by trees, the mist hanging over the surface, the sense of ancient, quiet mystery that permeated the area. But seeing it in person—in three dimensions, in full color, with actual mist and actual water and actual sounds—was something else entirely.
The lake was larger than the games had suggested, stretching out before him in a wide, almost perfect circle, its surface smooth and glassy and reflecting the grey Sinnoh sky like a mirror. The trees around its shore were old—ancient, even, their trunks thick and gnarled, their branches heavy with moss and snow. The air was cold and clean and carried the faint, almost imperceptible hum of something more—something beneath the surface, something that existed in the space between seeing and knowing, between the physical and the metaphysical.
Mesprit was down there. Somewhere. In the depths of the lake, in a cavern that existed in a place that wasn't entirely physical, the Being of Emotion waited, patient and eternal and utterly unaware that a panicking twenty-four-year-old from another dimension was standing on its doorstep, hoping for psychological counseling from a legendary Pokémon.
Marcus stood at the water's edge, Crobat still perched on his head—he had given up on removing it hours ago, had given up on acknowledging it, and the bat seemed perfectly content with this arrangement, occasionally chirping softly and nuzzling into his hair like a cat in a sunbeam—and stared out at the lake.
Mesprit, he thought. I know you're in there. I know you can sense emotions—that's literally your entire thing. You're the Being of Emotion. You exist to embody and understand the full spectrum of feeling. So you must be able to sense ME. You must be able to feel how confused I am, how frustrated I am, how desperately I want to say "thank you" and "I'm sorry" and "I love my Pokémon" and can't, can't, CAN'T, because this body won't let me, this voice won't let me, this UNIVERSE won't let me.
Please. Help me. Show yourself. Give me a sign. Give me ANYTHING.
He stared at the water.
The water stared back.
Nothing happened.
"...The silence of this place is consistent with my expectations," Cyrus's voice said, to no one, filling the quiet with the kind of cold, clinical observation that was the verbal equivalent of a wet blanket on a campfire. "Legendary Pokémon do not reveal themselves to those who seek them. They reveal themselves to those who are... worthy."
Am I not worthy? Marcus thought, and felt a pang of something—hurt? Disappointment? The existential ache of a man who had traveled three hours to ask a mythical lake creature for therapy and been ghosted?
He sighed.
Crobat chirped sympathetically.
"Your attempt at comfort is unnecessary," Cyrus's voice told the bat. "I am not in need of consolation. I am in need of results."
Crobat nuzzled his hair anyway, because Crobat did not speak Human and therefore did not understand the words, but it did understand the tone beneath the words—the frustration, the loneliness, the quiet desperation of a man who was drowning in a body that wasn't his and couldn't call for help because his mouth refused to form the words.
Marcus stood there for a long time.
He stared at the lake.
The lake did nothing.
Well, he thought eventually, the disappointment settling into his chest like sediment at the bottom of a pond. That was a bust. No Mesprit. No magical emotional cure. No divine intervention from the god of feelings. Just me, a lake, and a bat. Great. Wonderful. This was a productive use of my—
"BARRYYYYY! WAIT UP! YOU CAN'T JUST—BARRY! SLOW DOWN!"
The voice came from behind him. From the direction of Twinleaf Town. And it was accompanied by the sound of footsteps—two sets of footsteps, one running at a reasonable pace and one running at a pace that suggested its owner had a deeply adversarial relationship with the concept of patience.
Marcus froze.
Oh no.
No no no no no.
Not NOW. Not HERE. Not while I'm standing at the lake like a creepy villain doing creepy villain things at the exact location where the protagonist is supposed to start their journey. This is LITERALLY the worst possible timing. I need to leave. I need to leave RIGHT NOW. I need to turn around and walk away before—
His body did not move.
His body did not want to move, apparently, because Cyrus's body had its own opinions about tactical situations and "retreating from two children" was not in its behavioral repertoire. Cyrus did not retreat. Cyrus did not flee. Cyrus stood his ground, because Cyrus was the kind of man who would stare down an oncoming train and critique its punctuality.
So Marcus stood there, at the edge of Lake Verity, hands clasped behind his back, Crobat on his head, face set in an expression of cold, imperious calm, as two boys—two kids, because that's what they were, kids, children, actual human children who were about to start the most important journey of their young lives—burst through the tree line and skidded to a halt at the sight of him.
The first one was Barry.
Marcus recognized him instantly—the blonde hair, the orange and white striped shirt, the green scarf, the manic energy that radiated from him like heat from a furnace. Barry was twelve, maybe thirteen, all gangly limbs and restless motion, bouncing on his feet even while standing still, his eyes wide and bright and filled with the kind of boundless, uncomplicated enthusiasm that Marcus had once possessed and had somewhere along the way misplaced.
The second was Lucas.
Dark hair, red beret, blue jacket—the player character, the protagonist, the hero of Pokémon Platinum. He was about the same age as Barry but carried himself differently—calmer, more measured, more aware, with sharp eyes that were currently fixed on Marcus with an expression that was equal parts curiosity and wariness.
They stood at the tree line, twenty feet away, staring at the tall, blue-haired man in the expensive suit who was standing at the edge of their lake with a bat on his head.
There was a long silence.
Barry broke it first, because of course he did, because Barry was physically incapable of experiencing silence without attempting to fill it with words.
"Hey! Hey, Lucas, look at this guy! There's a guy! At the lake! Who ARE you? What are you DOING here? This is OUR lake! Well, it's not OUR lake, it's everyone's lake, but we come here all the TIME and I've never seen YOU before! Are you a trainer? That's a cool suit! Is that a CROBAT? On your HEAD? Why is there a Crobat on your head? Is it YOUR Crobat? Can I PET it?"
This entire monologue was delivered in approximately four seconds, without pauses, without breaths, without any of the standard human mechanisms for separating thoughts into manageable chunks. It was less "speech" and more "verbal fire hose."
Lucas, meanwhile, was still staring. His eyes had narrowed slightly. He was looking at Marcus—at Cyrus—with the careful, evaluating gaze of someone who had good instincts and whose good instincts were currently screaming at him that something about this situation was wrong.
Smart kid, Marcus thought. You should trust those instincts. You should turn around and walk away and come back to this lake tomorrow, when the creepy nihilist in the suit has gone home. You should—
"The lake is... adequate," Cyrus's voice said, because apparently his mouth had decided that now was a good time to engage with the children rather than ignoring them and leaving, which was what any sensible person would do. "Its waters conceal more than the casual observer might perceive. There are things beneath this surface that would make the philosophies of men seem... trivial."
Why did I say that?! Why did I say something mysterious and ominous and VILLAINOUS to two CHILDREN? I could have said "nice day for fishing" or "just passing through" or literally ANYTHING that didn't sound like a cryptic threat! But no! My mouth went straight for "there are ancient powers beneath this lake that dwarf human comprehension"! GREAT! WONDERFUL! Very normal thing to say to a twelve-year-old!
Barry's eyes went wide. "Whoa! That sounds SO COOL! What things? What's under the lake? Is it treasure? Is it a legendary Pokémon? I heard there are legendary Pokémon in the Sinnoh lakes! Is it TRUE? Have you SEEN one? Tell me EVERYTHING! Also, you still haven't told me if I can pet your Crobat!"
Lucas put a hand on Barry's shoulder. "Barry. Maybe we should... not bother the weird man at the lake."
"He's not WEIRD, Lucas, he's MYSTERIOUS! There's a DIFFERENCE!"
"There really isn't."
Marcus wanted to agree with Lucas. Marcus wanted to say "yes, listen to your friend, I am absolutely weird, please leave." But his mouth was already forming words, and the words were—
"Your companion shows wisdom," Cyrus's voice said, his gaze shifting to Lucas with an intensity that probably should not be directed at a child by a fully grown adult in a suit. "The prudent course of action would be to depart. This place is not... suited to idle curiosity."
That was a WARNING, Marcus screamed internally. That was me trying to tell them to LEAVE! It came out sounding like a THREAT, but it was a WARNING! Please, kids, PLEASE just take the hint and GO HOME!
Lucas's hand tightened on Barry's shoulder. His instincts were firing. Marcus could see it in his eyes—the recognition that something was off, that this man was not a tourist or a fisherman or a curious traveler but something else, something with edges, something that existed in a register beyond "normal person at a lake."
"Come on, Barry," Lucas said quietly. "Let's go."
"But LUCAS—"
"Let's go."
Barry looked from Lucas to Cyrus and back to Lucas, and for a moment—just a moment—his manic energy dimmed, replaced by a flicker of something like uncertainty. Like a puppy that had been barking at a shadow and suddenly realized the shadow was attached to something with teeth.
They turned to go.
And Marcus felt a wave of relief wash over him, a warm, sweet, blessed wave of "oh thank God they're leaving, crisis averted, disaster avoided, I can go back to staring at the lake and contemplating my existential nightmare in peace."
And then his mouth opened.
And Cyrus's voice said:
"You carry Poké Balls."
NO! SHUT UP! DON'T—
Lucas and Barry stopped. Turned back. And Marcus could see it—the Poké Balls clipped to their belts. One each. Brand new. Freshly received. Starter Pokémon.
They already got their starters from Rowan, Marcus realized, with a sinking feeling that had by now become his constant companion, like a loyal but deeply unwelcome pet. They already have their Pokémon. And I just drew attention to that fact. Why? WHY? What possible reason could my stupid Cyrus mouth have for—
"Newly acquired, by the look of them," Cyrus's voice continued, his eyes scanning the boys' belts with the practiced assessment of a man who had spent years evaluating threats, resources, and opportunities. "Professor Rowan's selections, I presume. The old man's preferences are... predictable."
STOP TALKING. STOP TALKING ABOUT THEIR POKÉMON. STOP BEING OBSERVANT AND MENACING AND STOP—
Lucas's hand moved to his Poké Ball. Instinctive. Protective. The gesture of a trainer who had bonded with his Pokémon, even if he'd only had it for—what, an hour? Two hours? The bond was already there, already forming, the seed of something that would grow into the kind of unbreakable partnership that defined the Pokémon world.
"Who are you?" Lucas asked, and his voice was steady, but there was an undertone of steel in it. Young steel, untested steel, but steel nonetheless. This was the protagonist. The hero. The kid who would, in the normal course of events, go on to defeat Team Galactic, conquer the Elite Four, become the Champion, and save the world from the very man standing in front of him.
But that was the normal course of events.
This was not normal.
"Yeah!" Barry chimed in, his uncertainty already fading, replaced by the irrepressible Barry energy that could not be suppressed for more than a few seconds at a time. "Who are you? Are you a bad guy? You LOOK like a bad guy! Not in a bad way! In a cool way! Like a movie villain! The kind with the cool suit and the evil plans and the—Lucas, he looks like a MOVIE VILLAIN!"
"I know, Barry."
"ISN'T THAT AWESOME?"
"It's really not."
Marcus tried—with every ounce of willpower he possessed, with every fiber of his transplanted consciousness, with the desperate, straining effort of a man trying to hold back a dam with his bare hands—to say something neutral. Something harmless. Something like "I'm nobody, don't worry about it, have a nice day, goodbye forever."
"My identity is irrelevant," Cyrus's voice said, and for a moment Marcus felt a spark of hope, because that was—not great, but not terrible either, that was dismissive but not aggressive, that was—
"What is relevant," the voice continued, and the hope died, "is that you have something I find... interesting."
NO.
NO NO NO NO NO.
Lucas's eyes widened. His hand closed around his Poké Ball. "Barry," he said, low and urgent. "Barry, I think we should—"
"Battle him!" Barry finished, completely misreading the situation with the confidence of a boy who had never once in his life correctly read a situation. "Yeah! Let's BATTLE him! Our first trainer battle! Come on, Lucas, let's show this guy what we're made of!"
"Barry, that is NOT what I was going to—"
But Barry had already grabbed his Poké Ball, already pulled it from his belt, already reared back with the wind-up of a kid who had practiced this throw in front of his bedroom mirror approximately four thousand times, and—
"CHIMCHAR! I CHOOSE YOU!"
The Poké Ball sailed through the air, burst open in a flash of white light, and a Chimchar materialized on the grass between Barry and Cyrus.
It was small. Adorably, heartbreakingly small. A tiny fire monkey, barely a foot tall, with wide, curious eyes and a flame on its tail that flickered and danced in the cold Sinnoh air. It looked around, took in its surroundings—the lake, the trees, the blonde boy who was its new trainer, and the tall, blue-haired man in the suit who was staring at it with an expression that, on Cyrus's face, looked like cold assessment but was, behind Cyrus's eyes, approximately ninety percent panic and ten percent "oh no, it's cute."
"YEAH!" Barry pumped his fist. "Chimchar, this guy wants to battle! Let's SHOW him!"
"Chim!" Chimchar chirped, bouncing on its feet, ready and eager and completely, blissfully unaware that it was a level five starter Pokémon facing down a man whose weakest team member could sneeze on it and cause a fainting.
Lucas stared at Barry. Stared at the Chimchar. Stared at Cyrus. Made a decision that was, given the circumstances, the right decision—the decision of a protagonist, the decision of a hero, the decision of a kid who wasn't going to let his friend fight alone even when every instinct was screaming at him to run.
He pulled out his own Poké Ball.
"Piplup, let's go!"
Another flash of light. Another starter Pokémon. Piplup materialized next to Chimchar—a small, proud, thoroughly self-important penguin that puffed out its chest and fixed Cyrus with a glare of haughty defiance that was incredible given that it was approximately ten inches tall and weighed about as much as a bag of flour.
"Pip! Piplup!" it announced, in a tone that clearly communicated: I don't know who you are, but I'm not impressed.
Two starter Pokémon. Level five. Fresh out of the ball. No moves worth mentioning—Pound for Chimchar, Pound for Piplup. Maybe Growl. Maybe Leer. The basic, bare-bones, tutorial-level movesets of Pokémon that had been alive for approximately fifteen minutes.
Against Cyrus.
Against the leader of Team Galactic.
Against a man with a Honchkrow, a Weavile, a Crobat, a Houndoom, and a Gyarados.
Marcus looked at the two tiny Pokémon. He looked at the two kids behind them—Barry, vibrating with excitement, Lucas, tense with determination. He felt a swell of emotion that Cyrus's face refused to display and Cyrus's voice refused to acknowledge—a mixture of admiration and pity and guilt and the horrible, creeping knowledge of what was about to happen.
Don't, he told himself. Don't do this. They're kids. They JUST got these Pokémon. Walk away. Just walk away. Turn around and—
His hand was already moving.
His hand was already reaching for his belt.
His hand was already closing around a Poké Ball—not just any Poké Ball, but the big one, the one that contained the twenty-one-foot serpentine engine of destruction that was his Gyarados—and his arm was already rearing back, and his fingers were already releasing, and the ball was already sailing through the air—
NO! NOT GYARADOS! ANYTHING BUT GYARADOS! THEY'RE LEVEL FIVE! GYARADOS IS—GYARADOS IS A GYARADOS! THIS IS LIKE BRINGING A NUCLEAR WARHEAD TO A WATER BALLOON FIGHT!
The Poké Ball exploded open.
And Gyarados emerged.
Not just "emerged." Gyarados did not simply "emerge" from Poké Balls. Gyarados erupted. Gyarados detonated. Gyarados entered the physical world with the subtlety and restraint of a volcanic eruption wearing a bad mood. Twenty-one feet of blue-scaled, rage-fueled, tooth-lined serpentine fury materialized in the air above the lakeside clearing, its body coiling and uncoiling as it rose to its full, terrifying height, its eyes blazing with the perpetual, existential anger that was Gyarados's factory default setting, its mouth opening to reveal row upon row of teeth that could—and had, if the Pokédex entries were to be believed—reduce steel beams to confetti.
It roared.
Not a normal roar. Not a "I'm a big animal and I'm making a loud noise" roar. A Gyarados roar. A roar that came from the depths of something ancient and furious and fundamentally opposed to the concept of chill. A roar that shook the trees. A roar that sent ripples across the surface of Lake Verity. A roar that caused every bird Pokémon within a half-mile radius to take flight simultaneously in a panicked explosion of feathers and self-preservation. A roar that said, in no uncertain terms: I am the worst thing that has ever happened to your day and your day is about to get significantly worse.
Chimchar fainted.
Not from an attack. From fear. The tiny fire monkey took one look at the twenty-one-foot serpent of doom hovering above it, made a sound that could only be described as "meep," and collapsed sideways onto the grass in a dead faint, its flame tail flickering out like a candle in a hurricane.
Piplup did not faint.
Piplup, to its eternal credit, stood its ground. It puffed out its tiny chest even further, tilted its head back to look up—way up, all the way up, at the creature that was approximately two hundred times its size—and said, with tremendous dignity and absolutely zero survival instinct:
"Pip."
Then it also fainted.
Not from an attack. From the effort of looking up that far. It had craned its neck so far back that it had simply... toppled over. Like a tiny, proud, penguin-shaped domino. It hit the grass with a soft thump, its little eyes swirled into unconsciousness, and it lay there, motionless, a monument to bravery and poor spatial awareness.
Barry and Lucas stared at their fainted Pokémon.
They stared at the Gyarados.
They stared at the Gyarados some more, because when a Gyarados was that close and that large and that angry, it commanded a significant portion of your available attention whether you wanted it to or not.
And then they did something that, in hindsight, was either very brave or very stupid—probably both, actually, because bravery and stupidity often shared a zip code:
They stood their ground.
Barry, despite his fainted Chimchar, despite the twenty-one-foot death serpent hovering overhead, despite every rational survival instinct that evolution had spent millions of years carefully installing in the human brain, clenched his fists and shouted:
"HEY! THAT'S NOT FAIR! Chimchar didn't even get to ATTACK! You can't just—you can't just pull out a GYARADOS against a level five Chimchar! That's—that's CHEATING! There are RULES! You're supposed to—"
"Dragon Tail," Cyrus's voice said.
The words were quiet. Almost casual. The kind of quiet, almost casual tone that a person uses when ordering a coffee or commenting on the weather, not the kind of tone that should accompany the command for a twenty-one-foot sea serpent to use a physical attack in the general direction of two twelve-year-old boys.
Gyarados moved.
It moved fast—faster than something that large had any right to move, its massive tail whipping around with a speed and force that turned the air itself into a weapon, the displaced wind howling past like a localized hurricane—and its tail connected.
Not with the fainted Pokémon. That would have been cruel but standard. That would have been within the normal parameters of a Pokémon battle, even a wildly unfair one.
No.
The tail connected with Barry and Lucas.
With the children.
With the actual human children.
Dragon Tail was, in the games, a physical Dragon-type attack with a base power of sixty and the secondary effect of forcing the target to switch out. In the games, it was a solid but unremarkable move—useful for phazing, decent for damage, nothing spectacular.
In reality—in this reality—Dragon Tail was a twenty-one-foot serpent swinging a tail that weighed approximately as much as a compact car into two twelve-year-old boys with the casual indifference of a bored construction worker knocking over a stack of empty boxes.
The impact was not gentle.
Barry went flying. Not metaphorically. Not "staggered backward" or "stumbled" or "was pushed." Flying. As in, his feet left the ground. As in, he traveled horizontally through the air for approximately fifteen feet, arms and legs pinwheeling, green scarf streaming behind him like a banner, his expression shifting rapidly through surprise, confusion, pain, more surprise, and finally a kind of stunned acceptance as he hit the ground, bounced once, rolled twice, and came to rest in a crumpled heap at the base of a tree.
Lucas, who was standing slightly behind Barry and therefore caught the tail at a different angle, went in a slightly different direction—sideways, mostly, his body rotating in the air like a particularly undignified frisbee. He hit the ground hard, skidding across the grass on his back, his red beret flying off his head and landing in the lake with a soft plop, and slid to a stop approximately ten feet from where he'd been standing, groaning, the wind thoroughly and comprehensively knocked out of him.
Marcus watched this happen with the frozen, horrified expression—well, internally frozen and horrified; externally, his face was its usual mask of cold, Cyrusian indifference—of a man who had just witnessed himself order a dragon attack on two children and could not, for the life of him, explain why.
I JUST HAD MY GYARADOS USE DRAGON TAIL ON TWO KIDS.
TWO ACTUAL KIDS.
THEY'RE TWELVE.
THEY'RE LYING ON THE GROUND GROANING AND I DID THAT. I DID THAT WITH MY MOUTH. MY MOUTH SAID "DRAGON TAIL" AND MY GYARADOS LISTENED BECAUSE MY GYARADOS IS A GOOD POKÉMON WHO DOES WHAT I TELL IT TO AND I TOLD IT TO TAIL-WHIP TWO CHILDREN ACROSS A CLEARING.
I AM THE WORST PERSON IN THE HISTORY OF PEOPLE.
I AM WORSE THAN THE REAL CYRUS. THE REAL CYRUS JUST WANTED TO DESTROY THE UNIVERSE. I'M OVER HERE PERSONALLY ASSAULTING MINORS WITH A SEA SERPENT.
Barry groaned. It was a theatrical groan—everything about Barry was theatrical—but it was also a genuine, pained groan, the groan of a kid who had just been swatted across a field by something that was, in terms of the "things that should be hitting twelve-year-olds" scale, significantly above the acceptable threshold.
"Owwwww," Barry said, from his crumpled position at the base of the tree. "What... what just... ow..."
Lucas groaned too, less theatrically, more quietly, the kind of groan that suggested he was doing a quick internal inventory of his bones and finding that while none of them were broken—Gyarados, to its credit or perhaps just by coincidence, had pulled the hit enough to avoid serious injury—all of them were very, very unhappy about what had just occurred.
"Barry..." Lucas managed, his voice strained. "Are you... okay...?"
"I'm FINE," Barry said, which was obviously a lie, because he was lying in a heap at the base of a tree and could not, at the present moment, feel his legs. "I'm totally fine. That was... that was a cheap shot. He cheap-shotted us. When I can stand up, I'm going to... I'm going to..."
He didn't finish the sentence, because he couldn't stand up, not yet, his body having made the executive decision that lying on the ground and contemplating mortality was a more appropriate use of the current moment than standing.
And Marcus—Cyrus—was already moving.
His body moved with the calm, unhurried efficiency of a man who had all the time in the world, because he did—the only two people in the vicinity who might have stopped him were currently horizontal and groaning, and their Pokémon were unconscious, and there was nobody else around, because this was Twinleaf Town, population: basically nobody.
He walked to where Chimchar lay. The tiny fire monkey was still unconscious, its flame tail out, its small body limp and helpless on the grass. Marcus's hand reached down—he tried to stop it, tried to will his arm to stay at his side, tried to resist the Cyrus autopilot with every scrap of mental energy he could muster—and picked up Chimchar's Poké Ball, which had rolled to a stop a few feet from where Barry had been standing.
No. No, don't do this. Put it back. PUT IT BACK.
He recalled Chimchar to its ball.
He put the ball in his pocket.
"HEY!" Barry's voice, from the ground, weak but outraged. "HEY! That's MY Chimchar! You can't—give it BACK! That's MINE! Professor Rowan gave it to ME!"
Marcus's body was already moving to Piplup. The tiny penguin was still unconscious, lying on its back in the grass, its little flippers splayed out at its sides, and it looked so small, so helpless, and Marcus felt a surge of guilt so intense it was almost physical, a hot, sick twist in his gut—
His hand picked up Piplup's Poké Ball.
Recalled Piplup.
Pocketed the ball.
"STOP!" Lucas this time, struggling to sit up, his face contorted with pain and anger and the desperate, helpless fury of a kid watching something precious be taken from him. "Give them back! Those aren't yours! You can't just—"
"The strong take from the weak," Cyrus's voice said, and each word fell like a stone into a frozen pond—cold, heavy, final. "This is not cruelty. It is the natural order. The universe does not reward those who are unprepared. It rewards those who act."
I DON'T BELIEVE THAT! I DON'T BELIEVE A SINGLE WORD OF WHAT I JUST SAID! I THINK STEALING POKÉMON FROM CHILDREN IS ONE OF THE WORST THINGS A PERSON CAN DO AND I JUST DID IT! TWICE! WITH MY OWN HANDS! WHILE QUOTING NIHILIST PHILOSOPHY AT THE CHILDREN I STOLE THEM FROM!
But his body wasn't done.
Because his body had noticed something else. Something that the two boys, in their pain and their anger and their focus on the immediate crisis of "a man with a Gyarados just dragon-tailed us and stole our Pokémon," had not thought to protect.
Their bags.
Barry's bag was lying on the grass where he'd dropped it when the Dragon Tail hit—a bright yellow backpack that matched his bright yellow personality, slightly scuffed, slightly overstuffed, with a zipper that was barely holding. Lucas's bag was still on his back, but Lucas was on the ground and couldn't exactly defend it with the kind of vigor that defending one's possessions typically required.
Marcus's body walked to Barry's bag first.
He opened it.
Inside: Potions. Several of them. The basic kind—the purple spray bottles that healed twenty HP, the starter kit that Professor Rowan or someone's mom or the local Pokémart had provided for the beginning of a journey. There were also a few Poké Balls—the cheap, basic, red-and-white kind—and some money, and a Town Map, and what appeared to be a hand-packed lunch in a container with a Staraptor sticker on it.
Marcus's hand reached in and took the Potions.
Took the Poké Balls.
Took the money.
Left the lunch, because apparently even the Cyrus autopilot had some standards.
"NO! MY STUFF!" Barry wailed, having finally managed to prop himself up against the tree trunk, though his legs were still not cooperating. "That's my STUFF! My MOM packed those Potions! She said 'Barry, take these Potions, you'll need them on your journey,' and I said 'Mom, I'll be FINE,' and she said 'take them anyway,' and NOW LOOK! The weird lake guy is STEALING them!"
Marcus moved to Lucas. Lucas, to his credit, tried to resist—tried to pull his bag away, tried to shield it with his body, tried to do something to prevent the tall, blue-haired man from reaching into his bag and taking his things. But Lucas was twelve, and injured, and on the ground, and Cyrus was a fully grown adult with the calm, implacable strength of a man who did not experience hesitation or doubt or any of the other inconvenient emotions that might have slowed him down.
He took Lucas's Potions.
Took Lucas's Poké Balls.
Took Lucas's money.
Lucas stared up at him with eyes that burned—not with tears, although there was a shimmer there that suggested tears were being considered and rejected—but with a fury, a quiet, intense, personal fury that Marcus recognized, because he had seen it in the mirror. It was the fury of someone who had been wronged and who intended, with absolute certainty, to make it right.
"I'll find you," Lucas said, his voice low and steady despite everything. "I don't know who you are. But I'll find you. And I'll get them back."
Cyrus looked down at the boy on the ground. And Cyrus's face did something that Marcus did not authorize and did not want—it smiled. Not a warm smile. Not a kind smile. A cold, thin, razor-edged smile that conveyed approximately zero warmth and approximately infinite menace. The kind of smile that villains gave to heroes in the first act, the kind of smile that said "I look forward to watching you try."
"Your determination is noted," Cyrus's voice said. "And dismissed. You are a child with no Pokémon, no supplies, and no understanding of the forces you presume to challenge. The distance between your ambition and your capability is... vast."
I hate myself, Marcus thought. I hate myself so much. I am giving a VILLAIN MONOLOGUE to a CHILD I just ROBBED. This is rock bottom. This is below rock bottom. This is the geological stratum beneath rock bottom, the one that scientists haven't discovered yet because it's too depressing to excavate.
He turned away.
And then, because apparently robbing two children of their starter Pokémon, their items, and their dignity was not enough—because apparently the Cyrus autopilot had one more atrocity left in its queue—his body paused.
And turned.
And his eyes focused on something in the grass that he hadn't noticed before.
A briefcase. Brown leather. Slightly battered. Sitting at the edge of the clearing, where it had been left—presumably by Professor Rowan, who had probably set it down here earlier when distributing the starters, or by one of the boys, who had been carrying it.
Rowan's briefcase, Marcus realized. The briefcase with the starter Pokémon. But Barry already has Chimchar—well, I have Chimchar now—and Lucas already has Piplup—well, I have Piplup now—so the only one left would be—
His hand was already reaching for the briefcase.
He opened it.
Inside, nestled in a custom-fitted foam insert, was a single Poké Ball.
The last one.
The one that hadn't been chosen.
Turtwig.
Marcus stared at the Poké Ball. Inside it was Turtwig—the Grass-type starter, the tiny tortoise Pokémon, the one that neither Lucas nor Barry had selected. It was sitting here, in a briefcase, at the edge of a lake, unclaimed and unprotected and right there.
Don't take it, Marcus told himself. DON'T. You've already stolen two starter Pokémon from two children. You've already mugged said children of their items and money. You've already had your Gyarados dragon-tail them across a clearing. You have crossed EVERY line. Don't cross this one too. Don't take the last starter. Don't—
He took it.
His hand closed around the Poké Ball, lifted it from the briefcase, and deposited it in his pocket with the same calm, efficient, utterly remorseless motion that he had used for everything else.
Three Poké Balls in his pocket now. Three starter Pokémon. The complete set. Chimchar, Piplup, and Turtwig. The rarest Pokémon in the Sinnoh region—because starter Pokémon were rare, absurdly rare, the kind of rare that made Professors guard them like crown jewels and distribute them one at a time to carefully selected trainers. You couldn't find these Pokémon in the wild. You couldn't catch them in tall grass or fish them out of ponds or stumble across them in caves. They were given, as gifts, as symbols of trust and partnership, as the beginning of something precious.
And Marcus had just stolen all three.
From children.
Why, he thought miserably, as his body straightened up and his face reset to its default expression of cold indifference. Why did I take Turtwig? I didn't even NEED Turtwig. I already have a full team! I have Honchkrow and Weavile and Crobat and Houndoom and Gyarados! What am I going to do with THREE level-five starters? They're USELESS to me in terms of battle power! I took them because—because—
"Starter Pokémon are among the rarest specimens in any region," Cyrus's voice said, and Marcus realized with horror that he was speaking aloud, delivering this justification to the two boys who were still lying on the ground staring at him with expressions of shock and fury. "Their genetic potential far exceeds that of common wild Pokémon. To leave such resources unclaimed would be... inefficient."
I'm justifying it. I'm JUSTIFYING it. To the CHILDREN I STOLE THEM FROM. I am standing here, with three stolen starter Pokémon in my pockets, explaining to two twelve-year-olds why it made LOGICAL SENSE for me to take their Pokémon. This is the worst thing I have ever done. This is the worst thing ANYONE has ever done. Team Rocket grunts are watching this from the afterlife and SHAKING THEIR HEADS at me.
"YOU'RE A THIEF!" Barry screamed, having finally managed to get to his feet, though he was swaying slightly and leaning against the tree for support. His face was red—not from embarrassment, but from pure, undiluted, twelve-year-old rage, the kind of rage that was too big for his body and too honest to be contained. "You're a—a POKÉMON THIEF! When my dad finds out about this—my dad is a FRONTIER BRAIN—he'll—he'll—"
"Your familial connections are irrelevant," Cyrus's voice said, already turning away, already walking toward the tree line, already leaving. "Power does not derive from lineage. It derives from will. And your will, at this moment, is... insufficient."
I just dissed his DAD. I stole his Pokémon, beat him up with a Gyarados, robbed him of his items, and then DISSED HIS DAD. I am the WORST HUMAN BEING IN THIS OR ANY UNIVERSE.
He walked away.
Behind him, he could hear Barry shouting—a stream of outraged, barely coherent threats and promises and declarations of vengeance that were deeply felt but, given the current power dynamic, deeply impotent. He could hear Lucas, quieter, saying something to Barry, something calm and measured and reassuring, and Marcus caught the words "we'll get them back" and "we'll get stronger" and "remember his face" and each word was a tiny knife in his conscience, a small, precise incision into the part of him that knew he had just done something unforgivable.
Gyarados floated beside him as he walked, its massive body weaving through the trees, somehow navigating the forest without knocking anything over, its perpetual expression of rage occasionally flickering toward something that, if you squinted, might have been smugness. It had done what its trainer asked. It had done it well. It was pleased with itself.
Crobat remained on Marcus's head, unbothered by the events it had just witnessed, chirping softly and nuzzling into his hair.
Marcus recalled Gyarados to its ball when they reached the road, because a twenty-one-foot sea serpent was not exactly inconspicuous as a traveling companion, and continued walking in silence.
The silence lasted approximately thirty seconds before his mouth broke it.
"The acquisition of the three starters was necessary," Cyrus's voice said, to no one, to the empty road, to the cold Sinnoh air. "Starter Pokémon represent a concentration of potential that cannot be replicated through conventional means. Their rarity is a function of controlled breeding programs managed by regional Professors—programs that produce a limited number of specimens per generation. To encounter all three in a single, unguarded location is an opportunity that would be irrational to ignore."
You're still JUSTIFYING it! You're justifying it to YOURSELF now! To the EMPTY ROAD! There's nobody HERE! You're delivering a TED Talk on the economic value of starter Pokémon theft to a bunch of TREES!
"Furthermore," the voice continued, because apparently the TED Talk was not over, "the two trainers demonstrated a fundamental lack of preparedness. They engaged an unknown opponent with untested Pokémon and no strategic assessment of the threat level. In the natural order, such recklessness is punished. I am merely the mechanism of that punishment."
They're KIDS! They're TWELVE! They've been trainers for approximately THIRTY MINUTES! Of COURSE they weren't prepared—they shouldn't HAVE to be prepared! They're supposed to be starting a fun adventure, not getting mugged by a nihilist with a Gyarados!
"Emotion clouds judgment," Cyrus's voice concluded, and Marcus could feel it—the Cyrus filter, working overtime, taking his guilt and his shame and his horror and grinding it all down into cold, rational, philosophical dust. "Guilt is a construct of a flawed spirit. I will not be bound by it."
But Crobat could feel the truth.
Crobat could feel the roiling, churning mess of emotions beneath the cold exterior—the guilt, the shame, the self-loathing, the desperate wish to turn around and go back and give everything back and say "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I don't know what's wrong with me, this body does things I don't want it to do and says things I don't mean and I'm SORRY."
Crobat chirped.
Softly. Gently. The way it always chirped when it sensed that its trainer was hurting.
And it wrapped its wings a little tighter around his head. Not possessively. Protectively. The way a parent wraps a blanket around a child. The way a friend puts an arm around someone who's crying.
"Your sentimentality is misplaced," Cyrus's voice said.
But his hand reached up—on its own, without the Cyrus filter's permission, without the autopilot's involvement, just Marcus, just the real person inside the shell—and touched Crobat's wing.
Gently.
Gratefully.
And Crobat purred.
The drive back to Veilstone City was long and quiet.
The driver grunt—who had waited exactly where he'd left her, and who had apparently spent the entire three hours of his absence practicing things to say to him when he returned, because the moment he got in the car she launched into a prepared speech about how "the drive was lovely and I thought about you the whole time, Commander, not in a weird way, in a professional way, a professionally admiring way"—eventually subsided into silence when Cyrus's voice said "drive" with a finality that suggested further vocalization would result in consequences.
Marcus sat in the back seat, staring out the window at the passing Sinnoh countryside, and thought about what he'd done.
Three starter Pokémon sat in his pocket, in their Poké Balls. Chimchar. Piplup. Turtwig. Three tiny, innocent, freshly born Pokémon that had been entrusted to two boys and one briefcase, and were now in the possession of a man who had obtained them through violence and theft.
I'm going to take care of them, Marcus promised himself, and it was a real promise, a genuine promise, the kind of promise that meant something even if his mouth could never say it out loud. I stole them—I didn't WANT to steal them, but I did—and now they're my responsibility. I'm going to raise them. Train them. Keep them safe. They're going to be the most loved, most pampered, most well-cared-for stolen Pokémon in the history of stolen Pokémon.
Even if I can never tell them that.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out Chimchar's ball. Held it in his hand. Felt its warmth—because it was warm, the way Poké Balls always were when they contained a living being, a gentle heat that pulsed like a heartbeat.
"You were... inadequately protected," Cyrus's voice said to the ball, quietly, almost gently—as gently as Cyrus's voice was capable of being, which was roughly equivalent to the gentleness of a brick that was trying really hard. "Your previous trainer was... unprepared. This is not a failing of yours. It is a failing of the world that placed you in his care without ensuring his competence."
That's the nicest thing my mouth has said since I got here, Marcus realized. It still sounds cold and clinical and vaguely threatening, but underneath the Cyrus filter... that was me trying to say "I'm sorry, little guy, I'll take care of you." And it came out as... well, as that. Which is not GOOD, but it's... something.
He put the ball back in his pocket.
Crobat chirped on his head.
Houndoom's ball vibrated on his belt.
And somewhere behind him, growing smaller in the rearview mirror, two boys stood at the edge of a lake with no Pokémon, no items, and no money, and stared at the road where the tall man in the suit had disappeared, and made promises of their own.
Promises of finding.
Promises of fighting.
Promises of getting back what was theirs.
And somewhere in her study in Celestic Town, Cynthia looked up from her research, her Garchomp rumbling beside her, and felt a chill run down her spine that had nothing to do with the Sinnoh cold.
Something's wrong, she thought.
She didn't know what.
Not yet.
But she would.
Marcus arrived back at the Galactic Building in the late afternoon to find the entire front entrance blocked.
Not by security. Not by barricades. Not by any of the things that typically blocked entrances to criminal headquarters.
By women.
Team Galactic grunts. Dozens of them. Possibly hundreds of them. Filling the entrance hall, spilling out onto the steps, overflowing into the street. They were packed together so tightly that the entrance looked less like a doorway and more like a solid wall of grey-uniformed curves, a dam of flesh and fabric and absolute physical impossibility. Hips pressed against hips. Shoulders pressed against chests. Bodies pressed against bodies in configurations that would have given a physicist an aneurysm and a fire marshal a heart attack.
And they were all staring at the car.
"COMMANDER CYRUS IS BACK!" someone shouted, and the crowd surged—or tried to surge, but surging was difficult when you were wedged into a space approximately one-third the size required to contain you, so what actually happened was more of a collective undulation, a wave of motion that rippled through the mass of bodies like wind through a field of very top-heavy wheat.
"Oh no," Marcus whispered inside his skull.
"The spectacle of your greeting is... unnecessary," Cyrus's voice announced as he stepped out of the car, projecting effortlessly over the crowd with the cold authority of a man who could silence a room by existing in it. "Return to your stations. Your duties have not been suspended in my absence."
The crowd did not disperse.
Instead, it did the opposite of dispersing.
It condensed.
The grunts pushed forward—or rather, the grunts in the back pushed forward, which pushed the grunts in the middle forward, which pushed the grunts in the front forward, creating a slow, inexorable tide of bodies that flowed toward Marcus like lava toward a village—warm, thick, and impossible to stop.
"Commander Cyrus, sir, how was your trip?"
"Commander Cyrus, did you eat lunch? I made you lunch! I made you THREE lunches in case you wanted OPTIONS!"
"Commander Cyrus, Commander Mars said you went to Lake Verity! What did you find? Was it a legendary Pokémon? Did you CATCH it? Can I SEE?"
"Commander Cyrus, I reorganized your files while you were gone! I also cleaned your office! And washed your spare suit! And alphabetized your bookshelf! And I would have done more but Commander Jupiter told me to stop because I was 'being weird' but I don't think it's WEIRD to want to make your workspace nice for you, it's just CONSIDERATE—"
The voices came from everywhere, overlapping and competing and creating a wall of sound that was somehow both overwhelming and adoring, like being caught in a hurricane made entirely of compliments and desperate affection.
Marcus waded through them. It was the only word for it—waded, because moving through this crowd was less like walking and more like swimming through a sea of soft, impossibly curvy bodies that parted just enough to let him through and then immediately closed behind him, filling the space he'd vacated with more bodies, more curves, more wide-eyed adoration.
He made it to his office. Closed the door. Locked it.
Leaned against it.
Breathed.
"This is untenable," Cyrus's voice said to the empty room, and for once, Marcus was in complete agreement with his own filter.
He walked to his desk and sat down. He reached into his pockets and placed the three stolen Poké Balls on the desk in front of him—Chimchar, Piplup, Turtwig—arranged in a neat row.
He stared at them.
Three starter Pokémon. Stolen from children and a briefcase.
A full team of his own Pokémon on his belt—Honchkrow, Weavile, Crobat, Houndoom, Gyarados. Five powerful, loyal, devoted Pokémon who loved him unconditionally despite every cold word he said to them.
A building full of women who adored him for reasons he couldn't fathom.
An evil plan he couldn't stop accelerating.
A voice he couldn't control.
And a Crobat on his head.
He let the starters out.
Three flashes of light. Three tiny Pokémon, materializing on his desk, blinking in the fluorescent light of Cyrus's office.
Chimchar was first to orient itself, its tiny head swiveling, its flame tail reigniting with a soft fwoosh, its eyes wide and cautious and—not afraid, exactly, but wary. It knew. On some instinctive, Pokémon level, it knew that the man sitting across from it was not its trainer, not the loud blonde boy who had thrown its ball with such enthusiastic abandon, but someone else. Someone different. Someone whose emotional register was a locked room to which Chimchar did not yet have the key.
Piplup was next—the tiny penguin straightening to its full, unimpressive height, puffing out its chest, fixing Cyrus with a glare of such concentrated indignation that it was almost physically tangible. Piplup was offended. Piplup was offended on a spiritual level. Piplup had been unconscious during the theft and had woken up in a strange place with a strange person and this was not acceptable and Piplup wanted the management.
Turtwig was last—the small grass turtle blinking slowly, calmly, with the unhurried equanimity of a creature that was either very Zen or very stupid, Marcus couldn't tell which. Turtwig looked around, looked at Cyrus, looked at the desk, looked at Crobat on Cyrus's head, and then apparently decided that everything was fine and began eating the corner of a report.
Marcus looked at them. Three tiny, helpless, perfect creatures.
I'm going to take care of you, he thought again. I promise. I'm going to—
"Your presence here is the result of strategic acquisition," Cyrus's voice told the three starters, cold and flat and informative. "You have been removed from suboptimal conditions and placed under my authority. Your previous circumstances were insufficient to realize your potential. Under my direction, you will achieve what you could not have achieved elsewhere."
The three starters stared at him.
Chimchar tilted its head, its expression shifting from wariness to something else—something curious. As if it could hear the words, could understand that they were cold and clinical, but could also hear something beneath them, something that the words were trying and failing to express.
Piplup maintained its glare for approximately three more seconds and then, with a dignity that would have impressed royalty, turned its back on Cyrus, sat down on the desk, and began grooming its feathers. I'll tolerate you, its body language said, but I want you to know that I'm doing so under PROTEST.
Turtwig continued eating the report.
And then—because his Pokémon could sense things, because they were attuned to him in ways that transcended language—the balls on his belt began vibrating.
All four of them. Simultaneously.
Marcus sighed and released them.
Honchkrow materialized on the desk, took one look at the three starters, and puffed up its feathers in what Marcus initially interpreted as aggression but quickly realized was protectiveness. The big dark bird sidled toward the three smaller Pokémon, positioned itself between them and the door, and settled into a watchful crouch, its eyes scanning the room with the focused intensity of a bodyguard who had just been assigned three new clients.
Weavile appeared on the floor, prowled over to the desk, looked up at the starters, and then—delicately, carefully, with a gentleness that seemed impossible for a creature with claws that could cut steel—reached up and patted Chimchar on the head. Once. Lightly. A gesture of... welcome? Acceptance? Marcus wasn't sure. But Chimchar's flame tail brightened, and the wariness in its eyes dimmed slightly.
Houndoom padded over and sniffed the three starters, its skeletal horns gleaming, smoke curling from its nostrils. Turtwig looked up from the report it was eating, stared at Houndoom, and then went back to eating the report. Houndoom, apparently satisfied with this interaction, lay down beside the desk and curled its tail around its body, smoke puffing contentedly.
Gyarados—Marcus did NOT release Gyarados, because Gyarados was twenty-one feet long and the office was not twenty-one feet long and the last time had been a disaster of spatial proportions, so Gyarados stayed in its ball, but it vibrated in a way that suggested it was vibrating supportively.
And Crobat—still on his head, always on his head, forever on his head—chirped a greeting to the new arrivals and then settled back down, content in its throne of blue hair.
Marcus sat behind his desk, surrounded by Pokémon old and new, stolen and bonded, and felt—despite the guilt, despite the horror of what he'd done, despite the knowledge that two children were right now standing at a lake with empty pockets and broken hearts because of him—felt something warm.
Something good.
Something that Cyrus's voice couldn't name and Cyrus's face couldn't show and Cyrus's body language couldn't convey, but that was there nonetheless, burning in his chest like a small, stubborn flame that refused to go out no matter how many cold words were thrown at it.
"Your integration into the existing team structure will proceed according to a defined protocol," Cyrus's voice told the three starters, who were now being gently herded by Honchkrow and Weavile into what appeared to be a nest made of stolen reports and Crobat's shed wing membranes. "Training will commence immediately. You will meet the standards I set, or you will... be retrained until you do."
It sounded like a threat.
It was not a threat.
It was a promise.
And somewhere, in the quiet space between the words and the meaning, between the cold exterior and the warm interior, between the man he appeared to be and the man he actually was—
Marcus smiled.
Not on his face. His face remained as immovable as carved granite, as expressionless as a Zen garden, as emotionally communicative as a parking meter.
But inside.
Inside, Marcus smiled.
And the three starters, somehow, felt it.
And they curled up in their nest of stolen paperwork, surrounded by Cyrus's other Pokémon, in the office of the most accidentally evil man in Sinnoh, and they slept.
And Crobat purred on his head.
And outside the door, the muffled sound of Team Galactic grunts whispering about how dreamy Commander Cyrus was filtered through the walls.
And somewhere in a forest between Twinleaf Town and Sandgem Town, two boys without Pokémon walked toward Professor Rowan's lab with fire in their eyes and vengeance in their hearts.
And the world turned.
And the story continued.
END OF CHAPTER TWO