Chapter 9
Royal City / Belladonna / Cousins / Drowning
—July 12th, 128 CR
"It's called echolalia," Prof. Willow said. The video call stuttered and resumed. "They hear things in the egg and repeat them meaninglessly. One of my peers in grad studies cared for an igglybuff egg while he was practicing a seminar, and when it hatched it recited bits of the talk for a few weeks."
"I understand. Thank you, Prof. Willow. It was a little unnerving!"
"No, it absolutely is—protein expression markers aren't quite as dry when they're being recited by balloon staring at you at night."
Russ laughed. "Sorry to bother you."
"Call me anytime, I'd rather you contact me for nothing than fail to for something. Have you called your mom lately?"
"Thanks, professor, I better go."
The celestiule had been silent after that first unnerving pronouncement. 'How dull'. Duller than the egg? Now it was acting like a baby pokémon should: smelling everything, chewing on blankets, sleeping most of the time.
Russ looked outside; Matt's ursaring had shown his fatherly side and was dozing with it in the exercise yard. The other pokémon had been curious, approaching carefully one at a time to smell and touch it carefully, even other trainers' pokémon, who could be standoffish toward pokémon outside their group.
The celestiule was beautiful, eye-catching with its changing, sky-reflecting hide and pearly eyes and mane. He'd held off on naming it, knowing that sometimes baby pokémon would suggest their own names when they began to speak, but privately he was thinking about 'Celeste'.
x.x.x.x.x
Matthew Reyes, Eosazhana's son, walked through the royal city.
This should have been yours, said one voice, and It can still be, said the other.
He had had plans, once, grand and sweeping, in that confusing flavor of defiance and desperate desire to please that colored all his interactions with his mother. Notice me! Notice me! Notice me! they all seemed to say, in true teenager fashion.
He couldn't escape it. Well, he'd been a teenager well after his allotted time.
A secret he couldn't utter, not even to the wind or the reeds. Maia didn't know; she had been a kitten when it happened, an ocean's width distant, but she knew something was wrong. Bjorn knew pieces; he'd been away, convalescent at the pokémon center. The others had left him, frustrated, traded away, abandoning him. Dead.
It could be worth it. It could all yet be worth it.
He felt sick for thinking it.
x.x.x.x.x
The gym was in the old town, on expensive real estate with a view of the ocean. It resembled an ancient amphitheater or, more appropriately, a gladiator arena. Stone pillars ringed the spectator seating, supporting trellises choked with flowering vines and shading the seats with cloth overhangs.
The battle area had the usual modern setup despite the building's apparent age: pale substrate, trainer platforms, boundary moat, energy shields, recording devices. There were people in the stands in anticipation of the next scheduled battle: adults chatting in the shade or enjoying the sun, kids running around and being annoying, young pokémon following them and screeching, vendors offering hot roasted nuts and ice cream. Now and then a wingull would drift overhead, gliding aimlessly, and insects and hummingbirds darted from flower to flower among the trellises.
The three of them had studied the arena for a moment before it became apparent that they were not about to be met by an attendant or receptionist. Matt, patience dwindling, stalked off along the perimeter of the amphitheater while Russell and Moriko trailed behind. Moriko couldn't blame him, for once: after the trouble they'd gone through to secure this appointment, standing in line for hours and fending off challengers who wanted to battle to move ahead, somebody at the facility had better look interested in keeping it.
The stone path was surrounded by dense flowering bushes and ornamental trees. As they went on they passed more and more poisonous flowering plants—Bryonia, Acontium, Solanaceae—that Moriko guessed were part of a theme, this being the poison-type gym. Russ pointed them out; he had always been interested in plants, even before plant-type Sylvia, but soon they were passing species he'd never seen, not even in a book. Not all the regions had been fully explored, and the continents were different than on Terra: there were still plants to be discovered or properly described.
Matt soon found a gardener wearing thick work gloves and face protection against the plants, and was asking her where the gym leader was.
"Oh, I'm not sure…" she was saying. "Do you have an appointment?"
"Are you kidding? I can't believe this gym—"
The woman pulled off her mask and kerchief. Moriko recognized her from her headshot on the gym website.
Matt bit back whatever he was about to say.
"Good decision," Belladonna said, grinning. She was taller than Matt, with fuchsia hair and luminous green eyes.
The gym leader was looking between her and Matt. "Are you two half?"
Moriko stiffened. "Yeah, why?"
"Cousins!" she shouted, and hugged the two of them boisterously. "It is so good of you to come! Please, who are your people?"
Matt and Moriko stared at her, shocked.
"M-My…?" Moriko stammered.
"You do have clans, don't you?" Belladonna looked between them, her excitement cooling as she saw their obvious ignorance and confusion. "Well, never mind. Ask your parents, I suppose. Show me your pokédexes."
They obliged, and she scanned their IDs. "Moriko Sato, were you just in Verdure Town?"
"Yes?"
Belladonna grinned again. "I heard your oxhaust beat Hawthorn's little thornlem. Good for you. I hate that he has those things. This way," she said, motioning them to follow her.
They took another path through the gardens; distantly they could hear the crowd in the arena. The plants were higher and closer here, disorienting, the path twisting and the gym leader striding swiftly and almost out of view.
"You hate the thornlem?" Moriko asked, hurrying after her.
"I don't hate them, I hate that Hawthorn has them," Belladonna said over her shoulder. "He's the worst person to have them. They should have gone to Ironhelm, he's too fucked up on decker juice to do anything with them, and that would be a shade less infuriating."
"Why… shouldn't he have them?"
"A pokémon like that," Belladonna said passionately, "should belong to a queen. Pokémon won't torture or murder. A killer pokémon would, but good luck controlling it. The automata, though? They will do anything you say, and they don't need to eat or rest or think."
Moriko couldn't think of anything to say to that.
"We've been out of queens for a while," Matt said, an edge in his voice.
"That's the thing about queens," Belladonna said wistfully. "When you get rid of one, there's another waiting. The process is quite instantaneous."
"How do you know they'll do anything?" Matt added.
Belladonna smiled back at them, feral.
The path forked. "Go down to the arena, I'll get dressed and get my pokémon," Belladonna said, directing them down one arm. "See you in a bit!"
"Sounds like she knows something about the second crossing," Russ said, as they went off.
"At this point I'm not sure I want to know," Matt said grimly.
x.x.x.x.x
Matt went down to the challenger's platform, and Russ and Moriko took seats nearby.
The gladiator pokémon from New Dawn could have fought down below, blood and ichor flying. Moriko had always found that game cartoonishly violent, but she felt nervous thinking of it now. The sight of the dead trainer in Tsugaru intruded on her thoughts, and that of Latna the caligryph, yellow eyes in the twilight. She shivered.
The gym was old underneath the modern trappings. She imagined the adepts of the second crossing squaring off with no shield to protect them, and no healing machine for afterward. You could pull back time in layers like paint or wallpaper and find the blood and the bones.
The buzz of sound from the crowd changed; Moriko looked down to see the referee emerge and take his place behind the monitoring equipment. Cheering followed, and Matt's head snapped around to watch as Belladonna appeared. She had changed into her gym leader's outfit, black highlighted with a pinkish-purple, and her arms and neck clattering like an exploded junk jewelry drawer.
Russ pulled out his pokédex, looking back and forth between it and the gym leader. "Ha, she's wearing porphyry," he said.
"Uh, the city?"
"It's actually a color; it used to be illegal for anyone to wear but the imperial family. Very expensive. Made of snails." He frowned. "Well, back then, at least. It probably comes out of a vat in industrial Sinnoh now."
"Single battle, two pokémon per trainer, no items, no time limit, switching allowed," the referee was saying.
Matt and Belladonna were nodding agreement. The gym leader's expression was… hungry.
The rules were always 'switches allowed', but hot switching was hard to pull off; the incoming pokémon would be vulnerable to a big hit upon reformation—
"Select your pokémon!"
A pokéball and a great ball spun into the ring. Tak appeared on the floor in a flash of blue light; he studied his surroundings, head twisting, as his opponent materialized across the field from him.
The vileplume was enormous, each petal swollen and shiny in the sunlight while its tiny eyes glinted underneath. Gloom that evolved too early were sometimes unable to support the ponderous weight of their petals as a vileplume and required physical therapy, but this one didn't resemble those shriveled specimens in the slightest.
"Trainers ready?" the referee called from the sidelines. "Begin!"
"Have at it," said Matt, folding his arms and relaxing his stance. "Watch out for spores."
Tak clacked his beak and ascended into the air, turning a few lazy loops before diving with a screech at the flower pokémon. The vileplume released a dense cloud of toxic spores that shimmered in the sun, and then aimed a stream of pale purple acid at its opponent.
The honchkrow dodged the acid easily, swooping away from the vileplume. He flapped his wings powerfully, trapping it in a whirlwind that spun its spores up into the air—and spread them throughout the arena. Chatter and sarcastic clapping sounded in the audience.
"Looks like you're going to have to get your feet wet," Matt commented, sounding amused.
Tak squawked something unintelligible, which was probably for the best, before arcing upward and streaking down again in a dive bomb attack. He angled under the spores, smacking into the vileplume and whisking away again. He was flying smoothly, probably not poisoned or paralyzed, while the vileplume looked a little less serene with one petal crushed and scratches oozing dark ichor. The partisan crowd roared their disapproval.
Tak swung around while the vileplume glowed, humming as it healed itself—but it traded the previously crushed petal for a new injury, the honchkrow's wing slashing it along its body.
Dodging another shot of acid, Tak struck the vileplume again, this time making it lose its balance and topple over. The instant of vulnerability gave the honchkrow an opening to launch into a scratching, pecking frenzy.
Belladonna's arm snapped out, and she recalled the vileplume. Moriko clenched one hand, watching. The gym leader had good reflexes; she hadn't let Tak really put his beak in. The vileplume could still be a threat if she brought it out again.
Matt smiled, satisfied, and Tak screeched happily.
And yet. Belladonna was grinning a little too broadly for someone who'd just had their first pokémon driven back decisively. "Not bad," she said, her first words the entire match. "Try this."
The ultra ball arced over the sand, revealing a winged shape; Tak swooped in for his free hit on the materializing pokémon.
It slapped the honchkrow out of the air and leapt on him, blood and black feathers flying, and it was Matt's turn to jerk out his hand in a quick-draw recall. The crowd cheered and whistled at the turnabout.
Mantigore, the maneater pokémon. Dark- and poison type, it evolves from scorplion near level forty. It lives deep in the desert, guarding oases and stalking opponents that come to drink. Its poison causes weakness and paralysis, and then it will strike with its claws and teeth.
It was a desert lion, thin and pale, with dark maroon bat's wings and a scorpion's tail and armor. The creature snarled, high and hissing, its jaws augmented by chelicerae.
"This one's a favorite," Russ murmured, tapping his pokédex. He and Matt had been looking at the Battle Insider page for the gym.
The mantigore paced restlessly, glaring at Matt as if he'd robbed it of a treat.
Matt seemed to freeze, thinking, and as the seconds ticked by the referee raised a flag. "Challenger must select a pokémon."
Finally he blinked and shook himself, and tossed a pokéball out into the ring.
"Maia," he said.
The audience sighed as she appeared. The tibyss accentuated the mantigore's severity of form: it was ragged, parched, a scar on the sand, where she was water made flesh, flowing along the ground instead of walking.
It snarled, fur bristling, wings unfurling, the scorpion's tail rising to quiver in the air. Maia arched her neck and regarded it with cool, queenly disdain. You fool, Maia's look seemed to say. You are beneath my notice.
"Trainers may begin when ready."
"Ragemaw," said Belladonna, "sting cross."
The mantigore sprang into the air and circled around the ring to build up momentum before hurling itself at the tibyss. Fangs, claws and tail glistened with venom as it dove, wings unfurling at the last moment to blind and overwhelm—
Maia's ice shard hit it squarely, the fragments exploding out of the tibyss' mouth and slicing its face and wings. The mantigore screeched, rolling away in mid-air, and hit the ground ungracefully. As it righted itself, it hissed at her, and Maia raised her ruff, her expression identical to Matt's hauteur.
"Careful now," Russ muttered.
"Double team," ordered Belladonna. "Stay on the ground."
Ragemaw spat, annoyed, splitting into clones. Despite its ferocity, its deception skill was quite good: Moriko couldn't find a telltale mistake in the illusion, and Matt's frown of concentration suggested he couldn't either.
"Maia—"
"Crunch!"
The three clones leapt at Maia and she swept through them with an icy wind. They dissipated, but the real mantigore was on the outside—it had time to close on her and clamp its jaws where her neck met her shoulder.
"Maia!" Matt shouted.
Moriko found herself watching Matt, fascinated at that new note of fear in his voice, despite the action in the arena. She looked back: Ragemaw's claws and fangs were sunk into Maia's midnight blue hide and bioluminescent spots, its arachnid mouthparts delivering venom like a needle.
It swung its scorpion's tail at her throat. She grunted as the sting sank into her paw instead, raising it just in time.
Maia growled, low and threatening, as she shoved it away. The two feline pokémon slashed one another briefly, grit flying, and then Ragemaw caught her hard across the muzzle and she dropped her head, sidling away.
Matt made a choked noise that the mic barely picked up. He was leaning over the trainer box railing, nearly falling.
The mantigore gave a raspy cackle and crouched to leap.
An explosion of dirty water burst underneath Ragemaw, sending it spinning into the air. The moat drained, turbulent, as Maia dragged it into the arena to flood it. She stood in the water, drawing it around herself, watching her opponent.
The mantigore was recovering, righting itself. It wheeled in the air, coming around again. She fired off another ice shard—too slow—
Ragemaw landed hard in the water, sending up spray, paws splashing as it slashed at the tibyss. Her head dipped—
Maia froze it, spiderweb frost exploding outward along the surface of the water. The mantigore was soaked from the explosion; it froze too, locked into place. The tibyss snarled, a wave rearing up like a fist, and it washed over the mantigore, hardening instantly.
The crowd roared as she limped away, leaving Ragemaw encased in a shell of ice. It jerked its head and yowled.
Matt's smirk found its way back onto his face. He looked up at Belladonna, who stared back, eyes blazing.
"Finish him off, Maia."
Maia prepared a hydro pump, the sphere of water gathering in her open mouth. Her bio-lights glowed.
The mantigore struggled, cracks appearing along the surface of its shell—there had been an air bubble under its wings, and it had a little room to move them. It snarled, poison sting spikes shooting off its tail and freeing it.
With a wrench, it was free, and it shot at her.
The hydro pump hit it like a tank. It bounced twice before Belladonna's trainer platform finally arrested its motion.
Ragemaw struggled to its feet.
There were cheers and gasps. Moriko's hands flew to her mouth, childlike. Maia!
The mantigore spread its wings and staggered. With a sigh, it dropped limply onto the ground.
Moriko gathered breath to cheer and then cut it off. She stared agonizingly down at Belladonna; there was still the vileplume to contend with.
Belladonna was watching the mantigore as its body faded into energy, and finally she recalled it. She stood for a moment, thinking, and she looked out at Maia, bleeding, breathing hard, covered in cuts and envenomed punctures.
The tibyss looked back at her and raised her head, held her ruff high.
Belladonna nodded to the ref.
"Trainer Matthew is the winner!"
The crowd erupted with cheering and an undercut of booing from the diehards.
"Matt and Maia!" Russ shouted through his cupped hands.
Moriko clapped, whistling. She was never best pleased with Matt, but Maia deserved all the praise.
Matt jumped to the arena floor, skidding on the water. He rushed over to Maia and then slowed, putting his hands on her face with sudden delicacy and obvious affection. She bumped him with her nose, smearing his clothes with blood, and then she hopped back into her pokéball.
Matt left the ring, disappearing under the stands as he was waved over by one of the gym leader's acolytes, probably to use a healing machine for Maia's poisoning.
"Trainer Russell, please approach the challenger's platform."
Russell got up without a word, and made his way down to the arena. Moriko whistled at him, and he waved without turning around.
His first pick was Conall, sand-colored and mud-spattered. The dirfox had improved greatly since that day that Russ had caught him, when he'd burst out of his pokéball after being healed and hid in a closet. Eventually he'd requested a nickname, as some pokémon did, and had shown off his psychic powers and excellent deception skills.
Russ wore his customary mild expression, but Belladonna's had been stormy since recalling her mantigore. She flicked a great ball into the ring. The energy in it coalesced and then rose, higher and higher.
An enormous arbok loomed over Conall, its hood snapping open to reveal eyespots in red and yellow, garish against its dark purple hide. The dirfox shifted backward a step as it studied him with lidless eyes, its forked tongue flickering.
Conall shivered—and then split into three copies. Too early. The battle screen flicked on, and Russ got a red flag from the ref. Too many faults and he'd forfeit.
No time to apologize: the arbok surged forward, selecting one of the double-team illusions, and it glared at it ferociously.
Behind Moriko: "Not double team—"
She jumped. "Gah! Matt, say something!"
Matt smirked and nodded at the arena. "Arbok can sense heat and heartbeat—it might be able to see through the double team."
"Confuse ray!" Russ commanded. "Conall!"
The dirfox and its copies were paralyzed, locked in the same half-crouch. The arbok's mouth opened grossly wide as it reared up and struck. An instant later, it was shaking the dirt off its snout as Conall and his remaining copy slunk away behind a drift of sand.
Matt folded his arms. "Huh, not bad."
The arbok whirled and spat venom at its opponent, but the dirfox levitated a curtain of sand to block the drops, running alongside it as it rose. Just in time: the arbok burst through the shield, striking just behind him.
"Confusion!"
Conall turned, trembling; it seemed to do nothing, but suddenly the air in front of his opponent rippled, distorting. Its head was knocked backward sharply as psychic energy washed over it. It lunged forward again, and then stopped, scanning the arena, looking past the dirfox right in front of it.
The CFN indicator flashed onto the battle feed. Some cheering from the audience.
Russ raised a fist triumphantly. "Get it, Conall! Use psybeam!"
The dirfox paused, charging the stronger psychic attack. When he let fly, multicolored energy hummed as it hit the arbok, who hissed and tried to jerk away. It struck out with a poison fang only to jar its neck painfully as it hit the ground a good meter away from its opponent.
Conall ran in, yipping mockingly. He hit it with short, sharp psychic attacks, the arbok's upraised body jerking from side to side as it looked around in bewilderment.
It couldn't last.
"Careful! Get to range and use sand whip!"
Belladonna sighed, annoyed. "Veregrei! Focus!" she called, and after a beat she put her fingers to her mouth, whistling with a peculiar harmonic.
The arbok's head whipped around.
"Conall—"
Veregrei dove at the dirfox almost too fast to see, the poison fang attacks stabbing into his body. Once, twice, three times—on the fourth strike, it tossed the dirfox into the air like a toy.
The arbok unhinged its jaw, and Conall tumbled headfirst into its gullet.
A groan from the crowd. Russ was holding out the dirfox's pokéball.
Veregrei spun, blocking the pokéball return beam. The arbok gulped grotesquely, the dirfox's limp legs sticking out of its mouth.
Moriko was on her feet, screaming at the ref, and Matt was too, and so was half the crowd.
The referee was waving a black flag; the match timer had paused—how many seconds had passed?—Belladonna was grinning again. The ref finally threw down his own pokémon, a reuniclus that expertly disabled both combatants and teleported them to opposite ends of the ring.
As it let them go, the arbok snapped its maw closed and looked around, hissing furiously, and Conall collapsed on his side, covered in deep bite marks. Russ recalled him.
Moriko saw him mouth disbelieving curses.
"Matt, what the fuck," she whispered.
Matt said nothing and just sat slowly. He stared down at the arena with his hands clenched on his knees.
Moriko watched Belladonna. A cold dislike crept up her back, and it felt like contemptuous looks and disbelieving stares.
There goes that half-second crossing girl, hafu kid, you know what they're like; every time she raised her voice or played too hard there it was, the wildwoman's child, the animal; her pokémon-bright hair and eyes markied her as other despite ubiquitous cosmetic genehans—and she knew the rumors about how they'd got those colors without tech.
And Belladonna just—!?
"She's capering for them," Matt whispered. "This is what they want to see."
There was a disapproving murmur from the crowd, but no one had left their seats. They were here for this; they were here to be disgusted and shocked by the violence. The ref had stopped it when it had gone tantalizingly over the line.
Moriko glanced at him. "I was so careful," she said. "I was so careful my whole life. And she…"
He nodded once. He knew. "Queens," he muttered. "Court jester, more like. Who does she think she is, wearing the royal purple?"
Moriko felt bad, watching Russ. The psychic- and ground-type dirfox had been supposed to sweep the poison-type gym leader's team or nearly, but types hadn't been a factor: only the savage fangs of the arbok were needed. Now Russ had a fairy-type and a grass-type to pick from.
"Sylvia!" Russ called, tossing out her pokéball.
But then again…
Sylvia had evolved, her shoulder branches lengthening and sprouting into dragon's wings, her tail a long, flexible wooden club, and her forelegs morphed into long taloned arms. Borfang, wolf-dragon, much-loved for their loyalty and power.
Sylvia howled and took to the air.
"Ice fang," Belladonna said, but she'd folded her arms, looking less eager.
The arbok leapt at Sylvia, jaws crackling with ice-type energy as it pushed off the ground, its corded muscle launching it high into the air. It missed as she just flew out of reach.
"Venom spray."
"Dragonbreath!"
Sylvia wove neatly around the ranged attack and hit the arbok with one of her own, teal dragonfire searing down on it. It dove underground and burst out of the sand, missing her as she swooped away. It fired off a poison sting, wide and dispersed, and a couple of the needles managed to connect.
Another dragonbreath from the borfang and the arbok was slowing, paralyzed. It screeched, half the audience wincing, and Sylvia faltered, but she managed to wing off out of reach again.
The arbok was writhing, trying to follow her down the arena, slow and painful.
"Finish it off, Sylvia!"
Sylvia flew above it and breathed dragonfire until it disappeared in the recall.
"Arbok is out! One pokémon left on each side," the referee called, updating the match totals on the gym video screens.
The gym leader tapped her lips for a moment before selecting a new pokémon: it was a raigar, a shiny one with red fur and yellow markings, its bells shining silver in the sunlight.
"She's trying to force Sylvia to land," Matt commented. Airborne pokémon had unparalleled mobility, but it gave them vulnerabilities like an air-type.
"It's done if she can get a good hit on it, though." Tarahn had lost more than one battle when his opponent had resisted deception and charged in. "Is there anything ice/poison she could be using?" Moriko wondered.
"Look on your pokédex."
"There's this thing called 'making conversation'—"
"Rootbind, Sylvia!"
The raigar darted out before the grasping roots could connect and aimed a thunder wave at Sylvia. The electricity homed in on her and she grunted, glowing with the hit, her wingbeats turning fitful and uncoordinated. She didn't quite drop like a stone, but it was close.
The raigar approached and she lunged at it, talons out to slash. It dodged and raked her with a quick poison claw before leaping away again. She chased after it, wings still ungainly, and got a faceful of acid for her trouble. Sylvia snarled, her mane bristling as she tensed to spring.
"Sylvia!"
Russ whistled and she broke away, trotting in a circle around the arena's edge as the raigar mirrored her path.
"Well-trained," Matt said. "Dragon-types can get wild."
Moriko nodded. "She was going to leap headfirst into its next attack."
"Careful now," Russ was saying. "Roar!"
Sylvia's bellow had an edge to it that unnerved the human crowd and froze the raigar in its tracks. She shot forward, rising on her hind legs to slash powerfully.
The raigar recovered and hit her with another thunder wave; she fell, muscles jerking and her wings flapping uselessly, and the crowd cheered the reversal. The raigar danced away and then closed in again when she didn't follow, dragging its venomous claws down her belly.
Sylvia snapped at it, teeth closing on a limb, but it twisted out of her grip. It fled to range and started to spit gobbets of venom to finish her off.
Moriko groaned. Sylvia wasn't looking good. Come on!
But there was a glint in the borfang's eye, and roots shot out of the ground to curl around the raigar's paws as it yowled in surprise. She lunged, muscles straining, and she clamped her jaws around the smaller pokémon, shaking and worrying it with a growl and the discordant jingle of its bells.
It yowled and shocked her, but she held on, blood staining its yellow coat.
Belladonna recalled it and nodded perfunctorily at Russ. She was already looking away, looking at the crowd—looking for Moriko.
"Trainer Russell is the winner!"
"Yeah! Sylvia!" Moriko called, Matt whistling beside her.
Sylvia sat down clumsily, legs splayed, and Russ recalled her.
Moriko realized it was her turn.
"Go get 'em, kid," Matt said. He grinned as she rose uneasily.
Russ drew off to visit the healing machine, and the referee was calling for her.
The walk to the trainer's box took too long, the sky above her too blue, the sun too hot, the arena walls too close. The people in the audience were all staring at her, ranks and ranks of identical shadowed faces. She looked down, looked away, concentrated on the scuff of the stone under her boots and the feel of the weathered cast iron of the ladder under her fingers.
A perfect crowd to watch her lose.
Stop that, she told herself firmly, closing her eyes. Belladonna wasn't unbeatable, it had just happened twice today. Everything was perfectly okay. Tune the crowd out; they don't matter, they're just a bunch of repeated sprites, like in Legendary III.
She'd spent hours on that game with Russ, working through the battles and recruiting the pokémon characters, defeating boss ronin and impressing mythical pokémon from beyond time, freeing the lost prince. Becoming the legend yourself.
Gods, she was far from legendary.
Maybe that was for the best—the protagonist from III turned into the villain in Legendary IV.
She selected Rufus' pokéball at the referee's signal.
The ball arced out, opened; energy spilled out as the reconvergence effect snapped as loud as thunder. It coalesced into the oxhaust, light fading. Rufus yawned and exhaled an umbrella of flame before setting about calmly stretching his muscles.
Belladonna had chosen her fifth monster. The oxhaust's opponent was a bipedal lizard with dark hide mottled with orange and yellow patches, its claws taped up with beige fabric.
Varanitor, the monitor pokémon. A poison- and fighting-type, it evolves from komodra due to age or when traded. Travelers found them on a distant island. They work together to secure territory and drive out intruders using a combination of poison and direct damage.
Moriko tried not to groan; the fighting-type was a problem. She squinted at Belladonna, getting tired of how gym leaders seemed to guess that the three of them each had a different Gaiien starter.
"Trainers may begin!"
The varanitor attacked suddenly from its patient crouch, charging and kicking up a cloud of sand at close range. It darted behind the oxhaust and kicked at his legs, talons gouging his hide. Rufus kicked backward, turning and roaring a flamethrower underneath one arm.
The varanitor wove out of reach and spat a clot of acid that sizzled on the pipes on Rufus' back. Rufus exhaled another fire attack as they backed off, circling each other.
"Bulk up," Belladonna said.
"Flame charge, Rufus!"
The varanitor glowed red, trading energy for strength, and it sidestepped as the oxhaust barrelled in, surrounded by flames. It dealt Rufus a neat karate chop across his back that dented his armor and sent him staggering.
Rufus flame charged again, aiming an iron punch at the varanitor, but he was still too slow, his opponent weaving around his fists. At last, Rufus got a hit in, flooring the varanitor—
—and it balanced on one claw mid-fall, and kicked Rufus right in the face.
The oxhaust staggered backward, dazed, arms up in a fighter's pose. Could he even see? Was his faceplate damaged? Moriko strained on tiptoe to see.
The varanitor shook itself, and then with a running leap it dove into the sand as if it was water.
Fuckshitfuckfuck—"Rufus! Use flame wheel and—just hold it! It's using dig!"
The oxhaust crouched, the fire on his shoulders leaping up as flame surrounded him in a spiral and held, flaring.
Agonizing seconds passed with no attack. Moriko bit her lip—the ref would call out a timer for no attacks occurring, it had to do something it had to do something now—Rufus could only hold like this so long—how 'bout now—now—
The varanitor burst out of the ground in a fountain of sand and punched Rufus in the lower back despite the flames. Rufus lost concentration, and the fire exploded outward off his body.
The varanitor was knocked back, flipped across the substrate, and it skidded to a stop before righting itself gingerly. Rufus whirled to face it—gods, still too slow—but the BRN indicator pinged on the arena monitor. Both pokémon were panting; the varanitor's boxing tape was gone, burnt up, and its movements were slowing.
Come on! He can outlast it! "Flame charge!"
Rufus' mane flared and shot haphazardly out of his crushed pipes. He charged again—and missed as the varanitor leapt onto his back. It jammed its claws into an unarmored spot on his neck, and Rufus bellowed, blood spurting.
"Rufus!"
He jerked, trying to throw it off. The two pokémon were flailing at one another desperately, Rufus swiping at his tormentor and the varanitor grimly hanging on.
Finally the oxhaust caught hold of one of its arms, and in an instant it was on the ground, the breath whooshing out of it. It gasped, trying to push itself away, dragging along the ground.
"Stomp!" Moriko shouted. "Get it!"
Rufus took a few stiff steps, but Belladonna recalled the varanitor before he got close.
Yellow flag. "One pokémon down on the gym leader's side."
Moriko exhaled, long and slow. That had been close; only Rufus' toughness had got him through that fight. But it had been a controlled match, at least. The varanitor was better-trained and -disciplined than some of the gym leader's other choices.
Well, mostly. Blood was streaming out of Rufus's neck as he held his hand to it, slumped over, acid eating away at his armor. The referee looked at her, questioning, and Moriko nodded, recalling the oxhaust.
"One pokémon down on the challenger's side. Final matchup."
Who to select next? Rufus had been first with his immunity to poison, and Tarahn had a resistance and couldn't be poisoned. Liona might make a good showing, given how Belladonna had struggled against Sylvia.
"Go, Tarahn!" she said, deciding, his pokéball flying out into the ring.
It was a moment before Belladonna chose her pokémon. Eventually a teal and black net ball hit the ground, emitting a burst of turquoise light.
"Scypha," the gym leader said.
Moriko stared and drew out her pokédex. What was—?
Oh. The blue and metallic red cap of a tentacruel lay on the sand like a gigantic mushroom, six feet across and bloated. Its eyes and tentacles were invisible, buried, as if the arena substrate was water and it was floating out at sea.
It didn't stir. Tarahn's tail twitched; Moriko wondered if he was resisting the temptation to go up to and poke it.
What was it doing? Water pokémon without limbs should be levitating at this level, sacrificing energy for mobility, or their trainers would only use them on a water field.
She glanced up at Belladonna; the gym leader was bored, unconcerned. The ref was counting seconds—someone had to attack, and as the challenger the onus was on her.
It looked like the joke was on her too, whatever it was.
"Use thunderbolt, Tarahn," she said.
"You got it!"
He was eager to act. Bright yellow and blue energy crackled along his body; he took his time to really charge it up against his unmoving opponent and then let fly.
It fizzled into nothingness. There was a faint orange barrier around it. Protect? Light screen? Godsdammit—she pulled out her pokédex again, pointing its eye at the battle.
"Again, Tarahn!"
Another fizzle: protect. It couldn't do that forever, but Tarahn couldn't attack forever, either.
It smelled like a trap.
"Thunder claw, this time," Moriko said. "But be careful."
Tarahn was stronger putting his claws and elemental power together; time to go for the bigger, riskier hit when the opponent wouldn't be able to nullify it. He crept up to the tentacruel, stalking, Moriko watching him carefully. They both started as someone in the crowd whistled shrilly, heckling him.
"Hurry up, scaredy-cat!"
Whoever it was, they were rapidly shushed by their neighbors, but Tarahn was annoyed. He lashed his tail, and crouched and leapt at the thing.
Dark tentacles slithered out of the ground to swat him out of the air. Moriko jumped; Tarahn hit the ground with a thud as they disappeared as quickly as they came.
Belladonna was grinning again, leaning on the railing of her box.
"For fuck's sake," Moriko muttered.
Tarahn snarled, really irritated now, and hit it with another thunderbolt. Moriko could have sworn the cap actually flinched this time.
She glanced at her pokédex. It was confused by the tentacruel being half underground, the health bar oscillating as it couldn't decide how much energy its body had absorbed. Protect, the move log claimed, as well as ground circuit.
It would poison a regular opponent and then wait them out, tiring them, she realized. Constricting attacks too, but that would just be an easy path for Tarahn's electricity.
"Thunderbolt again, it can only stall for so long," Moriko said, decisive. Protect was very energy-intensive, she knew that much.
A flash of light—mirror coat. The blue thunderbolt flew back at Tarahn, pure energy sizzling over his body, and he spat in frustration. Moriko tried not to let her own show.
But it had finally taken damage. No more immunity moves left?
"Thunder claw, Tarahn!"
The raigar snarled eagerly and darted forward to attack at melee again, weaving to avoid the slap from the underground limbs.
A forest of tentacles erupted.
Scypha rose, sand spilling off of it like water. Tiny eyes glinted on the black underbody; it tilted its pincers forward and a jet of water blasted directly at Tarahn, surprising him and sending him rolling.
He righted himself and roared, tail lashing and his fur soaked. The tentacles extended, coming for him again.
"Use agility! Get out of there!"
The raigar shook himself off, nonchalantly, before disappearing.
He re-appeared above the tentacruel and landed delicately on its rubbery cap before proceeding to sink four sets of claws and his teeth into his opponent. Tarahn didn't like being embarrassed in front of spectators.
He shook his head like Sylvia, tearing off a huge strip of transparent tissue.
There was a horrible sound, a banshee howling that made the audience cringe and Tarahn freeze. The tentacruel caught him in its tentacles and swung him, hard, onto the floor.
Electricity arced off Tarahn, crackling off the force barrier and surging up the tentacles binding him. The tentacruel groaned and flopped limply to the ground in a puddle of arms.
Taran spat a glob of acid at it casually. A buzzing, whining noise started up, and the raigar started to paw at his ears and shake his head. Supersonic?
"Tarahn, stay focused—"
The limp tentacles shot forward like snakes and caught the raigar in a crushing grip. Tarahn scrabbled, trying to free himself, firing off confused thundershocks.
The tentacruel tilted its underbody forwards again, pincers gaping, and it lifted Tarahn off the ground. Where was this energy coming from? Had it been faking?
"Thunderbolt!" Moriko yelled.
The tentacruel garrotted Tarahn.
His eyes bulged, mouth opening soundlessly as he clawed at the arm around his neck. Electricity arced off him, and then it cut off, like a switch closing.
The raigar's flailing body went limp and he turned to energy, a yellow-and-purple sphere that jerked and floated away fitfully. Fainted, pure and simple. Fuck. She was done.
Moriko whipped out Tarahn's pokéball. "I forfeit! Return!"
Belladonna's tentacruel blocked the beam with its body.
What? "Return!"
The beam lasered over the tentacruel and did nothing, rejected by the unlinked energy signature.
Scypha looked right at Moriko. It gently encircled Tarahn's energy with a tentacle.
It looked into Moriko's eyes, and it stuffed Tarahn's energy body between its pincers.
It dove under the sand.
She couldn't breathe.
The arena walls seemed to rise far above her head; they were a pit now, a grave, and far above a demoness was silhouetted against the burning sky.
Someone was shouting. It took her a moment before she realized it was herself.
"Don't touch him! Don't touch him! You sick fuck, control your pokémon! Return! Return!"
She threw herself over the edge of the trainer box and hit the ground hard, stumbling, falling, substrate scraping her hands and knees.
"I'll kill you!" Moriko spat, grit in her mouth. "Don't touch him! I'll drink your blood you sick—you crazy—"
The ref was blowing his whistle. Useless.
"Trainer! Off the arena floor!"
"Do something you blind shit!" she screamed back. "He's dying!"
She scrabbled across the sand, tripping in the drifts built up by the fights, boots crunching on the slicks of glass that Rufus' best attacks had left. She fell and cut herself.
There was a wordless primate scream forcing itself out of her throat as she ran. She couldn't tell how loud it was. The crowd was a blur. The sky was on fire. Tarahn was dying.
Most ronin are killer pokémon, but some killer pokémon aren't ronin.
Some people want to catch them.
The tentacruel raised itself out of the sand as she approached, Tarahn's yellow energy trembling in its pincers.
It was enormous, barnacle-encrusted, a monster that had drifted the seas long before the third crossing had forced its way between the worlds. A hag, a Baba Yaga that had made a deal with a gym leader: it was old, its strength decayed—but it knew tricks. Let it terrorize kids at tier three.
Rufus let himself out of his ball despite his injuries, and Liona followed. They tried to shield her, Rufus putting out his gauntleted arm and the nigriff spreading her wings.
Moriko shoved her way past them, heedless.
Rufus: "Moriko, don't—"
Liona: "What do we—"
The tentacruel looked down at her, its narrow eyes contemptuous, and she felt the wave of derision pulse off of it, at her, at Rufus and Liona.
The tentacruel was laughing at her, and it dissolved away into nothing as Belladonna recalled it.
There was a yellow and purple sphere on the ground, pulsing gently.
Moriko was gasping, hyperventilating; she grabbed at it, her hands passing through the energy. She remembered the ball, almost dropped it. Tarahn disappeared into it.
She sunk onto the ground, body curled around the pokéball.
"Moriko, he's okay," Rufus was saying. He touched her shoulder and left a bloody handprint. "Ugh, sorry. Moriko—"
Belladonna was coming down off her trainer platform. She was laughing.
Moriko shot upward, her body hot and stinging. She advanced on the gym leader.
"You sick fuck, what was that? What the fuck—this isn't funny—"
Belladonna's eyes were bright and merry and poison-green, her arms clacking with a swamp witch's bone bangles and fetishes.
"Oh it is, it is, my dear. You've come to the right place—"
"You tried to kill him!" Moriko screamed. "That is a killer pokémon—"
"Darling! Please. This is a show. This is what they come for. They come for me, and they come for blood," she said, gesturing around at the crowd. "You were perfect, cousin."
"How do—how do you fucking live—"
"Trainer Moriko, please leave the arena—"
She whirled. "You useless sack of shit—how much does she pay you?"
"Harassment of a league official," the referee warned her, without much force. The reuniclus was back, cheerful under its green cell wall, and it floated forward casually.
Moriko turned again and saw Belladonna's grinning face. She lunged at her.
The varanitor clotheslined her out of nowhere, and Moriko went down, seeing stars.
Belladonna was crying with laughter. "No," she was saying, "no, no, let her up, let her go. Oh, cousin."
Moriko snarled, actually snarled, and Belladonna guffawed again. The varanitor started dragging Moriko away, and the gym leader flitted forward and kissed her forehead.
"Come and see me again, soon, cousin," Belladonna sang.
Rufus snorted warningly at the varanitor as it pushed Moriko down in front of him and Liona.
"Don't touch my trainer!"
"Don't touch mine," the varanitor replied, forked tongue snaking out.
"Moriko!"
Russ and Matt came down to the arena's edge.
Moriko looked up into Russ's shocked face and Matt's darkly amused one, and she looked around and around at the crowd, the faces blurring together, laughing, cringing, disgusted, and she felt strangled inside, hot and floating.
That half girl, rushing at the gym leader after losing. An animal.
She was sick. She had always been sick. The sickness had never left her, it had just been waiting all this time to come rushing out and ruin everything—
"Hey, Moriko, hey, hey, it's okay," Russ was saying to her.
She was dimly aware that she was crying, soundless, gasping, her lungs straining like a bellows.
"You're okay, Tarahn is okay, no one died, you're good, let's go, let's go to the pokémon center—"
Moriko allowed herself to be led away.
There was poison, and she had brought it with her; it was in her bloodline; it had always been there, sickening everything it touched. There had always been something more to destroy: her. And it was coming from inside.
They were right. They had always been right. She was monstrous.
x.x.x.x.x
Moriko sat miserably in the pokémon center. Tarahn had not gone through the quick course of healing, as Rufus and the other pokémon had.
"Damage to the body can be healed as energy in under a half hour, but damage to the underlying energetics takes longer," the pokémon doctor had explained. "He'll be here for treatment overnight."
The tentacruel had hurt Tarahn when he was fainted. That had to be illegal—that was how pokémon killed and ate each other—
"Think about it, you want to report someone for hurting your pokémon in a pokémon battle?" Matt scoffed. "The damage is healable, so there's no case."
"Fuck off, Matt."
He shrugged. "I see what all the one-star reviews for the gym are for now, though."
"Legal or illegal, it was still fucked up," Russ said uneasily. "Saints, I don't know if Conall is going to be the same after that. He gets his first go at a gym battle and it's nearly the worst of the wild."
"Don't you care about Maia?" Moriko said suddenly to Matt. "She had to fight that thing, gouged, poisoned—"
Matt put up a hand. "Do not ever try to use Maia to guilt me again," he said, and she fell silent, chastened.
They left her alone to stew, and when the nurse pokémon said she could see Tarahn she tore into the room.
She slowed, seeing him stretched out on a bed underneath a whirling matrix of energy.
"Tarahn…"
"Hi!"
There was a warhare sleeping under a similar contraption, and a fainted pokémon under a tight energy barrier. The status monitor identified it as a nimbval, too big to lay down on the cleffa-patterned bed.
"Moriko?"
She looked at him. "Tarahn, we—let's go home."
He sat up on the cot. "What? Why?"
"You almost died," Moriko whispered. "I should have—we'll go home, this is stupid, this was never—"
"Moriko!" Tarahn tried to move closer, and the regen machine beeped a warning. He whuffed and lay down again. "Moriko, stop. It was scary. But I'm okay, I just need more healing. I don't want to quit. Why do you?"
"Because—that was too much! It choked you, Tarahn! I watched your body die!"
"That's not—it was just dirty fighting, Moriko," Tarahn said, bewildered. "It hurt a lot and it made me lose, but I'm okay."
"Tarahn, I—I just—I don't—"
"What is it?"
"…I couldn't protect you. I couldn't keep you safe."
"Safe from what? If I wanted to do nothing and never get hurt I'd be a pet. I wanna fight. Sometimes that means I get my butt kicked. You like fighting, or you used to. What's actually wrong?"
She took a deep breath. "I went crazy, Tarahn. I wanted to kill Belladonna. Just like…"
"What? What? No! Moriko, no. I remember." He tapped his paw, inviting, and she put her hand under the energy net and touched his purple toes.
He watched her. "I remember, in your old house. I remember what happened."
There was an ember at her heart, and if she never touched it, it could never burn her. She didn't think about it, couldn't; it would come back in searing clarity. Like she'd never left.
There had been blood, that last night in the house by the brook. A lot of it.
"You're not like that. You're not. We're together. We're alive. We're going to win together. And I'm the claws, I'll protect you. You can't get rid of me. Right?" Tarahn purred at her, violet eyes bright, the bells on his mane shining.
Moriko touched his paw, first pokémon, first friend, friend in spite of everything.
"Right," she said.
Royal City / Belladonna / Cousins / Drowning
—July 12th, 128 CR
"It's called echolalia," Prof. Willow said. The video call stuttered and resumed. "They hear things in the egg and repeat them meaninglessly. One of my peers in grad studies cared for an igglybuff egg while he was practicing a seminar, and when it hatched it recited bits of the talk for a few weeks."
"I understand. Thank you, Prof. Willow. It was a little unnerving!"
"No, it absolutely is—protein expression markers aren't quite as dry when they're being recited by balloon staring at you at night."
Russ laughed. "Sorry to bother you."
"Call me anytime, I'd rather you contact me for nothing than fail to for something. Have you called your mom lately?"
"Thanks, professor, I better go."
The celestiule had been silent after that first unnerving pronouncement. 'How dull'. Duller than the egg? Now it was acting like a baby pokémon should: smelling everything, chewing on blankets, sleeping most of the time.
Russ looked outside; Matt's ursaring had shown his fatherly side and was dozing with it in the exercise yard. The other pokémon had been curious, approaching carefully one at a time to smell and touch it carefully, even other trainers' pokémon, who could be standoffish toward pokémon outside their group.
The celestiule was beautiful, eye-catching with its changing, sky-reflecting hide and pearly eyes and mane. He'd held off on naming it, knowing that sometimes baby pokémon would suggest their own names when they began to speak, but privately he was thinking about 'Celeste'.
x.x.x.x.x
Matthew Reyes, Eosazhana's son, walked through the royal city.
This should have been yours, said one voice, and It can still be, said the other.
He had had plans, once, grand and sweeping, in that confusing flavor of defiance and desperate desire to please that colored all his interactions with his mother. Notice me! Notice me! Notice me! they all seemed to say, in true teenager fashion.
He couldn't escape it. Well, he'd been a teenager well after his allotted time.
A secret he couldn't utter, not even to the wind or the reeds. Maia didn't know; she had been a kitten when it happened, an ocean's width distant, but she knew something was wrong. Bjorn knew pieces; he'd been away, convalescent at the pokémon center. The others had left him, frustrated, traded away, abandoning him. Dead.
It could be worth it. It could all yet be worth it.
He felt sick for thinking it.
x.x.x.x.x
The gym was in the old town, on expensive real estate with a view of the ocean. It resembled an ancient amphitheater or, more appropriately, a gladiator arena. Stone pillars ringed the spectator seating, supporting trellises choked with flowering vines and shading the seats with cloth overhangs.
The battle area had the usual modern setup despite the building's apparent age: pale substrate, trainer platforms, boundary moat, energy shields, recording devices. There were people in the stands in anticipation of the next scheduled battle: adults chatting in the shade or enjoying the sun, kids running around and being annoying, young pokémon following them and screeching, vendors offering hot roasted nuts and ice cream. Now and then a wingull would drift overhead, gliding aimlessly, and insects and hummingbirds darted from flower to flower among the trellises.
The three of them had studied the arena for a moment before it became apparent that they were not about to be met by an attendant or receptionist. Matt, patience dwindling, stalked off along the perimeter of the amphitheater while Russell and Moriko trailed behind. Moriko couldn't blame him, for once: after the trouble they'd gone through to secure this appointment, standing in line for hours and fending off challengers who wanted to battle to move ahead, somebody at the facility had better look interested in keeping it.
The stone path was surrounded by dense flowering bushes and ornamental trees. As they went on they passed more and more poisonous flowering plants—Bryonia, Acontium, Solanaceae—that Moriko guessed were part of a theme, this being the poison-type gym. Russ pointed them out; he had always been interested in plants, even before plant-type Sylvia, but soon they were passing species he'd never seen, not even in a book. Not all the regions had been fully explored, and the continents were different than on Terra: there were still plants to be discovered or properly described.
Matt soon found a gardener wearing thick work gloves and face protection against the plants, and was asking her where the gym leader was.
"Oh, I'm not sure…" she was saying. "Do you have an appointment?"
"Are you kidding? I can't believe this gym—"
The woman pulled off her mask and kerchief. Moriko recognized her from her headshot on the gym website.
Matt bit back whatever he was about to say.
"Good decision," Belladonna said, grinning. She was taller than Matt, with fuchsia hair and luminous green eyes.
The gym leader was looking between her and Matt. "Are you two half?"
Moriko stiffened. "Yeah, why?"
"Cousins!" she shouted, and hugged the two of them boisterously. "It is so good of you to come! Please, who are your people?"
Matt and Moriko stared at her, shocked.
"M-My…?" Moriko stammered.
"You do have clans, don't you?" Belladonna looked between them, her excitement cooling as she saw their obvious ignorance and confusion. "Well, never mind. Ask your parents, I suppose. Show me your pokédexes."
They obliged, and she scanned their IDs. "Moriko Sato, were you just in Verdure Town?"
"Yes?"
Belladonna grinned again. "I heard your oxhaust beat Hawthorn's little thornlem. Good for you. I hate that he has those things. This way," she said, motioning them to follow her.
They took another path through the gardens; distantly they could hear the crowd in the arena. The plants were higher and closer here, disorienting, the path twisting and the gym leader striding swiftly and almost out of view.
"You hate the thornlem?" Moriko asked, hurrying after her.
"I don't hate them, I hate that Hawthorn has them," Belladonna said over her shoulder. "He's the worst person to have them. They should have gone to Ironhelm, he's too fucked up on decker juice to do anything with them, and that would be a shade less infuriating."
"Why… shouldn't he have them?"
"A pokémon like that," Belladonna said passionately, "should belong to a queen. Pokémon won't torture or murder. A killer pokémon would, but good luck controlling it. The automata, though? They will do anything you say, and they don't need to eat or rest or think."
Moriko couldn't think of anything to say to that.
"We've been out of queens for a while," Matt said, an edge in his voice.
"That's the thing about queens," Belladonna said wistfully. "When you get rid of one, there's another waiting. The process is quite instantaneous."
"How do you know they'll do anything?" Matt added.
Belladonna smiled back at them, feral.
The path forked. "Go down to the arena, I'll get dressed and get my pokémon," Belladonna said, directing them down one arm. "See you in a bit!"
"Sounds like she knows something about the second crossing," Russ said, as they went off.
"At this point I'm not sure I want to know," Matt said grimly.
x.x.x.x.x
Matt went down to the challenger's platform, and Russ and Moriko took seats nearby.
The gladiator pokémon from New Dawn could have fought down below, blood and ichor flying. Moriko had always found that game cartoonishly violent, but she felt nervous thinking of it now. The sight of the dead trainer in Tsugaru intruded on her thoughts, and that of Latna the caligryph, yellow eyes in the twilight. She shivered.
The gym was old underneath the modern trappings. She imagined the adepts of the second crossing squaring off with no shield to protect them, and no healing machine for afterward. You could pull back time in layers like paint or wallpaper and find the blood and the bones.
The buzz of sound from the crowd changed; Moriko looked down to see the referee emerge and take his place behind the monitoring equipment. Cheering followed, and Matt's head snapped around to watch as Belladonna appeared. She had changed into her gym leader's outfit, black highlighted with a pinkish-purple, and her arms and neck clattering like an exploded junk jewelry drawer.
Russ pulled out his pokédex, looking back and forth between it and the gym leader. "Ha, she's wearing porphyry," he said.
"Uh, the city?"
"It's actually a color; it used to be illegal for anyone to wear but the imperial family. Very expensive. Made of snails." He frowned. "Well, back then, at least. It probably comes out of a vat in industrial Sinnoh now."
"Single battle, two pokémon per trainer, no items, no time limit, switching allowed," the referee was saying.
Matt and Belladonna were nodding agreement. The gym leader's expression was… hungry.
The rules were always 'switches allowed', but hot switching was hard to pull off; the incoming pokémon would be vulnerable to a big hit upon reformation—
"Select your pokémon!"
A pokéball and a great ball spun into the ring. Tak appeared on the floor in a flash of blue light; he studied his surroundings, head twisting, as his opponent materialized across the field from him.
The vileplume was enormous, each petal swollen and shiny in the sunlight while its tiny eyes glinted underneath. Gloom that evolved too early were sometimes unable to support the ponderous weight of their petals as a vileplume and required physical therapy, but this one didn't resemble those shriveled specimens in the slightest.
"Trainers ready?" the referee called from the sidelines. "Begin!"
"Have at it," said Matt, folding his arms and relaxing his stance. "Watch out for spores."
Tak clacked his beak and ascended into the air, turning a few lazy loops before diving with a screech at the flower pokémon. The vileplume released a dense cloud of toxic spores that shimmered in the sun, and then aimed a stream of pale purple acid at its opponent.
The honchkrow dodged the acid easily, swooping away from the vileplume. He flapped his wings powerfully, trapping it in a whirlwind that spun its spores up into the air—and spread them throughout the arena. Chatter and sarcastic clapping sounded in the audience.
"Looks like you're going to have to get your feet wet," Matt commented, sounding amused.
Tak squawked something unintelligible, which was probably for the best, before arcing upward and streaking down again in a dive bomb attack. He angled under the spores, smacking into the vileplume and whisking away again. He was flying smoothly, probably not poisoned or paralyzed, while the vileplume looked a little less serene with one petal crushed and scratches oozing dark ichor. The partisan crowd roared their disapproval.
Tak swung around while the vileplume glowed, humming as it healed itself—but it traded the previously crushed petal for a new injury, the honchkrow's wing slashing it along its body.
Dodging another shot of acid, Tak struck the vileplume again, this time making it lose its balance and topple over. The instant of vulnerability gave the honchkrow an opening to launch into a scratching, pecking frenzy.
Belladonna's arm snapped out, and she recalled the vileplume. Moriko clenched one hand, watching. The gym leader had good reflexes; she hadn't let Tak really put his beak in. The vileplume could still be a threat if she brought it out again.
Matt smiled, satisfied, and Tak screeched happily.
And yet. Belladonna was grinning a little too broadly for someone who'd just had their first pokémon driven back decisively. "Not bad," she said, her first words the entire match. "Try this."
The ultra ball arced over the sand, revealing a winged shape; Tak swooped in for his free hit on the materializing pokémon.
It slapped the honchkrow out of the air and leapt on him, blood and black feathers flying, and it was Matt's turn to jerk out his hand in a quick-draw recall. The crowd cheered and whistled at the turnabout.
Mantigore, the maneater pokémon. Dark- and poison type, it evolves from scorplion near level forty. It lives deep in the desert, guarding oases and stalking opponents that come to drink. Its poison causes weakness and paralysis, and then it will strike with its claws and teeth.
It was a desert lion, thin and pale, with dark maroon bat's wings and a scorpion's tail and armor. The creature snarled, high and hissing, its jaws augmented by chelicerae.
"This one's a favorite," Russ murmured, tapping his pokédex. He and Matt had been looking at the Battle Insider page for the gym.
The mantigore paced restlessly, glaring at Matt as if he'd robbed it of a treat.
Matt seemed to freeze, thinking, and as the seconds ticked by the referee raised a flag. "Challenger must select a pokémon."
Finally he blinked and shook himself, and tossed a pokéball out into the ring.
"Maia," he said.
The audience sighed as she appeared. The tibyss accentuated the mantigore's severity of form: it was ragged, parched, a scar on the sand, where she was water made flesh, flowing along the ground instead of walking.
It snarled, fur bristling, wings unfurling, the scorpion's tail rising to quiver in the air. Maia arched her neck and regarded it with cool, queenly disdain. You fool, Maia's look seemed to say. You are beneath my notice.
"Trainers may begin when ready."
"Ragemaw," said Belladonna, "sting cross."
The mantigore sprang into the air and circled around the ring to build up momentum before hurling itself at the tibyss. Fangs, claws and tail glistened with venom as it dove, wings unfurling at the last moment to blind and overwhelm—
Maia's ice shard hit it squarely, the fragments exploding out of the tibyss' mouth and slicing its face and wings. The mantigore screeched, rolling away in mid-air, and hit the ground ungracefully. As it righted itself, it hissed at her, and Maia raised her ruff, her expression identical to Matt's hauteur.
"Careful now," Russ muttered.
"Double team," ordered Belladonna. "Stay on the ground."
Ragemaw spat, annoyed, splitting into clones. Despite its ferocity, its deception skill was quite good: Moriko couldn't find a telltale mistake in the illusion, and Matt's frown of concentration suggested he couldn't either.
"Maia—"
"Crunch!"
The three clones leapt at Maia and she swept through them with an icy wind. They dissipated, but the real mantigore was on the outside—it had time to close on her and clamp its jaws where her neck met her shoulder.
"Maia!" Matt shouted.
Moriko found herself watching Matt, fascinated at that new note of fear in his voice, despite the action in the arena. She looked back: Ragemaw's claws and fangs were sunk into Maia's midnight blue hide and bioluminescent spots, its arachnid mouthparts delivering venom like a needle.
It swung its scorpion's tail at her throat. She grunted as the sting sank into her paw instead, raising it just in time.
Maia growled, low and threatening, as she shoved it away. The two feline pokémon slashed one another briefly, grit flying, and then Ragemaw caught her hard across the muzzle and she dropped her head, sidling away.
Matt made a choked noise that the mic barely picked up. He was leaning over the trainer box railing, nearly falling.
The mantigore gave a raspy cackle and crouched to leap.
An explosion of dirty water burst underneath Ragemaw, sending it spinning into the air. The moat drained, turbulent, as Maia dragged it into the arena to flood it. She stood in the water, drawing it around herself, watching her opponent.
The mantigore was recovering, righting itself. It wheeled in the air, coming around again. She fired off another ice shard—too slow—
Ragemaw landed hard in the water, sending up spray, paws splashing as it slashed at the tibyss. Her head dipped—
Maia froze it, spiderweb frost exploding outward along the surface of the water. The mantigore was soaked from the explosion; it froze too, locked into place. The tibyss snarled, a wave rearing up like a fist, and it washed over the mantigore, hardening instantly.
The crowd roared as she limped away, leaving Ragemaw encased in a shell of ice. It jerked its head and yowled.
Matt's smirk found its way back onto his face. He looked up at Belladonna, who stared back, eyes blazing.
"Finish him off, Maia."
Maia prepared a hydro pump, the sphere of water gathering in her open mouth. Her bio-lights glowed.
The mantigore struggled, cracks appearing along the surface of its shell—there had been an air bubble under its wings, and it had a little room to move them. It snarled, poison sting spikes shooting off its tail and freeing it.
With a wrench, it was free, and it shot at her.
The hydro pump hit it like a tank. It bounced twice before Belladonna's trainer platform finally arrested its motion.
Ragemaw struggled to its feet.
There were cheers and gasps. Moriko's hands flew to her mouth, childlike. Maia!
The mantigore spread its wings and staggered. With a sigh, it dropped limply onto the ground.
Moriko gathered breath to cheer and then cut it off. She stared agonizingly down at Belladonna; there was still the vileplume to contend with.
Belladonna was watching the mantigore as its body faded into energy, and finally she recalled it. She stood for a moment, thinking, and she looked out at Maia, bleeding, breathing hard, covered in cuts and envenomed punctures.
The tibyss looked back at her and raised her head, held her ruff high.
Belladonna nodded to the ref.
"Trainer Matthew is the winner!"
The crowd erupted with cheering and an undercut of booing from the diehards.
"Matt and Maia!" Russ shouted through his cupped hands.
Moriko clapped, whistling. She was never best pleased with Matt, but Maia deserved all the praise.
Matt jumped to the arena floor, skidding on the water. He rushed over to Maia and then slowed, putting his hands on her face with sudden delicacy and obvious affection. She bumped him with her nose, smearing his clothes with blood, and then she hopped back into her pokéball.
Matt left the ring, disappearing under the stands as he was waved over by one of the gym leader's acolytes, probably to use a healing machine for Maia's poisoning.
"Trainer Russell, please approach the challenger's platform."
Russell got up without a word, and made his way down to the arena. Moriko whistled at him, and he waved without turning around.
His first pick was Conall, sand-colored and mud-spattered. The dirfox had improved greatly since that day that Russ had caught him, when he'd burst out of his pokéball after being healed and hid in a closet. Eventually he'd requested a nickname, as some pokémon did, and had shown off his psychic powers and excellent deception skills.
Russ wore his customary mild expression, but Belladonna's had been stormy since recalling her mantigore. She flicked a great ball into the ring. The energy in it coalesced and then rose, higher and higher.
An enormous arbok loomed over Conall, its hood snapping open to reveal eyespots in red and yellow, garish against its dark purple hide. The dirfox shifted backward a step as it studied him with lidless eyes, its forked tongue flickering.
Conall shivered—and then split into three copies. Too early. The battle screen flicked on, and Russ got a red flag from the ref. Too many faults and he'd forfeit.
No time to apologize: the arbok surged forward, selecting one of the double-team illusions, and it glared at it ferociously.
Behind Moriko: "Not double team—"
She jumped. "Gah! Matt, say something!"
Matt smirked and nodded at the arena. "Arbok can sense heat and heartbeat—it might be able to see through the double team."
"Confuse ray!" Russ commanded. "Conall!"
The dirfox and its copies were paralyzed, locked in the same half-crouch. The arbok's mouth opened grossly wide as it reared up and struck. An instant later, it was shaking the dirt off its snout as Conall and his remaining copy slunk away behind a drift of sand.
Matt folded his arms. "Huh, not bad."
The arbok whirled and spat venom at its opponent, but the dirfox levitated a curtain of sand to block the drops, running alongside it as it rose. Just in time: the arbok burst through the shield, striking just behind him.
"Confusion!"
Conall turned, trembling; it seemed to do nothing, but suddenly the air in front of his opponent rippled, distorting. Its head was knocked backward sharply as psychic energy washed over it. It lunged forward again, and then stopped, scanning the arena, looking past the dirfox right in front of it.
The CFN indicator flashed onto the battle feed. Some cheering from the audience.
Russ raised a fist triumphantly. "Get it, Conall! Use psybeam!"
The dirfox paused, charging the stronger psychic attack. When he let fly, multicolored energy hummed as it hit the arbok, who hissed and tried to jerk away. It struck out with a poison fang only to jar its neck painfully as it hit the ground a good meter away from its opponent.
Conall ran in, yipping mockingly. He hit it with short, sharp psychic attacks, the arbok's upraised body jerking from side to side as it looked around in bewilderment.
It couldn't last.
"Careful! Get to range and use sand whip!"
Belladonna sighed, annoyed. "Veregrei! Focus!" she called, and after a beat she put her fingers to her mouth, whistling with a peculiar harmonic.
The arbok's head whipped around.
"Conall—"
Veregrei dove at the dirfox almost too fast to see, the poison fang attacks stabbing into his body. Once, twice, three times—on the fourth strike, it tossed the dirfox into the air like a toy.
The arbok unhinged its jaw, and Conall tumbled headfirst into its gullet.
A groan from the crowd. Russ was holding out the dirfox's pokéball.
Veregrei spun, blocking the pokéball return beam. The arbok gulped grotesquely, the dirfox's limp legs sticking out of its mouth.
Moriko was on her feet, screaming at the ref, and Matt was too, and so was half the crowd.
The referee was waving a black flag; the match timer had paused—how many seconds had passed?—Belladonna was grinning again. The ref finally threw down his own pokémon, a reuniclus that expertly disabled both combatants and teleported them to opposite ends of the ring.
As it let them go, the arbok snapped its maw closed and looked around, hissing furiously, and Conall collapsed on his side, covered in deep bite marks. Russ recalled him.
Moriko saw him mouth disbelieving curses.
"Matt, what the fuck," she whispered.
Matt said nothing and just sat slowly. He stared down at the arena with his hands clenched on his knees.
Moriko watched Belladonna. A cold dislike crept up her back, and it felt like contemptuous looks and disbelieving stares.
There goes that half-second crossing girl, hafu kid, you know what they're like; every time she raised her voice or played too hard there it was, the wildwoman's child, the animal; her pokémon-bright hair and eyes markied her as other despite ubiquitous cosmetic genehans—and she knew the rumors about how they'd got those colors without tech.
And Belladonna just—!?
"She's capering for them," Matt whispered. "This is what they want to see."
There was a disapproving murmur from the crowd, but no one had left their seats. They were here for this; they were here to be disgusted and shocked by the violence. The ref had stopped it when it had gone tantalizingly over the line.
Moriko glanced at him. "I was so careful," she said. "I was so careful my whole life. And she…"
He nodded once. He knew. "Queens," he muttered. "Court jester, more like. Who does she think she is, wearing the royal purple?"
Moriko felt bad, watching Russ. The psychic- and ground-type dirfox had been supposed to sweep the poison-type gym leader's team or nearly, but types hadn't been a factor: only the savage fangs of the arbok were needed. Now Russ had a fairy-type and a grass-type to pick from.
"Sylvia!" Russ called, tossing out her pokéball.
But then again…
Sylvia had evolved, her shoulder branches lengthening and sprouting into dragon's wings, her tail a long, flexible wooden club, and her forelegs morphed into long taloned arms. Borfang, wolf-dragon, much-loved for their loyalty and power.
Sylvia howled and took to the air.
"Ice fang," Belladonna said, but she'd folded her arms, looking less eager.
The arbok leapt at Sylvia, jaws crackling with ice-type energy as it pushed off the ground, its corded muscle launching it high into the air. It missed as she just flew out of reach.
"Venom spray."
"Dragonbreath!"
Sylvia wove neatly around the ranged attack and hit the arbok with one of her own, teal dragonfire searing down on it. It dove underground and burst out of the sand, missing her as she swooped away. It fired off a poison sting, wide and dispersed, and a couple of the needles managed to connect.
Another dragonbreath from the borfang and the arbok was slowing, paralyzed. It screeched, half the audience wincing, and Sylvia faltered, but she managed to wing off out of reach again.
The arbok was writhing, trying to follow her down the arena, slow and painful.
"Finish it off, Sylvia!"
Sylvia flew above it and breathed dragonfire until it disappeared in the recall.
"Arbok is out! One pokémon left on each side," the referee called, updating the match totals on the gym video screens.
The gym leader tapped her lips for a moment before selecting a new pokémon: it was a raigar, a shiny one with red fur and yellow markings, its bells shining silver in the sunlight.
"She's trying to force Sylvia to land," Matt commented. Airborne pokémon had unparalleled mobility, but it gave them vulnerabilities like an air-type.
"It's done if she can get a good hit on it, though." Tarahn had lost more than one battle when his opponent had resisted deception and charged in. "Is there anything ice/poison she could be using?" Moriko wondered.
"Look on your pokédex."
"There's this thing called 'making conversation'—"
"Rootbind, Sylvia!"
The raigar darted out before the grasping roots could connect and aimed a thunder wave at Sylvia. The electricity homed in on her and she grunted, glowing with the hit, her wingbeats turning fitful and uncoordinated. She didn't quite drop like a stone, but it was close.
The raigar approached and she lunged at it, talons out to slash. It dodged and raked her with a quick poison claw before leaping away again. She chased after it, wings still ungainly, and got a faceful of acid for her trouble. Sylvia snarled, her mane bristling as she tensed to spring.
"Sylvia!"
Russ whistled and she broke away, trotting in a circle around the arena's edge as the raigar mirrored her path.
"Well-trained," Matt said. "Dragon-types can get wild."
Moriko nodded. "She was going to leap headfirst into its next attack."
"Careful now," Russ was saying. "Roar!"
Sylvia's bellow had an edge to it that unnerved the human crowd and froze the raigar in its tracks. She shot forward, rising on her hind legs to slash powerfully.
The raigar recovered and hit her with another thunder wave; she fell, muscles jerking and her wings flapping uselessly, and the crowd cheered the reversal. The raigar danced away and then closed in again when she didn't follow, dragging its venomous claws down her belly.
Sylvia snapped at it, teeth closing on a limb, but it twisted out of her grip. It fled to range and started to spit gobbets of venom to finish her off.
Moriko groaned. Sylvia wasn't looking good. Come on!
But there was a glint in the borfang's eye, and roots shot out of the ground to curl around the raigar's paws as it yowled in surprise. She lunged, muscles straining, and she clamped her jaws around the smaller pokémon, shaking and worrying it with a growl and the discordant jingle of its bells.
It yowled and shocked her, but she held on, blood staining its yellow coat.
Belladonna recalled it and nodded perfunctorily at Russ. She was already looking away, looking at the crowd—looking for Moriko.
"Trainer Russell is the winner!"
"Yeah! Sylvia!" Moriko called, Matt whistling beside her.
Sylvia sat down clumsily, legs splayed, and Russ recalled her.
Moriko realized it was her turn.
"Go get 'em, kid," Matt said. He grinned as she rose uneasily.
Russ drew off to visit the healing machine, and the referee was calling for her.
The walk to the trainer's box took too long, the sky above her too blue, the sun too hot, the arena walls too close. The people in the audience were all staring at her, ranks and ranks of identical shadowed faces. She looked down, looked away, concentrated on the scuff of the stone under her boots and the feel of the weathered cast iron of the ladder under her fingers.
A perfect crowd to watch her lose.
Stop that, she told herself firmly, closing her eyes. Belladonna wasn't unbeatable, it had just happened twice today. Everything was perfectly okay. Tune the crowd out; they don't matter, they're just a bunch of repeated sprites, like in Legendary III.
She'd spent hours on that game with Russ, working through the battles and recruiting the pokémon characters, defeating boss ronin and impressing mythical pokémon from beyond time, freeing the lost prince. Becoming the legend yourself.
Gods, she was far from legendary.
Maybe that was for the best—the protagonist from III turned into the villain in Legendary IV.
She selected Rufus' pokéball at the referee's signal.
The ball arced out, opened; energy spilled out as the reconvergence effect snapped as loud as thunder. It coalesced into the oxhaust, light fading. Rufus yawned and exhaled an umbrella of flame before setting about calmly stretching his muscles.
Belladonna had chosen her fifth monster. The oxhaust's opponent was a bipedal lizard with dark hide mottled with orange and yellow patches, its claws taped up with beige fabric.
Varanitor, the monitor pokémon. A poison- and fighting-type, it evolves from komodra due to age or when traded. Travelers found them on a distant island. They work together to secure territory and drive out intruders using a combination of poison and direct damage.
Moriko tried not to groan; the fighting-type was a problem. She squinted at Belladonna, getting tired of how gym leaders seemed to guess that the three of them each had a different Gaiien starter.
"Trainers may begin!"
The varanitor attacked suddenly from its patient crouch, charging and kicking up a cloud of sand at close range. It darted behind the oxhaust and kicked at his legs, talons gouging his hide. Rufus kicked backward, turning and roaring a flamethrower underneath one arm.
The varanitor wove out of reach and spat a clot of acid that sizzled on the pipes on Rufus' back. Rufus exhaled another fire attack as they backed off, circling each other.
"Bulk up," Belladonna said.
"Flame charge, Rufus!"
The varanitor glowed red, trading energy for strength, and it sidestepped as the oxhaust barrelled in, surrounded by flames. It dealt Rufus a neat karate chop across his back that dented his armor and sent him staggering.
Rufus flame charged again, aiming an iron punch at the varanitor, but he was still too slow, his opponent weaving around his fists. At last, Rufus got a hit in, flooring the varanitor—
—and it balanced on one claw mid-fall, and kicked Rufus right in the face.
The oxhaust staggered backward, dazed, arms up in a fighter's pose. Could he even see? Was his faceplate damaged? Moriko strained on tiptoe to see.
The varanitor shook itself, and then with a running leap it dove into the sand as if it was water.
Fuckshitfuckfuck—"Rufus! Use flame wheel and—just hold it! It's using dig!"
The oxhaust crouched, the fire on his shoulders leaping up as flame surrounded him in a spiral and held, flaring.
Agonizing seconds passed with no attack. Moriko bit her lip—the ref would call out a timer for no attacks occurring, it had to do something it had to do something now—Rufus could only hold like this so long—how 'bout now—now—
The varanitor burst out of the ground in a fountain of sand and punched Rufus in the lower back despite the flames. Rufus lost concentration, and the fire exploded outward off his body.
The varanitor was knocked back, flipped across the substrate, and it skidded to a stop before righting itself gingerly. Rufus whirled to face it—gods, still too slow—but the BRN indicator pinged on the arena monitor. Both pokémon were panting; the varanitor's boxing tape was gone, burnt up, and its movements were slowing.
Come on! He can outlast it! "Flame charge!"
Rufus' mane flared and shot haphazardly out of his crushed pipes. He charged again—and missed as the varanitor leapt onto his back. It jammed its claws into an unarmored spot on his neck, and Rufus bellowed, blood spurting.
"Rufus!"
He jerked, trying to throw it off. The two pokémon were flailing at one another desperately, Rufus swiping at his tormentor and the varanitor grimly hanging on.
Finally the oxhaust caught hold of one of its arms, and in an instant it was on the ground, the breath whooshing out of it. It gasped, trying to push itself away, dragging along the ground.
"Stomp!" Moriko shouted. "Get it!"
Rufus took a few stiff steps, but Belladonna recalled the varanitor before he got close.
Yellow flag. "One pokémon down on the gym leader's side."
Moriko exhaled, long and slow. That had been close; only Rufus' toughness had got him through that fight. But it had been a controlled match, at least. The varanitor was better-trained and -disciplined than some of the gym leader's other choices.
Well, mostly. Blood was streaming out of Rufus's neck as he held his hand to it, slumped over, acid eating away at his armor. The referee looked at her, questioning, and Moriko nodded, recalling the oxhaust.
"One pokémon down on the challenger's side. Final matchup."
Who to select next? Rufus had been first with his immunity to poison, and Tarahn had a resistance and couldn't be poisoned. Liona might make a good showing, given how Belladonna had struggled against Sylvia.
"Go, Tarahn!" she said, deciding, his pokéball flying out into the ring.
It was a moment before Belladonna chose her pokémon. Eventually a teal and black net ball hit the ground, emitting a burst of turquoise light.
"Scypha," the gym leader said.
Moriko stared and drew out her pokédex. What was—?
Oh. The blue and metallic red cap of a tentacruel lay on the sand like a gigantic mushroom, six feet across and bloated. Its eyes and tentacles were invisible, buried, as if the arena substrate was water and it was floating out at sea.
It didn't stir. Tarahn's tail twitched; Moriko wondered if he was resisting the temptation to go up to and poke it.
What was it doing? Water pokémon without limbs should be levitating at this level, sacrificing energy for mobility, or their trainers would only use them on a water field.
She glanced up at Belladonna; the gym leader was bored, unconcerned. The ref was counting seconds—someone had to attack, and as the challenger the onus was on her.
It looked like the joke was on her too, whatever it was.
"Use thunderbolt, Tarahn," she said.
"You got it!"
He was eager to act. Bright yellow and blue energy crackled along his body; he took his time to really charge it up against his unmoving opponent and then let fly.
It fizzled into nothingness. There was a faint orange barrier around it. Protect? Light screen? Godsdammit—she pulled out her pokédex again, pointing its eye at the battle.
"Again, Tarahn!"
Another fizzle: protect. It couldn't do that forever, but Tarahn couldn't attack forever, either.
It smelled like a trap.
"Thunder claw, this time," Moriko said. "But be careful."
Tarahn was stronger putting his claws and elemental power together; time to go for the bigger, riskier hit when the opponent wouldn't be able to nullify it. He crept up to the tentacruel, stalking, Moriko watching him carefully. They both started as someone in the crowd whistled shrilly, heckling him.
"Hurry up, scaredy-cat!"
Whoever it was, they were rapidly shushed by their neighbors, but Tarahn was annoyed. He lashed his tail, and crouched and leapt at the thing.
Dark tentacles slithered out of the ground to swat him out of the air. Moriko jumped; Tarahn hit the ground with a thud as they disappeared as quickly as they came.
Belladonna was grinning again, leaning on the railing of her box.
"For fuck's sake," Moriko muttered.
Tarahn snarled, really irritated now, and hit it with another thunderbolt. Moriko could have sworn the cap actually flinched this time.
She glanced at her pokédex. It was confused by the tentacruel being half underground, the health bar oscillating as it couldn't decide how much energy its body had absorbed. Protect, the move log claimed, as well as ground circuit.
It would poison a regular opponent and then wait them out, tiring them, she realized. Constricting attacks too, but that would just be an easy path for Tarahn's electricity.
"Thunderbolt again, it can only stall for so long," Moriko said, decisive. Protect was very energy-intensive, she knew that much.
A flash of light—mirror coat. The blue thunderbolt flew back at Tarahn, pure energy sizzling over his body, and he spat in frustration. Moriko tried not to let her own show.
But it had finally taken damage. No more immunity moves left?
"Thunder claw, Tarahn!"
The raigar snarled eagerly and darted forward to attack at melee again, weaving to avoid the slap from the underground limbs.
A forest of tentacles erupted.
Scypha rose, sand spilling off of it like water. Tiny eyes glinted on the black underbody; it tilted its pincers forward and a jet of water blasted directly at Tarahn, surprising him and sending him rolling.
He righted himself and roared, tail lashing and his fur soaked. The tentacles extended, coming for him again.
"Use agility! Get out of there!"
The raigar shook himself off, nonchalantly, before disappearing.
He re-appeared above the tentacruel and landed delicately on its rubbery cap before proceeding to sink four sets of claws and his teeth into his opponent. Tarahn didn't like being embarrassed in front of spectators.
He shook his head like Sylvia, tearing off a huge strip of transparent tissue.
There was a horrible sound, a banshee howling that made the audience cringe and Tarahn freeze. The tentacruel caught him in its tentacles and swung him, hard, onto the floor.
Electricity arced off Tarahn, crackling off the force barrier and surging up the tentacles binding him. The tentacruel groaned and flopped limply to the ground in a puddle of arms.
Taran spat a glob of acid at it casually. A buzzing, whining noise started up, and the raigar started to paw at his ears and shake his head. Supersonic?
"Tarahn, stay focused—"
The limp tentacles shot forward like snakes and caught the raigar in a crushing grip. Tarahn scrabbled, trying to free himself, firing off confused thundershocks.
The tentacruel tilted its underbody forwards again, pincers gaping, and it lifted Tarahn off the ground. Where was this energy coming from? Had it been faking?
"Thunderbolt!" Moriko yelled.
The tentacruel garrotted Tarahn.
His eyes bulged, mouth opening soundlessly as he clawed at the arm around his neck. Electricity arced off him, and then it cut off, like a switch closing.
The raigar's flailing body went limp and he turned to energy, a yellow-and-purple sphere that jerked and floated away fitfully. Fainted, pure and simple. Fuck. She was done.
Moriko whipped out Tarahn's pokéball. "I forfeit! Return!"
Belladonna's tentacruel blocked the beam with its body.
What? "Return!"
The beam lasered over the tentacruel and did nothing, rejected by the unlinked energy signature.
Scypha looked right at Moriko. It gently encircled Tarahn's energy with a tentacle.
It looked into Moriko's eyes, and it stuffed Tarahn's energy body between its pincers.
It dove under the sand.
She couldn't breathe.
The arena walls seemed to rise far above her head; they were a pit now, a grave, and far above a demoness was silhouetted against the burning sky.
Someone was shouting. It took her a moment before she realized it was herself.
"Don't touch him! Don't touch him! You sick fuck, control your pokémon! Return! Return!"
She threw herself over the edge of the trainer box and hit the ground hard, stumbling, falling, substrate scraping her hands and knees.
"I'll kill you!" Moriko spat, grit in her mouth. "Don't touch him! I'll drink your blood you sick—you crazy—"
The ref was blowing his whistle. Useless.
"Trainer! Off the arena floor!"
"Do something you blind shit!" she screamed back. "He's dying!"
She scrabbled across the sand, tripping in the drifts built up by the fights, boots crunching on the slicks of glass that Rufus' best attacks had left. She fell and cut herself.
There was a wordless primate scream forcing itself out of her throat as she ran. She couldn't tell how loud it was. The crowd was a blur. The sky was on fire. Tarahn was dying.
Most ronin are killer pokémon, but some killer pokémon aren't ronin.
Some people want to catch them.
The tentacruel raised itself out of the sand as she approached, Tarahn's yellow energy trembling in its pincers.
It was enormous, barnacle-encrusted, a monster that had drifted the seas long before the third crossing had forced its way between the worlds. A hag, a Baba Yaga that had made a deal with a gym leader: it was old, its strength decayed—but it knew tricks. Let it terrorize kids at tier three.
Rufus let himself out of his ball despite his injuries, and Liona followed. They tried to shield her, Rufus putting out his gauntleted arm and the nigriff spreading her wings.
Moriko shoved her way past them, heedless.
Rufus: "Moriko, don't—"
Liona: "What do we—"
The tentacruel looked down at her, its narrow eyes contemptuous, and she felt the wave of derision pulse off of it, at her, at Rufus and Liona.
The tentacruel was laughing at her, and it dissolved away into nothing as Belladonna recalled it.
There was a yellow and purple sphere on the ground, pulsing gently.
Moriko was gasping, hyperventilating; she grabbed at it, her hands passing through the energy. She remembered the ball, almost dropped it. Tarahn disappeared into it.
She sunk onto the ground, body curled around the pokéball.
"Moriko, he's okay," Rufus was saying. He touched her shoulder and left a bloody handprint. "Ugh, sorry. Moriko—"
Belladonna was coming down off her trainer platform. She was laughing.
Moriko shot upward, her body hot and stinging. She advanced on the gym leader.
"You sick fuck, what was that? What the fuck—this isn't funny—"
Belladonna's eyes were bright and merry and poison-green, her arms clacking with a swamp witch's bone bangles and fetishes.
"Oh it is, it is, my dear. You've come to the right place—"
"You tried to kill him!" Moriko screamed. "That is a killer pokémon—"
"Darling! Please. This is a show. This is what they come for. They come for me, and they come for blood," she said, gesturing around at the crowd. "You were perfect, cousin."
"How do—how do you fucking live—"
"Trainer Moriko, please leave the arena—"
She whirled. "You useless sack of shit—how much does she pay you?"
"Harassment of a league official," the referee warned her, without much force. The reuniclus was back, cheerful under its green cell wall, and it floated forward casually.
Moriko turned again and saw Belladonna's grinning face. She lunged at her.
The varanitor clotheslined her out of nowhere, and Moriko went down, seeing stars.
Belladonna was crying with laughter. "No," she was saying, "no, no, let her up, let her go. Oh, cousin."
Moriko snarled, actually snarled, and Belladonna guffawed again. The varanitor started dragging Moriko away, and the gym leader flitted forward and kissed her forehead.
"Come and see me again, soon, cousin," Belladonna sang.
Rufus snorted warningly at the varanitor as it pushed Moriko down in front of him and Liona.
"Don't touch my trainer!"
"Don't touch mine," the varanitor replied, forked tongue snaking out.
"Moriko!"
Russ and Matt came down to the arena's edge.
Moriko looked up into Russ's shocked face and Matt's darkly amused one, and she looked around and around at the crowd, the faces blurring together, laughing, cringing, disgusted, and she felt strangled inside, hot and floating.
That half girl, rushing at the gym leader after losing. An animal.
She was sick. She had always been sick. The sickness had never left her, it had just been waiting all this time to come rushing out and ruin everything—
"Hey, Moriko, hey, hey, it's okay," Russ was saying to her.
She was dimly aware that she was crying, soundless, gasping, her lungs straining like a bellows.
"You're okay, Tarahn is okay, no one died, you're good, let's go, let's go to the pokémon center—"
Moriko allowed herself to be led away.
There was poison, and she had brought it with her; it was in her bloodline; it had always been there, sickening everything it touched. There had always been something more to destroy: her. And it was coming from inside.
They were right. They had always been right. She was monstrous.
x.x.x.x.x
Moriko sat miserably in the pokémon center. Tarahn had not gone through the quick course of healing, as Rufus and the other pokémon had.
"Damage to the body can be healed as energy in under a half hour, but damage to the underlying energetics takes longer," the pokémon doctor had explained. "He'll be here for treatment overnight."
The tentacruel had hurt Tarahn when he was fainted. That had to be illegal—that was how pokémon killed and ate each other—
"Think about it, you want to report someone for hurting your pokémon in a pokémon battle?" Matt scoffed. "The damage is healable, so there's no case."
"Fuck off, Matt."
He shrugged. "I see what all the one-star reviews for the gym are for now, though."
"Legal or illegal, it was still fucked up," Russ said uneasily. "Saints, I don't know if Conall is going to be the same after that. He gets his first go at a gym battle and it's nearly the worst of the wild."
"Don't you care about Maia?" Moriko said suddenly to Matt. "She had to fight that thing, gouged, poisoned—"
Matt put up a hand. "Do not ever try to use Maia to guilt me again," he said, and she fell silent, chastened.
They left her alone to stew, and when the nurse pokémon said she could see Tarahn she tore into the room.
She slowed, seeing him stretched out on a bed underneath a whirling matrix of energy.
"Tarahn…"
"Hi!"
There was a warhare sleeping under a similar contraption, and a fainted pokémon under a tight energy barrier. The status monitor identified it as a nimbval, too big to lay down on the cleffa-patterned bed.
"Moriko?"
She looked at him. "Tarahn, we—let's go home."
He sat up on the cot. "What? Why?"
"You almost died," Moriko whispered. "I should have—we'll go home, this is stupid, this was never—"
"Moriko!" Tarahn tried to move closer, and the regen machine beeped a warning. He whuffed and lay down again. "Moriko, stop. It was scary. But I'm okay, I just need more healing. I don't want to quit. Why do you?"
"Because—that was too much! It choked you, Tarahn! I watched your body die!"
"That's not—it was just dirty fighting, Moriko," Tarahn said, bewildered. "It hurt a lot and it made me lose, but I'm okay."
"Tarahn, I—I just—I don't—"
"What is it?"
"…I couldn't protect you. I couldn't keep you safe."
"Safe from what? If I wanted to do nothing and never get hurt I'd be a pet. I wanna fight. Sometimes that means I get my butt kicked. You like fighting, or you used to. What's actually wrong?"
She took a deep breath. "I went crazy, Tarahn. I wanted to kill Belladonna. Just like…"
"What? What? No! Moriko, no. I remember." He tapped his paw, inviting, and she put her hand under the energy net and touched his purple toes.
He watched her. "I remember, in your old house. I remember what happened."
There was an ember at her heart, and if she never touched it, it could never burn her. She didn't think about it, couldn't; it would come back in searing clarity. Like she'd never left.
There had been blood, that last night in the house by the brook. A lot of it.
"You're not like that. You're not. We're together. We're alive. We're going to win together. And I'm the claws, I'll protect you. You can't get rid of me. Right?" Tarahn purred at her, violet eyes bright, the bells on his mane shining.
Moriko touched his paw, first pokémon, first friend, friend in spite of everything.
"Right," she said.
