Fighting 3.19: Adrift
Kekoa
February 15, 2020
“For those of you who are just joining us, we’re continuing our anniversary coverage of the Weather War Tragedy. Eight years ago, two titans clashed in the heart of Hoenn. Tens of thousands of lives and billions of dollars in property were lost before…”
You swirl the spoon around in your near-empty cereal bowl. The Pokémon Center’s receptionist is listening to public radio so now you are, too. You hate it. You hate that even the ‘liberal media’ puts the price tag in the same breath as the dead. As if lost lives could also be rebuilt with some relief money.
“…at approximately 12:40 PM local time Kyogre surfaced in Rune City. Torrential rains followed throughout eastern Hoenn. This storm would eventually grow to encompass the entire province and beyond…”
You hadn’t thought anything of the rains at first. Just a pop-up storm. You learn to live with them in the tropics. And then you got outside and there were liquid bullets striking your skin. A shiver runs up your spine and for a moment it feels like your clothes are soaking wet and unbearably heavy.
“…Groudon emerged approximately thirty-one minutes later and dispelled the storm. A heat wave took its place.”
Collapsing bridges, boiling roads, the old and young dying as they walked. ‘A heat wave.’
You scowl and stand up. Fuck this, you don’t have to take it anymore.
“Put your dishes away!” You ignore the receptionist and walk outside. If she wanted you to do work, she would’ve picked better programming to listen to.
It hits you once you get outside that you’re stepping into cold and darkness with only a jacket on. Doesn’t matter. You aren’t about to go back inside and ruin your pride just to get a coat. Not like you’ll be out here for long, anyway.
A flicker of light catches your eye. There’s a purple balloon floating in front of you, two long arms dangling down. A puff of white billows like smoke from its head. The pokémon is lit up with pale blue flames. You stare at the drifloon. It stares at you.
“Enjoying this shit, huh?”
The ghost doesn’t reply to you, but it seems to float a little higher. Drifloon feed on loss and grief. When something ends, they’ll be there to guide it to oblivion. Doesn’t matter if it’s a life, a friendship, or a TV show. You guess today is a buffet for them. You’re used to them showing up on the orphanage’s front steps when you got a new arrival. The kid’s life as they knew it was over and the despair must’ve been very tasty.
Your breath fogs in front of you. Even if you wanted to, which you don’t, you couldn’t afford to stand here all day while a pokémon basks in your pain. “Wanna make yourself useful? I want to visit The Queen.”
The ghost balloon blinks before it slowly floats down the street, one arm beckoning you to follow. You trail after it, footsteps sounding off into the darkness. You thought the city was quiet before the ships arrived to take people away. Now the streets are almost perfectly silent. It’s far from the heat and chaos of Hoenn’s fall but it feels equally wrong. To say nothing of the snow on the ground. Or the flickering light abruptly ending providing a sphere of ghostly flame surrounded by a world of darkness.
The whole city is an ending, and the ghosts are feasting.
You keep track of the turns the drifloon makes. It’s taking you north like you asked. It’s a little paranoid to check since it has no reason to lead you astray. They don’t eat people or anything and you’re willingly spending time with it.
The gates of the royal graveyard emerge from behind a thick layer of fog. Supposedly the gates are made of meteorite iron: the heavens themselves guard your Queen. You put a hand on the gates and they creak open on their own. You smile despite the grim location. The Queen’s guards only let your people in. Even then it’s a rare honor. Entering the graveyard doesn’t exactly make you a chosen one but it does remind you that you belong here.
The sound of your footsteps is swallowed whole by the grass. Fog looms heavy around you, only breaking to form a single clear passageway. Everything not hidden by fog is lit by pale blue light. The drifloon’s own will-o-wisp goes out as it moves alongside you. Has it been here before or is this new to it, too? You don’t dare speak aloud to ask. This is a kingdom of the dead and lost. Silence is the price of admission.
That’s why it’s so surprising when you hear a voice speaking ahead of you.
It sounds familiar but you can’t quite place where you’ve heard it. You keep walking forward until you’re close enough that the voice stops.
A crobat drops down in front of you, shrieking hysterically while beating its wings. A chill runs down your spine and you feel something arrive behind you. Shit. Ambushed. Here? Why? The guards let you in.
A kanaka woman in a black jacket steps out of the fog and stands in front of you, behind the crobat. “Stand down,” she absentmindedly says. The supernatural chill fades and the bat rushes off to roost somewhere else. The woman keeps staring at you, her eyes boring into different parts of you one after another. “Kekoa, right?”
Plumeria. That’s who you’re talking to.
“Y-yes.”
She laughs. It’s a short one, but not unpleasant. Not mocking, even though you probably deserve to be mocked right now, scared shitless and standing in the freezing air without a coat. Come to think of it you don’t feel the cold anymore. Something about the place? Or is this like when you stopped sweating from heatstroke? There’s no snow on the ground. It seems like this place just ignores the weather. “Come to pay your respects?”
“Yes. The Queen…” Oh gods you’re already screwing this up. Again. Plumeria probably already hates you for fucking up with The Gage Heiess and—
She walks away and gestures for you to follow. You do, and the fog path shifts in front of her. You arrive at a life-size obsidian statute standing tall on a pedestal. An inscription on the base practically glows with unnatural red light. It takes you a moment to work out the words in Alolan:
The tides recede
The sun sets
All is lost
All will return
Alola
“The elders say she’s waiting here with The Marching Shadows,” Plumeria explains. “They aren’t sure if she’ll fight from the shadows with the shadows or if she’ll be reborn in time to rule Alola again. Either way, I don’t plan on keeping her waiting for long.”
“I… yes.” What was that even supposed to mean? “Do you come here often?”
“No.” For a moment it looks like she wants to say something more, but she just shakes her head. “No.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t stop Genesis from leaving,” you blurt out the moment the silence gets awkward.
She snorts. It should horrify you that she does that here, but she has enough mana that you barely notice. “Listen, kid, the apocalypse isn’t your fault. I wouldn’t have even asked if I’d thought things were going to get this bad this soon.”
“Oh.” That should make you feel relieved, but it just makes you sad that she thinks you never had a chance.
It’s silent in the graveyard for a long while as you and Plumeria look at Her Majesty’s grave. “Your friend going to go home anytime soon?” Plumeria finally says.
“I don’t think she has a home to go back to,” you whisper, feeling guilty just for saying it aloud.
It makes sense. Her mom is dead and her dad’s never called. She’s never even mentioned going home since the lights went out.
“Stay with her if you can. She might be useful if you think she’d be loyal to us. And if I can spin it to Anahuac as Skull protecting one of their citizens…” She trails off. Is Skull working with a foreign country? A strong Alolan independence movement would be a blow to Anahuac’s northern rival. You remember Cuicatl’s comments on flower wars and your blood freezes. They wouldn’t provoke the US, right? That almost destroyed them in the 80s.
“What’s the drifloon’s deal?” Plumeria asks.
“He just showed up this morning. Followed me around.”
“Cool. You should keep him.”
“What?”
“They’re tied to endings. One latching on to you is a good omen for a revolutionary. And…” her eyes narrow. “Again, you can’t tell anyone this next part? Got it?”
“Got it.”
“Right. Supposedly the drifloon carry kids off sometimes and drop them down far away. I grew up,” she flicks her head to the side, “thataway. Saw a lot of the ghosts there. As a kid I kept going to the local graveyard hoping that one would grab me and take him me. Then one day I realized that I could leave on my own if I wanted. I did. Rest is history.”
You turn to look at the ghost yourself. It can create light. That’s automatically useful. If it goes with you then you could sell your inkay to VStar for your cold weather travel fund. Then you’d still have the drifloon, Mahina, and carbink—name still TBD—for the fight against Hala. Solid type advantage.
You aren’t really going to keep the carbink for long. Just for the grand trial. It wasn’t an official capture mission but VStar will still pay a fuckload of money for one. Enough to support something stronger.
Picking up the drifloon is another step to being a full-fledged flying-type specialist with Ihe and Mahina already on the team. Admittedly not great for fighting a champion with a vikavolt and lycanroc. But there are reasons most pro trainers get a specialty. It’s just much easier to raise six pokémon with overlapping needs than six entirely different ones.
And, most importantly, Plumeria thinks you should.
“We’ll talk it over.” And you’ll read more about it. Make sure you know what you’re getting into.
“Probably for the best.”
“So…” You aren’t sure if you should ask this, but you’re here and can talk without the risk of anyone listening in. The Queen’s guards wouldn’t allow it. “What do you want me to do now?”
She shrugs. “You still insist on beating the champ?”
“Yes.” She’s implying that you shouldn’t be doing that. Is she just… okay with a false queen on the throne? Is she willing to say as much in front of the true queen’s grave?
“Then you probably don’t wanna be caught doing illegal shit. Not a whole lot you can do for me without breaking some laws.”
“I’m willing to do what it takes.”
“Are you? They’d kick you out of the challenge if you got caught.” Her voice picks up in fake shock when she talks about the challenge. Mocking it. Mocking you. “Is it worth that risk?”
She starts circling you like a predator staring down injured prey. You want to immediately answer “yes, of course” but then your mind drifts to the florges in the meadow and you aren’t so sure. She’d said something like this, right? “Kid, we don’t do legal shit. If it was helpful to the cause the government would’ve already made it illegal. There are a lot of people like you, respectable types, who will show up to rallies and sign petitions and run for the governor and all that jazz. They have their uses, but if it was just them in the movement, we’d never accomplish a damn thing.”
The insinuation crawls under your skin and gets your blood pumping. That you’re just like the centrists to her. That you don’t get it. Even if you’ve lived it, bounced around through shitty haole foster homes before ending up in a slightly-less-shitty orphanage where you’re supposed to be grateful for the charity of that fucking maniac Lusamine after she tried to burn your country down for her jellyfish fetish.
Plumeria looks you dead in the eyes and meets your building rage with cold analysis, like she’s sizing up an unruly pokémon.
“If you could accomplish anything by beating the league, they would just change the rules so that you couldn’t. You can’t win their game. The best thing you can do is make it impossible to play. Watch them pick up their toys and sulk off to a friendlier place.”
“Just having a throne of our own—”
“Wouldn’t save us. Didn’t save us.” She flicks her eyes towards the glowing gravestone as if daring Her Majesty to disagree. The lights don’t change. No voices carry on the wind. There’s no sign she heard at all. “Text me when you’re willing to get real. Until then I have no further use for you.”
She brushes past you and walks towards the gates. Her arm brushes against yours and you startle at the touch. It slowly brings you back to reality.
Plumeria thinks your plan is bad.
She thinks that you’re useless to her. To the cause. To Alola.
She can stand before The Queen herself and say there’s no point in clearing the foreigner off her throne? After she dared to take the title and then fail to defend Alola in her hour of need? The best thing she could do now is fix things, abolish the league, resign, and go back to where she came from. If she won’t do the last three, someone needs to do it for her.
Still…
Plumeria knows these things. She’s put in the work and maybe done more for the cause than anyone else since the fall of Alola. There’s a chance she knows something you don’t. And there’s no guarantee you would get caught if you went deeper into Skull’s work. The lowest level members, the ones who just harass tourists, they get arrested a lot. The higher ones, the ones who set construction sites ablaze or kidnap heiresses… you’ve never heard of them. No one has. That’s the point. Skull rarely even claims responsibility. It means that they can present to the world as bumbling fools that annoy tourists while also really hurting the people who need to be hurt.
But Plumeria doesn’t trust you enough to put you in her inner circle. Not now. After a grand trial or two you might be more interesting to her.
Whether you want to follow Plumeria or make absolutely sure you don’t get kicked out of the challenge and thrown in jail before the false queen’s downfall, your path runs through Iki Town.
You bow one last time to The Queen’s grave and quietly walk back towards the gates.
There’s work to be done.
*
The receptionist doesn’t bother you when you walk in with a ghost. The news has moved on, too, to a report about The False Queen. You don’t know if that’s better or worse.
You make your way down the hall and unlock the door. You almost immediately walk into your carbink hovering in the middle of the room. It swivels around to acknowledge you before rising up towards the drifloon. They stare each other down for a long time, trapping you between them, before the carbink eventually floats off to rest over Cuicatl’s bed. Ihe and Mahina are in their balls because you can’t trust them not to poop inside. Leilani is sitting next to her thunder stone. Her carapace already seems thicker. Boxier. You wonder if she’s already begun to evolve.
Flickering lights come out of the bathroom as your inkay floats out. There’s a sound of a toilet flushing behind her. Damn it. That one has the opposite problem as the birds. Keeps flushing the toilet over and over again. Thinks it’s fun to drop things in and see if they can be flushed. You’ve caught her trying to flush your phone once but managed to pull it away in time. When you shut the lid and put your backpack on it she just took that as a challenge and took things out of the backpack one by one until it was light enough to be moved off the lid and into the toilet.
You go into the bathroom and see Noci sitting on the lid.
“She flush anything?”
[Negation]
Good.
You glance over to Cuicatl’s bed. She’s still in it. Facing away from you. Hair hanging over her face. Arms pulling Coco into her. Hard to get a good idea how Cuicatl’s doing. Probably not great. You weren’t exactly thrilled to let Makani go but it wasn’t like this. She’ll eventually be due for another talking to, but she didn’t seem to appreciate it the last time you tried. You’ll give her another few days of wallowing before you try again.
Coco raises her head to look at you. You’re once again reminded how big she’s gotten since you could last see her. Might be pushing forty pounds at this point. Her down is almost entirely gone. There’s only a short cape of white feathers down her back to show that it was ever there. The tyrunt lowers her head and snuggles in closer to her trainer.
You clear your throat. “Lyra out?”
It takes a long time to get a response. You start to wonder if she’s asleep. “Ye-ah” she says, voice breaking in the middle. She’s been crying again. “Didn’t say where.”
You roll your eyes. Hypocrite. Loses her shit because her starter gets adopted by one of her own kind. She told you once that she had the right to keep a vulpix because she was making it happy. The vulpix found something that made her happier and Cuicatl lost that right. She should just suck it up and find a new monster to replace the one she lost. There are even zorua in the area if she really wanted another fox. Even if she couldn’t talk to it with her mind it barely matters. Zorua can talk to people themselves. Her cousin has one. Some people even claim he’s a zoroark himself.
You sigh and plop down on your bed to face the drifloon. Cuicatl probably isn’t up for translating right now, but it seemed to know what you meant earlier. Maybe it can do yes/no questions.
“Raise your left hand for yes, right for no. Do you understand me?”
The right—your right, its left—hand goes up. Good. That makes things easier.
“Are you a boy?”
No.
“A girl?”
Yes.
“Do you have a name?”
No.
That’s weird. They live in groups. How do they tell each other apart?
“Do you want to stay with me for a while? On my team?”
Yes.
“Alright. Let me do some reading first. Figure out what you need from me and if I can give it.”
You pull up the dex entry from the league’s website. It isn’t that long. Drifloon need to wander during the day but they’re pretty good with coming back at night. Even know where to go if you’ve moved. No idea how they pull that one off and the writer doesn’t seem to know either. Yeah, you can make this work. Don’t even need to carry food for her.
“Would you like a name?”
Yes.
“How does Moeʻuhane work? Maybe Moe for short.”
She hesitates.
“It means ‘dreamer.’ Ghosts always drift through reality like it’s not really there, and, uh, dreams end quickly. They only leave feelings. Thought that maybe you’d like it.”
She raises her left hand.
“Great.” Now what? “Uh, anything you want to do today?”
Moe’uhane drifts over to Cuicatl and hovers above her. Coco starts to growl.
“That’s Cuicatl. I travel with her. And the pokémon is…” Not actually your son and you don’t want to explain that to a balloon in front of Coco. “Coco. She’s a tyrunt.”
The drifloon comes closer and Coco rears up, sparks flying out of her mouth. Cuicatl promptly raises an arm over her and presses her back down into the bed. The growling doesn’t stop entirely but it does get quieter.
You pull out a pokéball. Ideally, you’d use a dusk ball for this but those sold out almost immediately after the Blackout. “Moe’uhane, do you want to be caught?” The pokédex says they don’t like pokéballs. She might refuse. You won’t push it until you need to battle with her. She drifts on over anyway and hits the capture button with her arm. Apparently, she knows how these works. The ball drops to the ground and gently shakes before sealing with a ‘click.” You immediately let her out.
Carbink had continued to hang back over Cuicatl’s bed. It slowly floats down and stares at the drifloon. For a minute. Two. Five. You check your newsfeed and see that “Hoenn,” “Groudon,” “Kyogre,” and “Rayquaza” are trending. You turn off your phone again.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
As soon as the screen goes dark it lights back up. An incoming call.
From Jabari.
He probably wants to talk about eight years ago.
You do not.
When you look up you see your carbink and drifloon staring at your phone in a mix of confusion and awe. Their eyes grow wider when it starts ringing again. You let it go for a while just to watch their reactions. The drifloon summons pale will-o-wisps to communicate with the strange glowing stone. Even Cuicatl’s metang moves so they can see what’s going on.
The ringing stops and the screen goes dark again. Moe drifts forward, arm outstretched. “No.” You pull the phone into your chest and shake your head. “Mine.”
An alert pops up to tell you Jabari left a voicemail. Maybe you’ll listen to it someday. Probably worth keeping around as a reminder in case he bites it, too.
You’re almost not freezing again. Guess that means it’s time to go back into the cold.
“I’m taking my birds out for some air. Coco want to come with?”
The dinosaur perks up excitedly and you can see her tail wagging back and force, thumping against Cuicatl’s legs. Then she guiltily looks down at her trainer and slowly starts to settle again.
“Go,” Cuicatl grumbles.
Coco pounces more than halfway across the room and looks up at you expectantly. You withdraw most of your team, only leaving Coco and Moe out. No need to take the entire clown car through the halls. When you reach the door you turn around to see that Cuicatl’s metang has hovered down and laid an arm over their trainer. Oddly affectionate for a spy robot.
Mahina glares at you when you send her out. She does her business—thankfully not on top of you—and starts loudly demanding to be withdrawn again. No idea how her wild cousins are doing right now.
The others start to explore the cold while you start cleaning Mahina’s mess. Ihe and Coco almost immediately start their ongoing wrestling match again. The rufflet tries hard but Coco’s bigger and stronger. Thankfully the dinosaur is clearly going easy on her playmate. Carbink starts drifting off towards a nearby building. You’ll need to keep an eye on them and make sure they don’t go too far. Moe hovers just behind you. The light makes cleaning Mahina’s shit up much easier.
You sit down on a bench to watch the chaos. Just as you move to withdraw carbink, your phone starts to ring. You almost hit the cancel button without looking but a wrong hand movement shows you the screen.
It’s Kanoa. The childhood friend you ghosted for years and are kind-of reconnecting to. You know what she wants to talk about, and you still don’t want to talk about it.
For some reason you answer anyway. But don’t speak.
“Hello?” She says, “You there?”
Your pokémon start drifting back to look at the phone. Except Coco. She runs off to mark her territory.
“I’m assuming you’re there since someone answered. You don’t want to talk about it. I get that. Just wanted to let you know that I’m here and… and I can sit in silence with you if you want.”
“Fine.”
You can hear her let out her breath on the other end. So much relief from a single word. Why? You were a shitty friend to her for years. She owes you nothing but scorn.
For a moment you consider asking her about what Plumeria said. If dethroning The False Queen matters. But Kanoa’s deep in the system. Might even be on her boss’s side. She wouldn’t give you worthwhile advice either way. So you phrase it a little differently.
“How should we help our people?”
“Hmm?”
“Kanaka maoli. How do we help them?”
‘Free them’ might be too strong for a trial captain. Baby steps.
“Volunteer, I guess?” She sounds as if she doesn’t even understand why you’re asking. “I help around my parent’s farm. Run some errands for our neighbors when I get a chance. But, um, the entire people… that’s not something I’ve thought much about. I try to help everyone.”
The oppressors and oppressed alike. ‘Both sides.’
“Did you… since we met…” Kanoa takes a deep breath. “Did you start listening to the Skulls?”
You don’t answer that. Maybe she’d try to call the cops or something. She practically works for them anyway.
This entire conversation was a bad idea.
“Listen, we’re never getting the country back. I wish we could as much as the next girl, but we won’t. We don’t have an army. Even if you count Skull, that’s just a few hundred disaffected teenagers staring down the US military. The Tapu didn’t fight the Americans last time and there’s no sign they’ll fight for us now. Lunala…” Lunala has been enslaved by the colonizers. You would have to free her with the country. “And even if we could get a god on our side that’s just asking for a repeat of Ho—” She catches herself at the last moment. It doesn’t matter. For a moment you still feel the pounding rain on your skin. Her voice softens. “Plumeria’s wrong. We won’t get the islands back. Certainly not in our lifetime. And harassing the tourists is just going to make things worse for the people still here. I get what she’s going for but she’s wrong. Even Guzma says so.”
“We just give up, then?” Your voice is hoarse. As if you’d already yelled at her or Jabari or the Gage heiress anyone else you want to be furious at. But you haven’t yelled yet and you won’t now. Your voice is perfectly level. “Don’t even try to resist them? Let them take over our league and put a throne of their own on Lanakila?”
“Throne? Wait. You think that’s—” Her line goes dead silent. Your eyes narrow. Is she muting herself so you can’t hear her laugh. “Sorry, signal cut out.” Definitely sounds like she’s been laughing. “That’s just a fancy chair the champion sits in. I’m sure Selene would get rid of it if I just told her it’s a bad look. She’s pretty nice, actually.”
Nice? She enslaved your god. Built a temple to her own glory on a sacred mountain. Failed to protect Alola when your country was threatened. Even without the throne she needs to be crushed. Because if she can be brought down? Then any haole can be.
You don’t say any of that. You say “thank you for calling” and hang up.
Ihe looks a little cold. You withdraw him and carbink and move back inside, Coco plodding obliviously ahead of you while Moe floats beside you.
The doors open just as you approach. Lyra stares out at you before taking a few steps forward so the automatic doors can shut behind her. She’s still impeccably, expensively dressed. “I was going to lunch,” she says. “Wanted to know if you wanted to come with.”
“I’m fine.” You try to keep your voice level despite the everything going on in your head. Loss threatening to lurch into anger at a moment’s notice.
“I’d appreciate it if you did. I’m willing to pay.”
“I don’t need your charity.”
She just rolls her eyes. “Look, it’s been a rough day and I just want someone to talk to while I eat some nice food. Trust me, you’d be helping me more than I’d be helping you.”
“Rough day, huh?” She can complain all she wants but her day hasn’t been half as bad as yours.
“Yeah. Eighth anniversary of Hoenn, you know? I grew up in Japan and,” she shakes her head and looks down. “It’s kind of a big deal. And every year the anniversary comes around and I don’t know what to do with it.”
“I was in Hoenn,” you tell her without really thinking. Surprisingly your eyes stay dry.
“What? I—really?”
“Yeah.” You turn around and stick your hands in your pockets. She doesn’t need to see it if you really have to cry. “My dad was in the navy. I was visiting him.”
A hand presses down on your shoulder. You ignore it. Definitely don’t find some comfort in the touch.
“I… I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault,” you mutter. “Just two dipshit assholes and the gods who went along with them.”
The door opens behind you. Cuicatl walks out. She’s hunched into herself with one arm barely reaching out to touch her metang. Great. Everyone’s a wreck today.
“You willing to go?” Lyra murmurs towards you. “If not I can just bring something back for you.”
“I’ll go,” you pipe up. She dragged all this up. Might as well take some food on her dime.
No one really talks on the way over the restaurant. For the best. It’s fucking freezing and if you had to open your mouth more and inhale the freezing air you might actually get hypothermia in the span of five minutes.
When you finally get to the restaurant it doesn’t look that impressive. Just a small door in the wall of a bigger brick building with a bar and yoga studio. No Galarian sign on the outside, just a kanji you don’t recognize on the door. The inside is also pretty small. Only a small desk and two tables pressed against the wall, a painting of some pond hanging between them. Whole place is lit by an inkay. You wonder if they bought it from VStar.
The hostess glares at Moe when you walk in. Right. Bit rude to have a ghost out today. Some older women, like her, really don’t like them. All the more reason to keep her. You walk back and open the door for Moe to float out. She gets the hint. Doesn’t even look back as she drifts away. Hopefully she’ll come back later. She said she would.
The hostess drops some menus off at the table and promptly retreats into the back. You glance it over. For a moment you consider sashimi just because Lyra’s paying and she can afford it, but you’re not sure how well they’re prepping that in the dim light. You settle on tonkatsu instead. When you visited Hoenn you weren’t bold enough to eat raw fish yet.
Cuicatl doesn’t even reach for one. Right. Can’t read. Duh.
“Oh. Uh, I can try to read you…” Lyra trails off as she looks at the sheer length of the menu. “Actually, have you been to a Japanese restaurant before.”
She shakes her head. Her hair was already a bit of a mess but that sends even more onto her face. Girl really needs to get her bangs cut. Not that you’re letting anyone bring a blade to your head until the light come back.
“Cool. Maybe… oyakodon?”
Cuicatl visibly flinches. Past food poisoning or something?
“Oh, okay, not that—”
“It’s fine,” Cuicatl says. “I’ll go with that.”
Lyra gives her a long questioning look (that Cuicatl can’t actually see) and then goes back to looking at the menu. Eventually the hostess comes back with your waters and takes your orders by glancing at each of you in turn with her pen over the paper. No forced niceties. You like it. Even if it means that Cuicatl would’ve been really confused if she’d been giving her own order. Once the woman has retreated again you turn back to Lyra.
“How’d the rest of Japan take it?” you ask. Because you certainly don’t want to talk about your experiences on that day, and I sounded like she wanted to vent or something.
“Not well.” She shakes her head and picks up the chopsticks on the table to idly twist them around in her hands. “Kyogre and Groudon were southern gods, but Honshu had its own fire and water deities. The Emperor had declared that the Hoenn gods were just different names for Lugia and Ho-oh. Kind of backfired later on. And since Ho-oh supposedly gave us our culture…” She sets the chopsticks down and rests her hand on the fork in front of her. Kind of shocked a place like this even provides them. Good for Cuicatl, though. No idea how she’d do with chopsticks.
“…If the giver of our culture killed thousands of people on a whim, then you have to question the culture, huh? My dad took it hard. Moved the family to America as soon as he got a chance with his work. Made us all take new names. Enrolled me in a school that was big on Xerneas.” For a moment she smiles despite everything. “Never really took any of that to heart. If Xerneas were a prudish jerk, why’d he make girls so cute, huh?”
She winks. You’re going to imagine it was aimed at Cuicatl and that this isn’t a misgendering thing. Cuicatl, of course, can’t see the wink. They’d make a weird couple until the whole thing blew up because Lyra found out she was dating a mind reader. And Cuicatl really deserves someone who’d accept that part of her.
“What’s your actual name?” Cuicatl asks.
“Kotone, originally,” Lyra says. “Don’t call me that, though. I’ve gone half my life as Lyra, and I don’t mind it anymore.”
She sounds sincere about that. It’s still really sad. Being cut off from her culture. You’ve been trying to learn what was denied to you, even if Kanoa says you haven’t been doing a good job of it. Lyra’s parents are still alive but they just… threw it away.
“You’re just fine with leaving your culture behind, then?”
She shakes her head and tucks her hands back into her lap. “Oh, I’m not. My mom and brother aren’t. We just can’t really do it in ways so obvious that my father would notice. Thankfully he spends a lot of time at work. On days where my father is at work and the help is off sometimes mom will make something for us and tell us stories.”
She’s just going to casually throw in a mention of her servants, huh? Yeah, now you’re remembering why you don’t like her. No one really speaks again after that. Just a tiny little division between her and the rest of the world.
When the food finally comes she eats it like she’s rich, too, all delicate movements and effortless precision like she wasn’t eating stew. Cuicatl is just lucky to get a spoonful in her mouth. Then she glares at the bowl for a second like she hates it, only to devour the rest in half the time it takes you to finish your meal. And the food is really good. Not good enough to justify the expense, but still good.
*
Selene’s having some kind of press conference. Apparently, that’s what the news was on about earlier. You end up watching while huddled with Lyra around her phone because it’s the biggest and brightest. Cuicatl’s sitting nearby. She can be a little farther away since she doesn’t need to see it, just hear.
The False Queen looks a lot more put together than she did in the conference announcing the end of lockdown restrictions. Not dressed in a suit or super nice dress, but just in a decent enough jacket and pair of jeans. She almost looks relatable. Cunning bastard. At least she kept the governor off stage this time. Couldn’t stand to see both of them at once.
“Alola,” she begins. Her hands are clenching the sides of the podium hard enough you wonder if the wood will break. “I am happy to inform you that a solgaleo will arrive in the region within the next week. At that point it is my intention to go and bring the battle to Necrozma.”
“Hell yeah,” Lyra whispers next to you.
“We estimate that, given the amount of light Necrozma has obtained, the temperatures around it will be well over 6,000 degrees. Only the strongest of fire-types will be able to withstand the air, much less any attacks. I have a suit that can withstand these environments, but on relatively short notice we were not able to create more than one.”
Read: She’s a glory hound who doesn’t want to share.
“Despite this, I cannot hope to win this fight on my own. Only one of my pokémon is capable of battling in these conditions and even he will be out matched. I will need help from powerful fire-types and mineral pokémon. Reshiram has already agreed to accompany me. A friend’s silvally has agreed to join as well. More may still be required. I urge any strong fire-types to consider coming with me to restore Alola.”
Like, say, a victini owned by a billionaire who lives in Alola. You imagine Selene’s already asked. Maybe the entire speech is about building up enough public pressure on him that he changes his mind. Gods, you hate your boss right now almost as much as the champion. Maybe more. But only one of them pays you, so…
For a moment you wonder if she’d try to get groudon for this. No. Even she isn’t that stupid. And from what you’re told they keep his resting place super heavily guarded now. She’d probably be shot the moment she got within twenty miles.
Selene keeps puffing up the logistics and dangers of her mission so it’s all the more impressive when she wins. Or her sacrifice is nobler when she dies. You hope she wins, though. Then she’d at least have fixed some of the damage she did to her home. And then the haole wouldn’t have their own martyred queen to look up to. Last thing you need is for them to get self-righteous about their shitty cause.
…
Wait.
Is that what Kanoa, Plumeria, and the florges think about you? They’d all seemed almost amused by your worldview. Like it was a joke. Like all of this was a joke. And if your pseudo-sister, boss, and a near-immortal revolutionary all think you’re a… a self-righteous fool.
…
…if you were, then who would be right? Kanoa and her ‘just roll over and deal with it’ approach? Plumeria’s insistence that things will only change with fire and blood? Or the florges’s… whatever she’d been leaning towards. Help the orphans and refugees and pokémon and hippy, flower power love bullshit.
You glance at the carbink. They stare at you. If you sell them after the grand trial, they’ll still have places to explore. It won’t be too different. But… you should ask them, to be sure. And if they say no…
…you can afford to keep them on your team for a while. Until the dark goes away. Then you can release her. But if that happens every time VStar asks you to find a pokémon or you pick one up for a trial or two, then you won’t have the money to properly care for your team. You’ve already given up on having the team you planned out to beat Selene with. Giving up on VStar might mean giving up on the challenge altogether and failing Alola.
And then you’d go right back to foster care. Or the streets. Or at least to a shitty shared apartment while you work at whatever job they’d give to an inexperienced teenager.
“You alright?” You snap out of your thoughts to look at Lyra. “Selene stopped talking a while ago and you’ve kept staring at the wall.”
“I just need some time to think things over.” Good. You managed to keep your voice even there. “Excuse me.”
You walk into the bathroom and the damned carbink follows you.
*
February 18, 2020
You still haven’t figured things out by the time your grand trial rolls around.
The kahuna invites you to his place before the trial. It’s apparently something he does with everyone. And you have your pokémon on you. Not into walking into stranger’s houses without some way to defend yourself. Nothing’s ever happened to you but you’ve heard enough from your foster siblings to worry about it.
He’s older than you’d expected. All his hair is white. Wispy where he’s clearly pulled it over a bald spot. His body’s still pretty filled out but his face is wrinkly. Nice ‘stache though. You’re jealous. Last time you tried to grow out facial hair it was just embarrassing.
“It used to be unusual for someone to have four totems behind them by their first trial,” he says as he takes a seat. “I’m guessing you’re with VStar.”
You bristle. You can guess that he doesn’t like them. Same as the bug captain that gave shit to Cuicatl. Even came out to give you a talking to when you went looking for a carbink. That wasn’t even for VStar. You just didn’t want to fight a vikavolt with two birds and an inkay. Seemed like a recipe for disaster. Even with the carbink you still had to use strategy and a clutch z-move to have a chance of winning.
“I’m thinking about quitting,” you tell him. And it is the truth. You are thinking about it. Looked into some stuff over the last few days. You just aren’t sure if you can make it work. If you want to make it work. You still don’t know what happens to you if you fail the island challenge but you’re guessing it’s Skull or foster care. You’re not opposed to Skull but you’d rather go there as a badass who finished the island challenge than another scrub.
He smiles. Some of the wrinkles go away and some deepen. Is that going to happen to you when you get old? You haven’t thought much about aging at all. Two of your grandparents died in a car crash before you were born. Another went when you were just old enough to kind of remember the funeral. Last one has dementia. Not much point in visiting. He doesn’t know who you are and you barely know anything about him.
“I’m sure the Pokémon Center can give you resources.”
“Yeah.”
You just aren’t sure if the money can ever really work. Or if Cuicatl would even let you quit while she’s working for them and making her share of the budget.
The kahuna settles deeper into his chair. It creeks under the weight. All the furniture is wood. It looks like it was made by hand a long, long time ago. Maybe he made it. Maybe he even inherited it. The whole space is tidy. Nothing out of place. You wonder if anyone else lives here. You can’t hear anyone. He has a grandkid so he must have been married at some point.
“Are you nervous?”
“Hmm?” You got distracted there. It’s a little embarrassing.
“Are you nervous about the battle?”
You shrug. “Not really. I’m—” You’re kind of a bird specialist. Probably shouldn’t tell him that. “I have a good team.”
“I suppose we shall see. Either way, there is no shame in loss.”
There is. Especially in front of a crowd.
The conversation pauses as he takes a drink of his coffee. Some of it stains his moustache brown. You weigh a question before eventually deciding that there’s nothing to lose by asking it.
“What’s the point of the island challenge?”
He sets the cup down and sighs. “I thought once that it was a good way for boys to grow into men. Go into the wilds, learn to budget and cook, face challenges and overcome them. Now it feels like too many of the children who set out never get a chance to grow up.”
“Necrozma?”
He shakes his head. “Even before this. The world feels more dangerous than the one I grew up in.”
It hasn’t been that bad so far. There was the pangoro, sure, and if Cuicatl hadn’t been there that could have gone badly. You aren’t sure you ever properly thanked her for that. Would it be weird if you did it now? Probably.
“What about becoming champion? There value in that?”
“I think there could be. It depends on how the office is used.”
“So a Kanaka champion could do some good?”
“Hah.” His smile comes back. It’s fainter than before. “It’s good to have dreams. Just remember that you can only walk one step at a time.”
“It would be good, though?”
“Perhaps. Come, now. Show me if you’re confidence is backed by strength.”
*
You’ve never struggled too much with stage fright. It’s still a little weird being on a proper stage with people watching for the first time. And that’s all you can really think about because the match is boring as hell.
Carbink versus mankey. Mankey can’t do anything at all after carbink’s used harden for a bit. Even their eyes are made of diamond. There’s just a very angry monkey trying to hit a floating rock over and over again. You’re not sure if carbink even notices. They just keep using ancient power to slowly make new rocks on the field before tossing them into the mankey with rock throw. You have no idea how long it’s been and you aren’t sure how much longer it will go on. Hala also looks a little checked out on his side of the field. You wonder why he hasn’t withdrawn yet. Hoping he gets a lucky hit or something? You were worried the mankey knew some fancy moves or at least brick break but you’re pretty sure this thing is freshly caught. Maybe it would have been a problem back in November. With your current team? No.
Eventually the mankey takes a good hit to the knee and screeches in pain. Hala withdraws him before he falls all the way to the ground.
“And with that, uh, riveting match, Kekoa is up three – zero.” There’s some light applause from the crowd. You look out. It’s just Lyra. Cuicatl is hunched over in her seat. She honestly might be asleep. Can’t blame her. Not like she can see what’s going on. “Kahuna, please send in your next pokémon.”
A machop forms on the stage. Good. A little more challenging.
“Bulk up.”
A lot more challenging. Well, might as well use your z-move here. Your last pokémon is almost certainly a crabrawler and you don’t need one for that. You slot the Normalium-Z into the bracelet and feel a jolt of energy run through your body. You straighten up and slowly go through the stances as the energy spreads out and grows. In the last moment it swells through you before disappearing all at once. It’s always a rush. Leaves you feeling like a good workout afterwards.
Carbink glows and lowers closer to the stage. Just like you’d planned. Then they rush forwards.
“Catch it.”
Wrong move. Carbink isn’t actually that strong, even after a Z-Move. You don’t have any fancy equipment to test it but you really doubt it can knock out any of Hala’s pokémon without a lot of damage already done. But it’s still a heavy rock moving at good speed. Damage isn’t the point. And on this arena, with ring-outs a valid way to knock out a pokémon…
The machop catches the hit and is immediately pushed back. And back. Closer and closer to the edge.
“Drop and duck!”
The machop tries and just gets hit straight in the face by carbink and knocked onto his back. He’s still on the stage, though. Could have gone better for you.
You can’t withdraw carbink in time before they also fly out of bounds. Unfortunate but not really a game-ender. Your last two pokémon can finish things easy enough.
Inkay comes out. Bulk up doesn’t matter when you’re hitting your opponent’s mind. They go back and forth for a while. The machop can jump but inkay are slippery and know confusion. It never holds on for long. Inkay told you through Cuicatl’s metang that she’s fine losing a tentacle if she gets to play with a species she’s never seen before. They just grow back in a few days. She does lose a tentacle when the machop grabs it. There’s a spray of blue but she barely seems to notice.
Confusion can’t be good for the head. Especially after taking a flying carbink to the face. Within a few minutes the machop is down. For the last thirty seconds it was just pathetically punching at the air or lobbing vacuum waves that missed the mark by a few feet. The bleeding from the stump has already stopped.
A crabrawler comes out next. In the dim light you can’t quite tell which one it is.
“Rock tomb.”
All the rocks Carbink put on the stage start to float up in a spiral. Shit. Rock tomb. The online guides never mentioned any of the crabrawler using that. It’s… salvageable. You debate switching to Mahina. No. Best to at least knock him off his game a little. He might miss a rock tomb against a faster opponent.
“Confusion.”
She interprets that as attacking the rocks, not the crab. The air ripples and a few of the rocks get knocked out of the way but the rest come down on her and pin her to the wood.
“Confusion, the crabrawler.”
She can send a message if she really doesn’t want to continue. You half expect it now that she isn’t winning. No. Instead the crabrawler hisses in pain and even punches his own head. Not the strongest punch but you’ll take it.
“Power through. Rock smash.”
Your heart leaped into your throat when he said ‘power.’ Power-up-punch would have been really, really bad. You can deal with rock smash.
“Just keep it up.”
The crab walks up to Inkay. It’s slower than he usually does in the videos. Definitely feeling the attack. He brings down a hammer on one of the rocks and it explodes in all directions. Most probably goes into inkay.
“Hold the shards. Push them back.
The small rocks lift up. Crabrawler tries to hit them with a rock smash but there are too many and they’re too small. They start digging into his shell. He hits one of the shards and just digs it deeper in. Crabrawler aren’t the brightest. This one seems especially dumb. You can work with that.
“Keep hitting your opponent!”
He does. Inkay sends the first round of shards back. Then there’s a tingle at the edge of your mind. It’s way stranger than Cuicatl’s. Somehow even stranger than the literal alien, too.
You withdraw her. She’s been a good sport staying out this long.
“Mahina.”
Maybe using Mahina was a mistake. You were trying not to use Moe. Too new to the team and all of Hala’s pokémon usually have dark moves. Half his usual pokémon can’t even touch Carbink, not many of them have bug or fairy moves for Inkay, and then Mahina… it would feel wrong not to have her here. Even if Moe might have been better type-wise.
The trumbeak flutters into place.
“He knows rock tomb. Hit him hard and stay out of the way.”
She doesn’t need more than that. Flies right up, weaves around a punch, and pecks the crab hard in the face. Then she leaps over him and pecks from behind. Good. She remembers what you’d told her. Crabrawler have no options for hitting behind them.
“Rock tomb.”
Except for that. Is he willing to bury himself?
…actually not a bad idea. Traps the birds in for close range attacks. Maybe a z-move to out-damage her.
“Take off and dodge.”
Mahina isn’t the fastest bird. The big beak slows her down. But she’s fast enough to dodge a rock tomb from a dazed crab. It comes crashing down right behind her and she swoops in for another peck. On the opposite side of the field you see Hala touch his wrist and start going through the steps of a fighting z-move. Perfect.
“Stay airborne. Stall.”
Crabrawler can’t learn vacuum wave. You checked. And they can’t jump. He’s got no way to get to Mahina in the air and eventually he’ll have to let the energy out. If you’re lucky he’ll fly right off the stage when he does.
The dance reaches its last step as Mahina lazily hovers over the crab. Sometimes he punches the air like it’ll do anything.
“Bulk up.”
Wait fuck.
The crab flexes. The cracks in his carapace heal before your eyes and you swear you can see his muscles bulging against the shell. Bad. Uh. Well, you still have your ‘pray to whatever god’s listening’ card.
You cover your ears.
“Supersonic.”
It’s still way too loud even through your hands. You see most of the crowd wince at it.
The crabrawler does too. Good.
“Circle.”
You talked through this. If she just stays in the air right by the edge of the stage, then eventually a confused crabrawler might just walk right off.
The first time Hala orders a rock tomb the crabrawler goes through with it. Mahina manages to dart out of the way. The second time the crab ignores it and marches straight up to Mahina.
Without orders, Mahina dives down and slams her beak beneath him before flipping it up. The crabrawler tumbles right over the edge. Good girl. Remembered your advice.
After you take your stamp and z-crystal the crowd bursts into applause. It’s not actually that many people but it feels like a whole crowd. Lyra flashes you a thumbs up. Cuicatl is at least awake and looking in your general direction. Pretty sure she’s smiling. Hard to tell in the light.
It feels good.
It feels really good.
People are proud of you. You’re not sure the last time that happened.
Even if the island challenge isn’t the best way to free your people, you like this feeling. Maybe you can stick with it for a little while longer. Just long enough to get a little stronger. And maybe to see your next grand trial. It’ll be even sweeter when you beat a rock master with a team of birds.