"We lost." Finding time for himself in the aftermath of his 'defeat' at Drayden's hand had been difficult for Aidinza. Between the endless stream of people gushing over the fight, the condolences for his loss from people who did not get it, and the congratulations from those who did… well, it had taken nearly two hours to extricate himself from it all, even with some very pointed remarks that he had somewhere else to be.
Thankfully, when he arrived at the pokémon centre, it did not take long for the Nurse to recognise him, and few people were hamheaded enough to get between a trainer and his team's prognosis.
Which led to where he was now, sitting in one of the medical rooms out the back of the Pokémon Centre in the early morning, with Sandile carefully splayed over his lap and most of the rest of his team scattered about the room.
There was a dull clamour at his pronouncement, mostly from Shandíín and Mawile, as Sandile pressed deeper into Aidinza's lap, sulking. Aidinza let them get it out of their system, waiting patiently for Shandíín to calm down before continuing over Mawile's theatrics unimpeded. "But that was inevitable. I've only been a trainer for a few months; I've only been your trainer for some of you for a few weeks." He glances towards where Mawile is still… coming to terms with the loss in his own way, which seems to involve some elaborate ritual between him and his false jaw that already includes waterworks. Then, at Nihanlo as the ice type bobbed up and down on the shelf she had been placed on to stop her from freezing to anything important, then towards Pawniard, the only pokémon that Aidinza did not end up using in the battle.
Honestly, Aidinza had expected her to have the worst reaction; Astazhei had certainly been beside himself when Aidinza told him that he would not be participating in the fight against Drayden. But like always, her expression was undivinable underneath her helmet, and she listened with the same focused intensity as ever.
"We did better than we could have ever expected. We went up against the strongest gym leader in Unova and forced him to admit that he could not beat us without overwhelming force." Shandíín let out a piercing whistle as he took to the air, flashing his brilliant plumage. Clearly demanding praise for his part in the fight. Aidinza stops stroking Sandile for a moment to offer a perch and lets his fingers run through the preening bird's orange feathers. "You did great; the fight would not have gone half as well if not for you."
He really had gone above and beyond. Tyrunt had genuinely been a terrible opponent for him, naturally absurdly resistant to Shandíín's strongest Moves, with an arsenal of its own attacks to reach the ember pokémon while he was in the air. Yet despite that, Shandíín not only put the fossil down but inflicted a debilitating burn on his next opponent.
Shandíín screeched proudly as he stretched his wings out, the complicated black, yellow and orange mesh that dyed his primaries glinting in the sterile light of the hospital room.
After a few more moments of pampering, he tosses Shandíín lightly into the air and drops his hand back down to the sulking pile of scales in his lap.
"That goes for all of you; each and every one of you did and gave more than I could have ever asked you to. From the bottom of my heart, I am proud of you, and you should be proud of yourselves." Aidinza slowly scanned the room, making sure to make eye contact with every pokémon he brought up against Drayden, even Pawniard, despite him not ending up using her in the fight itself. A smile crosses his face unbidden as they each straighten up in turn as his eyes make contact, even Mawile stopping his theatrics to bask in the heartfelt praise. "We're going to be leaving tomorrow, so we can't spend too long celebrating. But I asked Nurse Joy to include some extra berries in your dinner tonight, so eat up and rest up; you earned it."
For a moment, it felt awfully little to Aidinza for how much that they had given, a pat on the head and some dessert to go along with their meal. But an excited chatter passes through the pokémon nonetheless, almost as perky as when Aidinza professed his pride in them. Clearly, they thought it was more than enough.
Aidinza shakes his head and lifts Sandile out of his lap, carefully placing the limp pile of scales back onto his bed, being as mindful as he could of the ground type's freshly cast leg. For a moment, Sandile tries to hold onto Aidinza's hand, and the Ya'an-ah boy gives him a soft look. "I need to go check on Naazin." Sandile continues clinging to him, and Aidinza has to gingerly pry him off. "Be good, and get some rest." He aims the words at Sandile to start before looking up to make sure it is clear that he meant that for the entire team as he steps away from Sandile's bed.
Then, when he was satisfied that everyone at least got the message, he left the room and headed deeper into the pokémon centre.
Everyone gave it their all against Drayden, for whatever might be said about how they gave it their all in the case of Mawile, but the fight had not taken from each of Aidinza's pokémon equally. Nihanlo, for instance, had walked out of the fight in a better state than she had woken up that morning in; Sandile, on the other hand, limped away with a nasty enough broken front left leg to need a cast and likely a full week of recovery.
Aidinza pauses outside of a door, listening to the muffled sounds of beeps within.
But the worst off of all of them was Naazin. His carapace had been outright shattered in several places, tearing up the sensitive flesh and muscles underneath; his antenna had nearly fully snapped off, and his sensitive eye membranes had been ruptured.
Drampa was an incredibly powerful pokémon, and rousing its anger had cost more than Aidinza was really comfortable with.
However, all he could do now was deal with the aftermath.
Aidinza shakes his head, chasing away his thoughts, and pushes through the door. On the other side was a rather unusual room; instead of a bed dominating the space, there was a large tank full of water. Hanging from the ceiling, walling in the tank somewhat, were an array of machines which beeped and flashed to an esoteric rhythm. Cables ran from the machines into the water, tightly bound in thick insulation to prevent the wat-
Aidinza shakes his head and stops delaying the inevitable. His eyes fall to the pokémon softly floating in the water.
Naazin was an uncomfortable sight. Most of his body was bound in compression bandages, held tightly to his shell with an eclectic pattern of zip ties. Two of his left legs had been set into a rigid cast, slung into place by yet more bandages, and his broken antenna had been entirely removed; it had been too damaged to be salvageable, and leaving it attached would have delayed the regeneration of new sensory nerves. Though Aidinza could not see it from where he was standing, he knew that one of Naazin's eyes was covered by a patch, to give time for its ruptured membrane to heal.
Though the uncomfortable feeling in Aidinza's stomach had little to do with the somewhat gruesome sight of the lightly stained bandages that covered the crustacean and more to do with the soul-crushing knowledge that this was unequivocally his fault, beyond the natural fault that all trainers had when their Pokémon were injured.
He had not just sent out Naazin or been slow to return him. He had left Naazin out on the field with the express purpose of getting the drampa angry. He had done so despite knowing that Naazin would lose. He continued to do so even when it became clear just how outclassed Naazin was.
Even when Naazin had suffered the consequences of following Aidinza's plan, had already been injured… Aidinza let the pokémon conv-
Aidinza pauses and shakes his head. The Sun demanded that he be honest with himself; he had not been convinced; he had taken the first available excuse. Unlike Sandile, Aidinza knew that Naazin would have been unbothered by being returned; the clauncher did not have the fragile pride of a sandile teetering on the precipice of evolution to wound.
Then again, Aidinza had been blindsided by Naazin going so far as to spit in the eye of a dragon that had been in the process of utterly destroying the water type. So maybe Aidinza should not make so many cocksure claims about the colour of the sun at sunset when his eyes had only ever seen noon.
The sound of sloshing water interrupted his thoughts, and Aidinza glanced at the tank in front of him as Naazin shifted to look at his trainer from the corner of his eye. The Naisho'h boy smiles and hopes that it is not as grim and forced as it feels as he squats, stepping to the side so Naazin has an easier time focusing on him.
For a moment, the two of them just made eye contact, yellow meeting green as Aidinza wondered what to say, and Naazin… just watched with guarded anticipation. The crustacean was expecting something, something that he was not looking forward to.
Aidinza wet his lips, and started speaking. "We… we got further than I expected. We took Drayden to his sixth pokémon, and it took him sending out Haxorus to really stop us." The smile came more naturally now, even if it was decidedly more savage, there was something endlessly exhilarating about his achievement that demanded he exult in it. But here and now he needed to focus on his injured friend.
"We wouldn't have been able to do it without you. The entire plan hinged on you, and you went beyond anything I could have asked; you were brilliant." Aidinza pauses as Naazin shifts, breaking eye contact to stare forward with a deliberate coolness as his uninjured antenna twitches uncontrollably. The Ya'an-ah boy suppressed a chuckle into a slow exhale of air, his smile growing fonder. "You were brilliant." He reiterates, just to watch Naazin shift about in the water again, before growing more serious. "But it got you hurt."
The Ya'an-ah reaches out to the tank, his fingers pressing into the cold glass before he freezes as Naazin's eyes snap to his digits. Something in Aidinza's words had brought back all the tension and uncertainty that had been there when he first walked in. But after a moment or two of uncertainty, Naazin seemed to… not relax but untense.
"I spoke to the Nurse," the boy continued slowly under the careful stare of his pokémon. "It's… not a quick fix, not if we don't want long-term complications." And was that not just a damning indictment of what had happened? All the horrors and terrors of Caġaṡakehaƞska Caƞtaƞka inflicted on him had taken not even a day for modern medicine to deal with. "And I'm not going to force you into a premature moult just because I can't deal with my own mistakes while you recover."
The Nurse had been very clear on just how many issues could arrive from an improperly prepared forced moult, starting at a brittle carapace and escalating to being partially crushed within his own shell as his flesh grew into a space that simply hadn't been developed.
The words were meant to reassure the crustacean that despite the undercurrent to their relationship—the constant push-and-pull between getting the water-type to train and the water-type trying to nap instead—Aidinza was not going to push him on this point.
Aidinza almost goes on to say more before something catches his attention… or rather, a lack of something, movement. Naazin, Aidinza's third pokémon, was not a particularly active pokémon; he was the embodiment of lethargy, in fact. But that usually precluded him from moving himself, not from being moved by the world. Aidinza had lost count of the number of times Naazin had let a river's soft flow carry him far enough away that the Ya'an-ah boy had to send Astazhei to retrieve him. Resisting the pull of the river to stay still would have been more effort than the lazy lobster was willing to give more often than not. Even in the tank, he had been softly bobbing as the water filter and his own breathing created a subtle current.
Naazin was no longer bobbing. He had gone utterly, unnaturally, still.
His words had not reassured the water type. Which made what he had to say next so very much harder, and the words had already clung to his throat like muk and mucus.
"You'll be staying here, I can only take six pokémon on the road, and you need time to recover." There was a part of him, a very, very convincing part, that wanted to yell that he was just kidding, that this was some kind of cruel joke, and that, of course, he was not rewarding Naazin's effort and dedication with abandonment, no matter how temporary.
It was necessary. Naazin needed time to recover, and Aidinza's new pokémon needed training and attention. But the justifications did not make it easier to stand here, in front of the injured Naazin, watching as each word weighed on his friend, and that unnatural stillness was replaced by a resigned slump.
"Naazin…" He trails off almost as soon as he begins; if there was one thing that being a trainer had taught him, it was to see when his pokémon were not listening to him. "Naazin." He repeats, firmer than the first, and when that fails to get a reaction, he pushes his featherlight touch on the glass forward until his entire hand presses into the glass with a dull thud. Naazin, despondent or not, could not suppress his instincts to react to physicality so close to him, flinching around to eye it. "I know… I don't want this either. You gave everything, and it tastes like ash in my mouth that your reward has to be this. But you need time to recover, and I need someone to look after Sandile."
Sandile's name, more than any other word, drew the next reaction. A twitch of his remaining antenna and a sharpening of focus that his flinched reaction did not truly draw.
"It's only temporary." Aidinza pressed forward while he had his pokémon's attention. "You'll stay here until the Nurse is satisfied you can be safely transferred, then you'll be sent south to where my people are." The Ya'an-ah eschewed permanent settlements to wander their beloved Mother Desert, but they were not blind to the needs of a modern world. Decades ago, one of the last Hataałii'diyin had established the Ya'an-ah Reserve, maintained in great part by the brokered deals that allowed wider Unova use of Route Four. The Pokémon Habitat Research Centre, which Mawile's pokéball automatically transferred to what seemed like so very long ago, was constructed on that reserve.
Aidinza had never been and, in all honesty, only recently learned of it. But he had no doubt that his people would treat his pokémon well; the students of Bi At Ini could do no less.
"Then, when I reach Lacunosa when you've recovered, we'll see each other again. I'm not just going to forget about you and Sandile," He pauses for a moment, a sharp twisting of the lips pulling at his face. "Though maybe Sandile would have forgotten about me by then." There was a touch of something not quite bitter and not quite fearful that Aidinza could not keep out of his voice with his attempt at levity. Caġaṡakehaƞska Caƞtaƞka had been days; this could be weeks.
He did not want to do this. There were few things in the world that he wanted to do less than this. This was not a disgusting effort of cleaning out his tribe's latrines or having to rush for shelter in the unforgiving midday sun to avoid a sandstorm. Or even an uncomfortable conversation with his sister about growth, and urges, and hair.
This felt like he was hurting himself. Every spoken word was like a trembling knife carving around his heart; every minute twitch and reaction from Naazin felt like that trembling knife was pushed deeper and deeper. He said this tasted like ash in his mouth before, but he did not have words for how every word, every vowel and consonant, every twist of his tongue shaping each vibration of his voice box was nothing less than awful.
Aidinza's shoulders slump down as Naazin maintains his stillness, and his next words are begging. "Please don't make this worse than it already is for me, Naazin. I don't want this, I don't. Please believe that."
The boy was not sure if it was his words that moved the water-type in the end or the brittle emotion that he could not stop from cracking his voice towards the end. But whichever it was, Naazin finally reacted, turning towards his trainer and studying him with reserved blue eyes.
"Please." He repeats with a helpless gesture, out of words to try to shape the emotion he put on naked display.
A few moments passed as Aidinza waited for Naazin to make a decision, unsure what he would do if the water type rejected what he was saying. Unsure what he could do.
Thankfully, he did not have to find out. The press of Naazin's claw into the tank was probably rougher than the Water-type intended, but the shock of vibrations up Aidinza's arm felt like they were lifting the weight of the world off Aidinza's shoulders.
-
Naazin needed to rest, and Aidinza… Well, he also needed to rest. That had been exhaustively difficult for him in a way he just had not expected. Naazin was always the easiest going of his pokémon, following the path of least resistance in all things. Or at least the path to most quickly going back to sleep.
Aidinza expected him to appreciate the chance to simply rest for however long it would take to recover, to relax without the need to train and the constant interruption of his naps. On some level, it was even meant to be a reward for pushing so hard against the drampa.
He felt like such an idiot.
A high-pitched keen interrupts Aidinza's self-flagellation, and he glances over from the tree he was sitting - slumped - underneath. Dreepy was an odd sight under the sun proper; the stark, revealing light of day defined her in ways that the trickster Moon did not. The intrinsic mutability that marked her as a ghost not gone, but diminished. If that solidity bothered the ghost dragon, she certainly did not show it as she danced through the air around Mawile.
Mawile, for his part, dramatically stumbled around the shaded clearing, swiping through the air behind the ghost, intermittently letting out 'bellowing' roars that, from his diminutive frame, were nothing short of adorable.
The two of them had been playing since Aidinza released them, Mawile playing the part of a raging monster and Dreepy… a helicopter? Some kind of superhero? There were definitely times when Dreepy was the damsel, but the ghost never really stayed still long enough for Aidinza to get a read on her role in Mawile's play.
Aidinza watches as one of Mawiles flailing limbs catches the ghost as she banks around, the blow featherlight compared to its potential, but nonetheless sending Dreepy 'careening' towards the ground. She bounces across the ground like a stone across water in suspiciously equal arcs, before abruptly transitioning into a long tumbling roll that ends up with her at the feet of the third pokémon Aidinza has out.
Pawniard stares down at the ghost at her feet with a defensive, and decidedly incurious yellow gaze as Dreepy lets out a low melancholic keen that sets Aidinza's teeth on edge and sends a shiver up his spine.
A sound not quite like a squeal catches Aidinza's attention, and when he glances back over to Mawile, it's to see the steel-fairy all but swooning. He had managed to pull most of Aidinza's pokémon into his 'plays' in the short time that he had been with Aidinza, but this was the first time another pokémon had their own overly dramatic 'death' scene.
Mawile did not remain a watcher for long, bellowing again and stomping towards the two with exaggerated steps, his false jaw snapping in the air at unseen threats. Pawniard's attention snaps up to him, stepping back and lowering herself into a loose stance, ready to lunge forward or away at the drop of a hat. An aggressive, fighting stance, obvious to anyone who looked.
Mawile did not look, continuing to lumber forward without a care in the world, clearly eager to get another swept up in his dramatics and not giving a second thought to if Pawniard wanted to be swept up or not.
In moments, he was standing in front of Pawniard and looming over the 'still' body of Dreepy, who was 'surreptitiously' wriggling around to peek up at what was happening. The only sign of what was about to happen was Pawniard's yellow eyes flicking over to Aidinza, as Mawile's false jaw swung around to pose with the rest of his body as his real head roared.
Or attempted to roar at least, the moment a sound came out of Mawile, Pawniard surged forward, punching forward with her two blade arms as they shone with an inner light. The first blow spun Mawile around on his feet as it slammed into his head, and the second sent him barreling ass over teakettle in a way that was starkly graceless compared to Dreepy's previous dive.
A snarl fills the air, distinctly real and very unpleasant compared to the over-the-top bellows and roars of before, as Mawile catches himself on the grass and lunges towards the sharp blade pokémon as the dark-type shifted her stance, angling her head down to increase the profile of her heavy steel plates, and to look searchingly towards Aidinza.
"Mawile, stop!" Aidinza snaps, pushing off the tree behind him and dropping a hand to the pokéballs on his belt. The fairy ignores him, lashing out at Pawniard with a glowing fist that slams into the black plate between the dark type's torso blades straight through her raised guard.
The blow was enough to send Pawniard stumbling, but unlike Mawile, she did not immediately throw herself back into the fight. Instead, she fell into the same neutral stance she had been standing in since Aidinza released her and turned away from Mawile to look at her trainer.
Mawile attempted to use that inattention to follow up, his false jaw glowing with power. But before he could take another step, he disappeared into a red beam as Aidinza returned him. The pokéball takes a moment to settle, and as it does, Aidinza lets out a frustrated sigh; he had been hoping to have some time to get familiar with his three newest pokémon, but between getting caught up in his head about Naazin, Pawniard just standing off to the side, and now them getting into a fight…
Dreepy, as was seemingly becoming common, interrupts his thoughts, rising into the air and circling around Aidinza's head once before settling over the back of his neck. Her cool flesh a warding balm against the frustrated flush that had risen up his face, and her soft coo distinctly calming.
He reaches up to scratch underneath the ghost's chin, marvelling just a bit at how different it felt from normal flesh. Like something caught between a liquid and a gas, only really solid by the barest circumstance.
"Pawniard, come here." He orders as he releases Mawile back into the world and takes the fairy type not immediately flinging himself at the pawniard again as the low victory it was. If he had, Aidinza would have had to bring out Astazhei or Shandíín, and that was the exact opposite of the message that Aidinza wanted to send.
The Ya'an-ah boy takes a moment to collect his thoughts, staring down at the two rather diminutive pokémon. Aidinza could tell that they were ashamed, or at least some equivalent of it, though they showed it in very different ways. Pawniard was preternaturally still, head bowed forward in a way that exposed the flexible flesh of her nape usually hidden by her helmet, and blade arms twisted outwards to an awkward position that would stop her from easily bringing them to bear. Mawile on the other hand was all nervous, offended energy. Shooting suspicious stares at the back of the supplicating pawniard’s back, before turning an almost teary eyed gaze onto Aidinza then an eager stare at Dreepy hovering close by.
"Pawniard, attacking your teammates is unacceptable. If you think they are trying to fight you or hurt you, you come to me." It was not the first time something like this happened, though usually, the perpetrator was Astazhei getting too invested in some roughhousing. Pawniard bent further, curling in on herself in a way that should have been defensive but only seemed to make her more vulnerable. Aidinza tried to stay firm, but between the sleepless nights, the intense battle, and the even more intense aftermath, he was emotionally exhausted. He tilts her head up, physically pushing her out of her submission posture. "It's fine, just don't let it happen again, okay?"
There was a look of bewilderment in Pawniard's yellow eyes as her head was tilted up, one that was not masked at all when her eyes dropped to the floor deferentially. Aidinza resisted the urge to sigh and poked the dark-type between the eyes. Watching her reel back and go cross-eyed, brought a quick smile to his lips. "Go sharpen your blades; your stone is in my bag."
The sharp blade pokémon nods, the image of dutiful compliance, but the speed with which she turns around and runs off reveals her enthusiasm. Sharpening her blades with her favourite stone was one of the few activities that got more than passive acceptance or intense supplication from her.
Aidinza turns to Mawile, studying the fairy type as he begins to fidget seemingly only just realizing that he was also in trouble. Mawile was easily Aidinza's most troublesome pokémon; he was distractible in the extreme, he was distracting to others during training, and as seen in the fight against Drayden, only an effort shy of being outright disobedient. Then there was his attitude towards Pawniard to consider; it had only come up a few times since Aidinza caught him barely two weeks ago, but there was something harsh festering in it that was easily roused. The only reason it was not more common was likely because Pawniard barely acted without direct instruction from Aidinza himself.
It was not enough to call Mawile trouble outright, but it was enough that Aidinza wanted to be careful in how he handled the fairy type. But then again, treating him cautiously and differently was pretty much just calling him trouble outright anyway.
"Mawile… Pawniard should not have attacked you, and unless she had continued attacking you, you should not retaliate." He keeps his voice level, trying for something chastising but not aggressive or domineering. Not that that stops Mawile from quailing in on himself. "But worse, this is all off the back of you antagonizing Pawniard. She showed you she did not want to play with you Mawile, she warned you to back off. But you didn’t and then you act like you did nothing wrong? Then you disobeyed me, ignoring my orders and forcing me to return you, to stop you attacking your teammate.”
That came with a bit more intensity than Aidinza was trying for. Even for the admittedly luddish Ya'an-ah, the pokéball and the bond it represented between humans and pokémon was something that was… not holy but innately sacred. Being forced to use it rather than being able to properly control his pokémon left an uncomfortable feeling in his gut.
He breathes out slowly. "If you want to make this work then you can’t just assume you can do whatever you want, Mawile." There was the temptation to push harder, hammer the fairy type about the disobedience against Drayven, potentially spoiling Naazin's sacrifice; but he knew that did not come from a really fair place. “If your teammates don’t want to play with you, and some don’t, then leave them alone.”
Silence descends over the two of them for a long moment as Aidinza is left unsure what else to say, while Mawile squirms and fidgets; unable to meet Aidinza’s eyes gaze for more than a second as his nervous offence turns almost panicked. The decision of what to say next eventually was taken out of his hands as a crunch of leaves and grass drew his attention.
He gestures to Mawile that they are done, only pausing for a moment to watch the fairy-type dart away before he turns to face Unktehila.
The Pheyan'atho Elder comes to a stop a few paces from the Ya'an-ah boy, and as he does so, the Boy takes a moment to study the Elder. For as long as Aidinza had known him, though that was certainly a short time, there had been an air around Unktehila noticeable only by its new absence. It had been a certain cast to his face, the angle of his shoulders, the weight of his steps.
The source was obvious to Aidinza after their last conversation, but the sheer physical weight of it on the Elder… Aidinza just had not realised its full extent until now. Until the weight of a doomed march was gone from his feet, until the slump of an impossible task had slipped from his shoulders, and the cast of a guilty countenance had left his face…
Unktehila did not look quite so old now.
"Nearly twenty years ago to this day, Dra'khíza-ide'en ordered me to destroy the Pheyan'atho genealogy records. Nearly twenty years ago to this day, I disobeyed my Itaƞcaƞ wicaṡta otokahaƞ." The man spoke matter-of-factly, his tone almost monotone. But it was a thin veneer over the sheer depth of history and guilt in his words.
Aidinza was not sure if he should be offended or not, that not burning some lineage book warranted more guilt than putting his life at risk.
"Last night, my Itaƞcaƞ wicaṡta otokahaƞ ordered me to give him those same records I had spent decades hiding from him, maintaining in direct defiance of all meaning and spirit of his order." Despite his words, a smile splits his craggy face, a moment of humour touching his blue eyes. "Or, more accurately, told me to remake those records. It was gratifying to learn that my efforts were not just Dra'khíza-ide'en humouring his old friend, almost as gratifying as his face, when I gave it to him not ten minutes after he asked - forty years of service and I can still surprise my Itaƞcaƞ wicaṡta otokahaƞ."
"I expected Jha'y'zéča-den to come find me first." It was probably the only reason why Aidinza had not left Opelucid already, that and the looming… conversation that would have to happen with Sandile.
"Jha'y'zéča-den is a smart boy. He will go far after he finishes his Haŋhépitúwe and starts his journey. But he does not know the Ya'an-ah. He thinks you want time for yourself. I wager the fact that you will leave soon has not even crossed his mind." Aidinza inclines his head; he might have to go find Jha'y'zéča-den himself, even if it meant potentially aggravating Drayden… again. Unktehila shifts and studies Aidinza slowly, seemingly mulling something over in his head. “Mihuƞkawaƞżi miye womnaṡica.” He mutters and shakes his head when Aidinza gives him a confused glance, his threadbare grasp of Pheyan'atho leaving him wondering why the elder was talking about a smelly brother. "If you were anyone else, any other Ya'an-ah, this would not be my place. Kici ti'daƞ, why must you leave so soon?"
Aidinza opens his mouth immediately to give a response, but despite that, he does not end up saying anything. The response was so quick on the tip of his tongue, but it was never really formulated as he stood there, considering.
In the desert, the answer would be obvious. Staying at one oasis for longer than a week or two would risk overdrawing it and the surrounding land in a way that would have disastrous effects that might only become evident years in the future. So, the tribe would stay for only as long as it took to prepare for the next journey and leave.
Here… the only pressing need to move on was the gym challenge or perhaps the cost of living to his wallet. But it would be months before the next Conference, and even after his purchase of TM's it would take a long time before money would become a concern.
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Something uncomfortable stirs in Aidinza's stomach, and the trees around him feel like they were closer, more oppressive than before, and the grass underneath him felt even more foreign than it usually did.
"I… don't know." He shakes his head, gathering himself. Perhaps there was something to be said for getting out of the way of Gym Leader Drayden, the most powerful Gym Leader of Unova, who Aidinza had just spent nearly a week getting on the bad side of.
But weighing that against being able to stick around for Naazin's and Sandile's recovery? It was not even a question.
"The Ya'an-ah wander so much that the idea to stop never crosses their mind." Unktehila muses and Aidinza could not find it in himself to gainsay the older man. "But again, I say this for what you have done for my people, Kici ti'daƞ. You should leave nonetheless."
Aidinza's eyes narrow at the old man, and he straightens up to give him a suspicious stare. "I'm not even sure I want to give you the chance to explain." Yet despite that, he does not turn away from the elder.
"You are a four badge trainer who just took on Opelucid, and took down Drampa and Druddigon in the same fight and then you forced Drayden to send out Haxorus five pokemon to six." Aidinza was tempted for a moment to interject that much of that victory was the planning from the Pheyan'atho, but he doubted anyone had a keener understanding of that than the man in front of him. "You have attention on you; the same people that flock around eight badge trainers are looking at you."
"And why does that matter?" Aidinza knew what Unktehila was talking about, at least on the front of attention. But between the crowd watching his fight with Drayden and the seemingly endless stream of people who wanted to say something after that, he was pretty sure he did not want anything to do with it.
"You want to bring the Ya'an-ah into the current age, Aidinza. You don't want them to fade into history." The Naisho'h shifts uncomfortably. He can see where Unktehila is going with this, and he is already not sure if he is wrong. "It would be better if the current age met them halfway, and attention in this world turns to fame, turns to influence."
It was a bitter pill to swallow, and there was a temptation to just petulantly reject the old man out of hand, turn away from him and… go do something else, somewhere else. But then something shifts on his shoulders, and the cool, soothing, ethereal flesh of Dreepy presses against his neck as the dragon reacts to his agitation.
The old man ignores, perhaps kindly, Aidinza's resigned sigh as he continues: "There is a tournament in Lacunosa soon, one of the most famous in Unova. Some trainers focus their entire careers on it rather than the Conference. If you leave in the next few days, you'll make it in time for last-minute registrations, and if you perform well, you'll find the attention you found against Dra'khíza-ide'en turn into momentum."
"The thought occurs that the last time I listened to you, I nearly froze to death and just about got mauled by a beartic and a pack of sneasel." For all the truth in what Aidinza said, it still felt somewhat unfair to say it. He knew the reasons Unktehila had, and while he was far from self-hating enough to agree with them, he doubted they had anything to do with this.
"You are right, and if you had died in that forest, I would have justified it to myself as yet another necessary step. I would do anything to make sure that my people carried on, but because of you, that's no longer necessary." This time, it was not Aidinza who grew agitated; he had heard this frank honesty from the old man before. But instead, it was Dreepy, her body tensing and some of her weight shifting from his shoulders to her flight. "Like I said, Kici ti'daƞ, if you were someone else, I would not say a thing. But this old man has too many regrets to sit by and let someone who has done so much for him develop his own."
"I didn't do it for you." Aidinza allowed himself at least some petulance, but the old man just gave an unconcerned shrug.
The Ya'an-ah breathed out slowly and looked away, staring for a long moment at Pawniard as she eagerly sharpened her arm blades, not far from where Mawile was dancing… or maybe posing?
"I'll let Jha'y'zéča-den know where you are." Aidinza nodded, but the crunch of leaf and grass that followed immediately after Unktehila's words told him that the old man had left him with his thoughts.
Aidinza was not sure if that was better or worse. He reaches up and scratches at Dreepy's chin as the ghost type slowly settles down, with Unktehila no longer in sight. "I'm not sure if I prefer him with an active interest in helping me, compared to when he manipulated me with a callous disregard for my physical health."
She does not reply, simply snuggling into his fingers, leaving him to try to argue against Unktehila in his own head.
Or, more accurately, lose to Unktehila in his own head.
-
At some point, Aidinza just gave up and splayed himself out in the grass in the middle of the clearing, soaking in the sun. Distantly, he could hear Mawile and Dreepy's play in full swing, and much less distantly, he could hear Pawniard still intently focused on sharpening her arm blades. A surprisingly rhythmic, soothing sound, for how harsh the rasp was.
It was probably not a productive use of his time, but it was better than brooding on his conversation with Naazin. Or brooding about his conversation with Unktehila. Or brooding about his impending conversation with Sandile.
Just him, the soothing warmth of the sun, and only the sort of weird sensation of firm ground topped by soft grass.
But the day was not done with him yet.
"Of everyone who could have told me where you were, I didn't expect it to be Unktehila." A shadow falls over the young Ya'an-ah's face, and he opens a single green eye to look up at an upside-down Jha'y'zéča-den. "But maybe I should have."
Aidinza does not respond, only letting out a mildly disgusted noise.
"That bad huh?" The Pheyan'atho boy shifts, and Aidinza's eye winces closed as he stops blocking the sun. There was a thump as Jha'y'zéča-den sat down, and with a grunt, Aidinza sat up to face him. "I've heard you've had a day."
"I'm having a day." He stretches briefly before brushing a stone loose from his back. "I had to talk to Naazin about him staying behind while he recovers, then I talked to Unktehila, and he told me that I could just stay while Naazin recovers, and just when I was getting my hopes up, he told me that I shouldn't stay." There was a part of Aidinza that thought he should hold back some of the venom Unktehila inspired from him in front of Jha'y'zéča-den, but he just could not muster the energy to. "And… the worst thing about that man is he makes sense."
If Jha'y'zéča-den was surprised at the vitriol directed at his elder, he does not show it, just calmly listening to Aidinza's rant. "He's good at that, making something you don't like make sense. Though, for me, it was just getting me to eat my vegetables." A weak smile crossed Aidinza's face at the joke, but it was startlingly ephemeral. "However much sense he might make, Aidinza, that doesn't necessarily make him right. Definitely never made celery taste less like dirt."
"No, but I think he's right anyway." It hurt to admit it out loud, but Aidinza had already lost to the old man in his own head, so it was not like he had any refuge from the idea.
"Well, if you decide otherwise, you've always got a welcome with the Pheyan'atho even if Dray-..." He pauses for a moment, brow furrowing before a smug, satisfied smile worms its way onto his face. "Dra'khíza-ide'en huffs about. Unktehila is going to be too busy to bother you if that helps."
"Thanks." There was a part of Aidinza that was tempted, the chance to thumb his nose at Drayden after everything that had happened tickling something bitter in him. But he shakes his head and pushes himself to his feet, helping Jha'y'zéča-den up a moment later. "But I'll let Dra'khíza-ide'en's blood pressure come down, least I could do."
"So where does that leave us?" Jha'y'zéča-den brushes some grass from his jeans and adjusts his hair out of his eyes.
Aidinza shrugs, tossing a glance over to where Mawile and Dreepy were playing, pausing for a moment at the sight of Mawile halfway buried face down in leaves, with Dreepy nestled into his false jaw as it juts into the air. "I need to have what's gonna be an unpleasant conversation with Sandile, and then I think I get moving."
The Ya'an-ah boy lifts his fingers to his mouth, prepared to whistle and call his two pokémon over, but finds himself pausing for a long, silent moment. He was… not really sure why he paused, maybe expecting Jha'y'zéča-den to say or do something. But the silence stretches on, companionable if not for the unmet expectation in the air.
Then, the silence breaks as he lets out a piercing whistle. "Mawile! Dreepy! Time to go." He looks back to the other boy, who seems paralysed by some deep thought, before absently tapping a pokéball to the head of Pawniard, who had already placed her sharpening stone away and had been waiting patiently by Aidinza for some time.
It was not until Mawile and Dreepy had slowly ambled over and were returned themselves that Jha'y'zéča-den spoke. "Some of the parents are dropping off their kids at the Village of Dragons in a few hours." Aidinza slips the last pokéball onto his belt and gives the Pheyan'atho a slightly perplexed look. Jha'y'zéča-den meets it with a shrug and a half smile. "Free childcare in Opelucid is a hell of a deal… but I mean." This time, his smile was fully formed, tinged with something cheeky. "Dra'khíza-ide'en's blood pressure's already going to be elevated, right? Might not even notice you there."
It was a clumsy invitation, but for all the reasons he had, the call of the road was as quiet as it had ever been for Aidinza. "As long as you keep Unktehila away from me."
"Dra'khíza-ide'en ordered Unktehila to remake the Pheyan'atho genealogy records; I'd be surprised if anyone sees him for a month." Jha'y'zéča-den scoffed, and Aidinza wondered for a moment if it would be funnier to burst his bubble now or later. "I have to pick up some groceries, you can come with me if you want?"
"No, like I said, I have a difficult conversation, and I probably shouldn't put it off." Though maybe he should, it would almost certainly spoil his mood before he got to the Village of Dragons… he shakes his head. "Just try not to run over anyone on your way back."
Jha'y'zéča-den grins widely. "But it turned out so well the first time, hey? Might solve all my other problems."
"You'd need to find a braver man than me to take on that travesty you call a room." Aidinza wanders over to where his bag was leaning against a tree, fixing up the slight mess that Pawniard had left when she retrieved and put back her sharpening stone.
"It's not that bad." The Pheyan'atho boy followed Aidinza, leaning against the same tree that Aidinza's bag had been sitting under.
"Wacis'a-mƞi could spend an entire night talking about everything she and Keh Wakaƞuƞci dredge from your room." He shrugs the bag over his shoulder and pins Jha'y'zéča-den with a look.
"Maybe I should make my bed before the," A smile across his face unbidden, "kids come around." He pushes off the tree and glances at his watch. An almost contrite look crosses his face. "Which means I probably need to get a move on. The kids should be getting dropped off before lunch…" He makes a weird, uncertain gesture. "Just show up whenever you feel like it."
The two exchange a final nod before Jha'y'zéča-den jogs off, leaving Aidinza alone in the clearing.
For a moment, Aidinza was tempted to just head straight to the Village of Dragons. Telling Naazin that he was going to be lef- was not going to come with Aidinza on the next route had been a gut punch, and while he cared deeply for the clauncher…
Sandile had been there since the start, and while Aidinza managed to convince himself that Naazin would be fine being left behind, at least before the actual conversation, there was no chance that Sandile would take it well.
But it had to be done, and putting it off did not and would not make it better.
So he leaves.
-
There were very few places in Opelucid; cities in general, really, that Aidinza really felt comfortable. Even a month after he had arrived at her doorstep, and three months after he took his first coltish steps into the lights of Nimbasa. The streets still felt like they were choking him at times, the buildings bearing down on him until they covered the sky and hid the Sun.
Bizarrely, the top of the hospital was one of those places.
Thankfully, that meant he had somewhere to retreat to for a very uncomfortable conversation he needed to have, where he would not need to contend with the somewhat nauseous feeling that being in and around the city gave him.
Unfortunately, that meant that he did not have a reason to put off having to have this very uncomfortable conversation he needed to have.
Aidinza resists the urge to sigh as he sits on the edge of the hospital's roof and runs a hand down the bumpy spine of Sandile sitting in his lap, careful to keep from jostling the ground-types' injuries.
"I'll be leaving soon. There's a tournament in Lacunosa, and if I want to make it, I need to hit the road by tomorrow." Even just coaching the words in terms of 'I' instead of 'we' made Aidinza want to curl up. The idea of his journey, any part of it, not being shared with Sandile felt anathema to Aidinza's identity outright.
Made even more gut-wrenching by the fact that Sandile clearly did not get what Aidinza was getting at, carelessly wallowing in Aidinza's lap, enjoying the rooftop sun.
"I'll be leaving you here until I reach Lacunosa." The words took a moment to register with the ground type, slowly piercing through his content-lolling haze over several seconds, an unnatural stiffness spreading through his body. Aidinza struggled to keep his voice even as Sandile turned his confused, beady eyes onto him. "The nurse said your injuries need to be kept under observation, a-and I need you to stay here to keep an eye on Naazin while his carapace heals."
Aidinza's voice wavered uncertainty as Sandile whined, his excuses sounding threadbare to his own ears. But as Sandile straightened up, his limbs shuddered and quaked, the weakness and pain in his limbs evident. The Ya'an-ah boy's hand slipped under Sandile's ribs, taking some of the weight off Sandile's limbs. "You can barely stand, Sandile." His voice turned to an almost intimate rasp, soft and pleading. "And I need to go."
A snarl cut through the air, and Sandile pulled himself out of Aidinza's lap, jumping down onto the edge of the roof before whirling about to stare up at Aidinza. There was a prideful cast to the ground types features that Aidinza was not used to seeing outside of a fight. The tremble was gone from his limbs, replaced by that fierce glint in his eyes and a growl deep in his throat.
It was almost enough to make Aidinza hesitate. It was definitely enough to give him second thoughts. If Sandile felt this strongly about it, and that feeling in his gut was this unpleasant, surely he could just take the ground type with him? Not be separated from his first pokémon?
Then, in spite of Sandile's determination, his back leg buckles, and he teeters into a sideways tumble towards the several-story tall drop. Aidinza lunges forward, catching Sandile before he can tumble off the edge and sending both of them tumbling off the other way. Aidinza grunts as he crashes to the rough ground of the hospital's roof, and then hisses in pain as the Sandile, started and off-balance, lashes out; his teeth sink into the thick cloth of Aidinza's clothes and pierce the flesh underneath by bare millimetres.
For a moment, Aidinza just lay there, awkwardly crumpled between the hospital roof's wall and its floor, staring up at the sky as he tried to reign in his heart rate, plagued by thoughts of what almost happened. He nearly let Sandile fall off a Sun scorched building at the barest of arm's length.
He gasps as something wrenches at his arm; Sandile has leveraged his panicked bite into a death grip, pinning Aidinza's arm in place. The determination had given way to petulant desperation, a growl building in his throat as if he could intimidate Aidinza into just staying, undercut by distressed, confused, pleading whines.
Sandile did not want Aidinza to go, and his frantic attempts to force Aidinza to not go were hurting the young native, only not actually injurious because of his clothes, weaved to survive the harsh conditions of the Ya'an-ah desert.
But if Sandile kept thrashing, or sun forbids, started to use an actual move, Aidinza's comparatively frail human limbs might just snap.
A growl builds up in Aidinza's own throat, low and primal, the same growl that he had used to train Sandile with Hone Claw. His right hand comes up to clamp down on the back of Sandile's neck, a poor mimicry of the end result of dozens of dominance fights between krookodile he had watched throughout his youth.
A poor mimicry, but good enough. Instincts as old as the sands themselves kicked in for Sandile, his body going limp as his body was flooded with signals he had lost a dominance display and now needed to submit or risk finding his neck in a death roll.
He tugs his arm out of Sandile's mouth, wincing at the ragged cloth slowly being stained with droplets of blood. He pulls Sandile close against him, hugging the ground type as tightly as he dared with the crocodile's own injuries. The Naisho'h boy shifts and moves until he is able to sit upright with his back against the wall, ignoring the bloody scrapes that his tumble had earned to run a soothing hand down Sandile's spine as he whimpered. "I know, buddy. I don't want to go. But I have to, and it'll only be a couple of days, okay? You'll blink and I'll be in Lacunosa, and you'll get an extra big dinner, and I'll buy a nice blue blanket for you."
Aidinza tried for something conciliatory, expected he would manage something bargaining, and ended up with something bordering on desperate. He hated this, he hated just as much as he hated having to tell Naazin he would have to stay behind. Hated it almost more than having to take Astazhei to the hospital.
Sandile whined again, but this time it was resigned, but no less heart wrenching for it. Sandile understood that he could not make Aidinza stay, and Aidinza understood that Sandile hated it, that if Sandile could he would make Aidinza stay.
But he could not.
"It will only be a few days," Aidinza said again, making no attempt to get up and move, as he clutched his starter to him, trying to pretend the slow wracking jolts were Sandile trying to squirm from his grip. Just like he tried to pretend the blur over his eyes was from the pain of his fall and not anything else.
He wished Sandile could.
-
There was a certain tranquillity to the Village of Dragons, a quelling ataraxy that compelled a necessary level of courtesy that Aidinza naturally adopted. Here was the cradle of some of the most important people in Unova's history. Some of its greatest villains, and some of its greatest servants. It bid respect.
Was being the operative term. For all the gravitas that the Village of Dragons compelled in Aidinza, it did not seem shared by its newest denizens. Who yelled and squealed as they darted about the wide open spaces around the Village of Dragons that had seemed so very empty before today.
Nor, it seemed, was it shared by its oldest.
Aidinza only met Haŋhédaŋzéča once, the hydreigon only deigning to wake up to examine its fiefdom's newest intruder the first time Jha'y'zéča-den brought him to the village. Yet the memory of it stuck with him, a dragon with teeth as long as his arm and so old as to have his eyesight stolen from it.
It was a living, breathing piece of history.
It was currently bounding about the wide-open plazas of the Village of Dragons like an excited puppy. The contrast of its sheer bulk next to the tiny form of the children that had been dropped off at the Village of Dragons was bordering on madness. A single misstep by the dragon could probably crush the children by the classful, and with how enthusiastic and erratic the ancient drake's movements were, Aidinza was half certain he was at all times mere seconds away from witnessing a brutal tragedy.
Yet, despite the hydreigon crashing into the ground repeatedly - its weight enough to shake the ground and nearly send Aidinza stumbling from nearly a dozen metres away - and its seemingly careless movements chasing after the fragile children playing with it and the fact that it was blind. Disaster never struck; the old beast was clearly intensely aware of the fragility of humans.
Or maybe it was the innate connection between the Pheyan'atho and dragons, Aidinza mused to himself as he silently watched, like how Aidinza had known since birth how to keep himself at just the right distance from a basking krookodile so as never to be mistaken for a midday snack.
Or maybe it was Jha'y'zéča-den's colossal effort, having long since waded into the thick of things and demonstrating an old hand at playing with the massive beast of a hydreigon.
Or maybe everyone here was just really lucky.
A threadbare smirk crossed the boy's lips as he looked away, just a touch morbidly amused. But it fades just as quickly as his eyes wander over to where Wacis'a-mƞi had gathered a cadre of kids, sitting at the bank of a lazy river that edged the only border of the Village of Dragon's that was not demarcated by the foreboding expanse of Caġaṡakehaƞska Caƞtaƞka.
Distantly, the Ya'an-ah boy could hear the rasp of her voice as her cadence rose and fell with her story, a story that he was pretty sure he was told a few days ago with far less enthusiasm. Which considering the woman had spent nearly an hour and a half regaling Aidinza and an indulgent Jha'y'zéča-den with her dredging stories, was saying something.
It certainly seemed to enthral the circle of kids listening to her, or maybe it was the graceful form of the old dragon hovering behind her, flexing his prowess over water that had kept Wacis'a-mƞi safe time and time again, diving into even the most treacherous depths. Keh Wakaƞuƞci, Wacis'a-mƞi’s sleek treasure hunting Kindra, displayed a mastery over water that beggared belief, turning the lazily drifting river into a raging torrent as Wacis'a-mƞi described the stormy currents of Savo Island, calmed time and time again at his whim as she spoke of descending to the wreckages that lay beneath the waves every day for nearly a month.
Then came the storm that trapped her beneath the waves for nearly three days, and with a flex of will the water entirely still, lifting it into the air and pulling it into a deceptively fragile bubble of water that glinted in the sunlight.
It was a magnificent display of a kind of power separate from battling, that left Aidinza, even at this distance, in awe.
But his attention drifted on regardless, something heavy and grey in him dulled the awe quickly, as a commotion drew his attention to where Unktehila had emerged from one of the halls that dotted the village, a box made of wood covered in dirt that almost looked as old as Aidinza himself clutched in his hands, and an air about him of satisfaction.
The literal hand full did not spare him, and he quickly found himself swarmed by half a dozen children who had somehow grown bored of either playing with a Dragon presumably well able of removing a small town as an afterthought, or watching a Dragon flex it's mastery over an entire river.
Aidinza watched as the old man struggled to both keep a hold of the box and greet the children clamouring for his attention, a wide smile on his face, even as he kept a worried eye on the box in his hands.
He turned away until his gaze finally drifted to a presence he had been ignoring to watch the children for the last ten minutes.
To where Drayden, Dra'khíza-ide'en, honoured leader, the Ya'an-ah boy did not care much which in that moment stood half hidden from his tribe and the children of that tribe by the house Aidinza had been leaning against.
There was a new air around the gym leader. Distant from the cold, disciplined disapproval that had coloured the man when Aidinza first met him and not quite the unravelling anger that had bubbled up during their fight. Not even the resigned defeat that had come over him after that fight was quite like it.
But what that air was eludes Aidinza at that moment.
"I did not expect to see you back here, so soon." His voice does not carry far, not necessarily low, but lacking the diaphragmatic boom that usually lent his words such a commanding impression.
"Why?" The question had more than one inquiry, and even Aidinza was not sure which, if any, he actually was asking for.
"Old expectations." Drayden's response seemed to amuse himself, a flash of humour in his sharp yellow eyes and the slightest upturn of his lips. The closest to a smile Aidinza had ever seen on the old man.
Aidinza did not know how to react to that, and for all his thoughts of thumbing his nose at Drayden earlier today, he found himself awkwardly silent.
"Part of me wondered if anything would ever come of letting Unktehila have his way. I had turned Opelucid into a city of tomorrow; why would it care about the fossils underneath its feet." The gym leader stares off into the distance for a moment, towards where Aidinza knew the slightest hints of the tallest of Opelucid's buildings could just be made out before he snorts. "Should have known that even if they did not care about the fossils, getting the children out from under their feet for free would be too tempting an offer."
Aidinza himself was unsurprised, if there was anything he expected to be true out of the desert as much as it was in it, it was a parent pushing their children off to the grandparents at the earliest opportunity. "What do you want, Drayden." It was meant to be a question, but Aidinza's voice was too flat to manage it.
But if Drayden was surprised by that, he did not show it. "I will be straightforward with you, Uŋmaŋ. I do not like you." Aidinza did not even blink; the feeling was very much mutual. "But I owe far too much to someone far too important to me to let you wallow in this jealous mire like a petulant child."
There was a certain irony to Drayden, so incapable of accepting a potential defeat at the hands of Aidinza himself that he sent out Haxorus, accusing Aidinza of being a petulant child. But throwing his words back in his face felt almost like he would be playing into them, so Aidinza only breathed out slowly. "Jealous mire?"
"As much a fool as you made me, boy, do not think I am one. Sitting here off to the side glaring out at the fruits of your own labour like it personally offends you." The gym leader snorts and pins Aidinza with his own glare. "Do not act stupid."
"I've just had a bad day." The excuse sounded weak to his own ears and clearly sounded even weaker to Drayden's if the curl of his lip over his teeth was to be judged.
"Then forget about your bad day and enjoy what you won, Uŋmaŋ." The gym leader goaded, jerking his head towards the Pheyan'atho reconnecting with their children.
Aidinza does not move.
"Jealousy, Uŋmaŋ. Look at them, gainsay me. Uŋmaŋ." Aidinza glances towards the Pheyan'atho again, that heavy, grey feeling building up inside him again, bitter in his gut. Aidinza does not gainsay the gym leader. "You look at them and think of all the blood and sweat you and your team put into the fight against me. And you remember you are an outsider, you're an other, an Uŋmaŋ. You get nothing from it."
"I'm Jha'y'zéča-den's friend, I knew his struggle. I helped my friend." Aidinza believed what he said, Jha'y'zéča-den was his friend. He knew his struggle, it was a struggle he himself knew. He had helped his friend, and even now he felt proud of that. "It matters as much as I make it matter." He repeats the words like a mantra, believing them wholeheartedly.
So why, standing there at the end of the consequences of it all, did the words sound so weak to his ears.
"His struggles reminded you of your struggles, Uŋmaŋ. Just like how his success reminds you that it is not yours." The gym leader's words were cruel, yet his tone was not. It was ruminative, maybe, introspective definitely. Cruel… not quite.
"Is there a point to this?" Aidinza shifts, he did not have to stand here and listen to this, the gym leader had not earnt that.
"Did your fight with me teach you nothing, boy?" The gym leader makes a disgusted noise as if even being reminded of the fight angered him. "Sitting here agonising over having to make hard choices and over getting hurt, acting like at the end you're left holding the bloodied spear and an empty stomach. You got experience, boy; you proved your concept. Even without an unfezant in hand, you have information." There was an edge to the gym leader's words, something almost desperate. This was wisdom he had to pass on, earned in such a way that it demanded he impart it onwards. "You said it to me yourself, Uŋmaŋ; what does it mean for the Ya'an-ah if the Pheyan'atho is so easy to forget? Ask yourself what it means for the Ya'an-ah that you changed that?"
Aidinza did not leave, nor did he respond for a long, long moment. "I think I hate old Pheyan'atho men."
Drayden snorts, contemptuous and amused all at once. "Wiser words than I could ever speak." Then, the gym leader steps out of the cover he had been hidden behind, and a moment later, a cry goes up among the Pheyan'atho children. Moments later, the Gym Leader finds himself swarmed, as enthralling to the young Pheyan'atho as the living piece of history, playing with them like an excited puppy or the dragon juggling a small river like it was nothing.
Aidinza watched as with practiced ease Drayden calmed the crowding children, quelling Haŋhédaŋzéča with a glance, and taking control of the situation with a surprisingly velvet clad iron grasp.
It did not surprise Aidinza that Drayden was good with children, he must have fought and guided hundreds in his time. Some of the people Aidinza watched fight him, that gave him his greatest fights, were little more than children.
But it still annoyed him.
And the fact that it annoyed him frustrated him to no end. He had not been here long, but all he could manage was sitting here, seething in a quiet resentment while cowering in the shade as if the Sun would not judge his disposition just because some building older than the bones of the Mother Desert was in the way.
He should leave; he should have already left.
"You're the guy who was with Uncle Urkel an' Jackyden." Aidinza recognised Wan'la-ite's voice, even if he only met the girl in passing. He turned to face her, trying to plaster a smile on his face.
"And you're Wan'la-ite; how is your mother?" He was pretty sure he managed it; at least the little girl didn't seem put off by him as she ran an errant hand through her dark, purplish locks, trying to tame them in a herculean task that only Drayden, of all Pheyan'atho, seemed able to overcome.
"She's good! She had a lot of fun helping prepare for the fight, but…" The girl glances around suspiciously before leaning forward conspicuously.
Aidinza leaned forward himself, feeling only slightly silly when the girl proceeded to say nothing for several seconds. "But…?"
"Well, just because you asked." The girl tried to whisper, but it instead came out just as loud as she had been talking but with a lispy rasp. "She wasn't very good at it…"
Despite his gloom, or maybe because of it, Aidinza felt his smile turn to a more genuine smirk of amusement. "Not like you, huh?"
The girl shakes her head, long purplish hair flaring wildly. "Nu-uh, she thought that a Thunder was the same as a Thunderbolt! An- an an didn't understand that just because Tyrunt is really good at taking a hit doesn't mean it's so good at-at…" She pauses, frowning as she tries to find her words. "Taking ranged attacks?"
She shakes her head, clearly not satisfied with that.
"Special attacks?" He offers; whether or not to use Naazin to shut down tyrunt had been a fierce debate he remembered clearly. A single water pulse from the Water Gun pokémon would have been enough to stop the Royal Heir pokémon in its tracks.
"Special attacks, yeah!" She clicked her fingers sharply, yellow eyes lighting up. "Cuz you know, its rocky feather mane is so good at dis-per-sing force, but the stuff underneath is more mushy." She gesticulated wildly, a queer rolling gesture that he guessed could mean mushy. "But your Fletch-inder didn't care about that AT ALL! He was all like, whoa, blam, fruosh!"
Aidinza's smile widens; he would have to tell Shandíín later that he had been like 'whoa, blam, fruosh.' The vain pokémon would love it. "Shandíín did everything I could have asked of him and more."
"Yu-huh! Then he burnt the altaria like fruosh ahhh! And he was soooo cool." Wan'la-ite bounces around for a while, playing out the fight with her hands, her left Aidinza was pretty sure was meant to be Shandíín, her right the Altaria. Then she freezes suddenly, whirling around on him with wide eyes. "I'm gonna have one."
"Yeah?" Aidinza offers lightly, not quite put off by the young Pheyan'atho's sudden intensity.
"Yu-huh! I'm gonna be just like you!" That one, Aidinza had to admit, hit differently. Wan'la-ite stares up at him with earnest eyes, honest and almost completely free of guile. It was difficult to keep hold of bitter feelings underneath a declaration that ardent. "I'm a start with a dreepy, an then catch a bergemite, an a fletchinder an then a sandile an a claunch, an then I'm gonna beat up Mr Drayden just like you did."
"Drayden beat me." He teases slightly, resisting the urge to laugh as the girl's cheeks puff out angrily.
"Didn't count! Everyone knows you won." Wan'la-ite narrows her eyes at Aidinza as if she was ready to fight him over whether he won or lost his own fight.
The Ya’an-ah boy hums. "Well it's not me you have to convince of that." He glances significantly over to where Dra'khíza-ide'en was dealing with a crowd of children. Wan'la-ite follows his stare, and from the corner of his vision he could see her eyes narrow further. "You could also tell him about your team plan, so he knows what's coming."
Aidinza was not sure how Dra'khíza-ide'en would react to being told that a young Pheyan'atho was planning on repeating his humiliation with the same team, but he doubted that the gym leader would take it well.
The young Pheyan'atho girl nods seriously and marches off, shoulders set and a mission in her spine.
Aidinza watches her go for a moment, oddly fond despite the brief interaction. "So I'm guessing that was your idea?" He called over his shoulder when she was too far away to hear him, lolling his head to glance backwards at Jha'y'zéča-den.
The other native boy smiles sheepishly, walking over to stand next to Aidinza. "Was it that obvious?"
"I've heard her say dispersing just fine before, and I know for a fact she knows what special attacks are." She was one of the Pheyan'atho who argued effusively for using Naazin to beat Tyrunt quickly. Part of Aidinza wondered if part of that little act was just an excuse to tell him Tyrunt's weak to special attacks again. "And she was trying very hard to sound like a kid."
"Sorry, I probably shouldn't have put her up to that." He bows his head apologetically, but only for a moment, his blue eyes meeting Aidinza's with almost as much earnest sincerity as Wan'la-ite. "She meant it, though; she was saying it to the other kids."
"Yeah, I got that." Aidinza sighs and runs a hand through his red hair, wincing slightly as his fingers tangled up in a painful knot. He had not had a haircut since he left the Mother Desert, and he desperately needed one.
"I thought it would be nice, to know that they look up to you, like that." The Pheyan'atho boy continues haltingly shifting his weight from foot to foot before falling silent.
The silence drags on for a few seconds, Jha'y'zéča-den hunching in on himself as it stretched longer and longer, until finally there was another apology at the tip of his tongue.
Then Aidinza bumps his shoulder into his. "Yeah, yeah it was." He admits, maybe it was for only a little while, and the ache of his hurt team still bit at him, but having a tangible impact like that on someone else…
Maybe it was not what he desperately hoped for, but after Caġaṡakehaƞska Caƞtaƞka, after his team getting mauled by dragons, maybe it was just enough for what he needed.
He jerks his head towards the crowd of children, as a strange hush fell over the cacophony of noise that came from so many children in one place. "Come on, I want to see if Drayden's head explodes hearing a Pheyan'atho tell him that they want to make him face my team again."
Jha'y'zéča-den laughs and follows.