Golett blasted a Graveler out of the way of Machamp who was punching away at some exposed tumblestone on the cliff side of what Hectar had told me was a circular structure protecting a basin containing ‘Turnback Cave’. There was nothing inside, according to Hectar, but I still gazed up at the high reaching cliffs with curiosity. We were gathering materials to teach Mille how to craft Poké Balls, which would also have the added benefit of providing me with maybe a couple more so I wouldn’t have to rely on the single empty one I had. I was… conflicted about sharing crafting knowledge towards Pearl Clan members. What if this was a huge mistake? But I had opened my big mouth and now I had to commit.

“What about… Thomas?” Hectar lit up at the name.

Kirlia shook his head by my feet. At a tiny two-foot tall, he was just barely smaller than Edith.

“Sorry,” I grimaced. I actually quite liked Thomas as a name for him.

“Hmm…” Hectar wasn’t deterred even as bits of tumblestone exploded from Machamp’s hulking form. Mille was listening to us with a feigned interest. “Harry?”

“Harry?” my eyes tightened. “No…”

Kirlia thankfully agreed.

Hectar tutted. “Maybe something more exotic, then… Hisoko?”

What the…? I opened my mouth to reject it, but Kirlia chirped and nodded his head.

“Hisoko?” I asked him with a disbelieving note in my voice. “Really?”

“Hah! He likes it!” Hectar punched the air in celebration.

I sighed. “If that’s what you want to be called…”

Hisoko the Kirlia. An odd name, for sure, but if Kirlia liked it then who was I to deny him that? Hisoko it was.

A shadow fell over Hectar and he looked up at Machamp staring down at him. “You’re done, big guy?”

The buff Pokémon had both of his hands full of jaggedly shaped tumblestone. He nodded and his biceps bulged with the effort of carrying so much weight. “Go back to the camp,” Mille spoke up to Hectar. “We’ll gather the wood and meet you there.”

Hectar agreed and set off with his Machamp. I clambered down the slight incline of rock we had scaled to reach the exposed tumblestone deposits and Golett offered a hand to Mille to help her down. “Thank you, Golett, you sweet thing.”

Mille seemed quite fond of Golett. Maybe I should let her name it, since I couldn’t really think of a good name for it myself. Besides, calling Golett an ‘it’ in my head felt… wrong. A male or female name would at least give me a gender to attribute to it, even if Golett didn’t have one.

We managed to get back to flat terrain and I had Edith create a wall around us with Double Team clones- both for practise and for protection against Mothim- while I set Bibi to fell a tree. I didn’t have to ask him twice and he eagerly got to work gnawing on the closest trunk. “Did you get him from the pond?” Mille asked while Bibi worked.

“No, from the Obsidian Fieldlands… near Jubilife,” I replied. “He was my first ever Pokémon.”

“Hmm…” Mille seemed thoughtful. “You know, we always made fun of Bibarel in the Pearl Clan. They’re not the strongest Pokémon ever and they’re a little… dull.”

She said that last bit cautiously, as if afraid she’d offend me. But I knew what she meant. They were often ridiculed in Sinnoh, too, and their tendencies to block rivers with their dams often made them a nuisance for most.

I had first planned to ditch Bidoof for another stronger member, I was ashamed to admit. Against a nightmare like Giratina, a Bibarel wouldn’t do too well. I needed Pokémon like Golurk and Gallade for that. But I’d grown too fond of Bibi and Edith to let them go. If Giratina’s second type was indeed ghost, then they’d both be immune to its shadows. But I was playing a dangerous game if it happened that Giratina was a dragon/dark type.

Besides. If Giratina was so powerful that both Dialga and Palkia’s combined power could only hope to control it- let alone defeat it- then I was screwed no matter how many counters I brought with me.

In that regard, I was still debating on whether Gallade or Gardevoir was the better choice. Still was leaning more towards Gallade, but I might’ve had to settle on Gardevoir if I couldn’t get my hands on a dawn stone.

“I get what you mean,” I replied to Mille. “Bibi can sometimes be a little bit… interesting.”

Her reply was cut off by the harsh crack of snapping bark. Hisoko howled as the tree trunk fell over Bibi, but he lucked out when it fell just shy of his chubby body. For his part, Bibi didn’t even seem to know he had just barely avoided being crushed.

Edith, however, was a slightly different story. Four of her Double Team simulacrums had been dispelled by the treefall. I was just thankful the real Edith wasn’t one of them.

But it did reveal her weakness with the move. If something as simple as getting brushed by falling leaves and branches were enough to break apart Double Team, then the move was almost entirely useless against wide area-of-effect moves like Heat Wave. At least they could attack somewhat decently, though. By my estimation, they struck with about a third of the real Edith’s power. Optimal Double Teams outputted about half damage, so still a bit of work left but otherwise good progress on the offense side.

I asked Golett if it could shave off the branches and leaves and it silently got to work. “Hisoko,” I beckoned Edith over while speaking. “Can you help Edith out with her Double Team? Try to throw some weak Psybeams to test their durability. Edith, try and focus on defensive simulacrums as well as offensive ones. It’ll be hard but, with practise, I bet you could get them to survive a weak Psybeam at least. Then, we can go from there.”

Honestly, I didn’t really know if it would work. I was still winging it from the lessons I was taught about Pokémon at school. I assumed Edith was focusing Double Team on offense instead of defence. It made sense, right? But I didn’t exactly know.

I kept Hisoko and Edith paired up while Golett carried the now clean tree trunk over its shoulder. Bibi held the rear and was spitting Water Pulses at the surrounding grass since he seemed to derive pleasure from watching the water splash across the ground. When we got back, I got to work on crafting with Mille.

First of all was borrowing a knife, which Vicus thankfully had on hand. But we still needed to cut cubes from the tree trunk- a task Jubilife handled with a handsaw. Our saviour ended up being Octillery. He could shoot highly pressured water from his open snout that was apparently enough to cut through metal. All it took was for Vicus to send his Empoleon into the water to find Octillery, and five minutes later, we were in business.

Golett held the trunk down to stop it from getting flung away by the water jet. I watched Octillery work his magic with an impressed look. He could constrict his snout to alter the flow of water erupting from it and did so to produce a thin but powerful jet of water that sliced through the tree trunk like butter. I admired his control and gave Mille my compliments.

“Oh, thank you.” She smiled at that. “I used to be the head of the Firespit Island guard before…”

She trailed off. And I showed quite a bit of restraint when I didn’t push my luck by asking her to elaborate. “Anyways,” she continued after an awkward moment. “I needed my partner to be pretty precise in my duties.”

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Once we had our cubes of wood, I showed Mille how to shave the bark off with the knife before demonstrating how to carve it to the desired shape. I smiled wistfully as I worked, thinking back to all the issues I had getting the hollow bowl-shape down with Anvin. I hoped the craftsman was still okay in Jubilife…

Mille’s first effort was pretty similar to my first effort- in that it was kind of terrible. But she could practise it by herself now that she knew what to do. Next were the tumblestone chunks. No knife would be able to cut through them, so we relied on Octillery again to form the bowl-shaped lid.

There were a couple of accidents involving water. The nastiest was when Octillery got a bit too excited and accidentally carved Golett’s arm right off of its shoulder. But Golett wasn’t that injured. All it did was hold the arm next to its socket and waited for its clay to remould it back on. Mille had been horrified and was super apologetic. Most other Pokémon would’ve permanently lost the limb. But no harm no foul, in my opinion. There was a reason I was so callous in letting Golett near such powerful water moves.

Once we had two (rather beautifully carved) pieces of tumblestone, I went into the small pouch I had attached to the back of my belt where I kept all of the premade latches. In all the chaos, I was honestly surprised I hadn’t lost them all somehow.

As I retrieved two latches for ourselves, I spied upon the scatterbang I had bought all those days ago before the Wurmple survey. I had never used it- even when it would’ve been useful. Truthfully, I had completely forgotten it was even there. Something to keep in mind for later…

The premade latches had two components. The first was clamped onto the back of the Poké Ball and attached the base and the lid together- allowing the Poké Ball to open and shut. “We usually have a press to force the clamp through the wood and stone, but if we could borrow Machamp again, he’d have enough strength to do it for us.”

The second was the actual latch part that secured the Poké Ball shut at the front. This could be done by hand and was comparatively easy. “See how the latch holds the Poké Ball shut?” I demonstrated to Mille by flicking at it with my finger. The latch fell from its groove where it had held the ball shut, enabling it to burst open with a snap. “If it comes loose, the Poké Ball will open itself quite forcefully, so you need to be careful when you release your caught Pokémon.”

“Uh huh,” I noticed Mille was suddenly a lot more cautious over hers. Her crafted Poké Ball functioned in that it could open and shut with the latch, but unfortunately her botched wood carving had made it useless in terms of Pokémon catching. They were quite finicky to craft in that way.

“They’re designed to snap open upon impact,” I continued. “So don’t throw it around or smack it with your fist. Aside from that, congrats. Your first made Poké Ball.”

“Thanks for showing me!” Mille exclaimed, proudly observing her new creation at various angles.

“Fascinating,” Vicus had been watching over us along with his looming Empoleon.

I gave Mille a couple of the latches. “In case you fancy making a couple more.”

Truthfully, I was surprised at how painless the process had been. Pokémon really did make things so much easier. Making a Poké Ball as we did in Jubilife would’ve required a three-day minimum mining trip to the Fieldlands and another six hours of continuous work at Anvin’s workshop. For us with Pokémon, it killed around four hours in total- the majority of that being travel times and carving.

“I need to visit this Jubilife place.” Hectar declared. “Imagine the things we could learn!”

I chuckled at his enthusiasm. “As long as you don’t bring your-”

“Pokémon!” Mille cried out, pointing towards the sky. “Looks like Braviary!”

Dread lurched through my stomach when I spotted the giant flying type circling above us. It was gradually descending towards us and, sure enough, I spotted Irida riding on its back. And just when I was loosening up, too…

We all remained silent as Braviary landed. Unlike back at the Shrouded Ruins, Braviary opted to land gently and softly dug its talons into the sand on impact. Irida was quick to hop off and I was surprised to see she didn’t have her Glaceon with her.

“Vicus,” she didn’t even spare me a glance as she immediately approached her subordinate. Empoleon let off a deep, growling noise that was equally menacing and threatening, but Irida barely flinched as she turned her focus to him. “Oh, please. I knew you since you were a little Piplup. You wouldn’t raise a flipper to me.”

There was an eerie pause, but Empoleon eventually backed down with a derisive huff. “You need to control your Empoleon more, Vic.”

“But you do such a good job at it already.” Vicus replied dryly.

I noticed Hectar had shrunk back a little. He looked uncharacteristically meek in the face of the Pearl Clan leader. Even Machamp had found an isolated corner to hide in.

“Still planning on killing me?” Irida asked in a friendly tone. “How’s that going?”

“You know we’re not planning anything,” Mille kind of half-sighed, as if she had rehashed this conversation dozens of times. “If we were, it’d be grounds for our execution. And we quite like ourselves alive.”

Irida cocked her head. “Is that so?” a pause. Then, she relaxed with a shrug. “Oh, well. One day you’ll slip up. And I’ll be all over you when that happens.”

“The day will never come, Irida,” Vicus sounded annoyed. “Because we’re not planning a thing. I mean…” a sigh. “What happened to you? To turn you into someone so jaded and paranoid? To turn you from a close friend to… this?”

“People change, Vic,” Irida replied with a slight frown. “You’re too busy looking at me to notice how much you’ve changed yourself. I can barely recognise the kind boy I once played with when I was young.”

Vicus didn’t reply to that. And after a moment where Irida almost seemed to dare him to speak up again, she flitted her eyes towards around the campsite. “Where’s Leuca?”

“I’m here,” the hooded woman emerged from the tent with the same monotone voice and bored look she always had. “Hey, Irida.”

“I came to see you,” Irida wrapped an arm around Leuca and her voice softened. “How are you coping?”

“Same as always, I guess.”

“That’s good, Leuca. Sometimes, I think you deal with that day better than I. And I wasn’t even one of the ones affected by it. Come,” she started to lead Leuca back towards the tent. “Let’s talk…” she shot all of us a warning look from over her shoulder. “Alone.”

They disappeared inside and Vicus sighed into the following silence.

“You’re not… actually planning to kill her, are you?” I couldn’t help but ask. It was a horrible question, I know- especially at the time-, but my curiosity had eclipsed my politeness.

“Of course not,” Vicus huffed and started to reassure an upset Empoleon with a hand to his flipper. “We all may disagree with her, but killing our leader is unthinkable. That isn’t how we roll.”

“When we say we oppose Irida, we mean it in voice only,” Mille elaborated with a knowing glance towards the tent. “We of the Pearl Clan have a right to voice our differences with Irida- just like Irida has the right to surround herself only with supporters.”

But to intentionally send them into dangerous positions like fodder…? A bit much, in my opinion.

Now, you might be wondering at this point why I never asked if my new ‘friends’ would help me escape. The truth is that I did the night before- where I had tentatively brought up the prospect- but they all had refused. I was welcome to try myself, but then they would be forced to capture me. If Irida caught any of them helping me to escape, they’d be executed. Both Mille and Vicus had family at the Pearl Settlement. They had too much on the line to risk for someone they’d just met.

“You’re wondering why Irida is talking to Leuca.” Vicus followed my gaze towards the tent.

I was actually deep in thought over something else, but decided to jump onto the opportunity. “A little, yeah.”

“The Lake Valor Incident,” Mille slowly shook her head. “That’s all we’re allowed to tell you.”

I simply nodded. Something had happened at Lake Valor. Where was that? I had no idea. What happened there? No idea, too. It was beyond me, and I needed to focus on what I was going to do next, so I simply dismissed thinking about it for now.

It was fairly obvious at this point that Irida wanted me alive. For what reason? Based on what she told me up on Mount Coronet, it looked as though she wanted me to quell one of their Nobles. But I was to attempt something like that alone… it might as well be a death sentence.

I could wait until Irida left before attacking the Pearl Clan guards, but… could I really do something so cold-hearted? And even if I succeeded, where would I go?

I had decided I needed to bide my time and hope for another opportunity.

Irida had emerged from the tent half an hour later and wordlessly took off on Braviary. I had thought she’d have at least acknowledged me at some point, but it was like I didn’t exist to her at the time. Leuca ducked outside herself a minute after Braviary disappeared into the sky. “Are you alright?” Vicus asked her with a slightly arched brow.

“Yeah.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Same as usual.”

Hectar rolled his eyes and Vicus made a tsk noise before giving up. I felt someone nudge their way besides me. “What do you think?” Mille asked me with her hands behind her back.

I turned my head. “What?”

“Of Leuca.”

I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Irida has a soft-spot for her, but it’s hard to tell what Leuca thinks,” Mille’s expression soured. “Sometimes, I think we’re here just to look after her more than anything.”

“Okay…”

“Just indirectly warning you, no need to act all defensive,” Mille lightly elbowed me. “Please don’t do anything to Leuca. That’s a great way to die. And don’t give anything up to her, either. We don’t know what she talks about in that tent.”

Duly noted, I guess. After that, it was business as usual, except there was an undercurrent of tension around the camp. Irida had left behind a bad taste, it seemed. Glad I wasn’t the only one who felt that way.

But it only took around forty minutes for her to return again, sending another ripple of unease through the camp.

Because, this time, she wasn’t alone.