CHAPTER 134

Pauline currently sat in her mother's office with her arms crossed. She had never felt this conflicted about something in her entire life. She was a person of action, not reaction, and yet, when it came to Emilia and Denzel, she couldn't help but flounder like a Magikarp out of the water.

It was so unlike her. She'd wanted to burry everything a deeply as she could.

And yet, she was finally ready to admit everything.

"Mommy. How do you know… wait, let me rephrase. What do you do if you like two people?"

"Pick one and move on," the old woman answered.

"I'm serious! I can't just pick one."

"Sure you can. If you had to choose one right now, who would it be?" Josephine said.

Pauline opened her mouth, but no sound came out. She couldn't choose. "I— I can't."

Her mother clicked her tongue dismissively. "Life is a series of difficult choices, Pauline."

"I know that! You've engrained it into my head since I was a fucking baby! Sometimes, you don't know what to do!"

"I cannot give you an answer. It is up to you to decide what you want in life."

Pauline irritatingly tapped her foot against the floor. What she wanted wasn't possible. It was unreasonable, selfish, and there was simply no way for it to happen.

Her mother smiled at her. "Why come here when you've already made a decision?"

"It won't work."

"Why not try it?"

"I wouldn't even know where to begin! Plus, we're leaving soon, and Emilia's staying here, so she'd obviously get jealous if I traveled with him and not with her if they were dating me! And hell, I don't even know if Denzel likes me anymore. He's hanging out with all these others girls, and I hate it! I… I can't do it."

"The issues you raise are valid," Josephine acknowledged. "And personally, I couldn't ever imagine sharing the person I loved with someone else, but then again, who knows what your friends are like."

Pauline scoffed. "You hated dad and never dated anyone else."

"I did love him for a few weeks," she laughed. "Look, I do not have all the answers. This is certainly a conundrum I've never encountered before. All I can tell you is to know that your choices—"

"Have consequences," the girl sighed. "That was useless, but thanks anyway. I don't feel like going back to the Center. Can I stick around?"

"Obviously."

—

Denzel sat on his bed with his head in his hands. He'd delayed this long enough. Sylveon was starting to become unmanageable, and he had to put his foot down. They'd talk one-on-one so that there would be absolutely no distractions. Denzel made sure his phone was on silent mode too. Emilia was freaking out about some massive scandal regarding some judge, but he hadn't looked into it yet. The trainer released Sylveon, who happily greeted him by wrapping a ribbon around his leg. He felt a relaxing sensation spread throughout his body, and it took him a few seconds to come back to his senses.

"No, Sylvi. I already told you not to do that— at least not without my permission. You can wrap it around my hand or leg, or whatever, but no powers," Denzel scolded.

Sylveon's huge, blue eyes twitched, and the fairy type looked incredibly hurt. Denzel felt his heart wrench.

"That came out more aggressively than I wanted. Sorry. But you know that there needs to be boundaries with these things. Come here."

He gave a hesitant nod before jumping on the bed and lying down next to his trainer. Denzel sighed, not knowing where to start. Talking to people was easy and straightforward, but talking to Pokemon was a lot harder.

"You've been changing, Sylvi," he started, making sure to use a gentler tone. "Slowly but surely, you've been becoming… different. Now, I've welcomed some of these changes. I don't care if you're becoming more brutal in fights, but some of them are too much. You can fight as much as you want when training with the team or Pokemon of our level, but you've got to hold back against Maeve. And that's not even the worse of it! For example, I've caught how you look at people I spend time with. At first, I thought it was just because Maeve and Mira were new and you weren't used to them and their Pokemon, but now even when I say that I'm going to spend time with the people you do know, you try to do all these things to get me to stay."

"Sylv—"

"Let me finish. I've been trying to keep my hands off of the relationship drama between you and the team, but… this might be me being paranoid, but I'm pretty sure you've been manufacturing conflicts so that I'd have to stay and diffuse them."

The fairy type stood completely still.

"I know they like you for real, and that you do dislike it, and that you genuinely don't want to bother with it, but it can't be a coincidence that these fights mostly happen when I say I'm about to go hang out with the others. You've been… you've been manipulating them and playing them off of each other. Even Snorunt, who doesn't have a crush on you. That is not okay, Sylveon."

He protested, and after a few moments, Denzel understood what he meant.

"I know that you're bothered by it too, and that you do love the others, but you can't deny that you've been using it to your advantage. The only one you seem not to manipulate is Feebas. This needs to stop."

Sylveon said nothing.

"I know you're attached to me, but you can't keep hoarding me to yourself. I know I've been kind of absent lately with all my meetings, but that's temporary. When we're back on the road, we'll be able to spend more time together," Denzel said, petting the fairy type's head. "Promise me you'll try."

The Pokemon hesitantly nodded.

"Okay. I won't tell anyone about this. It's partly my fault too, I should have intervened sooner instead of hoping the issue would fix itself. From now on, if you step out of line, I'll tell you, okay? And if you do it again, then I'm forcing you to confess to the others, and you know that won't be pretty."

Sylveon sighed and agreed.

"Thank you."

Now, it was time to go to sleep.

—

Last night.

What Fantina had told me tonight had been completely unexpected. In fact, it was so out of left field that I'd been in denial about it for a good few hours after the fact, but at this point, what else could I do but wait to speak with Electabuzz himself? It hurt to think that he potentially had this secret past that we never spoke about, and it made me think that I hadn't exactly been good to him. What if he'd been hurting all this time, and I hadn't found out? I couldn't help but think back to the first time he'd sensed Mars' Dusknoir, but he'd seemed cheerful enough. After that, he had helped with Mismagius in Eterna Forest, but there were also no signs of distress.

Maybe I was overthinking things?

Then again, this proved to me that I needed to ask about Jellicent's past too. Who knew if he was hiding something?

But again, maybe he'd talk to me about it on his own one day? Would I be overbearing?

"Damn it," I groaned, leaning against my room's wall. There was nothing I could do until I picked Honey up from the nurses tomorrow and asked him myself.

—

"Your Pokemon are as good as new, Ms. Pastel," Nurse Joy smiled. A Chansey stood next to her and nodded. "We hope to see you again!"

"Thanks. Have a nice day," I said before turning away.

It was bright and early in the morning. So early in fact, that I didn't have to contend with trainers swarming around me to ask questions. There was barely anyone outside. I considered going back to my room to talk to Electabuzz as fast as I could, but I figured that it'd be better to go to Amity Square to talk. Since dad would probably still be asleep, I quickly got on a bus and took the relatively quick trip to the park. I released Electabuzz, who yelled loudly and stared at me in anticipation.

Right. He still didn't know if we won or not.

"We won," I said, sitting on the floor. "Pretty handily, too, you and everyone else did a wonderful job. Come and sit."

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He celebrated, flexing and whirring his arms around, but I patted the ground next to me, and the electric type slowly stopped, then hesitantly sat.

"Buzz?" He asked.

"Just you and me this morning," I said. "What, you don't wanna hang out with me? Come on!" I joked, playfully tapping his back.

Electabuzz chortled, and my hair stood on end. He was getting a lot stronger. I leaned against my knees, taking a deep breath, and he nervously stared at me.

"Listen, hon," I started. "I spoke to Fantina after the battle about your ghost sensing ability, and she told me what she thought about it. If you don't want to tell me anything, it's fine, but I have to ask. Before I took you in, and when you were just born, did you hang around with a ghost?"

The electric type froze and then scratched his head awkwardly. I could tell that he hadn't expected me to figure it out and that he didn't particularly feel like talking about it either.

"Well, I say hang out, but according to her, it was more like you were raised by them," I continued. "Um, I don't know what happened, but I'd like for you to talk to me about it. If you've been bottling something up inside, then I'm here for you. Not necessarily today, but in the future—"

He interrupted me by placing a hand on my shoulder.

He was ready.

I almost expected him to tell me that a human that owned a ghost hatched him and then abandoned him, but it was nothing of the sort. It took a bit of trial and error, but Electabuzz ended up explaining everything to me. He never knew his parents, since Elekid tend to live alone right from birth, but a powerful trio of ghosts had taken care of him right after he hatched.

Three Gengar.

Needless to say, if the topic hadn't been so serious, I would have been skeptical. Finding a wild Gengar was a rarity in and of itself, but three? And the fact that they took care of him was strange too. Why? Was it just out of the kindness of their hearts? It was impossible to know. They took care of him for months, protecting him from predators, and he learned to sense them too. It was just as Fantina had said, except that it was three instead of one ghost. One day, however, the Gengar all left while he was sleeping. Electabuzz stayed in the same spot for months, hoping that they'd be back, but they never returned. To this day, he still didn't know why they left or what happened to them, but a part of him thought that it was because he was too weak and that they'd gotten tired of having to save him so many times.

"So that's why you put yourself down so hard after every loss," I said with a pained look. I welled up and hugged him tightly. "I'm not going to abandon you, you idiot! We're family! I love you! No matter what happens, I will always stick by you."

Honey held me tight, and let out a few tears of his own. We stayed like that for at least five minutes to let our emotions settle down. Seeing him beat himself up so badly made me feel like there was a hole in my heart. How had I not seen anything? What kind of parent wouldn't figure out that their kid was hurting?

"I won't tell anyone you cried," I said, letting out a sad chuckle. "It'll be our secret."

Electabuzz stared at me, his eyes red, and pointed to my thighs. I nodded, and he placed his head on my lap, and I stroked his head.

"Was that why you wanted to go to the power plant so badly? I remember you telling me that the signal was stronger the more powerful a ghost was… that Dusknoir felt just as strong as one of those Gengar, didn't he?"

"Ele," the electric type confirmed.

It all… everything made so much sense now. I had never thought there had been anything wrong with his past behavior, but having the extra context helped so much. Mismagius had probably felt significantly weaker, though.

"So you want to meet them again, then? Ask them why they left you?"

Electabuzz nodded. He'd been so enthusiastic about joining me because he knew that with a trainer, he'd be able to travel far and wide to potentially meet the three Gengar again. On his own, he'd never be able to grow as strong as he needed, or at least not as quickly. It would have taken him years to get to where he currently stood— and he had reached this point in a few months.

"I promise you, Honey. I promise you that I'll help you find them again and get you your answers. If they aren't in Sinnoh somehow, then we'll go to the other regions. I was planning on doing that anyway."

His eyes widened, and he stared at me in surprise.

"Right, I haven't told any of you, have I? What do you say I release everyone else now? Of course, what you told me about your past can stay between us for now, if you'd prefer that."

"Ele," he agreed after thinking for a few seconds.

I kept scratching his head for another twenty minutes, where we just sat in silence. I watched as the sun slowly rose, and people slowly started filtering into Amity Square. I figured that just having some time to ourselves was nice. I released the entire team after finding a more secluded part of the park— including Turtonator, who I desperately wanted to call Sunshine, but couldn't. Knowing him, he'd bear a grudge for weeks. I told Angel and Sweetheart that we'd won the gym battle, and they celebrated happily. Tangrowth picked her up to stop her from messing up the floor with her stomps, though.

"Listen up, everyone!" I said, clapping my hands. Turtonator ignored me and lay down on the grass. "I came to this realization when we were back at Savika's cabin, but Sinnoh's just the start! I'm going to become the best trainer in the world, and to do that, I'll need to travel to different regions after I mop up Sinnoh," I said, half-jokingly. Larvitar nodded, not understanding that I'd been joking, and I chuckled in response. "I'll have to figure out how to get enough free time to do it while being the Champion, but you catch my drift."

Turtonator let out a dismissive snort, and Togetic's eyes narrowed.

"You think I can't do it, huh? Well, just you watch, because you've got front-row seats!" I said. "Anyway, it's nice out today, and we're already here, so I figured, why not stick around a lil'? Angel, feel free to take Sweetheart to the lake if you want. Princess, do you want to go too?"

Togetic defiantly shook her head as she stared at the half-asleep Turtonator.

"Fine. I guess you can add to the stories I'll tell," I sighed.

Today, I'd tell Turtonator about my experience at Valley Windworks. I had skirted around Team Galactic before, skipping past the incident at the lake next to Twinleaf and my meeting with Roark, but I figured that I couldn't ignore such a pivotal moment in my journey. I leaned against Jellicent, who solidified his body for me— but not too much! Just enough for it to be comfortable.

The moment I uttered the words Team Galactic, Turtonator's eyes shot wide open.

—

Cecilia was currently watching the news in Pauline's room. Surprisingly though, Pauline wasn't there. She'd gone to talk to her mother about something, but she wouldn't say what it was. Emilia was there, but she was glued to her phone, looking up something about some disgraced contest judge that apparently took bribes from coordinators to alter their scores. The story was still developing at this point, so who knew how many people this touched. Cecilia knew that since the coordinator world was a private entity, anti-corruption measures were nowhere as prevalent as for trainers, since the latter was run by the government. Justin was there, but he was also engrossed in his own research for his fifth team member that he would try to get by the time they were at Solaceon. He wanted to have his six as soon as possible, unlike Pauline, who was taking her sweet time.

Meanwhile, Grace had been missing since this morning, but she had messaged them to let them know that everything was fine and that she was just with her team at Amity Square. Supposedly, there was a lot for them to talk about, but Cecilia didn't want to pry.

Suddenly, one of the news anchor said something that held everyone's attention.

"And we are now receiving word from the League itself that Team Galactic was involved in the scheme with contest committee member Fabian Mcclure. Apparently, they threatened to expose his bribe-taking tendencies if he did not reveal information about Fantina. Due to the current cooperation of five members of Team Galactic in custody, we are learning more and more about this elusive terrorist organization."

"And you forgot to mention that they were operating through a middleman, the well-known—"

"What?!" Emilia yelled, staring at Cecilia. "Put it back on!"

"Ugh," Cecilia said. "I don't want to hear about Team Galactic. It brings bad memories…"

To a time when she did not care about whether she was alive or dead. It seemed so far away, now.

"Emi, you need to think about how your actions affect those around you," Justin scolded.

"Oh. Sorry," Emilia said. "I've been so into the news today that I didn't realize. I'll just look at it on my phone. This is incredibly depressing for the little coordinators like me or Vincent. It's the first time corruption of this scale was ever found in the industry. The grand contest next week was canceled too. This'll have ramifications for years to come. Which means if someone wants to reform the industry like I do, now's the best time to do so."

"I don't think you'll like what you'll find. Team Galactic— sorry Cece— Team Galactic probably has a lot more contacts in high places. The League can figure it out."

"That's right. Team Galactic is dangerous. You're better off keeping your head down."

"The Contest Committee will throw a hissy fit and will oppose investigations at every step of the way. They'll stall so long that it'll take years to do it properly. It would be much easier to do it from the inside. What I do wonder though, is why Fantina hasn't done anything about it until the League stepped in? Someone like her must know a lot of what goes on on the inside… I need to unearth it all."

Emilia had changed, since entering Hearthome. Cecilia couldn't have imagined the scared girl in Eterna Forest potentially investigating Team Galactic's influence in the coordinator world, but she was different now. More confident.

Too much confidence, however, could be dangerous.

"Just be careful, Emi," she sighed. "Sometimes, it's better to let the situation resolve itself."

"I won't poke the Bewear, don't worry."

A few hours later, Cecilia decided to go back to her room to rest. She needed to start getting ready for the Solaceon tournament as soon as possible, so she'd start training early tomorrow. She'd been slacking lately, and her overconfidence against Fantina had nearly cost her the battle.

But at the same time, they were leaving soon, so maybe it'd be better to spend more time in the city with Grace, if she wished. She still hadn't found a piano to practice on, and Cecilia had found an establishment where people could freely play. If they went there early or late, then they wouldn't need to annoy any passersby. As she opened the door, she couldn't help but giddily anticipate the look on her girlfriend's face when she would find out. Maybe Cecilia could make it a surprise? Tell her that they were going someplace else, but secretly bring her to the—

A man sat at her desk, his feet on the table and a lit cigarette in hand as he leaned back against her chair. A child with a disturbing grin and blank stare happily pointed at her, making weird gurgling sounds. A third person— an old woman, stood against the wall and looked blankly at her.

And a Malamar stood in the middle of the room with a wicked grin that sent a shiver down her spine.

Abel.

How had he gotten in here? A Pokemon Center was the safest place a trainer could ever be, and the windows didn't open from the outside, and they were reinforced with the toughest material possible! And yet… it was open, but showed no signs of it having been busted. Cecilia didn't freeze. She immediately tried to bolt, but she felt an invisible force restrain her body and drag her toward Abel, who lazily turned toward her. The old woman gently closed the door and stood in front of it, blocking her with a grunt.

Cecilia couldn't breathe. She couldn't think. Her vision swam, and she tried to scream, but Malamar's eyes lit up, and her throat closed up until she almost choked.

"Malamar, stop toying with her and insulate the room, will you?" The Unovan said.

The dark type playfully laughed as the room became distorted.

"There you go. No one can hear you scream now, so let's not waste time with your childish antics. I hope you don't mind the cigarette, I opened a window for the smell."

Who cared about a cigarette? Her life was over. Cecilia silently raged as tears streamed down her cheeks. Josephine had been wrong. He did come after her.

And in the end, after all her trials and tribulation, she was still weak.

"Oh, please, don't get your knickers in a twist," Abel said, rolling his eyes. "Now that I'm not getting paid, I don't want anything to do with you. It's your father I'm after. Unfortunately though, my hand was forced and I had to do this, since I'm rather pressed for time."

Cecilia silently stared up at the unassuming man. Brown hair and eyes, average height, clean-shaven, an angular face, and an obnoxious smile exuding confidence.

Ten Pokeballs at his belt.

"Let's have a nice, long talk, Cecilia."