CHAPTER 136

“Pffft— hahahaha!” Mira laughed, doubling over. “Oh man, you guys are a riot! You’re telling me this guy doesn’t even know what he’s here for?”

“I don’t even know you,” Chase said. “You’re making a terrible first impression.”

“Mira…” Maeve groaned.

The pink-haired girl sprung up. “We should be friends—”

“No.”

“I’m sorry, Chase,” I sighed before quickly bringing him up to speed. He didn’t seem to react very much, although I caught him sneaking some worried glances at Cece. “There, you’re caught up.”

“Okay. So what is this for? Are we going to fuck up these guys, or what?” He asked.

“You know what, I’d enjoy that very much,” Pauline smirked. “But we couldn’t even if we wanted to.”

“All of us combined? They can’t be invincible.”

“Don’t be stupid, guys,” Denzel said. “We’re not going after anyone. That’s not what this meeting is for, this isn’t a movie. Let the League do its job.”

“We believe that since everyone here has been involved with Cecilia or Louis one way or another, we’d best bring you all into the loop and find ways to defend ourselves in case things go south again,” Justin explained.

“I mean, I think I got the gist of what happened when Louis told us but… aren’t your dads going to get arrested? We should be fine,” Maeve said.

“Don’t be naive,” Pauline rolled her eyes. “See, this is why—”

A stare from both Denzel and Emilia shut her down.

Emilia started to speak. “What Pauline meant to say is that while yes, Harvey will probably get arrested, it’ll take an investigation from the International Police and the League. They were implied to be transferring funds to Team Galactic, right? They’d be foolish to have left a paper trail.”

“Harvey’s days are numbered, but a cornered Pokemon tends to lash out even if it’d make no sense,” Justin said, turning to Louis’ friends and Chase. “And unfortunately, you’re all involved, so you might be targeted.”

“I’ll beat ‘em,” Chase shrugged. “If this is when you ask to travel as a large group, then I’ll have to say no.”

“We weren’t going to,” Cece said. “It was just a general warning. Keep a Pokemon out with you at all times, and be careful of who you potentially befriend.”

“Not sure this guy’s going to make any new friends without me to help,” Mira said, pointing her thumb at Chase. He just ignored her.

“Please take this seriously,” I chided.

Her eyes narrowed, and she stared me down for a few seconds before relenting.

“Sorry, sorry! I’m a little bit of an airhead.”

“Louis?” Cecilia asked worriedly. “You’ve been quiet.”

“W—what?” He recoiled. “Maeve’s been quiet too.”

“Please don’t throw me under the bus,” she muttered. “I’m just scared.”

“You should leave me, then,” he said.

“Of course not. Plus, what’s done is done. They already know we’re friends.”

“Let’s get back on topic,” Denzel clapped his hands. “Like Cecilia said, you should have a Pokemon with you, even in a city. That’s the most important bit to take from this. Something with defensive capabilities would be ideal— like a psychic— but if you’re like me and you don’t have any, then a fast Pokemon would do the trick. Especially you, Emi, since you’ll be alone in Hearthome. Second, we should create a group chat so we can all communicate. Since we’re not going to travel together, it’d be good to keep tabs on each other until this whole thing blows over, at the very least.”

“Don’t forget to bring Vincent up to speed,” I told her.

Emilia had tried to bring in Vincent, but he couldn’t make it because he was working at his part-time job. We hadn’t known if he’d been with us enough to warrant him being here, but we wanted to be thorough.

“Can’t we ask the police for bodyguards or something?” Maeve asked.

“Bodyguards on the routes would basically be impossible,” Denzel shook his head. “Maybe in the cities, but I wouldn’t count on it. The only person they might give one to is Cece, because Abel seems interested in her, but even that isn’t guaranteed.”

“That’s such bullshit,” Pauline complained. “They don’t give a fuck about us.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Justin said. The redhead huffed and turned away from him.

“What’s some crummy police officer going to do that we can’t?” Mira shrugged. “We’re getting to the point where we’re more powerful than even those. The only thing that could be useful would be some League trainers, but it’s not like that’s ever happening.”

“So you can be smart. Why aren’t you smart all the time?” Chase asked.

“Maybe it’s because I want to see your reactions,” she joked.

“Emi, you’ll have to keep training your Beldum’s Confusion or get him started on Psychic, I think,” I said. “Not like it wouldn’t help with contests.”

“I was planning on doing that anyway.”

“Okay. Think you’ll be alright, then?”

“I don’t plan on making you guys worry about me. I’ve got to be able to do things on my own too,” she said.

“Let’s move onto Abel, then,” Justin said.

“That Malamar psycho? What’s there to say about him? Isn’t he basically on our side?” Chase asked.

“As long as the money blows that way,” Cecilia whispered. “There are still things we haven’t considered. What if Clarence offers him a sum so ridiculous that he not only stops going after him, but changes his mind and comes after us again? Money is all he values.”

“Pay him to fuck off?” Mira mused. “That certainly sounds possible.”

“There’s also Louis’ dad to consider,” I said. “He’s more involved with Team Galactic than Clarence, if Abel’s words are to be believed.”

“My father… I’m going to get my chance to speak to him again no matter what,” Louis said.

“Well, hopefully you’ll speak to him during visitor hours in prison,” Mira cheerfully said.

There was a small lull in the conversation, and I used it as my opportunity to bring up what I wanted to talk about.

“On the topic of Abel… I wanted to ask a question regarding Ditto. Justin, you know a bit about those, right?” I asked, and he responded with a nod. “Could a Ditto that turns into a human potentially grow stronger than one? The police said no, but I wanted to be sure.”

“No. That older woman Cecilia described cannot be a Ditto.”

Damn, so it really was some other shapeshifter Pokemon. I didn’t even know that more existed in the first place, but there was no other explanation. It was the only thing that lined up with the behavior Cecilia had described.

And it could use Extrasensory. That Xatu hadn’t been the one to lower Abel out of the building.

“I’m stumped on what it could be, but the people in charge will probably figure it out,” I said. “But Cece, I think you’re wrong. Didn’t Abel say that he’d never work with Clarence again? There’s a weird honor code he abides by, so I think that it’s plausible.”

“I won’t take that chance. I’ve been slacking off too much. I’m going to try to get Slowking a psychic teacher that can teach him how to shield minds. It’ll take months, but it’s the best I’ve got.”

“But who?” Justin asked.

“I can certainly find one. Maybe not in Solaceon, but Veilstone is a large city. There’s bound to be a psychic expert there to teach him. Once they get started, Slowking will be able to continue working on it on his own.”

The water type sagely nodded.

“Maybe I’ll do the same with my Kadabra!” Mira said excitedly.

“You don’t have money,” Maeve rolled her eyes.

“I’ll pay for it,” Louis said. “It baffles me, but my father… my father still hasn’t cut off my money.”

“You still have a private account, right?” Cecilia asked. “Then you should do what I did, and withdraw everything right now. The situation’s changed. Who knows what Harvey will do now?”

“Very well. If you say so, Cecilia, I will do it.”

I frowned at that, but let it go.

“How are your Pokemon doing, by the way?” I asked Louis. “Still having trouble with Gible?”

“Well, Denzel’s Sylveon has knocked most of his confidence away, so he mostly listens to what I say these days,” he said with an awkward smile. “The rest are doing well, and I’ve caught a Pawniard.”

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“He’s a tough little thing,” Maeve said. “Louis carries his favorite rock wherever he goes. I find it cute.”

“No flirting!” Mira yelled. “This is a serious meeting. Chase, say something!”

“Huh?” Chase grunted.

“That wasn’t flirting,” Maeve rolled her eyes. “You can call people cute platonically… you can right? I mean, I’m actually not sure, but I think you can? Any help?”

“How did this get derailed so quickly?” Denzel pinched his nose. “I feel like people are not grasping how serious this is. Let’s move on from Abel, there’s no way to know if he’ll change his mind or not, and we don’t even know how his relationship with Team Galactic will affect this as a whole.”

“True, that could be a curveball,” I said. “I mean…”

Mars had probably moved on from me by now, right? It had been months. No one could be that obsessed.

“I mean, it’s probably best to think about it like a mutually beneficial relationship. He hasn’t actually joined them, so the moment it becomes inconvenient for him to work with them, he’ll stop.”

“Yeah, the news said that he was just a middleman. Anyway, I do want to ask everyone to try to get your Pokemon to the next level as soon as you can. We all want to make it to the Conference— or the Grand Festival, in Emi’s case— so we should already be doing it anyway.”

“I train more than any of you already, Williams,” Chase said.

“Wait, what’s this? You call people by their last names?” Mira curiously asked.

“Yes.”

“You don’t know my last name. What’d you call me?”

“Loser.”

“Haha! You’re too much, man!” She cackled. She tried to slap his back, but he easily knocked her hand away.

Denzel buried his face in his hands and groaned. “For example, I’ve got the money to buy a Dawn Stone now that I’m sponsored. I was going to wait, but I can’t afford to. Plus, I think Snorunt is ready.”

I knew what he meant. He didn’t particularly mean training, per se. We all already trained a ridiculous amount. I believed what he meant was overcoming the bottlenecks that restrained us. For him, it was not evolving his Snorunt. For me, it was probably not having money for a Shiny Stone and needing to get Turtonator on board.

Our conversation had been cut short. Something I’d hope to remedy tomorrow morning.

For Mira… well, it was probably her issues with her Haunter. For Pauline, it was how picky she was with her Pokemon. She quite literally easily put Denzel’s pickiness to shame. At least he had a concrete list, but she was just going at it half-heartedly, hoping something would catch her attention. Justin’s was less on the Pokemon side of thing, and more on his indecisiveness during fights. He had clamped down on it during his battle with Fantina, but I didn’t know how he’d react in an actual street fight with no rules.

Hell, even I wouldn’t know how I’d react.

I didn’t know enough about Maeve to come up with something. Cece… well, she tended to rely on power too much, I supposed. Power wouldn’t work against tricky people like Abel or against hitmen potentially stronger than we were. We’d need ingenuity to make it out. Not only that, but her Scyther was a lot weaker than it could be in battle due to not listening to her.

Louis’ bottleneck had always been his Gible, but it looked like that’d be fixed soon, and Emilia’s was the fact that her Pokemon other than Beldum were stagnating. Even coordinators trained their Pokemon’s strength. There was a battle phase, after all.

“When we make it to Solaceon, we should stay there and lay low for a bit before going to Veilstone. It works out for us, since there’s a tournament we wanted to join. With some luck, this whole thing will blow over while we’re there. Abel’s goal is to head to Veilstone, so I think we should wait a little,” I said.

“I ain’t waiting,” Chase shook his head. “And I’m not going to Veilstone either. I’m going to Celestic first.”

“Route 210’s pretty dangerous,” I warned. “The visibility—”

“It’s important to me and Ri.”

Ah. It was true that he had referred to wanting to travel to Celestic multiple times now, but I hadn’t known it was sentimental.

“I understand. Just stay safe,” I said.

“If Mount Coronet couldn’t take me down, some fog won’t do it either,” he shrugged.

Mira pouted. “Bummer. I would have liked for you to travel with us instead of alone. Maeve told me that she knew you.”

“We traveled together through Eterna Forest,” she explained. “He was… different, back then.”

“I might have been a prick,” he shrugged again. “Doesn’t really matter now.”

“You’re still kind of a prick, but you’re growing on me,” Pauline said. “I like how blunt you are.”

Chase smiled. “Thanks, I guess. Ri says that I should be nicer, though. Self improvement and all of that.”

“Oh, your Riolu! I missed the little guy. I haven’t seen him in so long,” Maeve said.

“Little guy? He’s more than twice your age.”

“Oh. Wait, what?”

The meeting kept derailing, but Denzel, Cece and I kept trying our best to get it back on track. Soon enough, people started to leave. Chase was first, saying that he needed to go and work out. Then, Louis’ group left, and it was just us. I left to finally tell dad what was going on, and he told me he’d try to get us official League protection somehow, but I already knew that was probably a lost cause. He was worried to death, especially when he was leaving soon, but I promised him I’d stay safe. My Pokemon were getting strong enough to defend me from threats, and he’d seen them battle.

Still, Abel was out of reach for now, but all we could do was hope that he’d keep targeting Cecilia’s dad.

Soon enough, I went back to my room and went to sleep.

——

I woke up to a soft, yet purposeful knock on my door. Togetic instantly sprung to action, and her eyes started to glow, but I stopped her with a gentle tap. She was sleeping with me tonight, just in case. Now that we knew even Pokemon Centers weren’t safe, I was sure that we were all sleeping with at least one of our Pokemon out.

“Calm down, Princess,” I yawned. “That’s Cece’s knock.”

I lazily strode to my room, scratching my stomach until I reached the door. When I opened it, I immediately left my half-asleep, dazed state. She looked distraught. Her eyes were red, like she’d been crying. Slowking was diligently following behind her, and he stared at me with pleading eyes. She needed help.

“So you were affected after all,” I softly said. “Come here.”

I let Slowking through, closed the door and gently held her in my arms.

“I couldn’t sleep. I’m so tired, but I just can’t fall asleep. I don’t know why,” she sniffled. “I don’t even feel particularly scared. I’m just on edge all the time. I can’t stop thinking that something’s going to go wrong.”

I rubbed her back, letting her vent her worries.

“Can I sleep with you?”

“Come on,” I said. “You don’t even need to ask, you’ve done it a lot already. I can get Buddy to help, if you want. He doesn’t need to sleep, so maybe you’ll feel safer.”

She hesitantly nodded, and I grabbed his Pokeball from my nightstand, releasing him. Jellicent stared at me curiously. He hadn’t expected her to be here, or to be out tonight.

“You’re on watch tonight. Remember how I said I’d keep you guys out more from now on for security?” I said.

The water type nodded and let out a smooth, deep cry.

“He’ll be on top of things,” I smiled. “Maybe he can bond with your Slowking too. Princess will probably fall asleep though, but she’d probably annoy Slowking anyway— wait, I’m rambling.”

Cecilia smiled and shook her head. “It’s okay, you know I like it. Plus, it makes me feel like everything’s normal.”

I relaxed as we both got into the bed. It was true that I was finding it easier not to panic than I thought it would be. In fact, I felt strangely calm. It wasn’t like I wasn’t worried, but a part of me had already expected things to go to shit. Harvey and Clarence had always been in the back of my head, and I’d known that something related to them would go wrong. Maybe it was because I’d been through so much at this point that I was starting to get used to it.

Then again, it wasn’t me that Abel had threatened. It was Cece.

I placed her head against my chest.

“Do you feel it? My heartbeat.”

“Mhm,” she softly said. “It’s so slow.”

“Does it help? With destressing you, I mean.”

She wrapped her arms around me. “Yes.”

Jellicent was having a quiet conversation with Slowking, and Togetic was lazily listening while lying on his head, sometimes chiming in.

“Thank you for being there for me,” Cece said.

“Of course,” I said. “We’re all here for you. The others too.”

“I know, it’s just… it’s special with you. I feel whole with you there.”

The conversation paused, and I considered what to say. What she needed was…

“What do you say we go somewhere tomorrow for a change of pace? It’ll do both of us some good.”

“There was a place I found… a place with a piano. You told me you wanted to play.”

My heart fluttered. “You remembered?”

“Obviously. Do you want to go in the morning?”

“Hm, I’ve got to talk to Turtonator, so that might take a while. What about the afternoon?”

“There are too many people.”

“Are you worried about spies?” I asked. Was she so shaken that she didn’t even want to go outside when there’d be a lot of people—

“No, you’ll just bother the people there. You don’t know how to play, right? It’d be annoying to hear that.”

“What?! Hey!” I protested.

She giggled, and I started laughing too.

“You know what, you’re probably right,” I continued. “Thanks for finding it, though. It completely slipped my mind. Oh man, now I’m nervous… I don’t even know how to read sheet music. Am I just going to improvise?”

“Wasn’t that always the intention?”

“Of course not! I thought I’d have more time to get ready. You need to play with me so that if something goes wrong, we’re both to blame.”

“Don’t rope me into your schemes. I’d have you know that I already know how to play the piano quite well, although I might be rusty.”

“Oh. That makes sense,” I blankly said, remembering that she used to take all kinds of lessons. “Wait, then you can teach me!”

“I can’t start teaching you until you learn how to read sheet music, Grace.”

“I know a little. Do, re, mi… fa… la?”

“You might be a lost cause already.”

“We all have to start from somewhere, Cece!”

We’d been supposed to sleep, but we didn’t do so for two more hours.

——

I’d overslept, but it was for a good reason. I certainly felt a lot happier today than I did yesterday, and hopefully, things would settle down for a bit so people could have a period to unwind. The League would announce something about the Directorate this afternoon, and hopefully, it’d have to do with the apparent corruption there. It was probably too soon, though. They had only just found out about it, and surely they’d need to at least investigate.

I was back at Amity Square again, and I grabbed Turtonator’s Pokeball. He’d told me his story, and I had told him mine, but we hadn’t talked about what it meant for our relationship going forward. I released the hulking dragon, and he observed me with a curious eye. Tangrowth was standing behind me, soaking in the sunlight, but he was supposed to protect me from any attacks.

Not from Turtonator. From people.

“Morning, Sunshine,” I smiled.

Turtonator responded with an angry snort, dismissing the nickname immediately by beating his tail against the ground. His reaction hadn’t been as strong as I had expected, however. He didn’t even raise the temperature, which was a big win in my book.

“Sorry, I just wanted to try it out,” I said, leaning to the right. “Damn, you did a number on the floor. People work to keep it flat and the grass mowed, you know.”

Turtonator ignored me, clearly not caring for the employees here and lazily laid down, awaiting what I had to say.

“Let’s talk.”