Whoever that person was that Marshal sailed away with, they were not a trainer. The woman had vaguely Japanese—if that’s even the right word anymore—features, green eyes, and hair so dark red it was almost black. She was also maybe five-foot-six and jacked, even under her heavy clothes I could see the muscle definition.
She'd been wearing an open-fronted, long-sleeved, red utility jacket with a shield-shaped badge, a black button-up, some kind of black undershirt, red-highlighted black pants, a utility belt with a lot of things hanging off of it, what looked like brown combat boots, and a red, flat-topped, military-style cap with an insignia that I didn't recognize, but there were no pokeballs in sight.
Her clothes had obviously been a uniform of some kind, what with the shield badge, radio, belt, chevrons on the sleeves, and hat. But the woman also left me with several questions and a problem.
To start with the problem, she’s currently playing with Buizel and keeping an eye on me while I’m invisible. I don’t think the sneasel in question can actually see me, but she’s tracking me accurately enough. More concerning is the fact that she's nearly invisible to my ghost-sight. The only reason I can even attempt to see her is depth perception, she's effectively solid black against a black backdrop but in a place without light, so she's not so much 'invisible' as just extremely hard to make out. And it’s now the second time I’ve seen someone have a color I actually recognize in this weird space.
The first was the woman who brought the sneasel here, she’d been very bright white.
She had also been reporting on me through her radio, and if I heard her right I’m the reason she came out here at all. I really hope all my screaming doesn’t bring any more trouble, I didn’t mean it, honest.
And the radio—I think—confirms my distance translation theory. It also highlights a problem I had first noticed when I saw the sign posted by Marshal's grove, which is that I don't know the languages here. What I heard over the radio sounded, well, vaguely Japanese, though it definitely wasn’t. At least I can understand humans, I assume for the same unknown reason I can understand pokemon now, but I can’t read at all. Which means I have to learn to speak and read again because fuck not talking to people when they can talk to me.
Back to the sneasel. She seems friendly, not that I’ve met a truly hostile pokemon yet, and Marshal let her play with Buizel. She still unnerves me, not only is she practically invisible to my new senses, but she's not shedding any emotions at all and the few floating emotions near her are just… flowing around her rather than being pulled in the way I’ve seen others do now.
The best way I can describe her physically is a bipedal, roundish, black weasel-cat-thing with gray highlights, an asymmetrical red feather ear, fucking three red feather-tails, two strange, crystalline nubs in her forehead and chest, gold eyes, and weirdly sharp, two-clawed hands.
I think I’m just going to stay phased out while I wait for Marshal to get back.
“Hey.” A voice in the silence says. Fuck, of course she can talk here.
I sigh and phase back to reality before replying, “Yes?” There’s no point pretending I can’t hear her.
"Do you really eat emotions?" …That's what she's asking?
"Yeah, but I'd rather not talk about that right now," I say. Please don't make this any worse.
Her reply is rather simple, "Okay, you want to join us?" Huh, I don't know what to make of that except that I need to internalize the fact that the people here seem genuinely friendly.
I consider it, she basically made a pool slide and those are always fun but… "I don't think I can, gravity doesn't seem to affect me anymore." Not unless I consciously make it affect me, anyway. "And I don't think I weigh enough."
She cocks her head at that, "Gravity?"
“You don’t know what gravity is?” I ask her, not believing for a moment that she doesn’t.
She puts a dramatic hand to her chin, thoughtfully, before dropping it and shrugging, “Nah, it’s not worth trying to mess with you like that, yet. Does it genuinely not affect you?" I see, she's an actor, a jokester even. I hope she doesn't try to pull too many on me.
…Why does she seem familiar?
“I have to focus for it to affect me, and-” I drift downward a moment, “-That’s about as fast as I can fall,” I say.
She looks at the slide and then back to me a few times. "Yeah, alright. But what if one of us carried you?” I didn’t think I’d miss tasting emotions so much, because I can’t tell if anything she’s doing is real or if she’s messing with me.
I decide to change the subject instead, “Who was that, the person Marshal carried off?” I ask.
Sneasel blinks a few times before answering. “That’s R- Onaga, my best friend. My companion.” She pauses after that, tapping her claws together. “She s- She’s the best human I’ve ever met, and I’ve been with her six years now.” Onaga sounds Japanese as well, my list of uni- multiversal questions just keeps growing.
“She’s not your trainer?” I ask. Curious to finally get an answer about training.
She cocks her head for a moment, before saying, "Training is illegal in Almia." There's a region where training is illegal? That- That’s a good thing, right? And, I mean, if anything big happened here the name would be vaguely familiar, wouldn’t it?
But then again, how many games were released since I last played? Or is it the show that matters?
And Sneasel is looking at me suspiciously now, "Where are you from?" Shit, a region I've never heard of and a question I doubt she'll let me dodge.
Do I still try to not answer? Fuck it, might as well go with the one I remember most, maybe get some information. "Unova," I say, and her face scrunches up.
“How’d you get all the way over here? that’s practically the other side of the world.” comes her enlightening question. The other side of the world huh? At least I can recognize one of the regions then, and hopefully more as well.
Time for another omission. "I just kind of… woke up here," I say.
“You didn’t teleport or anything, just ‘poof’ and woke up here?” She says, disbelief evident in her voice.
Well if she's going to keep pushing I'll just say it then, "I died." She goes quiet.
“Oh,” she finally says, voice small. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring that up, I didn’t even think about… that.”
“It’s-” I pause thinking about it for a moment. “Well, it’s not fine, but you didn’t mean to, so no hard feelings.” She nods, quiet again after the apparent faux pas.
After a minute it’s Buizel who ends up breaking the silence, “Are you going to stop with the slide now?” That makes Sneasel start chuckling, and I join her, the two ‘adults’ taking the chance to break the tension.
She keeps chuckling, “No, I’m not. Even if Float-Face over there won't join, we can still have our fun.”
…Holy shit, something's been eating at me about her, and I just realized what it was. She reminds me of Roxxann. Shit, I might even be able to get along with her.
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"Waterway Express, huh?" Asks Barry as I enter the station still dripping wet.
"Marsh tossed me into the lake, not much point trying to stay dry after that," I say. He just shakes his head.
Barry's not a bad-looking guy, he's Unovan, strong-jawed, blue-haired, always has a five-o'-clock shadow, and tall like most Unovans. The only thing betraying him is his gut.
“When does Karlos want my written report? Because he’s not getting it tonight.” I say. I’m not budging on that point.
"End of the week he said, so you've got a couple of days. How was the 'Break’?" He asks.
“It was nice,” I say while stretching, dripping even more water on the floor. “Great to be out of endless meetings and planning sessions, I really needed it. Anything new on the student programs?”
“Still only Francois, we’re just too small to spare some ranger students this year.” He stops talking for a moment, but I know that look.
“What?” I ask, getting it over with.
“What was the ghost like? Not- I mean, in person.” He asks. I guess that’s a fair question.
Where to start though? “Honestly? The pictures and descriptions don’t do them justice, I can't do them justice. It was like… well, a ghost story, you know? I could see them but they didn't seem real, the light around them kind of shifted a bit, and it was like they had fire and water under their skin. Also, their voice was spooky, just saying," I tell him.
"And you didn't take a camera?" He whines. Oh Kimetsune’s tails, Barry.
"We're going to be seeing more of them, Barry, It's practically guaranteed that Rowan's study gets approved, and we both know I'm going to need to walk out there again after some tourist makes them angry,” I say, mostly calm except for ‘tourist.’ Seriously they are hell.
“Okay, geez, it’s just… ghost, you know?” He says. And yeah, I know. But come on Barry, whining? “Also we’ve been pre-approved to call the runners for the tourist season, so you won’t be the one walking.” He reveals. That’s a massive time save for us, so I nod at him, acknowledging the news.
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
“How’s Francois doing?” I ask, changing the subject as I begin heading for the showers.
Barry starts smiling at that, “He’s great, a bit green obviously, but that’ll pass.” he says.
"And Karlos put the newbie on the night shift," I observe.
Barry snorts, “Easy shift more like, but I get it, ease him into real work. Not like we get many midnight missions here.”
"Did he say when he'll put the kid on day duty?" I ask as we reach the showers.
“Day after tomorrow. Katie will be shadowing him and it will be you and Karlos in the field.” He replies.
I nod and step into the barracks locker room, Barry staying outside like the gentleman he is. He could follow me in to keep talking, it's not like there could be a rule against it when most bases have a single shower room. But Barry also didn't go through the Death Weeks on the ranger track and is still bashful about certain things.
I can hear water running, which is probably Maya, and looking into the shower hall confirms it. The Sinnoh native gives me a glance and a half nod when she sees me.
And I do mean Sinnoh native, with her rich golden-brown skin, large red eyes, curly black hair, and stout figure, Maya Surn is a dead-ringer for one of the remaining Celestica people.
Undressing, I hang my jacket, hat, boots, and belt up outside my locker before folding the rest onto the bench and stepping into the showers myself.
“So, Prime decided to unite the hives, did she?” I ask as I turn my own shower-head on.
“Holy Sinnoh, you have no idea how scary that was, one moment I’m wondering why all the grass-types were worked up, and the next I’m surrounded by combee. And all that buzzing…” She trails off, shaking her head at the thought. “I know Prime would never let her hive hurt us without reason, but it wasn’t just her hive there. Though with her hive having five- maybe nine vespiquen now, I doubt the other four even tried to fight it.” She pauses to rinse her face before she looks at me and asks, “Barry said you actually saw a ghost?”
“Yep, how much do you want to bet one of us gets called out to save a tourist when they make them angry?” I ask, enjoying the hot water for a moment.
"I don't take sucker bets." She says lightly, shutting her own water off and heading for the lockers. "Though I'll put cleaning duty on us not getting to put a warning sign down before they hurt someone." She calls from the lockers.
"I don't take sucker bets either," I call back. Making her laugh, though there isn't much humor in it.
Marshal had roughed up five tourists before the rangers were allowed to put signs by her grove to warn people off, that’s without mentioning her older exploits. And Luxray had killed an extremely stupid man who kept trying to touch the thunder-alpha’s kits before we could stake warning signs around his little valley. The moment people catch wind that there’s a ghost they’re going to swarm that cabin out there, and I’ll give it a week at most before someone gets hurt. At least with a sign, we can say they were warned and then enforce it if they decide to still ignore that warning.
I hear the door open and then close as Maya leaves and decide to speed my showering up. Quickly soaping, scrubbing, and rinsing I'm out in under eight minutes. Now wearing civvies, I make my way to the small kitchen just off our equally small lounge. As I enter I see Barry, Maya, Katie, and Emil all already eating dinner. Karlos must still be in his office, then.
“Who cooked tonight, Katie or Emil?” I ask, grabbing a folding chair as I do.
“Emil.” The blonde Unovan, Katie, says. “He’s just better at it. And I want to relax since I finally have a day off.”
“You always flatter me, amé." Says the tanned Kalosian man, displaying a blinding smile as always. "And tonight is chicken stuffed tomatoes with gogoat cheese salad and fresh pecha juice." Sweet gods the man should have been a chef, his cooking is always a highlight on his base-days and we're so lucky to have him here.
“Where did you get chicken of all things? Did a ship come in recently that I missed?” I ask, finally sitting down.
He nods, "Yes, at the Chicole port, and I managed to convince Karlos to acquire not only chicken, but pork, and six chicken eggs too. We should have enough to last till Autumn, if we ration." He says, still smiling. "I intend to bake a cake with the eggs though," he adds warningly. As if any of us would stop him.
Food imports are rare indeed, and the meat is always welcome with Almia’s—Sienna's as a whole, really—lack of meat farms. Dairy? Sure. Fish? Within certain regulations. Eggs? So long as you aren't squeamish and don't mind the large sizes, there are plenty of eggs. But real meat, the kind most people would think of, we need to import. And I’m sure a good piece of the budget for the next few months went towards buying us that meat. Although I’d bet all Emil had to say was that he’d be the one cooking it and Karlos said yes immediately.
Although, where I grew up, eating pokemon meat was both cheap and extremely common.
Our gracious chef soon has a plate in front of me, and it not only smells but looks delicious. After thanking Emil I dig in, hungry as always after a day in the field. By Her tails, the food is good, Emil clearly having put his heart into it with real meat to work with.
“So, how’d Marshal treat you?” Emil asks innocently as I finish my plate.
I look at him suspiciously, that's plainly not what he wants to know, but I answer anyway. "She was happy to see me, less happy when it was work-related, she tossed me into her lake," I tell him. He nods, it was very Marshal-like behavior.
"I heard there was a ghost at the lake too?" He asks, tone still just as innocent.
That has me glaring at Barry while the man himself fixes his gaze on the ceiling, "Is everyone going to ask about that?" I inquire to the table.
“Hey, I only asked if it was true!” Maya defends herself, and I raise my hands placatingly. She’s right after all.
“You’re the first one here to see a ghost amé, Maya and I may be seeing them soon enough, but we’re still curious.” He says. Katie nodding her head the whole time.
Then the woman speaks up, “I wasn’t going to ask, just so you know.” I sigh, deflating a bit.
"Okay, yeah. Marshal seems to like the ghost enough to let them see her garden, so they're probably friendly, but it was getting dark and I mostly didn't interact with them. Sneasel should be able to give me a better idea of their disposition when she gets back.” I tell them all.
“Good,” Emil starts, walking towards the oven “Now mò aniés, how about seconds, hmm?” He finishes as he brings out a new tray of tomatoes. That lifts the mood as we all tiredly cheer him on.
***
After dinner, as we’re all settling into our bunks, Sneasel returns, happy as can be. She promptly hops onto our bed, pats me on the head, and collapses in a heap, seemingly already asleep.
Maya and Lerp—yes, the turtwig named himself that—both chuckle at my partner's typical behavior as they look up from their book, While Emil and Piplup just smile at it, and Karlos just snorts as he’s still going over papers with Gabite. The operators are already asleep, having less stamina than we rangers.
“Not going to say anything huh?” I ask the very much awake pokemon, poking the side of her face as I do. She doesn’t respond, so I’ll just ask her tomorrow. Actually…
I look at the clock on the far wall, seeing that it’s only twenty-two-fifteen I poke her again, “Hey, we need to talk about your evolution.”
“Sneea…” She sighs out, unfolding her tangled limbs and sitting back up. I gesture towards Karlos as he looks up at us.
“This is going to need the office, isn't it.” He more states than asks, and I nod. He nods back and stands, gesturing to the barracks door for us to proceed.
A minute later we're in his rather spartan office and Karlos is smacking the side of a beige tower while shaking his head, "For being the way of the future, paper sure seems to work faster most of the time." He comments, tapping his fingers on the desk. I just look around the office while we wait. He complains, but there is a significant amount less paper in here than last month, the bulky scanner to the side of his desk the obvious reason. The office is rather bare otherwise, filing cabinets line the walls and the desk has little more than two pens, some papers, and the computer on it, the lone indulgence being the brass nameplate with ‘Karlos Monte – Head Ranger, Vien Forest West’ engraved on it resting at the front.
“There we go.” He says, hands moving to his keyboard as he types to bring something up. “So, Sneasel’s going to evolve soon?” He questions, eying the pokemon next to me. “Yeah, I can see it. You’ve been sharpening those?” He asks Sneasel while gesturing at her claws, she nods in response. “Getting itchy I bet. So, once you evolve, staying as Onaga’s partner takes a bit more paperwork, quite a bit more, just ask Gabite about it, let me tell you, and getting most of it done ahead of time will help. There's also citizenship, which is more paperwork upfront, but it'll come with other benefits and fewer things to file down the line." Now looking at me he asks, "Have you talked to her about any of this?"
"I only just made the connection earlier today, I was going to talk to her on my next base-day, but I'm pretty sure she'll have evolved by then," I tell him.
He nods thoughtfully before looking back at Sneasel, “Think you know what being an Almian citizen means?” She nods, and he continues, “Good, if you don’t want to become a citizen I’d appreciate you telling us now.” He pauses, and Sneasel thinks for a moment before making a rolling motion with her left hand for him to continue. He sighs. “On the other hand, if you choose to become a citizen and remain Onaga’s partner you will be employed by the Ranger Union as a legal pokemon enforcer, with pay and future benefits. Onaga will also become your legal sponsor, though that could mean as much or as little as the two of you want it to." He leaves out that she could become a citizen and leave because a partner that's stuck around as long as she has won't even consider it anyway. Sneasel thinks a bit more and then looks at me for input.
"Well…" I start, scratching the back of my head. "The pay means you'll be able to buy yourself things instead of asking me, of course, though it does come with extra responsibilities and training." Sneasel rolls her eyes when I say training, but I continue, "It also comes with taxes, which while you work for the rangers are handled by the bursary but you will need to learn how to do them just in case, You'll need a legal name, and you'll need to abide by the law, but that shouldn't be an issue." I need to stop and search my memory for a second, but I come up blank. "I'm not entirely certain what the benefits package is for pokemon," I say, shrugging.
She seems to be thinking about it rather hard, and I find not just my own but Karlos’ eyes drifting to the clock on the wall more than once as she does. After two-and-a-half minutes she finally seems to come to a decision.
“Sneasel?” she says, pointing at Karlos and making a chomping motion.
“You want to know what Gabite chose?” he asks. And when Sneasel nods I know exactly what her choice will be. “He’s still just my partner, he-”
“Snea, Snea!” Sneasel interrupts, hands reaching up to his desk and nodding her head furiously now.
“Uh… ” He eloquently says before looking at me, “Do you know what that means?”
"She's saying 'Yes, gimme!' Right Sneasel?" I half-tell him, half-ask her. And Sneasel keeps nodding.
Karlos looks at the clock again before sighing. “Well that’s not happening tonight, you two can go back to the barracks for the night, I’m just going to start things off and make some notes before I hit the hay too.” He dismisses us.
As soon as we're out of his office I pick Sneasel up and hug her. "I hope you know what you're in for, Sneasel," I tell her. "That's not a small decision, and you can't take it back."
She pokes my nose, before giggling, “Sneasel, sneasel.” While pointing at me.
I set her down and we start walking back to bed. I open the barracks door as quietly as possible and step inside, Sneasel right behind me, and see that everyone else has settled in now. We silently make our way over to our bed and climb in, Sneasel laying on top of the blanket as I slide under the sheets. I’m too excited to sleep easily, thoughts about my best friend swirling around my head as I lie there.
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My continued efforts to use Moves have been… successful? I’m not sure which move it is, but I’m definitely using some kind of psychic thing. And after two days I think I’ve finally got a handle on keeping the power low enough that it doesn’t hurt me while still being able to move things around with it. Or, one thing, but still.
Holy shit psychic powers are cool. They’re also annoying to control, I can’t just push or pull, lift or lower, no, I can shrink it, grow it, twist it, curve it, flatten it, ball it up, focus it, diffuse it, invert it, and turn it inside out. I can tell I'm getting better at it rather quickly, but I think I might be meant to.
“Hello?”
I’m fairly certain control like this comes naturally to pokemon, even if I wasn’t one before. That is to say, I’m almost certain I have new instincts along with my old ones, but because I have old ones the new ones have kind of… faded into the background with the old ones.
I don’t think it’s like something messing with my head, it’s closer to what I remember of puberty. ‘Gasp, what do you mean I suddenly find girls attractive?’ or ‘Oh why yes, starting a fight for no reason sounds like a great idea to me!' They're just… new urges. The only problem is that I spent more than thirty years learning to ignore most of my urges and now I need to sort through them.
The results of listening to them have been fruitful so far, though.
“Hey Charlie, you with us?”
I- uh… what's with the anxiety? Anyway, I'm pretty sure my cloud is what I use to scavenge more effectively, and I only figured it out when I listened to the desire to expand it while I was floating around the woods at night. It's effectively a net at that point, catching emotions that are flying away from me, might just skim past my reach, or fling themselves out of orbit.
Not that that's the only thing it can do, and since controlling it felt so similar to whatever psychic thing I was doing I tried moving it the same way. And once I started fully listening to my instincts about how to move it, how to mold it, I- well I can make illusions now.
The illusions aren’t great, or even good, but I can do it. They don’t work in sunlight, I still get that pins and needles feeling and I don’t think I can do anything about that, but hey, superpowers. Neat.
“I swear you get creepier every time I see you.” Says Leafeon, making Grotle—the female—chortle a bit, and snapping me mostly out of my thoughts.
What was I- Right, my voice, as it turns out, can also be fed power. I haven’t tried putting a lot into it because I can already get really loud. But I can do that too.
“And you get more sour.” I retort, making the leafy-fox-thing smirk, though the small jolt of fear is unexpected.
Honestly, even two days later I'm still just riding the high from Sneasel telling me I won't need to worry about trainers here, that let me relax enough to work all this out, even if she did mention tourists. But how bad can they really be?