The first Rangers and police showed up twenty minutes after we had staggered back to the road and Kane’s wrecked truck.

Professor Rowan had called Commissioner Jenny, who had called the chief of the Eterna City Police Department, who had gotten in touch with the Rangers to organize a response.

Apparently, the police in Eterna City weren’t quite as quick on the draw as those in Jubilife, and their response was much more chaotic than the first time I had met Kane. Then again, when I had first defeated Kane and his goons, I had the luxury of being in constant contact with the dispatcher over the phone, and was able to tell them everything they needed to know.

This time? They had to play a game of telephone and figure out where the crashed truck was located.

I didn’t blame them for being late, but I did feel slightly vindicated that I had made the right choice to not wait for them.

Even if Kane had escaped, we were able to disrupt whatever he was planning, and had even saved another Pokémon that he would have tried to pawn off to the highest bidder. I should have felt at least a little proud of that.

If we had waited for the police and the Rangers, he would have been long gone by now, with both Hisuian Growlithes. If things had gone even worse, he might even have been able to take on the Ursaring and her cubs, and I dreaded to think what would have happened to the little bears.

Had it been a stupid idea to rush in? Yes. Had we failed to catch Kane? Also yes.

I felt awful that my Pokémon had gotten hurt, but the look of sheer pride on Venus and Zetian’s faces told me that they didn’t regret it one bit.

They had run into a fight that they shouldn’t have been able to win, and came out alive on the other end. They had even rescued a Pokémon from the clutches of an evil poacher.

That was enough for them, but I still didn’t feel good about it.

Ted had already left with the Rangers, taken to the Pokémon Center at Eterna City to have Rakkyo healed. We had been assured by the first responders that the Flygon would live, but he would likely need a lot of healing, even with the advanced medicine of the Pokémon world.

I was planning to meet up with Ted in Eterna, and I was just hoping that he wouldn’t blame me for getting Rakkyo hurt. I was already blaming myself enough.

For now, I was sitting on the curb on the side of the road and trying to figure out what I could have done better.

“Well,” A familiar voice said, and I looked up to see Professor Rowan standing before me. “This seems a little too familiar for my liking.”

He looked a little disheveled, his long brown coat looking rumpled, and it was obvious that he had thrown it on in a hurry.

“Hi Professor.” I said tiredly.

“Sorry it took me so long to get here.” He stepped forwards and sat down at my side on the curb, looking down at the pile of fur by my feet.

Venus had taken to the Hisuian Growlithe like a mother after a puppy, despite the dog-like Pokémon being much bigger than she was. With her help and a couple of poffins, I had convinced the Growlithe to let me give it a potion, and Venus had sat the larger Pokémon down to start grooming its fur.

After she had gotten it cleaned up, the two Pokémon fell asleep, exhausted from the day’s events.

Zetian was also asleep, but she had chosen to sleep in her ball, and had gone in with three expressions of victory. She had been slashed by Terror, but had put a beating on the Mightyena in return and was quite happy with her partial victory.

I was a little concerned with how gleeful she had been at stinging Kane and Terror, but that was a problem for future-me.

Professor Rowan sighed and leaned back, looking up at the sky.

“Did I ever tell you that I traveled with Kane?”

I looked over at him in shock. “I didn’t know you knew him at all.”

“Really?” Rowan hummed. “I must have forgotten to mention it. It was… well, as the kids would put it, it was the ‘bad old days.’”

His gaze softened, and I could almost see the weight of time pressing down on him as he looked back at his past.

“Things were different back then. The Pokémon League that we know today was just an idea at that point, a pipe dream of idealists like myself and Professor Oak.”

I had so many questions, like how he knew Oak, but they could wait.

“The regions were much more fractured. War wasn’t common, per-se, but there were a lot of ‘territorial conflicts.’ Everything was less… civilized. We talk today about Journeys and sending children off to learn about the world first-hand and to build confidence in themselves. But it wasn’t always like that, children used to go out to get stronger, to find new Pokémon, to make the region a more formidable place so the other nations wouldn’t want to attack us.

I was young when I set out on my Journey, younger than you are now. As young as Dawn is, actually. I was full of gumption, eager to make my mark on the world. Cinder and I were determined to become the strongest Trainers in the entirety of Sinnoh.”

“Cinder?” I couldn’t help but ask, and Rowan smiled bitterly.

“My first Pokémon. He was a Cyndaquil, and I wasn’t a very imaginative kid when it came to names.”

“I didn’t know you have a Cyndaquil.”

“Had.” Rowan said, and the word was full of pain. “But that comes later.

There weren’t gyms so much back then as there were clans of powerful Trainers. By challenging the most powerful members of the clans of a certain town or city, you would gain respect among your peers. Much like today, except less regulated and more brutal. I started out on my Journey, and met my first traveling companion.”

“Kane?”

“No, actually. A young girl by the name of Eleanor Jenny.”

I blinked.

“Wait, Commissioner Jenny’s first name is Eleanor?”

He winced. “Don’t tell her I told you that. She’s not a fan of the name. But that’s besides the point. We got on like two Purugly in a bag, and were constantly sniping at each other. Still, we were strong Trainers, and together we were able to overcome any challenge thrown our way. But even two strong Trainers can’t fight against the world, until we came across a young kid.”

Professor Rowan chuckled. “Listen to me, ‘Young kid,’ he was the same age as we were, but he seemed so much younger. He was from a different region you see, Orre, and had moved to be with his grandparents. Looking back on it, I think Jenny and I pitied him, being in a new region all alone with nobody to keep him company. Out of that pity we let him travel with us, although we never admitted as much, and promised that we would be friends forever. Jenny and I did too good of a job. We helped him catch his first Pokémon, a runt of a Ryhorn who had been abandoned by his herd. We taught him how to battle other trainers, and he took to it like a Goldeen to water. We also tried to teach him how to love his Pokémon, how to be a good person, and how to respect the natural world.

It didn’t work. I don’t know where his attitude came from, but I think it must have been from his childhood. Orre is a rough region, and they’ve never been able to overcome the difficulties of geography.”

I frowned. “What does that mean?”

“Orre simply doesn’t have much going for it. It has some metals and minerals that can be mined, but most of the region is arid, with little to attract people. It was originally started as a colony by explorers from Hoenn, but was abandoned by the government after a few years when they failed to get a worthwhile return on their investments. Orre is home to some impressive scientists and architects, but the vast majority of people are struggling.”

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

“Oh.”

That put the Pokémon Colosseum and XD games into a more depressing context.

“I did some research into what happened to Kane’s family, after everything happened. There’s few records, and they can’t prove anything, but Kane’s house burnt down when he was a child. He was the only survivor, and officially it was ruled as an accident, but I have my suspicions. The few people I talked to that remembered his family always said he was a mean child, and was fascinated by Fire-type Pokémon.”

“An arsonist?” I frowned. “I suppose he did have Havoc, and he managed to get away with one of those Growlithes, but I don’t think I’ve seen him with any other Fire-types.”

“Like I said, they’re just my suspicions, but as long as I’ve known him, he’s always had a Fire-type with him. When we were traveling together it was a Slugma, but I don’t know what happened to it after we split.”

“What happened?”

Rowan sighed. “I wish I could tell you, I really do. As far as I’m aware, there was no specific inciting incident, nothing that pushed him to be who he is now. At least, not while we were traveling together.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.”

We both turned to see Commissioner Jenny standing behind us, looking much older and more tired than the last time I had seen her.

“Eleanor!”

“Commissioner!”

“You should know better than to call me that, you old fossil. And it’s good to see you again Alina, you’re looking better than the last time I saw you.”

She eyed me critically. “Well, not that much better, but at least your face healed up well.”

Rowan started to rise, but she waved him back down. “Don’t worry about me, I just spent the past twenty minutes trying to get out of a meeting with Cynthia to get here and I need to stretch my legs.”

I froze. “Cynthia? Like, the Champion?”

Commissioner Jenny sighed. “Yes, that Cynthia. She can go on for quite a while about wall engravings or whatever. I suppose I do have to thank her after this is all over. Once she finally understood that I needed to go, she was willing to give me a ride. It was much faster than if I had borrowed one of the police force’s Staraptors, that’s for sure.”

Professor Rowan nodded as if this was the most natural thing in the world, but to my horror I saw a blonde, black-clothed figure poking around inquisitively at the crashed truck.

Cynthia. Perhaps one of the most powerful Champions in the entire world. A nightmare of a Trainer who had crushed my Pokémon teams many times over in the games.

She was currently less than a hundred feet away from me.

I may have let out a small squeak.

“I got an update from the Rangers.” Commissioner Jenny continued, like I hadn’t just had a life-long dream accomplished. “Is that the Growlithe that you managed to rescue?”

“It is.” Rowan answered for me.

“Good job.”

Her words brought me out of my daze at seeing Cynthia in person, and I felt a wave of guilt crash over me.

“I didn’t really do anything.” I said, shaking my head. “Kane still got away, and with a Growlithe too.”

“You can’t win ‘em all kid,” Commissioner Jenny said. “And if you try to win them all, you’re just going to end up burning yourself out, and helping nobody in the end.”

“I want to believe that,” I said honestly. “But I still feel like I failed.”

She sighed.

“Trust me, I understand. We were seventeen when it happened. I’d noticed that Kane was hanging around me a lot more often, and just generally acting… well, creepy. It didn’t take long for me to realize that he wanted to be more than friends.”

Both Professor Rowan and I looked over at her.

“I never knew that.” Rowan said quietly.

“You wouldn’t have. I kept it quiet because I didn’t want to drive a wedge between us, I thought that the three of us were still friends. So I tried to rebuff Kane, to tell him that I didn’t think about him that way. He didn’t take it well.”

Her face could have been set in stone.

“Kane changed after that. He had never been a fan of people, but after the rejection he started hating them. Pokémon were no longer companions to him, instead they were little more than tools to be used and discarded when necessary.”

“That I do remember.” Professor Rowan said.

“What happened after that?” I asked, morbidly curious.

“We still traveled together for a while longer.” Commissioner Jenny said. “But it was different, more tense. Kane became increasingly callous, and started thinking that money would be the solution to all of his problems.”

“Money is what gets you respect.” Rowan said, his voice changing slightly as he mimicked Kane’s voice. “That’s what Kane told me once. That money is what makes the world spin, and if he had enough money, he could be the powerful one for once.”

“He started poaching just before we went our separate ways. He came up to Rowan and I and said that he had heard from a ‘friend’ that we could make a lot of money if we helped out on a ‘gig.’ We were all in need of money then, so we thought it would be a good idea. Turns out that his ‘friend’ wanted some help in catching a Mamoswine for its tusks.

When we figured out what was really going on, we turned our backs on Kane, and left him behind. I personally never saw him again, but over the years he’s popped up in police reports. I’ve done everything I can to crack down on poaching, but he’s always remained one step ahead of us. This is the closest we’ve ever come to catching him.”

Commissioner Jenny sighed, looking off into the distance. “So if the two of us haven’t been able to catch him for decades, you shouldn’t beat yourself up over this.”

“Do you regret what you did?” A new voice said from behind us, and I almost jumped out of my skin.

I turned, and froze. Cynthia was standing there in all her glory.

Stuttering, I blushed and looked down at the ground. I wasn’t normally the kind of person to be star-struck, but this was Cynthia.

“No.” I eventually squeaked out.

“So you don’t regret your actions, but you do regret the results?”

I nodded instead of trying to speak and make myself look like a fool.

“Did you do the best you could?”

I thought it over. I wasn’t a great battler, but my Pokémon had put their hearts and souls into the fight. We were going up against stronger Pokémon than we were ready to deal with, and while my Pokémon had been hurt, we had still come out intact on the other side.

Even Rakkyo would be alright, although he would need a lot of rest and recovery to be back to normal.

“Yes,” I eventually bit out. “But it wasn’t enough.”

Cynthia crouched down so she was at eye level with me, and put a hand on my shoulder.

I was blushing again, this time at how close she was.

“Then I agree with Rowan and Jenny - you shouldn’t beat yourself up over this. You did your best, and your Pokémon are safe. You did everything and more than we could have asked of you.”

She smiled, and my heart beat a little faster. “If I remember correctly, Jenny was telling me that you had been told specifically not to chase after a dangerous poacher, and you did it anyway because you were worried about any Pokemon. It was a dangerous and stupid thing to do, but it was the right thing to do. If you never challenge a single gym or enter a competition, I would still say you are a magnificent Trainer, and that Sinnoh needs more like you.”

I couldn’t speak, and my eyes stung with unshed tears.

“So be proud of what you’ve done. You might not have caught Kane, but you did your best regardless.”

Cynthia patted my shoulder, and stood back up, turning to Jenny.

“As much as I want to stay and poke around a little more, I should get back to the League. What needs must, and all that.”

With a friendly wave to Professor Rowan and Commissioner Jenny, she brought out her Garchomp.

The entire clearing froze as the Dragon emerged with a roar, and every atom of my body was telling me that I should run and hide.

Cynthia’s Garchomp wasn’t that big, physically. Rakkyo was actually larger than it was, but the sheer presence of the Pokémon was like a weight that pushed down on my chest.

The smooth, fluid way it moved, the way its eyes seemed to take in everything at once and gleamed with intelligence, everything screamed that this was the most dangerous Pokémon I’d ever seen.

It took me another second, but I realized what else was remarkable about the Garchomp.

Every “high level” Pokémon I’d seen, from Rakkyo to Crusher, had scars. I suppose it was inevitable, considering the kinds of attacks that Pokémon regularly threw at each other. Most Pokémon who were in the professional battling scene apparently saw them as a mark of pride.

Cynthia’s Garchomp had no scars. Not a single scale was marred in any way. This wasn’t just a powerful Pokémon, this was a Pokémon who had seen battle, and had never been hit.

“Alright then!” Cynthia said, as if she hadn’t just released a monster into our midst. “I’ll see you all later! And Alina;”

She eyed me with a knowing look. “I’ve heard some interesting things about you from Professor Rowan. I think we should talk sometime.”

With that, she hopped on the back of her Garchomp, and in a rush of motion, it was in the air and shooting out of sight like a fighter jet.

Professor Rowan sighed. “She hasn’t changed at all, has she?”

“Not one bit.” Commissioner Jenny commiserated. “She was supposed to be my ride back to Jubilife.”

She turned back to me. “So we’ll need to get an official statement, but after that you’ll be free to go.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

It felt… anticlimactic. Wasn’t there supposed to be more?

But I guess the real world didn’t operate on anime logic. Not every week ended with Team Rocket blasting off once again, only to show up in the next episode.

I sagged like a puppet who had its strings cut, and a wave of exhaustion rolled over me. It was over for now, and there was only one thing on my mind.

“Is there anywhere I could take a nap?”