~~~ Chapter 44 - Rules ~~~

Art, already sore from dry heaving, rolled over, guts clenching as he looked at Leah. Leah was rubbing her blades, and air was whooshing in and out of her mouth. He walked over to her, picking her up, gently pushing her blades apart with his free arm. "Please, excuse us," he said to the three trainers and Looker.

He'd warned Looker the other day that Leah might panic. She tended to get anxious in social situations, especially when in a place she didn't feel comfortable. He didn't blame her. Lenora's gym was immaculate, but there was only so much you could do about the scents of other pokemon that Leah was undoubtedly picking up on.

He'd been doing his best to imagine what it would be like to be a pokemon. They said bugs had simple inner lives compared to other pokemon, and that it was harder to bond with bugs. Walking out of the room, ignoring the murmur of conversation between the four behind him, Art couldn't tell if the sour taste in his mouth and his scrunched gut was a lingering effect from the dry-heaves or him picking up Leah's anxiety.

It took a second, but Leah had actually stopped her hyperventilating! Leah paused. Then her head tilted, swapping to look over his shoulder, giving Looker and Dawn stares in ways that only bugs could. Crossing through the gym's halls, heading for the front door, Leah did not object to being held in Art's left arm as the two traveled across the sizable front lawn of the towering gym. The clear air would help both refocus and keep from doing anything they would regret.

"Hey girl," he said in a soft voice, resisting the urge not to bounce the leavanny up and down in his arms like a baby. Bugs didn't respond to physical touch the same way humans did. Art, as a human, felt the need to hug her, but it wouldn't allay her emotions. Leah's antennae tapped, twitching the air, occasionally brushing his head and face. He put his right hand up to her arms, gently pushing the wicked leaves apart. It had only been a few hours, but Fidget's doting on her was already solidifying. The other bug had practically turned Leah's dress and outfit into a papier-mache of leaves, now all hardened. His phone buzzed in his pocket. He would pick it up later. Right now, he had a pokemon to comfort.

"I'd tell you if you could, you're smart as a whip, you know. You've probably guessed that they're going to ask you questions, haven't you?" Art said, trying to console her, touching the little leaf-necklace she'd made sitting around his neck.

"You sound like a ghost when you breathe through your mouth, you know that right?" he said knowing that Leah couldn't understand most of what he was saying. Normally leavanny's air sacs breathe silently, passively. Neither Fidget nor the other evolved leavanny he'd surrendered to the professor had a tick where they would breathe through their mouth. He smiled. The other leavannies didn't ever panic-breath, either.

"Seriously, how do you manage that howl?" he asked playfully. She would have no idea what he was saying to her, just like the first time he'd asked. He was hoping that if he talked in a playful tone, it would help console her fears. Judging by how Leah wasn't struggling to run away, and the fact that her mouth was closed, she'd slightly recovered in his arms. He couldn't help it. She was just too cute in his arms.

Art gave Leah a little kiss on the top of her forehead at the edge of the treeline between the lawn and the forest where he'd taken her. The silcoon he'd left on the ground as they had gone inside was sitting under a nearby bush. If the silcoon was there still by the end of the day, he'd pick the silcoon up. He needed his second badge to register it at a pokecenter and use it for battling, but if it chose to stick around, he could catch it and start training it before then anyway.

Without really thinking about it as they perused the edge of the forest, he shifted Leah into his right arm, pointing her toward the forest. Using his left arm, Arty pulled a large, round leaf off a low-hanging branch from a nearby tree, giving it to her. Leavanny—and Leah was no exception—seemed to communicate their approximation of love through physical gifts. The Leavanny accepted it, holding the leaf on the side of her blade for a moment, staring at it.

For a brief second, Arty wondered if he'd misread her mood or if she'd reject his pathetic attempt at a gift. Then, she held it to her mouth, taking a simple bite of the leaf from the very top. It wasn't perfect, or exact, but if he didn't know better, it looked like she'd used her bite to give it the shape of a heart. Still in his arms, she then slathered the back of the leaf in her liquid-silk, before haphazardly slapping it onto her skirt.

Then, closing his eyes, he took steady, controlled breaths before heading back into the gym. He'd promised the agent that he'd do what he could to help catch the criminal Cyrus. As he and Leah walked back to the gym, his smile was half-hearted. He'd never met or interacted with a psychic before, but the detective had said the girl was more than capable. The knot in his stomach churned as he stepped up the front porch of Lenora's library/museum/gym.

He paused, taking a look around. Leah's arms had gone from fully-taut-prepared to a fight and rubbing them together, to a kind of loose, droopy posture. She'd been cleaned of her mud and dirt from the rains and mud of pinwheel forest, and looked immaculate. Almost artisanal. He smiled as he opened the door to the gym, to return to the atrium.

Art had at least a few questions he would ask Dawn, before approving the mind-reading session.

"Come here boy." Lenora said, surprising Art out of his reverie, waving him down into the library. "Before anything happens here, I wanted to have a private conversation," the gym leader said. She turned her head to look into Leah's eyes. "Bring Leah too, don't you worry about that."

~~~

Dawn waited in the gym, taking a seat on the bleachers, turning her thoughts to her alakazam, using some of her psychic abilities to play a kind of soft push-pull game. Alakazam would never lose, of course. But it took her mind off Looker as he talked with Lyra as if he'd been flirting for years. She knew the man had connections. But not this kind sure, she was an older student/trainer tutoring with the gym leader. But she thought about how elusive the man really was. She didn't even know where the guy lived in sinnoh, her own home region. Was he a part of these conspi—her mind was briefly shuffled as both of her psychic thought-streams were forced back into her head. The mind capabilities between the two, were, as always, the gentleness of a master compared to an infant grasping her parent's massive fingers with all her might.

Whatever she knew about Looker, which wasn't much, she knew his methods were effective. With a bit of focus and help from her own thought-streams, she directed herself to the task at hand. She reviewed what they'd learned. First, that she was a complete wreck. That's what she'd decided anyway, given that after combing through the four bugs and realizing she was curled in a sleeping bag on the ground not an hour ago on the eastern coast of Unova. It was only on the last one, the leavanny that Looker had procured from the professor, that alakazam would have to help her filter taste and smell out from the mental connections. She still felt exposed, not having a large blanket around her, but she needed to put up a front of stability, at least for Looker.

Dawn would get to Cyrus, even if it killed her or gave her the mentality of a fucking bug-type pokemon. She didn't give a shit, she had work to get done. She rubbed her hands together, generating a squeaky sound. With Lenora gone, the conversation between Looker and Lyra had turned serious. She couldn't do anything but wait. She couldn't release Pip, his presence would probably scare the leavanny even worse when it returned. Leavanny were grass type, but they were still bugs, and they didn't know that pip mostly ate fish.

Dawn reached out with her mind in her local vicinity, performing a few extra routines to practice her psychic abilities. She had a team of five, but was told she'd need another psychic pokemon if she wanted to break any barriers. Passing her individual thought streams' awareness over both her alakazam and the other over the backpack on her bag, The girl had dismissed the idea in the past. Alakazam could Levitate, so that dealt with most of the Ground aspect of Cynthia's garchomp.

But the fucker wasn't exactly a slouch in the dragon or fire aspects either. More than one story of her Garchomp kicking up a sandstorm and then using its draconic fires to lace the field in rapidly cooling glass. They said Cynthia herself never shouted moves for the chomp.

Drayden lived in Opelucid city. His haxorus could supposedly go toe-to-toe with Cynthia's garchomp. On the other hand, one of Dawn's thought-streams tugged over the master ball in her backpack. Her exercises and meditations meant she'd memorized the shapes and colors of the tantalizing pokeball resonating.

If she met or caught a god, then Cynthia was as good as gone. Dawn smiled to herself, silently waiting for the leavanny to return, Lyra and Looker's conversation turning cold as they began to make their way out of the room. Looker gave her a glance that said all she needed to know. She would stay here and wait. She would make sure Cyrus was captured, of course…but if she could catch a god of creation, or at least convince it to help her out, it really didn't matter what her team was.

~~~

"I told you last time, Looker, Meg can smell when you smoke."

"Lyra, honey," Looker said, adjusting the collar on the shirt under his jacket.

"Yeah, yeah, I know, you don't believe that I can have that good of a bond with my pokemon. That shit's just woo." Lyra said, holding back her smile. "But I told you last time, you've lost your mystique. You needed to step up your game. This was your last chance, and you fucking royally blew it. All your stuff. I want it out of my fucking townhome before you even leave this fucking gym."

"What?" Looker asked. The usually self-sure detective was on the back foot. Dawn was playing with her alakazam. The girl, a bit more than six years Lyra's junior, was paying more attention to the conversation than she let on. Lyra had enough experience to know how psychics worked.

Lyra couldn't hold back her grin. It had turned predatory. "Come with me, let's have a quick, private conversation in the backyard." Lyra turned to Megan, who followed along behind her. She made sure to give Dawn a peek at her own pokebelt. The trainers Looker attached to had a tendency to find their way to pokeballs. Did Dawn notice the purple dots on her own pokeball belt?

Everyone Looker and his teams had "picked up" as his helpers in his investigations seemed to wind up with one, sooner or later. Ostensibly, it was to contain the mythical legendaries and help prevent future further crises, but considering the increasing frequency of national and at least regional conspiracies and disasters, Lyra had begun to doubt. More often than not, after being caught, it would be discovered that there were other legendaries of the same species floating around.

She'd have to give Dawn a talking to about the master ball. Looker certainly never gave her one. Then she'd talk to Dawn about Looker after Lyra killed him. The poor girl was probably running herself ragged chasing the detective's conspiracy of the week. Lyra had been there, done that. And was tired of hearing the man preaching about "saving the world" bullshit. She still loved…him. But Lyra had decided that "the world" could save itself.

At least once in a while.

~~~

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Dawn's heart had stopped, her thought streams and full mind ground to a halt. Lyra had the sight of the ball that Cyrus had given her. There was more than one master ball. Which meant the conspiracies went far further and deeper than she herself had thought. But why then? Who, exactly, was Lyra? Why would she have a master ball?

What pokemon was in it?

Cyrus had said he didn't need it any more? That he had another one meant that they weren't one of a kind, she knew, and she'd always wondered. Who else had them? Were Kyogre and Groudon really asleep? What of Jirachi? Did someone catch Cresselia and Darkrai with one? Or a member of the Lake Trio? Is that why they were so elusive?

Her own stomach would have churned, if she hadn't reached out to alakazam for some help and mental stability.

Looker's been tracking them down, she reasoned. The man wasn't a trainer. But he could be, if he knew where to get the balls. Dawn had offered to give the man her own master ball, but he'd declined, saying only trainers who bonded well could do it?

She hoped they weren't on someone's trainer-belt. To have continent-cracking power at your beck and call, as if chained to your will like Cyrus claimed? The master balls, Cyrus had said, had a piece of a member of the creators of souls within them, and would make any pokemon you catch aid you in your cause. At the time, she'd shuddered, and nearly thrown it away, until Lucas had shown up, obtaining his own master ball as well. Looker had been sending the two of them around Sinnoh investigating the then-galactic-group's more shady operations. She hadn't suspected at the time… is Looker after something other than to take down conspiracies?

No. She'd gone this far following the man's leads, and he'd advised Dawn to keep the masterball "just in case". But something was up, and now she needed to know what. Unfortunately, as she was getting up to follow Lyra to the backyard, Lenora returned with the interviewee. Lenora's eyes bore into Dawn, even as Dawn's back straightened and she forced herself to focus on the task that was actually-at-hand.

~~~

"Look, Lyra, I don't know what you're talking about—" Looker said. A vine whipped out, pushing, tapping the detective, the massive eyes of the Meganium staring the man down, pressing its eyes into his face. His face remained a trained neutral—Looker wasn't the type to buckle under this kind of pressure. Lyra knew he was and would be ready and willing to die if needed. But the standing hairs on the back of his neck told him everything she needed to know. Didn't mean the man wasn't scared of Meg.

"You know damn well what I'm talking about, Looker. Everyone at your damn agency—or whatever you're calling that fucked-up operation you're running—knows about my ultimatum" she said, licking her lips.

"I gave you two fucking rules." She said, "don't play coy with me, you bastard."

This time, it was the detective who smiled.

"Oh?" she asked. "What's with the smile? Done playing coy?" She was legitimately getting pissed.

"Goddamn you're hot when you're putting your foot down."

A gleam in Lyra's eye. "You realize you're dead just for walking into the atrium right?"

The man didn't respond, just held his smile in the backyard of the gym. Then, her face turned from anger, to pity. She spoke up, "Their—I mean, your—so-called agency's stuff's already being removed from my house right now, isn't it?" She knew what the detective was really saying, stepping away from the detective.

"Yes m—" his mouth was covered with a pair of vines, Meg responding to Lyra's intentions faster than Lyra could even vocalize them. There was a reason Lyra had brought Meg along. And it wasn't just because she could ride around on her best friend's back through the countryside and watch them spar with virizion. Meg was on a win streak over the "sword of justice," who were, themselves, toughening up considerably. She may have been feeding them some of Meg's food after each spar.

Lyra had given Looker two rules. And the threats she made were clear, and she gave her word, and stuck to it. This was one of those times it was going to be harder to enforce the rules because of the … relationships she'd built along the way. People trying to come to her and beat her or going into the wild and disappearing was normal.

But she'd never taken of the agency's investigators like this. No—he knew what Lyra was going to do. What she'd said she was willing to do, and what she was capable, as a Hoenn Champion. The organization was skimping on their own employees. Taking advantage of her threat in a kind of "who blinks first" play of first order moronics. And that filled her with a fire which made her almost want to rip the agency from its foundations.

No one at the agency would be responsible, of course, you see. They had just designed the rules. And whoops, some of them couldn't handle it or meet the proper barrier for proper exit.

The agency had protocols and processes miles long. Every agent she'd let stay with her knew of them. The regional ones would be tossed over to any of the detectives that crossed borders into another's stomping ground. The fact that they were already moving the Looker's "effects" from the house. Lyra would give the agency a reckoning. One day. Not now, but at some point in the future, she would tear the agency apart, tracking each agent down until every active "Looker" was daisies. They broke one of the conditions she'd given the Looker.

Their relationship was officially over, and they, eventually, ALL would know it. No, they were now halfway to breaking the first rule too.

And that turned her blood to ice.

"It must be getting pretty bad for an agent to be looking for an out," Lyra said, letting the flames turn cold. She didn't actually care to play the dominant persona as much as she did. A learned trait, that. Toxic one, it had eventually become. Wound tight, forced into a corner for yet another minor crisis.

There was always another crisis. Another plot by some ne'er do-wells that warranted her attention and power.

A long sigh. Ultimately, that frustration at the so-stupid-it-had-to-be-intentional system wasn't with the man in front of her. Lyra and Meg both knew how to direct their anger, they would have practically been twins in different bodies by this point… Were it not for the fire within her.

"You're one of the smokers. Light me a cigar," Lyra said. The man pulled out a cigar, handing it to her, pulling out a lighter as she held it out for him. She wanted to rant at him, tell the man they were a complete moron, that he probably fucked up his own mission by rushing things through.

No. She knew the situation was off. She could hold it in for now. Looker was silent in front of her, trying to hold his wry smile. But the handsome face's eyes betrayed the pain and loss.

"You do want out, don't you? That's the real reason you're here. That's why you brought Dawn here. If you really wanted to give Dawn a ticket into the distortion world, you could probably just reopen goddamn Mount Coronet, couldn't you?" she asked, staring at the cigar, not taking a single puff, watching it burn.

The man's single chuckle as he nodded was wry. Lyra rubbed her temples.

"I haven't seen my son in years," he told her, a pair of tears running down his eyes. "I look in the mirror every night and I wonder who's staring back. Smoking is one of the few things they haven't cracked down on."

Lyra took a breath from the cigar, before giving it back to the agent.

"You have an agent already being onboarded to replace you, no?" She asked.

Looker shrugged as he took a huff of air, before letting a puff of smoke out. "The agency knows I want out, they've known for the last two years and I've yet to hear wind of a replacement. Fishing through Cyrus' corporation, trying to get the Sinnoh league to do something, before it came to this. No evidence I brought up could get Cynthia to act."

He was sad. "Trying to help was impossible. Cyrus was untouchable until he disappeared. Dawn was really the only one I could convince."

Outwardly, the dual ex-Kanto, ex-Johto champion just sighed. She'd lived a similar story as that one, first hand. The Looker continued.

"So I'm leaving her to clean up Cyrus. She's crafty enough that she'll figure out how to bring Cyrus back, in cuffs, without me," he said, pausing, searching the sky as Lyra took a puff.

Lyra knew how the agency operated, even if she wanted to be kept from the day-to-day, she had a good relationship with her Looker, and sympathized with this one. From the backyard of the Nacrene City gym, Lyra thought for a moment. Anything too loud or bloody would catch Lenora's attention.

The pair of them walked to the very back of the gym's massive courtyard— filled with obstacles and sparring arenas and places for Lenora's dogs to run around and dig holes without worry. Compared to the front yard and inner gym rooms, this area was a disaster. Not to say it was a mess. It wasn't. But dogs liked to dig.

"Did you have any intention of talking to Dawn about the master ball?" Lyra asked.

The Looker shook his head.

"So you came here for suicide, and the agency just let you? And to top it off you wanted to leave Dawn to clean up your mess?" Lyra asked, incredulous. Then she shook her head. "Are you sure this is how you want it to go down?" They had walked to the very back of the yard. The nine A.M. sun shone down upon their tanned faces.

The detective nodded.

It was acres and acres of yard for her dogs to run around in.

The detective nodded.

"Take your clothes off then and stand behind a tree, I'm not fucking watching this shit. Meg'll do the honors, but we don't want to make a mess of your effects, now do we?"

"Hah," the detective said, finding his voice. "Wouldn't want that, now would we." He folded up his shirt. "There's a card in my jacket, send it to my son for me, would ya?" He asked.

"Shoulda done it yourself, bastard." Lyra said. Meg already intuit what she was being asked to do. They hadn't killed anyone since taking down the remains of Team Rocket back in Johto, but they knew each other so well.

~~~

Artemus and Leah walked out of Lenora's office. He didn't really know if he should be happy at the potential opportunity Lenora had offered him, or disappointed. She'd offered to let him stay and get on the gym's payroll for a few months as he trained, if he helped manage the increasing number of mass outbreaks the city had been dealing with. But the sour taste returned, when he realized why an increasing number of "mass outbreaks" might be happening.

No, he'd decided. As much as they needed some extra cash on top of the national stipend, plus still being listed as an employee at Castelia, after seeing what was happening in the city that very morning, he wanted nothing more than to leave Nacrene. They might pride themselves on their history, but slaughtering bugs just wasn't something he could abide.

As he entered the atrium, Lenora had apparently seemed to be genuinely shocked at his answer, and the reason why. Though he couldn't decide if it was because she assumed most people devalued the lives of bug pokemon so much, or if she was surprised it was happening at all. The sour taste on his mouth was growing. At this point, he had half a mind to take Leah and leave Nacrene city, and come back after he had a couple of badges of his own.

I just have to keep my word to Looker, he thought to himself. Dawn's eyes were glazed over as she sat on the bleachers. It was as if she was asleep with her eyes open. Art had never met a serious psychic trainer before, so he really didn't know what to think, other than to carefully keep his attention focused on Leah, noting his star's reduced signs of anxiety as their little excursion working. With just the two trainers and the alakazam in the gym room.

He took a breath, then set Leah down in the gym, giving her a candy treat. "Answer her questions? Please?" he asked.

Dawn's mouth smiled, but her eyes were empty. "Shall we?" She asked. Art had forgotten his questions for the sinnohan girl.

"Yeah, I suppose so," he said, giving her a slight bow. "I do have one request, though."

"Sure," she said.

"Move to the center of the atrium? I'll watch from the bleachers."

Dawn let out a single chuckle. "This isn't a pokemon battle!" she said, incredulous.

"I know," he said.

"If it would make you feel better—"

"It would, yeah."

"All right."

Dawn levitated then was gently set to her feet by her alakazam. Leah looked at Art, as if asking if she should follow them to the center of the room. He nodded, pointing at Dawn walking off, tossing her another candy before Leah went to join them.

Dawn's voice was stiff, yet mildly incredulous: "You can sit with us, by your pokemon if you'd like, you don't have to be all the way over there!"

"I, uh—I trust Leah," he said, recalling Leah's practice from the earlier morning.