~~~ 79 = Bloop ~~~

~=~=~

Lanky and Alder had been chatting in another room for a while. I'd been sitting in on the conversation, but got bored and wandered away. Shoes on, I'd navigated the floor back to the gymnasium without any slipping. Back in the gym, not long later I was with Fidget, just crafting and relaxing under the natural light from the ceilings, trying to forget the steel birds.

I'd fought against the birds of steel and despite my fear and quaking, the Skarmory fights hadn't been too bad. The start was fine, for the most part.

The nightmares had already ingrained the problems of literal firebirds eating your entrails while you were still alive, their talons adjusting to move over my head while I tried to crawl away… did seem to put a bit to put a damper on how scared of a bird of steel I was, at least once we all moved.

If nightmares were anything to go by, a hungry bird of fire didn't actually want to kill you with fire. Just use the flames to hold you in position.

Even so, with each swoop or near peck, and the various steel feathers that landed at or near my feetfeat, the primal urge to flee would resurface. Could I trust that these pokemon were trained enough not to try and kill me? I didn't exactly know what they were saying, if anything at all.

It took a while before human talking had clicked, why not pokemon lang—and I'd been hit, rolled along the floor, partially distracted, but also not really wanting to go all in. Death was near even under the casual attitudes of the birds of steel.

Our battle had gone fine. At least, as well as it could have. It could have been worse. It did feel like they weren't aiming to hurt, but to shepherd me around the ring. They'd nipped me a few times, threw a steel feather or four! I was pretty mad at him. Dodging was easy.

Afterward, Lanky had said something, asking if the gym leader wanted to try again. I'd locked up, I guess.

The firebird theme of my nightmares was already starting to stop and fade, but. Nope. No sir. I'd refused another round. The gym leader had just chuckled and said they could test Fidget some instead.

If my face wasn't already stuck in a permanent grin, I would have had a natural, very normal shit-eating grin.

Running those thoughts into circles was what made waiting for the next bit hard though. Ugh. Lanky was going to have to go out and get the rest of the gym badges. They wouldn't all come to us or be short walks…

At least, this was—had been the main flying gym in Unova!

Being out of the fear of the flying type gym was like lying a whole day in the sun. Well, that was probably because being in the gym under a sunroof panel was like having a whole day in the sun.

"I'm going to a place called relic castle," Lankyhe announced, "... I'm going to try and be gone for at least another month…" His voice choked. "But I—" he started, then stopped, and stuttered for a half-second.

He struggled to speak, and I tried to think of how to help him, but I didn't have any extra leaves to give him. Just one I'd stuffed into a little pouch on my leaf-dress. So I took it, made it sticky with a small bit of silk, and stuck it to his shirt.

He chuckled, but let me fuss about a bit. It was obvious why he would struggle so much to talk. The cloth he wore wasn't very thick at all. And I still felt guilty for hurting him and sending him to the hospital.

Maybe making him a whole leaf-shirt would solve both problems?

He took a deep breath. "God, it's not even like it's forever, it's just a month, then we'll be back together."

Oh.

Oh no.

And just like that, all thought that things would be okay dried up.

Images of being stuck in a pokeball for weeks, shoved into a PC or—no, that's not fair to Lanky. He's not like that.

"So, uhg, yeah, I guess you got the message," he said.

I nodded, sheepish. Lanky'd paused talking, but then eventually the words managed to come out once again.

"We're going to leave you here in the gym. Food will always be here, left out for you. Alder says there's a gardener all the plant pokemon love, he'll stop in at least once a week to make sure you're healthy. But even if we stick together…" he trailed off, mumbling.

No, I knew what he was saying, and stuck another leaf on him, this time on his pant leg.

"And I know it's impossible you won't get into trouble, but Alder said it's best to let you figure it out. And he has a point,"

Yeah well a child of a god of chaos, while nice and fun, isn't exactly reliable, it was kinda in the name.

~~~

Looker put his key to the motel room door. With a click, the door unlocked and he let himself in.

The agency hadn't given him the location of any safehouses in the region, and the last agent in the region was awol, so this Looker had been holed up in a motel for the last couple weeks.

Strolling in, he sighed, knowing that he'd need to find a new place in the next week. But that was a problem for a later version of himself. Closing the door and locking it, he tossed his briefcase and backpack onto the floor next to the motel room couch and pulled his laptop out.

A day off would have been appreciated, but with the way things were at the agency, it was a ways away from happening. Officially, indicators had pointed toward Unova to be the next region to light up in the near future. They'd been getting better at predicting the rise of the next set of Teams, but as he flopped his ass down and leaned back, he had to admit that it felt more like chasing around a bunch of Deino.

Blind, and about as likely to nip at the people trying to help them and house them as anything else. Regardless, the indicators were all there, just a few missing ingredients. With a chirp, his laptop went off and the mini printer in his briefcase started squawking.

The message on the screen demanded that he print out an envelope letter and give it to a nurse at the Castelia Pokecenter. Looker immediately closed the message in disgust. He'd deliver it, of course. Just not immediately.

The cases he'd already been checking into and investigating all needed more time to churn, so he opened his browser and searched for a few names that cropped up in passing. Unova was his new assignment.

~~~

I received a few comments about this on my last post, so I'm just going to say this here: I disagree with Cyrus' goals immensely.

His beliefs led him to decisions that were against human flourishing, and I want to see humans flourish. And those who claim I advocate for a Team? Well, I can't really dissuade them now, can I? Sometimes, readers of this blog break.

And that's okay. People's minds are often on the edge of breaking because they can't handle the reality in front of their eyes.

But I also want everyone here to understand that Dawn was a terrorist, a criminal. And her actions contributed to destabilizing the Sinnoh region, which is just now starting to feel the effects of the destruction of the Galactic Group. Who knows what kind of untold economic devastation she and her collaborators will have ended up wreaking?

…

Elsewhere, I've seen it proposed that arguments are soldiers. We call that kind of thinking a Dark Art. Mainly because most people are dumb, and with enough use of these arts, the good people as well as the smart people will eventually start to tune them out.

~~~

Looker hated these fucking bloggers that started to sprout up the last couple years. Who used the word flourishing when talking about humans anyway? It gave him the chills. This stuff was the prelude to something that would be far, far worse years down the road.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Interpol had managed a nearly-complete routing of both Team Rocket and Magma. Aqua, somehow, was still on the loose, though enough warrants were out if any of them showed up in public they'd be arrested as soon as their scents hit the air. Still, despite all the work that'd been done on the ground by this Looker and the others, these nerds show up on the internet psychosocially analyzing these fucks.

"At some point, one of these guys are going to look at what the Teams did in the past and say they can do it better." he muttered under his breath, downloading the blog post and saving it and the author to the list of people to explore the networks of.

Really, that was the real question to ask. Whether or not bloggers could be the precursor to a team. There were their tie-ins, but no smoking guns other than guilt by association. Sadly, the answer was always "almost". Smoke in the air, but no fire.

Yet.

Looker turned back to the blog, his morbid curiosity getting a hold of him.

~~~

And the other problem here is with total indiscretion of your argumentation, you will also cause the stupid to flock to you. Because we all know that those who fall for a deluge of arguments—saying anything and everything that points people in the direction you want to go—are low status or dishonest, or at the very least, annoying.

Let's assume there is someone out there that wants to utilize these arts to their advantage. They want to move the societal needle in the direction they want to see things go—a return to an earlier era, a return to the natural order of kings.

People who believe this way have a few options at their disposal.

They still like, or have friends who talk about pokemon battles, about the league, or ever just have trouble imagining what it would be like without pokeballs.

So you can't just throw each soldier at those people. But you can do a few things. They can highlight the plight of pokemon in our society. They may choose to talk about how much safer the cities are than going out into the wild and not being a trainer.

But the best trick we've found is to cause ideological lock.

…

So, in summary: don't be a threat and be nice. And one day, when we can coordinate, pokemon in Unova will be free, humans will be in cities, and true flourishing will finally happen.

~~~

Looker sighed and closed the laptop in annoyance at the piece of shit blogger. He didn't let his thoughts stew, ominous though they were.

But the guy made some points, in a kind of sadistic way?

Worse, Looker couldn't pull people in for using their speech if they haven't otherwise broken Unova's laws.

And Unova's Free Speech norms were… Lax, to say the least. People could be marching through the street shouting that all pokemon should be separated from their trainers and released in the wilds, and only those granted permission by the Right People could have pokemon, and still the region wouldn't do anything.

Though anyone stupid enough to run their mouths much would get put down pretty fast, either in courts or attracting a trainer to come pop them down a few notches.

Dawn had trouble with Cyrus' intellectual and societal positions. Looker had read the report—She'd been stopped from dragging Team Galactic's leader into interpol's custody at least twice purely because he'd managed to disarm her with charisma.

The kid had trouble with actual philosophy and grandstanding on a soapbox. It had been so hard to convince the league to move against him in part because of this. Though you simply don't go directly after people in the upper class unless you can get the target ostracized.

One would talk about the coming fall of a region, another one like this one would just talk about the new aristocracy and filtering of humans. Who would do the filtering? Of course, the new aristocracy would. Humans were changing, and you needed to protect them.

Farce of an argument aside—as a cross-regional officer, Lookers had rules he had to follow. It was to gather up the evidence, send them off to the regional authorities and let the regional courts deal with it.

The rules Cyrus, or rather, his family, the founders of Galactic Group had set up over their generations of aristocratic rule. Cyrus had gotten incredibly close to whatever the goal he'd had really was. Easy enough to assume it was remaking the entire region in his image. His visions and dreams, at the cost of everyone else.

Team Magma, Team Aqua, Team Rocket, all had some person with extreme power and delusions of grandeur guiding them. How Rocket was funded though? That was easy: Illegal businesses, harming pokemon for profit.

Open and shut cases. As far as this Looker had known, the agency hadn't bothered looking into Magma and Aqua's benefactors.

What a crock of shit, Looker decided, shifting on the ratty Unovan motel couch.

The stiff cushions and the musk of the old tobacco air dampened by his nascent smoking habit were reminiscent of the bankrupt feeling he got from the empty culture. The movies, the magazines, everything in service to a ridiculous outward image.

All the focus on image, the bling, the new phones that always sat in your pocket. It stank on every level, in a way worse than the smell of old tar still floating in through his nose.

He'd wondered if it was the gene-mods that gave him the extra senses and everyone else smelled it normally. It bothered him.

Despite that, and despite the fact that smoking indoors had been long-outlawed in Unova… for at least twenty years, even? Even with those efforts? The age of the place meant the stench was in the walls and in the fabric. Sitting down in his little room for a solid half-hour already, it assaulted his senses still.

Lookers were all good-looking, it was true. It was also true that they all looked the same. Just like the stench of celebrity cults threw all of his internal sensors off — why even bother with the gene-mod disguise if it was so obvious?

Shortly after the technology became viable, everyone in the vicinity started getting digital cameras. Then, social sites cropped up. Despite all the training and conditioning, it never stopped being weird.

Looker let out a sigh, then leaned back onto the couch and shoved the faller leavanny's papers to the side.

He'd lost a friend in the organization long ago. He wasn't quite sure what the organization’s leaders were doing, or what even their goal was anymore. Why did they care about a Vaporeon in another world?

And who the fuck was it that had found this leavanny and connected them together? He’d received the printed notice right out of his laptop. It was top of the line back in the day, but now it chugged just doing the one thing it was used for.

He pounded his fist on the table in frustration. A new world, potentially the original. Why did they care so much about these dotted lines?

It’s not like they were effective at stopping Team rocket, Magma, or Aqua in the past. And now another near-failure of Cyrus and Team Galactic was only prevented because a Looker had managed to ring in a local girl that had been getting hassled by them.

What was he going to do? Find some kid and send them on a multi-world journey to do the thing the organization failed to find casus belli for originally?

Forcibly re-home the pokemon in their old world? It disgusted him, honestly. She was clearly anxious at the sight of Lookers. But more than any of that, the thought of pursuing this particular line of inquiry? It was a disgusting organizational priority to take.

As far as he could tell, the region was already prepared to light up in flames just passively because tensions were actively rising entirely naturally.

Sure, the injection of money he’d followed indicated a clear path. He could nip that particular brewing storm in the bud… if given the actual authority to act. But without it, what was the point? He and the organization would get railed on eternally because it would be a half-baked defusing unless they could pull out the entire network, roots and all.

It just wasn't worth it. He turned his attention away from the papers surrounding her, leaving them in a stack, and instead pulled out another, similarly-"interesting" stack of papers.

The suits were worried, the entire Sinnoh economy had tanked overnight, but somehow they'd kept a lid on the news. An overnight liquidation of everything, the league and the Sinnoh police didn't have enough time to respond. They had, after all, removed most of the protections that kept the populace from hearing about the vast, automated liquidation of all of his companies.

The company and all extended properties he had direct command over didn't just sit around and try to figure things out. No. Of course he'd had a set of poison pill policies. They'd all self-liquidated every single asset they could in every market they participated in. The bastard had really made his death a suicide pact that would affect multiple regions.

The collapse alone, when the ripples finally hit Unova? The hate had been broiling under the surface already for decades.

The most he could say was that now Cynthia was out for blood at all the business leaders and conmen that kept the illusion that things were okay before this point. Heads rolling long after a problem everyone knew was a problem finally came to maturity was bitter.

He sighed. It wasn't as if the guy who'd been assigned to Sinnoh couldn't have done more. Just a little push around and they could have grabbed Cyrus before he'd made his gambit for apparent godhood.

The Looker didn't admire the heat the Sinnoh government was going to go through, the line of press had already broken, even though it was clear on social media there was no lid. Again, with cooperation, they could reverse a significant portion of the outflows of cash.

A part of him just wanted to see the region burn for the various people in positions not willing to make a move beforehand. Everyone knew it was a tenuous position to be in, and the beat would stop eventually.

Team Galactic was over, and he was stationed in Unova. Tracing the funds was for a different purpose than justice for those kids. It wasn't his responsibility, and it ostensibly wasn't interpol's either, to reverse the funds.

~~~

Lanky sat across from me, I could taste the acid in the air, the sweaty worry he had as he faced me. His heart was beating fast. He was nervous.

"Look Leah," he said, "we've been a great team," he started, as I scooped, "but…"

I paused the scoop midair. It was coming, It was always coming. I knew it would, I've caused nothing but problems…

"But I need to leave you here with the swaddlies, soIcantakevolcaronabacktorelic castle. I'll probably be back in a month.

A berry dripped into my mouth.

He… he had a point. I knew he did, if I was honest.

One day, I'd leave him anyway. I looked at him, and nodded, his face red like a beet. I wasn't going to complain about having the gym all to myself.

"Alder said I need a more diverse team, and Fidget needs more practice. He's good, but we still have so much to work on. Can you do that? Avoid trouble for a month or so?"

He made some hitching sounds, then wiped his eye. I understood. It was okay. Even if he couldn't read my mind, I know he felt it too. Our relationship as partners won't last forever. It can't. I was a bad starter.

"We'll come back with another badge, and we'll be back to working and training together!" he said. "You'll still be my ace, the star, but.."

I ignored the rest of what he'd said and just nodded along, let him grab me, and say some things. It didn't matter. He was right, Fidget and the Silcoon needed time to strengthen up. The swaddlies that weren't part of the team needed care.

I returned to the gym room and sat under the sun.

~~~