My mind whirled madly as Edwin set Fearow to stand by me and keep me from getting away. I knew I needed to focus on the situation, to try to figure out a way to escape (again), but I was too distracted by what had been revealed.

Jordan – Joanne – was a girl? And she was Finnegan’s niece? Now that I was looking for it, it kind of made sense. She had always seemed unusually short for a man, with a voice pitched just a bit too high. And she had that whole thing about not going into Violet City, which would make sense if she was trying to avoid Finnegan.

Still. She had always seemed so boyish. It was kind of a shock.

I tried to sneak away as Finnegan did the same song and dance with Sudowoodo that he had first done with Misdreavus, as Sudowoodo allowed himself to be captured to save Joanne’s life. But Fearow noticed and snapped at me, forcing me to stay in place. More men were summoned to the tent, and they bound my hands and ankles with rope. Then Joanne and I were both escorted out of the tent by a full set of four soldiers.

After a series of hurried conversations between the military men we were eventually led to a spot near the middle of the camp that looked like it had been recently vacated. The solider in charge barked at us to sit down. Once we had, a pair of soldiers settled down themselves and stared at us intently while the others jogged off. Clearly they didn’t want to give us any opportunity to run away again.

Throughout all of this Joanne had just followed along dully, not saying a word. It felt downright uncanny to see her acting so quiet and small. So after we had been sitting there for a while and the two men who were guarding us started up their own quiet conversation, I nudged her with my shoulder. “You okay?”

For a long moment, she didn’t respond; she just stared down at her feet. When she did speak, her voice was hollow. “I never should have come here,” she whispered. “I knew coming back was a bad idea.”

I let that sink in for a few moments, then spoke up hesitantly. “I’m glad you came back, though. I’d still be stuck in that prison if you hadn’t broken us out. We’d all still be stuck.”

She didn’t reply. She just kept staring at the ground.

I glanced over at the two soldiers watching us; they were keeping us in their field of vision, but they didn’t particularly seem to care if we spoke. So I lowered my own voice to a whisper. “I don’t think the soldiers caught the others,” I told her as quietly as I could. “Betcha they’ll try to rescue us and help get our majū out as soon as they can. We’ve got much better opportunities here than we did in the city prison.”

No reaction. I frowned a bit at that, since I’d been fairly sure she was upset about Sudowoodo getting captured. Maybe that wasn’t the only thing that was wrong.

After an awkward minute of silence, I decided to try again. “So. You’re actually a girl, huh?”

She leaned forward, resting her head on her knees. For a few moments it looked like she wasn’t going to reply again, but then she started talking in a quiet, raspy voice. “I just wanted to get away from all of that. My parents… they did not want me to live the life I wanted. I had to get out of the city.”

I felt way out of my depth, but clearly Joanne was feeling pretty awful, and maybe getting her to talk would help. “It’s okay to be a girl and a trainer,” I said cautiously. “I mean, look at Florence. She isn’t letting anyone stop her, neither should you.”

She just wrapped her arms around the tops of her knees and buried her head into them. “I hate this,” she mumbled so quietly that I could barely hear her. “I hate being Joanne. I just want to go back to the way things were.”

Oh.

I was getting this all wrong.

I leaned in closer. “Um. So. We can do that, if you want.” I paused, trying to figure out how best to phrase things. “You can still be Jordan.”

Jordan went still for a moment, then peeked up at me. “What?”

I scratched my ear, still fumbling for words. “Well. I’ve been thinking of you as a guy this whole time, up until about half an hour ago, and you seemed happy that way. So if you want to stick with that, let’s stick with that.”

Jordan just kept staring at me. “You heard Finnegan; you know the truth now. I’m his niece. I’m a girl.”

I looked back at the trainer pointedly. “Do you want to be a girl?”

For a long time, maybe ten whole seconds, Jordan was silent. Then, in a very small voice, he finally spoke. “No.”

“Then don’t be. Keep being yourself.”

Another long pause. “You have a strange way of thinking,” Jordan finally said, but his voice sounded a little less empty than it had before.

“Yeah, I get that a lot.” So what if my modern sensibilities were out of sync with how things worked in this era? I wasn’t going to tell Jordan to be someone he clearly wasn’t.

Jordan was still being unusually quiet, but he looked introspective now instead of dead inside, so I decided to leave him to his thoughts for a while. I tried to think of a way to escape instead. The ropes that held my hands and ankles together were snug and securely knotted; I couldn’t wiggle out of them, and one of the soldiers glared at me when I tried to use my teeth to shift the position of a knot that kept rubbing against my inner wrist. I had just barely been able to shuffle along when they had marched us to this new location, so I wouldn’t be running anytime soon, even if the soldiers got distracted and I was able to sneak away.

Eventually Jordan nodded as if he’d come to a decision. He leaned closer to me and grinned, and a spark was back in his eyes. “I have an idea,” he muttered quietly. “Follow my lead.”

I grinned as well, happy to see him acting more like himself. Maybe we’d still be able to get out of this mess on our own.

~

It turned out that Jordan was not good at coming up with plans on his own.

His idea was literally just ‘get the soldiers to take us to the latrine, then try to run away’. When he started sneaking away I tried to follow him, but after just four steps I tripped on the rope that kept my feet tied together and fell over. Jordan got a bit further, but one of the soldiers was still easily able to run up to him and tackle him to the ground.

All we got for our troubles were small injuries and better security. The pair of soldiers found two lengths of rope and tied us both to a nearby tree to ensure we couldn’t try to sneak off in the night, so now we were bound and tethered. I had skinned my palms when I tripped, and Jordan had a swollen, bloody nose and a split lip from his own fall. The soldiers didn’t offer us any kind of treatment, so I had to waste some of our water ration washing dirt out of the scrapes on my hands and helping Jordan get the blood off of his face.

I was so tired of all the countless little injuries and hurts I had accumulated over the past few days. Once all of this was over (if it ever was), I was going to lay in a bed and rest for at least a full day.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

I managed to awkwardly curl up on my side and sleep fitfully, even through the new pain of my throbbing hands and the old pains in my chest and arms. I told myself firmly that things would be better in the morning. The army would probably decamp and move forward towards Ecruteak, and that could give us another opportunity to escape. Maybe we could even sneak back towards Finnegan and catch him unawares, now that we knew where the poke balls were.

But it turned out that we weren’t going anywhere. As the new day dawned the army left their large, bulky carts and supplies behind and trotted away down the route, leaving a skeleton crew to keep the campsite secure. The two guards who had been picked to watch Jordan and me were very unhappy about their lot, and they kept snapping at us to be quiet every time one of us tried to say anything.

So I sat there, silent and sullen, forced to be alone with my thoughts. Of course I thought about the battle that was probably going down in Ecruteak – I was worried about my friends, after all. But I also kept thinking about food. Our captors had let us have water, sure, but they hadn’t shared any of the army rations. It had been two days since I had eaten a thin prison meal, and three since I’d had real, proper food. My stomach was constantly aching, and now that I wasn’t focused on escaping I couldn’t ignore it.

Thinking of how hungry I was made me think of Pausso. Was this how he had been feeling recently? That made me feel kind of guilty. But I had offered him regular food so many times. Why wouldn’t he have eaten it if he was that hungry? I decided that I would ask him directly once we were reunited.

If we were reunited.

The day wore on, slow and boring, for quite a while. Then, sometime in the early afternoon, I heard new noises coming from the front of the camp. I perked up at first; maybe it was the rest of our group staging a rescue attempt?

My hopes were dashed as the noises got closer and I could see who had arrived. It wasn’t Florence or Michael. It was Edwin.

The trainer marched right up to where we sat as Fearow glided over to rest on a branch of the tree overhead. Edwin glanced at Jordan’s still-swollen nose briefly, then looked down at the two soldiers currently on guard.

“The general wants Trainer Monroe,” he said curtly as he handed off a small piece of paper.

One of the soldiers peered at it, then shrugged and handed it back. “All yours. Can you handle him by yourself?”

A muscle in Edwin’s cheek twitched. “I am not by myself,” he said dryly as he cast a pointed look up at Fearow in the tree.

One of the guards got up and worked to untie me from the tree and remove the rope that bound my ankles. Jordan tried to tell me something as he worked, but the soldier kicked him roughly and told him to shut up, and then Jordan was too busy glaring at the guard to try speaking again.

Once I had gotten back on my feet Edwin gestured forward, and we started walking out of the camp together. For a while we were both quiet. I didn’t particularly want to talk after having been yelled at by the other soldiers so many times, and Edwin seemed lost in his own thoughts.

But eventually we made it past the outer border of the camp, and the sounds of human life were replaced by Pokemon calls. Walking down the trail with Edwin, I could close my eyes and almost imagine that things were back to how they’d been before, when we’d worked together to stop the wild Pokemon from fighting.

It wasn’t the same, though. My hands were still all tied up, and Pausso wasn’t here.

“Were you always planning to betray us?” I found myself asking out of nowhere.

Edwin didn’t stop walking, but he did wince, and it took a few moments before he replied. “No,” he finally said. “When we sent the request out for help, it was authentic.”

“So what changed?” I asked. “Why turn against us after we helped you?”

“The general said it was necessary,” he said automatically. He glanced sideways at me briefly, then looked forward again. “He did not tell me the plan until after you brought in the missing majū. I suspected even then that you would not collaborate willingly, so that put us on opposing sides.”

“The general said,” I repeated. I had been anxious for so long, but that anxiety was starting to change into frustration. I kicked at a stick on the path to vent some of my anger. “Why do you always do whatever he wants? Can’t you see he’s wrong?”

For a little while Edwin just stared up into the sky, watching where Fearow glided lazily overhead. “You do not understand,” he finally said, and his voice sounded tired. “I have known General Finnegan for… it must be twenty years now. He has always known what would be best for Violet, and the city has prospered under his leadership.”

“It didn’t seem that great to me,” I muttered rebelliously. “Especially for trainers. Everyone we met was scared of majū.”

“You are from Azalea,” Edwin replied, and I didn’t bother to correct him. “I know things work differently there. But in most of the region, it is wise to be cautious around wild majū.”

“Wild majū, sure,” I snapped back. “But trained majū?”

He sighed and shook his head. “It is better than it used to be,” he said quietly.

I stood still for a moment so I could stare at him. “What do you mean?”

“Keep walking,” he told me. I made a face and started moving forward again. Edwin looked down at the ground now, contemplative. “When I first bonded with Fearow – he was a Spearow then – we had it much worse.”

Despite myself, I was curious. “How did you meet?”

He smiled just a little. “My squad was assigned to guard a trading group headed down to Cherrygrove, and I was posted as the scout. How could I not notice the little Spearow that kept fluttering from branch to branch, trying to follow along as inconspicuously as possible?”

Fearow swooped down and landed beside Edwin, then settled his wings carefully alongside his back as he walked awkwardly forward. “Row, fea fear,” the bird said, preening slightly as he looked up at his trainer.

“You were not subtle at all,” Edwin replied. “Especially that first night, when you came sneaking up to the campfire.”

“Ro-ow!”

“Well, yes, I suppose I did have some of my food set aside for you already.” Edwin waved his hand as if to brush this point away. “It does not matter. The point is, by the time we returned to Violet the two of us had reached an understanding.”

“Just like that?” I asked, surprised.

Edwin nodded. “In my experience, that is how it works in many cases. A trainer and his majū share a powerful bond. Sometimes the bond develops over time; sometimes it is there from the very beginning.” Fearow nudged his head against Edwin’s side, and the trainer reached out a hand to scratch his comb.

Wait. We were getting sidetracked, and I wasn’t going to forget that Edwin was working for the wrong side. “What does this have to do with Finnegan?”

He frowned, still slowly scratching the top of Fearow’s head. “We went to join the trainer unit,” he said quietly, “and found it… disappointing. Trainers in those days were looked down on as superfluous, a waste. Why send a majū to do a job a man could handle? We were given the least resources and the worst assignments. And it showed in the men who chose to seek out their own partners. They were more interested in personal pursuits than in protecting the city.”

“I tried to show that we could be more, that by working together my partner and I were much more effective than I would be working alone. But people see what they expect to see. No one was willing to give us an opportunity.”

He paused, then smiled wryly. “Except for Finnegan.”

“He was not the general in those days – he was my old platoon leader, actually. Even though I no longer worked under him, he still kept an eye on me. He saw what Spearow and I could do together when others did not, and he advocated for us to be given more chances in defense and in battle. As he rose in the ranks over time, he worked to improve how we were seen. And it was not just the trainers that he supported; he spoke up for the guilds as well, and he worked to give the children who lived on the streets better opportunities. At every step he fought to help our city grow stronger, more unified. Our strength now is a sign of how far we have come.” He looked over at me. “So yes, I follow him. He has given me every reason to trust him, and I believe he can spread his influence across the region.”

“I don’t understand,” I muttered, still feeling surly. I didn’t want to believe that Finnegan had ever done anything good. “If he’s been so good to trainers, why is he so cavalier about majū? You heard how he talked about the wild ones.”

Fearow cawed and jumped back up into the air, startling a wild Spinarak that was resting in a web high up in one of the trees to the side of the path. Edwin just grimaced. “General Finnegan generally does what is best, but he has always been rough around the edges,” he admitted. “He speaks what he thinks plainly and with no delicacy, and once his mind is made up he does not compromise. When it comes to majū, he understands how strong and useful they can be, and he respects that. But I have never been able to make him understand that they are intelligent beings too.” He sighed and shook his head. “People in the city no longer disrespect trainers, true, but they are also far more aware of how powerful trained majū can be, and that leads to fear. Most have grown used to Fearow over time, but it has been a long process, especially after he evolved.”

I didn’t reply, because I wasn’t sure what else there was to say. Yes, the adults in the city all seemed afraid of Pokemon, but things didn’t have to be that way. Even the kids had been curious, not scared! Had the city’s outlook happened because of Finnegan’s attitude? How could Edwin believe that this was really what was best for Johto?

We were silent for a few more minutes, and I quietly watched the Pokemon passing through the forest nearby. Eventually the trees started to thin out. Ahead I could see houses, and a cobbled path took over from the dirt trail we had been following. As we finally left the last of the trees behind the town became visible in all of its glory, and I had to pause to admire it.

We had finally reached Ecruteak.