I was actually somewhat familiar with Ecruteak – well, modern Ecruteak. My grandparents lived there, and since it was such a short trip from Goldenrod we’d go to visit them often. I had many memories of the family dragging me to see some historical site that I couldn’t care less about, which often led to me sulking about while I waited to go back to my grandparents’ house.

And in some ways, the city was just the same as I remembered. Most of the buildings were built in the classic style, with long roofs that extended over the walls and sliding paper doors. Trees and small ponds appeared here and there mixed among the buildings, which made the city feel more alive. And when I looked up and to the east the grand tower stood majestically tall, as it always had.

But other things were different. There were none of the tourist trap stands that usually greeted you at the entrance to the city; instead, soldiers worked busily everywhere I looked. There were burn and sludge marks on the ground in some places, though it didn’t look like any major fires had caught in the city. The wild Pokemon that usually scampered across the rooftops or splashed in the ponds were missing, though I had kind of expected that.

I had not expected to see a second tower looming in the sky towards the west.

Which was dumb of me. I knew the story of the burned tower as well as any other Johto kid did: the tower was struck by lightning and burned down, three Pokemon died and were resurrected by Ho-oh, and now the legendary birds had deserted their towers while Ho-oh’s three scions roamed the land. I had always assumed that the stories were mostly mythological and that a natural accident had burned the tower down. Actually, I still mostly believed that, though after literally getting sent back in time I was more open to the idea that legendary Pokemon could have a hand (or wing) in human affairs.

Anyway, the point was that the tower reportedly burned down around one hundred and fifty years ago. Which placed it after my current time, so of course the tower still stood. It was paneled with bright panes of brass that shown golden in the sun, and it stretched just as tall as Tin Tower did. It looked like the top was flat and the roof was huge, exactly like the other tower. It made me wonder whether monks actually talked to Ho-oh and Lugia up there like the legends said they used to.

While I gaped at the sights Edwin led me forward and into the city. I realized as we progressed forward that I was only seeing soldiers outside; the citizens of Ecruteak must have either fled or hidden in their houses. It made me nervous. Had Michael and Isaac not warned the city in time? And where were all of the others?

There was another thing that bothered me too. In my time, Ecruteak was known as a city where wild Pokemon were welcome to live among humans as long as they lived in peace. It was common to see wild Pokemon in gardens, walking the streets, lazing on porches, and everywhere else. I had thought at first that that would be different in this time because of how people treated Pokemon differently, but now I could see there were wild Pokemon around if I looked hard enough. A pair of Rattata crouched low under the cover of a bush, and a Poliwag swam about underwater in one of the ponds that we passed. Then we walked past a building that had a small collection of Zubat hanging from the eaves, and I saw one of the soldiers trying to shoo the bats away by waving his spear at them. They took off as a group and flew away towards the west, with one stubborn holdout swinging down to screech in the soldier’s face before it flew off after the others. My heart went out to that little Zubat, and I found myself moping about how even the wild Pokemon were being forced out of their homes.

As we moved further into the city I started hearing strange noises. It took a while for me to figure out what they were, and my eyes widened when I did. Was there still fighting happening in the city?

Before I could tell for sure Edwin veered to the left and wrapped his knuckles against the wooden frame of a large building’s door. A man slid the door open slightly, looked over Edwin, then nodded and let us in. I saw Fearow glide down to land on the roof of the building just as the door slid shut.

“… group of civilians are harassing the western flank,” a man in military dress was saying as we walked in. “We have been blocked from making any further progress.”

A second man frowned pensively. “And a creature that looks like an oversized Marill has done something to the majū assigned to two of my troops near the eastern trail. They stopped fighting entirely, so the men had to recall them.”

Both of the men turned to a short man who stood next to them. The third man ran a hand over his balding head before he spoke. “We make slow progress on the central front. There have been… oddities. The men are jumpy.”

“Oddities?” Finnegan snapped. The general stood in the center of the room, facing the trio of officers with his back to us. He didn’t sound particularly happy.

The officer sighed. “Strange noises. Dancing balls of light in the shadows. And sometimes men see things that are not there.”

“Likely ghosts, then,” Edwin said. Finnegan turned slightly so he could raise an eyebrow. “I believe at least one of Trainer Hisayuki’s apprentices is partnered to a ghost. It is the most sensible explanation.”

“Hmph,” Finnegan said. “We captured a trainer this morning; perhaps he can tell us more. Captain Nathaniel, you have clearance. Go interrogate the prisoner.”

“Yes, sir,” the balding man said, and he quickly saluted before he left.

“Captain Georg,” he continued, and the second man straightened attentively. “I assume you have attempted to capture the majū’s trainer?”

“That is the problem, sir,” Georg said as he glanced unhappily at the other soldier in the room. “As far as we can tell, the majū has no trainer.”

“Another wild one?” Finnegan sighed and rubbed his forehead. “Hold steady for now. I will assign a trainer to your unit at the first opportunity. Both of you are dismissed.”

The two men both saluted, then hustled out of the building, leaving us alone with Finnegan and the man who was guarding the door. I glanced back at him and suddenly recognized him – he was the man who had been in the tent the previous night, the one who had tried to wrestle with Sudowoodo. Now his whole left foot was wrapped in a thick layer of bandages, yet he still stood at attention like it didn’t bother him at all.

The general turned to look at me, and I glanced at his belt. Yes, he still had that medium-sized bag tied to his side. It took real effort to keep myself from lunging forward and grabbing it. Well, real effort and the knowledge that there was no way I’d get away with it.

“Trainer Monroe,” Finnegan said with a false smile. “I received a report this morning. Apparently you are not the only person the contingent back in Violet lost track of. I would be very interested to hear how you all got away.”

I kept my mouth closed and glared at him.

Finnegan sighed. “Stubborn. Well, I suspect I know the answer, given that you showed up in my camp with my niece. That girl always was trouble.”

“Has there been any sign of the other escapees, sir?” Edwin asked quietly.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Finnegan shot a glare at him. “Need to know information, trainer,” he said curtly with a pointed look towards me.

I felt my heart beat a little faster. That had to mean they hadn’t captured the rest of the group! Maybe they were even now helping with the resistance in Ecruteak.

“But that is not why I called you here,” Finnegan said. He walked to the side of the room and gestured for us to join him. I held back at first, but then realized there was no point in being obstinate. It couldn’t hurt to see whatever he wanted us to look at.

A long table stood along the side of the room, and on it rested perhaps two dozen poke balls. When I looked over them, I realized they all had something in common: all of their tumblestone bands were dull. They’d all been used and broken out of.

“We have many damaged poke balls,” Finnegan said, sweeping a hand over the array of balls. “It is a waste of resources. You will tell us how to fix them.”

I stared at him blankly. “I can’t do that.”

The general glared at me. “Need I remind you of the conversation we had last time?”

I shuddered involuntarily, remembering his threats. “No, I mean – it’s impossible. Once a ball fails at a capture, you can’t use it again. I don’t know how to fix them.”

Finnegan narrowed his eyes. “That sounds terribly inconvenient. When you fire an arrow you can retrieve and reuse it. Perhaps it may require repair, but the components are still sound. Why should that not be the case here?”

“I don’t know!” I said helplessly. “I mean, I think it’s something about the tumblestone, but I don’t know what the problem is or how to fix it.”

“Yes, tumblestone.” The general’s eyes narrowed further as he kept staring at me, and I fidgeted uncomfortably. “Researcher Tomohiro asked the mining guild about your mysterious rock. None of them reported ever seeing anything like it while out on expeditions. Tell me, Trainer Monroe, do you know where we could find tumblestone in the nearby caves?”

“How am I supposed to know?” I replied, trying and failing to smile. “I’ve never been in any of the caves up here.”

For a few long moments he just looked at me. Then he folded his arms. “I think you are lying to me.”

“What?” I looked at him, bewildered, and then glanced back at Edwin. The other trainer was looking down at the ground and wouldn’t meet my eyes. “I’m not, honest. I don’t know how to reset balls or find more tumblestone nearby.”

Finnegan just shook his head slowly, and the way he was looking at me was making me really uncomfortable. I felt even worse when he uncinched the bag at his side and pulled out Pausso’s poke ball. “I thought I made it clear last time what would happen if you did not cooperate,” he said in a calm tone as he placed the poke ball on the table, a little separate from all the broken balls.

I eyed Pausso’s ball. It was so close. But Finnegan was closer. Maybe if I waited for the perfect moment… “You did!” I said hastily, trying to watch both Finnegan and the ball at the same time. “I’m cooperating! I just –“

Finnegan unsheathed his belt knife and put out a hand to steady the poke ball, and my heart stuttered. “This is made of metal, yes?” he asked in a thoughtful tone. “So direct impact will do nothing. But I imagine it has weak points – ah, yes, the joint should work.”

I opened and closed my mouth, all thoughts of subterfuge gone, just trying to think of something to say. I was dimly aware of Edwin shifting next to me. “Sir,” he said uneasily, “I do not –“

“I did not ask for your opinion, Trainer Edwin,” Finnegan said curtly.

Then he placed the tip of his knife gently against the line where the black center band of the ball connected with the hinge.

I had to do something!

“Ask me anything else!” I blurted out, trying to dash forward. Edwin grabbed my shoulder and hauled me backwards before I could try to slap the knife out of Finnegan’s hand. “How to release majū the right way, the patterns we use on the insides of the balls, the way we actually make the tumblestone bands. Or where we found the tumblestone in Union Cave! Anything! I’ll tell you, I promise!”

Finnegan stared at me coldly, and his knife was still held ready. “But you will not tell me how to fix the balls we already have?”

“I don’t know how!” I said desperately, and my voice broke mid-sentence.

For a single, horrible moment, I thought he would try to break Pausso’s ball anyway.

Instead he cursed and withdrew the knife, then plucked the poke ball up from the table and put it back in his bag. I took a ragged breath and realized that my heart was hammering like I had just run a mile as fast as I could.

“Fine,” he snapped as he slid his knife back into its sheath. “In that case, we go with the alternate plan.”

Edwin released my shoulder and took a step forward. “Sir? What plan is that?” he asked as I tried to breathe deeply to keep myself from melting into a puddle of nerves.

Finnegan stared moodily at the table of broken poke balls for a few seconds. “We are down to only three active poke balls,” he finally said, “and apparently we have no immediate solution for how to increase the supply. Therefore, we will use the remaining balls to capture a champion majū, one that can easily defeat the wild creatures that keep plaguing us in this damnable city so we no longer need to waste resources on capturing them.”

I blinked at this new piece of information. So wild Pokemon that lived in Ecruteak were helping defend the city? That was certainly interesting.

At the same time, the idea of Finnegan capturing some kind of mega-powerful Pokemon and using it to raze cities… yeah, that would be bad news. Though there were lots of unanswered questions related to that, like how he would control such a beast, and how he would catch it in the first place. It seemed more like wishful thinking than an actual plan.

Edwin seemed to agree with me. “It will prove challenging to capture such a majū, sir,” he asked cautiously. “I could not even guess where to find one in this area.”

“Truly?” Finnegan smiled, and there was a strange light in his eyes. “Because there is a suitable creature everyone knows of very close to here indeed.”

I frowned, not sure what he was getting at, and Edwin seemed equally lost. We looked at each other, then back at Finnegan.

He scoffed. “Have you not heard the tales of the powerful beasts who roost on the two towers here?”

I just stared at him. No. He couldn’t possibly be that crazy.

Edwin also looked horrified. “General Finnegan,” he said hurriedly, “please tell me you are not referring to the birds of legend.”

“Of course I am,” the general snapped back, and my heart jumped into my throat. “They are majū, are they not? Then logic dictates they can be captured in these devices, just as the Arcanine and Nidoking were.”

“You can’t do that!” I blurted out. “There’s a huge difference between a regular Po – a regular majū and a legendary!” I flailed my tied-together hands about, unable to adequately express in words just how wrong the idea felt. “I don’t even think it would work!”

Finnegan whirled around and glared down at me. “Do you have proof of that?” he snarled. “Can you prove a beast like Ho-oh or Lugia is not a majū? Can you prove a poke ball would not work on them?”

My mouth snapped shut. Okay, fine, legendaries were definitely Pokemon (even if they were awe-inspiringly powerful Pokemon). And I had no reason to suspect that they didn’t have energy forms just like regular Pokemon did. So yes, hypothetically, you could trigger a change into an energy form with tumblestone and capture them in a poke ball.

That was no guarantee that they’d stay there.

“It might work at first, but they’re too strong, so they’d break out right away,” I said desperately. “Like – like the Nidoking did when Florence tried to capture him!”

Finnegan didn’t look convinced. “Yes, I know the devices fail occasionally. We have evidence of that right here.” He shrugged. “To me that only seems to indicate a flaw in the individual devices. We have always been able to capture the majū on a second try.”

I tried to come up with a counter-argument and failed. To tell the truth, I had been shocked by how well our poke balls had performed so far. Sure, we’d made sure to put Pokemon to sleep before trying to capture them, but even that should have resulted in more failures. Pokemon just seemed easier to capture in this era. But surely that wouldn’t apply to legendaries of all things.

Right?

“Sir, I must protest,” Edwin said, and his voice was unsteady. “These are no normal majū. It is said that Lugia has the power to create a raging storm with a single flap of its wings. And there are legends that Ho-oh can raise the dead.” He shook his head. “No mortal could command such creatures.”

Finnegan snorted. “I am surprised to hear such stories from you, Trainer Edwin,” he said casually. “Raise the dead? Please. They are merely unusually strong specimens of majū. And if we capture them, that strength is ours.”

“But what if you don’t capture them?” I said quickly. “Then they’ll use that power against you!” Not that I cared if Finnegan got blasted off the face of the world by an incredibly powerful attack. But he had Pausso’s poke ball, and all the other Pokemon too; I couldn’t let them get caught up in this insanity.

He seemed to understand my sentiment, because he glared at me sidelong. “You would like that, would you not?” Then he grinned in a way that was highly alarming. “Well, you will change your tune soon enough.”

“Not likely,” I muttered. Edwin frowned at me, but Finnegan just chuckled.

“You may not value my life, boy, but I am sure you value your own skin. And you are coming with me to the top of one of these blasted towers.”