Umbreon’s nose twitches uneasily as it tilts its head back and picks up a scent. Its black fur looks like a blur in the shadowy areas of the ruins, threatening to disappear into the ground, and when it notices something that doesn’t fit in with our surroundings, it glances at Spinel. The two understand each other wordlessly, so we follow his Pokémon past a half-broken wall, through a narrow exit that leads into a barren backyard. Between metal barrels, dried-up soil and stubbornly growing dandelions, pink mist billows – similar to the mist I used to escape in the Galar Mine.
Just as I step closer to the barrels, Spinel stops me with one arm. His eyes are fixed on one corner. Gentle rustling ensnares us. Airy breezes nestle against my skin and as I try to question him, my voice falters at the unsteady sight of pink mass.
It floats slowly out from between the barrels, following a constantly moving, white ball that reminds me vaguely of cotton wool, and makes amused noises, like a toddler under water. Its dark pink eyes shine brightly and my fascination clings to the purple floral pattern on its body. In a meadow of Alola, it would disappear.
“What now?” Silently, I move closer to Spinel. “Maybe we could catch it with my Mimikyu.”
He briefly puts a hand to his chin before a confident smile forms on his lips. “That’s a good idea. Umbreon will keep it in check if it tries to escape.”
He is counting on me and Mirra; believes we can do it. The reassurance makes my heart beat a little faster as I wordlessly release Mimikyu from her ball and lean down to her. In her Zorua costume, she looks just as invisible in the shadows as Umbreon.
“Do you think you can grab that Munna over there? Through the shadows? A bit like you’re using shadow sneak?”
“I can!” She puffs out her chest proudly.
Actually, I should let her rest, but Munna doesn’t seem like a Pokémon that likes to fight and we plan to catch it, not torture it. On top of that, I haven’t had a chance to use all of Mirra’s attacks and see what I can use them for outside of battle. This situation is our best chance.
As the shadow beneath Mimikyu darkens and spreads, steady and barely perceptible, I hold my breath. Hands clenched into fists, I can’t take my eyes off it as I scramble to my feet, hoping Spinel harbours as much desire for success as I do. His Umbreon has already sneaked away on stealthy paws to overpower Munna from behind if my plan goes wrong. But Mirra’s steady shadow escapes the creature completely. It is so focussed on the cotton wool it cares little for its surroundings.
Mimikyu’s darkness spreads into Munna’s shadow. Bumps rise until they form small claws – ready to chase upwards and grab the Pokémon. But before she can grab it, a chunk of stone hits right next to the Munna, startling it and forcing Mirra to retreat.
“We’re very sorry, but we can’t let you take this Pokémon!”
Umbreon’s hiss sends goosebumps over my body as it returns to Spinel in a few leaps. Dust hangs in its fur – otherwise, it is unharmed. Followed by its growling sound, two men step out from behind a ruined wall. One pats off his white coat with a sigh. The other wears the emblem of his organisation with a swollen chest.
“I can’t imagine what would happen if we allowed you to lock this poor creature in a ball! It’s much better off with us for a noble cause.” He brushes a few black strands from his angular face. “Are you leaving willingly, or do we have to force you?”
“I didn’t realise Team Plasma had started catching Pokémon recently.” Spinel isn’t fazed at all. The smirk on his lips looks amused and the restrained laughter makes him seem invincible. “Didn’t you want to release all the Pokémon in the world?”
“That’s still the plan!” the black-haired man grumbles. “But humans are stupid and stubborn and don’t appreciate adapting to new things. So let’s make it easy for them!”
His partner nods. “You’re from the Explorers, aren’t you? Then you should know from that mad scientist Fennel that Munna’s Dream Mist can be used for many things. With it, it’s possible to put people into a trance, so they release their Pokémon of their own free will.”
“You say if you force a dream on people where they release their Pokémon, that counts as free will?” Spinel’s amusement rises. “And next you’ll be telling me you haven’t released your Pokémon yet because there’s no way to set a good example in a world like this. Followed closely by all the terrible battles you fight with your Pokémon to take away other people’s partners. A bit arrogant, isn’t it?”
The way he delivers all these little side blows without stumbling over his words once fascinates me. It would probably have taken me a lot longer to come up with a suitable counter-argument. A bit like with N. Spinel switches much faster and the subliminal mockery in his words fuels Plasma’s restlessness even further.
“Such words can only come from someone who doesn’t understand our noble agenda!” Snorting, one of them snatches a Poké Ball from his belt, causing his black hair to fall back into his face. “We’ll confiscate your Pokémon and show you how much happier they are without you!”
With a gallant throw, he sends a Koffing into battle. Its purple skin and the unhealthy yellow clouds it emits with every breath make me sweat. My will to face Poison-type Pokémon is weak. Yet I dig out Coro’s ball. The poison in the smoke emitted by this Pokémon can be kept in check with wild wing beats. Simultaneously, Umbreon steps forward, ready to take on the second opponent, which is sent into battle late and turns out to be a lightning-fast shedding Pokémon – a cheerfully chittering Scraggy.
“Quick attack!” Without further ado, Spinel starts our battle, points his hand at the Koffing, and I can barely follow as his partner chases ahead in the blink of an eye.
Meanwhile, his opponent puffs up. The bulging protrusions of his body seem to emit even more grey-yellow gases and before Umbreon can break through the fumes, I yell for Trumbeak. He knows what to do, flapping his wings powerfully and forcing the danger towards the two Plasma members. A cough erupts on the other side. At the same instant, Umbreon rams into the Koffing with all its might – in the same eye-blink that Scraggy appears next to it and swings gallantly around its own axis. His small feet threaten to smash into Umbreon’s shoulder.
“Foul play!”
Spinel’s command happens just at the right moment to cause Umbreon to turn its body in mid-air. It narrowly escapes the kick of its opponent, whose body tilts forward in a swinging motion so Umbreon hurls a paw high up against its face from below. Immediately, the Koffing nearby moves. Violet, viscous saliva oozes from its mouth, ready to spew a poisonous sludge bomb.
“Echoed voice!” I hastily point at the opposing Pokémon.
The following scream, which thunders in my ears but only has half the power of the one between the cliffs of Alola, shakes our opponent, causing its slime-filled mouth to open.
Umbreon takes advantage of the invitation to deliver another quick attack that drives Koffing back, but doesn’t defeat it. It closes its mouth, bloats again and in the same blink as it spits its sludge bomb, Coro shoots towards Umbreon to grab it and drag it from its place – which is crushed by Scraggy’s low kick in the same second.
The slimy mass slams mercilessly onto the Pokémon’s yellow body. Screeching fills the space in between, steam rises and Scraggy’s trainer rushes forward – a water bottle in hand to wash off the sticky mass immediately. For a moment, Koffing doesn’t know what to do with itself and when Umbreon rushes at it from above, it can’t defend itself. They collide, Koffing is pushed to the ground and Umbreon uses the soft landing as a jumping opportunity to land at Spinel’s feet.
“That was a nice trick.” He gives me a glance before putting a hand on his cheek. “I’m surprised at how weak the Pokémon rights advocates are, though.”
“Shut up!” Raising his chin, the black-haired man calls his Koffing back. “We’ll show you how to win a fight like this!”
I’m about to get ready for his second Pokémon when I catch sight of his partner, Munna clutched tightly between his gloved fingers. It is so rigid it doesn’t even kick its tiny feet. Its pointed trunk quivers and the shimmering pink haze trickling from its body and settling everywhere becomes a little darker with every breath. In between, shallow, whirring whistles seep into our surroundings. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice Coro tilting his head and listening – like all of us.
It’s only when the guy holding the Munna elicits a brief scream from the Pokémon that our situation takes centre stage again. He threatens to crush it between his hands, squeezing it while drawing his brows together when the pink mist still doesn’t increase.
“Don’t tell me this isn’t stressing you enough!”
I should say something, command Coro, but my body moves automatically. Right now, I don’t need a Pokémon to fight a battle I’ve already won. The seething in my body is too restless for that. Spinel’s only comment is an interested hum as he shouts something at Umbreon, which my head blanks out. Scraggy lies exhausted on the ground, no longer covered in slime. In these seconds, everyone seems preoccupied with themselves.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
“Now do something!” The guy shakes the Munna with such force even his companion lets out a pressed sound of warning. An almost silent exclamation that stifles when he sees me near him.
He finds no words. Instead, he stumbles back a step as I clench my fist. The heat in my stomach knots. Then I take a swing.
His mate, meanwhile, looks up, an annoyed hiss on his tongue – interrupted by a punch to the face. My knuckles crash into his cheekbones, meeting resistance, which is released as his head flies to the side. The force knocks him back, causing the Munna to slip from his fingers and gain distance in hasty movements.
“Where’s your Dream Mist?” I say as I grab him by the collar and pull him toward me. Contrary to all awareness, he towers over me by a head. “Don’t tell me this isn’t stressing you enough!”
This guy in front of me isn’t the first one I’ve messed with. The two Team Skull members are similar to this situation, in which I am overcome by sheer violence. Everything in me wants to lash out again, wants to make this idiot realise he’s doing nothing but harm to the Pokémon he so desperately wants to help. But my fingers are so tightly buried in the rough fabric of his overcoat that I can’t release him.
“L-Let go of me, you lunatic!” With a delayed reaction, he grabs my wrists, unable to loosen my grip. “Noble deeds require sacrifice!”
“Noble deeds require noble actions, not the opposite of what you’re trying to embody,” I counter.
“Only children think that!”
The heat rises to my cheeks. It seems as if the seething inside me is getting out of control.
“Because you let yourself fall prey to my power,” it whispers in the back of my mind. “Use this hatred. It can make you invincible. All you have to do is give your Trumbeak the ord-”
“Shut up!” I push the guy away from me far too forcefully. My hands are shaking, sweating, throbbing as if I’ve been cutting off my blood with a rope for hours. My heart races, my breath rushes through my throat and as I put a hand to my head, hoping the heat will fade, my gaze wanders back to my opponent.
But there’s no guy from Plasma looking at me like I’m insane. Instead, I look into my mum’s warm violet eyes. The tired smile on her lips seems strangely familiar.
“Domino ... those voices in your head ... are in your control,” she begins slowly as she takes two steps in my direction. “I can imagine it’s difficult for you, but you have to use a filter. Allow what you want to allow and reject what scares you.” She lifts her hand, places it gently on my cheek and the headache, the heat and the anger suddenly disappear. “You can do this. You’ve done it before. Do you remember?”
I shake my head lazily.
“You had a high fever then.” Her eyelids droop. “And I told you to let it happen.”
I swallow. It’s a vague memory. A fragment that has already rolled over me once, when I competed with Bellro against two other trainers. Back then, in Akala. Closely followed by the day I was accepted by the Explorers. But I can’t grasp the images. They are blurred and unsteady and can’t be put together, making my throat constrict.
“I can remember and I can’t at the same time...” I gasp. “Everything in my head is fuzzy or gone or behind a black wall or haunting me in my dreams. I know that. There are days when I wake up and think I can grab the images, but they’re gone. Just like that.”
Her hand slips from my cheek. “That will fade one day. You need to figure out what triggers your memories. Until then, you need to learn to look at what you have as a whole.” A restrained laugh comes over her. “It was enough to make you remember, wasn’t it? Here and now. To remember me.”
My mouth opens, but I can’t say anything. My mum is there, but yet she’s not. The certainty tugs at my shoulders. My teeth dig into my lower lip and, for a moment, I bury my face in my hands. For just one breath, I want to compose myself, find questions, and understand the circumstances before I turn my attention back to my mother. But she has disappeared.
“What an unfortunate situation.”
A man’s voice draws my attention back to the two Plasma guys. A stranger has joined them, tall and with washed-out green-grey hair reaching down to his chest in gentle waves. He only looks over at me briefly, but his smile is just as friendly as Spinel’s and for a moment I want little more than to return it. However, the corners of my mouth weigh as heavy as lead.
“I apologise for the inconvenience you have been caused.” He bows his head while the other two gasp. Then Amethio steps to my side and I have to look twice to make sure I’m not mentally replacing Spinel again.
“What are you doing here?” My voice is like a faint whisper.
“Conia let me know you left with Spinel.” A brash sideways glance brings sweat to my brow. “She warned you.”
“And nothing happened,” I return tensely before my gaze wanders to the stranger again. “What now?”
The unknown man raises his hands. His magnificent robe, divided into gold and blue, outshines the two other Plasma members. The wide collar, shaped like an oversized crown, gleams in the incoming sunlight and bathes the embedded sapphires in elegance. He conveys the image of a simple king, the emblem of Team Plasma on his chest.
“We don’t desire trouble with another organisation. We are indeed pursuing a wish, caught in the eternal circle of rejection, that sometimes drives my young companions to deeds far from praiseworthy.” A heavy sigh comes over him. “Forgive them for today and may peace be with you. Farewell...”
He only needs a single hand gesture to order his members wordlessly to retreat. Immediately afterwards, he nods to us one last time and as soon as he disappears somewhere in the middle of the ruins, I whirl around to Amethio – who has vanished without a trace. Instead, I spot Spinel a few steps away, his face pale as a sheet.
“What’s happened?” I immediately rush over to him and put a hand on his shoulder.
Instead of answering, he points to the Munna. Its body is just clearing itself of the last bit of pink mist before it lets out a relieved squeak and goes on its way as if it had never been in trouble.
“We weren’t paying attention,” Spinel then explains. “After you punched that guy, Munna seems to have emitted a lot of Dream Mist at once.”
My brows lift. “Means ... what?”
“That everything except the two from Team Plasma was an illusion.” He takes a quick breath. “But everything else...”
He doesn’t need to elaborate, especially as we probably saw different things. But that only explains part of what happened. I more or less know my mother and Amethio, but this unknown man doesn’t fit into the picture.
Spinel seems to see through my thoughts immediately. “Dream Mist can allow other people to see into your dreams. If you have seen something unfamiliar to you, then it was most likely someone from the other two’s lives.”
“Really...” I run a hand over my face. Some of what has just happened is beyond me. Tiredness seeps into every fibre of my body and everything in me wants to curl up in a bed to sleep off the surreal intoxication of my senses.
“We should ... collect the Dream Mist,” I finally mutter. The pink dust scattered all over the floor must be what Fennel wants. “Do we have anything to bag?”
Spinel takes two blinks longer to catch himself. Whatever he saw, it must have been bad.
When he reaches into his trouser pocket and pulls out a bag capable of holding at least four oranges, I let out a sigh of relief. I immediately turn to Trumbeak.
“Could you flap your wings a little?” I gently take the bag from Spinel. “With any luck, most of it will fly into the bag.”
“That’s too messy.” With a wave of his hand, Spinel lets a Magneton out of its ball. Then he takes the bag again. “It will create an electric field to lift the powder. It is light in mass and will therefore rise first.”
“And if there’s dirt in it?”
“Fennel will be able to separate it better than we can.” He briefly gestures for me to keep my distance and I move back between the walls of the ruins.
The slight step between the backyard and the concrete corridor serves as a boundary and as Magneton sends his electricity across the floor with all his might, Spinel’s boots almost seem to make sense to me. They don’t direct electricity, arming him perfectly against his Pokémon, and as he guides the bag close to the ground, I’m left with nothing but admiration for his approach.
For a moment, my thoughts drift off; to the stranger and Amethio. What would he have seen in the face of the Dream Mist?
A sigh comes over me. Part of me wants to see him, wants to hear what he’s been doing for the last few days, because I’m part of the team and yet I can’t find my footing. He excludes me, even though everyone supposedly has a certain value in his eyes.
Shaking my head, I suppress the thought and call Coro and Mirra back to their balls. Spinel does the same when the bag is full. His white gloves glisten a little. Wordlessly, he strolls past me, his smile always the same. The pallor is still vaguely on his cheeks, but it is no longer so obvious and disappears the further we walk to get out of the ruins and back onto the forest path.
We don’t say a word the entire way back and I’m almost glad about it. My temples are throbbing and the stress of the whole affair twists my every thought. It seems impossible to have a useful conversation here and now.
Not even when we arrive at Fennel’s do my brain cells seem to have recovered. She greets us once again exuberantly outside the building, whose smoke has now cleared. The wet pavement hints at the fire brigade.
“Oh, thank you! That means I can get straight on with the ideas on our far-too-long list!” She claps her hands happily. “What do you say, Spinel? Fancy a bit of research?”
He raises his hand with a smirk. “Another time.”
Briefly, she puffs out her cheeks before turning to me and reaching into her lab coat pocket. “Then at least give me a hand! I’ve made an inner coating for Poké Balls from the Dream Mist.” She pulls out one of them and holds it under my nose. The red-purple colour glistens. “Yes, I left a word in the design, too. But apart from that, I’m naming this success the Dream Ball!”
“Dream ball?”
Eager nodding. “The Dream Mist in the inner coating wears off in the long run, but with this ball, you can look into a Pokémon’s dreams. Just place it next to you on your pillow at night and you’re there!”
“And that’s safe?”
“Probably!” She folds her hands cheerfully in front of her chest. “When the Pokémon sleeps, the dust reacts with the dreams and forms a kind of ... pink mist, which also occurs when Munna is under a lot of stress. This mist can escape from the ball, leading a trainer into the dream their Pokémon is having. The mixture isn’t strong enough to control your partner’s dream, but it improves the bond between human and Pokémon.”
“And what should I test?” Carefully, I take the ball. The idea behind it sounds interesting, but I can’t imagine simply giving such valuable goods to someone.
“Unfezant doesn’t want to share her dreams with me,” Fennel grumbles. “I want to know how long the ball’s effect lasts before it stops working. I’d also like to know if you notice any irregularities. Is the dream blurred? Is the Pokèmon suddenly in your dream? Are you both just sitting in a fog?” She puts a finger to her chin. “I don’t have time to catch a new Pokémon myself, and most researchers don’t get enough sleep to make a ball like this worthwhile. I’m talking to you right now, so ... are you in?”
She could just as easily ask Spinel, but they probably already know each other well enough for her to know that he doesn’t fit her target group. After all, he’s hardly less of a researcher than she is.
“I’ll give it a go.”
“Great!” She hastily digs a Rotom Phone out of another bag. I can’t avoid swapping contacts with her.
After that, we’re dismissed, and as soon as Spinel and I stroll along the road to the car, I’m overcome by a sense of calm I’d like to follow forever. We collect our clothes, take them to the accommodation and before new ideas flood our time together, we decide to go our separate ways for the rest of the day. This allows me to fall into bed to give in to exhaustion. Rest that drags me into a dream whose sweet flavour sticks to my body like a fantasy.