"Arceus, you won't believe what Clarissa did." Connie's damp hair glistened as she ran a comb through it. "Her Snorunt—she won't stop showing her off. So I told her, hey, maybe try keeping it to yourself a little bit. Because we're all sick of hearing about her, right? And she got so mad. And she was like, 'oh, you're just jealous because you know we're going to take the title in the contest, and you're not even going to rank.' So I might have called her a brat. And I might have switched out her toothpaste with some foot cream I found in the lobby. But never mind that, you won't believe what she—"

"Connie. Connie." Hayley rubbed her forehead with her thumb and pointer finger. "Can we focus? We were talking about your contest strategies."

"Huh? Oh—right." Connie dropped her comb and started raking her fingers through her hair instead, trying to work out a knot. "Like I said, Marcie's doing pretty well with her dancing, but she doesn't know any really flashy moves yet. I need to figure out something that'll grab the judges' attention."

"She's getting better at her telekinesis, right?" Hayley ventured. "You can probably do something with that. Give her a ribbon or something and let her wave it around."

"Yeah, but she's not that great at fine control yet. She might just end up tripping herself." Connie sighed and pulled her hair behind her shoulders, shaking it out. "But, I mean. That's not even her biggest problem, you know? What I'm really worried about is her stage fright. She still freezes up if someone even walks next to us when we're training. It's going to be tough to get her to go up in front of thousands of people."

A normal rank contest in Verdanturf was more likely to have an audience of tens of people, not thousands, but Hayley didn't say that. "I guess some Pokémon are just shy like that. I'm sure you'll be able to help her, though."

Connie shrugged. "Yeah. We'll work through it."

Suddenly, the door behind Connie swung open. Connie swiveled around, and the part of her face that was still visible contorted into a scowl. "Clarissa. I'm on the phone." Apparently unconcerned, Clarissa strode through the frame of the video call and disappeared off to the left. While Connie was disheveled, Clarissa looked perfectly put-together. It was as though she'd spent the whole day drinking tea, or getting pedicures, or whatever it was super-rich people did, instead of training.

"Where'd you leave the remote?" Clarissa's voice asked from offscreen. Connie rolled her eyes.

"Where'd you leave the remote?" There was the sound of drawers opening and shutting and things being moved around, and then Clarissa reappeared, remote in hand. She pointed it out of the frame, and tinny, indecipherable voices began rising in the background. Connie scoffed. "Can't you do this somewhere else—"

"Just look."

Connie shut her mouth and looked. Unfortunately, she didn't turn the phone around to show what she was looking at, so all Hayley had to go off of was her face. First she frowned, and then her eyes narrowed, and then they snapped wide open as she gasped.

"Oh my gosh. Hayley, turn on TVM. Gavin's famous."

"What?" Hayley jumped to her feet. "Hang on—I need to find a TV—"

The Rustboro Pokémon Center dorm rooms didn't have televisions, but there was a common area on each floor that did. Hayley shot out of the door and raced down the hallway, then skidded to a stop as she encountered half a dozen other people crowded around the screen. It was already tuned to TV Mauville, and sure enough, Gavin was onscreen. His hair was neatly combed, and he was wearing a stiff-looking button-up shirt, but what really caught Hayley's eye was his sling and cast-swaddled arm. The shot had been not-so-subtly framed so that it was right in the middle of the screen. Bold white lettering at the bottom left read Gavin Clark – Victim of Vigoroth Attack.

Oh no.

The camera switched to a wider angle, showing both Gavin and the woman interviewing him. Hayley recognized her chic bob and cool expression, and her jaw dropped—that was Gabby Sciarra. She was only the most famous League reporter in Hoenn. Why was she getting involved in this?

"I know this is difficult, but if you wouldn't mind, could you tell us what happened next?" Another camera change, and they were back to a close-up of Gavin. Hayley could see his throat bob as he thought over his answer.

"After we got separated—I know you're supposed to stay put when you're lost, but I couldn't, because of the trees—"

"The Trevenant. That's not your fault, Gavin; you did the right thing." A news chyron flashed to life underneath the both of them. It read TERROR IN PETALALBURG WOODS: INVASIVE SPECIES, TRANSIENT POKÉMON THREATEN NEW TRAINERS.

Habitat displacement. Howie had used those words after saving her from the Trevenant. Hayley knew Hoenn had had trouble with invasions and migrations since the Sootopolis incident a few years back, but was that really what had caused this? It had always sounded so theoretical…

"I kept running," Gavin was saying. "And it was so dark that I couldn't really see where I was going, but I finally made it to this clearing where the trees weren't going, and I thought it might be safe there…" He trailed off, and Gabby placed a hand on his arm. A sympathetic gesture, but her face remained as neutral as ever.

"But you weren't safe," she prompted. Gavin swallowed again. Hayley's ears filled with a strange rushing sound. Gavin's eyes, they looked the same as they had that night in the forest. He was remembering. Remembering the lashing rain, the smell of upturned earth, the taste of adrenaline…

"One of my classmates was there," Gavin said, and he might have been whispering, or maybe someone had just turned the volume down. "Not my traveling partner, another one—I think she was lost too—but she just said behind you, and I looked, and there was this Vigoroth, and its claws were covered in blood—"

"Huh. Howie didn't tell us that part." A too-loud voice sounded from behind Hayley, and she spun around, heart pounding. It was a mistake. Now she found herself face-to-face with Chad Bennett and his doppelganger, Caleb Nichols. And both of them were looking directly at her.

"Hayley!" Chad jumped closer and punched Hayley in the shoulder. "Why aren't you on TV?"

"Yeah, Howie said you were there too, right?" Caleb moved shoulder-to-shoulder with Chad, blocking off her escape. Hayley stepped back, and immediately bumped into the chest of another, older trainer. People were turning from the television to stare at her.

"He said you got pulled up to that Trevenant and it almost ate you!" Chad shouted. "That's way cooler than getting your arm broken. You should be up there instead of Gavin!"

"Nuh-uh. Gavin was saving his Pokémon, dude. That's cooler than getting attacked by a tree!"

"Yeah, if you're a loser!" Chad rounded on Hayley again. "What was it like? How does a tree even eat someone? Did it do it like a Victreebel? Yoink you in and—snap!" He clapped his hands together for emphasis, and Hayley flinched.

"Just because he said ate doesn't mean it was going to literally eat her. Ghosts are like…" Caleb's voice was drowned out as the rushing sound came back. On the screen, Gavin was still talking, but nobody was watching him anymore. All eyes were on her. And she remembered the eyes, the beady black eyes that had glinted in the flashlight, the hungry, bloodshot eyes of the Poochyena, the glowing red eyes that had materialized in the trunks—the huge one that had stared her down.

Caleb and Chad were yelling soundlessly at each other now. Chad rolled up his sleeve and flexed a non-existent muscle. Caleb scoffed. Hayley couldn't breathe. The crowd was tight, and she felt her ribs crushed again, splinters digging into her skin. But she wasn't in the forest right now, she was—it didn't make sense—she had to get away. She was going to die. Hayley pushed against the growing crowd, but Caleb spotted her and grabbed her arm. She shrieked and yanked it away—overbalanced, fell—

Something caught her. Hayley yelped and tried to claw at it, but instead of fighting back, it pushed her upright. A new voice, softer and calmer than the others: "Hayley. Hayley. Can you hear me?"

Hayley blinked furiously, struggling to focus her eyes through swirling colors. A face materialized in front of her—Howie. She tried to speak, but her voice caught in her throat, and all that came out was a croak.

"Just come with me, all right? I'll get you somewhere safe." The words bounced off her, but she caught safe, and now he was guiding her away from the chaos of the hallway. She gave in and let him shuffle her along, stumbling over her own feet, still struggling to take a single deep breath. He opened a door and led her through. A dorm, but not hers. She couldn't tell any more than that. He sat her down on the bed, and she immediately doubled over, head between her knees.

Time was fuzzy for a while. Hayley was aware of the room spinning, of her chest burning, of struggling to suck down air. Howie's voice broke now and then against the madness and the panic, and the words were mostly gibberish, but they were soothing, so she latched on to them. Breathe. You're okay. Can you hear me?

Finally, after an eternity, her heart slowed its pounding, and her lungs started to work again, and her vision began to clear. She was sitting on a bed in the Rustboro Pokémon Center. She was with Howie. She was safe. She felt the stickiness of tear tracks on her cheeks, and she swiped at them viciously.

"Are—are you feeling better?" Howie's voice cut through the newfound silence, and Hayley would have jumped, but every single muscle in her body had given up and gone slack. With difficulty, she lifted her head and saw Howie, still crouched on the floor in front of her. Now she could see that while his voice might have been calm, the rest of him wasn't; his eyes were blown wide behind his glasses, and he was holding himself like a runner waiting for the starting gun. "I can get someone, if you need me to."

"I'm fine," Hayley whispered. It was an obvious lie, made more obvious by the crackling dryness of her throat, but the fact that she'd pulled herself together enough to speak was enough for Howie to visibly relax.

"Okay. Good." He stood up slowly, as though she was a skittish Ponyta he was trying not to spook. "I think you're supposed to drink something now. Do you want water?"

"Sure." Howie turned to his backpack, and as he did, she caught a glimpse of his phone on the floor. The screen was unlocked and lit up, and it was showing a webpage titled How to Help Someone Having a Panic Attack.

Great.

Now that she could think and see again, Hayley took in the room. A regular Pokémon Center dorm, but unnaturally tidy; aside from the backpack on the floor, there wasn't a single sign of clutter. The bedsheets were neat and square underneath her, and on the table, a set of shorts and a shirt were crisply folded. It was definitely Howie's room.

Howie stood back up with a water bottle in hand, and Hayley took it without making eye contact. A sip of water made her throat feel better, at least, even if it didn't help anything else.

"Is this your room?" Hayley asked, just to break the silence—she already knew the answer. Howie nodded.

"Yeah. It was the only place I could think of that didn't have other people, so—sorry." Hayley shrugged halfheartedly. She was glad he'd thought to do it. At least it meant she'd only half embarrassed herself to death in front of everyone else.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Howie ventured after a moment, wringing his hands together. Hayley glanced down again at his phone on the floor, wondering if that had been one of the steps on the list. Howie flushed and snatched it up, turning off the screen and shoving it in his pocket.

"Not really." She took another sip of the water bottle, screwed the cap back on, and turned the bottle around in her hands. "I don't know why it… It was dumb. It shouldn't have happened." It had been three full days, almost, since that night in the forest, and with everything that had been going on with Barrett—"I haven't even really thought about it, since it happened. I don't know why it would bother me now."

"Even if you haven't been thinking about it, you remember it. Your brain remembers it—how it felt." Howie dropped his gaze, suddenly, and moved to sit next to Hayley on the bed. He stared ahead at the opposite wall, and after a moment Hayley matched him, watching him only out of the corner of her eye. "I've been having nightmares," he muttered. "My dad says it's normal, for… for things like that to happen. When you almost die."

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

"My nightmares have all been about Barrett," Hayley said without thinking. Howie gave a short, choked laugh, and Hayley felt heat crawling up the back of her neck. But at least it had broken the tension.

"I guess that's better. Or worse." Howie turned his head a bit, looking at her from an angle. "Have you figured things out with him yet?"

"A little. He's not attacking me anymore, at least. I think I convinced him to stick it out for a little while and see if I can help him get stronger."

"That's a good first step," Howie said. He was visibly less nervous now that they were back on a subject he knew about. Hayley relaxed, too. Training was familiar territory—more familiar, at least, than panic attacks and near-death experiences. She unscrewed the water bottle again.

"Did they pair you up with anyone else yet? For traveling?" Based on the state of the room, it didn't look like they had. Nobody in their class was this much of a neat freak except Howie.

"Yeah. Uh, Caleb and Chad, actually." Hayley choked on her water, and Howie chuckled again.

"No way," she said, once she'd cleared her throat enough to speak again. "That's awful!"

"It's not that bad," he said, rubbing his neck in a way that indicated it was, in fact, that bad. "The rooms only fit two, so I have this one to myself for now. And I've gotten a lot of training done over the past couple days. They battle a lot."

"Still. They've got to be exhausting."

"They're not any worse than Miriam," Howie said conspiratorially, and now it was Hayley's turn to giggle. She'd never heard him talk badly about anyone before; she hadn't even thought he could be mean. "But while we're talking about classmates, did you see that Melinda got the Stone Badge already?"

"What?" All the levity was immediately gone from Hayley as she whipped out her Pokédex and opened up the Trainer's Eyes app. She was linked with everyone in her class, but she hadn't bothered to check any of them yet, because it hadn't even been a week—nobody had had time to do anything. Scanning down the list, she saw that nearly everyone was marked as being in Rustboro or Verdanturf, with no badges or ribbons reported. The exceptions were Gavin, whose name was in grey with his location marked as inactive—Hayley's stomach did another twist at seeing that—and Melinda, who, sure enough, had a tiny icon of a Stone Badge next to her name. Hayley gasped. "That's impossible. How did she even get an appointment this early?"

"Maybe she really does have all those connections she talked about," Howie said. "I think she got a flight right to Rustboro, too, so she wasn't stuck on the route with the rest of us." Hayley barely heard him. This was bad—Melinda already had a badge, and now everyone else in their class was going to try to get one as fast as possible to keep up. Barrett was still on a medical hold, and it was going to be another week before she could even challenge a gym trainer, and probably a week after that before she could get an appointment to battle Roxanne—everyone was going to beat her. Melinda would probably be all the way in Mauville by then, and—

Hayley's phone gave a long, angry buzz, breaking her out of her thoughts. "Um. Your phone rang a few times," Howie told her. Her call with Connie must have disconnected. Small mercies, since it meant that Connie hadn't heard her entire meltdown. But when she took out the phone and looked at the screen, her stomach plummeted.

It was her mom.

----------------------------------------

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because it wasn't that big a deal—"

"Don't tell me what is and isn't a big deal! I had the other parents calling me about how you almost got mauled in the woods, and I didn't know what to say to them, because I didn't even know!"

Hayley hadn't seen the end of the interview, but as far as she could piece together, it hadn't used her name. It also hadn't mentioned her near-fatal encounter with the Trevenant, thank Arceus—Gavin had kept that one quiet. It had, however, mentioned Miriam's Elekid, and from there, it had been easy enough for the Pecha Tree Lane gossip circle to figure out. And now Hayley's mom was as angry as she'd ever seen her.

"They exaggerated a bunch of stuff, okay?" Hayley had never been any good at lying, but now her training career was on the line, so she gave it everything she had. "It didn't even touch me. I got a few scratches, that's it—"

"You almost died!" her mom shouted, in a tone that sent Hayley straight back to the rest station the morning after the attack. We all almost died. She suppressed a shiver as her mom kept going. "And you didn't tell me! What else aren't you telling me? Are you in trouble right now?"

"I'm not!" Now Hayley was raising her voice to match her mom's, which she knew was a bad move, but she couldn't help herself. "I'm in Rustboro, it's safe—"

"How can I believe that? If you can keep something like this secret, how can I believe anything you say?"

"I kept it secret because I knew you'd freak out! And you'd tell me it wasn't safe, and you'd try to make me come home!"

Somewhere in her heart, Hayley had held out hope that when she said those words to her mother, her mother would disagree. She'd say something like don't be silly, of course I won't make you come home, and everything would be fine. But her mother wasn't saying anything now. In the aftermath of the shouting, the air had gone sickeningly quiet.

"Hayley." Her mother's voice was softer when she spoke again, and Hayley could see the hesitation creasing her face. "I just want you to be safe. You know that."

"Yeah, I know." Hayley's mouth was dry again. Here it comes.

"And, well, you don't have to do this right now. You can always give it another shot next year, when the rangers have these Pokémon more under control."

"Mom, I'm in Rustboro!" Hayley tugged a hand through her hair, snagging it on the tangles. "What's the worst that could happen in Rustboro? Do you think I'm going to get mauled by a stray Zigzagoon?"

"You're in Rustboro, which is right near the part of the woods where all of this happened. And you're going to be traveling back out onto the routes to train—don't tell me you won't, because I'll know you're lying," she added as Hayley opened her mouth. "And just because you're in a city, that doesn't mean you're safe. You remember all that business with the gangs…"

"I'm not coming home." The words startled Hayley as they came out of her own mouth, and the sudden, hard certainty in them sent goosebumps up her spine. "I'm not."

"Hayley, please just think about it—"

"I'm not coming home," she repeated. "Mom. You were the one who told me I couldn't just give up the first time things got tough. You said I had to think about my Pokémon, and—I've got Barrett. He needs to battle; he can't just hang around the house for the next year. And he's already been traded so many times, I can't just give him away. Not—not when I'm finally getting him to trust me."

Hayley's mother was silent again, her hazel eyes studying her through the phone. Hayley swallowed and made eye contact right back. She had to convince her. She had to.

"…Well, at least you listened to me about one thing," her mother finally said. "I guess I should be happy about that, even if you are using it against me."

"I listen to you about a lot of things," Hayley started, and then stopped, because that sounded like something a kid would say, and she was trying to be mature. Her mother laughed softly.

"You're right that it would be unfair to Barrett to make you come home now. And trying to force you would just make me a hypocrite." She shook her head, her long braid swaying behind her. "So you win this one. You can keep training, for now."

Hayley's insides unknotted all at once. "Thank you—"

"I'm not done. I want you to be smart about things, Hayley, and I want you to stay as safe as you can. Promise me you won't go too far out on the routes until the rangers are done sweeping for more dangerous Pokémon. And keep an eye out for suspicious characters, especially now that you're famous."

"Mom, they didn't even show my face. Literally nobody knows who I am. And I need to go on the routes, to look for new Pokémon."

"I figured out it was you, didn't I?" her mother countered. "And some of these parents can't keep their mouths shut—Mr. Banks, especially. Word travels faster than you'd think. And, you don't need to go traipsing off deep into the wilds to find new Pokémon. The areas closer to the city have plenty."

"Yeah, if I want a team full of Poochyena and Taillow," Hayley muttered. But the fight had gone out of her, and now she was just arguing for the sake of arguing. She wasn't going to be able to go back on the routes while she was saddled with Miriam, anyway; it wasn't like that was anything new.

"I need you to promise me, okay? Promise me you'll do your best to stay safe. And promise me that if something else like this happens, you'll let me know."

Hayley breathed in deeply and shut her eyes.

"All right. I promise."

----------------------------------------

Hayley opened the door to her room to find Miriam sitting on the bottom bunk—her bed—with her phone pressed to her ear. "No, it's fine," she was saying to the person on the other end of the line. "You said it was important for me to do this, right? And it is. Even if it's dangerous."

Miriam's voice had a suspicious lilt to it. In fact, Hayley realized, it sounded exactly like the voice she'd been using when she needed to secretly goad Barrett.

Miriam paused to listen before speaking again. "That's nice, but actually, I think I'll be able to buy my own soon. All I have to do is win some more battles. I'll need to get some really strong Pokémon to make real money, though. I was thinking I might go back into Petalburg Woods for a while and train up." The voice on the phone got loud enough that Hayley could hear it from the door, though she couldn't make out what it was saying. Miriam grinned. "I know, I know. And I'll try to be safe. But that's the life of a trainer, right? Stuff happens." Suddenly, she spotted Hayley, and she sat up straighter. "I've got to do. Lots of trainer things to do. Talk to you later." And she tapped the screen to end the call, cutting the voice off mid-shout.

Hayley couldn't remember ever having seen Miriam happy. And now that she was seeing it, she wished Miriam would stop. Her smile was too big and showed too many teeth and her eyes were wide and manic as she nodded to Hayley, then turned back to her phone. "This is amazing," she said, rapidly thumbing the screen as it began buzzing again. "I knew my mom was going to lose it when I told her I almost died, but this is even better than I thought. She already told me that if I come home, she'll buy me any computer I want! If I keep this up, I bet I can get some consoles out of her, too. She feels really bad…"

Somewhere inside Hayley, something snapped. Before she knew what she was doing, she marched forward, ripped Miriam's phone out of her hands, and threw it across the room. It clattered against the far wall and dropped to the floor. Miriam opened her mouth, but before she could say anything, Hayley pulled Xena's ball from her pocket and shoved it into Miriam's empty hands."

"This is Xena," Hayley said. She was keeping her voice as level as she could, but it was a tough fight against the fire in her chest. "She's registered to you. She wants to spend time with you. And if it wasn't for her, we all would have died in Petalburg Woods."

Miriam shot up from the bed, her head narrowly missing both the beams of the top bunk and Hayley's nose. "No, if it wasn't for her, I wouldn't have been in that stupid forest in the first place. I didn't want to do any of this, remember?" She turned to stalk away, but Hayley grabbed her by the shoulder and turned her around again.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry your mom made you do this when you didn't want to, and I know it sucks. If I had to, I don't know, spend all summer stuck inside playing video games, that would suck for me, and I would hate it."

"That is not the same thing—"

"All right, it's not. Sorry. But what I'm saying is, it's not fair to you. If you don't want to do Pokémon training, then you shouldn't have to do it."

Miriam narrowed her eyes and yanked her shoulder out from under Hayley's hand, but this time she made no move to leave. "Okay? Then why are you yelling at me?"

"Because all of this isn't fair to Xena either." Miriam's expression darkened, and Hayley barreled on before she could interrupt. "It's not her fault that you got her. I know that. But she's registered to you, which means that you're the only one who can decide what to do with her. And keeping her in a ball forever while you—while you do this, that's not an answer. If you don't want to take care of her, you have to give her to someone who will."

"Fine," Miriam spat. "I'll trade her to you. I already said I'd do that."

"I can't take her," Hayley said, and it was the truth, as much as she wished it wasn't. "I've got Barrett, and he takes up all of my time already. She's just a baby, and she needs more attention than I can give her. Besides, if you want to keep conning your mom, that means we'll be together for the next three months, which means she'll keep on seeing you, which means she'll keep on trying to be friends with you. I don't know why she wants to hang around you, because Arceus knows I don't, but if you don't want to keep her, then you need to let her forget about you and move on."

Miriam had crossed her arms, but now her shoulders had sagged a fraction of an inch—a pose Hayley knew all too well from Barrett—and she glanced away from Hayley to stare at a spot on the wall. "It's not fair," she finally muttered. "I shouldn't have to deal with this bullshit."

"Why don't you just go home?" Hayley offered. "You already got what you wanted out of this, right? Your mom's getting you a new computer and everything."

Miriam scoffed. "I don't want to go home yet. My mom's just going to smother me, especially now. As long as we're not camping, I might as well stay here." Her expression momentarily brightened, and she glanced back at Hayley. "Can you stay in a Pokémon Center without a Pokémon?"

"Um." That was not a question that had come up on her exams, because why would it? "I don't think so. I'm pretty sure you need at least one."

"Shit." She kicked her toe on the faux wood floor. "So it's stay here and deal with Pokémon bullshit, or go home and deal with my mom's bullshit."

"I guess." Miriam didn't say anything back, and the room slowly filled with an awkward silence. Hayley cleared her throat and tried another tack. "I don't think Xena needs you to battle with her, or anything. If you don't want to do… trainer stuff. I think she'd be happy just playing with you."

"Ugh." Miriam uncrossed her arms and stared at the ball that was still in her hand, holding it away from her body like it was a Grimer egg about to hatch. "This is the worst."

Hayley just shrugged.

Miriam stared at the ball for a long time, brows furrowing deeper and deeper until her eyes all but disappeared behind them. Finally, she let out an exasperated sigh. "Fine." Before Hayley could ask her what she meant, Miriam crossed the room and picked up her phone from where it had landed on the floor. She turned it around, inspecting it from every angle, and when she seemed satisfied it wasn't broken, she went back to the bunk bed and deposited it on the top mattress. Then she pulled her Gameboy and her headphones out of her pockets and put them up on the bed as well. At last, she sat down on the bottom mattress again. "I'm going to regret this," she grumbled, and dropped the Pokéball to the gound.

The white light burst and faded, and Xena materialized between them. The Elekid immediately began scanning her surroundings, just like she had when Hayley had let her out before. This time, she found what she was looking for. She locked eyes with Miriam, let out a triumphant cry, and lunged forward to lock her arms around her leg. Miriam grimaced and made an indignant noise, but Xena was too engrossed in nuzzling her sock to notice.

"Just say hi to her," Hayley suggested. "She should be able to understand you, more or less."

Miriam hooked her free foot around one of Xena's arms and tried to pry her off, but Xena was stuck like glue. Sparks leapt off her horns, pattering harmlessly against Miriam's skin. Miriam scoffed, rolled her eyes, and visibly steeled herself.

"Hey… Xena." The words sounded like they were being pulled out of her, but Xena chirped and stared adoringly at her all the same. "I guess we're stuck with each other for a little while. Don't break any more of my stuff, okay?" Hayley shot Miriam a look, and Miriam muttered something under her breath. "Okay, fine. I'll… try to be nice to you, okay? But seriously, don't break any more of my stuff. If you fry my Lucario Kart cartridge, I'm trading you away to the first person I see on the street."

Xena chirped again, either oblivious to the threat in her words or too ecstatic to care about it. Miriam groaned and flopped back on the bed, still halfheartedly trying to shake Xena off her leg.

Hayley hoped she'd made the right decision.