Hayley's backyard was nearing maximum capacity. The small suburban lawn could fit two humans and eight Pokémon, but when those Pokémon started moving around and practicing their techniques, it got pretty crowded pretty quickly. Hayley and Miriam had blocked out today for "group study," as Hayley's mom had cutely called it, and everyone had paired off to learn from each other and figure out some new tricks.

Over in the artificial pond, her mother's Lombre, Lily, was demonstrating to Ceres how to condense water from the air. Ceres' water guns were powerful, but she'd more or less reached the limit of how much water she could push from her mouth, and she needed another source to draw on for new moves down the line—especially given the problems she was still having with water pulse. Despite having learned basic water control from Kei's Marill on Dewford, her execution of it remained as sluggish as her execution of confusion. Her water guns, no matter how powerful they were, lost all their speed and momentum the moment she grabbed hold of them to manipulate them into a spiral or ball. The result was about as devastating as being nudged around by ripples in a kiddie pool. After bashing her head against the problem for a few weeks, Hayley had finally decided that if speed wasn't an option, then they would have to turn their kiddie pool into a wave pool. Even slow-moving water was powerful if there was enough of it, and large volumes also opened up options for control and defense. A water version of Barrett's fire shield would be an great supplement to protect, especially given that it could be used for counterattacking in a way protect barriers couldn't.

In the far corner of the yard, the soil had been upturned, and the grass sacrificed, to form a patch of ground where Foley, her mother's Wooper, could work on geokinesis with Sen and Yuna. Having passed the two-week mark for Sen's body to safely absorb the changes from the detect TM, Hayley had finally been able to give him the rock tomb TM she'd been holding on to since Rustboro. Sen sorely needed a long-range attack option beyond confusion, and rock tomb would give that to him, as well as opening the door to battlefield manipulation—something Hayley's team currently lacked. As Sen endeavored to pull off the new move, Yuna worked on her stealth rock. She was trying to figure out ways to remotely detonate the traps she laid, or to stop them from detonating under herself. Theoretically, Foley was helping both of them. In reality, his mastery of ancient power had turned out to be very rusty, and his… below-genius intellect meant he wasn't great at being a teacher in the first place. Still, his demonstrations seemed to be having some effect, even if it was only to show Sen and Yuna what not to do.

At the midpoint between the two other groups, where any stray sparks could be quickly attended to by Lily, Foley, or Ceres, Barrett and Xena were working on punches—fire punches and thunder punches, specifically. Though the moves seemed slightly redundant, given that Barrett and Xena already had close-range elemental options in flame wheel and spark, the punches still had their use. They were quicker to pull off and used less energy than their full-body counterparts, and they kept Barrett and Xena from having to completely tackle their opponents, which was something that frequently left both open to counterattacks. The real draw, though, was that with a little work, a Magby could energize a fire punch into a thunder punch, and an Elekid could ignite a thunder punch into a fire punch. It would provide them both with excellent type coverage, as well as paying dividends down the line when they were a Magmortar and Electivire and would be able to learn thunderbolt and flamethrower, respectively.

That last part was well in the future, though. A year or more, if Hayley had to guess. For now, they were sticking with their own elements. Barrett's endless practice with flame wheel and fire spin meant that he was getting the hang of the new move quickly, but Xena was struggling a little more. Despite Barrett's patronizing guidance, she kept accidentally discharging her electricity as she transferred it to her fist, sending it into the ground.

"What if she uses her fists like her horns?" Miriam mused. At Hayley's blank expression, she explained: "You know, one positive, one negative."

"I don't know that much about electricity," Hayley began to say, but Miriam had already turned back to her laptop and was typing furiously on the keys. Her brow scrunched up as she read.

"I guess that would put the spark between her hands, and that's not what we're going for… Might be worth playing around with later, though… Oh! Duh. Fingers. Xena, use your fingers as terminals!" Hayley had no idea what that meant, but Xena apparently did, because she chirped in agreement and began spinning her arms to try again. Zero veered dangerously close as she did so, watching with unblinking holographic eyes. His training was to gather and log as much data as possible.

And Hayley and Miriam were doing some studying, too. Hayley had retrieved her own battered, sluggish laptop from its place in her bedroom, and she and Miriam were reading through study guides for the Class II exams. Hayley's repeated mentions of preparing for it had led Miriam to begrudgingly agree that she ought to start getting ready for it too, given that Xena might be ready for evolution in a couple months' time. Part of Hayley had half-expected Miriam to somehow already know everything that would be on the test, the same way she'd half-worried Miriam would somehow beat Roxanne the first time she'd stormed off to the gym in Rustboro—she was kind of a nerd, after all, and she'd been ferociously filling in the gaps in her Pokémon knowledge over the past couple months. But Miriam was no Alakazam, and Hayley's head start on the material, as well as the time she'd spent studying for the Birch Exam and the years she'd spent in the Taillow Scouts, gave her an advantage. For once, she was the one explaining test prep material to someone else.

"Let's go back to codes," Hayley said, squinting through the glare of the midday sun on her computer screen. "If you've got a class two Pokémon that can gas or spore, what are the restrictions on releasing it outside?"

"What do I care? It's not like I'm going to be raising grass-types or poison-types." Still grumbling, Miriam began counting off on her fingers. "It's about people being able to get away from gases and spores, right? So it's probably… Not in crowds, or in like, an alley? Is that it?"

"Part of it. But there's also 'roads with major vehicle traffic' or 'near the air intake system of any building.'"

"The air what? You mean like a fucking air conditioner? How the hell am I supposed to know how close is too close?"

"There's a table with distances in it," Hayley began, and Miriam hung her head and groaned.

"Of course there's a fucking table."

Over in the corner, Sen planted his feet, shut his eyes, and thrust a hand forward. The ground in front of him shook, then parted, disgorging a fistful of pebbles that made it all of an inch into the air before falling. Foley grabbed them with ancient power, tried to juggle them, failed, and blinked in dull bewilderment as each one popped him in the forehead on its way back down.

"They can't expect me to remember all this," Miriam said. "'Geokinesis and burrowing restrictions near roads, railways, and public utilities'? Maybe just don't make your roads so crap that some kid with a Dugtrio can poke holes in them?"

"That section's a little outdated," Hayley admitted. "A lot of stuff got rebuilt after the Calamity to make it earthquake-resistant, but I guess they left it in to cover anything that wasn't."

Miriam snorted. "Oh yeah, your stupid legendary kaiju. What'd be the exam to train one of them, a class five? Does it go 'person, room, building, block, country'?"

Hayley thought about it for a moment. "I think if they had a class, it'd have to be… six, at least. Something like Lugia would be a class five. 'Person, room, building, block, city, country.'"

"What? No way, Lugia is not weaker than Kyogre and Groudon. It can make storms that—"

"It can make one storm at a time, and it's never been bigger than city-sized. Kyogre made a hurricane big enough to cover all of Hoenn."

"That's bullshit. Nobody's proven it can only make one storm at a time, it's just never wanted to make more than one at a time. And nobody knows how strong that storm could get if it was really trying. I bet if Lugia had showed up during the Calamity, it would have kicked Kyogre's ass and Groudon's ass. It just didn't because it didn't want to blow your entire country apart."

Hayley looked over again at Sen, who was slowly shimmying a palm-sized rock out of the ground. She looked at Ceres and Lily—Lily was waving her finger and condensing water vapor into a leisurely pulsing ring. Ceres struggled to follow along, but all she'd managed so far was a couple of droplets. And all at once, Hayley thought of the scenes of the Calamity: Groudon's tremors driving fissures through the earth that swallowed houses and split mountains, Kyogre's rain bursting the banks of rivers and sweeping away everything in its path. Petalburg had been spared the worst of it, since it wasn't directly on the sea or close to Mount Chimney, but even then, the wind and rain and earthquakes had reached them. Hayley had clung to her mother as the ground shook and rain lashed the windows, and her mother had stroked her hair and promised her that it would be okay, that the Champion and the rest of the League would save them.

If she became Champion, the protection of Hoenn from any future Calamity would become her job. But her team someday having the power to stand up to a god—Hayley couldn't imagine it. She could barely even picture ahead to her fourth-badge fight. Someday, Barrett would have the power to summon blazing infernos and choking clouds that spread across an entire battlefield. Ceres would be able to make rainstorms and floods, and her telekinesis would be so strong that no Pokémon would be able to escape. Sen's rock tomb would raise small mountains and his strikes would split them, and his ESP would make him untouchable. And even then, it wouldn't be enough. Gym leaders and elites alike had lost Pokémon in the fight to drive the titans back. Nearly everybody had. In the end, it had only been the orbs that had saved them.

"You moved here after the Calamity, right?" Hayley asked Miriam, somewhat distantly, as her mind continued to work things through.

"Yeah. Like a year after."

"Why?" Miriam shot Hayley a weird look, and Hayley realized she wasn't following her own train of thought. "I mean, why Hoenn? Most people wanted to leave Hoenn after the Calamity, not move here."

Miriam shrugged. "I dunno. Maybe my mom wanted to torture me by moving to the worst place she could find." Seemingly content with that answer, she turned back to her laptop—but after a moment she dipped her head, worked her jaw, and sighed. "I guess the real reason is probably, it was far away. And cheaper than Sinnoh."

Hayley frowned. "Far away—far away from Kanto? Why did that matter?"

"Who cares?" The familiar veil fell over Miriam's eyes that told Hayley this conversation was over. She fixed her stare on the computer screen, tapped a few keys, and muttered to herself. "I'm bored of codes. Let's do science instead… 'Name four Pokémon with acidic venom and four with alkaline venom'?" Why?"

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

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Hayley's self-defense classes weren't going the way she'd hoped. Despite knowing that karate sparring wasn't real fighting, she'd somehow expected self-defense lessons to be an extension of karate lessons, where the instructor would teach her a list of moves she could use to knock out someone bigger and stronger than her. But while the classes did go through punches and kicks and weak points and escapes, the instructor kept circling back around to talk about not fighting. The best way to survive a fight, they said over and over, was to make sure that that fight didn't happen. So she had to know how to stay aware of her surroundings, how to quickly get from a dangerous place to a safe one, how to yell for help, and how to negotiate and de-escalate encounters. She had to not walk alone in dark alleys or set up her tent too close to a path, she had to keep her Pokéballs within arms' reach so that she'd be less of a target—but she knew all of that already! They'd gone over it constantly in her trainer safety courses. Couldn't they just focus the lessons on how she could fight someone bigger than her and win?

When she'd said that, though, the instructor had looked her in the eye and told her that self-defense was about surviving, not about winning. That no matter how much she learned, she'd always be at a disadvantage against someone bigger and stronger than her, and that there was no way to level the playing field through muscle alone. That she had to be smart, and know the value of running away.

Hayley was tired of running. She was tired of being afraid. She needed to be strong enough to stand her ground and fight—and if she couldn't be strong enough, then her team had to be. For the first time, she found herself thinking that Barrett had to evolve before she left Petalburg City. A Magby, Slowpoke and Meditite no longer felt like adequate defense against the dangers of the wider world.

Connie's separation therapy wasn't going the way anyone had hoped, either. The sessions consisted of putting her and Marcie into separate shielded rooms and emitting a dampening signal to break their psychic connection. The first round hadn't gone too badly at the start, but that was only because Marcie had used all her strength to push through the jamming and shielding and keep the link going. When the signal had been turned up, and Marcie's reserves had finally run out, that was when things turned bad. Connie and Marcie had both collapsed to the floor like their strings had been cut. Marcie had begun thrashing and wailing, and Connie had clutched the sides of her head and gasped in mounting panic. Despite the biomonitor saying her oxygen was fine, something inside her thought she was suffocating. Her eyes bulged, her body jerked, and soon she began to claw at her own throat. The session had been cut short before she could manage to injure herself.

It had been horrible to watch, and obviously far worse to experience. Afterwards, Connie had been near-catatonic for hours. Marcie had carried enough emotion for both of them, clinging to Connie so tightly that her nails broke the skin and snarling at anyone who tried to coax her away. She'd determined that everyone else was an enemy, and even Hayley hadn't been excluded from that—as she spent the afternoon in Connie's bedroom afterwards, fishing for one-sided conversation topics to brighten the mood, Marcie had never taken her eyes off of her. Her cold, hard, unblinking stare had let Hayley know, in no uncertain terms, that she was looking for any excuse to classify her as a threat. Hayley hadn't slept that night. She'd kept seeing Connie's bulging, bloodshot eyes and Marcie's defiant red ones.

The second session went the same way, except it was worse, because everyone knew what was coming. Connie had broken down in tears at the entrance to the room and pleaded with the doctors to find another way to do this. Her parents had joined in, calling it inhumane. But the doctors insisted that there was no other way. Marcie had lashed out at the first orderly who approached her and looked ready to fight the others as well, but Connie had begged her to stop—it would only hurt them at the hearing—and Marcie had reluctantly given in. This time, Connie had been strapped down to a bed, and with her limbs unable to move, and her body had compensated by jerking around like it was in the grips of a seizure—

Hayley had had to leave until it was done. Connie couldn't tell whether she was there or not anyway, and she couldn't stand to watch.

Now, with the second session finished, they were once again in Connie's room. The lights were turned down, and Connie lay facedown on her bed with her head in a pillow. Marcie sat on top of her, in the small of her back, gripping the fabric of her shirt and glaring at Hayley like she expected her to try and pull her away at any moment. Having exhausted all her small talk ideas to no effect the last time they did this, Hayley was quietly flipping through her phone, reading study guides for the Class II exams and absorbing none of the information.

It was around an hour into this when Connie lifted her head a fraction of an inch and muttered, "Did you go to see Corbin and Gavin again?"

Hayley's thumb froze over her phone. "What? Um, I saw them that one time, about a week ago… But not since then. Why?"

"Gavin messaged me again yesterday. He said he still wants to meet." She flopped her head back into her pillow, muffling her next words. "He's just going to tell me to stop being a coordinator, isn't he? Like he told you to stop being a trainer?"

"Probably." Hayley put her phone down on her lap and scratched her arm. "He hasn't messaged me since we talked, I didn't know he was still bothering you—do you want me to tell him to stop?"

"It's fine," she mumbled. "Maybe I should meet with him. He might be right."

Hayley shot to her feet, then immediately stumbled when Marcie did the same and flooded Hayley's mind with murderous intent. "Stop." Hayley swayed in place, clenched her fists, and resigned herself to talking to Connie from a distance.

"You can't quit, Connie. What happened was awful, but you told me right before that coordinating was still your dream—"

"Dreams are dreams." With visible effort, she pushed herself up with one arm and rolled onto her back, grabbing Marcie as she went and pulling her to her chest. "Maybe it should stay a dream. I don't know. You were the one saying right before that I ought to stop."

A strong breeze blew outside, making the house creak in a way that sounded like cackling. A coldness settled in Hayley's stomach. "I never said you should stop. I just wanted you to—to take a step back and think."

"Well, I've had plenty of time to think now." Marcie at last tore her gaze from Hayley, turned to Connie instead, and tilted her head. Connie sighed. "Sorry. I'm just all messed up right now because…" Her voice trailed off. In the silence, her fingers traced the folds of Marcie's dress. Finally, she bit out, "You said you wanted me to talk to you about this stuff, right? It's stupid. There was… another video. Evrard."

The house creaked again. It was like someone was snickering right in Hayley's ear. "Another video? About your last contest, or—"

"No. About how I missed this week's contests, and so obviously I quit because I'm not good enough."

Hayley's mind raced. "Does he know what happened?"

"No. I don't think so. If he did, he'd probably gloat about it. But he got someone linked to my Trainer's Eyes profile to tell him I'm inactive, so he's making up all of his own reasons why."

Fury blazed through her. "He can't just do that! He's—he's harassing you, that can't be okay. Can't we get his videos taken down, or something?"

"Addie tried reporting his videos before. Apparently it's fine as long as he's not making threats or telling people to stalk me. Trainers and coordinators are public figures."

"Even if you're inactive?"

"I guess so."

Hayley swallowed and slowly sat down again, slumping against the wall. "It's just not right. There has to be something we can do."

"It doesn't matter." Connie's lips twitched upward into the forced smile that Hayley had by now learned to hate. "I mean, it's just a video, right? Who even cares. I shouldn't let it bother me."

Later, when Hayley left the house, she was grateful for the heat of the setting early-autumn sun. Connie's room had been cold, and she hadn't even realized it until she felt the tingling of warmth returning to her numb fingers. The air was humid, but not unbearable, even though whatever wind there had been a couple hours ago had by now died down. On the walk back to the Pokémon Center, not a single leaf stirred in the trees.

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"So this goes back to what I always say: coordinators. Aren't. Trainers. And to head off the 'oh, but they're so creative with their moves' comments I always get on these videos—tell me the last time having a move sparkle was the deciding factor in a real battle. I'll wait. Anyway, here we have someone who's had no improvement over their last few performances, because they have no idea what they're doing, finally deciding to drop out and spare us all the embarrassment. I think that's great. More coordinators should follow Connie's example."

Hayley shut off the video. She already knew how it ended. She'd already watched it twice, adding her number to the countless other people who'd viewed it since yesterday. "The Mysterious Disappearance of Concordia Harper" was one of the top trending videos in the "Coordinator" section of TrainerTV.

She'd watched his other videos too. Nestled in the top bunk with earbuds settled in her ears, she'd finally forced herself to go through every awful video Evrard had ever made about Connie. She'd started right after dinner, and now it was long past midnight, and she wanted to throw up.

How could someone be that hateful? Towards Connie, of all people? She didn't have a "mean" persona like Addison or Clarissa—not that that would have made it okay—and she wasn't even famous. Not until Evrard had made her that way. The comments of every video were split, with half calling him cruel and half joining in. Some people talked about reporting his videos, but like Connie had said, nothing had ever come of it. Evrard showcased every single "content review" flag he got like a victory medal.

There had to be something she could do. Something. She thought about sending him a message, but she knew he would just laugh at her like he laughed at everyone else. She thought about making videos of her own, but who would watch them, besides the other people in her class? What else was there? There had to be something. What was the point in training to be strong if she couldn't even help her best friend?

Hayley's phone screen dimmed and shut off. Blue light still emanated from below her, though, telling her that Miriam was still awake and on her laptop. Not a surprise. Every minute of her life Miriam wasn't training or battling or sleeping, she was on the internet. She…

She would know about things like this, Hayley realized all at once. She would know what to do.

Hayley wrapped up her earbuds and tucked them and her phone beside her. She gripped the railing of the bed, leaned over, did her best to ignore the vertigo, and called out, "Miriam." No answer. Braving the void, she pushed herself over a little further, took one hand, and waved it below her to get Miriam's attention. "Miriam!"

It would definitely have been less stupid and awkward to climb down the ladder and talk to her that way. Miriam had made this look a lot easier than it actually was. But she was committed now, and Miriam was already poking her head out from under the bunk, pulling her bulky headphones off her ears. "Yeah? What?"

Hayley pushed herself back up to a more stable position, bed rattling under her as she did. "I need to ask you something. You're good at the internet, right?"

Miriam snorted. "Better than you, at least."

"Okay. So if someone's making videos you don't like, how do you get them to stop?"

Miriam's eyebrows shot up towards her hairline. Clearly she had not expected that question. "Uh, why do you need to know? Is someone trolling you or something?"

"Not me. Connie."

"Oh." Miriam dropped her eyes and chewed her lip. Hayley had never told her about Evrard, but—it seemed like she already knew. "I mean, if the videos aren't against TOS, there's not much you can do. Unless you have the sort of clout to make a callout post and turn everyone against them, which, yeah, you definitely don't. You probably just have to wait it out."

"I don't want to wait it out," Hayley declared. "I want him to stop, and I want him to apologize."

Miriam scoffed. "Good fucking luck. You're just going to give him more ammo, you know that?"

"If I talk to him online, sure. But what if…" The gears in her head turned. "What if it wasn't online? What if I talked to him in real life?"

"Once again, good fucking luck."

"I mean it." She grabbed her phone again and opened up Evrard's TrainerTV page. "His profile says he's in Oldale. How do I know where in Oldale?"

"Okay, even you can't be dumb enough to think people are just putting their whole addresses online for everyone to see."

"It's got to be online somewhere. Everything's online, right? How do I find it?"

"…Wait. Hold on. You want to doxx someone?" Miriam's eyebrows had completed their journey back down her forehead and were now furrowed over her eyes. "Like, actually doxx them and then fight them in real life?"

"I don't want to fight him, just talk."

"Yeah, sure." Another snort. "I mean, you're right that it's not super hard to find someone, though, if you know where to look. Especially if you have their full name—hell, I could probably do it."

"Could you?"

Miriam stared at Hayley in open amazement, as though she was seeing her for the first time. "It can get you in trouble, you know. If you put the info online, or use it to stalk someone—"

"I don't care. I'm not going to do anything with it right now anyway, I just—want to know. Please."

Miriam looked Hayley up and down—or at least, she looked at the part of her that was visible over the railing. Then, without another word, she disappeared under the bunk. Moments later, just her legs reappeared, swinging over the side with a laptop placed on top of them. "If you get arrested, I had nothing to do with this. So what's this guy's last name?"