Their flight east was a rocky affair, with constant pursuit by those elements of Johto’s dark underbelly that Athena hadn’t taken care of. Which was the bulk of it, of course; most of the Ankoku ninja clan didn’t even live in Goldenrod. No, they were spread out all across the country in twos and threes, from Azalea Town to Ecruteak and from Cianwood to Blackthorn – while her purpose in Goldenrod had been to swell Team Rocket’s budget with legitimate business and its contact lists with blackmail, most of the actual work had been methodically drawing out a map of the Ankoku family holdings.

  Because eventually, she’d known, this day would come. Though I didn’t expect to sail nearly this close to the edge… I guess my team’s just getting over the hill. And her as well; Athena would hit the big five-oh in the coming winter, and seeing that ephemeral mark on the horizon drew complicated doodles in the margins of her mind.

  Fifty. Seems like just yesterday Dad was handing me the keys to the family business… My son is twenty years- no, my son is twenty-one. Arc. I haven’t seen his father in thirteen years. Archer might be dead for all I know, and-

  “Mom, don’t zone out. This is the most dangerous stretch; they’ll have fliers out combing for us by now.”

  Silver’s voice snapped her attention back in place like the cap of a pen clicking home, and Athena blinked as she realised she could see her own breath condensing in front of her. “Are we in the Silver Range already?” It looked like it; their sparse camp was bracketed by rocky outcroppings nearly completely devoid of plant life, a campfire fed with half a bag of smokeless barbecue charcoal radiating heat around which her murkrow and Silver’s alakazam warmed themselves. But that seemed impossible – how much time had she-

  “No,” her son gruffly answered. “We’re just north of Blackthorn.”

  They were- yes, a moment’s thought allowed her to trace their path over the last few days, hiding in ruins and fording rivers on the back of his feraligatr, teleporting whenever the psychic type regained sufficient stamina. They were crossing into the mountains, but not the ones Silver was named after – no, at the moment they were on the outskirts of the Thorn Range, below which ran the Ice Path she’d used so many times back when she’d been bouncing between Goldenrod and Blackthorn City almost every day, trying to convince her son to…

  With a shake of her head she banished the intruding fingers of memory. “When was the last time I took an Antidote?”

  “Two hours.”

  Two..? Damnation, the intervals between attacks are getting shorter – I’m building up a resistance. Whatever it was that the Ankoku Matriarch had dosed her with during their battle, it was a lot more stubborn than she’d ever thought possible; Antidotes couldn’t always cure a human of poison instantly the way they could Pokémon, but in all her years as a poison specialist – and the prior ones as a professional nutritionalist, for that matter – she’d never encountered anything that could outlast multiple doses of the medicine. But despite days having passed the symptoms were the same; if she went too long without, she became light-headed and forgetful – then nauseous, and Rocket’s chief executive assumed that the condition would progress to further sickness and eventual death.

  They hadn’t allowed it to take more than a few steps in that direction, but with her body starting to reject the medicine it was only a matter of time until… “And you’re sure your crobat won’t carry me?”

  “Vlad won’t leave my side. We’ve been over this.”

  Silver cast a sullen look her way, his teeth bared and his dark eyes further shadowed by poor sleep. He had begun their journey prickly but determined, but now it seemed the enormity of what he’d chosen to do had finally settled in – and yet that determination was still there, shining in the depths of his pupils like the merrily burning coals of their fire.

  “You look so much like your father…” Athena muttered absently, and her son frowned harder.

  “Focus, Mom. We need to get over these stupid hills, and that’ll be hard even without you walking off into la-la land. We just have to…” His teeth, still as pearly white as in her most distant memory, pressed against each other so hard she could hear them creak – or perhaps that was only her imagination drifting into reality on wings of dark poison. “I know Clair keeps a fully-stocked infirmary for her team, with all the most cutting-edge shit. And she’ll be in or near Viridian for the tournament season; the place will be basically unguarded.”

  In the distance a dark cloud was eating the horizon, a telltale texture to the air beneath it promising snow.

  It was snowing – had been snowing since the first night they’d slept on the open sea – and Puce was decidedly sick of it. I hate this. I hate this stupid boat, and I wish we’d just given up and… and found Mister Mutsu or someone to make the trip on foot with.

  Some of the frustration was with the cold, and some of it with the endless blue mirror that stretched out in all directions… But most of it was reserved for the construction of the boat itself.

  The Statue of Venus was not a small vessel, and unlike the yacht they’d used to make land in Vermilion it couldn’t be crewed by one person – or by two, for that matter. It wasn’t even close… and so their Pokémon had been tapped to fill the empty space where humans should have been. Ravioli the poliwrath, Pinch the pinsir, and Scarlet the venusaur were Cliff’s contribution, while she’d had some success in getting her un-nicknamed hypno to tie knots. Her tentacruel could also nudge the ship a little from underwater, but that was pretty much it; the rest of her team was either thumbless, entirely limbless, or not smart enough to do much of anything. And then there’s munchlax, who needs to eat too much to even be kept out of his ball…

  Yeah, in the first few days it had looked like a lot of her choices had been less than intelligent, and she’d felt something almost like laughter in the back of her throat as she’d thought well, what else is new? As they’d drifted more-or-less in the vague direction of east, she’d wished with all her heart that she’d had Menard’s machoke or hitmonlee, Ryan’s golduck or kadabra, or any of Miss Cascade’s water types. We’re going to starve out here, she’d thought, sick amusement turning to terror as the land disappeared over the soft rolling blue. This was a terrible idea – why did I even suggest it? I don’t know a thing about sailing!

  But by the time they’d made it to the oh-so-narrow maze of broken docks that separated the mainland from Fuchsia, things had gotten… not good, but at least better. Mister Cliff’s leg healed up pretty well, neither of them got seasick like Menard had, and the Statue of Venus crossed the invisible threshold of the Cerulean Sea with only superficial damage from their sloppy captaining. Turning the boat north had been easier with experience, and now…

  Don’t take it back here, Puce thought as the high cliffs gave way to something that wasn’t quite a beach, the steep gravel hills marking their closeness to the end – to the abandoned power plant, their consolation pick of a destination. Not right when it’s about to be over.

  But the regret was resilient; it had taken nearly a full week to get this far, multiple times longer than it should have. Their original destination had been Cerulean City, but a few days in it became clear they wouldn’t be able to handle that journey. No, they would still have something of a trek left even after abandoning the sailing ship…

  And Puce would be lying if she didn’t say she was looking forward to it. “Land!” she cried, and a flurry of activity began down on the deck. The feeling of her entire weight pulling down on her fingertips as she swung across the rope-jungle that controlled the sails was painful, but barely noticed; she wanted to leave. “Left, twenty degrees!”

  Cliff, up on the raised hump near the back of the craft, whistled in acknowledgment and stomped out a pattern – and then, ponderously and with an almost living reluctance despite Puce hauling on ropes, Cliff controlling the wheel, and Ravioli turning switches down in the boiler room, they began to turn. No more wild tentacruel climbing up onto the deck at night, the large woman attempted, and a timid, cautious smile found her lips. No more cleaning off the shellder trying to dig nests in the hull, no more hidden minefields of staryu. Just good old-fashioned forest.

  She couldn’t wait. She was even, at the risk of jinxing it, something approaching happy.

  Silver wasn’t happy.

  Of course, that wasn’t exactly an unusual thing – Silver Capo wasn’t really a ‘happiness’ kind of person. No, he’d always found the emotion vapid, the mental equivalent of jerking yourself off; he didn’t want a quick burst of chemical reward, he wanted something that would last – a good proper satisfaction more than anything else.

  And the most satisfying thing he’d ever experienced was really sticking it to some holier-than-thou jackass.

  And a life spent telling people – showing them – that they were full of shit wasn’t one that had many friends. But that was fine too; Silver knew he was unlikeable, and he’d made peace with that. Friends were like happiness – they were an other people thing, not for him. He had his own relationships, and they were… well.

  He had a lot of people. People who were hard to categorise. His Gym Trainers, who were half employees and half sparring partners. The other Gym Leaders. The Blackthorns and the people of ‘his’ city. And those trainers who’d lost and gotten chips on their shoulders, they were his…

  Enemies wasn’t quite right, too melodramatic, but calling them rivals would be giving the people who threw themselves at him over and over too much credit. I’ve only got the one rival, and those mediocre fucks don’t compare. But they were satisfying. Not Gold satisfying, nothing was ever that, but it was enough – enough to live, enough to drag himself to those stupid clan meetings and wear a stupid cape and put up with Clair’s bullshit. Until now, I guess.

  And of course, buried deep down inside, there had been that anticipation. That if he kept training, kept getting stronger… maybe one day he would meet them again. The two people he really wanted to stick it to.

  …Huh. Been a long time since I thought about them. It must be the terrain – they were deep into the Thorn range now, where it finally turned into properly tall mountains, and it was bringing to mind Victory Road back on the Kanto side of the border. That was the last time I saw either of them, or close enough… Hah, boyscout becomes the Champion and pulls a disappearing act. Was it all a big prank? Some days Silver thought it must be. Gold had idolised Red Ketchum to a frankly embarrassing degree, and the dragon tamer could just see the dumb grin on his face as he contemplated following his footsteps to the very last. He’s probably out on some island somewhere, still trying to find his hero. No, Ethan Hibiki wasn’t the kind of person to give up – if his dad had split, Gold would probably have actually succeeded in dragging the old man back. That was the kind of unfair winner he was. I bet he didn’t think for a second how splitting would make Lance look, the airhead…

  The trickle of schadenfreude that came from remembering Clair’s older cousin all but pulling his hair out, exasperated as he was made a mere Interim Champion once again and people started whispering about conspiracy, killed some of the sour feeling in his gut – but then it came right back with a vengeance as his mother stumbled.

  “You alright Mom?” I don’t care – I shouldn’t care. She got herself into this mess all on her own, and it isn’t my responsibility to get her out. In fact, it was his responsibility to arrest her.

  …But no. Silver wasn't a Gym Leader anymore, and responsibility could join happiness and friendship in the loser’s corner. Maybe it was childish, maybe it didn’t make any sense, and maybe it made him a shitty person – scratch that, it definitely did – but he wanted his mother to make it. He wanted to… be there for her.

  Everything else be damned.

  The woman did her best to play it off, but it was obvious she was barely standing even with the sneasel and lickitung taking an arm each. “I’m fine, honey. Are we… Could we make camp soon? I need to put on another layer.”

  Silver grit his teeth against the tide of unease her words brought forward – his mother was wearing a frankly unhelpful amount of clothing, the thick winter coats he’d packed in case they needed to rough it for a while piled on top of each other to the point her torso was probably boiling. And yet, she still shivered – it was the poison, not the cold. But it’s a lot easier to blame the cold, isn’t it?

  The very instant Puce touched the rocky shore, the snow stopped. And while she’d have loved to take that as a good sign, she really couldn’t – because the reason it stopped was because the fat, gentle flakes had been replaced by an absolute downpour of equally fat, decidedly less-than-gentle raindrops. She was immediately drenched, as was Cliff, and for a beat the two of them stood there on the cold snowy sand as it turned to dirty slush, looking up in paired disgust as though the force of their displeasure would make nature back down.

  But the storm only called their bluff. BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM! came four claps of thunder, accompanying four bolts of lightning that struck worryingly close. “Arcus!” Cliff cursed. “Of all the rotten- come on, we need to-”

  If he says ‘go back to the ship,’ I’m going to cry. I’m going to cry, and I’m going to lift up the dinghy and smash it over my knee.

  “-Get to cover. The power plant should still have most of a roof, follow me!”

  And so, relieved and guilty for that relief, Puce grabbed her share of the supplies and followed. The rain wasn’t any warmer than the snow had been, and each of the hundreds of tiny impacts against her body felt like a knife stabbing down – for the first few seconds, at least. They were only out in the open for five, maybe ten minutes, but by the end of it she was almost surprised to see that her waterlogged shoulders were undamaged. I was kind of expecting my shirt to be torn up and soaked with blood… But no, I’m just numb. I'm completely numb, I can’t feel a thing from my neck to my toes. Not her face, though, her face was feeling the icy sting just fine – the lukewarm touch of her breath where it drifted back against her cheeks was like scalding steam, that was how high the contrast was. I- we need to- “W-we need to b-b-build a fi-ire. I’m f-fr-eezing!”

  Cliff nodded – she thought he nodded anyway; the darkness inside the red-painted building was intense – and then he released two Pokémon.

  His tyranitar and onix, confined to their balls for days lest their dense, bulky bodies shatter the wooden deck and turn the piloting efforts from difficult to futile, released a roar – and somewhere in the neighbourhood of twenty pikachu all squeaked and released surprised sparks as they darted away. Puce was surprised herself – despite their bright yellow colouration, she hadn’t noticed the approaching rodents at all.

  But as she shivered violently, the numbness just barely giving way to pain as her body fought the cold with everything it had, she smiled a grim smile. This is still better. I never want to look at a boat ever again. Potato and Hypno – who she really needed to nickname before they got to Saffron, or things would get confusing – joined Cliff’s Pokémon to form a perimeter, and the enforcer nodded. “Okay, a fire… That’s gonna be hard, with the rain outside and most of the building being metal, but we’ll figure something out.”

  Athena had first been introduced to Giovanni Capo during a perfectly mundane business mixer. She could still picture it clearly – the slightly aggravated boredom she’d been feeling as soft, inoffensive music played under the gentle murmur of aged voices. She’d thought she had been the youngest person there; twenty-four, basically a child in the eyes of the ancient movers-and-shakers around her. The care of Pokémon was an old business, maybe the oldest business that could be called such, and its practitioners matched that legacy – they were crusty.

  But then, through a field that was half crisp black suits and half Alolan chic – that had been the new hotness in the mid-eighties, a fashion trend that hadn’t survived to see the end of its decade – she had spied a pair of eyes that were sharp. Darkly sharp, dangerously sharp, and as Athena’s vision expanded to the rest of their owner’s face, she’d found it was a match. Defined cheekbones and a masculine brow bordered those black eyes; his lips were quirked in a thin, cocky smile; his chin was somehow both solidly squared and ephemerally boyish. His hair looked like the stings of a violin, thick and oiled and cut with precision.

  It wasn’t quite love at first sight, but lust? Yes; Athena could remember the lust she’d felt quite well – after all, it had never quite left.

  He had been four years her junior, an even twenty, and they’d hit it off immediately – both personally, and in a business sense. She’d been the owner of an up-and-coming pet food empire, and he’d recently been given control of a rather impressive collection of casinos and shipping companies; it was simply good sense that they saw more of each other. It was like we were the only people in the room. Like we were the only two humans on Earth…

  She’d discovered he was a member of Team Rocket almost immediately, a fact that neither surprised her nor made even the slightest dent in their budding relationship; Athena had never been the sort of woman to put much stock in other people’s authority, and the law wasn’t exempt from that disdain. Then the smuggling ring – which was mostly what Rocket was in those days – had transformed almost overnight when the war hit, going from a successful underground enterprise to something almost mythical as those secret pathways stopped carrying poached Pokémon in favour of legitimate ones.

  And so, seeing the way the wind was blowing – and with a child growing in her belly – Athena Ariana had folded Growl and Meow Chow directly into the Rocket supply lines. Business had boomed, she’d prepared to become a mother, and, as Giovanni made plans to move to Viridian City to better manage his assets, he had finally disclosed his actual relationship with Team Rocket. That of its leader.

  (Somewhere far away, out in present reality, Athena’s lips curved into a smile. Oh, that had been sweet, learning her lover was even more than she’d known.)

  And even as the war begun to sour, she and Giovanni had remained head and shoulders above the rest of the world. It turned out that he had even more talent for battling than as a criminal, and she had as much talent for criminal enterprise than the legitimate variety. Team Rocket soared as high and fast as its namesake, she’d been making almost as much money as the president of Silph, and even if Kanto lost she’d been certain that they, the two of them, would remain on top no matter what.

  And then the rocket had crashed.

  “Mom,” came a sharp bark, the voice of her son drawing her from the depths of memory and into pain. There was no middle stage to blunt the transition; one moment Athena was reliving the past, light and airy and warm, and then she blinked and her body was so cold it was burning. Her limbs felt like dead wood, each breath brought tears to her eyes, and she was only upright because a giant crocodilian was lifting nine-tenths of her weight for her via a clawed hand hooked into the inside of her collar.

  “Huh? Silver?” Silver, my son… My and Giovanni’s son… Was that his first word? ‘Mom’? I’m so… proud…

  Athena bit, hard, and a shock of much cleaner pain sent the hazy clouds away – for the moment. “Silver,” she said again, ignoring the taste of blood. “I was out of it for a bit; where are we and-”

  “Get your Pokémon out,” he interrupted, back silhouetted against the harsh late-morning sky, and belatedly she noticed the rest of his team standing around him. “Jaws, in front.”

  All six? He’s never brought out all of them at once – what are we..?

  As the feraligatr released her Athena’s true weight reasserted itself, and her vision went grey for a moment – but even in the haze, with her body numbed and her mind doing its level best to snuff itself out, her hand found the smooth, reassuring shapes of her Pokéballs. She threw them down one after the other, the flashes dull, the sound of release far away, her motions driven by pure muscle memory with functionally zero understanding of where her various limbs even were in relation to each other or her aching torso… and as her vision began to come back Athena Ariana saw their opponent seated on a stone a ways away. Just sitting out in the open, an absent-faced dragonite doing the same on the bare ground to his side.

  He was small, the sort of small that came from something that was once large having shrunk. A loose sort of small, the skin of his face only barely held onto the underlying skull with too little meat between them, his back visibly bony through the fabric of his cape where it hunched above his head – the traditional Blackthorn attire looked almost like a circus tent when applied to such a wizened figure.

  “Burgh Blackthorn,” she hissed. Fuck.

  “Master,” her son said, his voice much steadier. “I guess it was pretty stupid of me to think we could avoid the entire clan while going through their mountains. Who was it that spotted us? Or was it you?” There was no response. “Hmph. Gonna try and convince me to come back?”

  The old man and former Silver League Champion stood with unconcealed effort, and slowly shook his head. Around Athena her team bristled at the motion, Muk bubbling and Arbok flaring her hood – they, with their sharpened senses, could tell what calibre of enemy was in front of them without the crutch of human knowledge.

  “No. You are a stubborn boy, Silver… that is what made you a good trainer. I doubt a tongue-lashing from me would convince you of anything.”

  “Hah. Made me a good trainer? Don’t talk like you’ve already won.”

  As if in response to his words a second and third dragonite appeared from the sky, crashing down without the slightest care for the stress such a powerful landing must be putting on their bodies. Like the first they were larger than any dragonite she’d ever seen, both taller and broader than the ones his grandchildren used – dragonite looked fat as a rule, but these three were very nearly spherical.

  Her tongue stung as she pressed it to the roof of her mouth. Fuck. We’re out in the open – nothing to stop them from strafing us to death. Of course she had moves that could hit fliers, but these were Blackthorn dragonite; those bulky bodies were deceptive. They were likely as fast in the air as Silver’s weavile was on the ground.

  “Hm, banter. I’m afraid I’m simply not in the mood. Attack.”

  With that laconic order the three dragons burst away from their master, scattering – no, not away, Burgh was gone. He must’ve grabbed on- where are-?

  She blinked – and Muk and Vileplume were in front of her, blocking a bolt of brilliant lightning. They- neither of them are fast. How much time did I just lose?

  It couldn’t be very much, given the fight was still happening, but the fact that she’d drifted off at all with the amount of adrenaline currently in her system was terrifying. “Toxic!” she cried, backpedaling and reaching for an Antidote, and Muk all but exploded into an evil purple cloud that was countered by the soft snow turning to sleet. “Acid Armour! Vileplume, Solar Beam!” Usually the grass type was more useful as support – and the sun-fueled attack would take even longer to build up in this weather – but there was no way Stun Spore would ever hit; the dragons were too high, and too fast. Even Toxic is a long shot.

  A glance behind showed Arbok’s eyes glowing with an intimidating Glare and Lickitung rubbing her temples in an attempt to get off a Disable on the distant foes. Murkrow was nowhere to be seen, which was either good or very, very bad, and Sneasel, the relative baby of the team, was struggling to make an Icy Wind lift beyond the scattered treetops. The ampoule went into her leg with a sharp snap of pain, delivering its contents – and she felt the nausea worsen rather than abate as the chemical soup ran up against her body’s ability to process what was already in her system.

  Eyes forward, and Athena watched Silver’s feraligatr leap a full thirty feet into the air – Strength? Superpower? – but even that wasn’t enough. Burgh’s dragonite were acting more like bomber planes than the overwhelming physical fighters the species was normally seen as; they were simply too far up for anything but another flier to fight them effectively, raining down electricity and ice with eerie accuracy.

  Damn it. Damn it! “Silver, we need to-”

  “We can’t retreat,” he countered before she’d even finished, his calm at odds with the situation. “Where would we hide? There isn’t any cover they can’t blast through – we’re on a damn mountaintop.”

  He was right, but every instinct she had told her they should be trying it anyway. There had to be a cave, an outcropping, something – and it wasn’t like they’d be any more vulnerable on the move. “I-”

  “Mom,” came another interruption. “This isn’t as bad as it looks. I know how Master Blackthorn fights – trust me.”

  He turned, and flashed her a wooden smile as elemental fury rained down like artillery.

  As it turned out, fire hadn’t been nearly as difficult to acquire as Cliff had thought. “Well I’ll be damned. There’s even a starter just sitting here.”

  Not twenty metres through the building’s twisting front they’d stumbled on a campsite fashioned out of a small room, which was extremely welcome despite its out-of-place air within the artificial environment. A family of ekans had been living in the tent, but Smash hadn’t even needed to use his club to chase them off – just the appearance of the cubone had sent the snakes slithering off to find a new home.

  “Is there food?” Puce asked, leaning out through the tent flap. “Oh, and no, the sleeping bags aren’t usable.”

  “Bodies?”

  The awkward silence and look on the woman’s face immediately told him no, there weren’t any bodies inside. Well don’t look at me like that, abandoned tents don’t just pop out of the ground. “No. Um, I mean there are little bones in pellets, but no, no people.”

  “Hm.” Maybe whoever this was just got a scare and left without packing. Overly optimistic? Maybe. But he figured they were owed a bit of optimism at this point. And speaking of optimism, looks like there actually is some- ah.

  Cliff upended the knapsack, spilling the bits of scrap tin that were all that were left inside – save for some mouse droppings. “Steel types, electric types, and rodents… Don’t think we’re gonna find any food around here.” And we’ll have to guard what we brought from the ship like hawks; pikachu will get into nearly anything, and magnemite will try for the rest. But after a second of staring at the detritus, he huffed. “Well, doesn’t matter. We’ll dry off, have a hot meal, and Grind can guard us as we sleep; in the morning we can figure out how to deal with the rain, if it’s still happening.”

  A peal of thunder rattled through the building, telling him what the storm thought of his attempt at good cheer, but Cliff was undeterred; he’d made it through much worse situations. As long as we don’t wake up the Storm by doing something hideously stupid like venturing into the centre, we’ll be fine. And even if the Zapdos were already awake – as the heavy off-season thunder suggested – they were still going to be fine; it wouldn’t care about them. Again, unless we do something stupid. “…Hey Puce.”

  Soiled cloth flew out from the tent, followed by a distracted reply. “Yeah? This thing’s filled with plastic – I think they used to be radios, but…”

  Radios… you know, that fits. “If the Zapdos shows up, we’re running.” I think we’re looking at an observation station – this was where the League was keeping tabs. Now, the question remains: what made them disappear?

  “…Yeah? I mean why would-”

  Silence as she cut herself off, and then Puce stuck her head out, aghast. “Oh my god it lives in the power plant. We’re in the power plant..!” Her reaction was so extreme, and so delayed, that Cliff couldn’t help but laugh. At the same time his chuckles petered out the flint and steel firestarter he’d looted finally caught the nice convenient pile of wood, and the camp immediately brightened.

  “Don’t worry. People come here to catch Pokémon all the time; as long as we don’t go near the nest we’re no more interesting than a pair of electabuzz.”

  Puce gave him a skeptical look but eventually nodded, and they each resumed their tasks. By the time noon rolled around they were eating, surrounded by their Pokémon, and after that Cliff left his onix out to surround the camp with his thirty-foot bulk. Things were, barring a few wild ‘mons sniffing about, peaceful.

  Then, after maybe an hour of sleep, the screeching began. Cliff awoke instantly, but not instantly enough to stop a collapsing wall from sealing off the way back to the entrance. He blinked, awake without being aware, then cried out an emergency release as the overwhelming sound of the legend’s fury echoed through the cavernous building to reach the tight corridors of its outskirts.

  “Protect!”

  Jason paused for the barest fraction of a second, and then moved. Most Pokémon couldn’t do much more than turn and maybe take a step while the near-impenetrable shield was in place, but the weavile was sprinting, blocking shots for both Pinhead and Jaws as Kreuger executed precise Teleport-dodges and Vlad did much the same with sheer manoeuvrability. Stein was somewhere underground, waiting patiently for the signal to start ascending.

  It was the gengar, his second ace, that would decide this; while his crobat and maybe alakazam could reach the enemy without being shot down, they weren’t going to be taking out those monstrous dragons with conventional attacks – the Dragon Master may have lost the title of Champion when Silver was a baby, but his team looked to still be in their prime. He must have trained another generation away from prying eyes…

  Or, alternate theory, he’s just kept his Pokémon in stasis since the very second the war ended. Both scenarios were plausible; Silver had never seen these three in all his time living in Blackthorn City, and Burgh was exactly the type to want to leave his strength intact for the next generation. He was that sort of person – kind, honourable, generous, and fucking scary.

  Because when he fought, the leader of the Dragon Priests put his personal scruples to the side. It was probably twisting him up inside to do this… but that emotional pain wasn’t enough to stop the elemental fury raining down. Damn not-so-fake ascetic. It’s almost admirable.

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Too bad that old-school style’s gonna let me win.

  Or, well, it gave him a chance. “Mom, how you doing?” Bad, answered an instinctive thought, but he pushed the pessimism aside. His mother may not be on his level, but she was a Pokémon trainer – disrespecting that was out of line, even if he thought her choice of careers was dogshit.

  Her actual response was clipped. “I am feeling outclassed, Silver.” The implied ‘How much longer are we going to pretend we can win?’ rang in his ears almost as loud as the thunder, and for the first time he truly considered it.

  No. No, it won’t work; Burgh is too much of a powerhouse, and this team’s even better than the old-timers I know. The only way we can win is to get tricky, and that means catching him off his guard. I was a cocky little shit back when I started training with Clair – hell, I’m still a cocky shit, I can admit that much. He has to believe I still think I can overpower him! Which was why his feraligatr and alakazam were hurling chunks of the terrain, why Pinhead was matching the dragons’ Thunder. And honestly, it isn’t like the chances of that happening would be zero anyway.

  The dragonite were taking damage, even with gravity in their favour. Jason’s Icicle Spear was the main culprit, but Krueger’s Psychics were reaching up and drawing blood. Glares from his mother’s arbok and Confuse Rays from Vlad were addling their aim, and the crobat’s Haze was soothing down the overwork Jaws’s Superpowered throws were inflicting on his muscles. You know, if I get Stein going with Shadow Ball too…

  No, I said fucking no. No going off to my own personal la-la land; we stick with the plan, take our lumps, and come out with the win… no matter what it takes. So he kept directing his Pokémon to fight strong and stupid, he endured his mother’s withering looks and gradual breakdown into a vomiting mess, and his team took chips out of Burgh while he took gouges out of them.

  Then, it happened – the Dragon Master looked at the previous minutes with a critical eye, saw Jason gradually honing his claws as his Pressure tired the three dragons prematurely, saw his own stock of medicine dwindling as Toxic hit over and over despite the ludicrous distance… and descended a bit in order to improve his own aim.

  Or maybe he can’t handle his own weather, Silver thought savagely as he endured the facefuls of icy sleet. Man’s almost eighty, after all. He’s gotta be halfway to a popsicle, even with the waterproof cape. Whatever the reason was, the dragons had descended – and that was the redhead’s cue. A sharp whistle cut the air as Silver gestured, and all his Pokémon started double-timing it.

  And, somewhere under the shade of the clouds Burgh had summoned to aid his Thunders and Hurricanes and Blizzards, Stein the gengar was secretly levitating upwards.

  Inside the abandoned power plant, with both the mostly-intact roof and thick rolling clouds blocking out the sun, one in the afternoon looked a lot like one after midnight.

  “Go go go!” Cliff yelled, and Puce obeyed; with Munchlax under one arm and their supplies the other, she vaulted through the debris-strewn rooms. The husks of giant machines, their innards pilfered by various Pokémon over the years, seemed to jump out from the darkness as though maliciously alive. “Which way?!”

  “P-point outside, munchlax! Find berries!”

  Munchlax, with entirely too little urgency given that a grand indoor lightshow was playing out less than a hundred metres away over the tops of the chewed-open interior walls, sniffed and pointed with one pudgy arm. Puce whirled and made a one-eighty backwards, then a left turn around some hulking metal turbine-thing that saw her pass within touching distance of an angry electrode. “Cliff! We were going the wrong-!”

  “I noticed!” he bellowed back, just behind her shoulder, and she was comforted by the fact that she hadn’t left him behind.

  “What’s even happening?! D-did the Zapdos smell us?”

  “It’s fighting something!” Booming thunder punctuated the enforcer’s words, and Puce felt adrenaline-dulled pain shoot up her side as she didn’t quite dodge past a torn-open husk of aluminum. “Some dumbass trainer actually thinks they can fight the-”

  Another boom, so loud it made her vision go white, and then Puce was enveloped by something hard – Cliff’s tyranitar was hugging her, she realised, and-

  And then there was a great vibration, an impact, and ten seconds passed where she was once again so numb it hurt. She blinked, attempting to blink away the dazzling light, and as Crumb pulled away reality started to assert itself. The roof fell down, she half-realised-half-wondered as she took in the collapsed wreckage – and then she looked frantically around, failing to find her companion. “Cliff! Cliff, are you-?!”

  A muffled screech, and then his onix shook itself free from the red-painted pile of debris it’d been buried under. Puce carefully put Munchlax down and went forward, tearing away the bits of roof to reveal the man and his venusaur. “Oh thank Arcus, Cliff, I thought..!”

  He grunted as he crawled free, returning his Pokémon the moment they didn’t need to hold the crushing weight of the pile up. With the living supports gone it collapsed, thousands of pounds of mixed steel and aluminum and plastic insulation mashing themselves flat. “Holy shit,” the enforcer cursed. “Thought I was a goner. Talk about acts of god…”

  He was shivering, and Puce realised she was the same; they were keyed-up, terrified, and now that the roof was gone once again drenched in ice-water. “W-what will we do now?” The sounds of battle had moved away, most likely outside the plant’s ruin entirely, but that was far from safe given the Pokémon they were apparently dealing with. Is it- is it really the Zapdos? It’s not like we’ve seen it, it could just be- just be a-

  The biscuits she’d eaten came up in a rush, and Puce spent a mysterious amount of time upchucking. With the crashing thunder and the downpour and her own fear forming a sick cocktail in her head to match the one in her gut, it almost… Hah. I think I’m having a religious experience. Was this what Mister Mutsu had felt when he’d started praying to that unsettling statue of Lady Mew? Was this what her parents felt on the scant occasions they went to church? My… My parents…

  “It’s alright,” came Cliff’s voice, again from over her shoulder, and as he patted her back the strange too-big feeling of awe was cut with embarrassment and gratitude. “It’s alright, Puce. We’re gonna make it – the hard part’s over. Take the route northwest, swing around Cerulean, and we’re home free. Can you stand up for me?”

  “…I miss my parents. I don’t wanna be a Rocket anymore.”

  Cliff didn’t respond for a long time, only slowly making his way to her front – but when he did, his voice was almost a whisper. “If you still feel that way when we hit civilisation, then…” Thunder, more distant than ever, boomed – it must be over the ocean now. Whoever was fighting the Zapdos, they had to really be giving it their all. “Then you can leave. I told Hoshi the same thing; we aren’t a military. And I think you’ve more than paid us back for the ‘mon and black felt.”

  Then, Cliff did something she hadn’t been expecting in the slightest: he leaned down, still moving with incredible slowness, his lips puckering – and Puce recognised the incoming kiss and panicked, shoving him away.

  He took two steps back, slipped on the wet rubble, and fell on his behind as she exclaimed. “Oh! I-I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to push you, that was so rude, I was just surprised..!”

  In the alternatingly scant and overwhelmingly bright light of the thunderstorm – which showed no sign of dissipating despite the Zapdos’s departure – Cliff looked taken aback for an eternal second… and then he laughed. It started slow, and out-of-breath wheeze, but within moments he was belting out wild guffaws. Puce stared, confused and so embarrassed she felt her cheeks must be as red as a pikachu’s, but eventually the mixed emotions turned to catharsis and she joined in.

  “I- I- I really am sorry,” she stuttered as she dry-heaved.

  “No, I – I shouldn’t have pulled that. Just- we’ve been on that damned ship alone for so long, and you looked so sad, and…”

  Silence.

  “…Um… You’re a very handsome man? But I’m sort of uh…” The situation was too ridiculous; here they were, sitting in the middle of a collapsed building, getting slowly turned into popsicles, and some sort of horribly funny romantic comedy moment was playing out. She started laughing again as Munchlax pawed around in their supplies and came back out with a mouthful of ship biscuits, and that was funny too. She started heaving, her body attempting to remove an irritant that didn’t exist, and the hysterical reaction continued even as the senior Rocket helped her to stand. “B-being courted? By someone else, I mean.”

  “Sorry. Again. But I really do think we’re over the hump – as long as we don’t stick around, that is. I know we’re far from rested up, but can you..?”

  “I can move,” Puce answered, trying – and mostly succeeding – to control the laughter that was still climbing up her ribs. “I- yes, I can move. We really do need to get out of this rain, though…”

  You know, I think this might just be the worst thing I’ve ever felt.

  Athena had been poisoned before. By wild Pokémon, by her own Pokémon accidentally, by particularly canny opponents, and on one memorable occasion by a subordinate who’d thought she could usurp her position with a spot of assassination. In some of those situations, she hadn’t had immediate – or any – access to medicine. In some of them, she’d had to keep fighting while suffering the effects of whatever she’d been dosed with.

  But the Ankoku poison was agonising. I guessed it wrong, she thought as her vision swung between dark and bright, neither state very useful. Her ears were faring slightly better; Sneasel was down, Arbok was down, and Murkrow was still missing. She had to hope that they weren’t just silently bleeding out, because her fingers were no longer obeying their orders – she couldn’t keep hold of a ball long enough to half-blindly fumble through returning them. This isn’t a killing poison – I’d be dead or unconscious by now if it was. This is meant for torture. She could only imagine what would have happened if they’d caught her slightly more off-guard and she hadn’t had an Antidote on hand- but no, Silver had been there.

  But could Silver have beaten that rotten woman? His team is stronger than mine, but I know the poison type better than him. The little motions that signpost an attack before it happens, the physical tells that let you guess a ‘mon’s moveset beforehand…

  She knew it was useless to speculate, but she was having difficulties staying in the moment – not only was she only half-lucid, but the half of her in reality really didn’t want to be there. Her joints were on fire, it felt like her entrails were being tied into one giant knot even after they’d expelled everything even slightly solid from inside themselves, and if she couldn’t see that she was still upright she’d have assumed she was on the ground, her limbs incapable of holding weight.

  But Athena did have some level of awareness of what was going on, even through the haze. My son is holding his own. None of the dragons are down, but he’s keeping up with Potions and grit. And it wasn’t like her own team was completely outclassed – just mostly, hah. Muk had Gunk Shot and Vileplume Solar Beam, and while gravity was against them that could only do so much against such powerful attacks. There was a tiny little sliver of a chance that they would win…

  And of course, if she could see that then Burgh obviously could. Which was probably why the orange-and-tan blobs suddenly reversed their previous descent, climbing not only to their original altitude but surpassing it. Soon they were gone, though whether that was because the clouds had swallowed them or because Athena’s vision was simply too poor to pick them out, she couldn’t say. “…He’s not giving up, is he?” she asked – or at least, she felt she was asking; her tongue was either shrivelled up into a husk, melting, or so swollen it was filling most of her mouth, depending on which of the various sensations arcing through the muscle she asked.

  “Huh?”

  Damn it, at this rate I really will die even if he’s beat a retreat. “What is Burgh doing, Silver?”

  Her son turned to give her a wincing look. “I can’t understand a word you’re saying – here, take an Antidote before things pop off again.”

  She fended off his attempts to jab her with another dose – which would absolutely, definitely kill her with an overdose so soon after the last one – and after a moment he understood. “You already fucking took one? Arcus, that’s bad – you look like dogshit.”

  Thank you, my son, for that vital and relevant comment. You really do have a way with words. “Never mind that. You said he’s coming back? He’s com-ing back?” The overenunciation did the trick, and Silver nodded.

  “Oh yeah.” And then he smiled. “Right after the Hyper Beam exhaustion wears off, would be my guess.”

  He said it so nonchalantly, with a soft smile and a twinkle in his eye, that for a moment Athena didn’t quite register the words themselves. “Hyper Beam..?”

  Then it came down, and she yelled “Protect!” as her son did the same – and then everything disappeared as the thick blasts of white light enveloped everything.

  And then she blinked, and she was still alive – had to be alive, with the amount of pain she was experiencing. “Good job, Muk,” Arhena praised as the living ooze blooped in exhaustion, pulling herself back together from the branching tree-like shape she’d assumed to cover the maximum area possible. We survived a former Champion’s Hyper Beam – now all we have to do is figure out how to survive the next. Because there was no way that would happen a second time; Muk was spent, and Vileplume’s Protect wouldn’t reach far enough to shield anyone else. The sterile calculation went through her mind, cutting through the pull of dreamy half-sleep. Fifteen seconds, maybe, before the next volley.

  Silver had survived as well, of course, though his magneton and feraligatr were out – his team was much more offensively-focused than hers, and while that meant they’d been doing the bulk of the damage, it also meant the Weavile – the one Pokémon with Protect – hadn’t been able to block nearly as much as Muk. So we’re going to die. Burgh’s taken the kid gloves off, and we’re going to die.

  And yet Silver, her little boy, still had that soft smile on his face. “Come on, Stein,” he mouthed, “Any second now…”

  Her awareness of his prayer dropped away as the fugue of near-death broke, and Athena turned to use her last few Potions on Muk and Vileplume. There was no ability to aim left in her limbs, and so she just sprayed and let them find the mist themselves – and then, as the dragons were no doubt shaking off the drain of the super move up above the clouds, she managed to get both hands around Arbok’s ball and croak out a “Return.”

  The great snake dissolved into light, and she fumbled for Sneasel’s next, knowing in her heart that there wouldn’t be enough time, that she was only going through the motions and hoping for a miracle. A delirium-aided vision played out before her eyes, of Giovanni suddenly popping out to rescue them, of Jessie and James materialising with a cavalry of Rockets. “Silver,” she slurred, “Do you have more Pokémon? Your dragons?” Is that why you’re so confident?

  He blinked. “My Gym team? Hah… I guess bringing them would’ve been the smart thing to do, huh?” Shit. There goes that idea… “Nah. If I can’t deal with my own personal business with my own personal team, then that’s that. I’m done with stealing whatever looks strongest and then pretending those wins had anything to do with me – that would make me a massive hypocrite, no different from those idiot gangsters still chasing Dad’s shadow.”

  There was no time for her to process the words; the clouds glowed like hot metal, and Athena winced. A mighty shrieking boom sounded out – but there was no impact. She looked up, frowning, as the three Hyper Beams went ridiculously wide. When the vibrations hit, it was from a great distance. “What?”

  Tetsuro watched the Hyper Beam pass perilously close – as in, it flashed through the sky three-hundred or so metres above their heads – with a stoic expression. His partner, Clarice Blackthorn, did so with less grace; she let out a squeak loud enough to dislodge snow from the boughs of the tree they were sheltering under.

  “Wow.”

  “H-holy-! Master Burgh must be having trouble! We should..!”

  She trailed off, obviously reconsidering her words as the massive laser took a chunk off Mount Wuji’s top. “S-stay out of his way,” his nominal peer finished lamely, and Tetsuro nodded.

  “You’re completely right. At this point we’d either get blasted or force him to pull back – let’s just sit tight.” And… let things play out. His voice was steady, but internally Tetsuro Blackthorn of the Blackthorn Clan was a lot less composed. Just wait and see if the Boss can pull it off.

  The thought felt dirty, but then again so did the opposing thought of helping his relatives capture the Gym Leader. Silver may have abandoned his post, but… But he did it clean. Didn’t take any Pokémon, didn’t wreck anything, didn’t just disappear without a word… Again, it felt bad to think; far too thin a justification for what he was planning to do. Almost childish.

  And yet, he still wanted to do it – to side with his superior of nearly a year over the clan that had kept him fed and housed after his parents’ deaths. Tetsuro had been a member of the Blackthorn City Pokémon Gym for fifteen years, half his life, and somehow that shaggy-headed, self-professed bastard had managed to leave more of an impression than either of the two Gym Leaders prior. Part of it was their shared frustrations with family, but… But that shouldn’t be enough to betray the clan. Right?

  Ugh, I’m waffling. Which was stupid; he’d already – all the Gym Trainers had already – decided on a course of action. If he actually pulled out he’d be leaving them in the lurch, and that would be-

  “It’s been a bit since the last Hyper Beam, hasn’t it?”

  Tetsuro blinked, his introspection thrown off by the woman’s observation. It.. has, hasn’t it? “Think he switched to Giga Impact?” That would be the natural next step; break the enemy’s stamina with overlapping ranged attacks, then secure the kill using a dragonite’s stupendous physical power. Textbook dragon tamer tactics, tried and proven true over decades of refinement. Except Silver is a Dragon Monk too – he’d have had a counter in mind before trying this, right?

  The silence loudly refused to provide an answer, and Tetsuro continued to waver. Right?

  “Ut?”

  As his mother slurred out her confusion behind his back, Silver couldn’t help the savage grin that stole over his features. “Fuck yeah, Stein. Knew you could do it.”

  The proof of the plan’s success came only seconds later, as three tiny dots – no, four, one was just substantially smaller – came drifting down slowly. Even asleep, the dragonite instinctively flared their wings to glide. “Fuck yeah!” Silver yelled as he came down from the uncertainty, his voice loud enough it might just be reaching up to its target. “We fucking did it! Take that you old fart, didn’t think I could get tricky with it did you?!”

  The spike of joy was dulled some as his mother went down on her knees, but still. They’d won. The tinier speck quickly ballooned in size as it outpaced the hypnotised dragons, resolving into a now-solid gengar carrying the struggling Dragon Master in his arms.

  “You- how? We were a kilometre up! How could you possibly have gotten a Pokémon up there so quickly?” Burgh’s face was slack with astonishment – though the ex-Gym Leader noted that he was struggling a lot harder than his expression would’ve indicated.

  By predicting you’d lose your cool and go for the big guns at the first hint of being matched, Silver said in his head but not aloud; if Burgh thought he could still get out of this, there was no reason to say anything. Choke on the mystery of it, you sanctimonious old bag. That’s for all the stupid useless lectures I had to sit through when I could’ve been training. Yes, victory was sweet.

  Vlad and Krueger came in once it was obvious the contingency wouldn’t be necessary – Silver had thought that maybe the ancient Dragon Priest had something up his sleeve to fend off a ghost, meaning he could’ve used an Awakening and they’d still have had one dragonite to deal with. But that didn’t happen. They took their places to either side of him as he got Jaws back up and Pinhead in their ball – the magneton would just have to sleep it off, since they were officially out of Potions. “So, Master, are you gonna surrender quietly?” I’d eat my fucking cape if so, but weirder things have happened. “Or am I gonna have to find an intact tree to tie you to?”

  Disregarding the life still in his limbs – which I’m not going to do, but for the sake of argument – Burgh was showing his age and then some. There was frost crawling across the dome of his bald head, and the skin of his face was sallow in a way it usually wasn’t. “…I didn’t expect this to happen,” he said, voice low and, even clutched in the arms of a gengar as he was and with his Pokémon slowly spiralling downward unconscious, with a deep undercurrent of disbelief. “I underestimated you.”

  “You and everyone I’ve ever met. Now toss down your Pokéballs nice and slow, and I won’t have to let Stein get nasty.” The ghost clicked his brilliantly white and perfectly straight teeth behind the monk’s ear as punctuation, and at long last Burgh stopped struggling. Fucking finally. At this rate Mom’s going to choke on her tongue before I get this wrapped up… Not that I can ignore it, since taking my eyes off him would be fucking stupid. Especially while he was within surviving-the-fall distance.

  With glacial slowness, Burgh reached into the shapeless robes that contrasted so heavily against the scale-pattern cape, and Silver braced for him to show some trickery of his own at the last minute – but all he drew out was a storage-mode Pokéball, which he dropped to the ground. The little plink as it bounced made his spine tingle – he would never admit it out loud, but there had been a very large part of Silver Capo that had doubted he could win. But fuck me along with everyone else; we pulled it off. Jaws sniffed at the ball as his master retrieved it, and Burgh once again reached into his robe-

  And that was when Silver’s mother cried out. “Kill ‘m-!” she exclaimed, and he spent a precious fraction of a second stunned that she’d gotten back on her feet while he’d been distracted.

  She pointed, her Muk let loose a semi-gaseous round of Toxic, and her paranoia was justified as Burgh drew a gun rather than a second ball. Oh my fucking- I let my guard down right after saying I wouldn’t-!

  Silver had time for a burst of disgust, some for himself but mostly for Burgh – what kind of trainer carries a gun, do you have no pride left you shitty fossil – but not quite enough time to release Pinhead again. A shame; the steel type would’ve blocked a bullet just fine, even unconscious and in bits.

  But to his mingled relief and horror, the Blackthorn Clan’s patriarch was not, in fact, carrying a pistol – no, he was carrying a flare gun. Stein viciously dug into the man’s shoulders, and there was a dull snap that was probably a bone breaking, but despite that Burgh’s motions were sharp and lightning-quick as he turned the bulky thing skyward and pulled the trigger.

  A pop, and then a red star ascended towards the clouds. Silver snarled – but as he came down from the adrenaline rush of oh fuck if that had been a real fucking gun I’d be dead he started to laugh.

  It wasn’t long, or satisfying, but as Burgh was doused in Toxic and immediately turned an alarming purple it was definitely cathartic. “Are you stupid? You just vaporised three random chunks of mountain a minute ago; what the fuck is a flare going to do?” I should just let him die, the sore loser. Almost shit myself there, Arcus… But no. Apparently the last few Antidotes he’d stockpiled – for the Ankoku, though he’d ended up not giving a single shit about them once he’d seen his mom’s state – would just kill her faster at this point, so he might as well spend one as a parting gift for the years of… Shared suffering, I suppose. Silver stepped forward and gestured for Stein to lower himself as Jaws gnashed his teeth and Kreuger gestured with a spoon to pull the flare gun from Burgh’s weakening grasp.

  But first… But first, because he’d be fucked if he made the same mistake twice in a row, Silver gave the old man a pat-down. He relieved him of the remaining two Pokéballs, tossed a pack of caramels aside, and confiscated a Max Potion and three Full Heals – knew he had something left. Only then did he slam the brightly-coloured plastic tube into the former Champion’s shoulder, causing Burgh to immediately stop swelling up into a grape. His skin deflated with sickening speed, drooping to hang even looser from his cheeks and jowls.

  “There. Consider that my going-away present, jackass. Mom! Can you walk? No, scratch that, can you take a Full Heal? Is that like, different chemically from an Antidote?”

  “Mm… Yesh…”

  “Great, I’m gonna pray to whatever half-assed deity is listening that that was an actual answer, and not just you cooing at the pretty colours. Jaws, take the old man, Stein, you’re on lookout duty – you have my permission to do whatever the fuck you want to anybody you see.” Again, there’s no way that little flare did what six Hyper Beams and that whole entire battle before them didn’t, but just in case it did…

  It was a stupid thought, and Silver hated the way it elevated his heartbeat as he poured the overwhelmingly lemon-scented liquid down his mother’s throat. But then why did he fucking do it? The Master isn’t stupid, he wouldn’t do something to make me retaliate for no reason… “You alright? Mom?”

  She grimaced, standing there silent and with a zombie-like wobble that made the roots of his teeth itch, then coughed and spat. “I… I think that bought me a few hours.”

  Great. That would be just enough time to make it into the actual mountains if he completely wrecked himself and his alakazam sprinting and Teleporting as much as possible. And that’s assuming we don’t run into any other Blackthorn- “Son of a bitch.” Silver turned back to where Jaws was lying atop the Dragon Master like he was a clutch of very angry eggs. “You ancient prideful canny old fuck.”

  “Hm,” Burgh croaked. “Figured it out, did you?”

  Backup. He didn’t come alone – of course he didn’t come alone, he wouldn’t have been able to find us over such a large area. The rest of the clan must be spread out across the entire range. And Burgh, the old bastard, wouldn’t have wanted them in the line of fire – so he’d ordered them to stay back while he took care of it. Unless he lost. Unless they saw a signal.

  With quick jittery motions Silver returned Burgh’s dragonite, cursing as the distance caused him to miss with the lasers over a dozen times, then secured them with the same standard Gym Leader-issued leather straps that were still around Jiei’s team. “We’re about to have company,” he sent towards his mother – who, at least, was looking a bit less walking corpse. “Any chances your team can take… six, seven Dragon Priests, maybe?”

  Her withering look was all the answer he received, and Silver felt a chuckle sitting in his chest. Gradually building, but not enough to actually surface. “Yeah, I figured. Krueger, how far can you teleport?” An alien burst of information said two kilometres, or there abouts, and he supposed that would have to be enough. Teleport, maybe find a cave or have Jaws dig a hole, wait for a day- no, Mom will never make it a whole day. Teleport, hope the net isn’t tight enough we get caught, or fight through if we do. Speed is the most important thing; Vlad can carry Mom if her Pokémon aren’t up to it, he’ll be cranky as shit but that’s life, give Krueger an hour to rest, use the next few Teleports to skip over valleys… Staying on the mountaintops would see them stick out like sore thumbs in comparison to the lowlands, but it would let the alakazam aim better and keep them moving in a more-or-less straight line rather than following the curve of a valley. Fuck, this is a shitty plan.

  But it was the only one he could even begin to see as workable, so that was that – no time to sit and think about it. “Everybody start moving – Burgh, if I ever see your bald ass again I won’t save you a second time. Stay down.”

  Tetsuro of the Blackthorn Clan saw the flare come up with a distant sort of wonder, his thoughts congealing into a nearly-solid mass. Huh. Boss really did it. Was genuinely worried there for a minute. The understatement was laughable; with Master Burgh taking his war team out of storage, the most likely outcome had always been the Gym Leader and his crime boss of a mother being reduced to ash – those dragonite weren’t trained to be gentle. Wonder how he pulled it off…

  “T-there it is! Gym Trainer, look! The signal! Master Burgh really must have lost!”

  Well, he supposed the how of it didn’t really matter. “Calm down, Clarice. Are your Pokémon ready? Silver will probably still have some fight in him.”

  The Dragon Priestess turned to him with a nervous look. “O-of course they’re ready!” She put action to words, and a dragonite and shelgon appeared – and they did, indeed, look ready to fight, unlike their walking anxiety attack of a trainer.

  Come on, don’t be mean, he thought, gathering himself. That hard mass in the centre of his head softened a touch – but not nearly enough to deform. “…Yeah, okay. Let’s go in.” Just being a dragon tamer doesn’t say anything about personality – and personality doesn’t say anything about ability. Clarice may not be the most… assertive person, but she came out here of her own free will. Ready to fight a… a traitor. And that was worthy of respect. His own team of three-plus-one appeared; two gyarados, his Ace seadra, Hobkins, and Golgo, one of the Gym’s – Silver’s – eighth-badge dragonite. He let his eye wander over the line of dragons and pseudo-dragons, and took a deep breath to… prepare. My guys are ready too. Me? Not so much.

  “R-right! Poppy, we’re going to go save Master Burgh! Grab Hyacinthe and-”

  An exhale, and Tetsuro’s resolve crystallised. With a gesture and two short sentences, he betrayed everything he should’ve cared about in favour of a bond that had grown strong in the background, thickening with training sessions and discussions of move selection and a great void where family should have been. If my parents hadn’t been taken by the war, would I consider myself a real Blackthorn? Would I have become a priest, instead of going for the Gym? “Clarice Blackthorn, I challenge you to a Pokémon battle. Everyone, Ice Fang.”

  “H-Huh?!”

  In the end, he supposed it didn’t matter; the past had played out one way, and the Tetsuro who existed now was the only one who could’ve come from it.

  Half a minute later, the dragon specialist lifted a walkie-talkie to his downturned lips. “This is Gym One, calling Gym Two and Drake Two. You saw the signal?”

  A beat, and then the voice of Bindwood, the second-strongest Gym Trainer, answered. “Hey Ironside. Yeah, we saw it – priest turned his back to me and then… that was that. Didn’t even give ‘em a chance to release.”

  His frown hardened; the words tweaked the part of him that valued a fair fight… But if his junior felt differently that was his own business. They were all committing treason; taking a moral high road at this point felt too absurd. “Good. I’m off to talk to Three and Four; you hang tight and-”

  “Hey, Tet? We… did the right thing, right? Saving the Gym Leader?”

  Bind’s hesitation caused Tetsuro to cut himself off, and he spoke carefully. “I can’t decide that for you, Trainer. I decided to do it, and… I don’t feel any regrets,” he lied. The glare of the restrained young woman was definitely giving him mixed feelings, just not enough to take it back. “Silver’s been good to us. I don’t feel bad about helping him get out of the country, and you agreed with me back when the truth came out and we all met up to decide what side we fell on.”

  “Yeah, but… that was before we found out he was Giovanni’s kid, right?”

  “Now’s a little late to get cold feet, Bind. Stay put, I’ll be by to take the priest off your hands – you can decide whether to turn yourself in or not after.”

  He clicked the receiver off before another doubt-filled sentence could cut into his softening resolve, and for a minute Tetsuro Blackthorn, formerly of the Blackthorn Clan, simply enjoyed the stark silence of the mountainside.

  Then the thoughts began to creep in. Was this really the right thing to do? If Silver really is Giovanni’s son, then… isn’t it kind of his family’s fault that mine has so many orphans? So many that I fell through the cracks?

  “Shut up, idiot,” he muttered to himself. Are you going to take credit for all the Kantonian orphans the war made? Just ‘cause your last name’s the same as the people who made them? Semi-bidden, a memory sprang forth: a rainy day during that first spring after Silver had taken over for old Rozen Blackthorn – and more specifically, Tetsuro’s attempts to buoy the new Gym Leader’s spirits after his first loss. ‘Don’t worry,’ Tetsuro had said, ‘Gym Leaders really shouldn’t win every time – and the fifth badge team is a bit weak right now anyway, since we just moved the Ace seadra up to sixth before you got here. In a week things will-’

  Silver had snarled then, and the Gym Trainer had expected a meltdown – but it hadn’t happened. His superior had, to his surprise, spoken calmly despite the grimace painting his features. ‘You’re contradicting yourself old man. Don’t say it’s fine to lose one second and then make excuses for me the next… and I’m not angry about that anyway.’ Tetsuro could still see it clearly in his mind’s eye, the strange heat in the younger man’s eyes – Silver had yet to earn his respect, but that heat had kept him from firing back about the old man thing despite that being a touchy subject.

  He’d thought that would be the end of it, but Silver had continued. ‘…I got some bad advice from a trio of idiots back when I was a kid, and I went around trying to get my hands on every strong Pokémon I could. I was a shit trainer for a little while – obviously I got better.’ The words had come out begrudgingly. ‘So… using somebody else’s Pokémon feels weird, alright? That’s all. I’ll get over it.’

  Another brief recollection of a conversation followed, then another; each had been slightly less awkward as they’d gotten used to each other’s quirks. As Tetsuro stood in the snow, feeling the cold mountain air on his face and watching the distant mix of rain and hail gradually break apart, his hand unconsciously went to the dragonite’s Pearl Ball affixed to his hip. The smooth texture was soothing, like scales, and it calmed his heart as he considered doing something actually insane.

  ‘My family?’ Silver repeated back in his head, voice bearing a certain rasp that had always made the dragon specialist think disgruntled teen regardless of the man’s actual age. ‘Who cares? They aren’t around anyhow, so fuck ‘em.’

  ‘Really? No family at all?’

  ‘…Okay, my mom visits sometimes. It hardly counts.’ Tetsuro’s stare had actually forced the Gym Leader to avert his eyes, a first – and until the morning when he’d gone to Goldenrod, the only time that had happened. ‘What? My shit’s personal – I’ll say we have disagreements about each others’ careers, so fuck off. That’s all you're getting.’

  …Yeah. Yeah, okay, I’m really doing this.

  The radio hissed static as he turned it back on. “Hey Bind… you know, I do feel kind of like shit about something.”

  “Huh? Oh, yeah – I feel the same way, man. Like, I know Gym Trainer duty was basically a daycare for fuckups, but I still feel bad about just betraying the clan, you know? I hope none of the others accidentally.. You know, went overboard.”

  “No, not that.” Though thanks for putting that worry in my head, jackass. “I feel weird about letting Silver go without his team. What do you say, wanna bring Lucky over and see him off properly?”

  The texture of the static changed to the higher rattle of an open line, but there was only silence from the other end. Time passed, enough that Tetsuro started to assume that silence would be the only reply – but then Bindwood sent a strangled groan through the receiver. “Arc, Ironside, are you serious? Those aren’t even- those are the Gym’s Pokémon. We should have ‘em, if anyone.”

  “You really believe that?” They’re his pro stable – the monsters he’d need to defend the city if it was ever attacked. They might not me ‘his team,’ but they’re his fucking team. And he’d left them behind, because in addition to being a damn fine trainer Silver was a melodramatic little drama queen who was more sentimental than he’d ever dare admit. He left them as an apology… and I for one don’t accept.

  The radio spat out harsh static – and then fell quiet. Tetsuro blinked, surprised, and then sighed out a steamy breath that stung his face where it blew back. I guess I should’ve expected that. “Oh. Well, that’s that.” He finally took control of his hand back from his hindbrain, drawing the ball and releasing Golgo. The dragon’s appearance caused Clarice to start struggling again, but Tetsuro only smiled. “Hey, big man.”

  Despite being their top dragon, Golgo was young; he hadn’t even reached his full height, and there was a slimness to his scaled belly that the specialist knew meant he wasn’t even close to overcoming his type’s inherent weakness to ice. Dragonite didn’t just look fat for no reason; that bulk was essential to flying up high where the air was freezing cold, and not having it meant Golgo was probably uncomfortable just standing around on the chilly mountain. Not that he shows it. You’re a drama queen too, aren’t you? Tetsuro gently stroked the dragon’s antennae, drawing a lazy blink as the horned head lowered.

  “You want to go see Silver, kid? Or do you wanna stick with me?”

  Another blink. Golgo tilted his head, and for a moment the dragonite’s large, expressive eyes seemed like sucking whirlpools…

  Then he let loose one of the long, almost eerie moans his species were known for, and took to the air in a blast of wind. Tetsuro shielded his eyes, but still got a facefull of snow. “Ha, bastard!” He took off after the speeding dragon, leaving Clarice to express her displeasure alone-

  And a few minutes later he met a group converging on Silver’s location. “Bind! I thought you wouldn’t go for it.” And that made me give up on convincing anyone else… hah. I should really know you guys better, we’ve been working together since Clair was Leader.

  Bindwood Blackthorn frowned back, sour despite the five other Gym Trainers forming a crowd around him. “I’m doing this under duress, alright? Everybody else agreed, so I can’t be the only guy to keep one…”

  Tetsuro laughed, then kept jogging after the low-flying dragonite as Golgo followed the scent of his trainer.