Masaki enters the Saffron Police Department’s monitoring station, then steps in front of the main screen to observe the boy a few rooms over. He looks younger than 12, today, small in some hunched-in way that goes beyond his posture. Masaki can make out some resemblance to his mother, mostly the hair and shape of the chin, and wonders if Laura knew all along what her son was. “How’s he doing?”

“Same as before. Determined, but also miserable and scared, but trying to hide it. Doing a better job with the second.”

“Any use of his powers?”

“Not that I can tell, but I wouldn’t trust my assessment.”

“Don’t worry, I don’t.”

Touta rolls his eyes, but Masaki just sips from his coffee, gaze still on the boy. Red Verres’s file, insofar as he has one, was not enlightening. Barely anything of note until he started his journey, then it was one major thing after another, with occasional months-long quiet. Supposedly unlocked his powers just a year ago, and now there’s no one they can trust to evaluate him. Maybe Sabrina, if they could trust Sabrina to not be part of all this somehow, which Masaki also doesn’t.

He might get overruled on that, if the local League doesn’t see that Sabrina is the obvious person to have taught him how to do all these unique things. But that is, ostensibly, what she gathers students for in the first place, and so she has a convenient cover if any of them suddenly “develop” unusual powers.

“You’re being paranoid again.”

Masaki glances at Touta. “Lucky guess.” He wouldn’t have agreed to a psychic partner if he himself wasn’t dark, but Miracle Eye has changed things. Hard not to hold that against Verres, but he has to admit that possibility of teleporting someday does help… particularly given the ways the world is changing.

A “new age,” the Rocket leader said. As if he had the right to single-handedly declare that, and as if others hadn’t been saying the same for months now. But it was true, nonetheless, and in ways Masaki had been preparing for longer than anyone.

“With you it doesn’t take much luck, it’s practically the default. But no.” Touta taps the corner of his eye with his pen before bringing it back down to his notebook, his own gaze staying on Verres. “Slight squint. And you press your lips together, a little.”

Masaki considers, then grudgingly nods. “Thanks.”

“Anytime, Boss.”

“How much sleep did he get?”

“Was escorted to one of the Silph nap rooms about an hour after the broadcast, woke up thirty minutes ago, so… seven hours and change, assuming he slept the whole time in there.”

“Mm. Oversight, or deliberate?”

“Maybe confusion. If they’re still hoping to use him as an asset, they’ll treat him carefully so he doesn’t turn against them.”

His tone is pointed, and Masaki smiles. “And you think we should do the same?”

“You saying you don’t want him, if he’s legit?”

Masaki doesn’t answer. Just tends to the burning in his chest as the fire in him waxes brighter and hotter. Yes, he’d want Verres. Might even need him.

But he doesn’t trust him, and accepting his help without that could be more dangerous than going alone.

For over two decades of service, Masaki has been warning people about a possibility like Team Rocket. His superiors listened, gave him resources, connected him with potential allies. They did good work nibbling at the edges of such possible conspiracies, but the broader focus of Interpol was still on the day to day, the mundane, and his division was just two percent of their total resources.

In Masaki’s line of work, as often as not, being proven right feels worse than being wrong. He was, in fact, feeling sick to his stomach in the hours after the Rocket broadcast… until the call from his superiors, who informed him that the project’s budget and manpower were being increased tenfold, and that he was being given full authority in the Indigo regions to pursue and take down Rocket by any means necessary.

A mandate Indigo’s political powers may not particularly appreciate… which puts him in a position he dislikes being on the other side of.

His local informant hinted that Verres might be able to tell true lies to other psychics, and yet he has to act as though he doesn’t know that in case the regional police are in on whatever conspiracy produced Verres. In principle he doesn’t object to regions having their own secret methods of fighting crime, and would normally admire the security mindset that would keep them from sharing it with Interpol. But at a time like this, they should be laying their cards on the table… and no one’s mentioned anything to him yet.

Which means he has to assume he’s in hostile territory, and play things even closer to the chest than usual. Maybe whatever conspiracy birthed Verres was hiding him from the police because it knows they’re in league with the Rockets.

“When is everyone gathering?” he asks.

“Midnight. A couple of their dark leaders have to finish local meetings before they fly ov—”

The door opens, and Masaki turns to see the head of all Indigo police, Director General Akane Tsunemori. She’s a slight woman, rising only to Masaki’s chest, with short brown hair and a plain, calm face. “Good evening Agent Looker, and… Notebook, was it?”

“Yes, Ma’am. Pleasure to meet you.”

“Any update on identification?” Masaki asks before they can get derailed with small talk. The sooner they can question Verres the less time the potential conspiracy has to clean up their tracks.

Tsunemori raises a brow at him, but says, “Nothing we can match to a record yet, but we’ve got a name, ‘Archer,’ and a sketch.”

Touta looks between them. “The Rocket leader?”

“Supposedly,” Masaki mutters. “I’ll believe it when we interrogate someone who wasn’t at risk of being caught.”

The Director General ignores him, addressing Touta directly. “The young Oak helped Miracle Eye the renegades we caught. Most weren’t high ranked enough to know anything important, but our psychics confirmed that two of them had contact with a man they believed, at least, to be their leader. Supposedly everyone around them also acted like this ‘Archer’ was the boss of all their fellow renegades, and the two facial sketches match each other. We’ll be putting a generated image up with a bounty soon, regardless.” She steps closer so she can view the monitor. “How’s Verres doing?”

“He’s fine,” Masaki says. “I’d like to request—”

“Denied.” Her voice is calm, gaze taking the boy in without any obvious emotion. “You don’t trust me, I don’t trust you, and we still need to work together, so let’s just get to it, shall we?”

Fair enough. Masaki enters the interrogation room first, and watches as Red Verres’s gaze jumps to his, searching for something, then moves to the Director General and widens. The boy rises to his feet, and for an absurd moment Masaki thinks they’re about to get rushed… but no, Verres clearly recognizes her, and is reacting with respect.

It makes sense; while a Director General isn’t on the same level as a region’s Champion or Chairman, it’s not far below them in political power, above Leaders and on par with the Ranger General, if in a different hierarchy.

Still, the boy’s apparent surprise is itself surprising. It would be absurd to think he didn’t predict this level of response, so what is he trying to signal by pretending…

Not everything that’s surprising is suspicious, as Touta often says. It makes him a valuable partner, that he understands Masaki enough to work with him, while still balancing his perspective. If Red Verres is an operative for some secret organization, this is an act, but he should remain open to the possibility that he’s just a young psychic who stumbled onto some unique powers.

And in either case, from all accounts what he did earlier today was quite draining for him, which may explain why Verres is staring at Director Tsunemori’s hand, which is extended for him to shake. This surprise is more likely to be genuine, in any case, and the Director smiles. It makes her already young-looking face even softer. “I wanted to thank you in person. You and Oak saved a lot of lives today, not to mention keeping the renegades from getting all of Silph’s research.”

The boy tentatively reaches out a hand to take hers, which she squeezes and pumps once while Masaki takes his seat. “Sorry to keep you waiting, in any case,” Tsunemori continues as she takes her own seat. “Can we get you anything? Have you eaten?”

Verres slowly shakes his head, then seems to realize this is ambiguous and says, “I’m okay.” His gaze jumps to Masaki, clearly curious but unsure if he should ask.

“Agent Looker,” he says, letting his impatience color his tone more than it normally might. “Interpol. Let’s cut to the chase, shall we? Who trained you to do what you did today?”

It’s obvious, of course, that the international police would be the Bad Cop to the local leader’s Good, but it also naturally fits his personality better. He can do empathizing and understanding, any cop worth their badge can, but there’s something more… clean, about being able to freely let his suspicions out.

Verres blinks at him, then visibly steels himself. “No one. I figured it out myself, at the Casino.”

“It’s okay, Red.” Tsunemori’s voice is gentle. “You can tell him. You’re not in any trouble, and we’re all on the same side here.”

Verres’s eyes widen as he stares at her. “I… tell him what? I did, I…”

“You’re not in any trouble yet,” Masaki says, frowning at Tsunemori as if annoyed by her false promise. “The main reason you’re not under arrest, in case you’re wondering, is that no one’s quite clear what you did, so it’s a little hard to determine what laws, if any, you broke. Burrell and the others say you saved a lot of lives, but you clearly violated the spirit of Article 2 to do it. It wasn’t written with psychic powers in mind, but turning mon against their trainers certainly qualifies under ‘in any way intends to bring a human to lasting harm through use of living pokemon,’ by my reckoning.”

If Verres was pale before, he’s absolutely bloodless now. “I—”

“But,” Director Tsunemori says, jerking Red’s gaze to her own. “You did it against renegades. The reason we don’t deputize just anyone to use their pokemon to kill humans in a crisis is that it’s not something that can be restricted to just those moments. So maybe it’s fine. Or even better, maybe it only works on pokemon already trained to kill humans?”

Verres swallows, breaths audible in the quiet room as he wrenches his gaze from theirs and stares at the table. When he finally speaks, it’s in a whisper. “No.”

“No what?” Masaki asks, letting some of his buried tension out. “Speak clearly.”

“No, it… would work on any pokemon. Even if not trained by a renegade.”

The confirmation sends a chill down his spine, and Masaki doesn’t try to hide his emotions: awe, fear, anger, it’s all appropriate for this sort of revelation. But he keeps his suspicion to himself. He wasn’t sure Verres’s powers would turn out to be this maximally dangerous, but either way he didn’t expect the boy to just come out and say it if it was. “That’s it, then. The Director says you haven’t done enough to warrant a renegade investigation, so we can’t use a psychic to read your thoughts, but Interpol has different standards, and we will extradite you if you don’t cooperate.”

The boy’s breaths are coming faster now, and he swallows hard. “I… I don’t… th-that wouldn’t…”

Skillful interrogation is a fine art, despite the fact that it often looks indistinguishable from bullying. You have to know when to push, and when to ease off to get more information, or let the target hang themselves. Contrary to popular belief, even, depressingly, among fellow officers, getting angry or crying isn’t particularly correlated with guilt. Lack of sleep, traumatic experiences, shock, righteous indignation… there are plenty of reasons for any particular emotional response someone might have in a high stress situation.

The most interesting question is whether what he’s seeing is genuine or not, and he has to admit it’s hard to imagine it being a ruse at this point. Verres hasn’t even asked about whether he can have a lawyer, and Touta’s best guess from ‘surface readings’ was that Red is determined in some direction, beneath all his anxiety…

“…that wouldn’t help, because I can… hide my thoughts. From other psychics. And hide that I’m hiding them.”

Masaki can only stare as his plans unravel, hypotheses all fading. He should be reacting, should be more obviously skeptical of a lie so bold… maybe call him out for being desperate as to think they wouldn’t check anyway? But he knows it’s not a lie, or at least strongly suspected…

He can’t help but glance at Director Tsunemori, who… is leaning back in her chair, brow raised.

Surprise, not skepticism… and not sufficient surprise.

“You can’t be serious,” he says, finally managing to catch the thread of how his alternate ignorant self would react, upon seeing The Director General’s own reaction.

“Sabrina told us.”

“Of fucking course she did.” He lets his real frustration fuel the dynamic they’re playing at, but Tsunemori is still looking at Verres, and it takes him a moment to realize she was talking to the boy.

“You could think of it as a betrayal,” she continues, tone consolatory. “But in fact she seemed confident you’d admit it yourself.”

Like one of those visual illusions, where it’s both the selfish move on her part, and the one that shows great loyalty to Verres at once. There’s something fascinating in it, but he can consider it later. “And you weren’t going to tell me because you thought, what, that I’d have kept it from you, if I knew?”

“Not in this case, but it occurred to me that Interpol might already know this sort of thing is possible, and have kept it to itself for reasons I’m sure would seem very reasonable to you.”

He doesn’t act offended or angry, because the counterfactual him wouldn’t be even if she was wrong. But they are still in front of a suspect, and he has no intention of giving away his own source. “We’ll talk about this more later. Meanwhile, we still have to test it, to be sure.”

“Of course. Though I have to ask, Mr. Verres: why admit it?”

Because he expected Sabrina to talk, Masaki thinks… then realizes that if that’s true, it doesn’t hold up the theory that she taught him how to do it, nor does it serve whatever secret project he was suspecting them to be part of.

The boy takes a deep breath, then slowly lets it out. “Because there’s too much at stake. I always knew it would get out, eventually… and my mom would say not to, uh, to talk to you without a lawyer, but the announcement, earlier today… there’s no time for any of that. I’m scared… no, I’m terrified of what will happen to psychics when all this gets out. But we’re… just a small portion of the population. And if Team Rocket is lying about their ambitions, if they actually try to take over the region instead of making their own… I have to help stop that, however I can. Which… I think, means I have to help both of you.”

Despite himself, despite the cynical voice inside that says Verres only told them because he’d already told Sabrina and couldn’t trust she’d keep his secret, Masaki feels himself believing the boy. And that’s a dangerous thing to be feeling right now. “Alright, nevermind, we’re talking about it now. If you really want to cooperate, my partner will come in and ask you some questions during a meld.”

Red swallows, but meets his gaze. “I’m, uh… getting a sense, from my… hidden thoughts… that I have a few secrets that aren’t mine to share. I want to flag them, for, um, meta-honesty norms, and let you know about them ahead of time, so that, even though your partner won’t always sense that they’re there… you won’t have to worry about whether I’m hiding things, because I am, just… nothing related to my powers.”

Once again, Masaki feels disquieted by the mixed signals he’s getting off of Verres. If he hadn’t heard about how the boy seemed to veer between total calm and losing his shit throughout the attack on Silph, he’d be wondering what Verres is playing at. As it is, he decides it’s probably just stress, and grudgingly allows for some admiration.

“Bullshit,” is all he says. The last thing he wants right now is for Verres to realize he has some leverage. “You don’t get to say you’re cooperating then pull that. We have more information than you do, and we know how to keep unrelated information we gain in pursuit of an investigation to ourselves. You’ll tell us everything, and we’ll decide if it’s relevant.”

He leaves before Verres can respond, and goes directly back to the monitoring room to watch as Director Tsunemori puts a hand on the boy’s shoulder.

“He can be an asshole, but only because he cares a lot about stopping Rocket. It’s fine with me if you have some private memories, and I appreciate you sharing what you did about your powers. I’ll buy you some time to recover before his partner comes.”

Masaki can’t tell if she’s still playing Good Cop, is feeling genuine trust, or is just treating Verres like the prized asset he is. Either way, the boy seems close to tears again as he gives her a grateful look, then rests his forehead on the table and lets out a long breath once she leaves.

“Give him ten minutes,” Masaki says, only a little begrudgingly, as he puts on his coat. “And bring him some snacks and a soda. Get on his good side if you can, in case I burned a bridge.”

“You got it. What if he asks about his mother?”

“Tell him I’m speaking with her.” Which he is, if responding with one message for every dozen increasingly angry ones counts as “speaking,” which in Masaki’s opinion it does. Much as he’s come to respect her, she’s clearly a mom first in this circumstance, as she should be, and it would be an injustice to allow the extra power that her profession gives her to sway him from treating her son like any other suspect. Not to mention dangerous, if he has good reason not to trust either of them.

Tsunemori knocks, and Masaki leaves to join her in the hall, then follows toward the elevators. Once they’re on the roof (and reasonably sure they’re out of the boy’s range), he walks a circle around it to make double sure there’s no one else here, then rejoins her at the entrance, which she leans against with her arms folded, eyes watching him beneath shadows cast from the lights above the doorway.

Masaki sticks his hands in the pockets of his coat and meets her gaze, wondering if she’s expecting him to break the silence first. She probably expects him to lay down some heavy-handed ultimatum, or declare that he’s recruiting Verres, which he would if he had any sense that they could trust him—

“Does it bother you at all, that it took a scared young boy’s honest desire to help others to get the two of us to cooperate?” Her voice is soft. “Do you ever wish things could be different?”

Aha. So she wasn’t just playing Good Cop down there. Unless of course all this is a ruse. “What are you—”

“I won’t ask you to reveal your source, but you didn’t react well enough to hide your lack of surprise.”

He could play the game further, point out that she doesn’t know him well enough to judge that, even add that she’d say the same thing in a world where he did react differently just to judge his reaction to that or see if she could fool him into revealing it…

…but she’s right. It does bother him. He does find it sad, deep down, that he can’t trust the police of any given region he goes to work in. He does wish things could be different.

And yet now might be the worst time to trust a local cop not to be corrupt, even the head of the local cops (maybe especially the head of the local cops), given that her region was revealed to have the first confirmed secret organization of renegades in it. His paranoia is screaming at him not to trust her, to keep treating her as a potential renegade collaborator, or at best a source of leaks.

He could also admit that they’re in a strange ‘new world,’ admit that his way of doing things didn’t in fact lead to the revelation of the renegades, accept that she’s going to expect him to have an inside source regardless of what he says, and… actually openly collaborate with her fully, the way Red Verres is appearing to.

Or he could try going one level higher.

Masaki looks away first, and takes a few moments to draw the new identity, the new reality, around himself. “Of course it bothers me. But I can’t…”

“I know. You’d be more than justified in wondering if Rocket sprang up and maintained its presence here because I’m incompetent or complicit. I’m sure many others are as well, which is why I turned in my resignation papers.”

He turns back to her in genuine surprise, knocked out of his frame once again. “Your chairman refused?”

“She did, though she added that if I want to resign again in a month, she’ll accept it if there’s been no progress. Said it’s my mess, not something I can hand off to someone else.”

Masaki snorts. He doesn’t know how predictable that sort of thing was, but he agrees with the chairman’s attitude. Besides, while it’s dangerous to have a corrupt or incompetent person heading the investigation into Rocket, someone paying attention could get information about which category Tsunemori is in over the next month. If it was his call, Masaki would have a separate subdivision that tries to do the opposite of whatever directives she gives, just in case… but that might lead to more chaos if the different investigations get in each other’s way…

Something to think on, later. “So, what does trust look like, here?”

“It looks like me giving you some extra power, extra decision-making ability, over the Indigo police. And in return, you give fair and due consideration to the advice of me and my subordinates, who know this region best, and don’t take actions that will cause irrevocable harm or ill will toward us from the citizenry without damn good reason to believe it will stop Rocket.”

It’s a better offer than he expected. Almost too much so. “I want Verres, too.”

“Absolutely not.”

His smile is wry. “Power is clearly overrated.”

“Think, Agent Looker. If he hadn’t admitted that he can’t be mindread, we’d both still be assuming the other had secretly trained him. But if he’s not actually some secret operative, if he really is just a young prodigy who’s doing his best to help, we’re not going to pressure him into doing anything he doesn’t want to while we’re fighting each other, and I don’t trust Interpol not to do that to him enough not to try myself. He’s an Indigo citizen, and unless he decides to join you on his own, you can’t have him.”

Masaki turns to take in the city again, watching lights move along the streets between mostly dark buildings. There aren’t as many as there should be, even this close to midnight. Saffron is still spooked by what happened today, likely the whole region is, and he can practically smell that fear on the wind, feel it himself in the tension around his shoulders, the tightness in his stomach. The Rocket renegades are out there, planning their next move, maybe even swelling their ranks, while the rest of them argue over how to stop them. “My special project is about to have more funding and personnel than any other in the entire history of the international police. The nightmare scenario is real—”

“Yes, and you’ve been telling people for years about it, but it’s real in my regions. If it’s just in Kanto, then Johto might break off if it decides we’re botching the investigation, or if we wreck too many civil liberties along the way. Plus, the world is watching. We’re setting an example here, with every move we make.”

“The fact that they’re operating here doesn’t mean they’re native or rooted here. If they all decide to leave tomorrow, how would you even know? That boy needs to be trained and integrated as soon as possible if we’re going to have any chance at stopping them.”

“Training he can receive here, by both of us. He’s offering to cooperate.”

Masaki frowns as some stubborn shard of skepticism rises back up in him. There’s a way in which they’re being played, he can feel it, he just can’t think of what it might be. It gains their trust if Red knew they’d find out in other ways, but is a horrible gamble to take otherwise, since if they hadn’t, he’d have been able to clear his name entirely. And the alternative…

Regardless of how he and Tsunemori react, society as a whole is going to be freaked out enough by what Verres can do, even without knowing that they can’t check whether he’s used his powers to kill someone that isn’t a renegade. He must know that, given how dangerous his powers make him, he could face lifelong imprisonment or exile at best. If they are getting played, what possible plan would being trusted less be the first step of…? Outrage over mistreatment to a hero? He is connected, Oak and his mother would raise hell… plus…

“There was a part of the broadcast I keep thinking of,” he muses. “Overall the thing was pretty standard manifesto, but… ‘So long as psychics are trusted in society, it is no longer safe for us.’ What did you make of that?”

Tsunemori is frowning now too, gaze distant. “I thought it stuck out too, at the time. A personal vendetta, maybe, mixed into the overarching philosophy. It’s not untrue, just…”

“Odd to call attention to.” Masaki runs a hand through his hair as the warm summer breeze brings the scents of the countryside beyond the city to him. “It makes people trust psychics more, makes the public believe they should have more power, if it’s what renegades are afraid of. I don’t like it, and I like it even less that Verres confessed what he could do to Sabrina and she just sat on the information. Did she even have a justification for that?”

“She said it was told to her in confidence, and that she only reported it to those she was required to. In other words—”

“League business.” Masaki makes a disgusted sound. “That can’t possibly hold for a thing like this, and just sounds like psychics covering for each other, as usual.”

She gives him a look. “Isn’t your partner—”

“I’m not a bigot, it’s the timing that bothers me.” And if he’s not exactly excited by the prospect of psychics having even more power in society, he hardly thinks that’s bigotry. “I don’t trust how self-defeating it was, saying that, and whoever Archer is, if he’s really leading Rocket, he shouldn’t have been able to do that all these years making mistakes like that.”

“Or he’s a true believer. If he can really finish the Master Ball… then it’s not just a fantasy. They really could carve out their own region, or take over one, and enforce a policy against psychics reading criminal minds.”

“Right.” It’s not hard to hide his skepticism. The character he’s playing, of someone who’s suspicious of Tsunemori but ultimately trusts her, wouldn’t necessarily reveal it, if he’s worried about being dismissed as paranoid.

If everything that happened today was a ruse, and Verres is secretly working with the Renegades to… give psychics more power in the world… no, it doesn’t quite fit. All those dark renegades were willing to sacrifice themselves for something they thought was real, which would be easy to set up even in a world where their minds wouldn’t be expected to be read, but Miracle Eye alone was good enough for that. The ability to make pokemon attack their trainers is too toxic to gamble with.

He’s still missing something. But he can figure it out later, when he has more time to observe Verres, and do some poking around of his own.

The Director General considers him for another moment, then goes back to staring at the lights of the city around them. Finally she says, “We have to decide, before we go back down, how much we’re trusting him.”

“No more than we have to, obviously.”

“And does that mean not sharing what we’ve learned in the investigation? If he’s working with us, there’ll be no keeping it from him. And if we don’t want the public panicking in one direction or the other, he needs to be working with us, or at least appearing to.”

Masaki wastes a few seconds wishing they had the option to keep Verres’s capabilities secret. But even if the officers who were there kept it to themselves, too many hostages witnessed renegades being attacked by their own pokemon, rumors would spread, and even if the public bought some other story, Rocket could figure it out.

Red Verres is going to have multiple targets on his back, after tonight. Masaki wastes another few seconds feeling sorry for the kid, in worlds where he’s innocent, then says, “Alright, let’s give him what we’ve got so far and see what, exactly, he’s willing to offer.”

They go back down to find Touta and one of the local police psychics in the room with Verres, who’s sitting with his eyes closed. An empty sandwich wrapper sits in front of him, along with a can of soda, and Masaki remembers to check his phone to see if Mrs. Verres has said anything useful lately… nope, mostly just more demands for proof her son is okay, along with veiled threats. He snaps a picture to at least show they’re feeding him, and sends it, along with a comment about how he’s now speaking with the Director General about recruitment possibilities.

“Alright, that’s good enough,” Touta says to Verres. “Now, please think about the first time you used your powers like this again, this time while focusing on the possibilities that ran through your mind…”

His partner’s voice is friendly and soothing as he walks the boy through memories that they can verify, repeating half a dozen prompts with different emphasis each time to ensure all the relevant aspects of the experiences rise enough in his thoughts to be legible. Though there are similarities to non-psychic interrogation, Touta once described it to him as being only somewhat easier with a resistant target, particularly one that has trained themselves to mix their memories and focus on different things than what they’re prompted to.

Masaki can tell just from listening to the prompts that Red isn’t resisting, and spends another few minutes responding to various messages until the psychics are done. Touta thanks Verres, then asks if he needs anything else, and the officer beside him escorts the boy to a nearby washroom while Touta returns to the monitoring room.

“So far as I can tell, he’s being completely honest,” Agent Touta says, and you’d need to know him to hear the thread of pensiveness in his words.

“But you think he’s hiding something, still?”

“No, it’s not that. I mean, I have no idea if he is… there’s some sign, at least, that something weird is going on, but namely it was the way we’d get the occasional thought from his partitioned self. That was noticeable, but only because it was noticeable to him as it happened too, and… I think if it decided to stay silent, he wouldn’t notice, so to us it would just seem like his normal self.”

Tsunemori raises her brow. “‘It?’ That makes it sound like there’s a second person in his head.”

“That’s not entirely inaccurate, or at least it didn’t used to be. That’s what’s on my mind, really… his brain has been a strange place, over the past year. But he definitely didn’t design this sakki to be a weapon against trainers, the name wasn’t even his idea. And so far as I can tell, he’s being honest that the idea to use it against renegades came to him in a burst of desperation while he was trapped under the casino.”

“What was Sabrina’s reaction when he told her he could lie to psychics?” Masaki asks.

“From what he could tell, she seemed genuinely shocked… despite the fact that it was, apparently, her directive to her students to figure it out.”

“I knew it—”

“Let him finish,” Tsunemori says.

Touta shrugs. “Like I said, genuine-seeming shock. Apparently she meant it as a theoretical exercise, to see if it was even feasible, and to train them in various other ways in the process of trying for the impossible. They spent months at it without any sign of progress beyond those other benefits, until Red merged with an exeggcute, which gave his specially partitioned brain what he needed. He’s been giving regular reports to a ‘Dr. Zhang’ at the gym in case there are side effects of what it did to his mind, but he didn’t reveal that it also allowed him to hide lying, not even to his therapist.”

“Satisfied?” Tsunemori asks. “Or are you going to demand that he reveal every secret he’s keeping for anyone? And what are you prepared to do to him if he refuses, given we can’t even check, and he can apparently set it up so that he doesn’t even know he’s doing it?”

Masaki scowls. “I need to know who Sabrina reported it to—”

“Yes, and I’m sure the League will be happy to cooperate, but why don’t you send Agent Notebook to make that request, while we talk with Verres?”

Masaki feels antsy not having better answers, about them knowing there are secrets Verres isn’t sharing… but she’s right to say there isn’t much they can do about it in the moment. He looks at Touta, who nods, and sighs. “Alright, go. Message me with any updates.”

“You got it.” Touta collects his coat and gives Tsunemori a half-salute, half-wave as he heads for the door.

Once he’s gone, Masaki turns back to the monitor showing Verres, who’s resting his forehead on his arms this time. “Got a more comfortable room?”

Ten minutes later they’re in the station’s staff office, each with a cup of coffee or tea and a box of various pastries on the table. Verres still looks a little shocky around the edges, and a little wary, like he’s still waiting to be thrown in a cell somewhere. Masaki lets him finish his first cookie before breaking the silence.

“I still don’t trust you.” Tsunemori sighs, but Masaki ignores her. “Still, the Director General has made a compelling case to try and acquire your collaboration, and I’m willing to see what happens, because our circumstances are desperate. I’m not promising sanctuary, even if nothing you’ve said to us so far turns out to have been false.”

Verres just meets his gaze and nods. “I understand.”

He doesn’t, though. Masaki has exactly one lifeline to offer Verres if the people of Indigo decide, upon finding out what exactly he did to become the hero of Silph and the casino, that they don’t actually want a psychic-who-can-turn-any-pokemon-lethal-without-others-knowing walking their streets, and he’s going to only offer it once the boy has no other options.

Because whether Verres has co-conspirators or not, whether Verres is secretly coordinating toward some end with Rocket or not, he’s not going to be able to remain an independent entity forever. He’s become too powerful for that, and he may not have realized that his days as a simple researcher are over, but telling him now won’t make it sink in the way it will over the next few weeks.

In a Prisoner’s Dilemma, most people, criminal and innocent, believe that cooperation is by default the correct choice. But in a proper dilemma, defecting is the most rewarding option for the individual, so long as they believe their peers will cooperate. There are, of course, external complications that can be brought up to determine whether the reward is “actually” the best decision, like if a criminal is part of an organization that will punish them for speaking to the police, or if a negative reputation will make someone regret a decision that’s beneficial to them in the short term.

Which is why a real evaluation of any payoff matrix should incorporate things like that in the final scores. If an outcome is scored higher without taking all the factors into account, it’s a bad measure… which means influencing what someone decides to do in a dilemma requires figuring out as many of their considerations as possible, then making sure you can promise things that accurately tip the numbers in the directions you want them to go.

He doesn’t trust that Sabrina really revealed everything she knows about Verres, and Verres admitted that he’s hiding other people’s secrets. He can claim it’s unrelated, but he wouldn’t necessarily know that for a fact. If he really is as innocent as he appears, then Masaki would bet his badge that someone’s manipulated him… even if it’s the ‘partitioned self’ Touta mentioned.

And since the most reliable way to get people to cooperate in a Prisoner’s Dilemma is if both participants know that it is going to be repeated multiple times, or that others they could end up interacting with will know what they chose, Masaki needs to shut off any avenues of transparency or memory between Verres and anyone he might have collaborated with. Which means he first has to figure out who they are… and if that doesn’t shake the whole conspiracy down, then he’ll make his offer and promise Red a defection he won’t be able to refuse.

“Then first things first. Do you know this man?”

He opens the folder beside him and slides over the AI generated images built off the video clips and the profile sketches the psychics got out of the captured renegades. It’s a man in his early or mid thirties, with the pale skin of someone who spends most of his time indoors, an angular face, short teal hair, and pale blue eyes like chips of ice.

There are a dozen of them with slight variations, and Verres studies them all with a slight frown. “No. I’ve never seen someone like this, that I can remember at least. Who is it?”

“The renegades supposedly just called him ‘Boss,’ but a couple knew him as ‘Archer.'”

The boy’s crimson eyes snap up to his. “This is… the Rocket leader? How—”

“Oak helped us Miracle a few of the renegades we captured. We also have reason to believe that Archer probably wasn’t bluffing when he said he got the two Master Ball parts, given their plan… apparently the reason they let the hostages on the first few floors go was so a non-dark collaborator could rush in during the confusion, without anyone noticing, and teleport out with it. We’re still doing a thorough search, just in case, but we’re not hopeful about it. With pokemon unable to teleport with items on their own, it fits as the only remaining explanation for how they got it out.”

Verres leans back in his seat, eyes closed. “So there’s a chance it was all for nothing.”

“Nothing?” Tsunemori asks. “Far from it. You saved many lives, and if Rocket had the complete prototype now, our timeline for catching them would be much shorter. Victory isn’t guaranteed, of course, but—”

The boy shakes his head. “I didn’t… I know it wasn’t literally for nothing, I just meant…” He bites his lower lip.

“Ah,” Masaki says, and sips his coffee as he watches Verres. His face is so expressive, it’s hard to imagine he’s not playing things up just to appear more open. “You mean revealing your secret.”

The boy nods, plainly miserable. “I thought… even if every psychic in the region, in the world, gets exiled or… at least it would be worth it, compared to…”

“Have some faith, Mr. Verres,” Tsunemori says. “In people, and in the rule of law.”

Verres looks at her with eyes that want to believe. “You think…?”

“Like Agent Looker, I can’t promise anything, either for you or psychics as a whole. Perhaps society’s reaction will be… less than measured. But that’s why we must believe in the system we’ve created, and its ability to change to match the new worlds we keep finding ourselves in.”

Once again, Masaki finds himself surprised by the Director General. He wonders how genuine she’s being, while Verres listens with rapt attention. “Change how?”

“That’s what we all need to figure out, together. While the League struggles against pokemon never seen before, and to prepare for alien pokemon far more powerful than any we’ve seen so far, this is our challenge, as a society. What it means to be a renegade has changed, from both your discoveries and from the advances of technology.”

Verres is nodding, gaze back on the pictures of the Rocket leader. “I was thinking about that. Earlier today, someone mentioned that because of Miracle Eye, people have been… disappearing. Slipping away from their lives, probably, afraid of what might happen to them. And now, with that message… what’s going to stop every renegade from joining him? Or… people worried about being branded one… I think there might be more of those than most would expect.”

“It’s true that the law doesn’t always protect the people it should,” Tsunemori says, voice soft, gaze on her tea. “But people must protect the law, and not give up on it. Or else Archer is right, and renegades are right to flee to the sanctuary he provides. And if people don’t just turn against psychics, but turn the law against them as well… then they would be right to flee too.”

Masaki isn’t sure he should interrupt whatever she’s trying to do here, but he has to ask… “If they would be right to flee, then why not just say the laws are wrong? What does ‘protecting the law’ mean, to you?”

Her plain face is solemn as she turns it to him, but her eyes burn with conviction. “The law isn’t a set of rules, but the accumulation of a region’s desires for a better world. Fragile, irreplaceable hope, to live in safety and peace with those around them, that such a thing is even possible. All throughout time, people have dreamed of a better world, one less built on fear of those stronger than them. We’ve come a long way from the days of warlords, but in order for that dream to continue to hold meaning, we have to try our best to protect the law to the very end, even from people who would change it to promote injustice, or people who would break it to accomplish some ‘greater good.’ We can’t just give up on it, or else we give up on those fragile hopes, that precious dream.”

Before he can answer, she turns back to Verres. “Will you help us, Red? I know you have other aspirations, that this isn’t your fight. You’ve done more than we could ask of you already, and almost lost your life for it. But we’ll give you training, and some amount of authority, what protection we can, while in this twilight zone between the old world and the new. I wish I could tell you your work will be well rewarded, in the end, will be justly rewarded… but all I can say is we need your help, if we’re going to stop Rocket. And in return, I promise to do my best to protect anyone innocent of any crime… whether psychic or suspected renegade.”

The boy meets her gaze with something, for the first time all night, like hope. He sits a little different, his shoulders and neck a little straighter, as he says, “I’ll do everything I can.”

Masaki sips his coffee again, feeling both relief and suspicion. There’s plenty he needs to do beyond this, but through it all, he’ll have to watch Verres closely, to make sure their “miracle” isn’t worse than the problem they need his help to solve.

Chapter 113: A New Age

The first thing Leaf hears upon teleporting to Saffron is the emergency announcement blaring from the speakers on every street corner:

“—ade activity is ongoing at Silph Headquarters. Please evacuate from all surrounding blocks and seek shelter. Repeat, renegade activity…”

The air is full of pokemon carrying people above congested streets, while police guide crowds toward the city’s emergency bunkers. She scans the city skyline until she spots the silhouette of Silph HQ that stands tall against the cheerful blue horizon, then withdraws her abra and rushes down to the street level so she can bring out her bike.

Once she’s riding she taps her earphone to resume her call with Laura and Professor Oak.

“—when he arrived… Leaf?” Laura sounds calm, but Leaf knows her well enough to hear the tightly controlled fear under her words. “Have you arrived?”

“Yeah, I’m just a few blocks from the building, should be there soon.”

“Assess before rushing in,” Professor Oak says. “If the renegades are there for the master ball, the hunters might bring the whole building down.”

Leaf’s heart stutters. “Would the boys know that?”

“I hope so. But even if they do—”

“Right.” Even without the message that got passed along to the Professor, Blue isn’t the type to leave a situation like this once he’s in it. And so long as calls to both are still going undelivered, it seems likely Red is either trapped or fighting too.

Now Laura’s voice holds more than a fraction of the strain she must be feeling. “Sam, can’t you…?”

“No. I could run into the building myself and they’d still bring it down if they believed it necessary.”

Hearing the stark helplessness in his voice makes Leaf pedal harder. “How far are you now, Professor?”

“Just passing the western outpost, should be there in about nine minutes.”

“I’ll wait for you unless I—” Leaf’s earpod chirps, and hope shoots through her. “Hang on, getting a call.”

“Go. I’ll see you soon.”

“Be careful, Leaf.”

“I will, and I’ll let you know if it’s one of them.” She swaps. “Red? Blue?”

“It’s me.”

It takes Leaf a moment to recognize the voice of her and Laura’s informant over the blaring announcements. “Did you—do you know what’s happening?”

“Only what’s on the news. Are you there?”

“Almost. You coming?”

“No. I can’t.”

Leaf almost asks why not, then remembers that she’s dark. No way she’d make it here on time. “Then call me in an hour, one way or another it should be over by then—”

“Wait. I called because whatever’s happening there might be a smokescreen for something else. I wanted to make sure you go in there with your eyes open.”

Leaf tries to imagine what a public attack of multiple renegades on Silph Headquarters could be a smokescreen for, and fails. “You don’t think they’re there for the Master Ball?”

“I’ll decide after they succeed or fail. My guess is whatever happens, this benefits Silph in some way.”

“…evacuate from all surrounding blocks and seek shelter…”

Leaf wants to say she’s crazy, too tunnel visioned on her vendetta to accept a scenario where Silph may not be the bad guys. But whether that’s true or not…”So what do you want?”

“If you get the opportunity to grab a computer, they’ll think one of the renegades took it. Any of the executive’s computers would likely have valuable info, but the President’s own PC would be best.”

“You are crazy,” Leaf says this time. “Or you think I am, to agree to something like that.”

“The Rocket Casino—”

“—had a secret lab full of renegades, it’s totally different!”

“Leaf, we won’t get another opportunity like this.” Her frustration is clear even through the voice filter. “Silph can be the victim today, but they’ll still need to be taken down tomorrow.”

Leaf turns a corner and ends up behind a group of police riding toward the Silph building. The streets here are virtually empty, and she pedals harder to try and catch up to them. “Have to go, almost there.”

“Just think about it.”

Leaf hangs up, heart pounding in her ears as she slowly closes the gap between her and an officer in the rear riding a rapidash. She takes deep breaths so as not to arrive totally winded, and tries to focus on what she’ll say to the police if they try to stop her from helping.

But the informant’s words planted a seed of doubt, and more keep sprouting. Is all this some trick? Red’s description of what Silph wanted him to do was only surprising because it’s never been done before, but it wasn’t confusing, and opposed as she was to Red helping him, the fact that Silph turned out to be right about renegades in his company set her suspicions entirely aside.

What level of paranoid is the right level, when real conspiracies are afoot?

Maybe the more important question is, should she act just on the suspicion? She’s spent weeks working on a story with Fuji that she hopes will affect public sentiment about things like the Master Ball. If she finds hard proof of the skeletons Laura and their informant have been working to uncover, it could be much more effective…

“…renegade activity is ongoing at Silph Headquarters. Please evacuate…”

They reach the perimeter, where dozens of police and rangers prepare to face an unknown amount of pokemon, each trained to kill humans by people no doubt expecting exactly this response. She slows to a stop as the police in front of her approach someone that looks like they’re coordinating things. Nearby a pair of drones lift into the sky to join a dozen others that hover around the building, probably trying to get a clear view of what’s going on inside.

So many people, all working together to save the hostages inside, to save her friends, to stop the madmen trying to take power that would be even scarier in their hands.

No. She can’t do it, can’t enter this thinking of how to steal from Silph. It would make her like Yuuta, taking advantage of a crisis… not for personal gain, maybe, but still. Civilization has to pull together for pokemon attacks, and that goes double for renegades. Going against that would chip away at something precious, even if no one else found out about it.

Once the group of newcomers is dispatched elsewhere, Leaf walks her bike over. “Hi, I’m Leaf Juniper. My friends, Red and Blue… has anyone heard from them?”

The man shakes his head, and Leaf is about to ask if she can go in—

“Hello again, Miss Juniper.”

She turns toward the familiar voice and sees a tall man in a brown trench coat. “Agent Looker? I thought you were working in Celadon.”

“Got here about ten minutes before things went to hell. You could say I had a hunch.”

“Ah.” Laura. “Does this mean interpol is—”

“My partner is coordinating with them now, but this will likely be over before anyone else arrives.” He studies her for a moment. “Were you planning on going in?”

“Are you going to stop me?”

“If it was just your life at risk, maybe not. But there are civilians in there, and hunters that may be engaging the renegades as we speak. I know you’ve fought some before, but only in the loosest sense. Your wigglytuff isn’t going to catch these by surprise, and from what I remember you’re not a competitive trainer. Have you ever actually fought against a human trained pokemon?”

Leaf feels her heart sinking. “No. But…” She tries to find an argument, something that justifies the burning need to get inside, to at least make sure Red and Blue are okay… “Professor Oak didn’t say not to.”

It’s a weak defense and she knows it. Agent Looker just raises a brow at her. “Well he’s probably not thinking straight either. There’s a chance the police have a plan, and untrained outsiders are more likely to accidentally mess those up. Oak at least can hold his own and won’t become a liability.”

Leaf’s heart feels like a rock in her stomach, and she can’t keep the bitterness out of her voice. “So I’m supposed to just sit out here and… do nothing?” She never expected to regret her decision to not battle other trainers, but if it keeps her from helping Blue and Red now…

“If it makes you feel better, the Professor doesn’t actually have authority here, and might get stuck outside too.” Looker turns to the coordinating officer. “What do you think, Jiang?”

“Wouldn’t want to be the one to try to get between him and his grandson, but orders to bring the building down if there’s no opening to save the hostages in the next…” He checks his watch. “Eleven minutes.”

“He’s arriving in about eight,” Leaf says, feeling numb. She wonders a moment later if she should have kept that to herself…

Jiang sighs. “We’re trying to counteract the jammer to figure out if the commissioner can give us a sitrep, maybe change our game plan. But at this rate… well, let’s just say there are a number of people here who are probably willing to tackle Professor Oak to save his life. Guess I’m one of them.”

Leaf’s rising sense of horror and helplessness make it hard to think, and she wanders off without saying anything, trying to block out the sounds of the blaring city message.

“…Please evacuate from all surrounding blocks and seek shelter. Repeat…”

She should call the Professor, warn him… maybe he can land on the roof, if it’s got a flat one… does it? Or fly straight through a window, if it doesn’t… Gods, this is just like what Red faced in Vermilion, but I don’t even have a choice… Or does she? She could probably make it through the perimeter without being stopped, but.. Looker is right, she’s fooling herself if she thinks she stands a chance in a fair fight against a renegade. Laura and the professor would say the same if they weren’t so desperately worried for Red and Blue… she would say the same if it was almost anyone else in there…

If I can’t win a fair fight, I should cheat. Good idea, but how? None of her pokemon are as good of an equalizer as Joy, and even if they strap her to another pokemon and fly her around the windows to sing through, there’s no guarantee that the renegades will be more disabled than those they’re fighting, even assuming they don’t have protection against sound attacks…

“Miss Juniper.”

She turns to find Agent Looker has followed her. “Believe it or not, we’re mostly in the same boat, and I don’t like feeling helpless any more than you do. But there’s something else we can do to help besides rush in and hope for the best. It may not help save whoever’s inside, but it could stop the renegades regardless.”

“I’m listening.” She’d sound more eager if she wasn’t sick with fear.

“Something has been bothering me about all of this. A bunch of renegades attack in the middle of the day, hold hostages, but only above a certain floor, all to, presumably, steal the Master Ball. It looks coordinated, maybe a panic response to Silph bringing Verres in, but my question is, then what?”

“Then… what?”

“Right. They get the Master Ball, or the blueprints for it, or whatever. Then what? The whole city knows they’re here, they’re surrounded.”

“Maybe they use a hardwired PC to transfer it?”

“First thing we did was cut off the building’s power and internet. It’s running on local power but we’ve got our own jammer up to keep them from using wireless.”

“Then they just…” No, Silph wouldn’t have had to do this special screening to find them if they weren’t dark, so they can’t teleport out unless they learned how to use Miracle Eye in the past few days… or…

Leaf’s eyes widen. Is it possible?

“You see it too, huh?”

“I thought… I thought Red had… caused this, by being here… Silph told him he suspected something already, but—”

“Right. What if Red didn’t just trigger them to attack instead of stealing it? What if him being here was part of the plan?”

Leaf covers her face with her hands. She should have argued harder, should have told Red to leave…

“Hey. Deep breaths. If they’re going to force him to use Miracle Eye so they can teleport, they have to keep him alive, right?”

She tries to nod, head jerking too quickly. “What… what can we do?”

“Nothing for now. This is just a theory, and we can’t act on it right now anyway.” He studies her a moment, as if checking to see if she can remain calm. She does her best. “Miss Juniper, we’re some of the few people here who know everything that’s happening, and aren’t busy preparing for a raid or to stop an escape. More importantly, we’re not part of the local police network. Do you get me?”

It’s not hard, once you’ve spent enough time talking to Laura. “You think there’s an informant.”

“I think trust is a dangerous thing when facing an organization this secretive and well prepared. The renegades know they’re on a clock, regardless, but yes, they might have someone in the police to feed them info. I doubt they’re going to still be in there if the building gets brought down, so we need to figure out what their plan is before they execute on it. And it has to be people like us, to make sure they don’t hear about it if we figure out their plan. So I need you to poke holes in this theory. Maybe Verres has nothing to do with their escape plan. Then what? How else might they get out?”

Leaf keeps taking deep breaths, trying to think through the new fears being piled onto the old ones. “Roof? Fly away?”

“The hunters are setting up a perimeter of fliers for both speed and endurance. They won’t get away by air.”

“Digging?”

“They have to know that we’d use Earthquake if we had to. Same with any answer that involves hostages, it wouldn’t stop the hunters.”

Leaf tries to think of what else they might do. What would she do, if she had to escape a situation like this… “Maybe they… blanket the city with sleep powder, or…”

“Maybe. Start a list, alright? Anything you can think of, no matter how unlikely. We don’t have much time, but whatever they can think of, so can we.”

---

Once Lin and the CHRO have teleported to safety, the rest of those stuck in the security room line up in the order Burrell instructs. He checks to make sure everyone is ready, then nods to Jensen, who summons a machamp.

Its head nearly brushes the ceiling, and it looks around before zeroing in on the red pointer dot that Jensen is aiming at the wall beside the door.

“Three,” he murmurs. “Two… one… Cha!”

The machamp slams against the wall beside the door with all of its strength, body moving through the drywall in a single burst of raw strength. Jensen shoves himself through first, followed by Stocky (Red still hasn’t learned her name), Burrell, the young female cop (whose name he did learn, Mia), and Sicong. Valentin and Red listen to the sounds of battle through the hole, and only go through once it ends and Burrell calls “All clear.”

Red follows Sicong and Valentin out, stepping carefully around Jensen’s badly wounded machamp and the three dark pokemon around it. Nearly a dozen other pokemon are scattered around the hallway, broken and bleeding, but there are no renegades in sight. “They ran as soon as we came out,” Burrell says as they attempt to heal and revive their pokemon. The machamp is one of three that doesn’t respond to treatment, and each gets replaced with fresh Fighting and Bug types. “Not sure if they’re escaping or falling back to regroup, but we can’t give them time. Let’s move out.”

The hunters lead the way through the corridors at a jog, and for the first few moments Red is too busy trying to keep up to think of anything else. It’s hard to resist sending psydar pulses out, but he knows it’s not going to give him much info, and he needs to stay sharp, not risk destabilizing his thoughts any further. They pass the frightened faces of various office workers, and nearly make it to the stairs before more renegades find them.

Red has seen hunters battle renegades in movies. It’s usually depicted as being much quicker than normal trainer battles, each pokemon using their most lethal moves, and Red has occasionally thought about how he’d almost rather fight through a Tier 3 incident than get caught in the crossfire between a renegade and hunter.

Thankfully their environment limits what that means, on both sides, though it’s hard to tell if they’re holding back at all. He’s not sure how far a Hyper Beam would penetrate the walls and ceiling of this place, maybe the renegades are worried about bringing the building down themselves, but they’re doing enough destruction without it.

Acid splashes, fire bursts, and electricity arcs out as roars of pain and challenge by half a dozen pokemon drown out the commands of their trainers. Red pulls his gaze away from the sight of a pinsir using its horns to pin a mightyena to a wall as a weavile tears into its side, keeping his head on a swivel so he can watch their backs. That’s all he has to do, and so even when the renegades start to use non-dark pokemon, he doesn’t try to use sakki. He was given a task to do, and he’s going to let the professionals handle everything else rather than risk doing something that takes them by surprise and complicates their plans.

Which doesn’t mean it’s easy to turn his back on a lethal battle, even just for a few moments at a time, but he has to trust them, and his jangling nerves will just have to be endured.

No one attempts to flank them, however, and within a minute the battle is over. Red spares a glance back, dreading what he might see… but while there are once again numerous dead pokemon throughout the hallway, all the humans seem unhurt, and the renegades appear to have fled again.

“Something’s weird,” Jensen says as he heals his pokemon. “They’re not targeting us.”

“‘Us’ as in you and Hitomi?” Mia asks between checking the nearby offices with Sicong to ensure no one hiding in them got injured.

Oh that’s her name. Red stares blankly at the carnage for another few moments before he realizes he could be helping, and takes out some potions to heal their pokemon faster.

“Not just that,” Hitomi says as she aims her laser pointer at one of the downed renegade pokemon. Red looks away as the hunter’s pinsir braces its horns around the mightyena, but he still hears the crunch and wet sound of spraying blood. “They’re not targeting any of you, either. Our pokemon, yes, but not us.”

Red tries to recall the battles he had as best he can through the memories flooding him from multiple broken partitions. Did any pokemon directly attack him instead of his pokemon…?

“You think they’re trying to avoid killing?” Sicong asks, skepticism interwoven with hope. “That would make their threat against the hostages a bluff…”

“The hostages don’t know that.” Burrell says as he finishes healing his hitmonlee. “And it doesn’t make sense. They’d be branded regardless.”

“Still, if we reach them—”

“Hostages might get killed in crossfire,” Jensen says. He checks them over, then starts for the stairs again. “Power first.”

Red follows into the lingering smog of the stairway, and this time he does send out psydar pulses to make up for the lack of visibility. It makes it hard to focus, but this would be the perfect spot for an ambush…

“Couldn’t just exit here, hit it from below?” Valentin asks.

“We’d have to bring the whole ceiling down to be sure,” Hitomi replies, voice barely audible to Red over the sound of their feet. “They’d be able to collapse down on us before we do.”

One more flight of stairs without incident, and then they’re rushing through more hallways until they leave the offices behind and approach a door warning off any unauthorized access. Jensen holds up a fist and presses himself to the opposite wall, and they all quickly follow suit.

“Step light,” Jensen whispers between hard breaths. “They’ve had time to prepare a trap.”

Hitomi nods. “Two people could stay out, guard against being surrounded.”

“No, maximum push,” Burrell says. “Top priority is taking the power out.”

“They might take us all out in one blast if we go in together.”

“She’s right, Sir. It’s what I would do.”

Burrell frowns, and then they hear a “Hey!” that makes Red’s pulse spike before he recognizes the voice and turns with the others to see…

…Blue, shoeless and breathing hard as he jogs over from the direction of the stairs.

Nearly boneless with relief, Red reflexively steps forward to catch his friend in a hug. He belatedly realizes how unprofessional this looks, but Blue hugs him briefly back, and Red releases him at the same time. “Glad you’re…” He almost says ‘okay,’ but there’s something in Blue’s expression that Red can’t interpret, and he instinctively sends a psydar pulse out before remembering how dumb that is. “Alive.”

“Same to you,” Blue turns to the others and salutes the commissioner. “Blue Oak, reporting for duty, Sir.”

“At ease, Oak. You the one that turned off the lower backup generators?”

“Destroyed them. There was a renegade guarding. Came to take out these too.”

“Good man.” The commissioner glances down at Blue’s feet, seems about to say something, then turns back toward the others. “Alright Jensen, it’s your play. Who goes in first?”

“With Oak here, we’ve got more options. Mia and you will breach with me. Hitomi comes in with Sicong and Valentin a ten count later. The kids can make sure no one flanks us, or come in if it sounds like we just got blasted.” He turns to Hitomi. “Left or right?”

“I’ll go right.”

“Hold until I make the hole.” Jensen summons a rhydon and pulls a flashbang off his belt.

“Hey, I think this is yours?” Blue asks Mia as he unbuckles the police belt. “Thanks for it, saved my ass.”

“Keep it for now,” she says with a brief smile. “You might need it more.”

“Going in three,” Jensen says. “Two. One.”

He rushes forward, opens the door, and throws the flashbang in before using his laser pointer to indicate the wall between the group and it. “Cha!”

There’s a muffled bang just as his pokemon dashes headfirst into the wall and crashes through. Jensen is right behind it, followed by Mia, Burrell, and their pokemon. The sounds of battle are immediate, but continue for long enough that it’s clear they didn’t get blown away completely.

“Watch from the T-section,” Hitomi says to Red and Blue as she goes to the opposite side of the door with her poliwrath, who smashes another hole through the wall on her command and leads the way in. Once she and the other two are inside, Red moves to cover the hall opposite the way they came, while Blue steps beside him facing the opposite direction, then summons Soul.

“Shit,” Red says as he sees the state of Blue’s arcanine. His friend immediately starts spraying the patches of acid-burned flesh with potions, then sprays some antidote into his pokemon’s nose. “What happened?”

“Renegade filled the room with smog, then sent a muk at us.” Soul’s breaths are no longer rasping, and after another few moments it opens its eyes and carefully gets to its feet, though there’s hardly room for it to stand. Blue finishes healing his pokemon, then sprays some ether into its mouth and rubs his neck. “Maturin is down too, but she evolved, so… I think she’s alive. Gon didn’t make it.”

The pain and anger in his voice makes Red’s eyes water, and he almost goes to hug him again. “Damn. I’m sorry, Blue. I lost—”

A vibration runs through the walls and floor as something explodes in the room beside them. “Are they—”

Get a hold of yourself. Red sends out a pulse of psydar. “Everyone’s still alive.” Though two of their pokemon are dead or withdrawn, and one is in immense pain.

He takes deep breaths, trying to keep from feeling overwhelmed by the pull of different urges. Seeing Blue has quieted a lot of his anxious thoughts, but he still feels raw in some strange way, still feels like his thoughts are slipping against each other, or like he’s losing seconds of awareness. How long has it been since they left the security room? A minute, two? Are the hostages already dead?

He wants to bring Kadabra out to merge and check, but reminds himself again that he needs to conserve his power use—

Red only freezes for a second when the man rushes around the corner ahead of him, spots Red, and skids to a halt. Then his arm snaps up to summon his new lapras as the renegade brings out a cacturne.

“Icy Wind!”

His lapras is small enough that her shell stops just below his eye level, which means he has to rise onto his tip toes to see past where her body fills the hallway. The burst of freezing air slowed the attacking cacturne down, but eventually it manages to spit a Bullet Seed back, and Red drops to his knees behind his pokemon.

The lapras’s melodic cry is heartbreaking in pain, and Red claps his hands over his ears. “Icy Wind!” he yells, unsure whether his lent pokemon could even survive the next attack, and then—

“Red, swap!”

It takes him a moment to process the words—is Blue telling him to switch to his forretress?—and then he gets it and withdraws his lapras before pressing against the wall so Blue can send Soul barreling at their attacker. He resists the urge to watch how the battle goes, instead moving to where Blue was to watch that side as his whole body shivers with adrenaline and something else, something taut and strained near to the breaking point. He feels like he’s acting entirely by reflex and instinct, and while that might work for short periods he dreads the moment a difficult or complex choice is in front of him. He wishes he could use the battle calm, but it will take too much juggling if there’s an emergency and he has to use sakki… assuming he could still use it, in this state…

One more, he thinks as the sounds of battle behind him end. I’ve got at least one more in me, if I have to… He doesn’t know if it’s true, but when he glances over his shoulder at the sound of rapid footsteps, he sees Blue and Soul are the only ones in the hall, along with the bodies of the cacturne and an arbok. “He’s gone?”

“Yeah, but stay sharp. Might be back with help. When did you get a lapras?”

“It’s a borrow. Lost most of my team.”

“Damn.” Blue lets out a long breath, and Red can practically see the battle calm leaving him, now that he knows what it feels like. “I don’t get it, some of these guys fight till the bitter end, others scamper as soon as… wait, you hear that?”

Red focuses, but doesn’t hear anything… Oh. “The battle’s stopped.” He sends another psydar pulse out. “They’re alive.”

“Did they wi—”

There’s a crashing sound, and they’re abruptly plunged into darkness as the lights go out. “Guess so.” Red turns on his belt light a moment after Blue snaps his on, and they rotate to watch the halls. Any relief he might feel is overwhelmed by the creeping fear of an attacker making their way toward them in the dark. Come on, come on…

It feels like minutes later, but is probably less than one, when the door opens and everyone files out. “Everything quiet out here?”

“One came, we chased them off.”

Sicong is striding toward the stairs without slowing, and Red reflexively follows, only checking after a few steps whether the others are coming too.

They are, and the hunters quickly catch up to Sicong. “Careful. If they have nothing else to lose—”

“Wait,” Red says as he sends another psydar pulse out, then another. “Someone’s… going up the stairs…”

“Who?!”

Red takes a deep breath, focusing as hard as he can as he sends his senses out to their limits, merging with the mind for a brief moment-tension-fear-burninglegs-RENEGADES[?!]-dark-smog-before it goes out of his range—

“It’s the president!” he gasps just as his knees buckle. Blue and Mia catch his arms. “There are renegades with him!”

Sicong is already running, as are the hunters. “Go,” Blue says to Mia, and she releases him to follow the bobbing lights of the others. “Red, what’s going on? Are you hurt?”

“It’s… I’m fine…” The hallway is spinning, though he can distantly feel that he’s sitting with his back against the wall.

“He exhausted himself,” Valentin says. Red didn’t even realize he’s still with them. “Used his powers to take out a bunch of renegades before we went for the generators.”

“Oh. Right.”

Red remembers that there’s a conversation or ten that he’s dreading, but it’s hard to focus on anything right now besides Silph. “We have to go up…” He tries to push himself to his feet, only to be pushed back down.

“It’s fine, Red. There’s nothing more we can do now that they won’t, and it’s even more dangerous for us to battle around them in the dark.”

“I don’t get it, though,” Valentin says. “Why take the president up instead of down? Are they going to try to fly away with him?”

“They wouldn’t make it three minutes. I looked out the window on the way up, the place is surrounded. Actually, we should probably head down, tell them what’s going on so they don’t bring down the building…”

“They’ll know the power is out, but good call.”

“Oh, are our phones working now?”

“Already checked, mine’s not. Jammer must still be active, somewhere… I’ll go down, you stay with him until he’s more rested.”

Red tries to say he’s fine again, but the hallway is still spinning, so he just rests his forehead against his knees as they continue to talk briefly, then Valentin’s footsteps recede. He’s thinking of what the tech lead said, about why they might bring Silph up. It doesn’t make sense, they’re missing something… missing multiple somethings. Why did they let some hostages go but not others? Why didn’t they try to kill any of us?

“Something’s wrong, Blue,” he mutters. “We’re missing something…” Or at least, he tries to say it, but the words come out backward and echoey as he feels his back sliding against the wall, and then the darkness becomes absolute.

---

The thought hits her like the pichu’s thundershock in Viridian Forest, sending tingles through her body and tightening all her muscles as she sucks in a breath.

And then she’s up and dashing toward Agent Looker, who’s arguing with Professor Oak and a couple officers in fancy uniforms.

“The hostages!” Leaf shouts as she runs. “Looker! It’s the hostages!”

The group turns to look at her, their anger shifting to confusion… all except for Agent Looker, who looks like she just punched him between the eyes.

She had to go back to basics, think of everything the renegades had at their disposal, every resource and limitation. What do they have? Pokemon, office supplies, hostages. What can’t they do? Use internet, fly out, travel…

Could they have discovered a way for pokemon to teleport with objects? No, if she imagines that they learned how to do something completely new, the possibilities are endless. She has to stick to what she understands or else she has no chance of guessing something probable on time.

What doesn’t make sense? Letting some hostages go…

At first she thought they would just leave it somewhere in the building and recover it later, but no, it’s much easier than that. They let everyone below certain floors go, but kept them where they were operating. All they have to do is hand the data or Master Ball parts to one of them, and then it doesn’t matter if they escape or not.

So long as no one saw them acting as a renegade, any one of them could just walk out with it once the dust has settled.

Agent Looker turns to the man beside him. “Deputy Commissioner, I’m requesting a holding area within the jammed zone. Everyone who leaves the building gets a full search, understand? All of them.”

Professor Oak, meanwhile, has taken the opportunity to start walking toward the building. The cop from before who was organizing the response steps in front of him.

“Get out of my way, Son,” Oak says, voice low and calm.

“Can’t do that, Professor. This is an active—”

“The power’s out!”

Everyone turns as one toward the voice that shouted. It’s one of the drone operators, who’s staring at a tablet. He fiddles with some controls, and Leaf looks up to see one of the drones swooping around the building. “I’m seeing dark on every floor—”

“Me too—”

“I’ve got eyes on a stairwell, emergency lights have turned on—”

The organizing officer has a pair of fingers on his headset, looking distracted. Professor Oak steps around him and strides toward the building, but he doesn’t go after him, instead lifting the bullhorn from his belt and switching it on.

“Power is down, confirmed! Units one through four, breach!”

Everything happens very quickly after that.

Leaf wants to help, but Looker’s remark from earlier still holds true. Instead she watches for a few moments as police and hunters flood the building, some riding on pokemon that climb quickly to higher floors and break through windows. Her restless energy shifts her from foot to foot until she forces herself to go over to where Looker and someone she hasn’t seen before are speaking to a growing group of high ranked officers.

“No, this is an interpol operation now. My partner and I are going to oversee this. All you people need to do is ensure no one leaves without being screened, understand?”

Less than five minutes later some pokemon fly away from the building at high speeds in every direction. More rise to intercept them, and Leaf almost believes she was wrong for a moment, but no, she’s sure… almost sure, that those are decoys.

Fifteen minutes later the hostages are starting to trickle out, but by then there’s a cordon line set up and officers at every building entrance, watching to ensure no one leaves the area until their belongings are thoroughly checked.

“Building is clear,” one of the drone operators says soon after. “We’ve got multiple confirmations from unit leaders, all hostiles are down.”

“Understood. Requesting the city to bring the power back online.”

“Keep the internet connection severed,” Looker says, and the officer nods and repeats that to whomever is on the headset with him.

And five minutes after that Professor Oak re-emerges, spots her, and gestures.

He’s smiling.

Leaf’s feet feel like they barely touch the ground as she runs toward him, whole body light and tears leaking down her cheeks. She follows him through the halls, barely registering the signs of battle in one of the big office spaces they pass through.

Red and Blue have been given their own room to recuperate in, with police stationed outside. They’re half draped over a couch big enough for four, both looking like they’re ready to sleep for hours. Both have water bottles and snacks from the vending machine scattered around them, and Blue is flipping through channels on the wall monitor, each showing news coverage of the event.

Leaf doesn’t spare it a glance before rushing over to pull the boys into a massive hug. One of them smells like they walked through a burning chemical plant, which is as good a reason as any for the prickling in her eyes.

“…word from the commissioner, who was also on site during the attack. Casualties are still unreported, but…”

“On reconsideration, Red,” Leaf says, and clears her throat. “I think you should charge Silph. Lots.”

Blue laughs, though Red only gives a weak chuckle. “It might be hard to put a market price on… everything that happened today.”

“Just means any number you give can’t be unreasonable.”

Professor Oak clears his throat. “We’re still not getting signal in here, and probably won’t for a while. I’m going to go call Laura, tell her you’re alright.”

“Thanks, Professor.”

Leaf pulls back as he leaves and takes in the sight of them both, gaze lingering on the strain around Red’s eyes. “You exhausted your psychic powers again, didn’t you?”

Red’s surprised and guilty look is answer enough. “How did you…?”

“Seen it too many times not to recognize it, I guess. Though I can’t tell if this is as bad as Celadon, or Vermilion? Or… Lavender?” He looks somehow more tired than he did at the tower, not that that means much, considering he looked well enough then until he suddenly wasn’t.

“He already passed out,” Blue helpfully says. “But he was fine after ten minutes or so. Well. Awake again, at least. That’s not what’s eating him, though.”

“What is eating you, then?” she asks. “Your pokemon…?”

“We both lost some, but it’s not that.” Red glances behind her, and she turns to see what he was looking at. The police standing by the door? But then he says, “I think we lost.”

Leaf looks between them, some of her joy fading. “Did they kill—”

“The President is okay, they got him away from the renegades. They didn’t kill anyone, actually, as far as we can tell all of the hostages are fine. But they managed to get two-thirds of the Master Ball, apparently, and a bunch of the renegades flew off.”

“I keep telling him they won’t get far, but he insists we missed something, and they got away with the info. I think he’s just paranoid.”

Leaf lets out a breath. “Oh, is that all. Well, I’m pretty sure I actually figured that out.” They stare at her for a moment, and she smiles. “See, I think one of them disguised themself as a hostage, or maybe got it handed off to them. They set up a checkpoint outside, all the hostages are being searched before they’re allowed out of the area. We’re jamming any signals, so they can’t transfer anything.”

Red is still staring at her, but some new life is in his eyes. “Leaf, you’re a genius.”

“Nah, I just thought about it for a bit. Everyone else was too busy, you know, actually trying to solve the crisis. It was Agent Looker who made me, he deserves a lot of thanks—”

“…sorry, I’ve just received word that… a group of renegades has claimed credit for the attack.”

Leaf turns to the television in surprise. The news anchor is holding a hand to his earpiece. “What the hell?” Blue mutters, and lifts the remote to turn the volume up.

“A video was uploaded to the net just minutes ago, and appears to be… a manifesto of some kind…”

All three of them are staring at the screen, and one of the police officers has even stepped in to frown at the monitor.

“We’re going to play the video now, but be advised that we have not verified the authenticity of any claims within it.”

And then the news anchor at his desk is replaced by…

—Leaf’s breath catches at the wash of unreality, of this all being a bizarre dream—

…another desk, black marble, with a man in a white suit sitting in a chair. His face is cast in shadow, and on the wall behind him is…

A big red R, in the same style as the Rocket Casino’s sign.

“Greetings, people of the world. Greetings, people of Indigo.” The words aren’t distorted, but hold the artificial intonations of a text-to-voice program. “Months ago, a mystery was uncovered in your City of Rainbow Dreams, uncovered by chance… or if you’d like, by an act of gods. Renegades, beneath your very homes, working in secret for ends unknown.

“Police both local and international attempted to learn all they could. The public demanded answers. Where did they come from? What were their goals? Were they part of some broader conspiracy?

“I am here to give you all those answers and more, starting with the last: Yes. My conspiracy.”

“What the fuck,” the cop mutters, voice low.

“Our goal is also simple to answer: power, and survival. The Rocket Casino was among the smallest of our operations. It was a source of revenue, and a secret place to study stolen technology. We have many more like it, and will continue to use whatever means necessary to carve out a place for ourselves in a world that has rejected us.

“As for where they came from…” The man spreads his hands. “Everywhere. Nearly every region on the planet treats renegades the same, and so I have gathered them into one organization, and put them to useful purposes.

“Though renegades were employed at the Rocket Casino, none had orders to harm anyone unless threatened first. At least one disobeyed those orders, or perhaps believed the Casino to be under attack. It was an error that cost people lives, and we do not celebrate that. Our goal, as I said, is enough power to survive, not mayhem or destruction.

“And while many have wondered what other evils the Rocket renegades did in their time there, I can answer truthfully that up until the earthquakes, they did nothing. They acted as simple citizens, no different than any other criminal enterprise that keeps to lawful pursuits for most of their days.

“You see, renegades are not mindless killers, striking without reason. Celadon suffered not a single renegade attack in the five years it had my people there, up until the day of the incident, and while I regret the loss of life that occurred, I cannot fault my people for acting from a place of fear.”

“Bullshit,” Red whispers… but he looks uneasy.

“Your culture has lied to you. It has convinced you that renegades are not people, and deserve to be treated as less than people. And so people will continue to feel they need an alternative.”

The man opens his arms wide. “We are that alternative. We’ve operated in secret until now, but that time has passed. Psychics have had too much power throughout history, and with Miracle Eye they will only have more. So long as psychics are trusted in society, it is no longer safe for us.”

Red makes a sound Leaf can’t interpret, and she turns to see him staring with wide eyes. The next words pull her gaze back to the screen.

“Today we attacked Silph Corporation to steal the Master Ball. We did it because we know it marks a new age. An age where the regions have trainers, League or otherwise, who wield legendary pokemon. In this new age, any without one will be incapable of defending themselves. Having this technology was a necessary step for our fledgling region to defend itself, and so we took steps to secure it. I can say now that we mostly succeeded. I now possess two-thirds of the completed prototype, and my engineers will work tirelessly to recreate the rest.”

No. Leaf can’t tell if she says the word out loud or not, her whole body feels cold. She solved it, she stopped them, how did they…?

“And just as importantly, we accomplished this without harming anyone, at the cost of our own lives, to prove that renegades are no worse than ordinary criminals. Criminals that deserve arrest, if caught, and trial. Nothing more, nothing less.

“But we know that is unlikely. And so I say to you today, those of you who fear being branded a renegade, even if you have not committed any crimes… those who have been branded, and don’t wish to live your life as a monster on the run… those who believe it is wrong that your friends and family and neighbors will condemn you without proper trial or proportion… do not despair, for we are here.

“Join us, and together we will have enough power to fight for our own safety. And those of you who have used pokemon against others… we will hear you out, judge your character, and perhaps give you a second chance at life. You may not have freedom, but neither will you be discarded inhumanely.

“This past year has seen many changes in our world. For many, it seems clear we are entering a new age. And I declare this as true for renegades as anyone else.

“We are Team Rocket. We are everywhere. And we will defend ourselves from any attempt at annihilation.”

Hey everyone, with great thanks to a patron named Felix, there’s now a script that creates a pokedex chapter at the end of my epubs and turns pokemon names into a link that goes a picture and short description of them! I’ve had in mind for years to do something like this, and I’m very excited to offer it to patrons. Thanks a lot, Felix!

---

Blue feels like he should be pacing, but that would reveal nervousness to any potential watchers. So instead he just bounces his feet as he lies on one of the comfortable couches in the break room he was stowed in, listening to the hum of the vending machines and typing on his phone.

There’s something about this meeting that’s felt off to him from the beginning, and after Red left the call, Blue asked Leaf for a more detailed download of what he might have been missing that she could share. By the end of the call he was still unsure whether Silph was using Red as a pawn or not, but either way he doesn’t like the idea of just sitting back and hoping for the best.

Which is why he almost sends a message to Glen to get everyone who’s free and make their way to the Silph building. What slows his fingers to a stop is the expected next question:

Why?

The honest answer would include that there might be renegade activity here soon.

Which he expects them to do… what, about that, exactly?

He suddenly can’t shake off images of Glen struggling through physical therapy, of Maria’s occasional distant, haunted gaze, of Lizzy’s occasional sleepless nights that she admitted came from nightmares of facing down the renegade once again, except this time without the miraculous save…

Blue tries to convince himself that he shouldn’t be making this decision for them. It took Lizzy a while to find a therapist that worked for her, but she’s doing better. Glen would ask what the point of his working so hard to get back to his peak was for, if he’s not even called in to help. Maria… he’s not sure what Maria would say, actually. As for Elaine, that’s an easy one.

Don’t borrow so much guilt ahead of time, Blue. It’s very noble of you, but it’s patronizing as hell.

And still, he can’t bring himself to keep typing. Because Elaine isn’t traveling with them anymore, she’s taking a break, and Bretta and Slav and Sumi are focusing on different gyms with some of the others who already finished at Fuchsia, and that makes sense but it also might be to avoid being around Blue Oak, the danger magnet. Jamil and Viraj are new and eager to please, and they’re not novices just because they’re new to his group, but knowing they’ll come isn’t the same as being sure they’d come for the right reasons.

The scenarios they’ve been running prepare them for unusual battles (particularly since they’ve been watching the ones Vermilion continues to run so they can steal their good ideas), but it’s no good pretending that they’d prepare them for actual renegades. Maybe the average renegade, a little, but not the kind that would be infiltrating a place like this.

(Assuming there are any renegades and Silph isn’t just looking for excuses and justifications to get his workers scanned… but that’s a thought for later.)

Which means that despite getting immensely lucky a couple times, none of them have trained for this sort of situation. He thought about it of course, but there always seemed to be more important, more likely threats to prepare for.

And this doesn’t really change that. There’s no reason for anyone to get involved in this… not even him. His goal is to become Champion and stop the Stormbringers, not take down renegades.

But he’s here, and there’s no way he’s leaving until he knows how it shakes out, and makes sure Red is okay.

So he deletes the message to Glen and sends out new messages instead, canceling his plans for the day and filling grandpa in. If Gramps knew about the Master Ball and didn’t tell him Blue is going to be pissed… No, not really, he’d get it if it was part of some big secret thing with Aunt Laura. Still, he’s having trouble grasping what the invention might mean.

People have tried capturing the Stormbringers before, of course. Past champions, gym leaders, even some random trainers brave enough to attempt the impossible. A lot of words were written analyzing their failures, and what steps are required to get the job done.

The first barrier of course is just reaching them. Even the toughest pokemon tire quickly when flying through a storm under Pressure, and even fully insulated suits can’t protect their riders for long against the intense heat, electricity, and cold around the birds themselves.

The second is getting a ball lock. The storms reduce the range of even the strongest beams down to nearly nothing, and Blue knows first hand how hard it is holding one steady on a moving target while riding a pokemon, let alone doing it on a flying one in a storm.

Then there’s the throw, assuming you even get a lock. It’s hard to hear the confirmation over the storm, and those few who have sworn they felt the haptic feedback of a lock, thrown and hit, and still didn’t capture them. Damage to the balls from the intense temperature or electric currents was the primary guess for why.

And of course, all of this assuming the giant bird god is just flying in a straight line, and not concentrating its unstoppable power at you. Which is how most attempts failed, even with others helping support and distract.

There’s also the question of mass. While larger than any other birds, they’re probably not as dense as corviknight, most of which don’t hit the 200 kilo limit on ultraballs. But what if they don’t have hollow bones? How dense are their beaks and talons? Some fancy programs were run on video footage that tried to evaluate their weight by the way they flew and maneuvered compared to other pokemon, but they weren’t conclusive given the unique environment they created around themselves, and their unique immunities to it. The main thing Blue remembers from looking at that info years ago was that they somehow determined that articuno seems to weigh less than moltres, which made no kind of sense to Blue but made Red nod thoughtfully in what Blue suspected was just him acting like a know-it-all.

All of which is to say that if Silph really did create a ball that would stay undamaged, could scan through a storm, and could guarantee a capture if thrown… the stormbringers might get caught before he even becomes Champion, something he hasn’t actually considered likely before.

He’s not sure how he feels about it now.

On the one hand, massively relieved. On the other… disappointed, that it might not be him. He knows plenty of others have just as much a right to get revenge on the birds, he doesn’t need it to be him. But he’s not sure how he’ll feel if he doesn’t at least help take down one of them, if they’re all gone before he even has a chance to try.

And deeper beneath that worry, there’s fear… and anger.

That’s what has his foot bouncing, as much as anticipation. His inner arcanine, who resembles Soul now, scars and all, is pacing for him, spreading heat through his chest and stomach.

Someone is trying to steal their best chance at stopping the Stormbringers.

It’s one thing to worry about how to keep the peace once he or some other trainer gets a legendary. If a renegade gets it, or some shadowy organization…

No, the answer would still be the same. Become an ideal champion, one that can rally the region and take it on. He’s not sure if renegade controlled Stormbringer would be more dangerous than a wild one, but better to avoid that altogether, if possible.

The more he thinks about it, the more obvious it is that this is part of his path. He can’t just walk away from something that has this much chance to ruin the region, the islands, plausibly even the world.

Even if there’s no real chance of making a difference, he can’t just walk away.

He finishes messaging his grandpa, then starts drafting one to Red to check if anything new has happened. He gets interrupted within seconds by a call. “Hey, Gramps.”

“Who else is with you?”

The straight to business tone, with none of his usual levity, makes everything feel more real. Blue sits up, checking the glass door to see if anyone is coming by. “It’s just me and Red.”

“Were you invited?”

“Nah, I kind of talked my way in.”

“Then keep your involvement off the web until you know how things shake out.”

Blue feels a surge of affection for his grandpa, who doesn’t even try to talk him out of staying, and instead goes straight to what matters. “You think it’s a bad idea? There still might be time to talk Red out of it.”

“I honestly don’t know, Blue, but it’s different for him in any case. We can get away with some things you wouldn’t be able to.”

“If it costs political power—”

“Not just that, there’s social drag to you admitting your mistakes, if you make one.”

“Right.” It feels unfair, but he gets it. “I’m going to stick around.”

“I figur—”

“Attention all personnel.”

Blue twitches at the sudden gruff male voice, then turns to find its source: an intercom in the corner of the ceiling. “Hang on, Gramps, something’s—”

“I heard.”

“—be doing a full update of the SecuriPass system, and will begin distributing new cards throughout the day. Please be aware that if you leave the building before receiving your new card, you won’t be able to re-enter until we can get you one.”

Well now Blue definitely isn’t leaving…

“Please pay close attention to your intramail so you know when it’s your turn to receive your new pass. We hope to get done with everyone within a few hours.”

Nothing new comes, and Blue says, “Okay, go ahead.”

“You said the police are involved?”

“The city commissioner is here himself. Burrell.”

“Hm. I don’t know him.”

“Problem?”

“Maybe not, but I want to know why interpol isn’t there. They were helping in Celadon.”

“Huh. Dunno. Think Aunt Laura can check if they’re in the loop, somehow?”

“I’ll do it myself. Try not to rush into anything, Blue. If a larger game is being played, you’re as likely to wreck things as help if you don’t know what’s going on.”

“Yeah, I get it. But if Red is being used—”

“I know. I’ll do what I can.”

“Thanks, Gramps. I know you will.”

---

Red thought they might go through the whole building, merging with Silph employees one department at a time. Instead he’s led from the president’s office down to the fourth floor, where the building’s security headquarters is. There’s already a small team of rangers and police inside, as well as a pair of hunters.

Red met some hunters while working with the Celadon police, and always found the experience a little surreal. He’s so used to seeing them in movies and shows, which portray them either as heroic, misunderstood figures just trying to do a hard job despite stigma, or hardened loners balancing on the edge of their duty and its effects on their conscience.

In reality most seem to just be quiet and reserved, fading into the background and just following the lead of the police and rangers. These two stand at either side of the door, one with his hands clasped behind his back, the other with a thumb hooked into her pokebelt. Red’s eyes get drawn, as usual, to the extra black line that splits their balls vertically. He knows it’s conditioning from shows and films that make such simple change cause the hunter balls to look so sinister, but just being in the same room with them makes part of his attention constantly track where they are.

The Silph staff members who come in for screening seem to feel the same, gazes darting nervously toward them even more often than they do Commissioner Burrell, or President Silph, or the company’s psychic, or even Red’s kadabra. He listens as each is told the real reason they were called in, and each agrees to be merged with rather than leave work for the day and pick up their new security cards tomorrow. Silph’s CAO, CTO, and CHRO were apparently told and screened ahead of time, which is why they were all waiting for them in the security office when they arrived. His CMO was the only C-Suite executive not to be pre-screened, and so she was the first to be called in after the announcement went out over the intercom, followed by the various other heads of departments.

Red wonders whether the consent they’re giving will feel less real if no one decides against it. Does it even matter if Silph is being honest about the lack of consequences if no one believes it? But then, what could he do about that? If it’s really costless to them, why would they subject themselves to it instead of taking the paid day off?

Unless they’re really just that dedicated to their work. This is Silph HQ, after all, and so far they’ve all been fairly high up in the hierarchy. They’re probably intrinsically dedicated, and if they really have nothing to hide or are used to being scanned, this sort of thing would seem routine to them.

Things change when they reach the first dark employee, one of the R&D managers. He gets a longer explanation, and his reaction is more nuanced, a nervousness woven into his acceptance.

“You’re sure you’re okay with this?” Red can’t help but ask, looking into the man’s eyes himself.

“Yes, yeah, I’m good.” He wipes a palm on his pantleg. “You did it on Blue Oak, right? And he’s fine? There was no pain?”

“Yeah.” Red didn’t expect the main worry to be whether it was painless, but at the man’s nod he just accepts that he’s being over-cautious and mentally commands Kadabra to use Miracle Eye. “Okay, it’s happening now.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” the man says after a moment, cheeks pink as he keeps his gaze on the floor. “If something… uh, unusual comes up.”

“It’s fine, Sir.” The company psychic, Lin, has been clinically professional with everyone, and Red has wondered whether he’s a full time Silph employee or a contractor that works for other organizations too. “It’s very common for people to inadvertently think of things they try not to during a merger, but it doesn’t bother us.”

That’s a polite fiction, of course, some psychics do find the thoughts that come up in people’s minds disturbing, but that does fade with experience. It’s fair to say that someone in Lin’s position, at least, is probably long past any embarrassment or shock, but either way, he’s too much of a professional to show any.

After a few pointed questions to direct the manager’s thoughts to the Silph company, his feelings about it, and his career plans, the psychic nods to indicate that he’s withdrawn his mind, and Red tells Kadabra to end it.

“That’s it?” the man asks, looking around with another moment of apprehension.

Lin nods, and the head of security, Sicong, hands the man his new passcard. “Thank you for your cooperation.”

“Of course. Um, good luck.” He takes the card, bows to the room, and leaves.

“I think that went well,” the head of HR says, and President Silph nods.

“Let’s hope the rest do as well.”

And for the rest of the company’s dark senior staff, they seem to. There’s surprise for most, but not all; many are calmly, almost resignedly, accepting, as if they expected something like this. A few are even cheerful about it. Red can’t tell how genuine those are, since he’s just assisting with the Miracle Eye and not doing the mergers himself. But from what he can pick up by the brief period of surface thoughts, there’s nothing obviously incongruent.

There’s a brief break as Lin pauses to use the bathroom, and Red stretches his limbs by walking over to the glass wall that looks over the city’s main street and cranks one of the levers on the side to open a window slot, letting some fresh air into the crowded room. One of the cops is leaning against the glass with Pranav, another Silph security. “I don’t like it,” Red hears the cop murmur around her coffee cup. “If they talk about what we’re doing, give warning…”

“What’s the worst that happens? Someone leaves early?” Pranav shrugs. “Doesn’t change much.”

“Tips them off, if they’re planning something.”

“I’ll take it. Know you guys want to grab them, but so far as I’m concerned a boring day where everything goes smooth is a win.” He glances at Silph, who’s sitting at a desk and answering emails. The president said he prefers to be present, ensure the employees know the orders and assurances are both coming straight from the top, but Red can imagine it strikes the company’s security as an unnecessary risk. “Besides, not like they’re going to subject themselves to a merge anyway, if they are planning something.”

Red has to admit that he’s also unsure how this would help capture the potential renegade. There’s always some chance they’re overconfident, or feel trapped and let themselves be merged with rather than raise suspicion… but the more likely outcome is they just leave.

But after another half hour of working their way down through the middle managers and to the lowest ranks, no one’s done that yet, and Red starts to feel more nervous about it. Not the sort of nerves that makes him feel like he’s in danger; one of the hunters has a wigglytuff out and earplugs in, if anyone who walks in tries to start something they’d be unconscious in seconds. But still, his feet keep tapping restlessly under his seat.

He’s just about to try Focusing to see if his unease is coming from moral ambiguity, or something else when the CAO, whose name Red has already forgotten, claps his hands together with a satisfied sigh.

“Alright, that’s everyone in leadership. Kazue, I think we can deal with everyone else without you.”

President Silph looks up at him. “You’re sure?”

“Yes,” says the woman in a three piece suit that Red is pretty sure is the CHRO. “They’d probably feel more intimidated than anything. Go get some work done.”

President Silph smiles. “You know me too well.” He fiddles with the mouse and keyboard for a moment, then straightens his cuffs as he stands. “Alright, I’ll be in my office if you need me.”

Sicong looks to his subordinate. “Pranav, go with him.”

“Yes, Sir.” He gives the female cop a small wave and escorts the President to the door, where Silph pauses and turns back to Red.

“Be sure to come back up before you leave, Mr. Verres, so I can thank you again.”

Red just nods, and then they’re gone. As soon as the president leaves, some tension leaks out of the collective minds in the room, and the CHRO doesn’t waste a moment before turning to the CAO and CTO, saying, “Same goes for you two.”

They exchange glances, and the CAO opens his mouth, then closes it with a wry smile and nods. “Yeah, alright. Call me—”

“If I need you, yeah, yeah.”

“You alright here, Valentin?” the CTO asks the guy in the room who’s been reprogramming people’s new security badges. Red presumes he’s in charge of cyber security, but it’s been hard to tell what the organizational structure here is.

“I’m good, Sir.” The IT engineer flashes a thumbs up without looking away from his computer. “Everything looks good from the lab, too.”

“I’ll go see how they’re doing with the rest, then.”

Once the two men leave, the room starts to feel a bit less crowded, with just the CHRO, Valentin, Sicong, and Lin from the company, while Burrell, the female officer, and the two hunters represent the city. Red didn’t even learn their names, but the guy is lanky while the woman is short and muscular, so he’s been thinking of them as Tall and Stocky.

Red has been a little surprised by how casually everyone’s been acting toward each other, particularly given the high ranks of some of them, but he can tell that they’re all more than a little nervous. Still, that does seem to be decreasing, even for the cops and hunters, who are getting more and more relaxed over time. Even Burrell, whose hat has gone uncreased for nearly ten minutes now.

A steady stream of employees continues to trickle in, most of them non-dark, and as everything becomes more and more routine Red starts to wonder if it would be disrespectful to fiddle on his phone while he waits for Miracle Eye to be needed again.

He checks in with Kadabra instead, merging with his pokemon to send reassurance at some of his restlessness, then sending their combined senses outward in every direction. With Kadabra’s incredible range, he could count every employee mind on the surrounding floors if he wanted to, and it’s a little dizzying being aware of so many anonymous minds at once. At best he can aggregate, emotional impressions: a dozen people feeling anxiety, another dozen or so deeply focused on some task, a small scattering of people who seem to be on break, or relaxing in some other way, particularly clustered in a couple rooms that he guesses are kitchens.

It’s particularly interesting noticing where people’s attention is focused, and how “open” they are to the world around them compared to something specific that they’re deliberately paying attention to. He wonders whether his own awareness shifts, and, as he notices the way it automatically seems to “glance” at the people around him, what triggers it for himself when he’s not deliberately focused on anything…

“This is Red Verres, who will be allowing me to merge with your thoughts…”

Red pulls his mind back and focuses on the employee in front of him, trying to look attentive and unthreatening. The woman doesn’t seem too concerned, though she asks some questions about privacy expectations before agreeing.

Once the merger is done and she leaves, he decides to finally pull out his phone to message Blue and see how he’s doing. The text doesn’t go through, however, and after a moment he notices that his phone has no signal.

The sight of the error sends a small jolt through his stomach, and even as part of him knows he’s probably overreacting he looks around to see if anyone else has noticed something wrong. Maybe they just block it in here, and he has to get on the local wifi…

THUD

Everyone jumps, turning to face the door. The loud noise came from just the other side of it, and seemed to rattle it in its frame.

“What was that?” Commissioner Burrell asks. Everyone in the room with a pokebelt has a hand on a ball.

“I sent for lunch,” the CHRO says, but her tone is doubtful, and when one of the hunters twists the handle and pushes, it doesn’t budge.

“What in the h—”

BOOMMMMMmmm

Red waits until the floor stops vibrating to stand, knees slightly bent. “That came—”

“—above us—”

“Attention Silph Employees. This building is now under our control.”

Red stares at the intercom speaker in what feels like a haze of surreal shock, even while part of him feels like all of this is totally normal. Burrell swears, and the hunter tries to open the door again, this time shoving his shoulder against it.

“Everyone below the fourth floor may evacuate immediately. Everyone on the fourth floor and above, remove any pokebelts and lie facedown, hands on your head. If you attempt to stop us, we will kill our hostages, including President Silph.”

The room is frozen, for a moment, and Red has to withdraw his senses to avoid getting overwhelmed in the mix of emotions pinging off everyone’s minds. There’s a click from the intercom before the voice returns.

“Commissioner Burell and associates in security, you’ve no doubt noticed by now that you’re trapped behind a ton of iron. This means we can’t assure your disarming compliance. However, we have people throughout the building, and if you use any pokemon to break through the doors, walls, ceilings, or floor, we will kill the President. Just sit still, and no one needs to die.”

“Who is this?” the Commissioner asks, and Red is impressed by how even and commanding his tone is despite the vein that’s visibly throbbing on his temple. The man’s face is flushed to a dark mahogany, and his hat lies crumpled on the ground, fists clenched at his sides. “What are your intentions?”

There’s no answer, and Burrell takes out his walkie talkie. “Haru?” He twists a knob. “Emiko, come in.” Another twist, this one going through multiple clicks. “Burrell to all points, come in, over.”

“Internet’s down.” Valentin says, voice low as he starts typing rapidly. “Lost landline and wifi—”

“Jammer for phones and for radio frequencies,” Sicong says, breathing hard. The head of security is twisting his own radio through frequencies, each click sounding incredibly loud, then seems to force himself to stop.

Burrell seems about to throw his own radio, then catches himself and places it on the table next to him, palms flat beside it as he stares at the wall.

“What do we do?” the CHRO asks, voice low. “How did this happen?”

“I’m thinking.”

“They have Mr. Silph—”

“I’m thinking!”

The hunters have stopped trying to bust down the door, and Lin just sits with wide eyes. “The window…?”

“Four stories up,” Burrell says. “Any of you have a pokemon that you can ride that climbs walls?”

No one answers.

“They’d probably count that as trying to escape too,” Sicong murmurs. “And kill Kazue, and whoever else they have.” Red can tell he’s thinking of Pranav, maybe wondering if he’s already dead.

We’re trapped.

Red’s heart is beating hard in his chest, but steady. He merges with Kadabra and sends their psychic range out as wide as it can go, sensing the minds fleeing the floors below them, doing his best to filter out the universal fear and shock radiating from all the others in range.

They’re all trapped.

---

In a way, part of Blue had been waiting for the first boom that shudders through the building all along. It should have been like a shot of espresso, a jolt of adrenaline that set his heart racing. Instead Blue immediately enters his battle calm as he swings his feet around and stands, then moves out the door and into the hall that led to the elevator Red went up, hands automatically moving to unclip the airmask from the side of his bag and slip it on.

Maturin, Gon, Ion, Soul, Zephyr, Rive. The last two wouldn’t be able to be summoned indoors, and Soul would be pretty cramped too…

Soon he’s in the office area that leads to the private elevator. It’s a wide open room with a couple dozen desks scattered through it, each pair forming the Silph logo when placed side by side. The office workers are still at their desks looking mildly confused as they stare at the ceiling, or look around to see what others’ reactions are, and Blue’s steps slow as he wonders whether he should tell them to evacuate or ignore them and head for Red.

Which is when he notices one of the people take a pokebelt out of a suitcase and clip it on.

In any other context, Blue would admire the person’s level-headedness and reaction time. If you hear something like that, regardless of where you are, your first step should be to reach for your belt.

But there’s something too calm, too sure, about the man’s movements, and the memory association is immediate and impossible to ignore; it’s been nearly a year since he helped catch Yuuta, but he still dreams about it, sometimes.

“Renegade!”

The word comes out before he can consider it, an explosion of sound that gets more reaction from everyone than the boom had.

Only too late, in the moment where everyone turns to him in shock, does Blue consider other explanations for what he saw: an ex-trainer or ranger, or even an undercover cop or security guard…

And then the man throws two balls at the only relatively empty parts of the office: the spaces in front of the doors. One releases a vileplume, the other a blastoise. The pokemon have barely been summoned before he takes a facemask out of his suitcase and has clipped it on. “Nobody move—”

Blue has already started kicking rolling chairs and shoving over desks, throwing himself behind one as he tosses out a ball. “Go, Gon! Sa!”

As the freshly summoned breloom shoots a cloud of sleep inducing spores at the blastoise, Blue has a moment to uselessly wish he had a chance to use a PC and switch his pokemon, and then he’s rolling across the floor to shove more things out of the way so he can summon his arcanine, which takes twice as long. As he works, a barked command from the renegade sends a splash of acid onto Gon from behind, causing him to cry out in pain.

Blue grits his teeth and finishes clearing a space. “Go, Soul!”

People start yelling and rushing out of the way as soon as the arcanine appears, head brushing the ceiling. Blue almost orders a Flame Charge as a second blob of acid sails through the air, drops leaving smoking holes in the carpet, then remembers where they are and shouts “Faf!” instead, pointing up and vaguely toward the vileplume from behind cover.

The next few moments are full of screams and crashing sounds as Soul goes charging through the office space. Someone has started making an announcement on the office intercom, but Blue has no attention to spare for it, and cranes his head up to see how the battle is going… which is how he spots the renegade clearing some space around himself.

If Blue had been asked how annoying it would be to have a real pokemon battle in an office building, he could have gone on a two hour rant. Just because he hasn’t trained to battle renegades doesn’t mean he hasn’t trained to battle indoors; after everything he and his friends have been through, particularly stories of Leaf and Red’s battles in Vermilion, he’d have to be a fool to expect most incidents he ends up battling in to be in the wild.

So he practiced in sims, and looked up advice online, and even found a few buildings marked for demolition to set a few of the Fuchsia scenarios in. One of the main difficulties involved not having space to summon pokemon, so Blue got good at thinking and acting in ways that would create space while acting on new ones that show up naturally in the course of the battle, even while he found it incredibly annoying and tedious compared to the smooth back and forth of even a wild outdoor battle.

Of course his practice sessions didn’t include battling a renegade who was also trying to make space, and at the end of the day who uses it comes down to who’s got better reflexes.

His arm snaps out while the renegade is still raising his ball, and Maturin appears just as the man tries to summon his own pokemon.

The renegade’s ball gives a low error beep to indicate that the summoning area isn’t clear, and as the man scrambles to create more space Blue quickly checks the other battles.

Gon has put the blastoise to sleep, but is clearly hurting from the vileplume’s acid. Thankfully Soul is savaging the flower pokemon, flame-lined jaws tearing burnt petals off one at a time, so Blue rushes over to spray some potion on his breloom before a “Sab!” has it spitting seeds out in a rapid stream at the blastoise’s tough shell.

Blue turns back to see Maturin standing in ready expectation, its attention shifting between the pokemon fighting around it. It has nothing that he could order it to do to a human, but once the other battles are done the three pokemon he has out should be able to easily overwhelm whatever the renegade summons. Still, better to deny that one too, if he can…

He prepares to throw Ion’s ball, then notices that the renegade has stopped pushing desks out of the way and finished yanking a greatball out of his pocket, a variety of others falling and scattering on the ground, and a jolt of energy sends Blue rushing forward even as the man enlarges it and takes aim at Maturin.

He’s not going to make it.

Time fractures, two futures splayed out before him. In one he sacrifices his starter to what might be permanent psychological damage. Maybe he’ll be able to clean up the confused mix of conditioning, with months of careful reprogramming and retraining, but maybe not.

In another, he withdraws Maturin, the renegade summons a new pokemon in the empty space, and Blue probably dies before his other pokemon can come save him.

It’s the sort of decision that can only ever be made one way.

He wants to believe he’s fast enough to withdraw and throw at once, but he doesn’t have another ball prepared and the renegade does, and the renegade will just do the same thing to whomever he sends out to replace Maturin anyway.

And so he has a full second to accept that he’s likely lost Maturin, a second to prepare to summon his luxio, the only other pokemon he has on him that would fit in the cleared space, and then finds himself throwing Ion’s ball just as the man does, pegging the empty greatball out of the air with a tink.

He doesn’t stop to think about what he just did, other hand already moving to get an empty ball of his own, which he enlarges and chucks directly at the man’s head.

The renegade’s reaction to his ball being deflected midair is admirably/annoyingly unphased, but he also clearly doesn’t see Blue’s followup coming, and gets smacked in the temple, which sends him stumbling back a step. Unfortunately he recovers quickly, and Blue feels a rising frustration as his options grow more and more limited. Tactics that keep the renegade from using his pokemon aren’t enough, Blue needs some way to end the fight. Maybe Blue can pull the man’s mask off and have Gon use Spore, but the renegade is bigger and stronger than him, and probably knows how to fight—

Something hits the man in the back of the head, and he stumbles forward a step. A stapler clatters to the ground, and Blue sees a woman standing behind the renegade, half concealed by her desk, a half-panicked, half-furious look on her face.

“Nice shot!” Blue yells, a savage grin splitting his face. That was an ex-trainer’s throw, or his name isn’t Oak.

The renegade regains his footing and spins toward her, and Blue winds back another empty ball as she scrambles away—

Another object flies by, this time from the left. It misses the renegade by a few inches, but makes him reflexively crouch, which makes it easier for Blue to peg him in the back of the head and almost sending him headfirst into the desk beside him.

Blue has the fleeting, annoyed thought that this scene is going to look ridiculously cartoonish in whatever film gets made about his life, but the renegade does seem to be having trouble standing straight now, so he starts to look around for something heavier to throw.

And then three objects fly at the renegade within a few seconds, one striking him in the back and another in the side, and he starts to spin wildly, eyes wide behind his mask. Blue sees a marble paperweight and dives to scoop it up, rolls into a crouch, throws—

—but the renegade is running now, withdrawing his unconscious blastoise before dashing through the doorway it was blocking.

Blue curses and chases after him before he can stop to think, scrambling to swap balls and bring Maturin with him. “Return!” he yells, then adds “Soul, come, Gon, come!” before realizing there’s no way Soul will fit through the doorway and giving a yell of frustration, pumping his legs faster as the renegade turns a corner ahead of him. He must be running for the front lobby, and if he reaches the open space there first…

But when they arrive Blue sees it’s full of people, all rushing for the building’s front entrance. The renegade doesn’t stop, and within moments he’s lost in the crowd that’s shoving its way through the main doors.

Blue slows to a stop, then looks around to make sure people aren’t running from something more immediately dangerous. He almost grabs one to ask what’s going on, if there are other renegades elsewhere, but then Gon rushes up beside him, tail bobbing as he hops protectively around his trainer.

Blue takes a moment to catch his breath, then returns Gon to his ball and rushes back the way he came, past open and empty offices to where Soul’s head is stuck through the doorway of the room they were in, clearly trying to find a way to squeeze his body through. He makes a plaintive growl as he spots Blue, rotating his head as he tries to shift a shoulder past.

“That’s alright, Boy,” Blue murmurs, stretching a hand out to pet the arcanine’s snout before gently pushing so that he backs up into the room. Blue checks him for injuries, rubbing at the stitch in his side, then withdraws Soul and looks around the wrecked office area. “Everyone okay?”

The Silph employees are still mostly cowering around their desks, but one has gone over to the vileplume’s corpse, presumably to ensure that it’s dead, while another is going from desk to desk trying phones. It’s the woman who threw the stapler at the renegade, and she smiles and nods to him.

“We’re all safe, Trainer, thanks to you.”

Blue is about to express his own gratitude to her and the others for the part they played when a shrill voice yells, “Thanks to him? What kind of maniac starts a battle in a crowded room?!”

He turns to the source, an older woman who’s sitting beside an upturned desk, a broken PC in her hands, and tries not to let his incredulity and anger show, reminding himself that she’s probably just scared. “You’d rather I let the renegade do what he wanted?”

“Ben wasn’t a renegade, he was… I mean, he…” She shakes her head, eyes wide and confused. “He probably would have let us go! That’s what the guy on the speaker said!”

Blue frowns at her as he vaguely remembers the intercom saying things while he was fighting. “What did he say, exactly?”

“That anyone below the fourth floor was free to leave!”

“He also said they’ve got hostages,” the first woman retorts. “If he was going to let us leave he wouldn’t have blocked both ways out of here.”

“Hostages?” Blue asks before they can get into an argument. Why the fourth floor? “Who?”

“We don’t know, but President Silph is one of them.”

Blue’s fists clench, and he takes out his phone to call Red, then grimaces at the lack of signal and puts it away. “It doesn’t make any sense. They block communication but let people leave… what starts on the fourth floor?”

“I don’t know, it’s… there’s some storage? Security?”

“Not IT?”

“No, that’s fifth.”

Security probably, then. Maybe they put most of their people there? Fuck it, he doesn’t have time for guessing. “Alright, I’m sure there are a bunch of people calling the police and rangers and news and so on once they leave, but when you leave could you message my grandpa, let him know I’m okay?”

The woman’s eyes widen. “Yeah, of course. You’re… going up? What about the hostages?”

“Renegades don’t take hostages,” he says, trying to ignore the churning in his stomach. Red’s okay, he’s got to be…

The woman on the ground is shaking her head. “You can’t just decide that! They’ve clearly got a plan, you don’t know they’ll kill anyone—”

“Renegades don’t leave witnesses!” Blue yells, heat filling his chest thinking of what happened under the Casino. “They’re evil, pure and simple, and whatever they’re here for they can’t be allowed to get it! If Silph is alive it’s because they need him for something, but once they have what they want they’ll kill anyone who saw them! Letting others leave means they know they’ll be gone before the police and hunters get here.”

What they’re not accounting for is him being here.

The lady hangs her head, staring at the broken computer, and he feels his anger flare up again before he forces it out with his next breath and turns back to the younger woman. “Is there a PC connected to the storage system on this floor?”

“No, I don’t think so. But they should have one—”

“On the fourth,” he guesses, and sighs when she nods, running a hand through his hair. He’d like to swap some of his pokemon out… hell, he’d like to get some backup. He’s painfully aware that he didn’t win that fight, just stalled it until he got lucky. The whole reason he didn’t tell Glen and the others to come is that none of them are equipped to handle renegades, and part of him is kicking himself for not having called them anyway.

With time to think, to imagine what’s ahead, he can feel fear trying to creep through his body, to freeze him in place. Red would tell him not to be stupid, not to rush into the field full of beedrill, or the burning building.

But he has no idea what’s happening upstairs right now, and if delaying a few minutes means the renegades get the Master Ball, or something happens to Red…

He goes to find Ion’s ball and reclip it to his belt, trying not to think about the way he threw one pokemon away on a slim chance of saving another, then heads for the private elevator, picking up the marble paperweight along the way.

I’m coming, Red.

---

Once the shock starts to wear off, it’s not long before tempers begin to flare.

“Thank you for your advice, but the presence of renegades makes our job clear.”

“My job is to keep President Silph safe—”

“It’s also to keep company tech from falling into the wrong hands,” Burrel says, facing the chief of security down with a flat expression. “And I could imagine the president would say that if it’s between his safety or the Master Ball—”

Sicong shakes his head with a look of disgust. “Whether you’re right or not, there are other lives on the line too. I’m not assisting with any plan that might put them in danger.”

“If you expect the renegades to let him live,” Stocky says. “You are badly mistaken.”

The hunters have completely changed. From passively fading into the background, their bodies are brimming with energy, and they seem a hair’s breadth away from sudden action at any moment, which makes it hard not to feel an adrenaline kick just from being in the same room as them.

Red is spending half of his attention soothing Kadabra, who began to grow agitated from picking up on the tension and fear around them. Red would have withdrawn him, but it’s useful having the extra range for his psychic senses.

“Reinforcements will be here soon,” Lanky adds. “But they plan to be gone by then.”

“The hostages—”

“Renegade activity presumes constant danger to everyone,” Stocky says, then turns to the police commissioner. “With your permission, Sir?”

“Now wait just a minute—”

“Not yet,” Burrell says, ignoring Sicong and turning to Valentin. “I need you to tell me how compromised the labs might be. Is there any chance they can take what’s there?”

Valentin stares at the commissioner for a moment before glancing at his livid security chief, then back. “I don’t know. It’s… they shouldn’t be able to get anything, the Master Ball is being digitally stored in multiple parts, but if they have hostages… they might be able to convince someone to give them what they need?”

“Which is likely, if they threaten to kill them or those around them.” Burrell takes a deep breath, then lets it out, vein still throbbing in his temple before he turns to the hunters. “Suggestions.”

“Bring the building down,” Lanky says, one hand patting an ultraball on his hip.

“Can you do it from here?”

“No, Sir. Would need to get outside first.”

The commissioner nods, then turns to the other hunter, who shrugs.

“If they need hostages to get the ball, call their bluff,” Stocky says. “Fight our way to them. But Jensen’s right, they’re confident they can get it and leave soon, so—”

“We need to know where they are first,” Burrell says with a nod, then turns to the female officer. “We could split up. Cover all bases, do our best to slow them down until reinforcements come.”

“But it’s not certain, Sir,” Lanky—Jensen—says. “And they could teleport away as soon as they realize they’ll lose.”

“That’s still a win, right?” Lin asks, speaking for the first time. “Getting them to leave—”

“Every renegade that escapes is a potential slaughter,” Jensen says, voice flat. “That goes twice for renegades as organized as this. The only acceptable priority is extermination.”

“You can’t,” the CHRO says, voice low and obviously scared. “You can’t just… bring down the whole building, on all the people in it, just to…”

No one answers. They don’t need to: the hunters could, in fact, do just that.

Assuming Burrell agrees. He’s still the ranking officer, and they’re under his command.

Everyone watches the commissioner as he slowly runs a hand over his cropped hair, then walks over to the window, staring out at the bright day outside. As Red picks up on the tension in his mind, the wavering fear and certainty and dread, he feels his own fear spreading and growing, sinking him into the sense that this is all a prolonged nightmare. If the commissioner gives the word, the hunters will start fighting their way out… the hostages will be killed… and then, if they make it to the ground floor, they’ll bring the whole building down.

Options, options, we need options…

What do the renegades believe?

That they hold all the cards. That as long as the police and hunters are stuck in here, and as long as they have hostages, they can get the master ball.

So they need to get the hostages away from them.

But they can’t do that while they’re stuck here.

Red feels sweat beading his skin despite the cool breeze, and glances at the window beside Burrell. They’re not actually stuck here, any of them with a teleporting pokemon can leave… he could leave, if he’s willing to wash his hands of all this. Make it not his problem.

Save himself, and maybe consign Blue and the others to death.

Or, perhaps worse, let the renegades get the Master Ball.

His heart starts to beat faster, and Red closes his eyes. Options, he needs options. What can he do that the renegades won’t expect…

…and then his partition is down, and he’s his full self again, considering all the options he’s already cataloged while it was up.

They don’t know he can perfectly lie to psychics, but that doesn’t help him at the moment.

They don’t know he can project sakki, but that only helps if he can merge with their pokemon.

Most importantly, they don’t know he can teleport indoors. Not unless they believed his claim that he could, which most who don’t know him don’t seem to, and which they’re certainly not acting like they do.

Of course, whether he can isn’t the issue. It’s whether he will, if he tries. His abra was able to teleport him to his room because he fundamentally believed it was safe. There’s no way he’s going to believe that about any part of the Silph building…

Unless he tricks part of him into believing it by partitioning and amnesia’ing what he’s doing it for.

It feels like a dangerously convoluted plan that he wishes he’d thought to try practicing earlier, but… it just might work.

Lin is giving him a strange look, and Red meets his gaze and sends a wordless question. Trust?

The other psychic holds his gaze, then nods.

“I think,” Commissioner Burrel says, voice rough, and Red can sense his decision from the sense of dull finality in his thoughts. “That we don’t have a choi—”

“Wait,” Red says, heart hammering even as his resolve hardens to certainty. “There’s another option.”

Burrell’s face doesn’t show the hope Red senses from him, only skepticism. “Speak.”

“I can teleport out, and—”

“Help won’t come on time—”

“—save the hostages.”

The skepticism is radiating from everyone now, but it’s mixed with an odd kind of hope from the non-hunters, a desperate kind that’s looking for miracles.

Burrell’s hope isn’t that kind. He’s staring at Red as if seeing him for the first time, and giving an odd smile. “Knew there was another reason Silph wanted you here. You’re his ace in the hole, aren’t you? All that stuff with Celadon, you did more than help search buildings.”

“What can you do, exactly?” Stocky asks, and Red senses suspicion from her.

It’s understandable. Only the best trainers could hope to fight renegades without having pokemon that could go for a trainer kill too, and Red doesn’t have any badges. Which, to them, implies he might have illegal pokemon.

“I can teleport indoors, and I have a secret psychic ability that lets me shut down renegade pokemon.”

“That’s imposs—”

Jensen cuts himself off, and Red both senses and sees it. The moment they remember who he is, and what he’s done.

It’s an uncomfortable feeling, in some ways, but also makes some part of him relax, his back straightening as he meets their gaze one by one. Another part of him is terrified of what the consequences of his secret coming out might be… but maybe, if he’s careful…

“He’s not lying,” Lin confirms after a moment, voice quietly awed. Even without being merged, Red knows the other psychic can sense his resolve. “He’s scared, but… he really believes he can do this.”

Burrell’s eyes are wide, and he licks his lips, hand going to his hair again. His gaze jumps to his hat where it’s lying on the ground, then back to Red. “Ten minutes. Get Silph to safety, if you can. Stop the renegades, if you can. And then we’re breaking out.”

Red nods and turns to Valentin. “I need to know where I’m going. The only spots I’ll be able to teleport to are Silph’s office and the back elevator.” They’re the only places in the building he formed enough of a strong emotional memory to return to. “Can you tell me how to get to the lab from either?”

“I’ll do you one better. Give me your phone, I’ll transfer you our security codes and the building schematics.” Valentin hesitates, then turns to Sicong. “Assuming—”

“Yes, fuck it, give him whatever we’ve got!”

Red hands his phone over, then prepares himself for a very strange conversation with his partitioned self. After a moment he turns to Lin. “How far is your psychic range? Does it reach the bottom floor?”

“It doesn’t reach the top floors, but I can sense most of the building.”

“Then I’m going to need your help…”

It’s a testament to how good the food is that Red notices it at all, given the circumstances. Nothing exotic or fancy, but the karp is buttery-smooth in his mouth, and he’s never had more fresh seaweed salad. President Silph eats slowly, clearly savoring every bite, but Red gulps it down as he listens to Commissioner Burrell explain why he’s here.

“Our investigation has been slow and careful.” The short, heavily built man creases and rotates his cap between his hands as he shifts his weight from one foot to the other. When he noticed Red looking between him and the food, he gruffly explained that he had a late breakfast. “But this ‘Miracle Eye’ changed everything. As soon as it became possible, even hypothetically, for dark people to get scanned, we knew any dark criminals would start scrambling. And they knew we knew, so they scrambled as quietly as they could. Do you have any idea how many dark folk just flat disappeared in the week after your announcement?”

Red shakes his head as he slurps up some seaweed, suddenly feeling a sick turning in his gut. They predicted this sort of use case for Miracle Eye, of course, but it’s happening much faster than he predicted… and he should have predicted it, after Celadon.

“About a dozen reports in Kanto alone. Government, corporate, even some gym members, all in the wind. And we have to assume they were only the most cautious, or the least desperate.”

“Or maybe just the ones who weren’t close enough to completing their goal,” President Silph says and takes a sip of tea before clearing his throat. “I believe those in Silph can’t pull out now, because our latest project is too important to miss, and too close to being complete.”

Red pauses to drink some too, and is about to wipe his mouth with his sleeve before realizing he’s showing off bad table manners. Even the napkins are absurdly soft and comfortable. “Sorry, but just to be clear… you said ‘renegade,’ earlier. What makes you think they’re… that, instead of just, uh, spies, or thieves, or…?”

“It’s a fair question,” Burrell says, and glances at President Silph. “But not one we’re prepared to answer at this time. What we can answer is why you, in particular, would be helpful.”

“Today is just a normal day, as far as my staff knows,” Silph says. “Except I’ve allowed some controlled leaks to indicate that our most secret project will be ready for testing tonight, which means it’s in a complete enough form to be stolen, if stealing it is the goal.”

Red doesn’t imagine they’ll explain what this project is about, and they don’t. “So… you’re using it as bait? Isn’t that risky?”

“Risky is letting the renegades melt away, either with the tech or without it,” Burrell says. “Most don’t have access to the engineer labs it’s being held in, but we plan to do a full sweep of the building, just to be sure. Normally there’s only a slight chance something will turn up, if a previously scanned employee has been recently corrupted or blackmailed, but with someone to use Miracle Eye on each dark one we have a real chance at stopping them before they put their plan into action.”

“I would just change the testing date and location, but there’s no way to know who’s compromised,” Silph says. “If we coordinate with the police, however, we can ensure some level of preparation when our company psychics merge with them.” He holds up a hand to forstall Red’s objection. “And to be clear, all of my employees have signed paperwork allowing mental merger during internal investigations. The use of a pokemon to assist is new, however, and extensive legal consultation has produced new waivers. Anyone will be free to say no, upon which they will be asked to leave the building.”

Red frowns. “That still seems like they’ll be pressured into saying yes.”

“The alternative is to ask all my dark employees to leave for the day, and that we can’t do without seriously disrupting work, not to mention the test itself.”

It’s hard not to imagine that being something of a logistics nightmare, not to mention a PR one. Whatever Silph sees in Red’s expression, it makes him sigh and set his food down.

“I won’t deny that society has not always been fair to dark minds, but at Silph we have strived to treat everyone equally where possible, and I must admit to feeling some gall at the thought that this generosity may have been taken advantage of. At the same time, I take no pleasure in distrusting my employees like this.” He fiddles with his chopsticks, then puts them aside too and considers his linked fingers. “In fact I detest it. But it has been a difficult year for my company. I’ve seen and heard the seeds of suspicion blooming throughout it, and another piece of stolen technology may cause permanent division between my dark and non-dark staff.” He meets Red’s gaze. “But your new technique can change all that.”

“By letting people trust dark people,” Red guesses, feeling his stomach churn again.

“Yes. No longer will dark people have to deal with the suspicion of their peers, or their resentment at being exempt from such checks. Normally those feelings might be mixed with some pity over limitations they endure, like training psychic pokemon or not being able to teleport, but with that no longer a block, I worry resentment will grow. Instead, with these inspections everyone will be on a truly even playing field.”

Red hadn’t thought of any of this, and is unsure how much weight to put in that prediction. It strikes him as strange, and oddly petty… but Red knows that might be a blindspot of his. He’s never worked in any kind of corporate environment, while Silph has had decades of experience managing hundreds of people; if he thinks it’s a real concern, it probably is one.

A sudden feeling of rebellion rises up, and he remembers to be cautious in taking the older man’s word on anything that might persuade Red to do what he says. “It may have been unfair that some people could get a job with less scrutiny than others. But those who weren’t dark did sign up for the expectation of scrutiny, and those who were signed up without it, and that feels… important? There’s this thing called meta-honesty—”

“—yes, I read your post on the concept, and your own policies on it.”

“You did?” If so, it’s the first time in the past few weeks that someone he’s had to explain it to has actually saved him the time.

“Twice. My guess is you’re worried that those who were not dark and had some private secret that outweighed their desire to work here had the opportunity to make that informed decision, while those who were dark made a different mutually agreed-on decision, which is now being changed. How close am I?”

Despite the circumstances, Red smiles. There’s something like… relief, to be understood so quickly and easily. “Yeah, that was basically it.”

“It’s a reasonable concern, and I won’t pretend there would be zero pressure. But you have my word that I won’t fire anyone simply because they refuse, not least of which because it would set a terrible precedent. I simply must ensure that, while this research is being completed, we minimize risk as much as possible.”

“On that note, I want to reassure you that this would pose minimal danger to you,” Commissioner Burrell says. “We’ll have officers present in case anyone tries anything.

“Will you do this for us, Red?” President Silph asks. The older man’s voice is calm, his gaze piercing. “It is ultimately your decision, and I’ll understand if you say no. But this is the best chance we have to end this peacefully, and safely.”

Red doesn’t respond right away, simply stirring the remnants of his salad around with his chopstick. He understands that he’s being manipulated in every obvious way. The stakes are high. There’s a time pressure to give a response. He can’t ask others for help. And he doesn’t even have to take responsibility for the actual violation of others’ privacy; he’s just putting everyone on an equal playing field.

Still, it feels wrong.

“I’m sorry,” Red says after deliberating carefully on his words. “I understand that the prospect of a renegade in your company is a serious issue, but… the Miracle Eye is too new for me to feel comfortable making moral decisions like this with it. I’d like to help, but… I don’t think I can.”

President Silph doesn’t look disappointed, but he does set aside his chopsticks again and steeple his hands together as he inspects Red, who tries not to shift under the scrutiny. “Then I must tell you what’s at stake. It will be public information soon enough that we’ve developed a new pokeball that we believe will be able to capture legendary pokemon…”

Red listens as he describes the “Master Ball,” implications bouncing around in his head even before President Silph starts talking about their worries of one ending up in the wrong hands. The idea of a pokeball that could catch the Titans, maybe even the Beasts or Stormbringers, would change the world. It would provide real hope that things could change, might even calm people’s fears about the mysterious threat everyone’s been dreaming about… Blue is going to absolutely flip…

Oh shit, Blue! He completely forgot about him, he’ll have to remember to mention that he’s here at some point.

“…top secret, but I’m sure you can understand, now, how many degrees of caution feel appropriate.”

Red swallows, then drinks some tea. “I do, yeah. My friends and I talked about the idea of someone catching a legendary pokemon, and the good it could do… but also what it would mean for interregional peace. Is there… a plan for that?”

“Simply put, to sell as many of them as possible, so that all the power is not concentrated in any one person, or region’s hands. One of the features of this ball will be that it can capture a pokemon that’s already caught without causing permanent damage.”

“Woah. Okay, so using a legendary against anyone who might have another masterball would be a huge risk…” Red feels himself being convinced, little by little, and takes a breath. “Okay, so I get that this is important. I think… I need to get some outside counsel at this point.” It’s still strange to Red that he has a personal lawyer who he can call up and ask questions now, but he also means his mother. He knows she’s waiting to hear from him anyway.

“I completely understand. But I have one request: no journalists.”

Red meets his gaze and decides not to ask for the obvious exception. “If you expect all this to stay secret…”

“No, it’s not about the use of Miracle Eye itself; that will be public information soon after.”

“Then why?”

“Because I have little doubt there are many throughout my company that act as sources for them. Even in the best of times, it’s a troublesome thing to balance the good of the company and its proprietary information, and the freedom of individuals to freely associate as they choose.” There’s a stiffness to the way he says the second part, and he lets out a breath. “But in this particular case, it’s imperative that we not lose the element of surprise, and I don’t trust any journalist to hear of this sort of thing and not immediately reach out to learn more.”

Alright, much as he dislikes it, this seems like time for a firm condition of his own.

Even if it’ll end up sounding… really juvenile.

Red puts his pride aside and forces himself to say, “I’d really prefer to talk to my mother before agreeing to something like this.”

“I understand that you’d want some advice from those close to you—”

“Sorry, I wasn’t clear enough.” Ugh, why is this so hard? He feels like he’s pushing against some invisible force, some sense of… not just politeness, but basic decency, to be so openly suspicious.

But if his relationship with Silph requires keeping secrets from his mother then it won’t survive for long anyway. And if he wants it to be anything like an equal relationship, or one of respect, then just going along with everything Silph says is probably not the way to get there, if he can at all.

“I’m saying that I won’t do this without the ability to get counsel from anyone I feel the need to.” Red lets out a breath. “I’m not trying to be difficult, and will understand if you don’t trust me to be able to convince others to hold off on doing anything like that. But I at least want to be clear that it feels like a test of my judgment too.”

The older man across the desk meets his gaze for what feels like a minute straight, but is really just a couple rotations of Burrell’s cap in his hands before saying, “Of course. I suppose I’m extending enough trust as it is, and if you’re sure you can be persuasive about how dire the situation is… I have a private room to the side, if you’d like to use it.”

What he’d like to do is leave the building entirely, but saying that would imply that he’s being spied on, which he has no particular reason to believe President Silph’s own quarters would be. “That would be great, thank you.”

“I’ll go check with your people to ensure everything’s okay,” Burrell says as he puts his cap on. “Either way this goes, we’ll be ready to start within the hour.”

“Thank you, Commissioner.”

“Message me if anything changes.” He tips his head at Red and strides for the door.

“Uh, same for me. I don’t know how long I’ll be, but probably not an hour?”

“I understand.”

President Silph begins eating again, and Red looks at his mostly eaten food, scoops up one more piece of fish, then walks over to the door and enters a plush sitting room with a large screen in the wall and a minibar. Red messages his lawyer first, who asks for a ten minute wait while he wraps something up, then calls his mom in the meantime.

She answers before the first ring ends, and he can tell she’s trying to sound calm and neutral. “Hello, Red.”

“No emergency. Well, sort of. Also I might have to pause to take a call from my lawyer soon—”

“Red…”

“Right, so I’m in President Silph’s private office, there’s something going on that he wants my help with…”

It takes a surprisingly short amount of time to explain it, and when he finishes he feels a little silly. What exactly is he expecting his mother to say, other than—

“You can’t trust him, Red. Whatever he’s got planned—”

“Okay, sorry, this will sound rude but… can we jump to when I convince you I don’t, and you try sharing your models first before giving advice?”

Part of Red winces as his voice comes out more annoyed than he intended, but he doesn’t take it back, and after a moment his mother says, “Your voice is changing.”

Red blinks. “It is?”

“Yes. Getting deeper.” She sounds… he’s not sure how she sounds. Not angry, at least. “I’m sorry, Red, give me a minute.”

“Sure.” Red paces the room a little as he waits, then wonders if he’s being watched, then reminds himself President Silph’s own office isn’t likely to be bugged… then realizes that it could have been, particularly as he invited Red over and probably predicted he’d want somewhere private to talk to others…

He keeps pacing, hand tapping a rhythm against his leg as he tries to decide whether he’s being too paranoid or not paranoid enough. Clearly not enough up until now, if he’s being this slow to think of these things… what if his mom is right to worry he’s trusting Silph too much?

He’s about to say so when she lets out a breath. “Okay, so I’m still in a bit of shock that he told you about the Master Ball—”

Red almost reacts out loud to the revelation that she knew about it, but stops himself at the last moment.

“—and that it’s nearly ready. I can’t think of anything off the top of my head that makes this clearly a trap for you, so long as Burrell is there and you check with your lawyer and get something in writing.”

“You trust Burrell, then?”

“More than Silph, sure, but coming from me that’s not saying much.” His mom hesitates a moment. “He could be corrupt, but from what I’ve heard he’s clean, just a bit of an asshole.”

Red almost says that he seemed nice enough, if a bit understandably high strung, but a few sentences in a few minutes (while around President Silph) wouldn’t be a particularly good window into his character. “So if there’s no major risk for me, is there any for you?”

“It might undermine things I’ve said about him, when it comes out that you’ve helped him. But that seems like a reach for something this major, and also might serve to show impartiality if people assume we’ve got a more friendly relationship.” She sighs. “It also puts you in the middle, which I dislike on a number of levels.”

He understands why, but if he can act as a mediator or go-between, that seems better for everyone. Red wants to reconfirm that there’s no evidence Silph has personally done anything illegal, but is aware of the potential for bugs, and instead just says, “We’ll be okay. You know I wouldn’t—”

“Wouldn’t turn against me? Wouldn’t take his side?” Despite the words, she laughs. “No, Red, I know you wouldn’t. You’ll side with what you think is true, and I can’t be anything but proud of that.”

An unexpectedly strong surge of emotion fills Red’s chest, and he feels tears gathering at the corners of his eyes, and after a moment the wave fades, leaving him wiping at his eyes and trying to process what he felt. There was something in it that felt more like pain or grief than he expected…

“I’m just worried you’ll be misled,” his mom continues, and sighs. “But in this case, if there’s some hidden knife, I can’t see it.”

Red clears his throat. “Okay. Let me know if you do. I might still say no, but…”

“I understand. Let me call some people—”

“Wait, you can’t do that! This has to stay secret for at least the next hour, or else we might tip them off.”

His mother is quiet for a moment. “That’s Silph speaking, but I can’t argue the logic of it. I won’t check with anyone in the company.”

“Or anyone who might check with anyone in the company.”

“Yes, Red, I understand. But there are some people who need to know. Do you trust me?”

Red forces himself to relax. “I do. Sorry.”

“It’s alright. Be careful, Red. I love you.”

“Love you too, Mom.” He ends the call, then just stares at his phone for a minute, trying to untangle the stew of feelings he had during the call. A moment later he feels a renewed sense of urgency and messages Satori to let her know what’s going on.

His lawyer calls just as he finishes up, and Red goes over the details a second time. James doesn’t react particularly strongly to any of it, just going “uh huh” and “okay” and “right” through revelations that would set most people on the edge of their seat, until the question of whether Red might be liable comes up.

“Well, that’s an interesting bit of new jurisprudence you’ve landed in,” he says, and Red can hear his smile. “I’d have to see the waivers myself to be sure, but Silph is likely to be sure to cover their—their butts.” When they met, James told Red that he’s the youngest client he’s ever had, and it’s obvious now and then that he’s not used to it. But he never talks down to him, and Red enjoys the way he nerds out over legal things. “Send me a copy and I’ll let you know if they’re covering yours too.”

Satori is calling him now, so he says, “I will, thanks James, gotta go,” and swaps. “Hi Satori.”

“Hello, Red. I have… many questions, but I’m not sure which are time relevant.”

“I don’t want you to feel rushed. This was your discovery more than mine, and your primary project for years. If there’s any part of this that feels off to you, or like it might have a negative impact…”

She sighs. “When we talked about this happening, we imagined far less pressing scenarios. You know that this side of things always felt less interesting to me.”

“I do.” It was pretty clear she wanted the ability, or something like it, to exist for personal reasons, and her altruism extended mostly to what it would do for others like her or her sister. “Still, it feels important to make sure you’re okay with it.”

“For your own feelings of permission, or for potential public backlash?”

Red hesitates. “Both? But permission is the wrong word, I think. I just don’t want you to…”

“Regret having created it?” She laughs. “You know better.”

He smiles. “Okay, I guess now that you say it out loud, I do. It helps to hear it.”

“It isn’t ours anymore, Red Verres. We discovered it, shared our knowledge, even profited from it. But it belongs to the world, now, and if you are not the first to do this, someone else will be on another day. My legacy, such as it is, will be untouched whatever you choose yours to be. Do as you will.”

He’s not sure what to say to that, other than, “Thanks.” He almost says goodbye, but then has a thought. “I’m not seeking permission, but I am actually curious… what would your sister say?”

“You’ve met her. What is your belief?”

From what he could tell from a few conversations, what drove Koishi beyond the desire to be closer to her sister was to be like everyone else. “Insofar as this helps her, and those like her, be treated ‘normally,’ I guess she would be for it.”

“Having shared her mind as much as I have over the past weeks, I can confidently say you guess correctly. Be well, Red Verres, and good luck.”

“Thanks.”

Red closes the call and wonders if he should check with anyone else. After a five minute internal check, the only people that come to mind are Leaf and Blue.

He pulls them both into a group call, and for the fourth time goes over everything.

“…make sure you don’t say anything to anyone in the building obviously, Blue, and Leaf if you could avoid—”

“I can’t believe the Master Ball is almost done! This is way too early!”

Red blinks, then puts it together. “You and Mom knew about—”

“How do I get one?” Blue asks, voice hard.

“I don’t know, it’s not even done yet—”

“Blue you don’t want one—”

“The hell I don’t—”

“—there’s something Silph hasn’t told you about it, Red, it’s not just something that captures legendaries, it turns them into slaves!”

Red has a spare moment to notice his confusion in the ensuing silence before Blue says, “Uh, don’t you already think that regular pokeballs do that?”

“No,” Red says as it clicks. “She thinks it makes them tame, but the Master Ball… what, makes them completely obedient? Without the need to… get to know them or something?”

“Worse than that, it wipes their mind completely, turns them into robots!”

“How do you know that?” Red asks at the same time Blue says, “Oh come on, we’re talking about the Stormbringers.”

Red has a sudden sinking feeling, but he can’t think of something to say before Leaf retorts, “They might not only be used on Stormbringers, Blue, and they’re still feeling creatures—”

“They killed my parents—”

“Guys—”

“—and a million more—”

“Guys, shut up a sec!”

Silence, and Red belatedly remembers to lower his voice. “Sorry, but… I’m not really here to decide whether these things are good or not.” He’s also closer to Blue’s side on this, but it’s clear Leaf feels strongly about it and he’s not sure how to talk about it yet. “I’m just being asked to try and prevent them from getting stolen, which we can all agree is bad, right?”

There’s a pause, and then Leaf mutters “Right,” sounding more… surly, than Red’s ever heard her.

“Damn right,” Blue says. “What can I do?”

“Nothing, Blue, you’re not even supposed to know—”

“It’s been weird here, I knew something was off—”

“—I just wanted to check if you thought it was moral for me to do this with Miracle Eye.”

Silence again, and after a moment Blue says, “Huh. Didn’t really think about it, honestly. Kind of saw it coming, you know? Thought it would happen with people in power first though, what few of them are allowed. Guess that was naive of me.”

Red bites his lower lip. “Sounds like you don’t think it’s okay, then…?”

“I mean, it’s not my head being looked in. So long as they can walk away, not really my business.”

“Oh. Well. Alright, then.” He’ll dig into that later. “What do you think, Leaf?” He has a sudden worry that she’s mad at him…

“I’m not sure how to feel about it, honestly,” Leaf says. “It’s hard to put aside my feelings about Silph and the Master Ball enough to give any sort of answer. I’m not sure how to say this, but it feels bad to justify this sort of thing by how much is at stake?”

“What do you mean?” Blue asks. “If that was true we’d stop using hunters to catch renegades.”

“I know, I just don’t like that it’s being pushed on Red like it’s his fault if he says no and something bad happens. If they know there’s a renegade there then asking them to let their minds be read feels weird, because of course they’ll say no… but he’s saying they’ll just let them walk away and not treat them differently after? I guess they can’t know for sure who just has a really big secret, but I’m skeptical this will make people less suspicious of dark people. It’ll just make a new split between those willing to let someone read their mind and those not willing to.”

“Shit,” Blue says. “She’s right, and anyone not willing to will be seen even worse than they are now, since they have the option but are refusing it… ugh. Red, I may need you to casually comment about what merging thoughts with me is like at some point so people know that I’m not hiding any deep secrets.”

“Sure,” Red says, leaving unasked whether he’s actually going to want Red to merge with him first. He’s not sure how comfortable he’d be lying about that, though he does trust Blue… “So you think I shouldn’t do it?”

“Nah, doesn’t change anything. Was just saying, it’s going to happen, right or wrong.”

“Obviously if I had to choose between renegades getting it or Silph selling it to the Indigo League or whatever, I’d take the latter. Though that’s easy for me to say, since Unova isn’t near Indigo… no, obviously I’d still want it out of the hands of renegades.” She sighs. “I don’t know, Red. When this gets out, you’re going to get asked to do it a lot more by others before more people learn to. Are you ready to decide what makes the cut and what doesn’t?”

Red’s pacing slows, then stops as he stares out the window over the city. He didn’t think of that.

“I don’t know. I guess… it’ll depend on what’s at stake.”

“And how much they offer.” Blue says.

“What? I’m not going to charge for it!”

“Why not? Don’t tell me you turned down money!”

“They didn’t offer any, and I didn’t ask. That would be like charging for, I don’t know, saving people from a pokemon incident!”

“Nah, totally different. You think hunters and police don’t get paid? Is the Commissioner there on his off-time?”

“Blue’s right,” Leaf says. “Plus, it’s not like Silph can’t afford it.”

Red rubs his eyes, trying to decide if this is good sense or just a difference that comes from growing up poorer than the other two. “If I charge money for it, I can’t be sure I’m just doing it for moral reasons.”

“Hmmm… I guess from a PR angle…”

“Yeah, it’s a good point on both counts.” Leaf sighs. “Well, I’m out of wisdom on this one. Sorry, Red.”

“No, you’ve been helpful, both of you. Thanks.”

“Of course. Good luck!”

“Hey, seriously, if I can help—”

“I’ll let you know. But probably you should just sit tight, or maybe we can meet up later, in case this takes a while?”

“Fuck that, I’m staying.”

“Alright. Later guys.” Red ends the call and stares out over the city for another minute before he takes a breath and enters the main office.

President Silph is still sitting at his desk. Some dessert has appeared, and the older man carefully adds some crushed nuts onto his ice cream before he turns to Red. “That was quicker than I expected. Do you have your answer?”

“Mostly. I need to send whatever waiver you have to my lawyer…?”

“Of course. I’m still waiting on confirmation from Burrell and my head of security, so I’ll send you a copy now.”

He does so, and Red forwards it as he sits across from him again and looks over his own ice cream, wondering if it’s meant to further nudge Red into agreement. There’s an awkward silence as they wait for responses, or at least awkward for Red; President Silph seems to be enjoying his ice cream, and after a moment says, “Well, as we have some spare time, and didn’t have as productive a lunch as we might have liked… is there anything you’ve particularly wanted to discuss since our last one?”

Red half expected the President to bring up something related to his mother, and is wondering now if this is his way of inviting questions around that. Maybe give his side of the story, or judge whether Red is upset about it.

But Red doesn’t really want to talk about that, and bringing it up would put them in a frame of potential argument and conflict. He’s more interested in getting the President’s thoughts on his guilt over the pokemon prices going up…

“Yes, actually. I recently made a lot of money by selling pokemon capable of Miracle Eye—”

“Yes, I saw.” Silph’s smile is warm. “Congratulations are in order, not just for the discovery, but for capitalizing on it even better than you did the abra catching technique.”

“Right.” Red shifts in his seat. “It’s just, I’m not sure how to feel about the people who can’t afford abra, or other Miracle Eye pokemon, now.”

President Silph spoons another bite of ice cream up, but studies Red rather than eating it, smile gone. “You feel you’ve done something wrong?”

“Sort of, yeah. It felt good making abra easier to catch, since more trainers could get one, and it brought the price down so more non-trainers could buy them… but this feels like, I don’t know, I just made them harder to get than ever.”

“Nonsense.”

Red blinks at the older man. “Nonsense as in, I didn’t?”

“Absolutely not.” He gestures out the window behind him. “They are all there, just as easy to catch as they were before. Their numbers have not dwindled, their supply has not shrunk. What changed is that your discovery increased the value of them, and the market is merely reflecting that.”

“But… for those who can’t catch them, those who are too old or who aren’t trainers…”

“Believe me, Mr. Verres, when I say I share your sorrow that not everyone who has a want can yet have it fulfilled.” Put like that, Red feels a little silly, but Silph seems serious. “I am, after all, doing my part to help alleviate that problem. But that we have yet to reach utopia is no individual’s fault, let alone the fault of simple supply and demand. You would not blame physics for failing to accommodate our every whim, would you?”

“Well, no, but that’s different, isn’t it? People could choose to sell something for less than others…” Red trails off, because he of course didn’t make that choice for most of the pokemon he’d bought. Why would he, when those he sold to could just resell the pokemon for higher themselves? Not that everyone would, some might really want an abra or natu themselves, but he’d have no way of knowing that himself… maybe if some law was passed to keep people from reselling pokemon for a time after purchase… but wait, that would have stopped him from making any money off his discovery at all.

Red feels the guilt churning in his stomach again as he considers that maybe he shouldn’t have made money off it, and is interrupted by President Silph lightly tapping him on the nose with the handle of his spoon.

Silph meets his startled look with a level one. “I know the expression that was on your face just now, and it is a tragic thing on anyone, let alone those as bright and enterprising as yourself. While it would be no less proper for the price to rise due to scarcity, it would at least be regrettable. What you are failing to understand is that you have caused the price to go up because the knowledge you uncovered, the technique you developed, created value, and that is what the market is reflecting by the higher price.”

Red feels himself frowning, though the sick feeling in his stomach is starting to fade as he slowly realizes what the old man is saying. “But… what if people are wrong about how valuable something is?”

President Silph sprinkles some more nuts on his ice cream, and Red decides to try some himself. “Are you asking because you don’t know, or because you’re worried about your personal situation?”

“You’re right, I know the price will go down once people realize it’s not as valuable as they think.” Theoretically, at least. It might take a while. “And yeah, you’re right about the personal bit too. I guess I’m still not used to changing things on such a large scale…”

“And so you’re prepared to feel bad no matter which way things go.”

That’s not… quite right? Red takes a breath, finding the felt-sense in his chest and focusing on it as he speaks. “It’s more that… none of this feels real? No, none of it feels solid. In science there’s no certainty, but there’s at least knowledge that can be tested. There’s no right or wrong, morally, there’s just the pursuit of truth. I don’t have to worry about what it means for others if I succeed, because succeeding in science is always good for everyone…”

He trails off as he feels a painful twist in his chest as he says the words, but before he can focus on it he gets distracted by President Silph’s wry snort. “While business must always be zero-sum?”

“No, not always,” Red acknowledges. “Or at least, I get that on an intellectual level. But… well, now that I think about it, I guess all this is just an extension of what I was worried about before, with Miracle Eye’s effect on dark people. Overall the world will probably be better having it, but some people’s lives will individually be worse, and… that sucks.”

Red expects President Silph to scoff, but the older man stares into his ice cream bowl, spoon stirring it slightly as he slowly nods. “Yes. It does ‘suck,’ indeed, and it’s good to remind ourselves of that, once in a while.” The older man smiles slightly. “When my nephew was young, he said that I sound as though I worship the ‘invisible hand of the market’ that I was no doubt boring him with my repeated lectures on. I, a tad less jokingly, replied that I knew of nothing else as worthy of venerating, save perhaps for human ingenuity. But in truth, my god is as cold and impersonal as any other. I assume you have no faith?”

Red shakes his head as he sprinkle some of the nuts on his vanilla ice cream and takes a small bite. It is, of course, delicious, silky and sweet, and the nuts provide a grounding crunch. “Never saw a convincing reason to.”

“I’ll switch back to the scientific analogy, then. I made the comparison to laws of physics for good reason; there is fundamentally no difference between a man building his house on a faultline and his business unsuited to the market, save that it is easier for us to identify the outcomes of the first. It was not always so, and perhaps one day we will know better than to rail against the market for our failures to predict it, the same way we once couldn’t predict earthquakes.” Silph shrugs. “In either case, it is tragic that people may lose to forces beyond their ken or control. But to blame reality is childish. When one business creates a better product than another, it may put many out of a job. We can sympathize with them, hope that they find another, even collectively help via social safety nets. But as a society we’re improved by them losing that job, because they are no longer doing redundant, less valuable work, and we have the better service or product.”

“You support social safety nets?”

Silph smiles. “It surprises many people, but I do, within reason. They can encourage people to take professional risks that might benefit us all.”

Red’s not sure if it’s the ice cream or the words, but he is starting to feel better. He wants to take his journal out to make notes of why so he can check the reasoning later, run it past some others. Instead it strikes him again just how valuable this time is, and decides to jump to another question. “I’ve also been having trouble learning how to… spend money? I know that sounds silly, but it still feels like a rare resource, to me. On the ship you said to spend every dollar as deliberately as my first, and I feel like I’ve always done that, but now that I’m still doing it even with lots of money it feels particularly wasteful.”

Mr. Silph’s brow is raised. “Fear of wasting money is understandable, but ‘deliberately’ needn’t mean perfectly.”

Well, when he puts it like that… “Does that mean you sometimes regret purchases you make?”

“No.”

Now it’s Red’s turn to raise his brow. “Really?”

“Really,” Silph deadpans, then shrugs. “I used to, until I realized I was orienting to it incorrectly. I have goals, and I want those goals to be achieved, and so it feels bad if there are any wastes of time and resources that delay that. But if by regret you mean some sense of internal suffering, or self-flagellation, I have no time for such. It is much more productive to learn from failure and move on.”

Easier said than done, Red almost says, but the frame is familiar. “So if I treat every purchase as an experiment, something I learn from, whether I get what I want or not…”

“Precisely. Thus, ‘deliberately,’ but without dithering, and without frustration.”

Red smiles as he feels the new mental frame settling into place. “I’ll have to try that out next time, but I already think it’ll help. Thank you.”

“Of course, though I suspect it’s only half of the issue.”

“What do you mean?”

“Most people either are not used to earning regularly, or are on a fixed salary. This leads to—”

Red’s phone pings, and he checks it to see a message from James. “My lawyer says the waiver looks good.” He feels a strange mix of relief and disappointment, and knows the latter to be something uncomfortably close to cowardice.

“Excellent. Does that mean we can count on your help?”

Red tries to mentally shift gears back to considering what brought him here. He’d been enjoying the conversation, enjoying learning and having good ice cream, and he doesn’t want it to stop, doesn’t want to go around the building meeting strangers just to command a Miracle Eye on them over and over…

…but he doesn’t want renegades to steal the Master Ball either.

Assuming they really are renegades…

“Commissioner Burrell said he can’t reveal why you think there are renegades here. He looked at you when he said it, so if you’re the reason he can’t… I think I’d need to know, first.” He almost apologizes for adding yet another condition, but it feels appropriate.

Silph has finished his ice cream, and instead pours a small spoonful of nuts from the serving spoon into his personal one and eats that directly. “I am not the reason he ‘can’t,’ but rather, he is the reason I have not. There are ongoing investigations from the lab that held the stolen Silph Scope technology, and we’ve been keeping the details close. I suggested you be told, given your involvement in that incident, but Burrell disliked the idea. I could ignore his preference, but that would feel like defecting. Still, if it’s what you need, perhaps he would change his mind.”

“No,” Red says after a moment. “I mean, I’d like to be told, but there’s no actual reason for me to be, so long as I know there is good reason. No mental shield is perfect, and if it’s sensitive information…”

Silph is smiling at him again. “You continue to impress me, Mr. Verres. And so?”

“And so… yes, I’ll help.” Red tries not to let the compliment warm him too much, but he supposes it doesn’t matter if he does or not, now that he’s decided to go ahead.

“Excellent.” Silph lets out a breath as he picks up his phone. “I’ll let Burrell know. Thank you, Mr. Verres.”

Red just nods and eats more of his half-melted ice cream. Now that he has decided to go ahead, he feels lighter, though part of him still dreads the work itself. But at the end of the day, whatever the Master Ball is or isn’t, whatever people think of him for doing this, if there are renegades in the building and they get away, or worse, steal something that would let them capture a legendary… it would be partially on him. He can wish it were otherwise, but he can’t actually ignore what he knows about the world. There are older, stronger, smarter people than him doing their best to keep things together, but they’re not enough, and that he was asked for help means he can help.

And he won’t even be risking his life to do it. The more he thinks about it, the less it feels like a real dilemma at all.

“We have another ten minutes, and Burrell will be joining us with Sicong, my head of security.” Silph pours himself and Red some more tea. “Feel free to relax here meanwhile, and finish your ice cream.”

“Alright. Um, you were saying, about wealth?”

“Ah yes! Wealth…” He sips his tea, then pours the last of his melted ice cream into it and stirs. “Most people treat it as a fixed number, either saved in the bank or on a refreshing budget. What you must internalize is that you have something even more valuable than a large amount of money: what you have is earning potential. Many wealthy people do feel free to spend money because they simply have an enormous amount, but that is still the thought on the surface; the true secret is having an abundance mindset. To put it simply, your ability to spend money is a function of your ability to make it.”

Red suddenly remembers a thought he had while bored and scrolling headlines, about some superstar who had gotten millions into debt. It made him wonder, at the time, how anyone could spend that much money without realizing they were out of it… and how anyone could be allowed to spend that much money without having any.

But he was given tons of money just based on the confidence people had that he’d be able to make good returns, and in his mind there’s now a concept of wealth not as a fixed point, or even a trendline, but a range on an axis. “I think I get it, yeah. I was trying to internalize this earlier today, but I was just doing it from feelings of abundance and relief and success. The idea that I’m reliably able to pull off things like this more than once might take a while to update on, but… yeah, I see how that would help me feel less bad about spending money.”

“I’m glad, though I have to say, it is a bit odd that you felt confident enough to borrow money on speculation, but not to spend it. I suppose you felt it as enough of a ‘sure thing?'”

“Yeah, normally I think I’d be way too risk averse.” Red wonders if he should stop eating to let his stomach settle, then decides more nuts might be okay. “I guess I could also try to focus on the things I’m buying as ‘sure things’ too… just in a different way than I’m used to thinking of purchases.”

“Knowledge of a thing’s quality, knowledge of your tastes, unique experiences… there are many things we’re assured of, when we buy something, even if we dislike it.”

Red lets the thought and ice cream digest for a moment, sipping his tea and blowing on it. He feels like he should be preparing himself more deliberately, but he was told to relax, so he tries to relax, and finds himself still thinking of the financial questions that were dominating his thoughts before he came here.

“One last question?” Silph asks, watching him over his tea cup with a small smile.

“Yeah, actually. I was going to ask what you’d do with the money I have, but I guess that’s a silly question.”

“Silly how?”

“Because I assume you’re already doing everything you want with money? And we have different goals, so…”

The older man chuckles. “Another motto of mine, to add to our growing list: a man poor in fortune or spirits will only purchase that which already exists, while a man abundant in either will spend it to purchase what has yet to exist. Most of my wealth is being used to bring ideas into existence, whether material or systemic or conceptual. So what I would do with your money is, essentially, more of the same of what I’m already doing. You’re welcome to check my company’s site for the full list and explanations for which technologies we invest in and political causes we champion, but if you don’t find those particular arguments convincing, the important question is to ask what you would like to see done in the world, and spend money on that.”

Red thinks over all the many notes he’s taken throughout his journey about inventions he wished existed, or different policies or protocols that he wished were different. “What if I don’t know anyone working on those problems already?” He thinks of the CoRRNet incident report system, and how it doesn’t use Bayesian reasoning to determine what Tier a threat might be.

For the first time, Silph’s reaction makes Red feel like he asked a stupid question. “Then you pay them to do it.”

“Oh, sure, but… just like that? Even if they’re working on other things already?”

“Of course. What do you think money is, but a way to reallocate labor in a way you’d prefer?”

He’d never thought of it in quite those terms, but… “And if no one still wants to?”

“Then you didn’t offer enough.” President Silph shrugs. “I won’t pretend there aren’t other factors. Some work is so risky or unpleasant that virtually no one will do it, no matter how much you offer… though that is quite rare. The more difficult problem is finding people who are passionate about the thing you want them to work on, as they will, by and large, be much more competent and productive than those doing it just because of the money.” Something on his desk buzzes. “That is why talent searching is so important and valued.” He presses the button. “Yes?”

“Burrell and Sicong are here.”

“We’ll be right out.” He takes one last sip of tea, then stands, and Red gets up too. “There’s a PC here, if you need to summon your Miracle Eye pokemon.”

“I’ve got him on me.” Red’s fingers brush the balls along his belt until he gets to Kadabra’s. “I’m ready.”

Red watches the numbers in his bank account tick up every few refreshes and tries to really internalize what it means to have over six million dollars of personal wealth.

At first pass, it simply feels… impossible. When he tries focusing, the felt-senses that come up are a lightness in his chest and a numbness around his head that, when prodded, come up with phrases like “unreal” and “undeserved.” He wonders how much of it is due to the speed and the method of his riches, and how much is just a carryover from spending so much time worrying about money.

Red’s research managed to earn him almost as much as he spent after his abra sales, which meant he had roughly $150,000 to buy up pokemon that could learn Miracle Eye… of his own money, that is. It wasn’t hard, with his name recognition, to get some sizeable loans; in fact, when one of the bankers remembered why Red first got famous, he offered to double the amount Red asked for.

“So which pokemon is it this time?” the man asked as he filled out the paperwork, clearly joking but also clearly eager for some hint.

“What makes you think it’s a pokemon?” Red responded with a smile, and made sure to highlight that part of his request in his future applications.

By the end of it all he had nearly a million dollars in loans, which felt surreal on its own, and somewhat panic inducing. He had to keep reminding himself that this wasn’t a scheme that might or might not work; the price of abra and natu and male meowstic would go up, the only question would be how much. Even if he could only resell them at double the price he got them, even if he could only sell one per month, that would more than cover the interest, and those were some pessimistic estimates indeed.

So he borrowed more money, from Bill and Professor Oak and Dr. Madi and his mom and Leaf (whom he offered much higher returns to, as apology for not being able to let her in on the secret), and then asked Leaf if she’d agree to take out loans that he’d cover, which she did.

By the end of that round of funding he managed to have nearly three million dollars, and the issue he faced was one of supply. Buying up the entire market would have been hard even if he wasn’t competing with Blue and Satori, but they made a game of it to keep things from getting too cutthroat.

Timing things so that others wouldn’t notice what was happening was also important, and they first reached out to the breeding farms to secure as many backorders as they could, which got expensive quickly. There was some debate about buying up other psychic types too, as the discovery would doubtless encourage a ton of research into finding others who could learn it, but they recognized this as more speculative, even if all psychic pokemon rise in price a little. Blue decided to dabble in some of that, which left more of the sure bet for Red and Satori to buy up.

Occasionally Red felt guilty about what they were doing. He spoke with his mother about it first this time, and she agreed that as it was their direct discovery, it was a different situation than the one with the clefairy. But he could also sense that she still found it… distasteful, maybe? Just a year ago he was struggling to decide what to spend his limited funds on, and once he imagined some new trainer eagerly saving up their money for one of the pokemon that are about to skyrocket in price, it was hard not to keep thinking about how many people just wouldn’t be able to afford these pokemon after their announcement.

They ended up doing a similar deal for Rangers and Gyms, which soothed the guilt somewhat, particularly since the decision was reached before they devised their selling strategy, which began with some talks with a couple experts that were well worth their consulting fees. As he looks over the amount of money he still ended up with, the guilt starts to creep back in… along with the fear that he’s wasting it by not spending enough of it for good purpose.

It might not make sense to increase his spending proportionally, he’s not sure he can actually get good value out of ten times the spending he was doing before, let alone thirty times. But he should at least be spending twice as much as he was before he got it, realistically closer to five times as much. At the very least he could be funding more research by others.

He could also buy a female dratini under the same reasoning he used with his ivysaur and wartortle; getting a pokemon with high potential power that could also be rented out to recoup its cost in the future. Or he could just invest it directly into the stock market. He doesn’t plan to save for retirement, but if he’s not going to be spending it anyway…

And yet instead he just keeps staring at the numbers, on some level worried they’ll disappear, on another worried about wasting them.

He thinks over the mental tools at his disposal, including some of the more recent ones he practiced with Dr. Seward, and decides to try holding both emotions at once.

First he summons the memory of what it felt like to be limited by money; the worry about not having enough to buy what he needs, the longing of wanting something that was out of financial reach… then he summons the feelings of abundance he gets while looking at the numbers on the screen. More than that, he summons the feelings of… triumph, and confidence, that came from watching each step work out, one after the other, from his ideas, of watching the numbers go up over time.

Then he switches back to the worry he felt, the sense of scarcity and limitation… and now the sense of overflowing possibility. He lets himself sit with each feeling for a handful of slow breaths, sinking deep into each set of memories and emotions until he can start swapping between them more easily.

Then he holds both feelings together, side by side, as best he can, and when he finally starts to feel like the edge has been taken off of the financial worries, he takes one last deep breath and slowly lets it out.

When he opens his eyes and looks at the numbers on the screen again, the worry about spending it is still there, but not nearly as strong. He looks up the cost of a female dratini, winces, then decides to start with something smaller, but still a larger purchase than he’s made before. A few minutes later he finishes signing up for and prepurchasing one of Game Freak’s headset prototypes. The one on the site looks more advanced than the one showcased on the cruise, and he wonders how closely the final product will match it.

He feels a small stab of pain and regret upon clicking the Complete Payment button, but also some relief and excitement. He expects that it’ll get easier, and takes another breath before closing his computer and getting dressed.

Blue’s return to Saffron is by the traditional methods, which for him means riding in on Soul. Red has to admit that the scarred arcanine continues to make his friend look impressive, but if Blue had a teleport point set to the city he likely would have saved himself the time; he did, of course, fly most of the way before riding the last bit so that word of his arrival would spread by observation.

The reality of dark teleportation is that it still requires a dark trainer to create enough of a bond with their pokemon that it will understand who they are, and Blue is still working on creating one with his second abra so that it will be able to teleport with him. Meanwhile he said he plans to keep Tops’s teleport point in Fuchsia.

Blue swings down off his saddle, and Red steps up beside him to help unstrap Soul. Sunlight makes the arcanine’s fur glow in ripples along its side as it breathes in and out, and Red enjoys the warmth radiating off the large dog while Blue feeds and waters it. “None of the others came with you?”

“Some are staying for the long haul, the others are waiting behind until they get their badges. It would have been nice to get them in clusters again, but unless I can convince Blaine or Giovanni to do scenarios too, that might just stay a Vermilion-only thing.”

“No chance Janine changes her mind?”

“They’re okay with them continuing, so maybe. But she still seemed pretty against it becoming a way to do challenges when I left.” Blue returns Soul to his ball, then sighs as he takes his helmet off and runs a hand through sweaty hair, then waves at a couple onlookers across the street. “I need a wash. Mind if I use your shower before I head to the TH?”

“Sure.” They head inside and up the stairs. “So what’s the plan for Sabrina?”

Red thought his voice was casual, but Blue grins. “Itching to get back to the drawing board, huh?”

“Maybe, yeah.” Red smiles. “Planning battles out is almost as fun as doing them myself now.”

Blue laughs as their steps echo through the stairwell. “You know, on the list of things I never thought I’d hear you say, that’s pretty high up.”

“I wouldn’t have predicted it either.” He wouldn’t have predicted a lot of the ways he’s changed since leaving Pallet Town, but the way he enjoys battling is particularly surprising to him given how he’s been surrounded by it his whole life. “It’s also surprising to me how battling wild pokemon isn’t nearly the same.”

“Huh, really? It’s pretty similar for me, even more intense in some ways.”

“In… good ways?”

“Sure. It’s less predictable.”

Red wonders if they’re just misunderstanding each other. “What about the danger?”

“Oh, well that’s different. Normally I feel totally in control in battles, up until something really dangerous happens.”

“Wait, the ‘Battle Calm’ from Elaine’s game? That’s real?”

Blue turns to him with a frown as they step onto Red’s floor and head down the hall. “When did you—”

“She’s been sending us all drafts to get feedback. Each is a different copy so we can’t see each others’.” Red pats Blue’s shoulder, enjoying his friend’s rare bit of self-consciousness. “I particularly liked your Dueler’s Attitude.”

Blue tries to flick Red’s ear, but he dodges. “I asked her to tone that down, but she disagreed. ‘Artistic license,’ she said.”

They enter Red’s room, and Blue summons his eevee, then does a double take when Red does the same. “When did you buy—”

“Oh, I didn’t. Remember that work I did for the Celadon police? While we were going through buildings, we found an eevee in a ball just sitting in a room that’s been empty for years.” Red shrugs, a little self-conscious himself now. “It was really random. Thankfully it was in a plugged in charger, but there was a huge layer of dust over everything. They’ve been trying to track down its owner for the past few months, but none of the contact info reached anyone. Apparently they finally got hold of a family friend who said they passed away and had no benefactors, so the CPD decided to give it to me.”

“That’s… bizarre. Lucky for you, though.”

“Well, yeah, but it’s a little funny, because I could actually afford an eevee pretty comfortably now.”

“Okay, so it’s not too lucky. I’m so sorry for your gain.” Now it’s Blue’s turn to dodge Red’s flick. “Been going on a lot of daylight walks?”

“Yep, and made a nest of sunstones, which to be fair I would have hesitated to buy before.” They’re still not sure what exactly causes each eevee evolution, but there are some patterns that are less noisy than others. Red examines Blue’s while the two fluffy pokemon sniff at each other. “She’s gotten big.”

“Yeah, reckon she’ll be ready before I face Sabrina.”

Red’s thoughts go back to the pre-Challenge planning they did for Koga, and what that might look like for Sabrina… “So is the ‘Battle Calm’ based on something you really feel?”

“That one’s… more or less right, yeah.”

Red tries imagining what battling is like for him. The best he can come up with is his own many-mirrors-and-a-dim-room, which feels like it would be too detached to have the proper motivation or carefulness for a battle. “How do you stay motivated while not feeling things?” The two eevee’s minds feel less curiosity toward each other now, and are searching for stimulation, so Red takes out a pair of stringed wands with bright charms on the end and hands one to Blue.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not sure, actually.” Red considers his own surprise, following the confusion it leads him to. “I think I had a subconscious model that, without emotion, we’d just be following some logical process to decide what to do moment to moment. And maybe emotions are, like, a shortcut for that? We don’t need to reason out why we should eat if we just feel hungry.”

“That’s an instinct, not an emotion. Or… a sensation, I guess?”

“I don’t know how distinct those things are.” He bounces the charm up and down for his eevee, who just sits and watches for a pattern rather than pouncing right away. He’s not as cuddly as Red expected, and Red sometimes wonders if that’s part of why the original owner left him behind, assuming it was intentional. “We don’t need to spend time and energy reasoning out why something is bad for us if we just get scared or angry and run away or hit it, and that saved time is probably really valuable.”

“Sure, I get that. But you’re saying now that emotions are more than a shortcut, right?”

“Maybe? The more I remember what it was like to block out most of my feelings in the abra field, the more I remember how hard it was to decide to do anything. I was able to reason things out, but it was hard to care about the conclusions. I almost just… stood there and didn’t do anything.” Red sits silently with that for a moment. “What if ‘feelings’ are just another word for ‘motivation?’ What if they’re how we decide everything we do?”

“Huh. Wouldn’t have expected you to say that.”

Red knows Blue’s teasing him, but he nods. “I know, it doesn’t seem right.”

“Doesn’t seem right up here?” Blue points to his head with his free hand, then his stomach. “Or down here?”

Well, now that he pointed that out… “I mean… logically, it seems wrong. People go against their emotions all the time.”

“Nah, they just go with a different emotion.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s not like we feel just one thing. You can care about someone and be angry at them at the same time, and sometimes one wins out and sometimes the other does.” Blue shrugs. “Same with things like fear and courage.”

A familiar pit forms in his stomach, mixing anger and sadness and despair, and Red almost argues that it’s not that simple… but after a moment he closes his mouth, realizing that his friend might not even be thinking of that night.

Huh. Was that a counter example right then? “Just now I was about to say something, because of a strong feeling I had. And then I stopped myself, and I don’t think I had a feeling associated with that.” Though maybe he did… caution? But it “felt” like the thought came first…

Blue gives him a look, but stays silent for a moment before saying, “I just did it too. Was going to say something, then another emotion got bigger and stopped me.”

“Got bigger?”

“Yeah, like it… rose up? Took up more space or something.”

Red also chooses not to dig into what that emotion was. Instead he reflects again on what he felt, and what stopped him. Red’s eevee finally pounces, but Red felt the intention rising a moment beforehand and bounced the charm up just before it could be grabbed. “I guess… there was an emotion there, but… if so it was really subtle?”

“Worry?”

“No. Caution, maybe. But it felt like it came from the… the top down, rather than the bottom up.”

“Huh.” They’re both silent for a moment as Blue’s Eevee continues to leap around while Red’s sits and stares again, gaze flicking around to track the movements of the colorful feathers. “So maybe thoughts can stop you from doing things, but not get you to do them. Which means you’ve wasted how much time on all that rational stuff, exactly?”

Red rolls his eyes. “I’m not saying we don’t use reason to make decisions.” He thinks back to the decision he made on the cruise, when he was shifting back and forth between becoming Sabrina’s student or staying with Leaf and Blue. “But maybe reason only works because it changes how we feel? And how we feel is… well, it’s not always explicitly rational. People have biases and bad epistemics and blindspots. But we do update, eventually, if we’re given the right data or arguments or explanations…” He trails off, less sure as he realizes he doesn’t know how that works, exactly.

“Seems like you’re trying to have it both ways. What comes first, the pidgey or the egg?”

“Well we developed emotions first, obviously. And that analogy is terrible by the way, it’s just about how you label things, eggs definitely existed for longer than—”

“So what you’re saying is there’s an obvious answer to both, which means it’s a great analogy.”

Red opens his mouth, then closes it and rubs his eyes. “My point is, if reason developed after emotion, which is a pretty safe bet… then what caused it to stick around and grow as an adaptive strategy is probably the way it allowed humans to decide things other than just following emotion? Maybe? Or like, a way to explicitly alter emotions… so how much reason influences what decisions we make could just depend on how strong the emotions involved are?”

“Hang on, I’m pulling in Leaf.” Blue takes out his phone and starts tapping. “She’s spent more time trying to convince people of things than either of us, at this point.”

Red smiles as a light fluttering enters his stomach. “Right, good idea.” He’d been wondering what she would say about all this, but didn’t want to be the first person to suggest it.

“Meanwhile, I’m going to get cleaned up.” Blue hands Red the toy wand and opens a container ball to take out some extra clothes and a towel. Red plays with both eevee while Blue closes the washroom door behind him, and there’s silence for a moment before his muffled voice comes through the door. “Hey, what’s the latest research on trading pokemon to evolve them?”

Red raises a brow. “You’re thinking of trading Tops?”

“Of course not! Just wondering if I can game it somehow.”

“You know, I’ve been thinking about that ever since we proved Koichi’s methods work. I still think the trading thing is mostly a superstition, there’s even more noise in the data there than with eevee evolutions. But Professor Rowan’s got some interesting papers on pokemon like kadabra and machoke, so it might have a stronger effect in different species? Still, if the mechanism is that some trauma involved in losing a trainer and getting a new one causes pokemon to grow faster, it’s not obvious what actually triggers it.” Red senses his eevee about to pounce again, but it’s quicker than he is this time, and manages to snatch one of the feathers in its teeth. He lets it gnaw for a bit while he plays with Blue’s. “People have tried to exploit it a dozen different ways. Trading back and forth, trading to people in different regions, faking their own death while the pokemon watches… nothing reliably leads to measurable changes in growth.”

“But it does work sometimes?” The shower starts running, and Blue raises his voice. “No one’s figured out why?”

“Not that I’ve seen! The data is inconsistent, and no one has a good enough explanation to try something new!”

“You should work on that next, then! It would be huge!”

Red doesn’t respond, partially because he doesn’t want to keep yelling over the water, partially because he’s not sure how he feels about it. The truth is, as fascinating as Koichi’s training method and the Miracle Eye were, they’re not the main thing he wants to be studying.

He still hasn’t had the unown dream, and he’s increasingly becoming the only psychic on the islands who hasn’t, along with everyone else in the city. The omission is becoming large enough that people are starting to notice and wonder why, and Red has to keep his partition up more and more often to not leak that Sabrina’s ex-student or friend or whatever is actually the one going around warning people about the end of the world.

And he hasn’t fully grappled with that whole thing either, of course, because it’s scary and also because he has no idea what he could do about it. And also maybe because if he takes it seriously he’ll have to stop working on figuring out where pokemon come from.

But since both might be related to unown in some way, he could feasibly still end up working on both, if he can just find an inroad. Lulie’s idea of tracking unown flight paths caught on, and the What Comes Next forums have a whole section now to show pidove tracking charts, but there hasn’t been much time to set up a formal investigation team, and the regions are still bickering over what does and doesn’t count as pokemon creation research and how illegal it should be.

So maybe figuring out how trades might cause pokemon to grow faster would be a good thing to do, but it would also just be another side project that has more to do with battling than anything. And as much as he’s been enjoying trainer battles lately, and as useful as it might be for people to be able to grow their pokemon faster, he’s still not intrinsically as excited to do that sort of research. Maybe whatever he learns will have applications and insights that go beyond it, but…

His phone chimes with his personal assistant’s tone, and he puts both toys in one hand to check the message:

Call from President Silph, as in, the President himself(!) not a sec. Says you’ve met before? and he’d “like to speak with you.” Asked what it was concerning, he just said it wasn’t what you might think(?) and that it’s “somewhat urgent”(!?) so gonna call in a minute if you don’t respond. Gave his direct number…

“Red?”

“Yeah?!” His heart is pounding in his chest, thumb poised to start calling, then realizes he doesn’t know who he’s calling. The president, or his mom first, or maybe Leaf…? “Sorry, I got a message!”

“Alright!”

Silph said it wouldn’t be about what he’s thinking of, which means it’s probably not related to his mom’s investigations, assuming Silph would assume she’d tell him about that. Which he must have, if he said it’s not what he’d think… or maybe that meant…

Leaf first, definitely. She’d know if something happened with the informant, though if the President knows anything about their collaboration…

Red buys himself more time by typing a message to his assistant to thank him, and confirm for future reference that he did speak with the President in the past. It’s common practice, apparently, for people to report a connection to get through screened calls where there is none, but Red’s a little flattered by the idea that his assistant thinks President Silph might pull that sort of trick. He leaves the rest of the question marks unanswered, then calls Leaf.

“Hey Red, I was just messaging Blue to say I won’t be free until—”

“President Silph wants to talk and says it’s about something I can’t predict and he’s right.”

“What.” Leaf is silent for a moment. “Meta-honestly, I’m not hiding anything, I actually have no idea what he wants. Call your mom?”

“Yep, gonna do that now.” He still hesitates, enjoying the excuse to talk to her, however briefly. They’ve both been busier than usual lately, and he hasn’t even had time to come by the ranch to help out. It’s not as much of a problem now that more exposure therapy groups and friends of Blue are coming by to help more regularly, but… he misses her.

He almost says that, but instead just goes with, “How are you?”

“Good!” There’s a pause. “I’m good. Busy, you know.”

“Sorry, I can go—”

“No, that’s okay! How are you?”

“Yeah, good! Busy too. Got another few offers.”

“Anywhere tempting?”

“Kalos, actually, but only because of the things I’ve been hearing about the weird ways pokemon are acting there.”

“Oh yeah, there was something about a clefairy doing something odd, right? But they do unpredictable things more often than most pokemon.”

“A jigglypuff too, and there are reports of a granbull single-handedly taking down a wild machamp.”

“Huh.” He can practically see her brow creasing as she looks up and to the side… “That seems really unlikely, unless it was a really strong granbull.”

“Right? So that was tempting, but free-T makes a lot of things tempting.”

“I’ll bet. Still haven’t gotten around to visiting home, but I’ve been thinking about it more since I’ll have one fewer teleport spot soon.”

“The Safari?”

“Yep, it’s moved pretty far beyond me now, and I can conference call in. If it wasn’t for my new friend I’d hardly travel to Fuchsia at all.”

“Right.” There’s a moment of silence, and he tries to think of something else to say to continue the conversation…

“Should you be—”

“Yeah, gotta go, later!” He hangs up, then winces at how abrupt he was. His thumb hovers over redial for a moment before he closes his eyes and bonks his head against the top of the phone and calls his mom instead.

“President Silph wants to talk and says it’s about something I can’t predict,” he repeats. “Help?”

“That fucking—sorry, Hon, one second.” The background noise disappears, and he shifts his weight as he waits for his mother to finish cursing, or going somewhere private. Maybe he should have messaged her first.

She still sounds angry when she unmutes and says, “Did he reach out to you directly?”

“Yeah.”

“Then it’s something he doesn’t want others to know about. Record the conversation, don’t sign anything, make sure you choose the place you’re meeting, and bring someone else with you. Not me, obviously, but maybe Blue or Leaf… no, she’s not dark or psychic…”

Red hesitates. “Some of that makes sense, but… I don’t know, it seems a little antagonistic?”

“Antagon—Red, he sicced the police on me!”

“Right, yeah, I know that, sorry, I’m not… I get that he has a lot of power, and he might be involved in some shady things, but… what if this invitation is on the level? I don’t want to set things off on a combative foot. ” He was nice to me. It’s a naive thing to say, especially given that he had plenty of reason to have ulterior motives, but on the whole Red didn’t feel like Silph did anything bad to him.

He was angry on his mom’s behalf when he heard what happened, of course, furious even. But over time it became more clear that, from President Silph’s perspective, knowing that there was in fact someone stealing information from his company and (allegedly?) attacking his employees… well, even if he wasn’t doing anything illegal himself, alerting the police that someone may be working with them just seemed like the reasonable thing to do? Losing the Silph Scope technology didn’t just affect their ability to sell as many, their stock took a dive as confidence in the company went down. Red would expect a different CEO who was totally clean to also take the same actions.

“That’s not the point, Red.” He hears her audibly take and release a deep breath. “Even if it is, you have to protect yourself.”

“But if protecting myself signals that I don’t trust him, he might not trust me either! I don’t want to defect first when all he’s done is cooperate.”

“Defect on what?” She sounds alarmed. “Did you make any agreements with him?”

“No no, sorry, it’s a game theory term.” He realizes the eevee have been gnawing on the toys for a few minutes now, and tugs up to start waving them around again. “There isn’t a specific thing that I’d be defecting on, but… let’s say he has a value of treating people neutrally until they’ve done something that hurts his company first. That might not transfer between you and me, so I might still be off-limits to any unfriendly actions.”

“Those are far too many assumptions for dealing with someone as powerful as him, particularly since they all rely on Silph sharing your values at all! I know you’ve spent a lot of time around famous people, but he’s not a Professor, or a Gym Leader. He’s a businessman, and you’re playing with fire by assuming he has the same goals you do, or will draw the same lines.”

Red bites his lower lip, thinking of a blog post he read at one point that compared two opposing theories for social conflict that people tend to ascribe to. Mistake Theory said that people who are fighting for different goals than you just have different facts or the wrong reasoning, and if you talk things out, you might educate each other and reach some consensus. Conflict Theory, on the other hand, said that people in conflict largely just have different values or are too focused on competing for resources, and no amount of rational exchange of ideas would change that.

The article talked about this in a way that made it clear that the majority of people acted as though Conflict Theory was true by default, which often led to painting their political enemies as not just stupid, but malicious. He doesn’t think his mother views everyone that way, but because of her career she’s had a lot of exposure to bad people, and it makes sense to him that she’d be predisposed to think of anyone with different goals from her that way.

He’s not so naive to think he could convince Mr. Silph to drastically change his actions, particularly if he’s actually doing things like coercing researchers into working on secret projects, or hiring renegades to steal fossils. But there are already people working to stop him adversarially… it feels like Red has a better chance of changing things by pulling the rope sideways than joining one side in a tug-of-war, especially since he doesn’t have a lot to offer in direct confrontation or espionage.

Red winces as he realizes that’s not strictly true. He could become one of the best spies in history, if he decided to use his powers that way. But he doesn’t want to, and it would require revealing the secret to others, not to mention give perfect cause for people to distrust psychics all the more.

“I get that I need to be careful,” he finally says. “But I still want to keep my options open, and some of those things feel like they close things, or limit me, or something.”

His mom sighs. “Alright, Red. Let me think for a moment.”

“Sure. And thanks.” Red is worried about too much time passing before he calls the President… the message did say “urgent,” after all.

Not so urgent that I didn’t take an extra minute to chat with Leaf, of course…

He tries to focus on playing with the eevee again, and as his pokemon pounces for the third time, the sound of the shower cuts off. Red tosses the eevee some treats and steps outside so he can take the call in the hallway.

After a couple minutes, his mom sighs again. “Okay, so the things I said before about recording and not signing anything still apply. You don’t have to choose the meeting place, and you don’t have to bring anyone. I know he’s not going to do anything to you, and if you bring someone for moral support or to be a witness… that would change the dynamic, yeah. Still, don’t let him control the pace or feel of the conversation. If you’re in his office, then he might do little things to make you feel rushed, or like he’s busy and you’re bothering him with questions, even though he’s the one that reached out to you.”

Red almost asks why she’s assuming he’ll want to meet in person, then remembers her point about it likely being a private conversation. “Right.” He remembers what Leaf said about how talking to Giovanni while he was on his phone made her feel less confident in herself, and harder to push back on things or speak what came to mind.

“Also, don’t forget how subtle status effects can be. You’ll be in his place of power, and that’s going to manifest in a hundred minor ways. Be deliberate with every question you answer and any information you give. Even the smallest feeling of ‘well, I’m not sure if I should…’ is a sign that you shouldn’t, at least not without careful consideration for whether you’re seeking his approval or trying to avoid his disapproval.”

“Okay.” He thinks he can do that, particularly since he’ll be able to look out for his partitioned self… “Is that it?”

“All the other things I was going to say would set the tone ‘antagonistically,’ as you said. You can shield from psychics, so that’s not a worry, and you’ve already told relevant people… did you talk to Leaf?”

“Yeah, she has no idea what this could be about.”

“Honestly I’d suggest you not talk to him today. Something might have happened, there could be some information he has that it would be good to know going in. But the same is true in reverse… not that he’d tell you anything he’d be worried about me hearing… Red, I have to say I just don’t think you should talk to him at all, even later.”

Red hesitates, trying to take this idea as seriously as it deserves given that it’s his mom saying it. “But if I don’t…”

“I know. Can you blame me for caring more about your wellbeing than… all this?”

“No. I love you, Mom.”

“I love you too, Hon. Call me right after.”

“I will.”

Red hangs up, then downloads a call recording app, takes a breath, then another, and calls the number President Silph left for him. He doesn’t even get through the second ring.

“Hello, Mr. Verres.” The old man’s voice is as he remembers it, papery in some hard to define way, but also strong and sure. “Thank you for returning my call so promptly.”

Right. It felt like forever, but actually barely ten minutes have passed since he got the message. “Of course. I never got the chance to thank you for your advice on the cruise. It’s been very helpful to me.”

“I can tell by your accomplishments. All things considered, it was a very productive lunch. I was hoping we could have another.”

“I’d be happy to.” Independent of all the stuff that may or may not be going on, he actually would. Unless their conversation goes worse than he expects, lunching with the president was surprisingly impactful for him despite how short it was, and he’s interested in hearing more about the man’s beliefs and ideas to see if they’re as useful. “So what was the urgent matter I could help you with?”

“That’s what I was hoping to discuss over lunch, if you’re free.”

“Ah.” He assumes he’s not about to be asked to taste-test things, but this does seem to confirm that he wants the conversation to be private. “I am.”

“I’m glad. I can have a car waiting at your teleport point in Saffron, which I presume is Sabrina’s school?”

Red wonders if he should be more worried or less that Silph is taking for granted that he’d be okay with meeting at his office, and tries to think of where he can suggest that’s more neutral. The school itself is a building full of psychics…

But no, even saying he doesn’t want to meet at Silph HQ would be acknowledging things that Red thinks would set a certain tone that he doesn’t want to set. In fact, going could actually be a useful show of good faith.

“I think I can make that work… give me twenty minutes?”

“Of course. I’ll see you soon.”

“See you.” Red hangs up, then taps his phone against his leg for a moment before stepping back into his room.

Blue is dressed in fresh clothing and playing with the eevees, his silver one bouncing around in an energetic blur. “Important call?”

“Yeah. Sorry, but I have to hold off on our plans, unless you want to come with me to Silph HQ?”

Blue raises a brow. “Woah. Why?”

“Dunno, but the President said it’s ‘urgent.’ Figure he’ll want to talk privately, but if you don’t want to wait in the lobby I can always meet you after.”

“Nah, I want to know what’s going on as soon as possible.” Blue smirks. “Unless you’re going to lecture him about meta-honesty and miss out on whatever juicy gossip he wants to share?”

Red grimaces. “Yeah, I’ll probably have to. Might be a short meeting.”

“Well, all the more reason to come along then.” Blue looks him up and down. “You should change your clothes.”

“Really? It’s just lunch…”

“With one of the most powerful men in Indigo. You want to impress him, and you also don’t want to feel too inferior. Trust me, it matters.”

This is similar enough to what his mom said that Red decides not to argue further. He changes into a black button-up and takes off his hat, then combs his hair and puts on the dress shoes he bought for the press conference. After that they spend a few more minutes playing with their eevee, then go downstairs to wait for the ride.

“I’m nervous,” Red admits as they stand on the curb. “I’ve never talked to someone who might actually want to hurt people before. Maybe even my mom.” The thought of something happening to her makes a surge of blackness pour through his mind, a heavy ekans curling in his stomach, but he takes a deep breath and lets the anxiety and fear out as best he can. “What if I fuck it up?”

“Just treat it like a pokemon battle,” Blue says, hands in his pockets as he scans the road. “It’s no more life threatening than those.”

“But I know the rules in those.” Red wipes his palms on his pants, wondering if it’ll be easier with his partition up… or maybe if he tries to dim just the negative emotions… No, now’s not the time to experiment with that. The thought reminds him of his earlier question, however, which suddenly seems more relevant. “How does it work, the battle calm? I mean, if you don’t feel anything, how do you still decide things?”

Blue shrugs. “Didn’t say I don’t feel anything. I still care about winning. That’s basically all I care about, in those moments. And that guides everything I do.”

“Huh.” A truly uncomplicated, singular purpose… That would be incredible to experience in chaotic or dangerous situations. He wonders how similar it is to the “flow state” he sometimes enters while researching or exercising…

And then he realizes there’s actually a way for him to find out.

Red spends a couple minutes thinking about whether it’s a good idea to bring up, then another couple minutes deciding how. Eventually a Silph car arrives, and they get in the back seat. Red scans his ID, confirms the destination, and they’re off.

“Look,” he says as the car turns toward the highway. “This is… I know this is a big ask, alright? And I know I messed up the last time I asked something like this. But I hope I’ve grown since then, and our friendship has, and… I hope that I can ask this, now, and you’d trust that you can say no without me getting upset. But also, I know it might upset you if I ask at all, so… it feels a little risky for me to ask in the first place, so I want to know if it’s okay to?”

Blue is giving him a wary look. “You know this is that thing again, where I can’t promise not to react a certain way, right?”

“Yeah, I get that.”

“Okay. And I get that you know you’re about to say something that might be fucked up.”

“That’s… not a bad takeaway, really.” Red runs a hand through his hair, then stops himself and tries to pat it back into place. “Okay, so the thing that came to mind is… I might be able to actually copy your battle calm, if I use Miracle Eye on you and merge while you’re doing it. Like, permanently, I can save the mental state then use it in battle.”

Blue is silent for a long time, staring out the window. Red’s nervousness grows, and he almost apologizes and says to forget the whole thing, but Blue doesn’t look angry, from what Red can tell. Just distantly thoughtful.

“You know, if another battle trainer asked, it would be really hard to say yes,” his friend says at last. “Bad enough to let someone else in my head, but to copy one of my greatest strengths… it feels unfair, that someone else would get to do that.” Blue shakes his head. “But it might save their life, too. That’s what matters, right? That’s why we’re all doing this. And if I say no, if I don’t let you in my head and let you copy what’s in there… if you ever die in a wild battle I’ll never be able to live with myself.”

“Blue, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—”

“Shut up, I’m still talking.”

Red swallows and does so. Blue still doesn’t seem mad, however, and he actually smiles at Red.

“I’m not complaining. Not really. You helped give me something I never thought I’d have. That no dark person in history has had. And I meant what I said, before. I trust you. But it’s still hard to say yes. So what does that say about me?”

Red doesn’t answer, just meets his friend’s gaze until Blue looks away.

“I’ll think about it. And I’ll probably say yes. But either way, I’m not mad at you for asking. Well, part of me is, but I’ll get over it.”

Red swallows, and whispers, “Thanks.”

They ride the rest of the way in silence, until the car reaches the Silph office park. They drive through an automatic gate, then toward the main building… then past the front doors, and around the side between it and the walls surrounding the campus.

“Huh.” Blue sits up. “Ominous.”

Red feels his nervousness growing again, and one hand drops to Kadabra’s ball in case he has to get out of the car and teleport… but no, that would be leaving Blue behind.

The car finally stops once they reach a back door, where someone is waiting outside. Red takes a breath and brings his partition up…

…and steps out of the car on the same side as Blue, who’s also got a hand on his belt.

“Mr. Verres,” the man says, and frowns at Blue. “Mr. Oak. I wasn’t informed that you would be coming too.”

“I was planning to stay in the lobby.” Blue says before Red can speak up. His friend casts a disdainful looks around at the dumpsters and company car lot around them. “I guess I can hang out here instead, if this is what passes for hospitality at Silph.”

The man is frowning harder now, but says, “I’ll find somewhere suitable once I’ve led Mr. Verres to his destination.”

“Appreciated.”

The man opens the door, then leads the two inside and through some of the most opulent corridors Red has ever walked through. There are security cameras at every corner, and they pass through a scanner before reaching what looks like an exclusive elevator. It’s a short walk, but even still, Red notices that they don’t see anyone else the whole time.

“This will take you to the President’s Office,” the man says to Red, then turns deliberately to Blue. “I can lead you to a nearby break room, Mr. Oak.”

Blue gives the man an exasperated look, then turns to Red. “Call if you need me.”

“I will.” Red bumps fists with him, then watches them walk away before he takes a moment to calm himself and enters the elevator.

The penthouse is twelve stories up, but the elevator is quick, and Red barely has time to go over how he’s going to greet Mr. Silph before he finds the doors opening to let him out into a reception area with carved milotic fountains along the walls and live plant pokemon resting in pots around the couches. The receptionist is watching him, and Red approaches her quickly, shoes squeaking on the marble floor,

“He’ll be ready for you in a minute, Mr. Verres.”

“Alright.” There’s no nametag on her desk, and he realizes he never learned the name of whoever was waiting for them. Is that normal for corporate cultures like this? He realizes he has no idea, and wishes suddenly that he had a frame of reference.

Rather than sit on one of the incredibly comfortable and expensive looking couches (though part of Red realizes, with a start, that he can probably afford to have an office like this himself, now), Red wanders around the lobby examining the pokemon and registers with only mild shock that the tangela, ivysaur, cherrim, and sunflora are all shinies.

Okay, so maybe he can’t afford an office exactly like this. Not without losing a good chunk of his wealth, at least.

“You can enter, Mr. Verres.”

“Thanks.” Red goes for the door, making sure his shoulders are straight and his strides are confident, and then he’s inside the President’s office.

It’s nice.

Not as lavish as Red was expecting, but clearly expensive while still being muted about it. Thick, complex rugs, heavy, richly colored drapes, a large and solid looking dark wooden desk. There are paintings on the walls, along with a large monitor, while one of them is all glass. Without that part it would have reminded him of someone else’s office, but he can’t think of whose at the moment.

His attention is taken not by the man behind the desk, but the one standing beside him wearing a police uniform. A commissioner’s uniform, if it’s at all similar to Celadon’s.

“Thank you again for coming on such short notice, Mr. Verres.”

Red turns to President Silph, who has a pair of bamboo bento boxes in front of him, then slowly approaches, heart pounding so hard he’s sure it must be audible. Is he about to get arrested? He can’t imagine what the charge would be… so why is he so nervous? “I figured it must be important.”

“Very much so.” The President’s voice is casual, but his face is serious. “As promised, I have had lunch prepared for us. And then I and Commissioner Burrell are going to humbly ask for your help in finding a renegade, possibly more than one, that I believe is hiding in this building, under my very nose.”