Once Red and Artem shared their ideas with the other unown researchers in the What Comes Next network, and consensus arose on how paired researchers and psychics weren’t even necessary given how many people would be at the ruins in general, the next question became which ruins they should visit. Kanto has so few that they debated going to Johto instead, but Red’s free teleportation would make the most remote trip the most valuable for return visits, so he decides to go for the most isolated while Artem hops on a train heading westward.

Which is how Red ends up once again on a boat to the Sevii Islands, this time a small skiff rather than a luxurious cruise ship. The sky is gray with pockets of blue where the sun occasionally shines through, and he expects rain at some point, but all he really has to do today is make it to the island and set a teleport spot, so he didn’t let the weather deter him.

The Tanoby Ruins are hard to spot from a distance, but as they round the southern bend of Quest Island the ship’s captain helpfully points to the tiny islets the ruins are nestled on from east to west.

“Monean, Liptoo, Weepth, Dilford, Scufib, Rixy, and Viapois. Most of the buildings have fallen apart to time or pokemon or some storm or another, but each has at least one main chamber that’s underground or built into a cavern.”

“And that’s where the unown spawn?”

“Sure, but not just there, they’ll pop up all around here. ‘Specially lately; used to be I’d get just one or two jobs per month to bring people to the ruins instead of a dozen, and the rest of the trips were for trainers heading to the battle tower.”

Red turns to where it sticks up from the northern end of Quest Island. “That’s one of those places for underground pokemon battles, right? I mean, figuratively.” He remembers Blue talking about it once or twice; most regions have one, usually far from any major cities where the leagues have less direct influence.

“Well, it’s a bit too obvious for even that, eh? But they’re not ‘sanctioned,’ true enough. With just enough land here to build a small town, but no one interested in living near unown ruins, it made the perfect spot for it.”

“Right. I guess it would be unsettling to have one pop into your room one night.” After hearing the sounds they make firsthand, and spending a few hours listening to recordings of all kinds just in case he discerned some hidden pattern, he’s not sure cheap land would entice him much either, even with the ability to teleport offsetting the isolation.

As if summoned by the topic, Red sees Pikachu’s ears twitch, and follows his pokemon’s gaze to the sky, where a distant black shape floats by. It’s too far for him to make out its noise or even what letter it is, let alone do a mental merge, but he can at least track the direction it seems to be going in, and takes his pokedex out to add the trajectory to the WCN app, where thousands of thin lines show other projected routes for observed unown, including how many and what letters. Once he’s done he slides the timescale back, first a few days, then a few weeks, and finally to when the app was created a few months ago, watching lines vanish and reappear.

Still no pattern that he can make out. But hopefully getting a better understanding of where they’re going beyond the regions’ borders will help. After he floated the idea around, others have already tested and confirmed that most freshly appearing unown have a few moments of lingering memory of where they were before, making it clear that they’re teleporting in from somewhere else rather than being “born” that very moment.

He’s still playing with the map as the captain cuts the boat’s speed and starts to aim it toward the docks at the base of the nearest islet. Red does one last mental sweep to make sure there aren’t any dangerous pokemon around, then calls Wartortle back to the boat and returns him to his ball. “Thanks for the ride.” Red steps onto the dock, then resummons Wartortle so he can rest before bringing Kadabra out too. Pikachu finally jumps onto the dock beside him, sniffing around before dashing off to explore the rocky path that leads up to the rest of the tiny island.

“Sure you don’t want me to stick around? Know you said you can teleport back, but if you want to visit the other islands…”

“My pokemon can take me, just didn’t want to risk the long swim over.”

“Alright then, good luck to you.”

Red waves as the captain puts the boat in reverse and eases it away from the dock, then focuses on his kadabra, who’s doing a mental sweep of its surroundings. Unlike its younger form, Kadabra isn’t inclined to flee at the first sign of danger, his mood more of a careful wariness. Red lets his pokemon finish getting used to their surroundings, then deepens the merger and connects all the information from his own senses together with his current emotional state.

Firm stone beneath his feet, the strong scent of the ocean, the sound of the waves, sun on his skin, the feeling of excitement from being here, so far from the mainland and ready to explore the ancient mystery of the ruins… all of it merges into a unique memory that he can recall and use to return at will.

Once he feels like he has the memory down in sufficient detail, and enough time has passed that it feels like a memory and not his current experience, he walks a few steps off the dock with Kadabra, then puts a hand on his pokemon’s shoulder, focuses, and teleports back to the dock.

Satisfied, he checks on Wartortle, gives him some extra treats and water, then leads the two up the path, where Pikachu is still scouting ahead. A path has been cut into the side of the islet to ensure it’s not too steep a climb, but he’s still breathing hard by the time he makes it to the top and takes in the ruins for the first time.

Brown, mossy stones jut out of the ground in various places, some seemingly at random, others clearly the remains of some building’s foundations. A few structures are still standing, but even those have holes in the walls, and none have roofs. He can faintly make out the ancient etchings in some of the stones, thin unown shapes of all kinds forming words that can no longer be understood.

Sitting on one of the worn stone walls is a girl dressed in a purple shirt and beige cargo pants, attention on the sketchpad in her lap. She looks a few years older than Red, and beside her sits a houndoom on one side and a jolteon on the other, while a sandslash rests half-submerged behind her.

There’s also a kabutops walking around them all, maybe on patrol for threats. It’s a rare enough sight that Red stops and stares back as it gives him and his pokemon a measuring look, until the girl says, “Relax, Tops.”

Despite her pokemon all being natives, her accent is distinctly Galarian. Her kabutops (seemingly grudgingly) returns to its patrol, while the rest of her pokemon stay relaxed, with just the houndoom raising a head to glance at Kadabra before lowering it onto its paws again.

The girl smiles, and he’s just starting to wonder why she looks familiar when there’s a pop sound, and an O unown appears between them, a few meters off the ground and to Red’s left.

They both react together, Red rushing forward while the girl leaps off the crumbling wall, pulling a ball off her belt (wait, what?) as he expands two from his pouch. Their pokemon startle as well, though with no clear threat the two trainers swiftly leave them behind; Red almost sends a mental command for Kadabra to use Confusion if the unown starts to fly away, but the unown is simply doing a slow rotation midair, giving them both time to reach it from nearly opposite ends.

“Don’t catch it!” she yells.

“You can go first!” Red yells back as he runs under it to cut off a potential escape route. “I just need to merge with it!”

“Okay, just don’t do anything to scare it off!” She braces her arm. “Go, Pidove!”

The gray bird appears in front of her, and she quickly kneels to tie something to its feet. Red decides to save his confusion for later and just focuses on the unown’s thoughts, hoping he can pick up some traces of memory of where it was before…

The now-familiar “window” opens in Red’s mind, showing him a second visual field of what the unown sees… which, as usual, he can barely process.

Inside what looks like their single large pupil are in fact multiple, all crowded together to give a uniquely kaleidoscopic vision where multiple different perspectives, with varying range and color sensitivity, are crowded together. It also doesn’t help that the unown’s circular body keeps spinning in circles even as the eye rolls.

Still, even all that isn’t enough on its own to really give Red difficulty; what does is the sucking sensation that the other creature’s “mind” seems to constantly experience, a drain that Red’s unpartitioned self recognizes as somehow similar to what it’s like to partition memories. Except the unown’s memories aren’t going behind partitions, so far as he and other psychics can tell; just fading.

This has always been taken as the experiential side-effect of not having much memory capacity. Still, Red expected it to feel more passive, or like the fragmenting of a dream, or simply vanishing from one moment to the next. Instead the impression of his thoughts being pulled is distinct, attention not just collapsing but compressing to fit his sensorium into the unown’s limited body. He quickly releases most of the merger so that his mind settles almost entirely back in his own senses, then begins regulating the merger the way he’s practiced with his own unown, purposefully degrading the “window” of its vision until it’s a flat, low resolution monochrome.

He’s just in time to catch the last of the unown’s pre-current memories before they’re gone, but what he sees is an unrecognizable blur that vaguely looks like… the top of a forest?

And then he hears a quick musical trill, and turns to see the girl playing a blue ocarina. Her pidove flies up toward the unown, whose circular body spins away midair, and the chase is on.

But the pidove doesn’t attack, instead just following its slower prey as the unown loops around in erratic arcs above their heads, until finally its wanderings take it too far for Red to maintain the merger.

The eerie noise it emitted takes another moment to fully fade, or maybe that’s just in Red’s head. He stares after the two pokemon for a moment, wondering if the girl is going to call her pidove back… but instead she’s tucking her ocarina away, and miniaturizes its ball to put in her pocket instead of her belt (which seems to have customized pokeballs for the other five, tops alternating purple and yellow). “Thanks for not catching it.”

“Uh, no problem.” Red thinks back to that glimpse he got of the unown’s memory, trying to remember some detail that would help discern where the forest was. But there were no mountains, no lakes, no coastlines, no landmarks at all. A total bust. “I figured you’ve probably been here waiting for a while anyway, but… what about your pidove? What was that command you played?”

“Just something I’ve been working on to track the unown.” She walks back to where she was sitting by her pokemon and Red follows, watching as she picks her notepad up and brushes dirt off the pages. “Aw, shinx. It smudged.”

He catches a glimpse of a color pencil sketch and turns toward where she was facing to confirm that she’s been drawing the chain of tiny islets to the west, sunbeams peeking through the clouds to highlight the ruins on each. She must have been sitting here since morning to catch them all as they occurred, maybe multiple days. “Sorry.”

“Not your fault.” She smiles at him and holds a hand out. “Nice to finally meet you, Red. I’m Lulie.”

Red shakes it, mind automatically jumping to make the connection with her Galarian accent. “ReasonisFun? What are you doing in Kanto?” She has a sizeable following online, but in fairly different circles than Red, who only met her once she got involved in What Comes Next.

“Why wouldn’t I be, it’s where all the fun stuff is happening!” She considers a moment. “Tragic and dangerous too, of course, but you’re not about to leave, are you?”

“No,” he admits. He’s still going to most nearby incidents to help out while Cinnabar continues to stabilize, and though it often messes with his schedules and sleep, he hasn’t considered stopping. “But that’s because all my friends are here.”

“That’s fair. But I’ve got friends here too, from back when I first visited.” She takes a new pokeball, also the default red, out of her bag and clips onto the empty space on her belt where her pidove was. “Besides the pokemon, I mean, though I think they’re happy to be back home.”

Red looks at her pokemon again, then back at her. “You’re not psychic, are you?”

“Nah, I’m just good at reading vibes.”

He can’t tell if she’s joking or not, but now he’s curious about her pokeballs. If she’s color coding, he’d expect the houndoom to be in a red ball, but the only one on her belt is the one that she just put there. “Purple are for your houndoom and kabutops, yellow are for sandslash, jolteon, and…?”

“Two out of four. Yellow are Jolteon, Houndoom, and Agarment, while purple are Slashy and Tops.”

It takes him a moment to realize Agarment breaks the nicknamed/non-nicknamed pattern rather than being a pokemon he’s never heard of. “What’s Agarment?”

“Abra.”

Her deadpan delivery is betrayed by a slight twinkle in her eyes and curve to her lip that makes him replay everything, and then he laughs. “That’s terrible, and also Leaf is going to love it. Just to make sure, Slashy is the sandslash?”

“Yep, and Tops the kabutops.”

“My friend Blue has an abra named Tops.”

“Huh. Weird name for abra.”

Red snorts and decides not to tell her about how long all his abra spent named after their teleportation sites just yet. He almost asks her how she got a kabutops, especially if she’s only been here as a visitor, then remembers there’s still one unaccounted for. “So what’s in the regular ball?”

“Another pidove. Your post back in April about how to herd or follow unown on mounts got me thinking a few steps ahead; what if we can just figure out where they go instead, and find them there? There are plenty of pidove in my hometown, and they’re excellent long distance fliers with incredible memories. So I caught a bunch, trained them to follow unown, and bought a bunch of trackers.” She takes her pokedex out (also purple, with yellow trim around the screen and buttons) and taps a few times before showing him…

A personalized version of the WCN map, thick colored lines indicating where her pokemon have tracked the various unown she’s sent them after. Three of them are still being drawn in real time, blinking every second as the fronts stretches further out, often in loops or bends. “Woah. How far will it go?”

“The weakest I caught was still able to fly over a thousand kilometers in a day.”

“This is great! If there’s a pattern, we might even be able to follow it and get a confirmed sighting of them creating pokemon!”

“Sure, that too.” Lulie starts picking her colored pencils back up from where they rolled around. Her jolteon stretches its neck out to pick one up that rolled near it, then holds it up for her, and she smiles as she rubs its head and takes it.

Red helps her pick up the rest, then sits next to her as he continues studying the flight paths. “By ‘that too,’ you mean there’s something else you’re doing it for?”

“To better understand their behavior in general. I’m not sure what getting a confirmed sighting of a pokemon appearing near an unown would actually do at this point.”

“Well I know the evidence seems really convincing, but it would still be important to get observed confirmation!”

“Why?”

Red blinks. “Why… is observation necessary for confirming a hypothesis?”

“Would seeing the pokemon appear near an unown do that?”

Her tone is light and curious, and it makes him smile as he remembers all the times her curiosity online has led to people, himself included, stepping back from their reflexive responses to think things through more carefully. “Ah, no. It wouldn’t ‘prove’ anything, because we can’t prove things like that by observation. But it would lend confidence to the idea, and make our predictions stronger.”

“How?”

“We’d have at least one confirmed example that pokemon can be created by… no, that they could appear near where unown are.”

She grins at the correction. “Sure, but again, what would that change?”

“Hmm. Well right now we don’t know for sure if that can happen. Once we see it, we would.”

“Pokemon probably appear all the time near rocks, and we don’t think rocks have anything to do with it unless it’s a Rock type. I get that unown are much rarer than rocks, so it feels less coincidental if an unown is near a pokemon that appears, but ‘pokemon could appear near unown’ isn’t a useful scientific theory.”

“I think I get what you’re saying; we can’t prove stuff, black swannas can exist, and all it would take is one pokemon appearing nowhere near an unown to invalidate the idea. But until that happens…”

“You believe it would increase the odds of it being true. But induction isn’t how science is done.”

The sudden confidence is a sharp contrast to the earlier curiosity, and his skepticism blooms in response. “What makes you say that?”

She gestures at the ruins. “Why are you here?”

It takes him a moment to realize she’s not changing the subject. “To study the unown.”

“You can do that through books.”

“Right, I want to learn something new about them. Make new observations.”

“Keep going. Did someone tell you to learn something new about them? Is someone paying you?”

“No, I… want to know because I’m curious.”

“Huh.” Lulie looks up briefly, hand absently rubbing her houndoom’s back. “I feel like my curiosity always comes from somewhere, but I’m not sure if that’s actually true… it also sometimes feels like it’s just there, as a passive thing that doesn’t require a specific trigger. But as an emotion, it’s variable; sometimes I feel mild curiosity, sometimes strong curiosity. Is it different for you?”

“No, that sounds about right. Sometimes I see or hear things that make me notice a mild curiosity, but the strongest emotional response always comes from things that might be related to specific topics, like psychic phenomenon or the origin of species.”

“So why are you here, specifically, studying the unown in particular? The way you’re framing things is that you want to know something, right?” He nods. “But science is never going to give you proof that you’re right. So what is it you’re actually trying to do here?”

Red frowns. “Science may not be able to prove a specific model right, but it can prove which are false so we know which are less wrong.”

“Exactly!” she exclaims with a wide grin, and he’s not the only one who startles. “Woops, sorry boy.” She strokes the houndoom’s head, then turns back to Red. “So according to Popper, science—”

“Wait, according to who?”

“Karl Popper. He was a philosopher who wrote about the problem of induction, and why falsifiability is what distinguishes science from non-science. What makes science so powerful is its ability to falsify some set of competing theories, which means you first need at least two competing explanations to do science. If the explanation you have fits all the observations, then more evidence won’t make it any more true, so there’s no value in any further confirming evidence.”

“I know falsification is important, of course, but… he was against any retesting at all? What about peer review?”

“When someone runs an experiment to falsify something it can be important for others to check their work, of course. But if the theory properly explains the phenomenon, what’s the point of doing another test? You’d only do that if it doesn’t match some observation, which again means there’s a problem. That’s what motivates all scientific advances: solving problems. Sometimes practical, like how to build a better pokeball, sometimes theoretical, like where pokemon come from.” She smiles. “So what explanation are you here to test?”

He sits beside her to think about it, and she lets him, going back to her sketching. Red pulls a tin spoon out of his pocket and tosses it toward Kadabra to play with, watching for a while as his pokemon catches it midair and begin to levitate and bend it around. Red watches him for a bit as he spends a few moments appreciating how nice it is to meet someone else willing to launch into conversations and debates like this. He knows Blue would hate it, and remembers the way others have reacted when he did similar, but he’s already really glad he came to this island in particular.

Once Kadabra is regularly cycling through its mental exercises, Red starts to consider his potential explanations for pokemon genesis, then discard them one by one.

Unown create pokemon around them by accident, no other factors are important.

Unown create pokemon around them given certain other conditions.

Only groups of unown create pokemon around them… only certain amount of unown…

“Ugh,” he says after a minute. “Everything I come up with can’t be falsified by observation. I could come up with some more deliberately rigid explanations, but I have no reason to believe they’re true yet.”

“Noticing that is an important first step! There’s no time to test or critique every hypothesis or argument, which is why coming up with good potential explanations, ones that would actually help us discard it or competing theories, is such an important part of the process. That’s why all the greatest scientists are celebrated for their creativity in coming up with good explanations to test, or clever experiments to isolate the false variations of similar ones.”

Red considers this a moment, and realizes she’s right. It also gives him a new lens through which to view his own fumbling experiments, and how lacking a meaningful explanation for the potential experimental outcomes in his “psychic particle” experiments limited the value of what he was actually testing against. By contrast, his most recent discovery of indoor teleportation was accidental, but forming a gears-level explanation from the ground up was so useful that it not only could help reproduce the effect, it also helped Tatsumaki use kinesis through walls.

“I think I get it. So what are the explanations that you’re hoping to test against, if you can?”

She turns to another page in her notebook, then shows it to him so he can read:

1) The knowledge of pokemon biology is contained in meteorites that carry their genetic material from other worlds.

2) Unown are a conduit for knowledge from another world. That knowledge is what creates the new pokemon, which already exist in that other world.

3) Unown contain the knowledge to create new pokemon themselves, and different combinations of letters combine with different surrounding objects to spontaneously create life.

4) Living pokemon genetics contain the knowledge of ancestral pokemon, and some environments or circumstances trigger a reversion.

5) Pokemon genetic knowledge did not evolve anywhere, created by unimaginably intelligent designer—but then where did designer originate?

Red blinks, then blinks again, trying to decide where to start before picking, “You believe in parallel worlds?”

“Well sure, it’s the best explanation for what happens to single photons in the double slit experiment.”

“Oh, I’ve heard of that. Something to do with quantum mechanics, right?” He almost asks why it’s the best explanation, then decides he doesn’t care as much right now and can look it up later. “So if pokemon come from other worlds, what does it mean that unown contain the ‘knowledge’ to create them? I’ve been inside their heads, so to speak, and they’re even dumber than magikarp.”

“I know you know what memes are from that lecture you gave everyone about Pokemon types–”

“–it wasn’t a lecture, I was just saying–”

“–it was totally a lecture, Red, it was like ten thousand words, but I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, I actually enjoyed it! But the comparison of memes to genes is more apt than I think even Dawkins knew; he wanted to describe ideas the way we understand genes, but really it’s genes that are the embodiment of memes. When I say ‘knowledge,’ I don’t mean just memorized facts. Real knowledge is any information that preserves and replicates itself.”

“Because if it didn’t, it wouldn’t be able to be learned,” Red murmurs, trying to think of what this has to do with pokemon… “Ah, that’s what you meant by the comparison to genes. They contain ‘knowledge’ about biology. How many bones to grow, where, how thick, what shape, it’s all in the genes, along with skin, muscle tissue, metabolism, everything. If it doesn’t survive the environment it’s in and outcompete others, the genes die, and the knowledge of how to turn atoms into those particular biological containers, die with them.”

“You’re quick,” Lulie says with a smile. “I thought you would be. See, a good explanation doesn’t have adjustable parts. If pokemon appear around an unown, one explanation is that the unown ‘created’ it, but that’s no different than saying that pokemon are naturally occurring around the unown, or that Arceus created them and unown are just its eyes in our world, or that all the unown are parts of a different god who did it and Arceus had nothing to do with it. Until you have a way to test specific explanations with observations that will leave better ones standing, the observations themselves aren’t guaranteed to create any new or real understanding.”

Red slowly nods, watching Pikachu walk over to Jolteon for some mutual sniffs. “So the actual process is to first notice there’s a problem, which can be as simple as when two things you think you know, or see, contradict. But instead of following that with observations to make hypotheses, I should first come up with explanations.”

“You do come up with explanations first. All observations, all learning, is theory laden. We form explanations for things constantly, consciously or subconsciously, and what we think we know affects how we interpret information and make sense of it.”

“Right. That’s why two people can hear the same facts about something that happened, but come up with totally different explanations for why it happened, and their models might actually update in opposite directions.” That always annoyed him; it just seems wrong for two people to get the same information and not move closer to agreement rather than farther.

“There are other factors too. Sometimes two people will observe the same exact thing happen in front of them, but their attention is on different things.”

“And they’ll remember different things, which will also lead to different expectations going forward, which in turn might lead to biases.”

“You mean like confirmation bias?”

“Worse. If someone only sees or reads things that reinforce a certain belief, that might make it harder to accept something that seems to disagree with all they already believe. But taking awareness into account too… what if they don’t even register the counterevidence as counterevidence at all? That would be pretty rare though, like the starting perspectives would have to have diverged drastically, or the information about something they’ve developed a lot of attentional blind spots around.”

“Ugh. Sounds like what happens in politics a lot.” She sighs. “But yeah, this is why it’s important to think not just of what models people have of reality, but also where their awareness naturally goes. Every expectation we have is the result of an explanation our mind is using to predict what will happen next.”

“Yeah, that’s what predictive processing–” A distant pop makes them both leap up again, this time without spilling Lulie’s notebook.

“I don’t see it,” she says, spinning around to look in every direction as she unclips her red pokeball and takes another tracker out of her pocket. “You?”

Red’s senses are already stretched outward, and he starts running around the ruins in case it’s inside one of the buildings. By the time he senses it behind one of the crumbling houses it’s already flying up and away, not giving him time to glimpse its memories.

The ocarina sounds behind him, and Lulie’s second pidove launches into the air after the already-distant black speck.

Red jogs back over to her as she minimizes the ball and swaps it for another full one from her bag. “How many of those things have you got?”

“Just eight left. Never was able to send more than seven out in a day, but so long as it doesn’t rain I’m hoping I get lucky.”

“Will the pidove come back here, or do you go to them?”

“Depends; the ones that follow unown out over the ocean will turn back when they’re near their halfway flight time and rest on the roof of the battle tower until I pick them up. The ones that end up going more north or west will make their way to Cinnabar, Pallet, or Fuchsia.”

“Nice. Have you posted about this yet?”

“Just started, now that I can show how effective it is.”

Red grins. “With your following, this’ll take off big.” He should probably buy some pidove… not that they’re anywhere near as rare or hard to catch as abra, but they’re also not native to any of the island regions. “So which of your hypotheses are you expecting to invalidate by tracking them?”

“Oh, I’d be surprised if any of them would. Personally I think it’s too early to falsify any by observation until we have a better understanding of all sorts of things. Whether unown are somehow a carrier for the genetic knowledge pokemon contain or not, I’m also interested in the unown themselves for their own sake. Why they act the way they do, the unique properties they have, what sort of environment, if any, they evolved in. Exploratory research is useful to create new theories or decide which to test.”

“I totally get that, it’s why part of me is so frustrated by the research ban.”

Lulie shrugs. “Only matters if I intend to do that sort of research in a region that’s banned it. There are others that are just going ahead, you know.”

Red worries his lower lip. “Yeah, but… what if it really is dangerous?”

“Then that’s just another problem we’ll have to solve.”

Her words resonate within him, stirring the part that had been mostly, if uncomfortably, appeased by his talk with Giovanni. He wants it to be true. Would have probably agreed a year ago, and he knows it’s the sort of thing Blue would say.

But…

“I feel like that’s the sort of thing Archie and Matsubusa believed.” Salvage teams still haven’t found the stolen submarine to confirm Archie’s death, and neither renegade leader or any of their people have been seen or heard from, despite being Interpol’s most wanted criminals for months. “That they could figure out how to revive Groudon and Kyogre, and if there were any problems controlling them they’d figure that out later.”

“Yeah.” Lulie’s smile has faded, and she looks pensively up at the sky as her hand reaches back to stroke Slashy’s snout. “To be clear, I’m not saying all knowledge should be spread to everyone. All problems are solvable, but that doesn’t mean we’ll figure the solutions out on time. Still, the research should be done. If someone besides those two had learned what they did, maybe they could have stopped them or the legendaries even sooner.”

The parallel to the other regions already continuing with unown research goes without saying. “So, we should be trying to research whatever we can, and if something dangerous is discovered, then we shouldn’t share the knowledge until we can reasonably ensure it’s safe?”

“That seems nearly impossible. I’d say that it’s more about who you trust to tell than anything.”

Well, he can hardly argue with that given what he’s already decided, twice. Still, Red sits silent, thoughts turning to what they’re doing here as he uses psychic commands to train his pokemon in agile movement around the ruins. What’s more potentially dangerous, her tracking, or his memory searches? He has no idea. Red told Artem he’s not trying to sneak around the ban, but while what he’s doing isn’t technically research into pokemon genesis, they don’t know that it won’t contribute to it.

What would he do, if he discovered something important here? He couldn’t tell Sabrina or Giovanni, and even Professor Oak might feel compelled to obey their Champion, despite disagreeing. And he can’t just rely on himself to know what others might do with his research, since any piece of knowledge might be the key to another’s discovery.

But that’s true of any research, really… as he already learned, the hard way. Hell, even Tatsumaki’s discovery might just be another thing that people get scared of psychics about. The list is getting rather long, all things considered, and after a certain point it may just be a choice between stop doing anything he finds important or risk discovering something that might lead to bad stuff happening.

“Still bothered?”

Red turns to see Lulie watching him, and despite her not being psychic the words weren’t a question. Good at reading vibes, huh? He lets his senses withdraw from Kadabra’s and throws a treat out for his pokemon. “I guess I’m just trying to come to terms with the risks of all this. It’s been on my mind a lot lately, actually; figuring out what ways any of my research might lead to bad outcomes.”

“Well, I understand why, but while you’re at it, why not also figure out what ways any of your actions might lead to bad outcomes?”

“What, all of them?”

“Sure. Is there any reason to only care about research in particular?”

Her tone makes it clear she’s suggesting something intentionally impractical to make a point, but Red just gives her a wan smile. “Let’s just say I have good evidence that my research is more likely than not to cause problems, compared to all my non-research actions.”

Lulie’s eyes widen slightly, and this time she’s the one that stays silent, drawing pad forgotten as her eyes turn upward. Red merges with his pokemon one at a time, sending them through the ruins, treating it as an obstacle course, until finally she looks back at him and says, “I feel like you just admitted something rather personal, and important, and you believe it enough that I don’t feel inclined to doubt it. So, thank you.”

“You’re welcome, I think.” Really he shouldn’t have said it at all, if he’s being as cautious as he should be, but somehow he trusts her not to gossip. Some of his own “vibe” reading, maybe.

“I’ll admit to being curious, but understand if that’s all you want to say. Meanwhile, I should remind you of the good you’ve done too.” She pats the yellow ball at the back of her belt. “I was only able to afford Agarment here because of you.”

“I had some help. But… yeah, I think I did need that reminder.” He tries to let that sink in, and once it does he feels himself breathe a little easier, his worries about being a walking infohazard for psychics fading a bit. Much as it might feel lately like all he’s done is discover dangerous things, he knows he’s done more than that. “Thanks.”

“Anytime. So what’s your plan to figure out where pokemon come from?”

Red smiles. “Finding ways to test your ideas seems good, actually. The fourth one reminded me of ditto.” Part of him still stubbornly insists that metamon is the better name, but there’s no denying the tide has turned in the past few weeks. “There are stories of clefairy coming from the moon and ghosts from the afterlife, but as far as we know, minior are the only pokemon that aren’t really from our planet at all, right? Or at least, they form in the stratosphere before falling to earth. Has anyone tested whether ditto can transform into them?”

“You’re thinking, what, that because they’re not from the planet, they’re a completely different genetic branch from whatever ditto can imitate? Hmm.” She checks her pokedex, brings up the page on ditto, and starts to scroll. “Nope, they haven’t gotten around to testing that one yet.”

“Then it’s time I write up some competing theories of my own.”

Lulie grins. “And meanwhile, what’s your plan with the unown?”

“Well, I know you’re against knowledge by induction, but I still think it can be valuable. Let’s say unown really are important, in some way, to new pokemon appearing. If we want to get a sense of the range in which new pokemon might be spawned, then obviously just one observation wouldn’t do much; we wouldn’t have any sense of how relatively close or far it is from the potential maximums, or minimums for that matter. But with a hundred observations, unless there’s absolutely no trend at all, we could get a frequency curve that could be very useful.”

Lulie just stares at him a moment. “You want to make a hundred observations of pokemon genesis, when no one’s even managed one yet?!”

It starts to drizzle as they argue, and Lulie withdraws her houndoom as they find shelter beneath some trees, chatting late into the day and building up their knowledge together, one data point at a time. When Red finally says goodbye and teleports home, it’s with new conviction.

He wouldn’t experiment in any way that might create pokemon… but he would continue trying to learn where they come from, and decide what to do with that information later if he has to.

---

The division within Fuchsia gym starts slowly, and without any deliberate effort on Blue’s part.

For one thing, he and his friends are famous enough to naturally attract aspiring trainers wherever they go, to the point where he finds himself having trouble actually keeping track of everyone these days. It takes effort to spend “personal time” with others beyond Glen, Elaine, Lizzy, and Maria; he feels the most comfortable being himself around them. But he pushes himself to do it anyway, remembering how important it was to befriend each of them on a more equal level. He wonders where he’d be now if he hadn’t gone to the Saffron dojo that day; maybe worried to even attend classes.

Novelty also likely plays some factor in how popular their group becomes; after finally having the blessing from a gym leader to do what he wants, Blue can at last continue what they started in Vermilion. While he starts iterating on the Objection system, Glen and Elaine work together to develop a set of group training scenarios; Search and Rescue, Hold the Line, and Titan Takedown.

(That last one is the most unique, and soon draws the most sign-ups. Since they don’t have actual legendaries to practice on, the scenario features an asymmetric battle between one trainer using their most powerful pokemon and three to five using weak ones. Though it comes with an added risk to the pokemon involved, people seem as genuinely excited to try to work together taking down the “Legendary” as they do to play the villain; much debate was had over whether they should be able to ‘catch’ it, and in the end Blue decided that since no legendary has been caught yet, they would battle as though taking them down is the only option.)

And then of course there was Koga’s speech, and the way he occasionally visits to observe the “unofficial” classes they run with anyone that wants to try the scenarios. It’s hard to compress all the things they learned in Vermilion into a few lectures and practical tests, but the scenarios are different enough from regular battle matches, and the experience of those at the gym so wildly varying, that they make safety the priority and let the participants learn most of the rest live.

But still, all of that could be seen as auxiliary gym activities… until a couple weeks after starting, Janine began to post notices of private, one-on-one battle training. Not just with her; most of the veteran members of the gym also make themselves available, and far beyond what’s normally available in most gyms. Not only do they double their available times for single matches and coaching, they also post their training times, and stage them in public places where anyone who wants to observe can do so… always coincidentally at the same times that the group scenarios or lessons are scheduled.

It feels like years ago, now, but Blue still remembers what Red told him just before leaving for the cruise convention… along with the burning conviction that’s so rare to see in his friend.

“This is your chance to do something really different… prove that you can win, reveal your secrets, and then win again anyway.“

The memory has nudged him, now and then, to say more rather than less, to show his secrets not just to those in his inner circle, but to the world, in the hopes that it strengthens every trainer without costing him his dream. It still feels like a gamble, every time, but one that on net he’s glad he takes.

But he hasn’t tried to preach something similar, knowing it would bring a lot of backlash from other battle trainers; for all that he’s accomplished, he’s still young, and the more experienced trainers would believe he’s just trying to get others to show him their secrets in exchange for his own paltry few.

And yet without really intending to, it seems he’s managed to push the Fuchsia gym culture onto a path that might normalize that mentality. Janine knows she can’t beat him in offering more than what gyms traditionally do, but she can double down on that tradition, with added perks.

Which is why, while some trainers are attending both, there’s been a definite drop-off since Janine’s lessons started, to the point where they’re actually having trouble forming teams for each scenario with the smaller pool of skill and pokemon available.

All told, despite Janine beating him twice more since their first match, Koga’s plan is working out wonderfully, and the Leader is sure to allow him to Challenge soon.

“So why do I feel like I’m losing?” Blue complains to Elaine as they make their way to the training rooms to practice with their psychic pokemon. Blue hasn’t given up on getting Tops into fighting shape, and doesn’t plan to, but he has to admit that a kadabra alone wouldn’t bridge the gap between him and Janine. “And I don’t just mean because I am, obviously.”

“Let me guess,” Elaine says. “At this point even getting the badge and leaving would feel like failure?”

He grunts acknowledgement. And for multiple reasons too, not least of which is that he’s losing hope that the starting animosity from Janine will turn into a more friendly rivalry over time. For reasons he can’t quite understand, if anything the Leader’s daughter seems to actually hate him more now, despite his attempts to apologize for their rough start and befriend her. “The worst part is, her training will actually help people become stronger than ours. Not in every situation, but in their ability to win trainer battles and gym challenges. And that means the scenarios will die out as soon as we leave.”

“Makes sense to me. How many people get a gym’s badge in a year, a few dozen at most? Meanwhile, you’re the first person to change the culture of a gym without being its Leader. Of course you want to keep stacking that story.”

Blue sighs as they enter the elevator and start heading down. “I only want to because I’m right though. The Indigo League’s been around for nearly a century, if focusing on individual trainer strength was enough to keep the region safe then someone would have taken a Stormbringer down by now.”

“Preaching to the choir,” Elaine gently reminds him. “But however wrong it may be to focus on individual trainer strength alone, we can’t deny that her training will help with both trainer battles and wild battles.”

“Well, no, but ours helps against trainer battles too!”

“Mmm. If I were to think up numbers for it, which I have, I’d say her training boosts Battle Power against trainers by 10, and ours against wilds by 10. But while ours boosts power against trainers by 2, maybe 3, hers boosts power against wilds by at least 5.”

Blue frowns. “Are you pulling those from a game?”

“Nope.”

“Alright, well—”

“I’m describing how it’ll be reflected in my game.”

“You’re making a game? I’m in it?”

“Of course!”

“Wait, if it’s your game why not give my training a boost?”

“I can’t do that, silly, it has to be realistic. There are modifiers for the two of you, but I think they come out about equal, and then she’s got a Second and Third on her side.”

Which has certainly tempted Blue to go to the lessons himself, as a sort of “we’re not so proud that we don’t think we can learn from you too” (not to mention the help it would be in his own battles against them), but they’re still working out the schedule rotation and he needs to be present for most. “I still think our scenarios should boost trainer battles by more. They’re not even battling wild pokemon!”

“Neither are we, just pretending they’re wild.” She pats his shoulder as they pick a training room and close the door behind them. “It’s okay, Blue, you have plenty of other perks.”

“I do?”

“Yep! First off, you have Showman, which gives you advantage when speaking in front of a crowd, which gives you a higher chance at earning bonus reputation. You also have Battle Calm, which—”

“Wait, how did you…?”

Elaine blinks. “How did I what?”

Blue feels the back of his neck burning. “Uh, nothing. Just something I’ve heard before, I think?”

“Maybe! I thought I made it up, but you’re always super chill when you fight, so I gave you immunity to reaction penalties from stress.”

“Is that… good?”

“Yeah, it’s one of your strongest perks! That and the Legendary Reflexes and Heroic Name—”

“Okay, okay, I’ve got a lot of perks. I’m satisfied.” He smiles and unclips Tops’s ball. “Thanks. Where are you finding the time to even make a sim, anyway?”

“It’s not digital, it’s a tabletop RPG! You know, pencil and paper, character sheets, stuff like that. It’s what I’ve been working on with Marcus.”

“Oh. I thought you guys were, you know. Dating or whatever.” He half expected that’s why Marcus was so quick to join up with them in Saffron, but he couldn’t exactly call the older boy out on it, especially since he’s actually a good trainer.

“Ah. No.” Her cheeks are pink as she unclips a pokeball too, and Blue is about to summon Tops when she says, “I’ve, um, got my sights set on someone else.”

Shit. Blue still remembers that kiss on the cheek during the storm, now and then, and hoped it was nothing meaningful. That didn’t stop him worrying about it off and on for months, of course, and yet he still has no idea what to say. “Um.”

“But I’m pretty sure he just sees me as a friend.”

“Right.” He doesn’t dare be too relieved, yet, and sure enough…

“Maybe because he’s still focused on another girl. I know it’s stupid to keep hoping, and I’m not rooting against them, exactly…”

“Wait. Another girl?” Does she think he and Leaf…? Or maybe—

“It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?”

“It is?” Blue asks, feeling a little faint. He’s been talking to Maria a lot lately to get extra help training their psychic pokemon, but—

“Well, I thought it was. He talks like Bretta is going to ask him out any day now, or else he will.”

“Oh!” The relief is short-lived as Elaine gives him a quizzical look, and now it’s his turn to blush. “Right,” he quickly adds, hoping it’s a more normal response. And then, for good measure, “Yeah.”

“You think Glen’s still focused on her too, then?”

He should just lie. It would be so easy. But what if he’s wrong? In this case he wouldn’t just look foolish, he’d be misleading his friend.

“I actually have no idea,” he admits after a moment, very badly wanting to summon his pokemon and start the training. Instead he starts tossing the ball back and forth. “And it doesn’t seem like my business.”

“Right.” She starts to play with her ball too. “I just thought you were at least keeping track of things like that. For, you know. Drama-avoidance reasons.”

Blue grimaces, but says nothing. He’s read about the way romance among journeymates could lead to problems between them (despite the incomprehensible insistence of basically every movie to shoehorn it in, which is one of the many reasons he prefers films about trainers his own age) but the whys and hows have always been a mystery to him, and he’s never really wanted them not to be. As far as he can tell, romance just makes people go crazy in fairly random and uninteresting ways.

Sometimes heroic ones, too, but those would always be more interesting without the romantic motivation, to him, and observing the ups and downs of Daisy’s romantic life so far has convinced him further that the whole thing is more trouble than it’s worth, even if things seem to be going well with her current girlfriend so far.

She’s still looking at him, though, and finally he says, “I’m just trying to focus on what would make everyone a better trainer. So long as it’s not causing a problem, meddling with people’s personal lives would just be a distraction, for me and others.”

“I get that. And I do appreciate it. But you’ve earned the right to nudge, now and then, you know? If you think it’s getting to be more of a distraction than saying something would.”

Is she asking him to tell her to stop thinking about Glen? It doesn’t seem like the kind of thing someone would be able to do, at least according to movies, but then they’re not reliable in all sorts of other ways. “I’m younger than everyone else in the group. Why would I have any more to say on this than you all?”

“It’s not that you would, exactly. I mean, I don’t think people are going to ask you for dating advice. But if it’s affecting our training, I expect you to notice, and… well, we wouldn’t want to disappoint you.” She shrugs. “I guess I should just speak for myself, but if you think I’ve been slipping behind because I keep trying to make sure Glen is keeping up…”

She’s right, he has noticed that. He just didn’t say anything because he figured she’s doing it out of friendship. “Would you do the same for others in the group?”

“I’m not sure. Lizzy and Maria, probably? Maybe not the newcomers, if I’m being honest. I like Marcus and Alex, but I didn’t spend that much time at the dojo, so I’m still getting to know them.”

Blue nods. “You are, a bit. Falling behind I mean. But you’ve been improving in other ways too, and… there are more important things than pokemon training sometimes.” He sighs. “Honestly, it’s been a bit of a relief. I’d probably be doing it more myself if you weren’t.”

She lets out a breath, then nods. “Well. That does make me feel better. But I’m actually worried this is all just my past debt coming due for all the motivation I got after meeting him.”

“What do you mean?”

Elaine gives him a faint smile. “You probably didn’t realize, because we all met at around the same time, and… you didn’t know me too well at the start. But a big part of why I was always so eager to work hard and do more was… I wanted to impress Glen. I mean, I wanted to be impressive so that he’d notice me. Not to say I didn’t care what you thought too, or about getting a badge, or being a good trainer. All of that mattered to me. But I never felt so… energized, and cheerful, and focused.”

“You were pretty energetic back then, but you still are, too, most of the time. I just figured, you know… the things we’ve been through, they haven’t really left any of us unchanged.”

“Sure, that’s been part of it too. After what happened to Glen beneath the Casino… I could barely think straight until he woke up. But I’ve also been feeling some heartache, and occasional jealousy, and… trying not to let that get in the way of things has been hard.”

Blue frowns, staring at his abra’s pokeball. How did he miss that? “Sorry. Not just because that sounds like it sucks. I had no idea.”

“Don’t be, I wanted to keep it hidden. I might have just confessed to Glen if I wasn’t so worried about making things awkward and ruining things for the group. But I’ve been wondering… what if I stop trying to help Glen and still can’t keep up? It’s harder to motivate myself to train these days than it is to work on a game about training. Doesn’t that mean I’ve lost it?”

Blue’s stomach clenches at the thought that Elaine might quit, after everything she’s been through. Everything they’ve been through. But… “Elaine, if you’re worried I’m going to be upset—”

“Of course I am, but it’s not just that. When I think of how badly Aiko wanted to be a trainer, and how much good we’ve done, it makes me feel like… I have to keep going, for her sake. And if I could stop others from dying like that, but instead I just spend my days in Pewter making games…”

Blue knows he’s supposed to say something here, something like she wouldn’t want you to be a trainer for reasons like that. But he’s still shaken by the idea that he missed something so big in Elaine’s journey, and it threatens to throw everything he thinks he knows about her and even the others in his journey into doubt.

Or maybe that’s just an excuse to keep her with him.

More alarming is the thought of what else his friends might be going through that he might be totally blind to. Maybe he’s too young to understand the romance stuff, but while he still wishes it weren’t something he had to think about, at least now that he knows how blind he’s been he can ask Daisy for help. But if he’s mishandling the situation with Janine, which it seems he is, it could be for another reason that’s totally invisible to him.

How would he even know how to find out?

Pull yourself together. His friend is still standing silent in front of him, and he can worry about his own problems later. There are a few things he doesn’t feel or relate to that he’s managed to at least accept are real for others, and he reaches for some of that borrowed wisdom now.

“Maybe you just need a break,” Blue says at last. “We’ve been going pretty hard for months, and all the recent wild battles are wearing a lot of people down.”

“Not you.”

Blue snorts. “You said it yourself, a while back; I “double specialized” in pokemon battles, or something like that, right?”

But Elaine just gives him a sad smile. “I know you, Blue. You want equals with you, on your way to the top. If I spend a few months at home just fooling around, is there really going to be a place for me on your journey again? I don’t mean you’ll tell me to go away, but in your heart, will I still be an equal?”

“No one is,” he says, the words coming out before he can think. “I’m sorry, that’s not—”

“No, it’s okay.” She reclips her pokeball and walks over to the wall, pressing her back against it and sliding down, then patting the floor beside him. “Tell me.”

Blue suddenly wishes they were talking about romance again, but… she trusted him with her deep fear. He can’t do less.

He goes to sit beside her, rolling Tops’ pokeball between his hands. “I don’t know why I said that. I was trying to make you feel better, but it came out… bitter.”

“It’s okay to notice you’re not like others, Blue. In a few ways, at least. I’m just worried that’s going to keep you from finding real companionship.” She sighs. “But I guess it would, if those few things are important enough to you.”

Some leader he is; now she’s the one comforting him. But this isn’t even a loss, and… it’s Elaine. She’s been with him as long as anyone besides Red and Leaf, and through even more together.

“I know it might not be actually true,” Blue says. “I mean, there are probably a few trainers out there as good as me. Glen might actually be one of them, if not for…” He swallows down the ball of bitterness and sadness.

Elaine is looking at him in something like pity, but also worry. “Give him more time, Blue, he’s trying so hard, and—”

“I know. That’s part of why I admire him so much. But even people who are as good as I am at battles don’t have the same ambition, and without that it feels… different. I’ve met so many people I respect and admire and have learned from, including you, by the way, people with skills I don’t have, and insights, and all that good stuff. But for what matters most… it feels like sooner or later I’m going to walk a different path, or they will.” He smiles at her. “So don’t feel bad about going home for a bit, Elaine. You’re special to me, but not that special.”

She hugs him, and he returns the gesture, unsure if he’s made things better or worse until she says, “Just… don’t count us out yet. When you get to the top, and put out the call… we’ll be there, even if we couldn’t walk the whole way with you.”

“What if that just gets you killed?” Blue whispers, again without meaning to.

Elaine pulls back to meet his gaze. “Is that why it bothers you so much? When people can’t keep up, or fall behind?”

Blue shrugs, looking away. “I knew a long time ago that I’d be leading friends into danger they might not survive. Everything up until now, it’s… not weeding people out, exactly? Not consciously, at least. But I know that I don’t want people to come just because they like me, or are afraid of disappointing me. I want them to come because they believe as much as I do that taking the Stormbringers down is more important than anything, and are strong enough to actually make a difference rather than dying for nothing.”

For a second he thinks she’s going to hug him again, but then she just punches his arm and stands up. “Don’t borrow so much guilt ahead of time, Blue. It’s very noble of you, but it’s patronizing as hell.” She walks back to the arena. “Go, Ekans!”

Her pokemon appears and coils around, tongue flicking out. Blue gets to his feet as well, wondering if he should say something else, but then just goes to stand across from her and summon Tops. The purple snake goes absolutely still except for its tail, which rattles, and Blue watches his abra’s ears twitch, its body trembling with the effort not to teleport away despite its type advantage.

“You’re stronger than you think,” he mutters, wishing for the thousandth time that he was psychic. “I’ve just got to show you.”

“You talking to me, your abra, or yourself?”

“All of the above.” He takes the two sound emitters out of his pocket and holds them out to the sides, letting Tops orient to his position before beginning to tap out an attack. “And the rest of the world, too.”