The forest was dark and full of monsters, but Red wasn’t afraid. The bravest man in the world sat across the fire, and Red knew nothing would happen to him while Tomio Verres was near.

“The most important thing to remember is that everything contains risk, Red. Everything.”

Red watched his father turn the spit over the bed of cinders. “You mean like how you can choke while eating?”

Tomio smiled. “Exactly.” His other hand poured a packet of soy sauce on the pidgey meat. The fire hissed and snapped as the sauce dripped down with the meat’s juices, and the sharp scent filled the air, combating the damp, green smells of the woods. “So tell me, what risks are we taking right now?”

Red thought it over as he carefully peeled the bark from a stick. His father had given the dagger to him last night for his eighth birthday, and he’d been itching to use it all day. He watched each peel of bark curl up, carefully adjusting his grip if it became too thin or thick. “I guess just being here instead of staying at home is a risk. But the fire is the real problem, since it might bring pokemon. Also, the smell of the meat might attract predators.” As he spoke, he imagined sharp teethed pokemon circling the camp just out of sight, slowly drawing in to pounce on his back. The back of his neck tightened, but he resisted the urge to look behind him. His dad would see if there was a pokemon sneaking up on him, and Kage would alert them if any came near.

The mightyena rested with its head on its forelimbs beside the fire, a shadow in the island of light. One eye was open, reflecting the fire as it watched the pidgey meat, nose twitching. Red checked his new spit for splinters, then handed it to his dad, who speared a pair of wings and legs onto it. “What about if we had stayed home?” Tomio asked. “It’s safe there. There are wards around town to alert us if dangerous pokemon come by, and others to help defend us.”

“Well. We might have fallen down the stairs at home.”

Red’s dad smiled and said nothing.

So Red considered some of the dangers back at Pallet Town. He could drown at the beach, but the obvious answer was to just not swim. He could get run over by a car, but they’re so uncommon and easy to avoid that it’s not likely. He eventually realized he was thinking in circles. Everything was too similar to falling down the stairs to be what his dad had in mind. He tried to think of unpredictable dangers like storms, and as a glimmer of understanding surfaced, he thought out loud. “Well… If I stayed home all the time, I wouldn’t learn as much. I could read about wilderness survival, but not practice. And if I never left home, I’d never practice training or defending against wild pokemon. Which might be okay, if I live my whole life at home or in a city. Or it might be deadly, if something unexpected happens.”

“Put another way?”

“Put another way…” Red took his cap off and scratched his head, then left it off so he could feel the wind in his sweaty hair. His mom had taught him to write with as much breadth as possible before editing down to the basics, cutting the fat from the ideas until the core message stood stark and irrefutable. That’s what his dad wanted. “Put another way, if I stayed home I wouldn’t be learning to manage risk. Letting others keep you safe is a gamble on the long run that you’ll always be protected.”

“Full marks.”

Pride warmed Red deeper than the fire reached. His dad took the first pidgey off the sticks holding it up, and after blowing on the meat a bit, slid it to the end of its spit and offered it to Kage. His mightyena extended his neck without rising and chomped it off the spit, spilling half of the pidgey to the grass. The dark canine began to feast, light bones cracking in his powerful jaws.

“So what are we doing to mitigate our risk right now, Red?”

“Well. First we used some repel to mask our scent. We chose a dense part of the woods so the firelight doesn’t go far. And as a last resort, Kage is ready to defend us if anything comes by.”

Tomio nodded. “What else?”

Red racked his brain to think of what he’d missed. “Our clothes? Nothing bright green or yellow, nothing tan or purple.”

“Yes, nothing that resembles prey in the area. What else?”

Red frowned. He picked up a third stick and began to peel it. The minutes crawled by, and when he realized he was focusing more on how much time was passing than finding the answer, he shook his head.

“Where are we?” his dad asked.

“About eight kilometers west of Pallet Town.”

“What’s nearby us?”

Red blinked. “Uh… besides Pallet Town… the beach is about two kilometers south… the southern shore, I mean. The western shore is another seven…”

His dad waited silently, still turning the meat as he pours soy sauce on the second pidgey. Eventually he said, “You can check your map.”

Red did so, brow furrowed. His dad rarely told him straight out how he was wrong, instead letting him flail about and find out himself. It might be more embarrassing if he was in school, but the only one around is his dad, who never laughs at him for missing a question.

Red expanded the map until he saw it. “There’s a Ranger outpost two kilometers up from us. North, I mean.” Once he saw it, he remembered there being one to the northwest of Pallet. He hadn’t realized it was so close.

“That’s right. To further minimize our risk in camping out, we chose to spend the night near a Ranger outpost. Being constantly aware of your location helps you not get lost, but what if you were in trouble? What if your phone was broken, or your pokeballs were running low on power? You might have tried to go all the way back to Pallet, when there’s help much closer.”

Red put his phone away, cheeks burning. Even without being laughed at, Red hated missing obvious things. He bit his tongue, pushing down the excuses that tried to bubble up. Whether he’d been lazy or just forgetful didn’t matter. “So why aren’t we spending the night with them?”

“Because I wanted to spend some alone time with my birthday boy.”

Red looked up and saw his dad’s smile. His frustration melted away, and Red finished peeling the stick with a smile of his own before handing it to his dad.

“So would you say the risk has been properly negated?” Tomio said as he took the spit and speared more meat onto it.

“I guess so, yeah.”

“What else could we do to be safer, other than camping closer to the outpost?”

“I could have my own pokemon,” Red said automatically.

Tomio laughed, and Red grinned. He knew his dad wouldn’t break the licensing regulations, but he hadn’t given up on the loophole that allowed kids to use pokemon registered to their parents. He wanted a pokemon of his own so bad that just looking at his dad’s full belt made his fingers itch to touch the cold spheres.

“I don’t know that a budew or azurill would be of much use for keeping us safe.”

“I could get a riolu, or a tyrogue.”

Red’s dad shook his head, still grinning. “I’d rather not have your mother call about a new hole in the wall because your training got out of hand. What else could we do?”

Red let it go while his dad was still in a good mood. “You could bring out another pokemon.” He knew his dad was more than capable of commanding two at once in combat.

Tom nodded, face serious again. “I could. Who would you suggest?”

“Kaze could fly around and let us know if something’s coming from the air. Nintai could go underground in case of tunneling pokemon.”

“In a forest?”

Red shrugs. “Kūfuku could use roots…”

His dad smiled and stood. He took out a pokeball and aimed it one handed at the ground far from the fire. “Kūfuku, kimi ni kimeta!”

The flash lit up the night for a split second, and then a victreebel was with them, its long vine immediately digging into the ground as it flexed its leaves and opened its wide mouth to the sky. Its eyes rolled to take in its surroundings, and it relaxed as it found itself at home. Tomio ran a hand over the plant pokemon’s bulbous body and dug a pokeblock out of his pocket with the other. He murmured a greeting as he dropped the pokeblock into its gaping mouth, then stood back.

“Kūfuku, ne o uero,” he said, and his pokemon began extending roots through the soil.

Tomio sat back down and carefully placed the second stick of meat on a small plate before handing it to Red. “Why those pokemon?”

Red accepted the plate with thanks, and began blowing on a wing, belly rumbling. “Kage’s nose is strong enough to warn us of most things approaching, but there would be no scent if it comes from underground, or dives from above.”

“Good. So why did I bring out Kūfuku and not Kaze?”

Red hesitated. “Because there are no pokemon native to this area that dive to attack their foes,” he said, trying to sound confident.

“Was that a guess?”

“Uh… an informed guess?”

His father smiled, but nodded. “And a good one. Spearow and Fearow do, but they do not fly by night. So in total our risk—”

“Dad? There’s something else we could do.’

“Such as?”

“We could light other fires.”

Tomio’s hands paused while seasoning his food, face thoughtful. “As decoys.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you think we should do that?”

“Not really.”

“Why not?”

“Because leaving unattended fires can be dangerous, even if we build them carefully.”

“So why bring it up?”

“Because it’s an option, even if a dangerous one. It could be worth the risk. If I were here alone I might do it.”

“A manageable risk, to reduce a risk you have no control over.”

“Right.”

“Good.” Red’s dad finished cooking his meal, then joined Red on his side of the firebed. He placed a hand on Red’s hair, then bent to kiss his head. “Yoku dekimashita, Red.”

Red leaned against his father’s side, eating his dinner and feeling warmed from the inside and out.

“Remember, nothing is without risk, but risk is manageable. Risk is the balance between the danger of an action, and what the actor is capable of. A skilled trainer manages risks at all times and stays alive. A skilled and smart trainer thinks beyond the obvious risks of action, and find ways to do the impossible. Where such men and women go, legends bloom like flowers in their wake.”

As soon as Red gets over his shock, he whips his bag around one shoulder and scrambles for the zipper along the side. “Repel,” he hisses to Blue. “Now!” He pulls out the canister, pops the top, and sprays himself liberally, breathing deep to recover from the sprint through the woods and to keep himself from panicking.

The body in the field is too far to see clearly through the grass and flowers, but the tallish figure and short hair makes it appear to be a young man. There are red blotches on his clothes, but not enough to tell if he’s dead. Red tries to hold onto that hope, though it makes him anxiously aware of every passing second the venom might be creeping through the man’s veins…

Risk = Magnitude of loss x Probability that loss will occur. M is death for all of us, and P is… almost certain.

“Shiiit,” Blue says, quietly but with feeling as he pants for breath and sprays himself with repel. “How long—”

“Less than a minute ago,” Leaf murmurs, barely audible over the buzzing. Red offers his canister to her, but she shakes her head and holds up her own empty can. “I followed one of the beedrill here, and saw it… him… already lying there.”

Easiest variable to reduce is M, which means leveraging our pokemon’s safety. P needs to go down either way. What are our tools?

Blue already has his hand on a pokeball. “We need to watch their pattern, wait for an opening. Two of us can provide cover while the third goes to help him.”

Wait, Red mouths soundlessly as his mind races. Half a meter per second, sustained for up to 40 seconds—no good. He’s tempted to take his notebook out to check his numbers, he’s not great at math, but knows he’s just being optimistic. They’d never make it in time. Which way is the wind blowing?

Leaf is nodding as Red sucks on a finger and holds it up. “A distraction. Red, you taught charmander smokescreen, it’s perfect to keep them away. Bulbasaur could use his sleep powder on any that get through.”

“You’ve trained him in sleep powder?” Blue asks her.

“Yeah, we caught a ledyba with it before I found this place.”

“Wait,” Red whispers as yet another beedrill join the swarm. Moderate wind to the west, won’t work. Spinarak isn’t trained, can’t use web, beedrill could dive through sleep powder and sting before being affected—

“Then I’ll start with Zephyr and whip the smoke into them. You and Bulbasaur—”

“Wait.”

They both look at him.

“We need to wait.” The words are hard to say, but he forces them out. “The nearest ranger outpost isn’t far, they’ll be here in eight minutes at most from when you sent your alert, Leaf. This swarm is too big to handle on our own.”

Blue looks at him in disgust. “We can’t just sit here while he could be dying out there!”

“Keep your voice down,” Red snaps, shame and anger and fear swirling in his chest. “This isn’t a cartoon. Against six beedrill, we might stand a chance. At least we could try to get away if things go bad. Against nine, we would need to each personally take down three beedrill, which none of our pokemon are capable of. But even nine would be better odds than this. There are over a dozen beedrill out there—”

“I’m not saying we need to beat them all, but if we’re careful we can at least distract them long enough to check if that guy’s alive.”

Red shakes his head, still breathing hard from the run as he tries to put his thoughts in order. “My charmander’s smokescreen covers half a square meter per second, and double that vertically. It could hide one person moving slowly, but I wouldn’t be able to see anything from inside it, which means I wouldn’t be able to check for and treat wounds.” Red’s voice cracks, and he takes another deep breath to steady his voice, fists clenched against the ground. “Blowing the smoke into the field won’t work either, the wind will disperse it too quickly.”

“So we try to draw them a bit at a time,” Leaf says.

Blue shakes his head with a frown. “They attack in swarms. Pull one and you usually pull others. But we don’t have to hold them long, eight minutes—”

“Eight minutes with at least four on each of us,” Red says. “Maybe more. None of our pokemon can protect us from all of them, and we can’t outrun them. Zephyr and Crimson can handle at least a couple each, but unless you’re paying close attention you won’t be able to withdraw them at a safe time. And you won’t be paying attention, because the rest will be on you.” Red takes another deep breath, trying to get his heartbeat to slow. “The repel won’t mean much if they see us.”

“We could bring out all of our pokemon,” Blue says. “They can hold them off long enough to check—”

Red meets Blue’s gaze. “No bluster, Blue. No bragging. Think before you answer, because you’re gambling with your pokemons’ lives, and ours. Are you really that confident you could command four at once? Two you just caught?”

Blue’s eyes are dark and deep as the sea in a storm, no longer the sparkling blue of his grandfather’s. “Yes,” he says after at least ten seconds, which is still longer than Red had expected. “Maybe not the caterpie. He wouldn’t do much against them anyway, but the others, yeah. I’ve watched gramps. I’ve seen a hundred vids. I’ve practiced in the sims. It wouldn’t be perfect, but I can do it.”

Red looks at Leaf. “You?”

She worries her lower lip. “Bulbasaur and Crimson, probably?”

“So let’s say I try with Charmander and my rattata. We’re still outnumbered over two to one.”

“We took on bad odds with the rattata cluster.”

“We ran from that rattata cluster. Beedrill are faster, and won’t give up as easily. Not to mention the whole point is to help the guy out there, which we can’t do while all of us are focusing on the beedrill.”

“Squirtle can—” Blue whips his head around, and Red hears it a moment later: more buzzing, approaching from their side instead of the din in the field.

They all get to their feet, pokeballs in hand, but the three insects pass by them without slowing and join the others in the flower field. Up close, the pokemon’s forelimb stingers look wickedly sharp, their yellow and black bodies lean and deadly.

Red crouches down again, legs shaking at the near miss, and Leaf leans against the tree with a relieved sigh. Blue pounds a fist into the grass as the three join the rest of the swarm, along with yet another from the other side of the clearing, bringing the total upwards of twenty.

Red looks back at the person in the field, searching for any twitch, any sign of life at all. “There’s too many. Fighting on mostly instinct and outnumbered, our pokemon will die. We probably would too. If we know that guy out there is alive, maybe it would be worth the risk, but…” Red’s distantly aware that his legs are still trembling, as are his arms. He forces his gaze away from the… body. “It’s not. We’d most likely just get ourselves and our pokemon killed for nothing. That’s not what responsible trainers do. We need to be ready to assist the rangers when they arrive. If there are only a couple they might need our help, but until then we need to—” His voice breaks, and he closes his eyes as they start to burn. Something, there has to be something we can do… “—stay safe. Whoever’s out there… is probably already d-dead…” Like dad, dead even though he understood the risks, dead because at the end of the day he chose to put himself at risk to protect others, I’m sorry dad, I can’t…

There’s a hand on his shoulder. Left hand, right shoulder, Leaf. A moment later Blue’s is on his left, and together they wait, the air filled with the buzzing of the swarm.

Bulbasaur can send powder up and have Zephyr blow it into field, should get some of them, but the rest will notice us… we can try to lure some here and set up a smokescreen to keep the rest from following, taking them out a few at a time, but if any go around the smokescreen we’ll be overwhelmed… Squirtle can draw their attention and stay in her shell to stay safe, but Blue has to be nearby to give commands…

Nothing. There’s nothing they can do. Red takes another minute to finish internalizing that, then takes a deep breath and raises his head, feeling a bit more in control of himself. He wipes at his face, then nods his thanks to the other two and stands. “Be on the lookout for the rangers, they’ll probably be coming from the east across the clearing.”

“Let’s circle around then,” Leaf says, and leads the way through the trees. Red follows Blue after her and tries to keep an eye on the beedrill. A few leave the swarm as they walk, but to the northwest. Red quickly takes out his phone and draws a cone on his map in that direction, estimating where their hive might be so he can avoid it in the future. He can look up foraging ranges to make a better estimation later.

Thankfully the repel seems to be keeping them hidden while the beedrill are busy. Red watches another one finish drinking its fill of nectar before flying off for home, its lower limbs coated in pollen. He wonders if the person in the field had been resting there when the swarm arrived, or if they had been foolish enough to try to capture a beedrill while they were foraging. Perhaps only one had been here at first, and the others had taken him by surprise. Either way, where’s his pokemon? As far as Red can tell, the body is alone.

They reach the eastern side of the clearing a few minutes before the Rangers appear through the trees. As Red had guessed there’s two of them, an investigative pair comprised of a senior riding a meganium and a junior on the back of an ursaring. Red doesn’t recognize either of them, and for a moment he feels homesick for the familiar, competent presence of the Rangers around Pallet Town. Then the two are dismounting and withdrawing their pokemon, and Red takes a step forward.

“Sitrep, one civ down, possibly trainer, surrounded by fifteen to twenty passive beedrill. Aid is one charmander, squirtle, bulbasaur, two rattata, two pidgey. Trained suppression skills are smokescreen and sleep powder.” He doesn’t mention their new captures; even if he considered them reliable, the Rangers wouldn’t.

The junior Ranger’s brow rises, but the senior doesn’t blink as he sizes the three of them up. His eyes linger a moment on Red’s clothes; the red and white of his jacket and black of his shirt makes him match the Ranger uniform color scheme. “You were right to alert us. All three of you are willing to assist?” They confirm, and he nods. “Pokeball count?”

“I have six.” Red glances at the others.

“Five,” Blue says, while Leaf holds up five fingers.

“Good. I’m Ranger Akio, this is Ranger Metis. Please stand by while we assess the situation.”

Red barely steps aside in time to avoid being shoved as they pass. The two Rangers stand at the edge of the clearing and begin to confer in low voices. Red’s gas mask is strong enough to mute the repel he used on himself, but the strength of the Rangers’ repellent still goes through his air filters. Their uniforms are smudged and stained by what seems like a rough few days in the woods, and they stand with the steady confidence of professionals.

The knot of tension in Red’s chest has eased somewhat seeing them. The authorities are here now, and he can relax a bit. The three trainers wait together quietly, ready to act on the Ranger’s command.

But after a couple minutes pass, Red feels his impatience begin to return. He realizes he’s rocking back and forth on his heels, and reminds himself that he’s the one that insisted on waiting for their judgement and assistance.

Blue eventually begins to pace, both hands spinning pokeballs and swapping them with those at his belt with a speed and skill that’s mesmerizing to watch. Red tears his gaze away and sees Leaf watching the Rangers as they murmur to each other, the senior pointing at the far end of the field. She seems more patient than he and Blue, though there’s a crease between her brow.

“So. A ledyba, huh?”

Leaf glances at him.

He smiles crookedly and shrugs. “I could use some distraction, and you seem pretty calm.”

She lets out a breath of amusement through her nose and nods, turning away from the field. “Wish I felt calm. Yeah, I got the ledyba about half an hour in. It was caught in a spinarak web. I couldn’t get a lock on it, so I had bulbasaur prep some sleep powder, then cut it out with razor leaves.”

“Razor leaves too, huh? You’ve been busy.”

She smiles. “What about you?”

“I got a spinarak, actually. Wonder if you stole its dinner.”

“Wow. Spinarak’s a nice catch.”

“Yeah, ledyba too. Lots of support and impairment.”

She nods, and then they’re silent again. The quiet is filled with the distant buzzing of the swarm and the mutters of the Rangers. Red’s knee continues to ache, and he bends down a bit to rub it gently. After a moment he straightens with a sigh. “Want to know how big an ass I am?” he asks quietly. “There’s someone lying out there either dying or dead, and I feel slighted because I’m not being included in the discussion on how to help them.”

“I know. I feel like my mom sent me out of the room so she could discuss ‘adult things.’ What do you think is taking so long?”

“Their main priority is protecting people, but my dad made sure I understood that they’re also guardians of wild pokemon and the environment. Since we don’t know if that guy’s alive, my guess is they’re trying to minimize collateral damage. Something heavy handed could have repercussions on the ecosystem that harm a lot of others.”

“Like what?”

“Beedrill keep a lot of the plants in the forest spreading, and cull a lot of pokemon that move into their turf. This looks like a big chunk of a colony; if they’re all taken out, it could be enough to shift the ecology of this part of the forest in ways that are hard to predict.” Talking helps calm Red’s impatience, and he lets out a breath, stretching his arms behind his head. “Or if it’s part of a huge colony, the rest might go on a feeding frenzy to make up their losses. They might even migrate as a swarm. If the Rangers have a couple fully evolved fire pokemon, they could burn all the beedrill up in seconds, but that would be a last resort. Coming up with safe alternatives is harder.”

“Well, I’m happy to help however I can. But being kept out of discussing a plan that will involve my pokemon feels shitty.”

“Yeah. It’s probably because of how young we are. If we had a badge or two to flash around—”

“It’s insulting, is what it is,” Blue says, not keeping his voice as low as theirs. “Treating us like civs. If they knew who we are…”

Red rolls his eyes, though he’s smiling. “Who we are? That’s pretty generous of you.”

Leaf laughs. “Yeah, I don’t think ‘Juniper’ carries much weight around here.”

“You might be surprised,” Red says. “Your grandfather is pretty well respected, and some people even know of your mom’s work.”

“By ‘some people,’ he means the eggheads at the lab,” Blue says to Leaf.

She grins. “Bit of a biased reference pool, then.”

“Still,” Red says. “Unless these guys knew my dad, being the son of a Ranger and journalist doesn’t inspire much awe.”

Blue frowns at him. “Hey, you may not be an Oak by blood, but gramps doesn’t send just anyone out in the world with his babies. And no, I’m not talking about me,” he says as Leaf opens her mouth, and she covers her grin with a hand.

Red shrugs. “I think others would just call it nepotism.”

“Ahh, that’s crap.” Blue hooks an arm around Red’s neck. “Give it a few years and I bet ‘Verres’ will be a household Kanto name.”

Red flushes a bit at the unexpected compliment, trying to think of a reply when Blue knocks his hat off and begins grinding his knuckles in his hair. “After all, someone’s going to have to write my biography, ya know? Who better than the kid who watched the legend begin?”

Red curses and grabs for his hat, which leaves him defenseless to the noogie. Leaf leans against a nearby tree as she tries to muffle her giggles, and Blue spins in place so Red’s punches only graze his ribs.

Suddenly Leaf stands straight, face serious. The boys disengage and turn to see the Rangers approaching. Ranger Metis is frowning at them, but Akio merely watches impassively as they straighten their clothing and stand at attention. “We have a plan. Are you still interested in assisting?”

Red’s cheeks are hot as he nods along with the others. “Sorry sir, just nerves.” If you don’t want to seem like a kid, stop acting like one. “We’re ready. What do you need us to do?”

Even through his mask filters, the air is cloyingly sweet.

Red breathes through his mouth as he watches the meganium’s petals flap up and down, wafting more and more of its sweet scent into the air. They had separated the group, with Akio and Blue to the southeast of the clearing while Red, Leaf and Metis stay on the eastern side. Red can’t see Ranger Akio’s expression from this far, but sitting on the pokemon’s back, so close to the petals, the smell must be overwhelming. He’s probably used to it by now.

Blue on the other hand clearly isn’t, and even from a distance Red can see that his friend’s face is a grimace of disgust. He stands ready though, pokeball in one hand and flute in the other. After another few moments, when the scent feels tangible as cotton candy against Red’s tongue, Akio gives Blue the signal.

“Zephyr, go!” Blue’s pokeball flashes mid-air, and Zephyr swoops out, taking a moment to orient itself in the unfamiliar trees. Blue catches his pokeball with one hand and sticks his flute between his lips with the other, then points and blows a quick pair of notes.

The bird comes up behind Blue and hovers in the air as it begins to flap, small body bounding up and down mid air with every powerful sweep of its wings. Stronger and stronger gusts blow into the clearing, and it doesn’t take long for the beedrill to stop foraging and turn as one toward the source of the scent.

The buzzing of the field reaches a frenzied pitch, and Red feels a thrill of fear in his guts as the swarm suddenly dives toward Akio and his meganium. Blue has already withdrawn Zephyr and is running toward Red, Leaf and Metis.

Ranger Akio waits to ensure the trainer is clear, then slaps his pokemon’s side with a “Ha!”

The meganium leaps into the trees, swiftly disappearing through the foliage on its four powerful legs. Plant pokemon are not particularly known for speed, but meganium is one of the faster among them, and just barely outspeeds the average beedrill. The Ranger’s is no doubt also trained to be extra quick, and as long as their luck holds out, Akio should be able to keep the majority of the swarm focused on him until they’re far enough to cut the scent trail.

Meanwhile, Metis has already bounded off into the field with his ursaring. They decided not to stay in the clearing, even with the added risk of moving the body, in case any beedrill return or don’t follow Ranger Akio.

As indeed some haven’t. Red watches from the treeline as the powerful ursine swats a beedrill out of the air when it dives at him. The bug hits the ground and stays down, stunned or too hurt to fly again, but there are another four on the outskirts that suddenly turn their focus on Ranger Metis. Red tears his gaze away to crouch beside Charmander.

“Ok buddy, just like we practiced. Smokescreen. Charmander, smokescreen.”

Charmander’s head snaps up to Red, then he shivers a bit, eyes closing. A thick, heavy smog begins to pour from his tail, spreading and rising under the tree branch like a curtain between the field and the rest of the forest.

“Good job. Good boy,” he says, stroking his pokemon’s smooth head. “More, Smokescreen.” He looks at the field as the smoke rises around him, starting to obscure his vision. Faster, faster…

The last thing he sees is Ranger Metis carefully placing the body on the ursaring’s back before hopping back on and running toward him, the four beedrill in pursuit.

Then the smoke is everywhere, and Red can only crouch still so he doesn’t get barreled over. Ursaring aren’t nearly as fast as meganium, and the beedrill would swiftly close the distance. His heart hammers in his throat as he waits, keeping his hand on charmander so he knows where he is.

A few moments later the ursaring dashes through the smoke to Red’s right, a dark mass of furred muscle that takes some of the smoke with it. Then two beedrill zoom over him, more smoke dislodged in their wake. He hears the two beyond the smokescreen veer off, and says “Charmander, stop.” He picks his pokemon up and walks back through the smoke until it clears.

When it does, he sees the two beedrill lying on the grass a dozen feet away. They’d flown straight into the cloud of sleep powder that bulbasaur is raining down from a branch in a nearby tree. Leaf is beside him with a small bucket that Akio filled with more powder beforehand.

“All clear!” he says. “The other two turned back.” Red puts charmander down and waits, listening for any newly approaching buzz as the smoke slowly fades. He hears Leaf withdraw bulbasaur, and by the time she gets down from the tree, the smoke is diffuse enough for them to see the field again. The remaining two beedrill return to drinking nectar, taking no mind of them. A newcomer has already joined them, and the one that had been knocked down by the ursaring slowly rises back into the air.

Red lets a breath out and turns to see Blue jogging over, Zephyr on his shoulder. “Nice job. That was perfect timing with that powder, Leaf.”

“Thanks. You guys did great too.”

Red shrugs. He’d performed a simple task with minimal risk. Leaf approaches the unconscious beedrill warily and dumps the rest of her bucket onto them. Then the three trainers go to Ranger Metis, who’s crouched beside the body.

Everyone is silent, an air of tension making the forest seem oddly quiet and still. Or maybe that’s just the much quieter buzz of the remaining beedrill.

The body lies limp, mouth slightly parted and eyes closed. The Ranger has two fingers pressed to the young man’s neck, face impassive as he waits for a pulse. Impassive, but not indifferent; it’s an expression of control Red has seen on his father’s face. An expression of enduring.

The trainer’s wounds are hard to make out clearly. The back of his blue jacket is caked with blood where it pooled, but since he’s lying on it again it’s easy to look elsewhere. There are punctures along his torso, though it’s hard tell how many due to the spread of blood. Lacerations run along one arm and up his neck and jaw, leaving the rest of his face relatively unblemished. Red can see the Ranger’s potion and antidote bottles sitting on the grass, the droplets of their spray still glistening on the visible wounds. Their hypercoagulant properties have stopped any blood flow, but no new skin is growing over the wounds.

“Revive capsule?” Leaf says, voice hollow.

Ranger Metis shakes his head, once. “No swallow reflex.” He removes his fingers. “He’s gone. Lost too much blood, and the venom…”

A horrible weight is slowly pressing in Red’s stomach as he looks at the young man’s face. Blonde, with a round chin and a few days of beard growth. In death he looks barely older than Red. “How long…”

“Hard to tell without taking a temperature reading. He’s not stiff yet, so probably no more than a few hours.” Ranger Metis lets out a breath and rises, leaning against his ursaring’s neck and scratching its ear as he turns his face away.

Blue mutters something that gets lost in his face mask and stomps off, while Leaf walks to a nearby tree and sinks to the ground with her back against it, eyes closed.

Red continues to stand where he is, staring at the young man’s face. He’s dimly aware of his pulse speeding up, breath becoming faster and more shallow. He wants to ask if there’s any chance they could have saved him, if acting sooner would have helped… but he already knows there’s no answer. The trainer might have bled out before Leaf found him, or he might have died a few minutes after. Past that, it’s unlikely he’d have survived such blood loss.

This isn’t my fault. I can’t blame myself for making the right choice. He repeats it to himself as the world grows a bit fuzzy around the edges, distantly aware that he’s close to hyperventilating in his mask. He tears it off and takes deep breaths, willing himself to calm down. Not my fault. Not my fault…

The ursaring makes a chuffing noise and sits, Metis still rubbing its head. Now that Red notices the pokemon’s proximity, its size is intimidating. He meets its solid brown eyes and sees none of the razor focus of Trainer Donovan’s skarmory. Instead, the ursaring’s gaze is the very definition of neutral. It simply watches him, waiting. If he leaves it alone, it’ll leave him alone. If he attacks, it’ll snap his neck with one swipe. Things could go one way or the other, and the ursaring simply doesn’t care.

It looks away from him, gaze moving over the body, then off into the trees as its jaw gapes in a yawn. Unimpressed. Despite everything, Red’s lips twitch briefly with the ghost of a smile. The ursaring’s utter disinterest is grounding, in a way, and his breathing begins to even out. For the vast majority of the world and its inhabitants, life will go on. In the grand scheme of things, the web of tragedy and heartbreaks that will spread from this death are relatively minimal.

As soon as he thinks that, an echo of soul-cracking despair makes Red shudder, and he sways on his feet. Minimal. Right. He suddenly wants to call his mother. Hear her voice. He forces himself to remember the ursaring’s indifference, and after a moment the ache numbs a bit.

Ranger Metis finishes drawing comfort from his pokemon and steps away to withdraw it. He clips its pokeball to his belt slowly, then turns to consider the body, face once again a mask. “I’m going to identify him and record his death, then make preparations to transport him. There’s no need for you to be around for all that.” He turns to Red, and the other two as they approach again. “You did well. As thanks, please capture those two beedrill before they awaken. Then I suggest you find a safe place to camp. It will be dark soon.”

“If it’s alright,” Leaf says, “I would like to know who he was.”

Metis looks at her a moment. “Knowing will make it harder.”

“I want to know too,” Blue says, and Red nods. We owe him that much, at least.

Metis meets each of their gazes. His face softens a bit, and he turns away. “Alright. On the condition that you will keep it to yourselves until after we’ve had a chance to inform his family.”

They agree, and watch as Metis respectfully begins to pat the young man’s pockets down. He finds the wallet in his jacket, and extracts it to pull out the Trainer ID.

“Luke Koyama, Age 26. Home, Cremini Town. License issued March 3rd, 1492.”

There’s a moment of quiet as Ranger Metis puts the ID back. Red’s eyes are drawn to Luke’s pokeball belt, where four balls rest. “Was there a pokemon or pokeball out there with him?”

Metis pauses. “No. Not that I saw. I’ll double check before the swarm gets back. Now go catch those beedrill before they wake.”

Blue turns away, and Red and Leaf follow. They approach the sleeping pokemon without getting too close. One of them is still as stone, but the other’s wings are slowly flexing.

Each of the beedrill is about as tall as Red, their forelimb blades as long as his arms. The idea of applying human morality to barely sentient beings should be silly, but beedrill had always struck Red as an evil species, vicious in a way even the most commonly feared ghost and dark type pokemon are often not. No sense getting mad at a pokemon for acting in its nature, his father had told him once, but he can’t help but study their blades, trying to spot any signs of blood…

“You guys take them,” Blue says just as Red opens his mouth. “You took bigger risks.”

Leaf frowns at him. “What? You practically bathed in that beedrill bait. I was scared stiff thinking half of them would go after you.”

“Zephyr blew most of it away, and the beedrill knew the meganium was the source. If a few more had gone after you and Red—”

“I don’t want one.”

They both look at him. He shrugs a shoulder, keeping his gaze on the one starting to wake. “I don’t want one. They don’t really interest me, from a research perspective. So you guys should take them.” He walks away before they can reply, staring out in the direction Ranger Akio had gone.

You’re being irrational, Future Red mutters in the more distant recesses of his mind.

There are two of them and three of us. If someone has to go without, it might as well be me.

Rationalize it all you want, but you took us out of the running for purely emotional reasons. It feels good to you now, but I might need a beedrill someday.

So catch one then. They’re not rare.

Would that have made a difference? What if you come across a dragonair that had killed someone? Excuse me, that might have killed someone.

Is it so bad to not want a pokemon that might have killed a person?

The point of catching pokemon is to stop them from killing people. One of the points, anyway.

There are a pair of flashes and twin explosions of sound behind Red that light up the forest briefly. He looks up, noticing for the first time how dark it’s getting. Well, it’s moot now.

You’ll have to deal with it again eventually.

Technically, you will. Then you might not find it so easy.

His prospective mental voice grumbles a bit, but quiets down. Blue and Leaf approach, and Red turns to them.

“We’re not counting these as part of our catches,” Blue says. “So you’re still only one behind us.”

Red blinks at him, then smiles. The expression feels odd, but good. “Right. Thanks.”

“Not that you’ll be able to catch up before we get to Pewter anyway.” Leaf winks.

Red’s smile widens. “We’ll see about that. I woke up pretty late today, I might catch another three tonight while you guys are sleeping.”

Blue’s about to respond when Red spies a flash of color in the trees. “Akio’s back!”

They turn to see the Ranger approaching from the northeast riding an arcanine. Blue makes an appreciative sound at the sight of the majestic pokemon. Red wonders how far Ranger Akio had run before switching mounts.

After checking with Ranger Metis, Akio dismounts and examines the body for himself before approaching the trainers. The older man is sweating slightly, but otherwise seems fine. All trace of the meganium’s sweet scent are replaced by the vaguely burnt-air smell coming off of the arcanine’s fur.

“It’s good to see you’re all alright. Thank you for your help here today.”

“No prob,” Blue says. “Just doing our duty.”

Ranger Akio’s smile is brief, but genuine. If he’s bothered by Luke’s death, he doesn’t show it. Perhaps he’d already taken it as a given. “Yes. Today you three repaid the trust the public has placed in you, and all trainers. If you don’t mind, I’d like your names, so when we return Mr. Koyama and his pokemon to his family they know who else to thank.” He nods at Leaf. “Yours we have from the ticket you made, Miss Juniper.” He looks at the other two expectantly.

“Red Verres.”

“Blue Oak.”

Ranger Akio’s brow twitches briefly at Blue’s surname. “A pleasure to meet you. May your travels be swift and safe.” He salutes them, one arm crossed behind his back and the other across his waist as he bows slightly.

Red and the others return it, then gather their things. Leaf cleans her bucket out carefully before collapsing it and putting it back in her bag, and Red puts his gas mask back on. Before leaving, Red approaches the Rangers.

“Could you do me a favor? I’m very curious to know what happened out here today,” Red says. “How Luke was killed. What he was doing in the field. I know it’s not likely we’ll get any answers, but…”

Ranger Metis glances at his superior, who studies Red for a moment. “It doesn’t do to obsess over these things. Trust me, I know. Sometimes mistakes are made. Accidents happen. People die. The why isn’t always known, or even helpful.”

Red doesn’t agree with that last bit, but he merely says, “I understand. I don’t intend to dwell on it. I just meant, if you do learn anything, I would appreciate knowing. I think it would help me put it out of my mind.”

Ranger Akio nods. “If we learn anything, I’ll pass it along. You have my word.”

Red salutes him again, bowing deep. “Thank you.” Red rejoins Blue and Leaf, and, looking back at Luke Koyama one more time in the darkening twilight, leaves the buzz of the remaining beedrill behind.

In general, travel through Viridian Forest is safe in groups. While the more territorial or aggressive pokemon like weedle or mankey might choose fight over flight, lone pokemon that are willing to face down three humans, even adolescents, are the exception rather than the rule. It’s the primary reason people are encouraged to travel in groups, but it does pose an issue for trainers who are actively seeking out new pokemon.

Red, Blue and Leaf quickly conclude that sticking to the main road through the forest wouldn’t let them encounter many pokemon, while tromping through the forest together would only scare most off. Knowing how foolhardy it would be to go off in separate directions, they compromise with a variation of the tactic Rangers use to sweep an area.

Red checks the map on his phone as he walks through the underbrush. The screen shows an aerial view of the forest overlaid with a grid. The two dots representing Blue and Leaf’s phones form a rough triangle with his own, all within a hundred meters of each other. If someone goes too far from the other two, the phones would alert everyone. In the meantime they have enough personal space to find and catch pokemon without fighting over each one they see, and are still within safe distance of each other for emergencies.

Red smiles and puts his phone away, mentally patting himself on the back. They’ve only been in the forest for half an hour, and have at most another full hour of daylight left. After approximating their distance traveled so far with how much forest is left to the north before Pewter City, Red is confident his “competition” will keep them busy for at least a couple days. Hopefully that’ll be long enough to miss the storm if it continues south, but worst case scenario, Zapdos attacks after they arrive when at least one of them has a full belt of pokemon. And if any help requests pop up nearby meanwhile, it might take even longer before they get to Pewter, giving them an excuse to miss it entirely without bruising Blue’s ego.

Not that he doesn’t intend to try and win their little competition, of course. There are a number of pokemon in the area he wants, and a free dinner is a free dinner.

Red breathes in the earthy smell of the forest, mostly filtered by his gas mask. He’d put it on as soon as they split up, and has an empty pokeball ready in one hand so he can try for a quick capture if he spots a wild pokemon. But even walking alone, he’s big enough to scare away most pokemon in the area. Poking his head in every bush or tree trunk looking for those that are hiding is a great way to get a cloud of poison or stinger to the face, and while his mask will protect him from the former, he doesn’t want to test the latter.

Which leaves using his pokemon to flush wild ones out. He wants to keep charmander fresh, so he puts away his empty ball and unclips his rattata’s to summon it for the first time. “Rattata, go!” he yells as he throws.

The ball sails forward into a relatively clear patch of grass and disgorges his rattata in a flash of light before rocketing back toward Red. His throw had a bit too much of a downward arc, so he has to reach above his head to snatch it out of the air with both hands cupped together.

“Yes!” Red pumps his fist with a grin, then looks around. Unfortunately (or fortunately), no one had been around to see it.

No one except his rattata, who seems surprised at the outburst. She stands on her hindlegs and peers around the forest, nose twitching in the air.

Red approaches and kneels to scratch the fur along her back. “Hey there little lady. Nice to see you again,” he says, wanting her to get used to his voice in the real world. He puts her ball away and takes out some dried berries and nuts for her to eat.

His rattata’s whiskers twitch over his cupped palm, then her front paws begin scooping the food into her mouth, munching quickly at each mouthful before grabbing more. Standing on her hindlegs she’s as tall as his knee, and when she finishes feeding she drops back down to all fours and rubs against his ankle.

He plays with her a bit, letting her get the scent of his hands and scratching her white belly. He tries to stroke her tail, and smiles as she squirms, then twists it away from his hand. “Okay, no tail touching. Got it.”

Red finds some rocks and hefts them to ensure they weigh a solid amount. Once he has a dozen in his pocket, he begins walking forward again with one in each hand. His rattata follows at his heels, occasionally running to the sides or ahead briefly to sniff at some moss or munch on a fallen acorn.

Red stops when they near a particularly large clump of bushes, turning one of the stones over and over between his fingers. He doesn’t want to go rooting through the bushes for pokemon, and he doesn’t want his rattata to stick her nose into potential danger either…

“Rattata, ready,” he says, and the rodent dashes in front of him, planting its feet and staring forward, long tail curled up above it. Feeling his pulse begin to speed up, he prepares himself for a fight, then cocks his arm back and throws the rock into the bushes.

The round stone swishes through the leaves and rustles some branches as it hits something with a dull thud. Red waits, body tense, not blinking as the bush sits still… silent…

Eventually he realizes his lungs ache, and lets out his breath. “Rattata, follow,” he says, and they continue onward.

The next bush is smaller than the last, and when he throws the rock it sails straight through it. Red waits with his heart in his throat, but nothing emerges, and he walks on, checking every group of bushes big or dense enough to hide a pokemon.

On his fifth throw, a pidgey flies out of the bush with a startled flap of its wings. Red had an empty pokeball ready, but it’s already too far for the lens to get a lock, and he frowns as it flies up and away through the tree branches. Rattata hisses at a feather that floats down at them before pouncing on it, and Red laughs, frustration draining away.

He tries another two bushes with no result. Just as he’s about to throw at the third one, his phone chimes, causing him to jump and drop his rock. Blushing furiously, he takes his phone out and checks the screen.

3 to 2. Have I mentioned how much I love tentacool soup?

Red returns his phone to his pocket without replying. He’s dying to know what pokemon Blue had caught, and how, but that’s why Blue hadn’t mentioned it, and asking would just waste more time.

Throwing rocks into bushes and hoping a pokemon would pop out and fight his rattata may be the safest way to go, but it could take hours, and the daylight’s fading. It’s time to put some of his riskier ideas to the test.

He needs a flying pokemon, but hoothoot and noctowl won’t be up and about until it’s full dark. He could try to find one’s roost, but that would involve a lot of tree climbing, and without a flying pokemon of his own he’d be at a major disadvantage if he angers one.

Against anything but other flyers though, his charmander gives him a huge advantage over the local flora and fauna. One on one, the fire lizard could take down practically any pokemon in the forest, as most are bug or plant types.

But being the strongest thing around isn’t going to attract contenders. He needs to seem like the weakest.

Red takes his pokedex out and opens its audio folders. In them are recorded the cries of every pokemon ever captured and studied, most with a number of different entries: anger, playfulness, fear, challenge, affection, and pain.

It’s the last one that interests him at the moment.

In every ecology, there exists a food chain. It’s rarely a straightforward line, but rather a shifting mess of predators and prey. Viridian Forest has over a dozen species of pokemon with almost three dozen different forms that have lived amongst each other for thousands of generations, each filling different niches in the environment and adapting to one-another’s strengths and weaknesses.

Caterpie are without doubt the weakest pokemon in the forest. The only thing that keeps their species going is their incredibly short juvenile period, usually lasting no more than a few days before they “evolve” into metapods, which themselves only take a week or two before metamorphing again into butterfree.

In any other environment, a pokemon like butterfree might stay near the bottom of the food chain. It has no sharp claws or mandibles, and its poisonous spores are slow acting. Encountering any predator should spell a quick doom.

Or it would, if not for a peculiar adaptation.

As far as official classifications go, there are very few Bug/Psychic pokemon on record. It’s theorized that most just aren’t intelligent enough for the true breadth of mental powers psychics are capable of. And psychics do have a harder time defending themselves against bug pokemon, lending some merit to the idea that their minds are too simple, or just too different, for psychics to interact with the way they normally would.

Nevertheless, some bug pokemon like butterfree and venomoth seem capable of low intensity bursts of psychic energy to ward off predators, disorienting them long enough for an escape. There’s debate in academic circles whether it’s a truly psychic attack, or some low frequency sound or vibration the bugs use that just have similar effects; trainers with psychic and dark minds can’t seem to come to a consensus, which leads Red to think that the answer might be both. The end result is that butterfree are able to stay near the top of the food chain, despite not actually being a predator to any other pokemon. Even spinarak and ariados, with their own mental attacks, can’t keep butterfree in their webs.

Which is where hoothoot and noctowl come in. Another “non-psychic” pokemon with rudimentary psychic powers, their mental defenses are strong enough to resist butterfree’s disorienting attacks, allowing them to swoop in for a kill. Lacking the weaknesses of the more powerfully psychic birds like xatu, noctowl are the perfect predator to butterfree.

Unfortunately, it’s still light out, which means playing the distress sounds of an injured butterfree isn’t likely to bring any noctowl or hoothoot to him. But if there’s one pokemon that will catch the attention of any nearby predators, it’s caterpie.

Red goes to the tenth entry in the pokedex and turns the volume all the way up. He briefly considers switching Rattata out for Charmander, but the rodent is much faster than the fire lizard, and if some predators come charging out of the trees at him, he’s going to need Rattata’s speed to intercept them.

Red checks to make sure Rattata is at attention, then wipes his sweating palms on his jeans before he holds the pokedex up and presses the button.

A pained, warbling cry fills the quiet forest air. It only lasts a couple seconds, and then the hushed rustle of leaves returns. Rattata whips its head around, nose twitching as it tries to locate the source of the sound, and Red stands tensely still, ears straining for the sound of wings or rustling underbrush to alert him of incoming pokemon.

After a few seconds pass, Red presses the button again. When nothing approaches, he begins to press it repeatedly, waiting two to five seconds between repetitions as he starts walking forward. His rattata follows, still looking puzzled as she tries to see or smell the injured caterpie she hears.

His arms begin to get tired holding the pokedex above his head, so he lowers it to chest level with the speakers pointed outward, occasionally shifting its direction. Red’s spine feels like a coiled spring, and he keeps one eye on the forest around him while the other watches the ground for roots or stones to ensure he doesn’t trip in the dense underbru—

A line of silk shoots down and nabs the pokedex, tugging it out of Red’s grasp. For a second he simply gapes upward as it floats away to a tree branch above. Then he throws himself at the tree with a cry of horror, scrambling up the rough bark. “Rattata, climb!”

He lifts himself onto the lowest branch before checking to confirm that his pokemon is following, then looks up and around… There! Now Red can make out the spinarak hanging from the underside of the branch, drawing the pokedex up with its forelimbs.

Including the width of its six legs, the green and black arachnoid is as wide as Red’s torso, half again as big as his rattata. It finishes pulling up the pokedex, but seems confused by what’s clearly not a caterpie. Red’s veins fill with ice as the pokemon scuttles onto the top of the branch and away, pokedex still attached by some string hanging from the end of its abdomen. The slim red device tips this way and that under the branch, and Red begins to climb to the next branch up. Don’t fall don’t fall don’t fall…

To say his pokedex prototype is priceless would be a bit of an overstatement, but to Red it might as well be. Even older models that act as little more than indexes cost hundreds of dollars, and Red’s is by far the most valuable thing he’s ever owned. Part of what made Red work so hard the past year was the sacred trust Professor Oak would be putting in him; the only other person he’d given his personally designed, off-the-market software to were his grandchildren. Breaking the pokedex would be bad enough, but if the spinarak gets away and someone else finds it…

Red pulls himself onto the second branch and stands, legs only shaking a little. The third is another head above him, almost parallel to his own. He takes out an empty pokeball and points its lens up at what he can see of the bug pokemon. He waits for the ping with his heart in his throat, but the line of sight isn’t clear enough.

“Shit!” Rattata climbs up the trunk beside him, claws still hooked in the bark, and Red points to the retreating spinarak. “Rattata, Bite!”

Rattata follows the direction of his finger and gives a high pitched growl before leaping onto the branch and giving chase. Red places his feet carefully and follows on his own, feeling the whole thing bend and sway beneath him as he watches her attack. The spinarak turns just before she reaches it, and rears onto its hind legs, hissing and aiming the stinger on its forehead to break her charge.

Rattata stops herself short of being impaled, head darting in for a nip here and there. Spinarak retreats with its hind legs to avoid the bites while its forward claws draw blood along rattata’s forehead and stomach. All the while, the pokedex bobs and spins on the end of its string under the branch, out of Red’s reach.

Red grits his teeth as his rattata squeals in pain. Rattata’s greatest strength is her speed; on the narrow branch, the spinarak has home advantage that completely nullifies her maneuverability. Red pulls out his remaining stones and tries to chuck some at the bug. He nearly loses his balance on the third attempt, and his shots all go too high or bounce off the branch. Heart hammering, Red watches helplessly as Rattata over commits and gets stung, only managing a light bite in response.

I need to even the playing field. The only way he can think to do that is to get them off the branch. Just gotta avoid landing on my head. Or my neck. Or my back. “Fuck it,” Red whispers. “Time for heroics.” He shucks off his backpack and lets it fall before he bounces on the branch once, twice, then jumps to the one above, hands reaching.

His fingers scramble at the bark, digging in as his body hangs six meters off the ground. He feels the whole thing bend with his weight, and for a moment thinks it’s going to crack. That would be one way to do it. The wood holds though, and he begins to pull himself toward the pokemon, arms burning and breath coming in short pants. His eyes are fixed on his pokedex, bobbing closer with every hand. Come on… three more… two… there… He reaches out with one hand, fingers on his other screaming with his whole weight as he snatches the pokedex.

As soon as he has it in his grip and pulls, the spinarak scuttles under the branch, following it down as the webbing stretches to point its stinger at his hand and dash at him.

Red gives a heroic yelp and lets go before yelling, “Rattata, down!”

He only has a heartbeat of weightlessness to curl protectively around the pokedex and lift his head before he hits the grass. He turned onto his side a bit while falling, and a knobby root sends a bolt of pain up his knee. When he looks up, he sees the pokedex is still attached by its damn string, now stretched long and thin. Red instinctively rolls just as the spinarak leaps down at him.

Completely unfazed by its fall, it dashes for him again, stinger forward. Red holds the pokedex tight as he whips his arm up and spins his whole body, using his uninjured knee as a pivot the way Hamato had.

The spinarak is lifted into the air, and finally releases the web rather than smash into the tree. It lands on its feet and leaps for Red again just as his rattata falls on it in a clawing, squealing fury.

Red forces himself to his feet and stuffs the pokedex in his pocket as he shouts, “Rattata, Quick Attack!”

His pokemon immediately disengages, then dashes in for a bite, running past the spinarak before it can retaliate. She’s breathing hard and bleeding from a number of wounds, but now so is the bug, its green and black abdomen leaking pale fluid.

“Quick Attack! Quick Attack!”

Rattata dashes at the arachnoid again and again, taking a quick nip out of it with each pass. The spinarak occasionally tries to leap at it, but Rattata is too fast on the open grass, juking from side to side before speeding in for another bite.

But Red can see his pokemon getting slower from the blood loss and poison. The time between attacks grows longer, and her exhaustion is palpable as she tumbles over the grass after a close dodge. The spinarak curls its abdomen and shoots a string of web at Rattata as she scrambles to her feet.

Red already has Charmander’s pokeball in one hand and Rattata’s in the other. He points it at her and yells “Rattata, return!” In the space of a blink, a red beam shoots out and reverts his pokemon to a glowing mass that’s sucked back into the open pokeball. The web is left behind, and Red feels a surge of relief. Rattata would be safe in her ball, wounds suspended until he could treat her. “Charmand—”

The spinarak leaps for him. Red rolls to the side, dropping Rattata’s pokeball as he tries to clip it back to his belt. He throws Charmander’s ball haphazardly as he comes up hard against a tree. “Charmander, go!”

The ball explodes with light and sound before shooting back into some bushes to Red’s side. He doesn’t spare it a glance, eyes on the fire lizard as it takes a bewildered moment to look around and orient itself to its new surroundings.

“Charmander, battle!”

Charmander snaps into a combat stance and focuses on the only other pokemon present. The spinarak’s forward charge slows. Maybe it thinks the rattata is still around somewhere, or maybe it’s the open flame at the tip of Charmander’s tail, but the spinarak begins to back away, its abdomen rising to shoot web at the branches above.

“Charmander, Scratch!” He doesn’t dare use ember; bugs are easily killed or crippled by fire, and now that he has his pokedex back, his priority is to capture it.

The spinarak is forced to leap aside as the lizard claws at it, arching its back and raising its body upright above its head, hissing. The black dots and stripe on its abdomen look like a frowning fa—

Freezing, empty night, no light or warmth, not cold but simple absence of heat, a vacuum of sensation or sound that unhinges his mind-

Red gasps, pain radiating from his chest. He’s lying face down in the grass, nose pressed against his breath mask with no memory of when he’d fallen. Was I poisoned? He can’t recall being stung, but a wave of nausea almost makes him hurl when he tries to remember the last thing he’d seen. Red raises his head and spots Charmander weaving erratically toward spinarak, as if he can’t get his balance right. Instead of pressing the advantage, the spinarak turns and begins to scuttle away.

“No… you… don’t,” Red wheezes. He forces himself up and pulls an empty ball from his pocket, holding it outstretched and bracing it on his uninjured knee. The max distance a pokeball beam will work is roughly ten meters, and the bug is almost out of range when he hears the ping of its lock. Heart in his throat, he throws…

…and misses, the ball bouncing on the grass to the right of the spinarak.

“Charmander, Scratch!”

The fire lizard leaps forward, stumbling onto all fours as he tries to recover from whatever had happened. His first claw attack misses, but his flaming tail keeps the spinarak from retaliating so he can get another attack in. This time his claws rake the spinarak’s body, drawing more clear ichor. The arachnoid hisses and jabs its stinger forward, barely missing as charmander jumps away.

Tossing dignity aside, Red crawls forward until he can aim another pokeball, focusing it on the spinarak as it rears up and shoots web at Charmander, sticking his legs together.

Just as it turns to run again, Red throws. The ball nails the spinarak in the thorax, and it vanishes with a flash.

Red collapses back onto his stomach. He still feels queasy, and takes deep breaths until his stomach settles a bit. Charmander struggles to free its legs from the webbing, then curls its tail around to burn the stuff off. Afterward he approaches Red with a chirp and curls up beside him, tail flame warming Red’s arm to just the edge of comfort. He checks to make sure Charmander isn’t injured, then reaches out to rub his smooth head. “Good boy, Charmander. You did great.”

His mask is beginning to hurt as it’s pressed against his face, and he flips himself onto his back with a sigh. After a minute he feels a bit more grounded, but he still can’t think of what had happened without intense discomfort. He groans in frustration, removing his face mask and pressing his palms to his eyes. It’s like there’s a part of his brain that’s broken, a memory scooped out to leave a raw wound that he keeps brushing up against.

The spinarak hit Charmander with something, and Red, standing behind him, was hit much harder. It can only be a mental attack of some kind, but spinaraks aren’t usually capable of more than minor emotional manipulation, the type usually classified as Ghost attacks…

Chill fingers brush his spine. He’d never experienced a Psychic attack before, but he’d also never experienced a Ghost attack. He doesn’t know which it had been… but the fact that it was so strong pointed to two possibilities. Either his mind is incredibly vulnerable to all forms of Psychic attack, or… he’s psychic himself, and the attack had been a Ghost one that turned his own mental powers against him.

But I’m not a psychic. He underwent the tests last year. They aren’t 100% accurate, a lot of psychics’ powers only manifest when they encounter others, but he tried all the practice techniques he could find just in case he was one of the rare few. What kid doesn’t dream of having special powers?

But now the thought of enduring things like… that… again makes Red reconsider the various advantages of even mild psychic abilities.

His thoughts are interrupted by his phone ringing, and he suddenly realizes he’s been holding still for awhile. Had he dropped behind the others’ positions? He takes his phone out and sees that Blue’s calling him.

“Hello?”

“Red! Chasing a caterpie right at you! Cut it off!” Blue sounds like he’s running.

Red blinks, then scrambles to his feet, ignoring the cry of protest from his knee. “What?! From where?” He looks around and realizes his pokemon are all scattered. He pulls his mask back on and hobbles forward to grab Rattata’s ball.

“Northeast! I’ll be on you in ten seconds! Catchers keepers, but just stop it from getting away!”

Blue hangs up, and Red stuffs his phone away and runs over to grab his new spinarak, attaching it to his belt and cursing his weakness. He’d wasted time he could have used to register his spinarak or heal Rattata. But a caterpie shouldn’t be hard to deal with, and all he has to do is stop it from running.

“Charmander, battle!” The lizard was watching him curiously as he dashed about, and now drops back into an aggressive stance. Shit, where’s his ball? It went somewhere in those bushes…

He hears Blue before he sees him, crashing through the underbrush like a stampeding tauros. Red spots the caterpie bounding ahead of his friend just before Blue’s visible between the foliage. About as thick as Blue’s leg and half as long, its green segmented body blends in with the grass and leaves around it, whole body scrunching up to propel itself in hops from grass to tree to bush.

When it spots Red and Charmander waiting for it ahead, it aims its body straight up and flings itself up to a tree branch, sticky feet allowing it to start climbing.

“Not again,” Red mutters as he runs forward to meet Blue at the base of the tree. “Where’s Zephyr?”

“I was afraid he’d eat it,” Blue pants. “Can you send up your rattata?”

“She’s hurt.” Red looks at Charmander and hesitates for just a moment. “Get Squirtle out, I don’t want to start a forest fire. Charmander, Ember!” He points just ahead of the caterpie as Blue summons the water turtle, hoping his pokemon can interpret the difference.

Charmander looks up, then drops onto all fours. His tail relaxes downward before flicking sharply up, and the glob of fire hits the tree just beside the caterpie, though not quite where Red pointed. Still, the pokemon immediately curls up and shies away from the heat, falling to the grass.

Red and Blue have their pokeballs out and ready, both pinging almost simultaneously. The balls collide mid-air and bounce away from each other, and Red sees Blue’s hand move in a blur, already replacing Squirtle’s ball and grabbing another empty one. Red is still aiming his second when Blue’s new ball locks, and a moment later the caterpie’s gone in a flash.

“Squirtle, Water Gun!” A jet of water splatters against the trunk and puts out the fire. Blue rubs the turtle’s shell, then withdraws her.

Red does the same with Charmander after retrieving his ball from the bushes, trying not to feel disappointed as they gather up the pokeballs that missed. “Nice catch.”

Blue smirks and bows in the foreign style their generation uses mockingly, one arm across his stomach and the other to the side with one heel planted forward. “Thanks for the assist. That’s four to two now.” Blue takes out his pokedex and registers his new caterpie, beginning its virtual training.

“Four to three, actually,” Red says as he does the same with his new pokemon.

“Oh right, you said Rattata’s hurt. Whatcha get?”

“Spinarak.”

“Shit, that’s a good one. I got a shroomish.”

“With Squirtle?”

“Yeah, she’s pretty drained. It kept running through bushes so Zephyr couldn’t grab it, and I couldn’t get a clear throw. Got scratched to hell chasing it.”

“Tell me about it. This damn bug nearly made me break my neck…”

They exchange stories as they heal up their pokemon. Red doesn’t mention the mental attack, still not quite sure what to make of it. It would sound like bragging if he emphasizes the possibility that he’s psychic. And what if he’s wrong? He would just sound weak. I need to do some research first. He considers writing a note to remind himself, then realizes he’s not likely to forget the event. He shudders slightly as just thinking about it brings back a vivid echo of the sensations.

Red looks over his medical supplies once he finishes spraying Rattata’s wounds with some antivenom and a healing potion. He has six more potions, three more antidotes, and two each of paralyze and burn heals. Red watches Blue spray a bit of his own anti-burn medicine on his new caterpie, while Red uses one of his potions to heal his spinarak’s wounds.

It’s hard to look at the arachnoid’s green and black abdomen, expecting another burst of mental torment at any second. But nothing happens, and Red strokes his new pokemon tentatively after feeding it some berries. Once he withdraws it, he checks the pokedex entry:

Spinarak is a patient hunter that can wait motionlessly for several days for unsuspecting prey. Even juvenile specimen can spin webbing as strong as iron, and adults have been known to spin strands five times as strong as an equal weight of steel. The patterns on their backs are used to project some forms of mental attacks in an outward cone, and the venom in its forehead stinger can melt flesh into a nutrient-rich soup within their cocoons.

His seems to fall within the averages for weight and size. Red begins to look for more details on their mental attacks when his phone chimes. A moment later, both his and Blue’s phones chime at the same time.

They look at each other and say “Leaf!” before pulling their phones out. Red flushes as he realizes he’d forgotten to tell her that they’d stopped moving. It had been just Blue and him for so long that he’d forgotten… if she was hurt because of their negligence…

The second message said “Come quick as you can!” The first was a CoRRNet alert… with Leaf as the author.

“This way!” Red takes off through the trees quick as he dares, keeping one eye on his phone’s map and the other on the ground for roots or ditches. The wilderness training he’d gone through, first in class as a kid, then with his father, then with Blue over the past year, taught him how dangerous running through forests can be, especially with low light, and he tries desperately not to twist his ankle as he hurries to Leaf’s location, the pain from his knee getting worse with every step. Leaf didn’t press her panic button, taking the time to write out a ticket on CoRRNet instead, so what—

They find Leaf just before reaching a clearing. She’s crouched around the side of a tree, and puts her finger over her lips as soon as she turns and sees them.

“Quiet. Look.” She points.

Still catching their breath, Red and Blue stare past her. It takes a moment for Red to realize what he’s seeing.

The clearing is full of flowers. Above them, a swarm of at least a dozen beedrill fly from one to the other, collecting pollen.

And lying on the ground in the middle of the field is a body.

Viridian City’s northern department store is a round building that functions as a one stop shopping mall, each of its four floors devoted to a different stratum of needs. The sign over the entryway informs that the top floor contains trainer supplies, the third protective gear, the second conventional goods, and the first food and services. Red, Leaf and Blue walk through the wide glass doors into an open and bustling indoor plaza, walls lined with service areas and shops of every kind. As they head for the escalators, Red’s eyes bounce from cafes and massage parlors for trainers to poffin bakeries and treatment spas for pokemon.

“I may have to stop here on our way out,” Leaf muses, and Red follows her gaze to see a sentret getting its tail brushed through a display window, while in the next a charmeleon has its claws filed.

He absently rubs the cool spheres at his waist as he eyes the prices. It would be nice to treat his pokemon, but… he only has about $220 of spending money. As nice as it would be to pamper them a bit, his pokemon are dependent on him to make smart financial decisions. If someone were to offer him an hour at the spa or some extra medicine in case of emergencies, he knows what he’d choose for himself.

They reach the escalators and decide to head to the top floor first, then work their way back down. Red’s gaze continues to roam, passing over bright advertisements without a second glance. He sees a trainer with a bellsprout outside its ball step onto the escalator behind them, the plant’s long viney limbs wrapped around his shoulder and waist. Red smiles as the pokemon’s bulbous head swivels to take in everything around it, mimicking his trainer.

They switch elevators at the second and third floors, then reach the fourth near its middle, surrounded by stalls and shelves full of pokeballs and medical equipment. Trainers fill the aisles, speaking with salesmen and comparing products. Advertisements and guideposts hang from the ceiling to direct customers, and Red scans them quickly. “Okay, so we need to—”

“Check it out, balls are on sale!” Blue hurries to a glass display and crouches to peer at the colorful variety of pokeballs inside. “Greatballs for just eighty bucks with a trainer card, definitely getting a few of those, and ten pokeballs gets you a free premierball!”

“Don’t think I need—”

“Ooh look, free samples.” Leaf wanders over to a nutritionist sitting at a stall, the countertop covered in colored rows of pokemon vitamin supplements.

Red sets his jaw and resists the urge to follow either of them, turning resolutely in the direction of the audio training tools. It’s fairly easy to block the advertisements: after getting burned a few times by misleading ads as a kid, and making one particularly expensive impulse purchase he later regretted when he was nine, he grabbed some books on marketing and devoted a week to reading them.

Once he emerged from that roller coaster of fascination and horror, he walked into the living room and declared that if he ever became Champion of the Indigo League, all ads would just be a name, an image, an intended purpose in ten words or less, and some sources for where more information could be found. Ever since then he’s taken the default position that all ads lie about everything, and reflexively ignores them until he has the chance to do independent research.

But it’s a bit harder ignoring so many cool toys once they’re all around him and in easy reach.

He catches himself slowing down by a shelf of laser pointers with a sign declaring “50% off!” and forces himself to walk past, only to realize a minute later that he’s unconsciously veering toward some targeting frisbees that promise to “improve pokemon accuracy by 63%!” The lasers are regular priced, they’re just usually marked up twice as much, he grimly reminds himself. And a 63% improvement means instead of landing two out of ten attacks, my pokemon will land three.

The biggest crowd by far is in the relatively open area where new pokedex models are on display and available to demo. Red is glad he’s spared that particular temptation. The Technique Machine aisle proves impossible to resist however, and he walks over to a console to see what’s available.

He waits for the trainer using one of the machines to finish browsing, then steps up to the free screen and types in “charmander.”

Toxic, Dig, Flame Charge, Fire Blast, Shadow Claw…

Woah. Charmander can learn Shadow Claw? He checks the move’s information and confirms that yes, it’s a Ghost Type attack. He wonders how long some programmer slaved over that particular code.

The software in the machines are very specific programs designed to do two things: mundanely, they can train a pokemon to learn a specific behavior that they might normally be able to learn on their own, with enough maturity and training. The second, far rarer programs are those few that rewrite specific pokemon’s actual “code,” the data they’re saved as while in their pokeball, so that their physical bodies are safely altered to be capable of entirely new things. Even rarer are programs written well enough to apply the effects to any pokemon of that species, with all the variation they have, rather than a specific one the programmer wrote the code for. A coder that manages to make such a universal program is usually set for life, and a handful of programmers, like Bill Sonezaki of Kanto, have coded multiple such machines and gained prestige almost on par with that given to Professors.

He watches a demonstration video of a charmander attacking a pokedoll, its claws trailing purple mist. The mist doesn’t help with cutting the doll, as it’s not a physical augmentation: Ghost abilities attack the mind. But he can clearly see that charmander is capable of using it.

This. This would be a solid investment. With Shadow Claw, his charmander would have incredibly boosted coverage. He could stand a chance against rock pokemon, as charmander’s normal claws and fire wouldn’t do much good against their tough hides, and if he faces a Psychic or Ghost type, he could fight fire with fire, so to speak.

With a mix of excitement and dread, he checks the price and feels his heart sink. Five hundred dollars is relatively cheap, especially for something so cutting edge, but it’s still expensive for a one-time use. If it were a permanent copy of the software that he could reuse on other pokemon, that might be worth it…

Not that I could afford it either way. He returns to the homescreen and steps away for the next trainer, watching as a grim looking man in a trench coat navigates the screen with quick familiarity, makes his selection, then inserts an ultraball after swiping his card through the machine. Red turns away and continues his search for the training whistles, trying not to dwell on his disappointment.

“Hey,” Blue says as he approaches from the side and falls into step with him. “Lot of stuff around here, huh?”

“Yeah. You buy anything?”

“Nah, not yet. I might call up gramps and ask him to release some of my savings, but then he’s going to want to know every single thing I spend it on. Man, I can’t wait till I’m fifteen.”

Red nods. “Tell me about it.” He’s not as well off as Blue, but his own bank account has a couple thousand in it. Unfortunately he still needs his mother’s permission to withdraw anything more than a hundred dollars a week, and his mother made clear that should be for emergencies. It’s an old grievance of his and Blue’s: 11 is old enough to go out in the world, but not old enough to make their own decisions about money, apparently.

On the other hand… He looks around at all the things he’d love to buy. Being in a store like this, he can see why some kids might need a bit of help with self control.

“Have you seen any shock suits around here?”

Red frowns. “I think that would be on the third floor. It’s more for protection than training.” Professor Faraday had created the first “shock suit” to help him safely study electric pokemon. By providing an easy path for electron flow around the wearer, modern Faraday suits can immunize someone to most electric attacks.

It’s one of the top items on Red’s wishlist, and being reminded of it doesn’t improve his mood. I need to get started on articles for my Researcher license so I can get some income. He files the thought away for later consideration. “You’re not going to buy one now, are you? The ones I saw online were priced at least at a thousand.”

“If Zapdos ends up coming south, I think it would be worth it. I’ll just tell gramps I want the money for a good bike.”

Red’s steps slow at the mention of Zapdos. “Right. I actually wanted to talk to you about that…” How could he stop Blue from going into the storm, short of tying him up? Better yet, how could he change Blue’s mind so he chooses not to himself? Red flips through his memory for ways in which people change their minds. Fear of consequences, appeal to authority, deceit… which is most likely to succeed?

Blue looks at him askance. “What about it?”

1) Fear of consequences. The dangers of the storm trio are hard to overstate, but confronting them is tied to too many of Blue’s central values, including his ego and desire to avenge the loss of his parents. Low chance of success.

2) Appeal to authority. Low chance of success. Blue’s value for autonomy is too high. Calling Professor Oak to intercede directly might work, but would likely sever friendship. Worth severing to possibly save his life? Maybe.

“I don’t know how prepared we are at the moment,” Red says. “There are some things I was hoping to have before facing one of the trio, like a Faraday suit of my own.”

Blue scratches his neck, looking uncomfortable. “Yeah, I was thinking it over. Look, I think I can take out enough money to cover two suits without gramps noticing right away. Don’t worry about paying me back, I know you’re good for it.”

3) Deceit. I could pretend to be sick at a critical moment, and force Blue to choose between competing values. Better yet, actually injure myself at just the right moment. Even better yet, call Daisy and collaborate a convincing deception for Blue to return home. If discovered though, this would definitely sever friendship. Also would prefer not to injure myself badly enough to warrant serious medical attention. Moderate chance of success, but risky. Reserve for last resort.

4) Competing values….

Red nods. “Thanks, I might take you up on that. But I think there’s a cheaper alternative.”

“What is it?”

“I’ll show you when we head down to the third floor. For now I want to find these whistles before my wallet burns a hole through my pocket.”

They begin to hear the sound of flutes and whistles over the general noise of the store, and find a wall of various handheld instruments a minute later. Leaf is already there, examining a pendant ocarina with four holes on the outer side and two on the inner. A middle aged woman in store attendant uniform is standing beside her and demonstrating the proper way to hold it. Around her neck hangs an assortment of different whistles and flutes from the wall. Leaf spies Red and Blue approaching and waves them over.

“Hey guys! Come listen. She’s explaining how to choose the right instrument.” Leaf turns to the woman. “They’re interested in getting one too.”

The saleswoman smiles and turns to include them in her demonstration. “As I was telling your friend here, a whistle is a good choice for training pokemon that are expected to range out from you, like flying types. But it’s harder than just training them to follow a verbal command. Each action you want them to perform has to be linked to a particular, short tone or tune, and that means which instrument you choose is very important.”

The attendant finds the plain whistle in the jumble around her neck and demonstrates with a pair of quick notes. “See? Just two basic commands, and anything more than that will take a brief melody.” She waits for another attendant nearby to stop blowing on a long flute before she gives three short blows. “So you’ll need one of those for each action. With something like the ocarina, each note can be tied to a command, and then a melody can be its own.” She puts the pendant ocarina to her lips and blows each note once, then a number of quick combinations, and finally a brief melody.

“So why doesn’t everyone get an ocarina?” Red asks. “Other than the price.” He sees on the wall that the plain whistles are just five bucks, while the ocarina is thirty.

She smiles. “The ocarina takes quite a bit more dedication. It has more range and options, but you have to be willing to learn and memorize each one. Also it takes two hands, which some trainers find cumbersome.”

Meaning mostly battle trainers. Having your hands free to swap pokemon at a moment’s notice is a big deal, especially in the fast paced world of competitive battles.

Blue is clearly thinking the same thing, because he heads over to the plain whistles and begins to sort through them.

“I think I’ll take an ocarina,” Leaf says, and goes to the wall to examine the different styles available.

Red turns to the attendant. “So if we plan on traveling and training our pokemon together, should we worry about confusing them with our whistles?”

The woman smiles. “Getting three different instruments would certainly help avoid that.”

“Right. So… any suggestions? Something between the two in complexity is fine, but I don’t mind using both hands if I have to.”

Her necklace rattles as she sorts through it. “How’s this? Bamboo flute. A good amount of variety, and you can use one or two hands for increased range. And it has a very unique sound.” She gives it a trill.

Red goes over to the wall and examines one of the long wooden flutes. “I like it, but do you have something a bit more durable? And a bit smaller.”

“Certainly.” She leads him to another section, and within a few minutes Red decides on a one handed silver flute, with four holes on top and one on the bottom for his thumb. Blue goes with a similar one with a higher pitch, both of which only cost ten dollars, and the three trainers purchase their instruments, which Blue carries in a small shopping bag. After thanking the attendant, they head for the escalators.

“You guys should grab some vitamin samples before we go down,” Leaf says. “I tried to get some for you, but he wouldn’t let me.”

Red and Blue exchange looks, then shrug and head for the stall. There’s a bit of a crowd when they get there, and Red has time to read the ad on the screen above it. The sound is mostly muted by the crowd, but he can pick up the energetic narration. “Is your rapidash more of a slowpoke? Machamp getting seismically tossed? Want your kingler’s carapace to be as strong as steelix? Carbos, protein, iron, we have it all right here! Poffins and berries aren’t enough: four out of five professors agree, your pokemon can’t reach their full potential without the right dietary supplements!”

Blue snorts. “Bet the fifth was gramps.”

Red grins. “Yeah, and I’d love to know who the other four are.”

They move up in the line, and the young nutritionist smiles as they approach. “Hello again, I see you brought your friends! Excellent! What kind of pokemon do you two-”

“I’ll take protein please,” Red says.

“Same.”

The nutritionist blinks, but reaches beneath the counter and hands over two red packets. “Certainly, there you are. Now, if you’re looking for some-”

“Nope, I’m good, thanks a lot.” Red turns to the escalator and begins to head down to the third floor. He and Blue are soon joined by Leaf, who’s looking at him in surprise. “What?”

“Nothing, I just wasn’t expecting you to be so… abrupt. You could have at least heard him out.”

“Why? I don’t have money to spare, and there were more people in line behind us.” Red tucks the packet of protein into one of the side pockets of his bag. “Besides, I’ve already researched his products, and wouldn’t believe any new studies he cites without looking into them myself first anyway.”

“You don’t believe in nutrition supplements?”

“Let’s just say I’m skeptical of some of their claims,” Red says. “I got protein because it has some substantial research backing its effectiveness in muscle growth. As for things like iron ‘boosting toughness,’ or hardening skin or shells… the results are still inconclusive. Some tests show slight measurable gains, others don’t. And that’s not even getting to some of the other stuff they sell.”

Leaf looks at Blue. “You’re in the same boat I take it?”

Blue shrugs. “Some of the top trainers swear by certain vitamins, while others say they’re not necessary. I haven’t seen any proof myself yet, but as far as I’ve heard they can’t hurt, and free is free.”

“Huh. My mom never really talked about them, either for or against.” Leaf shrugs. “She tends to ignore anything outside the scope of her research.”

Blue laughs. “I think that comes with the fancy title. One time gramps spent a month at the lab without coming home for more than a meal and a shower a day. When I told him there’d been a new appointment to the Elite Four, he barely heard me.”

Red opens his mouth, then closes it. He always loved his parents for who they were, but being raised by a pokemon professor had always seemed like the closest thing to a perfect childhood he could imagine. He’s used to Blue’s grouching about Professor Oak, and just assumed it’s due to his lack of interest in science and research. But Leaf’s voice held a similar tinge of wistfulness that stops Red short, and he pulls out his notepad and reminds himself to re-evaluate whether he’s experiencing a negative focusing effect when he gets the chance.

“Hey,” Blue says. “If you’re analyzing me, you have to tell me why. That’s the rule.”

“I’m not.”

Leaf looks between them, then glances at the notepad. “You guys have a rule for that?”

Blue glowers at Red. “We do.”

“Can I have the same rule?”

Red smiles. “Yeah, that’s fair. But I’m not analyzing either of you. Just reflecting on that whole ‘the grass is always greener on the other side’ saying.”

They reach the third floor and step off the escalator, and Leaf returns Red’s smile. “I was mostly joking. You deserve your privacy. There’s little enough of it, traveling together like we are.”

Blue snorts. “Yeah, you say that now. It’ll drive you mad soon enough, you wait. Him scribbling in that notebook every other day, looking at you like a pokemon that learned a new trick.” Blue’s voice goes lower as he talks, eyes widening in horror. “Eventually you start thinking over every word you say, wondering what might set him off next… your nights are filled with thoughts of a notebook, its pages dissecting your every thought and action, and you dream of waking up in a lab cage, Red dressed in a white coat and staring down at you, scribbling, scribbling, scribbling…”

Red and Leaf laugh. “It’s really not a big deal,” Red says. “I’ll tell you about it later, promise. Just need to get my thoughts in order. In the meantime, I need to grab a gas mask. You guys should get a couple too.”

They find the right section fairly quickly, but after a few minutes of browsing Red doesn’t find a mask like the one he used in the trainer house practice rooms. He finds an ordering terminal and begins browsing its catalog while Blue and Leaf try on various masks and headgear.

He calls them over when he finds it. “Here, this is the one the trainer house used. It protects your whole face without distorting your vision or voice much.” He goes to the product page and swipes his trainer card. “Just forty bucks too. You guys want one?”

“Yeah, I’ll get one.” Leaf smiles. “I’ve been looking at new moves for Bulbasaur, and it could be handy for protection against powders or spores.”

Blue nods “Me too. There are butterfree and shroomish in the forest that can knock a guy out in one breath.”

Red shifts the quantity to three and presses accept. The machine hums, and after a few moments three of the dozen hand-sized slots beneath the screen light up. Red reaches into two and withdraws the Containers from them, handing one to Leaf while Blue takes his own.

They aim the silver balls at the floor and release the grey boxes inside in a triplet of flashes. Red opens his and takes out the gas mask, freshly sent over from the store’s warehouse. He closes the box, then withdraws it into the Container before returning the sphere into its nook as Blue does the same beside him.

Leaf carefully adjusts the ball in its nook so its lens is properly aligned before straightening. “Checkout’s over there, right?”

“Hang on, there are a couple more things I want here.”

Red follows the signs that have a lightning bolt on them until he’s surrounded by trainers trying out shoes with non-conductive soles. He steps carefully past all the boxes and scans the shelves, reluctantly drawing his gaze from the corner where Faraday suits are being sold as he walks from one aisle to another.

“Aha.” Red goes to a shelf of copper rods about twice as thick as his thumb and as long as his arm. He counts out four and turns to the others. “We should each have at least one. I’m getting two.”

“Do you think these will be necessary?” Leaf asks, taking hers and experimentally pulling on the rod. It extends to the full length of her arm-span without reaching its limit, and she collapses it back to its compact size.

Blue nods. “If we’re going to be risking the storm, we’ll need something like this sooner than later.” He looks over his and frowns, clearly skeptical. “That said, I’d feel much safer in a shock suit. You sure these will be good enough? Don’t they only work if you stand near them?”

“Well, ‘near’ is relative. A true bolt of lightning will be caught within sixty meters, and redirected to the earth. From that point, the ground current might travel about twenty meters, maybe a bit more. Speaking of which,” Red turns to Leaf. “You should pick up new shoes if yours aren’t rubber-soled.”

She hesitates, then nods and goes to the shoe section. Red checks the maximum size of the rods. “Three and a half meters… Should be enough.” He turns to Blue. “You can get a Faraday suit if you want, but I’d rather neither of us spend that much money if it’s not necessary. This will do fine for me.”

Blue looks at him for a moment, then back at the rod. “Sixty meters huh?”

“Yep.”

Red surreptitiously pulls out his phone and opens CoRRNet as Blue examines the lightning rod. His friend’s shoulders are straight, and his eyes gleam with anticipation as he extends it fully and tests its weight. Red goes to his alert settings and adjusts the threshold. By default it’s set to only alert him of Tier 1 or higher threats near his location, but it can also alert him of any nearby tickets or requests that pop up. Now it’ll be easy for Red to keep an eye out for any opportunities for heroism as they travel north. If he can delay their journey long enough, the storm might pass before they get near Pewter City. But if not, Red might still be able to distract Blue with requests for aid that will surely pop up with the storm’s arrival, even at its outskirts.

4) Competing values. If the storm comes south, I’ll force Blue to choose between rushing headlong into it and another value. If he has to make a choice between helping someone in need or taking a shot at one of the birds, he’ll make the right choice.

Red puts his phone away and watches Blue test out the quickest ways to get the lightning rod to full length. From a thousand games and conversations the two had shared over the years, Red knows that as hot as his friend burns for revenge against the storm gods, at his core the role he sees for himself is that of an emerging hero, willing and able to help those that need him. That Red sees himself the same way is one of the core bonds of their friendship.

Blue grins as he refolds the lightning rod. “Yeah, this’ll work. With your book smarts and my trainer skills, we’ll have all three birds down by the end of the year. Come on, let’s go help Leaf find a good pair of shoes.”

He’ll make the right choice…

By the time the three leave the department store, the sun has begun its western descent. Once out on the sidewalk, Leaf dons her last new purchase, a white sunhat with a pink band above the rim and in a half-circle above the front. She tugs its edges until it shades her eyes and ears, and smiles.

Blue takes their various instruments out of the shopping bag and passes them out before slipping his own whistle around his neck. Leaf puts her ocarina pendant on and gives each of its notes a test, running through a brief melody. The sharp sounds make passerby turn, and a flock of pidgey take off from a nearby light pole.

Red watches them go as he takes his hat off and slips his own flute on, tucking it into his shirt. His new gas mask is strapped to the outside of his pack for easy access, and his lightning rods are braced along the roof and floor of the inside of his bag: he can feel their upper tips against his spine. He’d had trouble fitting them in at first, and finally resigned himself to using his Container to free up room. For all his planning for the trip, “free space” hadn’t been something he thought he’d need this soon. Now that all his extra clothes are in the silver sphere tucked into one of the bag’s pockets, it feels uncomfortably light.

In total he’d spent about fifty-five dollars, bringing him down to $165. Having to use his only Container is what bothers him most at the moment. Unlike pokeballs, they’re not subsidized by the Department for the Advancement of Trainer Efficacy, and cost anywhere from a few hundred dollars on up depending on how much mass they could store. His own is the lowest model, capable of holding a bit over fifty pounds, not including the light metal box the Container is keyed to. It had his sleeping bag and a collapsible tent in it, but now it holds most of what was in his bag. He left everything that he might need at a moment’s notice out of it, like first aid supplies and snacks.

Leaf tucks her ocarina in her blouse. “How long before we’re out of the city? I want to start training Crimson with this!”

“We’re in the northern suburbs now,” Red says. “Shouldn’t take long.”

“Are you gonna pick up a flier soon too?”

“He wants a noctowl,” Blue says, already fiddling with his pokedex as they begin to head north.

“Neat. Why a noctowl?”

“Well for one thing, their night vision is incredible, and they’re almost completely silent while flying. For another, they’re one of the smartest birds in Kanto or Johto.”

Leaf smiles. “Very practical of you.” Red blinks, but before he can comment at her tone Leaf takes out her own pokedex. “Any thoughts on a good set of commands?”

“I’ve been looking some up,” Blue says. “There are a bunch of recommendations, but that lady was right: the more complex commands you want to give, the more you need to practice and memorize.”

“We’d better start then.” Red takes his small flute out, absently stepping around a lightpost in the sidewalk as he examines it. “Let’s go over the basics. Up, down, left, right. That’s four notes. A return command, that’s five. A ‘hover,’ for those pokemon that can do it…”

“Hang on,” Blue says. “Too complex. Pokemon are smart enough to know how to fly on their own. I’m going to stick with diving, climbing, and hovering for movement, and use the rest for attacks.”

“Well, I’ve got the options,” Leaf says, indicating her pendant. “I don’t need to micromanage them every moment, but if I need them to go a specific direction I like having the option.”

They debate and discuss the optimal ways to train their pokemon as they walk, researching and testing their instruments. Within an hour they’re surrounded by more trees than houses, and the road begins to split in different directions. They stay on the main path north as it winds between small neighborhoods and the occasional mom and pop stores.

Eventually Blue and Leaf take turns registering various whistle commands with their pokedex, then downloading them to their pidgey’s pokeballs. After letting the sound recognition programs run, they summon Zephyr and Crimson to fly around them, occasionally using their whistles to try instructions. At one point Crimson lands on Leaf’s shoulder, and Red notes the ruddy feathers along its wing tips. He’s about to point it out to Leaf, then realizes it must be the basis for the name. He feels a flush of embarrassment, and is glad he didn’t voice his assumption that it was a reference to him.

“I can’t wait till they’re big enough to fly on,” Leaf says with a smile as she watches Crimson take off again and soar up to a tree to peck at some fruit.

“Yeah, we should reach Vermillion City before then.”

“What’s in Vermillion city?”

“Well, I don’t know how they do it in Unova, but here in Kanto they don’t just hand the Fly program out to anyone,” Blue says.

“What, you mean it’s regulated?”

Red nods. “It gives bird pokemon an incredible boost in endurance and strength, but it’s not magic, and a lot of people don’t seem to get that.”

Blue scowls. “So all of us have to prove we’re not idiots just because some moron uses it on a golbat that’s barely bigger than they are and plummets off a roof.”

“Ugh. Did that really happen?”

“Yep.”

Leaf makes a disgusted face. “So how do we prove we’re not idiots?”

“Vermillion Gym Leader Surge,” Blue says. “You might have heard of him Leaf, he’s from Unova.”

“Really? Neat. No, I never heard of him. Does he use any birds from Unova?”

“Surge runs an electric gym actually. There’s no Flying gym in Kanto.”

Leaf raises a brow, and Red grins, shrugging. “We don’t make the rules.”

The sun continues to set, and the woods on either side of the road begin to grow thick as they enter the outer edges of Viridian Forest. They pass a school nestled in a clearing off the side of the road, and a few minutes later see a crowd of six or seven year olds in the distance. Blue and Leaf call their pokemon back, and withdraw them into their balls. When they get closer, they see the kids are gathered around an old man. A woman in a teacher’s uniform stands by, supervising the field trip and quieting the kids to let the old man talk over their shouted questions and excited chattering.

“Alright now, settle down, settle down,” the old man says, and the kids grow mostly quiet. “Who here can tell me the most important part of catching pokemon?”

“Keep it still!”

“Summon your pokemon!”

“Knock it out!”

“Stay a safe distance!”

“That’s right!” The old man says. “First and foremost, you want to stay a safe distance from the pokemon. That means knowing what a certain pokemon is capable of. If you encounter a pokemon that you’ve never seen before, you have to be extra careful! Don’t assume that just because it’s big that it’ll move slow, or because it’s small it has short reach. Watch carefully.”

The three trainers slow to a stop nearby as the old man walks into the woods. Red looks past him into the foliage and notices a weedle sitting on a bush and munching on its leaves, bright yellow and pink body a warning to any that come near. As the old man approaches, the weedle perks up, its segmented body going rigid as an exclamation point, long and thick as the old man’s forearm.

“Now, the standard pokeball has a lock-on range of about nine meters, and these little bugs can easily jump that. They pack some fearful poison in that stinger, so catching one can be a bit risky. But as long as you know how to read their body language…” He takes a careful step forward, then one to the side, watching the weedle as the stinger on its forehead sways to follow him. “See how it’s bunching itself up? One more ought to do it…”

The old man steps forward, and the weedle shoots forward like a loosed arrow. Red feels his pulse surge, and the watching kids cry out as the old man staggers to the side. The weedle curls midair and flips, so that it lands on the other side still facing him.

Red’s hand is on charmander’s pokeball and Leaf is already stepping forward with her arm cocked back, but when the old man turns they see he’s grinning.

“Caught my sleeve there,” he says, eyes on the arthropod as he holds his arm up to show the tear in his shirt. “Come on little guy, you can do better than that.” He steps forward, some of the children crying out in warning as the weedle bunches itself up and leaps at him again, quick as a blink.

The veteran ducks and spins with the speed of a man half his age, calmly turning to keep the weedle in his vision. It goes at him again and again, but never comes closer than a hand-breadth.

As Red watches the grizzled instructor turn and sidestep every leap, he feels himself slowly relax, a grin spreading over his face. The old man has clearly done this many times to perfect such showmanship, and the crowd of students cheers and claps, Red, Leaf and Blue joining in. In all the many field exercises he went on when he was younger to teach his class about catching pokemon, none of the instructors were as big of a showman as this guy.

The old man turns to face the weedle again, and holds a hand up to quiet the cheers. “Now, see the way it’s arching its body like that rather than leaping at me again? It sees I’m too quick for it, so it’s going to try and even the playing field a bit. That brings us to the second most important thing: speed. You gotta slow the pokemon down, or even better yet, keep it still! Whether you knock it out first or immobilize it some other way, you can’t catch a pokemon that’s moving too fast for your ball to lock onto it, let alone hit it with a throw.”

“We could’ve gotten those pidgey if they hadn’t kept blowing the balls away,” Blue mutters to Red, who shushes him.

The old man spreads his fingers wide and crouches, waiting. When the weedle shoots a string of sticky silk at him, he snatches it out of the air.

The weedle immediately leaps forward, using the connecting string to home in on the old trainer. But the veteran rotates on his heel with his arm straight out, swinging the weedle in an arc and bashing it against a tree trunk beside him. The pokemon falls to the ground and releases the string, stunned.

The old man bows at the renewed cheers, then holds up his hand again to quiet them, three fingers up. “Third, make sure the area is clear of other pokemon. The ball can get confused if the capture area is crowded, and it won’t open if it’s not positive it’ll draw in the right one.” He takes his pokeball out, lens pointed at the weedle. “Gotta let it hold on the pokemon for a bit, and when it’s ready…” There’s a ping as the pokeball locks onto its target. “It’ll let you know. Cock your arm back, take aim, and release just as the ball is leaving your fingertips… like so!” The old man throws the ball, hitting the weedle dead on. The pokeball bounces to the side, and opens mid-spin to capture the pokemon in a flash.

The ball rolls on the grass before coming to a standstill. The old man retrieves the ball as his audience claps and cheers. He approaches the road again and notices the three trainers standing behind the crowd. “Well hello there! Beautiful day, isn’t it?”

The kids and teacher all turn in surprise. “It certainly is,” Leaf says with a smile. “That was fantastic!” Red nods agreement.

“Why thank you kindly! You’re trainers then, are ya?” He eyes the pokeballs at their waists.

“That’s right,” Blue says, and spins Zephyr’s pokeball on his finger. “We caught these ourselves.”

“Coooool,” one of the kids says, watching the ball, and Blue smirks as the class begins to murmur excitedly, many asking to see their pokemon.

Red covers his grin with one hand. Just a few years ago, it would have been he and Blue staring in awe as “grown up” trainers walked by. When he notices one of the boys watching him in particular though, he feels his own shoulders square a bit, back straightening.

“Hey, not bad!” The old man gives his new weedle’s ball a spin, then sends it across the back of his hand by flexing his knuckles. The kids ooooh and ahhh, and Blue palms his ball to watch closely as the old trainer dances the still spinning ball from the back of one hand over to the other before turning his hand and catching it out of the air. “We’re gonna look for a spinarak next. Feel free to stick around, maybe you’ll pick up a thing or two!” He winks.

Red’s response is cut off by Blue. “We’d love to, but we’re trying to make the forest by nightfall.”

Leaf nods. “I wouldn’t mind getting a weedle of my own!”

Red hesitates, then nods. “Maybe another time.”

“Anytime you’re in the area, just come pay me a visit. Name’s Hamato.”

They introduce themselves, bow, and wave goodbye as they continue on their way. Leaf and Blue remark on how amazing the veteran trainer had been, while Red is mostly silent. That had been a perfect opportunity to spend the rest of the day without going any further north.

“You alright Red?”

He looks at Blue and nods. “Just wondering how long it might take to catch one of every pokemon in here.”

Leaf looks speculative. “For each of us? Or in total?”

“How about a friendly wager? First person to reach six pokemon, without any duplicates, is treated to dinner by whoever’s last.”

“Sounds like free food,” Leaf says. “You guys are one behind me.”

Red grins. “Is that a bet, then?”

Blue smirks. “You’re on.”

They pick up their pace, each pulling out their own pokedex. Within moments they’re so engrossed in their study of nearby pokemon habits that they barely notice when they pass the sign marking the border to Viridian Forest.

The Training House’s practice rooms are far fancier than the one at the Pallet Labs. Red passes by room after empty room, each different than the last. He’s curious to know if anyone else is up this late, and eventually finds one that’s occupied. He stops in front of the glass door to watch.

A young woman with long auburn hair is using a pair of flags to direct her butterfree, running around it to stay in its line of sight as it performs various aerial maneuvers. Training pokemon to respond to nonverbal cues has its advantages and disadvantages, and is largely a practice of competitive trainers; wild pokemon aren’t likely to get tipped off by shouted orders, after all. Red watches as the woman twirls her left flag once, and the butterfree releases a cloud of green powder. The trainer leaps safely out of the way as the butterfree flaps its wings, a gust of wind blowing the powder forward to envelop a wooden pokedoll shaped like a sandslash.

Red moves on, examining each room until he finds one with the symbols of a fan and fire over it. He enters the long rectangular room, its acoustics changing as the door slides back closed. Fire extinguishers are placed at each corner, and the floor and walls are made of a light grey, pitted stone. Looking up, he sees the sprinkler system and air vents ready to respond to any emergencies.

This should do nicely.

Red takes out his pokedex, and a clicker from his pack. Part of the training process is to associate a behavior with a conditioned reinforcer, the way Leaf had with the pokepuffs. Instead of having to use pokepuffs all the time though, Red wants to try out a feature of the pokedex. He quickly navigates to the right screen, then says, “Pokedex, establish audio reinforcement.”

“Acknowledged. Record audio reinforcement when light turns green, then press Done.”

Red smiles as he realizes that the voice of the pokedex is Daisy’s. It’s somewhat disguised by a digital filter, but the cadence of certain words gives it away to those that know her.

As soon the light beside the screen turns green, Red uses his clicker, emitting a sharp, loud click-clak upon press and depress of the button. Then he taps Done on the pokedex screen.

“Audio reinforcement confirmed.” It repeats the sound.

“Save.”

“Audio reinforcement saved. Upload virtual training?”

“Yes.” Red puts the clicker away and unclips Charmander’s pokeball, aligning the lens with the pokedex’s. “Upload.”

“Uploading… upload complete. Please wait four minutes and seventeen seconds for virtual regimen to integrate. Remember to periodically reinforce association in tangible space before hands-on training.”

Red makes a note of the time, then reclips the pokeball and repeats the process with his rattata. Setting up a basic positive reinforcement like this should make it much easier to train his pokemon; the sound of the click will be so associated with a reward, that just hearing it will trigger a release of dopamine.

And he’s going to need all the help he can get. While looking up a charmander’s basic techniques in the pokedex, one in particular had drawn his attention:

Smokescreen: When threatened by large foes, charmander can alter the fuel for their tail flame to produce copious amounts of thick smog. While mild exposure is not toxic, this smoke irritates eyes and sinuses and helps charmander stay hidden. Charmander are especially prone to emitting smoke if threatened at night, when their tail flame makes it particularly hard to hide.

Training such a specific automatic response in bright lights won’t be easy, but the potential benefits are enormous. Smoke could be used to not just hide in and avoid attacks, but also to coordinate ambushes, herd wild pokemon, even set and limit zones of control on a battlefield.

As he waits for Charmander’s virtual training to be done, Red takes out his notebook and scribbles down thoughts on cooperative tactics to try out with the others. Blue or Leaf’s pidgey could use gusts to send smoke in the direction needed, the way that trainer’s butterfree had with its poison powder. The smoke would block Squirtle’s line of sight if used carelessly, but Bulbasaur could use his vines to drag enemies into it. They could even use it to switch pokemon without the opponent being aware…

Red eventually checks the time, gives it another thirty seconds just to be safe, then puts his notebook away and unclips Charmander’s pokeball. He cocks his arm back, then throws it, voice echoing as he says, “Charmander, go!”

The ball reaches the open space in the middle of the room and releases his pokemon in a flash before flying back. Red reaches for it, but the angle of the throw was a bit off, and he has to jump to try and catch it when it returns at an upward angle. He knocks it upward, then tries to catch it as it falls, fingers closing a fraction of a second too late. The ball bounces off his palm and across the floor with a metal ding, ding, dinnnnggggg…

Charmander watches the ball roll by, then ignores it as it halts at the wall. He chirps and approaches as Red kneels down to pick the pokeball up, and Red rubs the lizard’s warm, leathery head.

“Hey there buddy. We’re going to try and learn something new tonight, okay?”

Charmander looks up at him and chirps again. Red smiles, wishing for a moment he could communicate with his pokemon intelligently. When he was younger he and Blue used to watch cartoons where the pokemon could talk to each other, and understood human speech directly, even if most couldn’t duplicate it.

It was amusing enough, if obviously for young kids. As he got older it became clear that the premise wasn’t particularly well thought out. Leaf’s perspective would have a lot more weight behind it, in Red’s mind, if pokemon were sapient enough for complex feeling and communication. Putting them in pokeballs would be a lot more morally ambiguous, for one thing, and for another if pokemon were sapient, working out a peaceful coexistence would be much more attainable without resorting to hunting and capturing them.

Still, even without that level of communication, it sure would be useful to have some latent psychic powers manifest right about now.

Red meets Charmander’s gaze directly and concentrates. Raise your left arm. Raise your left arm Charmander. He imagines the sensation of raising his arm, willing Charmander to pick up on it through the mysterious bond that everyone romanticizes.

Charmander’s gaze is locked in his, whole body completely still. Raise your arm, come on, raise your arm. Red’s own arm twitches as he focuses so hard on the muscle-memory, feeling lost in the depths of his pokemon’s gaze. Raise your arm, come on, just a little…

Charmander blinks slowly… then wags his tail a bit and chirps, rubbing against Red’s palm.

“Worth a shot,” Red mutters, and stands. He’d just make do the old fashioned way.

Red had never met a psychic, but whatever advantage their powers might grant them, the beauty of pokemon training, from its ancient, crude form to the refined science it is today, is that it’s accessible to everyone. If it were something that only certain people could do, humanity would never have thrived in such a dangerous world. Society would have been stuck in feudal dynamics, where the majority were ruled by the whims of those few who could control the monsters in the wild and keep the rest of them safe.

Now, science and technology have leveled the playing field. Some people still have natural advantages over others, but in today’s world, anyone can learn the methodology, refine their skills, and harness the power of their own pokemon.

Professor Oak raised a dozen of his own pokemon by Red’s age, and by developing the pokedex, revolutionized the relationship between practical knowledge and cutting edge research, allowing both scientists and trainers to share information and help each other day to day. Elite Agatha was the first trainer who didn’t keep their mysterious affinity with Ghost-type pokemon secretive, and she opened a school at the age of thirteen to help teach others how to deal with and train them, even without psychic powers. And Leader Giovanni rose to the head of his Gym when he was just a few years older than Red, and used his position and status to help set up society’s trainer programs, so everyone has a chance to make their own way.

Limited only by their intelligence, imagination, and will, people and their pokemon are capable of extraordinary things together.

And if they’re smart and dedicated enough, even a child can change the world.

Red tugs the bill of his cap securely down. Time to get started.

He takes out a pokepuff and unwraps it, then takes his clicker back out. Watching Charmander, he points at a section of the stone ground and says “Ember!”

As soon as Charmander whips his tail around and releases some oil, Red presses the button, and the distinct click-clak is heard, echoing in the room.

His pokemon’s attention sharpens, and Red feeds him a bit of pokepuff. “Good boy.” After Charmander finishes, Red does it again, and again. Each time he feeds Charmander some puff, it reinforces the association between the click and a reward, tying the two together so that just hearing the click is enough to signal satisfaction and pleasure.

After the puff is all gone, Red goes to the end of the room and opens a closet in the wall. Inside are a number of training supplies, and he lifts out a large rhydon pokedoll with both arms. It’s made of the same flame retardant foam as the one from that morning’s training, and weighs about as much as his backpack. He brings it over to the left side of the door and sets it down in front of Charmander, who immediately becomes alert. Red steps behind his pokemon as Charmander’s tail blazes, and the fire lizard watches the sudden threat warily, claws extended.

Red gets an arcanine pokedoll and puts it to the right side of the door, using his body to hide it from Charmander as he walks past him. When he puts it down, Charmander suddenly chirps in alarm, and Red jumps back as his pokemon rushes forward to defend him, flicking some fire at the new threat.

“Stop!” Charmander goes still, and Red immediately clicks again. Red’s pokemon growls at the two large simulacrum, but stays his fire. “Good job Charmander. Now, Smokescreen. Smokescreen, Charmander.” Red’s finger hovers over the clicker button, waiting… waiting… “Smokescreen. Smokescreen. Smokescreen.”

No smoke comes. “Any second now Charmander,” Red mutters, and his pokemon’s head twitches. Red chides himself for confusing him, and wonders how long he should wait. He wants the behavior to be associated with the word, but just repeating “smokescreen” over and over is feeling a bit foolish.

Red studies Charmander’s aggressive stance. “Smokescreen. Charmander, smokescreen.” Charmander twitches, as if ready to act… but does nothing, still watching the threats and growling.

Ah. Red grins. His pokemon is too brave to be scared.

Red slowly steps backward so Charmander doesn’t notice him leaving. When he reaches the closet, he turns and grabs a third pokedoll, this one is a wide, round graveler. He places it behind Charmander, so that the fire lizard is surrounded by arcanine, graveler, and rhydon simulacrum. His pokemon is too fixated on the first two threats to realize that he’s been surrounded, but once Red steps up beside him, Charmander repositions himself and sees it in his peripheral vision.

Charmander chirps in alarm, then turns frantically, first one way then the other, attempting to keep all the threats in sight. When he realizes he can’t, aggression turns to fear.

Red watches the fire lizard curl inward and begin to tremble, and feels a pang in his chest. He’s about to reassure his pokemon that everything’s okay… but Charmander needs to feel threatened to emit the smoke. Red crouches beside him and begins to tremble as well, breathing quickly so that his heart speeds up. “Smokescreen. Charmander, smokescreen. Smokescreen, smokescreen, smokescreen…”

Charmander continues to tremble, eyes darting around at the large figures looming over them. When he glances at Red again and sees his trainer curled up beside him, he begins trembling harder… and, with Red still repeating “Smokescreen,” it happens. The fire at the end of his tail becomes a bit dimmer, and black smoke begins to billow out.

The second he sees it, Red presses the clicker. Charmander’s head rises, and Red rubs his head. “Good boy!” He coughs as the smoke continues to come out, thick and heavy. It quickly blankets the area and makes it hard to see.

“Charmander, stop!” Charmander goes still, but the smoke keeps coming out. Uh oh.

Red picks Charmander up and walks around, trailing the oily smoke from Charmander’s tail. He says “Stop,” every few seconds, checking to see if Charmander’s tail stops emitting smoke. Even outside of the main cloud, Red’s nose wrinkles when he inhales. He can see how the acrid stench would work as a deterrent, and suddenly realizes his clothing is going to need a thorough washing.

Eventually the pokedolls are almost completely obscured, and when Red says “Stop!” again, the smoke suddenly cuts off. Red presses the clicker. “Good job Charmander.” His eyes water, and he resists the urge to rub at them, peering around in the thick smoke. That was fast.

Red walks over to the fan controls and puts Charmander down. The thick smog combined with his watering eyes makes it hard to see, and Red feels along the wall with his eyes closed, navigating for the right button by memory. One, two… three… four!

The fans rev to life and begin sucking up the smog. Red’s clothing and hair whips about, and Charmander gives an alarmed Rawr! as his protective cover is quickly drawn away.

Charmander tenses as he watches the three pokedolls slowly come back into view. Red puts his finger over the clicker button, waiting. “Charmander, smokescreen. Smokescreen. Smokescre-” Click-clak! “Good boy!” Red watches the smog rise, thin and long as the fans immediately suck it away. How long can he keep that up? “Stop, Charmander.” Charmander glances at him, but then turns back to the pokedoll, growling quietly. Red wonders if the sound of the fans are distracting his pokemon, and turns them back off.

Unfortunately that just causes the smoke to quickly obscure Charmander again. Red curses quietly. He needs to be able to tell the moment Charmander feels safe enough to stop producing the smoke, so he can reinforce him stopping.

And now the smog is completely surrounding him. Shit. Red crouches down and picks Charmander back up with one arm, the lizard’s smooth hide warm to the touch. His pokemon startles, and pain suddenly lances through Red’s side and arm. The lizard’s claws have sunk in, mostly stopped by his clothes’ armor mesh, but the tips still piercing through. “OW! Ow, ow… it’s okay Charmander, it’s just me… ow…”

Red walks gingerly forward, ignoring the pain as best he can as he keeps the smoke cloud behind them, glancing back and saying “Stop” occasionally to see if Charmander complies. Charmander’s tail stops emitting the smoke shortly after they’re past the pokedolls, and Red clicks. “Good boy…” He looks back to see an obscuring cloud of black smoke filling the rest of the room once again.

Red sighs and puts Charmander down, wincing as the lizard’s claws exit his flesh. He can feel blood trickling down his skin from the pinpricks. Charmander looks at the bloodstains on his sleeve and makes a low crooning sound, stepping closer and licking at one.

“Ow, hey, it’s okay. My fault for making you so scared.” The smoke is still spreading toward them, and Red coughs as the foul taste fills his throat. He unclips Charmander’s pokeball and points it at him. “R-return,” he croaks. Charmander is hit by the beam, then vanishes in a flash of light.

Red reclips the pokeball and returns to the controls, holding his breath and closing his eyes along the way as he keeps a hand against the wall. Would help if this place was voice activated, he grumbles to himself as he turns the fans back on. Red takes a deep breath as the air clears for the second time, and a sudden dizziness makes him sink down to the floor.

Alarmed, Red takes off his pack and lifts his shirt to examine his injuries, wondering if he’s bleeding more than he’d realized. They’re not particularly deep, however, and he realizes he’s probably just losing his second wind. Red relaxes and digs out a potion from his bag to disinfect and coagulate the wounds. Some paper towels serve to wipe up the blood, and once he feels the tender scabs already forming beneath his fingers he puts his shirt back on.

The steady hum of the fans provide a soothing ambiance. Red rests his head against the cool wall as he takes deep breaths of clean air and considers the training so far.

The next step is to test and see if the click and command would get Charmander to produce smoke in reaction to a less obvious threat. If so, he would reinforce that, and then wean him off the threats altogether until he responds just to the command and click, and finally just the command alone. He has to work on the “Stop” command too… maybe such an internal activity isn’t so easy for Charmander to stop on command, or maybe it takes a few seconds for the smoke to stop being produced even after Charmander responds to the command. A delay like that would make it much harder to judge the progress of the training…

“Hey, you alright?”

Red snaps out of a light doze to see the auburn haired girl standing in the doorway. He hadn’t heard it open over the fans. “Hi. Yeah, I’m fine, thanks. Just tired.”

“Ah, okay. I was walking by and just saw a sprawled pair of legs.”

Red smiles. “Taking a quick rest. All finished with your pokemon?”

“Yeah, we’re headed to bed. Long day tomorrow.” She notices the spots of blood on his shirt. “You sure you’re okay?”

“Positive. Just scared my pokemon a bit, that’s all. He didn’t mean it.”

She nods. “We’ve all been there. It’s something of a rite of passage, and happens all the time when teaching something new. Just be glad it wasn’t more serious.”

Red remembers the ease with which she dodged away from her pokemon’s attack, and wonders how often she’d been too slow. “What about you, were you teaching your butterfree something new, or just practicing?”

There’s the briefest of pauses before she says “Just practicing,” and Red feels a stab of annoyance. Some of the biggest arguments he’d gotten into with Blue had been about competitive trainer’s habit of secrecy. Most are loath to share the methodology behind the amazing feats their pokemon perform, each unique insight or training strategy they reveal being one less advantage against potential rivals. It’s partly why they’re often looked down on by other trainers, especially academics, and why Gym Leaders are so respected in contrast for opening their doors to teach what helped them become so skilled.

“Sorry, that was rude of me,” Red says into the awkward silence. He rubs his eyes, still irritated from the smog. “Like I said, I’m a bit tired.”

She steps into the room and leans against the door as it closes. “It’s alright. Even at one in the morning it’s silly to expect complete privacy in a place with glass doors.”

“Ah shit, it’s already that late?” Red checks the time himself to see how far off she’s rounding from, and sees it’s 1:14 AM.

“You have an early morning too?”

“That was the plan.”

“Better head back up then.”

He considers it. Postponing the training until tomorrow probably wouldn’t hurt, they’re likely to spend most of it in the city anyway…

Eventually he shakes his head. “I want to finish up first.”

She raises a brow and folds her hands behind her back, resting against them. “Something big going on tomorrow?”

“Not really.”

“Why the rush then?”

Red considers the question a moment. “If I said ‘optimism bias,’ would you understand what that meant?”

“Not really,” she says. “I mean I know what optimism is, and I know what a bias is…”

Red scratches his hair beneath his hat, then takes it off and turns it between his hands as he organizes his thoughts. “Okay well, basically, studies in psychology have shown that people tend to be overly optimistic about things involving themselves.”

“Like what?”

“Like this training I was doing. Part of optimism bias is something called the ‘planning fallacy.’ Experiments show people usually underestimate the time and cost involved in a task they need to complete, and assume the best results.”

She smiles. “I’m a bit guilty of that myself.”

“We all are. Optimism bias affects more than just things we plan for; we also underestimate how dangerous life can be for ourselves. I walked here with a couple friends from Pallet Town yesterday, and within a few hours we were attacked by a large group of rattata.”

The girl’s eyes widen a bit. “How large?”

“Eight, I think.”

She whistles. “Good thing there were three of you.”

“Yeah. We knew that sort of thing could happen, even on the main roads where most dangerous pokemon have been cleared away or chased off. But it was still a shock to experience it, even as our training kicked in.”

“You didn’t use any repellent?”

“We didn’t think we’d need to. The odds of something dangerous happening our first day out just seemed so unlikely. But if someone had asked me whether someone else might have a dangerous encounter their first day of traveling, I’d say it doesn’t matter if it’s their first day or their hundredth, the statistics are the statistics.”

The young woman is quiet for a moment. One hand absently tucks some hair behind her ear as it’s displaced by the overhead fans. “What about Tier 3 threats? People worry about those all the time, even though the odds of them dying to one are really low compared to some more common dangers.”

Red nods. “There are some exceptions, mostly because of heuristics that fool our pattern seeking minds. We don’t tend to hear about every person that dies on the road because it happens fairly often, all things considered, and are quiet tragedies. Region-wide news rarely cover them, unless something unique was involved. But because Tier 3 threats are so rare and visually stunning, and so many people die all at once…”

“Yeah. It makes a big impression.”

“Right. And that’s doubled by the huge media exposure they get. In general, we just don’t consider ourselves subject to the same statistical probabilities everyone else is. If asked, we’d probably never say something so egotistical, but by and large, we get worried about things that likely won’t harm us, and it takes careful attention and diligence to consider what likely will.”

She looks thoughtful. “And we spend millions to try and stop Tier 3 threats…”

“Yeah. We could be spending that money to build more ranger outposts, set up more sensors along major roads. It would probably save more lives per dollar spent.” He sees her cover her mouth as she yawns, which sets off his own, jaw cracking. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to start soapboxing. I tend to talk a lot when I’m tired.”

She’s looking at him with a slight frown. “How old are you, anyway?”

“I’ll be twelve next month.”

“Just started training?”

He nods. “Got my first pokemon yesterday.”

“Yesterday? You don’t sound like most newbies.”

“Less stupid, I hope?”

She smiles. “Less dewy eyed. Stupid’s a bit harder to judge, but exhausting yourself to get a bit of extra training in isn’t particularly smart.”

Red grins. “Future Me might be irritated at Present Me for not getting enough sleep, but he can sleep in if he really needs to. I’d rather Future Me be a bit tired and irritated, even with the potential negatives that entails, than risk him being as unprepared for a dangerous situation as Past Me was.”

“Do you always refer to your future and past selves as different people?”

“Out loud? Only when I’m—”

“Tired,” they say together, and laugh.

“So how are you supposed to fight this bias? Just be more negative all the time?”

“Well, that might help in some cases, but could also make you too pessimistic in others. For planning fallacy the best way to predict how much time something will actually take is to figure out how long it took you to do something similar in the past. But—”

“This is your first time doing anything like this. What about how long others took?”

“That’s the next best thing, but it varies wildly for pokemon based on their age and experience, and the trainers’ skill and experience… the estimates I saw for Smokescreen varied between an hour and ten.”

She chuckles. “So you assumed it would take an hour.”

“Hoped, yeah.” Red stretches his arms, then covers a yawn and forces himself to his feet before exhaustion overtakes him completely. “Whatever tomorrow brings, I want to be ready for it, and once I’ve thought of a way to be, I can’t just ignore it. Leaving an optimization task unfinished is like leaving a splinter in my toe. It might not bother me constantly, but every time I’m reminded it’ll be just as frustrating as the first time, and if I’m in a situation where I need to run, I’ll really regret not just taking it out when I could.”

She watches him thoughtfully as he gets a crick out of his neck. “Well, I guess I’ll reserve judgement until we see how well that works for you.” She smiles and extends a hand. “I’m Amy.”

He shakes it. “Red. Nice to meet you.”

“You too. Good luck with the training, and hope you get some sleep eventually.”

He smiles. “Me too. Have a good night!”

She waves and closes the door behind her. Red turns off the fans, and the sudden silence is almost tangible.

First things first. Red goes to the supply closet and digs past the remaining pokedoll to examine the other supplies. Rope, target posters, water canisters for a spray, a firesuit… There. Red pulls a gas mask from its hook and straps it onto his face.

It’s a clear plastic cover that seals everything from his forehead to his chin, and cleanses the air through filters on the sides. He breathes experimentally through it a few times, then takes it off so it dangles from his neck. He’d considered putting it on before, but didn’t want anything that might distort his voice and make it harder for Charmander to recognize commands. Now that he knows just how irritating the smog is though, it’s clearly the lesser of two evils, since choking and coughing don’t make his speech particularly clear either.

Unfortunately that’s about all that’s useful in here. Red puts two of the pokedolls back in the closet, then leaves the training room to examine the others.

The door to the right of his has a symbol of a fist above it, and he enters out of curiosity. The walls are heavily padded, and the floor is a soft mat, firm beneath the feet, but absorbent to reduce injury from falls. He goes to the supply closet and sees the more intricate pokedoll that swivels when struck to deliver a counter blow, as well as punching bags, fighting gloves, helmets, and body padding.

Red returns to the hallway and keeps searching, checking each new type of room to see what they’re like. One has a swimming pool in it, another a soft dirt floor. Occasionally he finds something in their supply rooms that might be handy for training his charmander or rattata, but for the moment there’s nothing that suits his needs.

Frustrated, he goes to the end of the training rooms and follows the directory to the help desk. A blond guy that looks to be in his mid twenties is sitting with his feet propped up, watching a screen. Red glances at it and sees an ongoing Indigo League match. Considering the time it’s probably a recording, but the blond seems riveted.

The battling trainers are swapping pokemon so fast that it’s hard to follow what happens. He sees a rapidash charge at a pinsir, which is replaced by a feraligatr. The rapidash is withdrawn before a blast of water can hit it, and a blink later there’s an umbreon in its place that shrugs off the deluge before it sends a pulse of darkness back. Feraligatr gets swapped for a hitmonlee that dashes through the darkness unfazed and leaps forward, foot outstretched. Umbreon vanishes in another flash of light just as hitmonlee jumps, and a pidgeot soars safely out of the hitmonlee’s way, then dives as it lands and rakes it with its talons.

“Excuse me,” Red says during the battle’s lull as hitmonlee is withdrawn, a point awarded to the pidgeot’s trainer.

The young man grunts, eyes on the screen.

“I need a mirror. Is there one available?”

“Bathroom,” the blond says, and points without looking.

Red stifles his annoyance. “I mean for training.”

“Training supplies are in the closets.” An ampharos appears to deal with the pidgeot, bulbs glowing with electric charge. Before it can get a bolt off the flying type is withdrawn, the flash overlapping with the replacement pokemon being sent out. By the time its ball rockets back to be caught by its trainer, she has already clipped pidgeot’s pokeball to her belt and replaced it with yet another. Regulations vary between regions, but the Indigo League allows no more than 1.6 seconds to pass without having a pokemon on the field; this trainer had just swapped pokemon and prepared a third in less than half that. Red remembers being awestruck the first time he saw the speed at which professional competitive trainers battle, making split second decisions one after the other while trying to predict two steps ahead of their opponents. Differences of philosophy aside, his admiration hasn’t faded much since.

“I know that, but there aren’t any in them,” Red says, tearing his gaze from the screen.

“Sorry.” The receptionist takes a drink from his soda can. As far as Red can tell, he still hasn’t so much as glanced at him.

Red feels his exhaustion fading as his blood pressure rises. He takes a deep breath, then lets it out. The cheap desk placard says “Mitchell,” and he puts on his most friendly, but forceful voice. “Can you pause that for a moment please, Mitchell?”

Mitchell sighs and stops the recording before turning to him at last, boredom giving way to irritation. “What do you want kid? I told you, the supplies are in the closets.”

“Sorry, I’m a little tired, and this is my first time at a Trainer House.” Making enemies isn’t going to help him, and he doesn’t have time to waste if he wants to get any sleep tonight. “What match was that? It looked pretty intense.”

After a moment Mitchell’s frown softens a bit, and he glances at the screen. “That was Alicorn’s last Summer Qualifiers from earlier tonight. She’s headed to Johto next week.”

Red vaguely remembers Blue mentioning an “Alicorn” once or twice. Something about her ability to adapt strategies on the fly and respond to new information… Red props his elbows on the counter. “Cool. I heard she has a great meta game.”

Mitchell nods. “Definitely top percent material. You see her match against Blaine last month?”

“No, I guess I missed that one.”

“Oh man, that was intense. You gotta check that out.”

“Noted.” Red glances around at the cluttered desk. “So you work here all night?”

“When I draw the short straw.”

“Must be boring.”

“Eh. Some nights go quicker than others.” Mitchell scratches the stubble on his jaw. “So what were you looking for again?”

“I need something that will let me see my pokemon without him seeing me.”

“Hmm. We’ve got observation rooms with a one way mirror.”

“I’d prefer being in the same room. Maybe a mirror and something to attach it to the ceiling?”

“Ah. Well I don’t think we have anything like that. What do you need it for?”

Red sighs. “I’m training my charmander to put up a smokescreen on command, but they need to be afraid to do it. I want to trigger it in different ways so he’s used to responding to it during emotions other than feelings of helplessness, so was thinking of hiding behind a pokedoll, throwing charmander’s ball to the other side of it, then shaking the doll and yelling to surprise him into emitting the smoke, which I’d then reinforce. But I can’t see him if I’m behind the pokedoll, so I won’t know when to reinforce his behavior, and if I pop my head out to look he’ll see me. So I figure I’ll stick a mirror on the roof and use that, since he’s not likely to look up.” Red sees Mitchell’s skeptical look. “What? You don’t think it will work?”

“Well, work or not, it’s pretty much the most convoluted way to go about it that I can imagine. Why does it matter if he sees you?”

“He’s really protective. I think if he sees me behind the pokedoll he’ll just think I’m in danger and attack.” Red shrugs. “I guess I’ll test it just to be sure, since I can’t get a mirror. Thanks anyway.”

“Well hold on there, you won’t need the mirror if you’ve got someone else to do the shaking.”

Red blinks as Mitchell gets up and walks around the counter, placing a “Be right back” sign up. “Are you volunteering?”

“Sure, my butt’s getting sore anyway.”

“Hey, thanks!”

“No prob. Shouldn’t take long.”

Red frowns. “Actually, that’s what I thought, but there’s an aspect of optimism bias called the planning fallacy-”

“Yeah, yeah,” Mitchell says, already heading toward the training rooms. “Come on, let’s go scare the smoke out of your pokemon.”

Red sighs and follows. Mitchell is clearly looking for an excuse to do something more exciting than sit at his desk, but Red doesn’t want to get the guy in trouble. It’ll be easier with help, he reasons. Another hour at most. Hour and a half, maybe…

Red feels for his pokeball pouch, drawing another sphere out and enlarging it. There, just ahead between the trees… now! He throws, the ball missing by an inch as the mythical pokemon makes a sharp turn. He gasps in exasperation and exhaustion, pumping his legs harder to keep up as the mysterious creature pulls further ahead. He can’t let it get away, such a rare find has to be studied… he reaches for another ball and throws it, hitting a tree trunk. He tries to run faster, arms pumping at his sides as he leaps over fallen logs and ducks between thorny bushes-

“Hey snorlax, you getting up anytime today?”

Red opens his eyes a crack, momentarily nauseous from disorientation. He shifts his head to squint over his shoulder at Blue’s silhouette. His skull feels like it’s full of cotton, and his thoughts crawl over each word one by one until he can comprehend them all together. “Mphre… time…?”

“Almost eight.”

It takes Red a full second to subtract four from eight to calculate how long he slept. He groans and rolls back over, pulling the blanket over his head.

“Hey! They’re about to serve breakfast in the mess. You don’t want any?”

A quick check with his hierarchy of needs pyramid confirms that “sleep” is etched much larger than “food” at the moment. “Mbbe later,” Red mutters, already drifting off back into his dream. The pokemon is so close he can almost make it out… four legged, and blue… or is it purple?

“Suit yourself. Guess I’ll just borrow this hat if you’re not using it.”

Alarm blows Red’s dream to fragments. He cranes his head over his shoulder again to see Blue walking out with his red and white cap on.

Red’s hierarchy pyramid pops up again, with HAT now overlaid at an angle across every level.

“Ngh!” Red tries to roll out of bed and only succeeds in turning over, his arm making a weak throwing gesture to capture the thieving demon as he walks toward the door. “…back,” Red wheezes, searching blearily around the bed for a pokeball.

“I’ll save a plate for you!”

Exhaustion overcomes his outrage, and Red’s eyelids slip back down, arm trailing over the edge of the bed as he drifts back to sleep.

Dammit, Past Red…

Laura Verres ends the call with her son and puts her phone away, gaze distant and a slight furrow in her brow. After a moment the oven chimes, and she goes to extract the roast fearow she’d prepared. Some final garnishing, a light sheen of sauce, and she puts it on a serving platter. She lifts the plate carefully and places the whole thing in the bottom half of a dull metal box. After closing and latching the lid, she stands back and takes a Container from her pocket.

Resembling a plain grey pokeball but with more buttons and a small display screen on top, the Container takes a moment to scan the box as she points the lens at it. When the ball makes a ding sound, she lightly tosses it underhand. It approaches the box containing the roasted fearow, opens and draws in the whole thing, contents and all. The Container falls to the table with a metal clink, and begins to roll toward the edge.

She stops it before it falls and heads upstairs to change, absently tucking the ball in a nook near the front door along the way.

If she doesn’t let herself dwell on it, she can almost imagine that Red is just over at a friend’s house, or out camping with Blue. Less than a day, and the house already feels abandoned. Sounds seem to echo in the silence, the walls hollow and fragile. She knows it’s all in her mind, but she can’t help feeling like a caretaker, getting ready to cover the furniture, draw the curtains, and lock the door on her way out.

When Red had originally approached her about becoming a trainer, it had taken all her willpower to smile and be encouraging. She was so relieved to see his excitement about becoming a pokemon professor… so relieved to see him excited about anything. After Tom’s death, a listless depression had kept him lying in bed all day, reading book after book or simply staring at the ceiling.

Laura was willing to endure anything to keep him from returning to such despair. Tom had lived his life following his passions and doing what he felt was right, even if it was dangerous. She couldn’t let her fears stop Red from finding his own calling in life.

And now that he doesn’t need her at home, she can return to hers.

Once she’s ready, she goes back downstairs and puts the sphere containing the roast fearow into her purse, along with a canister of pokemon repellant. It’s a ten minute walk to the Oaks’ residence, and the breeze is cool as it comes from the bay to the south, tugging at her hair and dress. She passes a handful of neighbors along the way, most walking their pokemon.

“Hello Laura.” She turns to see Mrs. Kiri out with her raticate. The old pokemon’s fur is more gray than gold, and Laura smiles as he sniffs at her familiar scent and rubs against her ankles.

“Hello Ana, hello Swift.” She crouches down to scratch behind the veteran’s notched ear. Not so swift as he once was, Ana’s raticate is a town champion, having fought off a number of particularly vicious wild pokemon over the years. The rodent’s eyes slip half-closed, and he stretches beneath her touch.

“Going for a walk?” Ana asks.

“Off for dinner with the Oaks, actually.”

“Splendid. Tell them I say hi, and thank Daisy again for me would you? Swift’s leg is barely troubling him anymore.”

“I will. Have a good night!”

“You too.” The veteran trainer walks past, and a moment later her pokemon scurries after her, barely favoring the hind leg that had almost been bitten off by a nidorino. Laura watches them fade into the dark, then walks on, enjoying the night air. Though she’d grown up in Celadon, she rarely misses the crowds and excitement of cities anymore. A few years in Pallet and she’d grown to love the quiet nights and star filled skies of the small town. Adapting back to city life would take some getting used to.

Laura had been a writer and journalist before marrying. She still occasionally writes editorial pieces for the local paper, but it’s not the same as the in-depth reporting she used to do. Forming relationships with people at all levels in society, learning how to ask the right questions, find the important, hidden stories… It had been an exciting life, shining a light on corruption or an aspect of the human experience few considered.

And it’s how she met Tom. The Celadon Herald was doing a story on the Rangers, a deeper look into the kinds of men and women who dedicated their lives to patrolling the wilds and defending others. Each of them had been passionate and brave, but Tom had a quiet intensity to him that was hard to forget.

Laura waits at an intersection for a car to pass, then crosses the street, glancing at the pokemon lab in the distance. Its lights are mostly off, but it still stands out as the heart of the town. She would miss Pallet and her friends here, but she knows she’ll come back some day.

She arrives at the Oak residence, a simple two story house much like her own. Far less ostentatious than one might expect of the eminent pokemon expert in Kanto, but Laura knows that Sam would spend most nights at the lab if not for his granddaughter. She rings the bell, and the professor opens it a moment later.

“Laura, come on in!”

She smiles. “Hi Sam.” She hugs the man who has been like a second father to her, then follows him toward the dining room. She and Marian Oak had been inseparable since they were children. The loss of his daughter and son-in-law a few years after Blue’s birth had been a shared tragedy, and years later he and his grandchildren had been there for her and Red when Tom had died.

Blue’s older sister enters from the kitchen carrying some salad. “Hello, Daisy.”

“Hey Aunt Laura!” Daisy puts the bowl to the table. “You’re just in time, everything’s ready. Got the main course?”

“I do.” She takes out the Container and aims it at an empty area of the dining room floor. She braces her arm, then presses a button on the side. The silver sphere scans the space in front of it, then opens with an explosion of light and sound that ends with the box lying on the floor.

Daisy takes the top off, and breathes deep as the scent fills the room. “Mm. Smells delicious!” She lifts the plate and puts it on the table, steam still rising from the cooked meat. “Everyone hungry?”

The next few minutes are spent enthusiastically digging in, punctuated by the occasional compliment of a dish. Once everyone has finished their first serving and begins to slow down, Laura turns to Daisy. “Ana says hello, and thanks again.”

Daisy smiles. “Swift’s recovering alright?”

“I saw him on the way here. He looked great.”

“I’m glad. I’ve been putting off new clients to get Moonlight ready for the contest in a couple months, but I had to make an exception in his case.”

“Oh? How’s she doing?”

“I’ll bring her out and show you after we eat!”

Sam’s voice is proud as he spoons more rice onto his plate. “I think they’re going to reach Master Rank this year.”

Daisy snorts. “Maybe if you bribe the judges.”

“Daisy! I would never abuse my long and deep friendship with the heads of the Pokemon Coordinator Contest to—”

“Yeah, yeah. Don’t try that innocent tone with me: I still remember when you just had a ‘friendly chat’ with Leader Erika on the week of my birthday, and what a surprise, she happens to be in town that day!”

“It’s hardly surprising if one of my old students wants to visit me now and again.”

“And the time when we went to Saffron for Blue’s birthday, where you chose the one hotel and room that the President of Silph happened to be staying next door to…”

“Well if you’re going to turn every coincidental—”

“And the time I got sick for a week and couldn’t go to school, and who should come to teach me at home but Mistress Agatha of the Elite Four…

Laura is grinning as Sam raises an indignant chin. “Surely a loving grandfather can speak of his worries and troubles to—”

“My point,” Daisy says, spearing a chunk of fearow with her fork. “Is that you seem to know just about everyone somehow, and if I ever find out that you’ve used your influence to give me an unfair advantage in the region-wide contest to test my skills as a pokemon coordinator, thus cheating me out of a fair assessment and cheating everyone else in the contest of theirs, I’ll wait till you’re sleeping one night and mail all your pokemon to Professor Elm. Pass the rice please.”

The professor hmphs, but passes the bowl with a slight smile. “Bring home even third place and people will come all the way from Johto to learn under you.”

“Grandpa—”

“So, Laura!” Sam says, turning to her. “I’ve noticed pokedex registrations from Red, Blue and Leaf. It looks like all their preparation is paying off. Have you heard from them?”

“Yes, less than an hour ago. They’re doing fine, arrived in Viridian with at least one new pokemon each.”

“Fantastic.”

Daisy is watching Laura. “How are you holding up?”

Laura takes a drink, then puts on a smile. “Not bad. I’m thinking of going back to work, actually.”

Sam raises a brow. “Really? Is Tom’s pension…”

“No, that’s all fine. It’s for me, mostly.”

“I think it’s a great idea,” Daisy says. “I always enjoy reading your articles. Is there something specific you want to write about?”

“A number of things, actually. I’ve never really stopped wanting to write about current events, I’ve just had a more limited ability to investigate them.”

“What do you think you’ll start with?”

“Something easy, I think. Maybe a look into those recent accusations of sexual harassment by employees at Silph.”

Daisy grins. “Oh yeah, no big deal, just going to start off by taking on the biggest company in Kanto.”

Laura scrapes the last bit of food from her plate. “Maybe I’ll throw in some pieces on gardening,” she says, and Daisy laughs. “In all seriousness though, it’s been hard to listen and watch what’s been going on in the region at times, and not do or say something about it.”

Daisy nods. “We’re pretty isolated here.”

“Not for long,” Sam says.

“What do you mean?”

Laura sips from her glass. “The town council is already thinking of incorporation, and after that it’s just a hop and a skip till we’re a proper city, with our own mayor and gym and everything.”

Daisy absorbs this for a moment. “That would be quite a big change…”

“That’s an understatement,” the professor says. He stands and begins clearing the table once it’s evident everyone is done eating. “You were only five when we first moved here, so you might not remember how different it is today compared to back then, but it’s barely recognizable as the same place. Incorporation would be an even bigger shift.”

“Is it because of the lab?”

“It’s been pulling people and money here for over a decade now, and there’s no sign that will stop anytime soon.”

Daisy and Laura join him in bringing things to the kitchen, and they carry the conversation to the kitchen, where Daisy begins to make some tea as Sam washes the dishes. Laura is waved off when she tries to help, so she and Daisy move to the living room. Daisy turns on the news, and the low volume and sound of running water in the kitchen are a soothing ambiance in the background as they talk.

“—reflect the noticeable drop in prices. Center administrators cite increased efficiency, mostly from the recently implemented standardized practices. When polled, over 80% support expanding the trainer subsidies. Licensing officials have yet to comment—“

“Is our center in that 80%?” Laura asks.

Daisy sighs as she pours them two cups of tea. “Some are, but not enough. Too few trainers pass through Pallet, and enough neighbors grumble about the tax as it is.”

“Until it’s their pokemon that’s hurt.”

“—reported that a swarm of tentacool have been spotted near Cinnabar Island, estimated to pass by the end of the week. Travelers should be aware that such swarms can move at surprising speeds, and are advised to use naval transport to and from the island until the danger is past.”

The screen shows a “cloud” of small red spheres bobbing in the ocean, each pair belonging to a separate poisonous jellyfish. Laura feels an involuntary shudder of revulsion. “So many…”

Daisy makes a face. “Hope they don’t come up here and ruin our beach. The surfing contest is next week.”

Mental images of some trainer and their pokemon caught in such a massive swarm makes Laura feel sick. Soon she’s seeing Red or Blue’s face in every scenario. She turns away from the television. “Weren’t you going to show me what Moonlight can do now?”

“Oh, right!” Daisy goes to the cubby by the door and brings back a greatball, its blue lid marked with a white sphere between its red ridges. With a hard throw, the ball zips through the air, appearing for a moment as though it will crash through a window: then it flies over the empty space of the living room, and discharges a clefairy onto the carpet.

Daisy catches the ball as it rockets back at her. “Hey there Moonlight! Come say hi to Aunt Laura!”

The pink, shy pokemon makes a light trilling sound, and flutters her small wings as she hops toward them, cuddling into Daisy’s arms. The teen brings her pokemon to Laura, who rubs the fluff of hair between the clefairy’s ears.

“—continues to enjoy its lowest crime rate since Leader Koga became head of the gym. Koga has commended the local police for their efforts, deflecting any implications that he might be partially responsible—“

Daisy strokes the pokemon’s tail, then smiles at Laura. “Remember that big debate grandpa was in last year, where the professors were all arguing theories on how the ‘Metronome’ ability works?”

“Vaguely. My main takeaway was that we still don’t quite understand how certain pokemon like clefairy get their energy. Wasn’t there something about the variation in their powers?”

“Right. Instead of just being able to manipulate electricity or temperature, clefairy, who don’t normally seem to be capable of such things, have been observed in rare circumstances displaying wildly different powers. People used to think it depended on the clefairy, but over years of consistent study they observed the same clefairy running the gamut of different abilities.”

“But it’s still completely random as far as we can tell?”

Daisy smiles. “Not completely. I think I’ve figured out how to influence what power they exhibit.”

Laura blinks. “How?”

“Come outside, I’ll show you. It’s about time for our practice session anyway.”

They leave their tea, and Daisy stops at the kitchen to grab a couple water bottles before they go out. Moonlight sings a brief, sweet melody, and flutters from Daisy’s arms into the wide grassy yard in front of the Oak residence. She begins an odd, hopping dance in a circle while gazing up at the moon.

“So most trainers, if they have a pokemon like clefairy, use the command ‘Metronome’ to try and trigger their mysterious powers. If the pokemon is trained well, they’ll go through the motions, but it’s a total gamble: no matter how well trained, it seems to do nothing as often as not, and even if it does something, there’s no way to prevent it from, say, shooting a bolt of lightning at a ground pokemon, or bathing a rock pokemon in fire.”

As Daisy talks, she begins to mimic Moonlight’s movements. Soon the pokemon and human are synchronized, hopping up and down from one foot to the other, fingers raised upward.

Laura grins, covering her mouth to hide it. Daisy looks utterly ridiculous, but the teen seems unselfconscious, completely absorbed in bonding with her pokemon. While not all pokemon coordinators are as good at battling as trainers, they do seem to have a better affinity on average with pokemon’s moods and behavior, which helps them enormously in the medical or training fields.

Once Laura is sure she won’t start giggling, she uncovers her mouth. “Is this what influences it? The dancing?”

“No, I’m just getting her in the mood… any second now…”

Moonlight starts to sing. Her voice is low, but haunting, the high, sweet tune carrying through the still night air.

And once she has the hang of the melody, Daisy begins to sing too.

Laura sucks in a breath, staring. She had heard Daisy sing before, but never like this. The teenager must have been practicing intensely: her tone and pitch are carefully controlled to match the pokemon’s, the two harmonizing beautifully.

And it doesn’t settle there: soon the melody shifts, Moonlight always leading at first. Daisy barely misses a note each time however, and eventually she begins the first shift herself, and the pokemon follows her, the two weaving a song of simple joy and hope and longing.

For what is surely only a couple minutes, but feels far longer, Laura merely watches and listens as the pokemon and human show the depth of their bond beneath the stars and moon. She feels as though she’s witnessing something primal and ancient, even as it’s new and incredible to her.

Abruptly, Daisy lowers one arm and points into the darkness. For the first time, a word enters the melody, and that word is “Met-ro-nome.” Each syllable seems carefully, delicately pronounced, so that it fits the music.

And in response, the clefairy’s arms begin to sway back and forth, and facing the direction her trainer is pointing, Moonlight opens her mouth wide… and emits a howling gale of wind.

When it dies down, the song is still going, and Daisy says it again, with the same deliberate focus: “Met-ro-nome.”

Moonlight completes its revolution in the small circle she and her trainer form, and then turns again and sways her fingers back and forth through the air. For a brief moment, nothing happens, and then, on the clefairy’s next hop, the ground suddenly bucks, and a cone of rock juts outward from the ground beneath the pokemon.

Again, the song continues, and again the word: “Met-ro-nome.”

The gust of wind returns, making the grass rustle and tear free.

Daisy has been maintaining the same song for almost a minute now, face glistening with sweat. A few seconds later: “Metr-ro-nome.”

A bolt of electricity briefly illuminates Moonlight and arcs off into the sky where Daisy is pointing.

Again: “Metr-ro-nome.” Nothing seems to happen.

Still the song, and again: “Metr-ro-nome.” The leaves of grass around Moonlight abruptly begins to grow, one inch, two, three inches, flowers blooming among them.

A few seconds of singing, and again: “Metr-ro-nome.” The gust of wind returns.

And again: “Metr-ro-nome.” For the second time in a row, the wind.

Suddenly Daisy’s dancing slows, and in the space of a blink Moonlight’s does too. The song continues for a few seconds more, dwindles, then peters off, both pokemon and human seeming to end near the same instant and coming to a standstill.

Daisy drops to the ground, and Moonlight falls back, her curling, fluffy tail lying limp. Both are breathing hard, eyes closed as they recover.

It takes Laura a moment to recover as well, and when she does she breaks into applause. “Oh Daisy! That was incredible! You too Moonlight, my goodness… how long have you been hiding such an amazing talent? You could be stars!”

Daisy smiles, voice a bit weak. “Thanks Aunt Laura.” She opens one of the water bottles, then helps Moonlight drink some before taking a swallow herself. “It took me a year to even match Moonlight’s melody. But did you see? She did it! Four times out of seven, the same ability! That’s got to be a record, and twice in a row at the end? I’ve been trying to get her to do that for a month! I’ve never heard of a clefairy doing that before, and neither has grandpa.”

Laura speaks slowly. “It’s the tone, isn’t it? The tone you pronounce the command in, how much emphasis on which syllables…”

Daisy nods. “In the wild, pokemon like clefairy and togepi only exhibit these surprising and random abilities on rare occasions, always while waving their arms and singing. Not always the same song, but not always completely different either. To an untrained ear, there seemed to be no correlation, and most people think that the arm waving is what’s important. Maybe it still is in its own way, I’m not sure.”

“But you found a tone that’s linked to a specific power,” Laura marvels. “Even more, you can duplicate it!” Her wonder is renewed by the significance of what she just saw. She can’t wait to tell Red, and again feels the pang of his absence. It takes her by surprise, and she realizes she had been completely absorbed in the music and dance, the first thing to have completely taken her mind off Red’s leaving all day.

Daisy breathes deep and takes a long drink from the second water bottle before letting Moonlight finish it off. The pokemon is looking somewhat recovered, and Daisy gets to her feet. “I’m sure others have considered it, but as far as I know no one’s practiced and experimented long enough to isolate one. Most trainers can get their pokemon to link the command with the action of swaying and singing, but volume, pitch, emphasis and lengths of which syllables and consonants… it’s hard to control so exactly, and the possibilities are endless. The slightest change seems to bring about a wholly different power.”

“Have you tried using a recording device?”

Daisy grins. “First thing grandpa rushed off to grab as soon as we thought of it. Didn’t work, which almost made me give up then and there. But it seems like we need to build up to it every time, get in sync enough to get it just right. Even when we record it in the middle of the song, it doesn’t come out the same when we play it. Grandpa says something about the sound is different, but we haven’t had time to consult with an acoustics expert yet. Maybe we’ll figure it out after the competition.”

Laura nods. “I’m sure you will. Either way, it’s still pretty amazing.” She grins, feeling a burst of pride for her oldest friend’s daughter, overriding even the sadness that Marian isn’t around to see what kind of woman Daisy is growing up to be. Eyes stinging with sudden moisture, Laura folds the teen into a hug, one hand brushing at her eyes. “Congratulations, Daisy.”

“Aunt Laura, I’m all sweaty!”

“I couldn’t care less. I think Sam’s right, with an act like that, I can’t imagine any other coordinator getting a higher score in August. You’ll reach Master Rank for sure.”

Daisy hugs her back, voice a bit embarrassed, but determined. “Well, we’ll be trying our hardest, in any case.” She picks her pokemon up, and they head back toward the house. Laura wonders briefly what the Oaks are going to do about the spike of rock sticking out of their lawn, and whether the back yard is full of similar oddities.

When they enter the house, Laura is prepared to call out to Sam about how amazing his granddaughter is when she sees the professor standing behind a chair in the living room, staring at the television. The words die in her throat at the grim set of Sam’s face. She turns to the television, a cold shiver racing up her spine.

“What happened grandpa?”

“Shh!”

“—unexpected at this time of year. The low precipitation supercell is sweeping northward, and Rangers insist that it’s too early to tell if this is a precursor to an attack. Nevertheless, CoRRNet representatives stress that everyone should periodically review their city’s evacuation and defensive procedures as a matter of course. The most recent standard response protocols can be found online, at—“

The tension in the room is palpable, and Moonlight makes a low trilling noise. “Where was it?” Laura asks, stomach cramping slightly with fear.

Sam pours himself a cup of tea, still watching the television until the news anchor shifts to another story. He finally sits down, face troubled. “Near Pewter.”

Fingers of ice brush her racing heart. Her hands grip the back of the couch, knuckles white. “Sam… that’s where Red and Blue are traveling, they’re going north after Viridian—”

“Don’t worry, Laura. The storm is headed for the mountains, and they’ll have plenty of warning if it changes direction.”

Her pulse begins to slow back down, and she lets out a low breath. Daisy is quiet, still staring at the screen. Thinking of her parents, no doubt.

The loss of Marian Oak and her husband James had almost broken the Verres household, resulting in the biggest fight she and Tom ever had. He refused to quit his position as a Ranger when she asked him to, insisting that tragedies like that were exactly why he was needed. His passion for helping people had always been one of the major reasons she loved him, but at that moment grief and fear had been stronger than love. All she could think of was that she would lose him. That Red would have to grow up without his father, like Blue and Daisy and so many others.

She had never wished so hard to be wrong about something. In the end, the universe took no mind.

“So, did I hear singing outside?” Sam says, breaking her dark thoughts. He’s watching his granddaughter, who still has a faraway look in her eyes.

“Yes,” Laura says, forcing some cheer into her voice. “Daisy showed me something remarkable.”

“Hm?” Daisy blinks at them and seems to come back to herself. “Oh! I was showing Aunt Laura…” She smiles and sits down with Moonlight in her lap. “You missed it grandpa, Moonlight did the wind gust twice in a row!”

“That’s great!” Sam grins, and the dark mood recedes from the room a bit. He pours a new cup of tea for Daisy and Laura and hands it to them. “Tell me all about it.”

Laura sits down as she and Daisy explain what had happened. The rush of cheer they had brought inside doesn’t completely return, and each of them glances at the television perhaps a bit more often than they normally would, but the news remains relatively mundane for the rest of the night, and their conversation eventually shifts on to other, similarly lighthearted things.

The three talk late into the night until silences and yawns begin to lengthen the switches between topics. It’s almost midnight by the time the second pot of tea is cool, and Laura decides to head home before she falls asleep here. It’s tempting to sleep in a house with other people in it, but she wants to spend the night at home, if for no other reason than to prove to herself that it’s not a big deal. She’ll have to get used to it soon enough.

“Thanks for everything, Sam, Daisy,” she says as the teen retrieves her serving plate and places it back in its box. Laura withdraws it back into the Container and tucks the silver sphere away before putting on her shoes and coat.

“Goodnight, Aunty,” Daisy says, hugging her. “Feel free to come by anytime if you get lonely.”

Laura smiles and kisses her hair. “I will.”

Sam waits by the door, his pokeball belt on. “I’m going to walk her home, Daisy. Be back soon.” Laura gives Moonlight a farewell rub, then follows him out the door.

The town is dark and still, most inhabitants long since gone to bed. Laura wonders if Red is asleep. She can almost feel the empty echoes from her house, waiting for her, the way it seemed after Tom’s death, when Red was little more than a ghost in his room. Tom was often gone for weeks at a time on duty, but even when she felt his absence like a physical ache, he was never more than a phone call away. Now she can’t even call him to talk about their day, to just hear his voice. At least she can still call Red in the morning.

“When do you plan on leaving, Laura?”

She looks at the professor. “Not for a couple weeks at least. I need to get my affairs in order and talk to some people, maybe find an apartment, depending on what I end up doing.”

Sam nods, and is quiet again for awhile. When he speaks again his voice is low, almost as if he doesn’t want to be heard, though there’s no one around. “I don’t mean to impose, but I have a favor to ask.”

“Don’t be silly. What is it?”

“In the course of your investigations, whatever they may be and wherever they may take you, would you mind terribly keeping an ear out for any mention of a Dr. Fuji?”

Laura blinks in surprise. She wasn’t expecting something like that. “Of course. Is he a medical doctor?” She reaches absently for her notepad before remembering that she isn’t carrying one, hasn’t for years.

“Yes, among other things. He was—is—a biologist who specialized in genetics, and an old friend of mine.”

“Did something happen to him?”

Sam sighs. “I don’t know. We kept in touch until about ten years ago, when his responses began to slow. I tried contacting him numerous times during a particularly large stretch of silence. His eventual reply was rather curt: some new project was taking a lot of his attention, the specifics of which he never mentioned.

“It was the last I or anyone I know heard from him. I resigned myself to thinking he simply… faded away. Withdrew. He lost his daughter, almost fifteen years ago. Shortly afterward his wife left him. It made him more absorbed by his work than ever, and I guess I just assumed he finally ran out of whatever kept him going. I tried to get in contact with him, help if I could, but no one seemed to know where he went.”

Laura is silent as they walk. “What changed?” she finally asks.

“A rumor. Not even that. A suspicion, grown from disconnected bits of information noticed over the years. Random remarks in online forums. Old news reports. Offhand comments. Whispers in the dark.”

“Whispers of what?”

“Other scientists and engineers from every region who similarly faded from the public, most within the same span of years. I don’t know if anyone else made such a connection, or if it’s mere coincidence. There are enough conspiracy theorists on the net to make me think I’m being paranoid.”

Laura shakes her head. “Maybe. Maybe not. You can’t really know without looking, and it’s hard to look without knowing what you’re looking for. What are your theories?”

“Hardly anything as substantial as a ‘theory.’ Not even a hypothesis, I’m afraid.”

Laura smiles. “What are your best completely unscientific guesses?”

Sam raises a hand, fingers moving to tick off each one. “First, some top secret government or company research project. Perhaps they’re all alive and well, and merely in deep seclusion. Many seemed to be those who had few tethers to keep them in public life.”

“Sounds reasonable. We know there are a number of projects that have been hidden from the public eye, and not all for questionable reasons.”

“Perhaps not, though Fuji’s studies tended toward pokemon research. Assuming that’s what the project is about, the name ‘Oak’ was apparently not fit to be included.”

Laura chuckles. “I always knew you’d get around to developing an ego some day.”

Sam smiles slightly. “My second guess is foreign interests have been poaching them for their own purposes, and none of their absences are related at all. I may simply be falling to confirmation bias, and forgetting all the data that doesn’t fit the pattern I’ve already formed in my head.”

“That second part should be fairly easy to figure out, with some research.”

He nods. “I’ve done some looking, but far from extensive. And the third possibility I’ve seriously contemplated is perhaps the most frightening, the thought which makes me wish to be wrong, dismiss my suspicions as crackpot.”

Laura frowns. “I know you love being wrong, but not without good reason.”

“I want to be wrong, Laura, because if I’m right it would mean my friend is very likely dead or imprisoned, as are all the others who faded so similarly.”

“How?”

“An organization,” Sam says, voice quiet. “One that operates between regions, could identify and hire, kidnap or coerce multiple researchers and technicians into secret work that they have no intention of allowing the public to be aware of.”

Laura doesn’t laugh. She’s never known Sam to joke about something like this, nor would he bring it up if he were really as unsure as he claims. The night suddenly seems chiller than it had a moment before. She draws her coat tighter around her as they approach the path to her house, and begin walking up toward the light hanging over her door.

When they reach it Laura turns to face Sam. His salt and pepper hair is somewhat disheveled, a bit like the perpetual mess of his grandson’s, and his blue eyes and face are lined from a long and exciting life. Even without his lab coat, Professor Oak still looks every inch the deeply kind, extraordinarily intelligent man she’d known since childhood.

“I know,” Sam says in the silence. “I’m being a paranoid fool. It’s almost a relief to hear how ridiculous it sounds out loud.”

When she meets his gaze, the usual spark of boundless curiosity and enthusiasm isn’t there. Despite his words, his expression holds no levity, and Laura realizes he is offering her an out. Playing down his beliefs and self-deprecating, so she can dismiss his suspicions as overly imaginative without offending.

But he doesn’t believe they are. He’s as serious as she’s ever seen him, through tragedies shared time and again.

“I’ll keep an ear to the ground,” Laura says at last. “If I can manage it, I’ll keep both.”