Broken Things

Summary: Three teens are stuck together to catch pokemon for profit. Completing the island challenge along the way: optional. As they travel they must learn to deal with the world, each other, and themselves. Heavily real world inspired 'verse.

Content Warning
This is a story about not being okay. There will be attempts to recreate the language of downward spirals, suicidal ideation, eating disorders, , anxiety, and possibly other things. I will do my best to provide chapter warnings for chapters dealing explicitly with suicidal ideation. If there are other notices you would like me to add, feel free to ask.

Note on Representation
This story deals with analogues to real world groups, albeit through an alternate universe lens. I have personal experience with some, but definitely not all of the things this story deals with. I have tried to read enough to not make big mistakes in my knowledge gaps, but I'll probably screw up. Feel absolutely free to point out any portrayals that don't sit well or quite work. As a minor disclaimer, not all POV characters are terribly knowledgeable about things. There are some "mistakes" made that I know full well are mistakes. And also the usual "no character could possibly encompass all aspects of an identity" thing.


Rachel

8/1/2019

It’s always fascinating watching your espeon eat, even after seventeen years. He nudges a treat into place with the tip of his claw, steps back, and lifts the treat just a little bit into the air. Then he pulls back his whiskers and brings his mouth around it before swallowing it whole. No crumbs ever touch his fur.

With his food eaten, Espy levitates the crumbs off the desk and into the wastebasket. Then he stretches out, walks in a circle, and gracefully sits down with his tail outstretched and a paw on your hand.

{You’re tired.} he says.

“I could use a nap.”

{Mind tired.}

You pull up your schedule instead of giving him an answer.

Interview with The Battler at ten. That one shouldn’t be too much trouble; just gauge if they are planning to play hardball are not, and if they aren’t send them up to Chris.

New journey group initiation today. You should stop by that, scan for potential problems before they blow up in your face.

The governor’s having a fundraiser tonight and you’ll be there. He’s a nice man. Genuinely likes you. Has a tendency to talk a little too much when he’s lonely and just a little bit tipsy and thinks he can trust someone. And given the way that things seem to be going at home and in the polls, well, he’s very lonely and probably drinking a little more than he should. And it’s your job to be likeable and trustworthy. When the public thinks of your company, they should think of their beloved sports star and hero. When the investors, reporters and politicians do, they should think of the pretty blond girl who either kind-of-flirted with them in just the way they liked or who gave them the kind of compliments they needed. Put a pretty face on your operation so no one ever wants to peel off the surface and look beneath.

Between the meetings? Email. Hours of email. And maybe a quick nap, if you’re lucky.


Three firm knocks on the door.

“Miss Bell? Mr. Sanchez is here.”

“Send him in, Sheryl.”

The door opens and a tall, tanned man in an ill-fitting suit walks in. His eyes briefly glance around the office. You take note of what he pays attention to: the bed where Espy is sleeping, the bag of expensive food underneath, and the map of Alola with nearly three dozen pins in it—and to what he doesn’t: your framed degrees, the busy-but-not-sloppy amount of clutter on your desk, and the half-hidden cot in the back corner. A battler through and through. Probably disappointed that you don’t have trophies or a framed badge case.

“Hey. Manuel Sanchez. With The Battler.”

You stand up and shake his hand. His grip is a little too firm, but you’re just mature enough not to crush him back. As soon as you make eye contact a feeling flashes in the back of your mind and you know that he’s cheating on his pregnant wife.

Eh. Could be worse.

“Rachel Bell. Vice President of VStar.”

You both sit and he flicks out a notepad and a recorder. He turns the latter on without asking permission.

“Alright, so VStar.”

You smile, a little too wide, and tilt your head. “VStar,” you repeat in a high pitch. He’s a cheating bastard who doesn’t really care about the professional world. You can spin that to your advantage easily enough.

“So, uh, Rachel—can I call you Rachel?”

“Yup.”

“Right. What does VStar do? Just to make sure that I’m on base.”

“Of course.” You never stop smiling. “VStar helps fund trainers who might not have the means to complete an island challenge, or trainers who just finished an island challenge but can’t afford to keep all of their partners. We help them get rid of excess pokémon and give them to people who want them but can’t get one. Busy professionals and parents, the disabled, or just people who don’t have a team strong enough to go into the species’ natural habitat. Everyone wins.”

“Right, right. And how many users do you have?”

Not even bothering to follow up on that. Less diligent than even you were expecting.

“Depends on how you define ‘users,’ Manuel. Right now we have 166 trainers currently on their journey with the app. Not all of them are active users. Several hundred trainers traded their pokémon in last year, a few thousand purchased a pokémon through the app.”

“Okay.”

More notes. He doesn’t press into what your vague numbers mean. He’s not normally on the business beat, usually just does puff pieces on trainers in the Americas. Whatever excuse he has, he’s making this almost embarrassingly easy for you.

“So, Rachel, are you a trainer?”

“Espy,” you call.

Your espeon gently rises to his paws before moving from his climbing structure in the corner to your desk in a single, elegant leap. He walks
over to you and nuzzles your hand.

“I know the name’s basic, but come on, I was ten.”

Manuel laughs in a way that might be flirtatious appeasement or genuine amusement. Just on the border of being genuine. “I named my growlithe ‘Fuego’ back in the day, so I can’t really talk.”

{Espy, can you pay attention to him?} you ask telepathically.

{Treat?} he shoots back, mentally.

{Later. You just had one.}

Satisfied, Espy walks across the desk and looks at Manuel expectantly. He starts to rub Espy’s ears without asking your permission. Espy recoils slightly and his tail flicks in disgust. Espeon aren’t that fragile, but they’re masters at feigning injury if it gets them more treats.

“You bring your pokémon to the office?”

“Of course. We are a pokémon company, after all.”

Espy starts to turn away. Manuel rubs a hand over the pokémon’s back as he leaves.

{Two treats,} you signal.

Espy turns back around.

“How long have you had her?” he asks.

You don’t bother to correct the gender. Espy doesn’t really care, and most people think of all espeon as female. “Since I was ten.”

“I meant how many years?”

You crack your smile a little wider. “Since I was ten.”

It takes him a half second, but he starts to laugh and you join. You’re pretty sure he’s more interested in you and your body than the company right now.

“Is she your only pokémon?”

You shake your head. “I also raise an alakazam. But he’s moving up in the years and doesn’t really like coming to the office.”

His eyes widen. Any half decent pokémon journalist know what alakzam ownership means. It’s why you aren’t going to replace Allen when he dies.

“So, you’re psychic?”

You nod. “Yeah.”

“You in my mind right now?” he asks with a raised eyebrow.

“I’m not that kind of psychic,” you say. Even though you essentially are that kind of psychic. But you really don’t think he’d appreciate it if you went into the details of the SIPAA, General and Specific Forms.

He relaxes. A lot. So much that he consciously corrects it by stiffening a little.

“What kind of psychic are you?” he asks.

You really doubt this is returning to the company, which is probably for the best. He clearly doesn’t have an interest in it anyway.

“Precognition. Get about a half second warning before I get physically hurt.”

“Huh. Take it you’ve never been in a car crash?”

You raise an eyebrow as if telling him off. “No, but that’s because I’m an excellent driver. Not because I’m a psychic. Really just means that I never stub my toe.”

“Oh.” He half-frowns. The kind that’s more unconscious than not. “Thought it’d be more useful.”

“It lets me train my alakazam,” you suggest.

“Yeah. I guess. You battle with them?”

“On the weekends. Chris likes his lieutenants to be halfway decent in a fight.”

He perks up at the casual mention of your boss. Because of course he does. You’re a pretty girl with a brain quirk and an espeon. Chris Foster? He’s the eight-time-running United States champion, highest ranked trainer in the world, tamer of victini, and at least the third biggest pain in the ass in Alola.

Yeah. Seeing that light in his eyes, you doubt Chris can mess things up too much. Maybe Manuel would even be impressed by the man behind the curtain.

“You know, I think I can set up an interview with him.”

“Really? I had been told that he’s too busy.”

“Of course, but you’re The Battler. I’m sure he can find the time.”

You don’t doubt that. Journalists build up the trainers into semi-divine heroes in the public eye and then revel in the attention they get from the celebrities they created. No one benefits from the cycle breaking. You still have to screen these interviews, in case hell freezes over and The Battler decides to blaspheme their gods.

You’re still reeling from a Hau’oli Tribune letter to the editor last month calling VStar “Evil Incorporated.” It had taken you two hours on the phone with Chris to talk him down from making that the official name of the company.


It’s an hour into orientation. Sometimes you’ll stay to watch the full thing, make sure that you know what’s being taught and how. Saves you time when the wrong person leaks the wrong thing (that they remembered wrong) and you have to figure out what really happened before you can tell the press what pretty much happened.

First few hours are nothing important, anyway. Here’s a little about Alola and the island challenge. What are tents and why should you use one. Like your food? Try not to get it stolen. Budgeting could maybe be helpful. This predator lives in these places and here is how you avoid it. The basics of life on the trail, with or without VStar.

The sensitive stuff—payment methods and tables, how to stay within the letter of capture limit laws, corporate facilities and affiliates, mortality rates, advancement paths, mission assignments, legal duties to the company—that all gets crammed in at the end.

Room’s emptier than usual. Only eight initiates, most mid- to late-teens. It’s to be expected. October is a garbage month for starting a journey since it’s in the middle of a semester and right at the start of the rainy season. Most of your new trainers come to the April, May, and June sessions. The people who come in October are the over-eager ten-year-olds who can’t wait to get on the trail or teenagers who can’t stay in their home a second longer.

Group isn’t bored yet. Doesn’t pay you too much mind when you sit down in a corner chair. Half of them look at you for a moment before glancing back to the presentation. One girl’s eyes linger for a little until she makes eye contact and immediately turns away.

Okay. Time to start scanning.

A lot of telepaths just read minds like a book. Or as a monitor with code shifting faster than you could ever hope to read. Your talent doesn’t work that way. It’s more akin to sonar. Send out a wave, wait to see what image you get back. Usually it just dredges up a secret or two: the thing that there’s the most resistance to you knowing. If you really focus you can get a basic overview of their personality.

Theoretically you could have your scan bring everything back, but it’d probably take you a week to process and land you in a hospital bed for a few months. If you were lucky. If you weren’t lucky it would land you in a coffin.

The first two are boring. A ten-year-old kid whose biggest secret is that his parents wanted him to wait, a teenager who got a girl pregnant and is running from the consequences.

Third kid. White girl, mid-teens, dressed a little too formally for this sort of meeting. Why is she even here? VStar gives structure, but it’s not the most efficient way to go on a journey. And the money can’t possibly matter to her unless she’s a runaway. A quick scan gives you the start of a headache, and not from the strain of your powers: her family is really, really rich. Big Six Families rich. Again, why is she here? She must’ve been cut off from her money, somehow. Was she exiled or did she run away?

Exile is unproblematic, although it’s the type of gossip you’d like to be aware of. If she did something bad enough that her family would bring hell down upon you for sheltering her you would have heard what she did by this point. If she’s a runaway her family might give you endless PR and legal hell until you give their daughter back.

Supplemental scan doesn’t dig up much. Kid’s kind of flighty, kind of lonely. Cautious and kind at her core. Very recent trauma with a trail of shame before and ahead of it. And maybe something buried. Supports either theory, but her temperament makes you think she’s not a runaway. Minds like hers are allergic to rebellion.

Fourth and fifth are an addict and a kleptomaniac. You’ll consider kicking them out before the sensitive part of the meeting.

Sixth. Young girl. Probably ten, maybe eleven. Abuse. Probably getting away as soon as possible. Smart kid. You’ll look the parents up so you
have blackmail at the ready if they try and take their kid back. Low security risk.

Seventh is… familiar? You try to never forget a face, but it still just eludes you. By the second minute of staring he’s (she’s?) definitely noticed and you avert your gaze. Secret dredging time, then. See what you missed… Trans. Your power doesn’t tell you if they’re female, male, or non-binary, but it explains the just-unfamiliar face: you probably knew them before, but hormones or style changes are throwing you off your game.

The eighth is in her mid-teens? Early teens? Very short and still rather thin, but her features make her look a little older. Deep set eyes,
angular face. Native girl, if you had to guess. Jade green hair. If it’s natural, it’s rare but not unheard of. If it’s dyed then you need to ask her where she got it done. Kind of weird colorful dress. Probably wool. Might be handmade. Big thing? She’s blind. Clouded eyes, white cane, whole deal. Can she really do this? You aren’t going to send a kid out into the woods knowing that she’ll get killed by the first predator she can’t see coming.

Still, in case you don’t rule her out, a secret scan can’t hurt.

A moment later alarm bells of panic and despair and random memories and pain rock your mind. The thoughts came back to you after the
scan but it’s like they were cut up in a blender, sharpened into daggers and then launched straight back into your brain. An attack? How? She’s…

Your eyes open wider as it dawns on you. She’s psychic. Probably another telepath. Strong. And not trained in any style you’re familiar with. This definitely shouldn’t be the first you’ve heard of her. You like to think that you’ve met every other psychic in the commonwealth and not a one has ever brought her up.

You got her attention. She’s slowly rotating her head to survey the room with either sound or some remaining vision, her foot tapping nervously the whole time.

How do you salvage this? It’s literally never happened before, and that’s not something you can say very often these days. Thought process isn’t helped by the thrum of pain in your head, alternating sharp and dull so you never quite get used to it. You breathe deeply and make your way to the door. You’ll have someone pull her aside later and direct her to your office. Gives you time to figure out how you’re going to approach this.


Your alarm goes off at 3:00 P.M. and you swear at the ceiling before awkwardly rolling over in cot and turning it off. It had been a ninety-minute nap and you still feel miserable. How does that work?

Well… part of that’s the mental bruising. A cold and empty memory that keeps resurfacing, feelings of panic when looking at random objects, a slight fog over everything, and random sights and sounds getting turned into metal walls and tinny echoes. And then there’s the absolutely brutal headache. You make a point of taking an aspirin, knowing that it won’t really help but hoping the placebo effect does enough to make you comfortable. Which might negate the placebo effect. Is there a placebo effect where you know that the placebo effect does make people feel better, but that it doesn’t actually do anything physically, but the thought that this might make you feel better even though it doesn’t work makes you improve anyway because you half-expect it to? A placebo placebo effect.

The line of thought definitely isn’t making your headache any better.

First things first. You text the instructor to make sure that the possible Skull defectors gets kicked out before the mortality tables come up. VStar’s mortality rates are lower than the general journey-goer rates, but dead kids are dead kids and it never feels like there’s anything to say, much less anything good. At the end you add a note to send the blind girl up to your office when orientation is over. The room is cold and clean and empty.Deep breaths. The third ceiling tile diagonal from the corner does not want to kill you. You’re in your office, the year is 2019, and are texting. The metal—not metal—walls have light blue wallpaper.

Second: daughter of Ernest Gage, the spider silk magnate. That one you might have to deal with in person, or at least at the fundraiser tonight. He and his wife will probably be there. It would be rude to get the information directly on such a sensitive subject, but there will be other attendees who love nothing more than swapping secrets. The room is cold and clean and

Third: You pull up the new trainer’s files. Abused girl is Aiko Katou. Mother is a barber, dad is a plumber. Good news is that they can’t really go after the company—the men will never believe you—Bad news is that if the family’s got nothing, they’ve got nothing to lose. Blackmail won’t do much. It might only succeed in letting them know where their daughter went. Still might try and get your hands on Why does the ceiling have teeth? By the kings this headache sucks.

Fourth: Blind girl is Cuicatl Ichtaca. From Anahuac. Fifteen years old. Here on a challenge visa. Explains how you’ve never heard of her. Didn’t report any pokémon at customs. You’ll need to start her off slow or put her with some strong teammates for her protection, but if she’s psychic then she might be worth keeping around. If your interview checks out. Moles can be annoying; a telepathic mole could be a catastrophe of the highest order. The room is cold and. Stop. Breathe. You can’t find anything online about her and it will take you a few days to get anything to leak from immigration services, so that’s the end of that investigation. For now.

Fifth—something brushes against your leg. You look down to see Espy looking up at you, holding his leash in his mouth.

Fifth: Go outside. Take your fox on a walk. Stop thinking about work for a minute. Make new memories. Be calm. Outside is warm and dirty and open.


You pull two water bottles and two packets from the refrigerator and place them on the table. “Water, if you’re thirsty. I know those meetings last a while. And I put some gummies there, too. Good to eat every two hours or so. Good for your brain.”

Her hand freezes in midair right before taking the water. It’s only for a moment, and she proceeds on like nothing had happened.

“Hey, it’s fine. You can’t be responsible for things you didn’t know to do.”

She doesn’t answer that. Natural shyness? Nervousness? Poor English? You never realize how much your scans are a crutch until you find yourself without them.

“Who are you?” she asks.

You smile. Uselessly. Doesn’t matter either way.

“Right. I’m Rachel Bell. I’m one of the Vice Presidents for VStar. I handle new recruits, among other things.”

“…and I’m not in trouble?”

“No. No, not at all. Just don’t get many psychics passing through. I try to meet with them individually.”

“I meant for the, um. Did I hurt you?”

Yes. Yes, you did.

“Not very much,” you say, bringing a smile into your voice. “Napped, took a walk, cleared my head. It’s fine now.” And it mostly is. Espy could help a little once he had some sunlight to power him up.

Her head dips a little. Shame, probably. “Okay. I’m sorry.”

“No, no. Don’t worry about it. I’m the one who,” time to take a drink of water and figure out how to finish that sentence without coming off wrong, “reached out to your mind first. Should have asked. Standard for new psychics.” What’s a polite way to ask her about her English skills? Because you don’t actually have a Nahuatl speaker in the building. That you know of. Might be a good idea to check. “You don’t have much training with your powers, do you?”

She gently shakes her head. “No. My mom’s reuniclus taught me a little. I figured some of the rest out. Never met a psychic but my brother.”

“You grew up around pokémon, then?”

Her lips curl into a smile and she makes (near) eye contact as a hundred tiny things change in her expression. She goes from sullen and afraid to absolutely adorable in the blink of an eye.

“Yes. My mom’s team lived near the house. I took care of them. She had a reuniclus, a heatmor, a swanna, a ferrothorn, a conkeldurr,” she really is infectiously cute when she’s excited, with her high-pitched voice and its rapid pace, “and a hydreigon.”

Your heart skips a beat. Her face is the exact same, but all of the cuteness gone.

“A hydreigon?”

“Yes! Her names are Alice, Dorothy, and Ilsa. Alice was first and is in the center so that’s her one name. But she prefers her three names.”

A wild hydreigon flew within twenty miles of the academy once and they shut down classes for three days. Parents accused them of underreacting.

“Uh huh. And, um, you took care of her? Them?”

“She likes ‘ellas.’ She doesn’t know that there’s more than one language and they have different words,” she says. As if this is just a normal thing.

“I see.”

You are very, very glad that she can’t see the color of your face right now. You know full well that your alakazam is a telepathic monster that can fry a man’s mind in seconds, but you will never, ever be comfortable with dragons. And why should you? You’ve seen footage of one shredding a tank without breaking a sweat. Do dragons sweat? You have no desire to look that up.

Focus. You need to change the subject a little. Useful information in those statements? She has a brother, but he’s presumably not here. If
Cuicatl cared for her mom’s hydreigon, her mom also can’t be in the picture anymore. Or she was horribly irresponsible. Either way?

Dangerous topic. She speaks Spanish and seems to have a decent grasp on English. Cuicatl said she doesn’t have any pokémon on the form. How did that happen? Did it happen? She wouldn’t be the first kid to tell a lie on their paperwork. Okay. Alice. Ellas. How did she find out that Alice liked ellas?

“Can you speak to pokémon?”

“Sometimes. Not with Alice. In her mind, at least. But we understand each other.”

“I see. What all can you do with your mind? I can tell secrets and foresee pain.”

“…secrets?”

She runs a shade paler and you can hear her foot tap against the side of the chair. Nervous tic that you share.

“Not yours. Your shielding is very good. Not trained, but effective.”

“Thank you. Renfield—reuniclus taught me that.”

That wasn’t an answer. But it does explain why it felt so much like the headaches Espy can give you when he’s really, really angry.

“Talking to pokémon is usually telepathy, then. Projecting and reading thoughts. Empathy is sensing emotions. There’s usually some overlap, but not always.”

She frowns. “I think I just have telepathy. Do people usually only have one thing?”

You shake your head. Oops. Time to fix that. “Sometimes. You don’t see things before they happen? See things you shouldn’t? Move things with your mind?”

“I don’t see anything.”

Poor wording. Anne would’ve torn you a new one if she’d heard. But Cuicatl doesn’t look too offended. She’s even smiling, just a little. But not nearly as brightly as before.

“But you can’t do any of those things?”

“Right.”

You give her a chance to follow up. She doesn’t. Just shifts in her seat and idly taps a foot on the floor, soft enough that she probably doesn’t even know she’s doing it. Whatever rapport you built talking about her pokémon, it’s gone now. Time for another subject change.

“What brings you to Alola, then?”

“I wanted, um, to go on a journey? And Unova didn’t want to take me. I don’t have much money so a girl in the Pokémon Center said I should come here.”

There’s a shred of truth in there, but she’s an awful liar. Don’t even need your telepathy to see through that. New topic options: SIPAA scoring seems a little too close to the last question and she doesn’t want to talk about why she’s here so… old pokémon.”

“Did you bring any of your mom’s team with you?”

She freezes up. Full deerling in headlights. Shit shit shit shit abort abort abort.

“Hey it’s—”

“No, I didn’t.” Speech is off. Breathing is erratic. Approach and escalate? Keep quiet and seem callous? Response depends on the type of breakdown you’re seeing.

…the kid has to be alone here. Half an ocean from home, at least one parent out of the picture, apart from her pokémon for maybe the first time…

She shouldn’t have to have panic attacks alone.

You get up from your seat and move around the desk to kneel beside her. Then you put a hand on her shoulder and press down a little bit. “It’s alright,” you whisper, “we can get you new friends and a new pokémon.”

The waterworks open in full. Before you can decide if you should hug or not, Espy jumps into her lap. Kid didn’t mention owning a dog, fox, or cat, but she’s still a gentle petter. Holds out her hand for a second for Espy to sniff. Then gently pets the ears and runs her hand back in slow, light strokes.

You take the moment to think as Cuicatl’s breaths get steadier. You remove your hand from her shoulder to avoid smothering her. Homesickness? Trauma? Other mental illness? Kid needs emotional support in any case. Ideally something intelligent enough for her to talk to, social enough to cuddle, and fluffy enough to pet. Difficulty of care and bonding shouldn’t be problems if she kept herself and a hydreigon alive. Maybe something a little difficult to distract her. Eevee would work. Not big enough to be a good guide, though, even when fully evolved.

…

There is a pokémon that fits all of those criteria, but she’s trouble. She’d either be a silver bullet for Cuicatl’s problems or a lead bullet straight to her heart.

You put your hand back on Cuicatl’s shoulder and she flinches from the touch.

Normal 1.2: Firemane
Pixie

They’re talking about you again.

You don’t understand many of the words, but you know the tone. Talking more in breath than sound, trying to sound quieter than they really are. The same mock concern they take on the moment they turn away from your table, like you aren’t still in the room.

But you don’t care. You don’t really care about anything anymore, except maybe for Avalanche. You wonder if she’s thought of you in the last few… days? Weeks? Months? Between the capsule and the trailer you haven’t had many chances to be outside and count the changing skies and you aren’t sure how often the humans leave and make it dark.

No, as much as you’d like to believe it you can’t imagine Avalanche cares about you anymore. The nine-tails only keep two of their litters to train. It lets them keep the territories intact. When the unchosen become three-tails they set off on their own. Your body and mind and comfort are your problems now, not hers.

And, because you don’t care, those things are now the problems of the people in white falsefur.

They keep you alive. They try to coax you into eating things that help with the bruises and scars. You won’t because it’s your mouth and you eat what you want. Which is nothing. They took a capsule out once and you bit them. They let you sleep on the table instead of in a cage like the others, and you’ve learned to sleep in the dark while the humans are away and rest on the table in daylight, keeping an eye open for more capsules.

There’s a new human today. Young and female. Like you. You catch a glimpse of her mane when she walks in. Thick, curly and went a little past her shoulder-blades. Light-yellowish, like the fire-tails in the stories Avalanche told you. It has leaves in it, some dirt. Even from a distance it smells unclean, although humans seemed to have a higher tolerance for that. It would be pretty if cared for and you want to run your paws and tongue through it to clean it up like you would for your own coat. Like Avalanche did for you.

You suppose you still care that you look like a fox should. But presentation is sort of like breathing, so you aren’t sure that counts.

New human approaches you again, with the other humans behind her. She walks up to your table, looking away like this isn’t premeditated, and stops at the edge. You cast her the sort of wary, frigid look that only an ice-type can manage.

“Hey,” she says. “Can I pet you?”

You don’t understand the words, but she offers her paw, keeping it head-length away from your snout. She doesn’t smell nervous. Is this how humans offer scent exchange? You hadn’t thought they marked each other at all.

It takes you a few seconds to decide, but you eventually do move to push your face against their paw, rubbing your scent glands against it. Her paw is warm, but not unpleasantly so. You sneeze and a burst of cold air radiates from your body. The human pulls away for a second, probably on reflex, but puts her paw back up to your head when you look at her expectantly.
She’s back the next day.

This time she opens up the door and looks at you.

“You want to go outside?”

The words are mostly unfamiliar, but you think you know the meaning. Yes, you decide, wind and flower smell would be nice. Rising on your paws is painful as you feel the muscles and skin ripple around your scars and bruises, but nothing tears. One of the humans picks you up gently and cradles you in his arms, like Avalanche would in her jaws when you were a kit. Insulting. The humans are not nine-tails. They have no right to handle you like that.

They set you down in the grass outside. The sun and air are much warmer near the sea, but your body quickly begins cooling itself to adjust. You can still feel the sunlight striking your fur. And you can smell the plants. There are different flowers here than you have on the mountain and there are far more of them. You absent-mindedly walk up to one and wrap your jaws around it to get a better feel for its taste and texture. The young human pulls you away.

“If you want food, they have more vulpix-friendly stuff in there.”

Her tone is cheerful, but you recognize the pleading edge and the ‘food’ sound. You turn away and walk closer to the big black human-trail, puffing up your tails behind you in a show of defiance. Before you reach it, a much larger pokemon cuts you off. He’s quadrupedal, red-and-black-colored and you can feel radiated heat enter your personal blizzard. Fire-type. Big fire-type.

He notes your reaction and adjusts quickly, holding his tail still and lowering himself to the ground before rolling on to his side.

“Didn’t mean to scare you. Just want to play.”

It’s a feline dialect. Close enough to your native vulpine to understand, even if you aren’t sure you got all the meaning.

You tilt your head. “Play?”

“Yes. Chase each other around or—” He stops short and rises to his paws before slowly walking towards you, head down. You allow him to brush his face against yours. “You’re sick?” He asks. “You should get that fixed.”

You slowly lay down and show him your stomach. “How do you heal this?”

His eyes narrow. “Do you have a ball? Or have they tried potions? Those look old and improperly healed. You’ll need to get those looked at before we can play. And eat. You look underfed. Are they feeding you?”

You tuck your tails between your legs, turn around and head back inside. You don’t want to talk about it. What happened. What happened after. Why you don’t care. He seems well-meaning, and he shouts after you that he’ll be back to play later, but there are things that a healthy fire cat with a gentle human mother can’t understand.

Still. The human seems to like you, and she at least takes care of her cat. She’s not like… like they were. You wonder why she came back, why she cares about you, and you realize that maybe she wants to put you on your team. You’d leave the room. She’d stuff you in a ball, sometimes.

But it’s something to hope for. And you’ll take it.

You eat that night. The food is dry and bland, but you get some down your throat before your stomach gets upset. Then you let them spray things on you (which sting and hurt) and put you into another capsule. They keep you in it until it’s bright out again.

You stretch out with your front paws and feel your belly react. It hurts less than it did when you went into the ball. You roll onto your side and move to scout out the area with your tongue, but you’re met with a spray of water when you do so. You uncurl, climb to your paws and hiss blindly in the water’s direction, kicking up a frozen mist around you in the process.

A human forepaw reaches down to your arched back and you bite the air around it before even seeing whose it is. It’s the young female human. Firemane. You’ll call her Firemane. She seems a bit startled, but not angry. You calm down a bit and let her stroke your back, but you won’t warm up the air for her while she does it.

After a few strokes she reaches down to pick you up, doing so by wrapping her arms around your side and hugging you to her chest. Won’t touch your underside. But she’s less gentle when she drops you down on the table. You still land, perfectly of course.

“She’s doing much better,” one of the humans says. “We’re very thankful for your help in this.”

Firemane’s voice sings and rumbles. Humans do that sometimes when they bare their teeth. You know that sound well enough, but it doesn’t seem to be threatening. The last times you heard it were followed by violence. This one is only followed by a chunk of delicious smelling food the size of your head being dumped in front of you.

“Not all at once,” Firemane says. You can guess the meaning, and it’s unnecessary. You couldn’t eat this much if you wanted to.

You end up getting much closer than you would have thought, but half of it’s still left. That goes to the cat, who devours in three bites what took you dozens. Firemane talks to the other humans for a bit while the fire cat tries to make conversation with you. But he’s very large and his voice is always approximating a growl, even when he seems to be happy.

Firemane leaves you a while later with a thorough head scratching.

They aren’t back the next day. Or the next week. Or the next month. You let them spray you with nasty liquids and put you in a capsule and cut you open (while you’re asleep, but still) but Firemane never comes back.

And with every day you sit on a table doing nothing, watching the humans care for sicker creatures until they leave you start to feel a little bit more like you did before you were healed.

Eventually your stomach is fine. They let you lick it again and you can only feel the scar if you really press your tongue down and weave it between all the tufts of fur. You still don’t know what comes next but that’s fine.

You don’t care.

You wake up to the sound of your kennel being unlocked. Odd. You’re usually awake by walk time. Without opening your eyes you stretch out and fluff up your six-and-a-half tails. When you look up you reflexively freeze the air around you. The woman staring at you is the matriarch of the facility, the one that all of the other humans submit to. She almost never comes down. Why is she here? Why is she here for you?

Matriarch steps back and waves her paw. “Come on, Pixie. We have things to discuss.”

You gracefully leap from the kennel to the ground and trail after her as she walks. She opens the door to the visiting room and you follow, leaping onto the table as she sits down.

You immediately puff your fur up and hiss. There’s another fox here. A short-furred, hideous pink fox with one good tail and a pathetic growth of a second. Eevee. You don’t know what gimmick this one has, but they’re all just eevee to you.

“Pixie, play nice,” Matriarch scolds. Even though that disgraceful asshole is on your table.

You generously let it go with a single huff and look back at Matriarch.

“Good, now that you’re paying attention, let me be brief. I’m giving you your sixth and final second chance with a trainer. Are we clear?”

You blink. She’s threatening you. Can you growl at her? Or should you submit? You don’t want to submit in front of the imposter fox. Or to someone threatening you.

“I’ll take that as a no. What I’m saying is, your shit stops now. No more peeing on pillows, hiding pokéballs in the woods, freezing the ground your trainer is about to step on, letting all hell break loose when you see another eevee, or trying to hurt teammates. Again, are we clear?”

That is a very unfair assessment. You only did the first three things because your trainer was already going to abandon you and your window for revenge was very limited. And every eevee deserves it, with their tangled manes and their insufferable pleading eyes and their “look at me, I can pretend to be a guardian of the peaks or a firetails or a fish or anything I want” nonsense like that makes them better than you. It doesn’t. And you obviously weren’t trying to hurt that rabbit: you were trying to kill it.

Matriarch sighs and cradles her head in her forepaws. “Pixie. I like this one. I think you can help her and she can help you. She’s probably the best trainer you’re going to get. If you’re just incompatible, fine. I’ll sell you off to a zoo on the mainland. But if you hurt her I will personally haul you back to Mt. Lanakila and see how long it takes for the vanilluxe get you.” With that she stands up and walks towards the exit, her eevee trailing behind her. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. You had best prepare yourself to make a good impression.”

Then she shuts the door and leaves you alone. The gall she has. You never even did anything to her and she’s acting like you already killed her kit. Fine. If this goes downhill, she’s given you no incentive to hold back. She wants a fight, you’ll give her one.

When Matriarch reenters her foreleg is gently wrapped around the other human’s and Matriarch is slowly walking towards the table with her. Other human has a strange white stick. A weapon? It wouldn’t be very effective against you. Foolish to even try. Matriarch walks the smaller human to a seat and gently helps her down before shooting you a wicked glare. She leaves you alone with your last-chance-trainer.

She’s very small. Her whole frame is delicate. Skin is… a little too in the middle. Humans are least hideous when they are very pale or very dark. She’s on the darker end, but not quite far enough to be visually pleasant. Her mane is green, which is a strange and somewhat disturbing color, but it is very shiny and well cared for. Her falsefur is white, which is the best color. Then her eyes… they’re only half moving. And something is off in them. Shimmers over the surface like a barely frozen pond.

The care that Matriarch took, the eye shimmers: she’s blind. What a cruel joke. Sticking you with a tiny, frail human who cannot even appreciate your majesty.

“Hello, Pixie,” she says. Her voice soft and kind of high pitched and it flows well. Like the sound of slow winds running along the mountain rocks. Except more human and voice-y. Still not enough to make you like her. She extends a paw out for you to smell or rub or whatever but you don’t stand up to go to it and she eventually sticks it down flat on the table. “My name is Cuicatl Ichtaca. I’m from Anachuac. I hope you will be friends with me.”

Nope. You will not give Matriarch the satisfaction. Human does not get the obvious hint and keeps talking.

“I’ve never met an ice-type before. My home was very warm. There were mountains nearby with snow on top, but they were very dangerous so my dad never let me go. One of my friends could fly up but never did because ellas didn’t like the cold.”

She keeps bad friends. And if she is too weak to climb mountains you do not want to associate with her.

“I read about vulpix once. It was a long time ago so I forget some things. You’re nocturnal, right?”

Obviously. What creature would ever want to go outside in the sunlight?

“If you are, then you probably won’t want to be outside in the day when I go places. I am okay with that. I can get around well enough with my cane. We can play and train around dusk and dawn. But I usually try to sleep at night, so not then.”

It is a better offer than most trainers make. But no. Not for the blind kit of an eevee trainer.

“I don’t know what your other trainers taught you. But I have ideas for battle. You could be a really good arena controller and zoner. Using hail and frozen patches to make it harder to get to you, and then hit them with from far away. Or just put them to sleep or trap them and then set up. You’re probably fast enough to be a sweeper. Or will be fast enough when you evolve.”

You are fast enough now to ‘sweep’ anything, whatever that means.

“Do you know roar?” she asks.

You do, just to show her how good your roaring is and maybe make her run away. She smiles, which is not the proper reaction. The proper reaction is terror and awe. Worse, she giggles.

“Sorry. I’m not laughing at you. You’re just really cute.”

You bark to scold her. It’s very annoying that she can’t just understand your glares and know when to shut up and fall in line. The bark does silence her and she stops baring her teeth for just a second. Good.

“Oh. I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings.” You fluff up your tails. Her? Hurt you? Impossible. The most she could do is annoy you. “I think that I went at this wrong. Can we start over?”

…what?

“Hello, Pixie. My name is Cuicatl Ichtaca. I want you to be my friend. If you don’t want to, that’s fine. You can stay here. But if there’s anything I can help you with…”

You hiss and sit down. What could she possibly help you with?

“I don’t know, Pixie. I was hoping you could tell me.” What? “I want friends. And money. And I thought you could help. But if there’s nothing I can do for you, then you should stay here. Maybe someone else will be able to help you later.”

You growl softly and menacingly and the human’s half-smile is just her baring her teeth because she is very afraid of your wrath. You aren’t actually sure about everything Matriarch said with her nonsense “zoo,” but it was still clearly a threat. No one will help you later and she knows that. So now this human is also threatening you.

“Oh. A zoo is a place where you’d have a big outdoor cage and humans would come to look at you.”

Your tails flex out reflexively in shock—in a temporary blip in your perfect composure. You bark-hiss, “you understand me?”

“Yes, but it’s much easier if you vocalize somehow.” As you think about that, she continues, “Why did she threaten to send you to one?”

You flick a tail down and growl, “No reason at all. I am a very good fox. She is a very bad human with a worse fox.”

She bares a little more of her teeth at the injustice. “The horror.”

“Exactly!” This one may be much smarter than the average human.

“I can take you if you want. And then either keep you, give you to another trainer, or release you to the wild. Whatever you want. Or I can leave you to the zoo.”

You flick a tail down on the table. This was not a set of options you were expecting. You weren’t really expecting options at all.

“What do you want, Pixie? What kinds of things make you happy?”

“Cold. Prey. Grooming. Toys. Proper respect.”

“Hmm. The wild would probably have cold and prey. No one else would groom you and there wouldn’t be toys. Don’t know about respect. The zoo would have grooming and toys. Maybe cold. No prey, definitely not respect. I could give you grooming and toys. I’d try to give you respect and you can tell me if I’m not. No cold, though, sorry. Other trainers couldn’t talk to you but if you don’t like me they could give you the toys and grooming.”

Many words. Good breakdown of options. You were going to just pick the one that sounded best, and probably will, but she is good at thinking. Rare in her species.

“What do you mean by respect, anyway?”

This is not an easy concept to express. It’s just respect. Every vulpix understands it. You aren’t even sure how much she understands of your language, but you try to express it.

“I am prettier and stronger and smarter than everyone else and they should recognize it and submit to me.”

“I’m sure you’re very pretty, strong, and smart,” she correctly says. “I would try to help you. Give you food and love and try to make you even stronger. But I can’t promise I’ll do everything you say. You would have to help me sometimes. And sometimes that help would be taking ‘no’ for an answer.”

“I do not need help,” you say.

“Then you’re best off alone.”

Alone.

A shiver wracks your body.

You are not afraid of alone.

The human sighs. “Do you want love?”

You bark, yes, of course, you deserve love.

“I can give you that.” You stare into her awful, foggy eyes. There’s brown somewhere in them. The dullest, worst color. “Do you want me to hold you?”

Your legs rise up and move towards her and you hate your limbs for it. She extends her forelegs, slowly at first, and then she flips you over and moves you towards her chest all at once. It’s not unpleasant, just unexpected. You yip in surprise and she whispers an apology. Then you’re cradled in her forelegs, pressed against her body. She’s warm. Not too warm, though. And it’s nice to feel a heartbeat.

She is a trickster with clever words and whatever she says, someday, maybe even today, she will hate you and leave you like Firemane and all the others.
But for now, Skysong is yours.

Normal 1.3: Almost Natural
Genesis


9/27/2019

It’s raining.

Apparently that means it’s good weather for catching poliwag, and you said that you’d wanted a water-type because you were in shock and don’t even remember why and Father strictly forbade you from getting a popplio. That leaves poliwag and the rain. Even if you sort of asked for this, you wish it wasn’t raining. The day is more than miserable enough.

Stefan stands to the side under an umbrella, watching as you cast the lure again and again. Sometimes he critiques your form. Mostly he doesn’t bother. The first few bites are magikarp. He does come forward and help you take those of the line before throwing them back. Then he steps away and takes the umbrella with him, leaving you out in the rain.

You finally catch a poliwag, a blur of blue sticking to the top of the pond. It doesn’t struggle to much on the line or in its lure ball. And then it’s yours. Stefan walks back to the car before you can let the frog out for bonding time. It’s okay. You’ll have time for that later. When you’re alone. You grab a stick on the way back to the car. Stefan gives you a funny look, but it’s important. You just don’t want to explain right now.

It’s a quiet ride into the city, only the sound of rain on the windshield and the occasional car sloshing by to distract you. That’s fine: you don’t feel like talking, anyway. You’ve already reasoned, begged, prayed, and cried to no effect. Father won’t be moved, and Stefan is on Father’s payroll. There will be no moving him.  

The car comes to a stop outside the Pokémon Center. Stefan walks around to open your door.

“You can register in there,” he says. “Then I’d take a ferry to Hau’oli. VStar is having orientation in a few days, and they can help you get money.”

Implying that you could be away for long enough that you’ll need to make money of your own. You stare straight at the door and nod. 
He leaves without either of you saying goodbye.


The nurse says that the poliwag is a boy. She politely doesn’t mention the damp stick you’re carrying, even when you take the multiple choice test on the computer so you can be a trainer. It’s all really basic stuff. She told you all of this many, many times over and you remembered enough to ace the thing.

When the rain clears up you go around to the pools out back and let the poliwag out. He looks up at you unblinking and ribbits. You kneel down and brandish the stick. He runs. “Wait! Come back!” Too late. He’s already in the middle of the pool, glancing at you from the surface of the water. Fine. You can break your plans. You very visibly throw the stick into the trash before walking back, hands raised in surrender. “I, um, dub thee Sir Bubbles? I had a whole ceremony planned, but…”

He dives underwater.

Looks like you dragged the stick here for nothing.


10/01/2019

The sanctuary is dead silent when you enter. You step through the rows of pews, descending towards the altar. The head of Xerneas greets you at the far wall, shifting rainbow antlers illuminating lifeless wooden eyes. Probably for the best. It can already be unsettling, having your creator and god staring down at you. If it blinked… that would be too far.

You needed to come here. Today is a big day, after all, and Xerneas is one of the few beings left that will listen to you. Maybe the only one who knows you aren’t lying. But it takes you ages to think of something to say.

“Lord Xerneas, my creator…”

Always a good start. Now more stuff.

“Thank you for giving me life. And please help Mother and Father understand what happened. And… maybe luck is too much to ask, but I would like to keep living and… I’m very thankful for everything.”

The eyes stare back, unblinking, as the rainbow lights shimmer above them.

“May my words and deeds bring honor to thy name.”


You should pay attention to orientation.

You want to pay attention to orientation.

You are not paying attention to orientation.

Partially because she already told you most of this and you remember some of it, despite you being you. You’re thinking about things that don’t matter. You’ve already read every scrap of writing in this room a bunch of times. There’s not much to read, anyway. Just a few notices and inspirational quotes. Orientation’s room is like a somewhat sparse school room. Even the chairs are similar, as you’re painfully reminded every time someone drags their chair forward or back.


And there’s a girl in front of you, just at the edge of her peripheral vision. She has nice hair. It falls down to her back in a lot of loose, shiny spirals. Green but not the bright, ugly, obviously dyed green. Almost natural. Maybe it is. Not the weirdest thing about her. That’s the colorful, maybe home-made dress. Might be a thing in her culture. Whatever that is. She has dark skin. You didn’t get a good look at her eyes since, well, they’re milky white. That was a lot bit distracting. Like staring into the dead eyes of Xerneas with color swirling throughout.


The intimidation is a little undercut by her height. Her feet don’t even reach the ground when she’s seated. At first glance you thought that she was a preteen kid eager to rush onto her island challenge, but her face—the parts you remember apart from the eyes and hair—seemed older. Nice cheekbones. And there’s some muscle on her arms that you wouldn’t expect from a little kid. Between her size and blindness, she’s still delicate. Maybe too delicate to go into the wild.

You wonder if she’s in the same boat as you, going along with the least bad option.

A woman in a very nice suit walks in midway through. Odd. Everyone else you’ve dealt with here was dressed in business casual or casual casual. Her eyes wander around the room, settling on each person in turn. You squirm and go back to looking at the series of stars and triangles you’ve wrote down in your notebook. Just one look from her makes you deeply uncomfortable. It feels like she’s staring right into your soul and judging you based on what she sees.

You can feel it when she moves on. You glance up in time to see the woman recoil as if in pain and bring a hand to head. What? What happened. The girl in front of you must feel it, too, because she’s looking around now. The woman quickly exits the room and the girl eventually goes back to resting her head on an arm and staring forward.

The girl probably doesn’t see the point of taking notes. Maybe you should for her. It would get you to pay attention, maybe. You can at least try it.


There’s a breakout session at the end where you finally get to meet your traveling companions. Girls, probably. It would be inappropriate to put you with boys.

You’re the first to arrive at the meeting room because you finished your lunch quickly, without talking to anyone. You don’t know any of them and what are you even supposed to say? Best to stay quiet and not ruin things. Although now that you’re in a room with nothing but you and a ticking clock you’re starting to wonder if you should have stayed. Was that expected? Were you being rude?

You glance at the clock. No, you’re a little early to the meeting but still on time.

The door opens and a boy enters. (A boy! Why are they letting you travel with a boy?) He lets the door slam shut behind him with a loud noise somewhere between a click and a clack.

“’sup,” he ‘sups. Then he plops down into one of the firmer chairs, letting his back sink in and his legs sprawl out.

You squirm in your seat. What was his name? He was a few rows over, but you didn’t think you would be with him because he’s a boy and you’re a girl and this is really inappropriate. Should you offer to share your name? That seems like a good idea. And he’s been quiet long enough that it’s awkward.

“I’m Genesis.”

He glances at you before rolling his shoulders back and somehow sinking even deeper into his chair. “Kekoa. Nice to meet you, Jennifer.”

“Genesis, actually—”

“Jennifer.”

He stares at you as if daring you to challenge him again. You break eye contact first. Fine. Guess you’re stuck with him. That’s just how your month has been going.

“We’re supposed to have a third person, right?”

“That’s what they said.”

The clock keeps ticking.

“You have a pokéball on your belt…”

“A pikipek.”

“Ah.” Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. “I have a poliwag.”

“Cool.” It does not sound like he thinks it’s cool.

“So why are you here?”

“Why are you?”

You don’t want to answer that, so you don’t. And he doesn’t want to talk, so that’s that. He goes back to looking at an old flip phone. 

There are footsteps outside and a strange grating noise. The door opens and the blind girl walks in, the woman in the suit behind her. “See you tomorrow,” the woman says before walking away. The girl just stands in the doorway. There’s something almost sad about her expression, but she shakes her head and starts to smile. Maybe you just imagined the earlier look: you’ve never been great at reading emotions.


“Is there a chair somewhere?” she asks.

You give her directions.

It turns out that you are not very good at giving her directions, but she does eventually sit down.

“Hello. I’m Cuicatl Ichtaca.”

“Hi! I’m Genesis.”

“Kekoa,” the boy says. You finally realize that you never got his name before. “Good to meet you, Kiwi.”

Her smile falters before coming back stronger than before. “That’s not even close and you know it.”

“Don’t give a shit.”

You think Cuicatl rolls her eyes but it’s… unsettling to look at. She won’t know if you’re making eye contact or not, so you look away from her face. “She like this to you, Genesis?” she asks.

“He, thank you very much.”

“Oh. Sorry. You just have such a girly voice, you know?”

It’s maybe just on the masculine side of androgynous. Normal enough for a guy your age. Ditto for his face. Still chubby but not unusually so. Maybe with longer hair and different clothes he could pass for a girl. “Heh. Well played.”

And he isn’t even mad. Weird. You thought he was insulted…

“Where are you from?” you ask. Crap that was probably not the right question. She’s going to think you’re some kind of a racist, which you’re not—


“Anahuac.”

“Oh. I know about it. A lot of your people come here. Not here specifically, I actually haven’t met many, but on the mainland. Um.” You stop before you can dig deeper.


She puffs up a little. Which is bad. She’s angry. But it’s also kind of cute.

“My mom was Unovan,” Cuicatl interjects.

Oh. Definitely here legally. That’s good.

“Then you’re a citizen?”.

“…no. Here on challenge visa.”

Maybe not legally. You’ll have to do the talking if any cops show up. Which they shouldn’t, because you aren’t going to do any crimes. Except for the crime she already did.



VStar gave you an advance to buy boots and you know just the place to go.

Princess Square Mall is easily the best place to shop in the entire commonwealth. It’s got everything from the Gracidea flagship to the usual big box stores, plus actual miles of halls lined with their own quirky shops. You make… made a point of coming here most weekends to try and look through at least three new stores knowing full well that by the time you visited them all some would’ve closed and others opened in their place and you’d have to do it again. You got some good stuff out of it, though, like a stuffed altitlama made with real altitlama wool and a blue snow globe with a faintly glowing horseshoe on the side. No idea why the latter cost as much as it did.


Kekoa powerwalks ahead and ordinarily you’d match him but you have to stay back and help Cuicatl along. He sometimes glances back and slows down a little bit, which clashes with his aloof meanie vibe. Eventually you get to Shaft’s Outdoor Supplies and Kekoa finally stops to turn towards you.

“I’m just going to go ahead and get this done on my own. Leave you girls to do your shoe shopping.”

“Then why are you going alone?” Cuicatl asks.

“Letting you two have your estrogen party in peace.”

“So why aren’t you coming with us? If it’s a girls thing…”

Kekoa shoots her an absolutely murderous glare. “I’m flipping you off,” he says before turning around and storming off. He is not actually flipping her off. Cuicatl just has a cute, dumb smile plastered on her face.

“Asshole,” she says.

You shouldn’t giggle but you do.

“So, um, what are you looking for? In boots? I can look for you.”

She doesn’t even take a full second to think it over. “Waterproof, well-fitting, don’t make me look too stupid.”

Okay. You can work with that.

“Do you have a personal style? What clothes do you ordinarily wear?”

It occurs to you too late that she might not know that. Thankfully, she does.

“I guess you would call them dresses, like what I’m wearing now. Sometimes more athletic clothing. Pick whatever colors you want.” Hmm. She has long hair that’s clearly well cared for. Isn’t wearing much makeup, but that might just be because she can’t apply it. In any case, definitely not a tomboy. Some outdoorsy-but-still-femme look, then. Hiking boots and whatever she’ll be wearing on the trail probably satisfies the outdoorsy bit, so you’re mostly concerned with the femme half. Ideally you’d get something dark green or very dark blue to go with her hair, but a quick talk with an employee (a talk that Cuicatl seems oddly despondent during) reveals that you’re really color and style limited at her size in the kids section. You settle on a pink pair without laces so that she doesn’t have to fumble around to tie them.


“They sound nice,” she says when you tell her the description. Her face is guarded so it’s hard to tell if it really does sound nice. Or if she cares about style at all. She rises up on the balls of her feet and then settles down and tilts her shoes to the sides. “Fit well enough. Should be fine after a little breaking in.”

And that’s that. Even before the two-thirds discount new trainers get on supplies, hers are just barely over fifty dollars. Yours are about twice as much, but after the discount they still fit within budget with some money left over. Black, kind of shiny, waterproof because Cuicatl thought that was a big deal. You’d be comfortable wearing yours in a city, which is kind of a must because you’re going to have to break them in before going out on the trail. Orientation made a very, very big deal about that, up to showing some blister photos that look like they came right out of a presentation on a disease that requires genital amputation.



You decide to have a movie night for your first night sharing a Pokémon Center room. You’re doing your best to ignore that you’re sharing a bedroom and bathroom with a boy but at least Cuicatl’s here so he’s outnumbered.

Kekoa fiddles with the screen of your phone for a second before putting it on the pile of stuff he haphazardly threw together. Then the movie starts to play on the small screen. Not really big enough for three people to crowd around, but Cuicatl’s sitting a little farther away since she he doesn’t really need to watch.

“You have your own account?” you ask to kill time as the company logos roll.

He snorts. “Yeah, no. I’m sure someone pays for this, but I don’t know them and no one I know knows them.”

That’s kind of theft, isn’t it? At least, not using it as intended. Are you doing something wrong by watching.

The logos stop and the screen shifts to a cage being moved in the rain by a bunch of men with guns. Then something goes wrong and the thing in the cage kills some of the men with guns before getting shot itself. What. This is violent. You definitely aren’t supposed to be watching it.

“What kind of movie is this?” you ask.

“A damn good one,” he answers.

“Seconding,” she adds.

You frown. “Your parents let you watch this kind of thing?”

He looks at you like you’d just asked whether water was wet. “No. My brother let me watch it once while my parents were out since I was going through a dinosaur phase. Now, I, uh, kind of watch what I want now.”

“People don’t really care about sex and violence in movies in Anahuac? They’re a part of life. No reason to keep kids from knowing real things exist. And do you want to talk about the dinosaur phase?” She’s absolutely beaming now. “Because I had a dinosaur phase. Never really left it either.”

Kekoa snorts. “You would, dragon girl.”

They’d talked about trainers at dinner. You didn’t have much to say, but they got into a long argument about what type was most reliable on the battlefield. Cuicatl had gone all in for dragons. Kekoa said fighting, but he barely even talked about machamp and hariyama. Instead he spent most of dinner telling an increasingly annoyed Cuicatl that dragons were overrated.

“Hey,” Cuicatl says. “it’s not my fault that we used to have birds that were four meters tall, then we didn’t, then we brought them back, and now no one seems to care that we have four-meter-tall birds again! Oh, Genesis, the dinosaurs in this movie shouldn’t have as many scales as they do. Except the aurorus, which should have spines and frills. But the dilatosaur shouldn’t have frills. Or venom. They were grass-types. And the pyroclaptors should be half the size. And none of them are actually from the Jurassic. Other than that, perfect film.”

Kekoa leans forward and makes a show of turning the volume up, even though it’s already as high as it goes.

“Fucking nerd.”

She folds her arms and leans back into the wall. “I don’t see what the problem is with liking things. Especially cool things.”

“Well, you missed the flaw that actually matters: tyrantrum were scavengers.”

“You shut up!” Cuicatl practically screams. “That is one scientist’s theory based on snorlax of all things. Sure, tyrantrum could have scared off smaller predators, but then why would they need the neck muscles if they weren’t going to hunt? And what was killing all the prey they ate? Raptors weren’t big enough in most of their home range and the crocodiles would’ve just dragged the food into the water. Maybe other tyrannosaurs, but if smaller tyrannosaurs were killing giant armored herbivores then why couldn’t tyrantrum do it?” She huffs and crosses her legs before glaring in Kekoa’s general direction. “Such bullshit.”

They continue like that for hour, with Kekoa asking short dumb questions and setting Cuicatl off on adorably angry tirades about tyrantrum’s typing (maybe a dragon-type, but definitely not a dragon), tyrantrum-pyroclaptor nest arrangements (the raptors didn’t eat the tyrantrum eggs, they ate the mammals that came for the eggs, duh), and whether blaziken would beat a pyroclaptor in a fight (blaziken one-on-one, but a pyroclaptor would never fight alone so that doesn’t matter). He immediately changes the subject whenever she gives a substantive answer, so he’s always winning the conversation with very little effort. Like Mom. Except Cuicatl doesn’t seem to hate it?

You stopped paying attention to the actual movie almost immediately. It would be rude to leave the room, but that doesn’t mean you should watch something like it. At some point you fell asleep entirely. You don’t know if your new partners ever stopped their bickering.