Electric Sheep

For fourth chapter, I'm in the same boat concerning Blair there. I think it's because she was coming off as Blue but perhaps a sharper tongue, so Blair and Door's first interaction did feel force there. I still look forward how she'll develop further on, though. With that out of the way, aw Door is warming up to Scout too and I like that she's begining to learn to hold back.

The extra I don't have much to say but oh is that Hilda? If so, wonder if she'll play a role here too.

Fifth chapter, another nice Geist and Door interaction there. Even college graduates will start from the bottom too Door, but hey you have Jack so have him with fun for as long as you can. And oh, interesting take on the Dream World there. I think I prefer the real Pokemon be taken to the Dream World after they get injured instead of horrible gory death heh. I want to do an "android dream of sheep" joke but Geist already beat me to it. = P Door's having her first gym then, should be exciting.

*cracks knuckles* Welp! Breaktime’s over!



So, as a heads up, heading out of town for the weekend, meaning for the second week in a row, you just get this update and a delayed roundup and whatnot. Sorry!

But! On the positive side, it’s a gym chapter, so at least I’m leaving you with something interesting to look at?

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Door was a little miffed. To be fair, she felt a little miffed because she also felt underdressed and highly confused, but this was secondary to the fact that she was mostly miffed, highly confused, and underdressed all at once because Geist had led her to a fine dining restaurant instead of a pokémon gym. At three in the afternoon, no less.

Not that she particularly minded getting free food. Sure, she would have preferred something a little less pretentious than anything off a menu that happened to be largely in French, but the point was she didn’t have to pay for it. It was just that she couldn’t figure out why Geist chose to bring her here.

She squinted at the menu, struggling to make sense of not only the French names but also the International Common descriptions for each dish (what the hell was foie gras?), and when she gave up on that, she sighed heavily, set it aside, and glared at her partner. He sat across a white-covered table from her, one hand on his water glass and the other resting nonchalantly on his closed menu. His eyes stared across the room, and as Door followed his gaze—passing over a massive, elegant dining area stocked full of empty tables, a cleanly uniformed waitstaff of Companions, and the occasional well-dressed patron—she came to a stage on the far end. Or, it might have been a stage. Door wasn’t entirely positive what it was, truth be told. It simply looked like a wide space extending into the dining area but blocked off by a thick, red curtain. Was it a stage? Perhaps a ballroom floor for functions? A place for a live band at nights? Did upscale French restaurants have bands? Door reached for her glass to take a long, nervous drink.

“You’re wondering why we’re here,” Geist said without taking his eyes off the curtain.

Door sputtered into her glass and came up gasping. “Th-that thought crossed my mind.”

Turning his head to her, he lifted his hand off his drink and signaled for a waiter. As if by magic, a young man with wild, red hair swept across the room, pulling a pad and pencil out of the pocket of his apron. This man, Door noticed, was not a Companion. The slightly apathetic expression on his face gave him away; actual service Companions were eternally perky, regardless of how many plates of foie gras with pickled wepear berries they had to serve.

“Have we decided?” he asked, his voice low and smoky.

“We have indeed,” Geist replied. He held up his menu, offering it to the waiter. “One bottle of fresh water each, please. My friend would like the chef’s special.”

“Chef’s special?” the waiter asked, hovering his pencil over the pad.

“We called ahead,” Geist explained.

The waiter grinned and pocketed both the pad and his writing utensil. “Of course. Just one moment.”

He walked quickly away from the table. Door followed him with her gaze until he disappeared through a set of double-doors to the side of the dining room—doors that, judging from the glimpse of the room beyond it, led to the kitchen. As soon as he was gone, Door turned back to Geist.

“Okay, I’ll bite.” She paused, then shook her head. “No pun intended. What’s going on?”

Geist smiled innocently, laced his fingers together, and placed his hands on the table. “Door, I’m surprised. Even considering your lack of interest in pokémon training, I would have thought someone who worked for our region’s foremost pokémon professor would have recognized what this place is by now.”

“We’re in a French restaurant.”

“Beyond that.”

“We’re in a very pretentious French restaurant.”

Geist guffawed but covered his mouth with the back of a hand. “All right. I can’t disagree there. This isn’t my favorite place to eat either. Nor is it Dr. Fennel’s, for that matter. I think the two of us have only ever come here on the very rare occasion that a graduate from the Trainers’ School seemed particularly interesting.”

Door put an elbow on the table and rested her cheek on her hand. “What, do you throw a wild party here, or is this the pokémon gym?”

“As a matter of fact, the latter.” Geist picked up his glass and examined the water inside. “Sometimes the former too. It depends on whether or not Bebe Larson is also in town.”

In response, Door contracted her lips into a pucker as she stared at Geist for a second. Then, she finally furrowed her eyebrows and said, “I was kidding, but okay.”

Geist placed his glass back down and tilted his head at Door. “My apologies. Allow me to go into a bit more detail. Door, this is—”

“Le Jardin Potager,” another voice chimed in, “the foremost establishment of French cuisine in all of Unova … and, as your friend says, the Striaton Gym.”

Door jumped in her seat and twisted around to see a blue-haired man in a sharp, black suit standing behind her. She stopped, taking in his sparkling smile and the depth of his ocean-blue eyes. Everything about him seemed smooth—slicked back, sprayed with cologne, pressed, and polished. He bowed and extended a pale hand to her, and she swallowed.

“Welcome,” he said. “You must be Doreen Hornbeam. Dr. Fennel has reserved a bit of our time, it seems, and I do apologize that I failed to meet you at the door. My name is Sumac. I am part owner and full general manager of Le Jardin Potager, as well as one of its three possible gym leaders. The water specialist, to be exact.”

“Oh,” Door said. “I gotcha. Striaton Gym’s the one that does the whole three gym leader thing, right?”

“A tradition passed down to us by our respective fathers, yes. Speaking of which…” Sumac drew back and motioned to the red-haired waiter, who had seemingly materialized out of nowhere with a tray balanced on his shoulder. “Allow me to introduce you to my cousin, Savory, the fire specialist.”

“Pleasure to meet you,” he said with a bow. His hand moved fluidly from the tray to the table, depositing a pair of water bottles at its center. “I look forward to your battle.” As he drew himself back up, he slid the tray into his hands at his front and cast a glance to his cousin. “Sage will be meeting us behind the curtain. We’re ready when you are, Sumac.”

“Ah, such a shame I don’t have more time for theatrics,” Sumac responded with a grin. “Very well. I’ll escort Miss Hornbeam to the stage in a moment. Go ahead and take your place.”

“Of course.” With another sweeping bow, Savory lifted his eyes to Door and winked. “Good luck, Miss Hornbeam.”

Then, he turned and walked quickly towards the curtain. Reaching up to play with the bottle of water, Door shifted in her seat.

“It’s … I prefer Door,” she said. “Just … just Door, if you don’t mind.”

“Ah! Of course. My apologies again, Door,” Sumac responded. He rested his hand against his chest as if to punctuate this thought, and Door couldn’t help but find the gesture to be a little overdramatic. “Tell me, though. Do you know why there are three leaders at this gym?”

Door shrugged. “Sure. Because back in the day, whoever had a type advantage against a trainer’s starter would be the one to battle. It was supposed to make things even more challenging for beginners.”

“A fantastic way to set the stage for the rest of the Unova League, wouldn’t you say?” he asked.

She couldn’t help but grin—genuinely this time, but also with a hint of confidence. “I’ll say. Please tell me that’s exactly what you’re doing now.”

“That is, in fact, exactly what we’re doing now,” Sumac answered with a flashy grin of his own. “So tell me, Door. If I sent a grass-type out to battle you, what type would be best to meet it?”

“Easy.” Door leaned back in her chair, slinging an arm over its back. “Fire. Like the ones Savory trains.”

“And if I sent a fire-type?”

“Water. Like your pokémon.”

“And a water-type?”

“Grass. Which I’m guessing your other cousin trains.”

“You would be correct,” Sumac replied. He placed a hand on the table and spread his manicured fingers across the crisp, white cloth. “So, Door. What type is your starter, then?”

Door stood up, shoving one hand in her pocket to feel Jack’s poké ball. As she did, her smirk grew. “Water. My starter’s an oshawott.”

Sumac clapped his hands together and smiled. “Then allow me to introduce you to my other cousin.” He threw an arm towards the curtain with a wide, sweeping gesture. “The challenger, Door Hornbeam of Nuvema City, wishes to battle Sage, gym leader of Striaton Gym!” His voice lowered back to its normal volume as he threw a look at Door over his shoulder. “And, if I may add, one hell of a head cook. Win, and perhaps dinner will be on her.”

Before them, the curtains parted dramatically, swinging back to reveal a wide-open hardwood floor painted with the lines of a battlefield. A young woman with a bright, green ponytail stood in its center, her hands pressed against the waist of her chef’s jacket. Beside her stood Savory, who gestured to the woman.

“Presenting the head chef of Le Jardin Potager and the grass-type gym leader of Striaton City, Sage Escoffier!” he announced.

Sage smirked and locked her green eyes on Door. “Ah, challenger! Welcome to Striaton Gym! I look forward to sampling the flavor of your techniques! Please approach the battlefield!”

Door took a deep breath and strode forward. This was it. Her very first gym battle. She had dreamed of this moment since she was a girl and hoped that one day, she would do it with real pokémon. But as she snaked her hand back into her pocket, she felt Jack’s poké ball. Was he ready? Gym battles were more intense than ordinary fights against wild pokémon or other trainers, and Jack hadn’t done much battling since he had joined Door’s team. Not only that, but also, Door thought back to Jack’s battle against N—how afraid he seemed. How easily he was beaten aside. And then there was the snivy in Amanita’s lab, the one that vanished in a puff of pink smoke after only a handful of attacks. With another deep breath, Door dug a little deeper into her pocket and felt Scout’s ball. No, Jack wasn’t ready. But Scout was. Or so she hoped.

She took her place on one end of the battlefield as Sage walked to the other. Not once did the gym leader take her eyes off her challenger, and Door wondered how frequently the chef left the kitchen for a good battle. Clearly, given how confident Sage seemed to be, it must have been often. Door swallowed for a second time and silently prayed that she was ready.

“So,” Sage said. “How long have you been a trainer?”

“I guess two days,” Door replied.

Sage chuckled. “You move quickly. All right! I’m honored to be your first gym experience, then! Allow me to tell you how this is going to go. It’s a two-on-two match. Only the challenger may switch pokémon. No time limit, and fauxkémon are allowed. Out-of-bounds counts as a knock-out. Got it?”

With that, Door pulled Scout’s poké ball from her pocket. Pressing the button, she felt it expand in her hand until it clicked. The movement felt fluid, natural—more so than any other time Door held it. And because of that, she smirked.

“Oh yeah,” she said. “Standard rules, then. Don’t hold back just because I’m new. I’ve been studying under Professor Ironwood for years.”

“Spirited,” Sage commented. She tilted her head and reached into her own pocket. “I like that. All right, then! I won’t hold back, and neither should you! Brioche, go!”

Sage tossed her poké ball to the center of the field, and Door followed suit. With a pair of flashes, two pokémon materialized on the battlefield: Scout and a puppy that looked exactly like Toto in every way. Door stiffened, remembering Blair for a second. She balled her hands into fists and hoped, at least, that this battle would end far, far differently.

“Whenever you’re ready, challenger,” Sage said. “I’ll let you have the first move.”

“Hold on! Door!”

She broke her gaze away from the battle to glance towards the tables. Geist rose to his feet, his eyes locked on Scout.

“I forgot to mention!” he called. “You’ve been using Scout for a lot of battles lately! That means he’s probably learned new moves by now. If Professor Ironwood taught you anything about the pokémon common to this region, think back on everything you know about patrat!”

Sage chuckled, drawing her challenger’s attention back to the battle. “Your friend’s observant.”

“He’s also got a point,” Door replied. Then, throwing her hand forward, she commanded, “Scout! Try Sand Attack!”

Without even questioning the order, the patrat spun, swiping his paw down into the floor. The motion was clear to Door: Geist was right. Scout did know more moves. And that realization lifted her spirits, even though Scout’s paw did nothing more than grind against the floor. She didn’t entirely expect Scout to turn the floorboards into the dirt and sand needed for the technique she had ordered; in fact, she was convinced that nothing would happen at all. But now that she could see she hadn’t entirely wasted her turn, a new plan was quickly forming in her mind.

“Not a strong start,” Sage quipped. “Brioche! Let’s show her how to really prepare for a battle! Work Up!”

The puppy dropped itself low to the floor and emitted a steady growl. Red light swirled around its body as it visibly tensed, and its growl grew louder and louder. Then, at the last second, Brioche snapped back to its full height, threw its head back, and howled, and the light around it burst into a brilliant, red aura. To Door, the creature looked like it was on fire, and with that thought in mind, she ground her teeth together and took a step back. She knew what Work Up did. She had even seen pokémon in televised tournaments use it now and then. But now, faced with a pokémon that was using it to prepare for a strike against her, she had to shake off her nervousness before even thinking about fighting back.

And then, she poured all her hope into a guess.

“Scout, you’ve got to take that lillipup out quickly!” she shouted. “Use Crunch!”

She didn’t expect anything to happen. She really didn’t. But then, to her shock, Scout opened his mouth wide, and a white light burst from his fangs. Before anyone could move, he barreled right for the lillipup, closing the short distance between them until he smashed his teeth into its shoulder. The puppy emitted a mechanical squeal as Scout’s jaws crunched straight through its fake fur and into its metal exoskeleton, and Brioche’s front legs flailed desperately against Scout’s tiny body. Then, with strength Door didn’t even know he had, Scout lashed once and released, sending the lillipup flying into the wall behind Sage. It slammed hard into it, leaving behind a dent as it crashed to the floor. When it struck the ground, it struggled back to its feet and blinked a few times, but before it could move back into the ring, Savory threw an arm into the air.

“Stop!” Savory announced. “Brioche is out-of-bounds! Match goes to the challenger’s patrat!”

Sage chuckled again and drew Brioche’s poké ball into the open. The puppy vanished with a flash of red light, and its trainer paused, grinning at her challenger.

“My, my,” she said. “You’re a lot stronger than I would have thought for someone who’s only been a trainer for two days.”

Door thought back to N and Blair and Amanita’s snivy again, and she shrugged at Sage’s comment. “It’s been a really long two days.”

“So I see.” Sage pocketed Brioche’s ball and drew out a second one. “Well, Mademoiselle Hornbeam, I made the mistake of underestimating you once, but I’m not doing it again! Pomme, go!”

She tossed the next ball into the ring. Door steeled herself, taking another deep breath as she waited. This was it. The grass-type. The gym-trained grass-type, no less. She couldn’t possibly risk sending out Jack at this point; given how little he had battled compared to Scout, Door knew he wouldn’t be able to stand his ground. So silently, she prayed that Scout’s victory against Sage’s lillipup wasn’t just a fluke.

The light streaming from Sage’s next poké ball burst and faded away, and Door found herself staring at a green monkey. As the pansage glared at Scout with large, dark eyes, a confident smirk played across its cream-colored muzzle, and it lifted one mitten-shaped hand to send a challenging gesture towards Scout.

And in that moment, Door decided that this match had to end quickly too.

“Okay, Scout!” she shouted. “Open up with Crunch again!”

Scout launched forward, white light swirling around his buck teeth once more. Yet despite the threat Scout posed and the short distance between them, the pansage didn’t move, not even to let its smirk fade. It was only at the last second that the pokémon shifted, holding up its left arm to block Scout’s attack, and when the rodent’s teeth clamped down on the monkey’s arm, it didn’t even squeal. It simply stood there, legs braced against the floor, as it held Scout at bay using just one arm.

“Pomme, throw it use and Work Up!” Sage commanded.

In what looked like a mockery of Scout’s move against its teammate, Pomme swung its arm down, threw the patrat off his feet, and tossed him across the field. Door tensed as she watched Scout tumble, her breath catching in her throat until he came to a stop just an inch from the very edge of the field. Then, she exhaled slowly and watched as, across the way, the pansage engulfed itself in a familiar red aura. Its eyes glinted, and its smirk grew more vicious as the monkey let out a low growl of its own. Pomme was certainly more of a challenge than Brioche, and because of that, Door hesitated, thinking hard about how to tackle this opponent without getting Scout knocked out.

Tackle this opponent.


Tackle.


Door’s eyes fell on the pansage’s arm. Even through the red light surrounding it, she could see the faint sparking emitting from the break in its “flesh.” That alone gave her an idea.

“Scout!” she said. “Tackle! Approach it from the right!”

“Pomme, don’t let it get close!” Sage countered. “Vine Whip!”

The two pokémon moved almost simultaneously. Scout bounded forward on all fours, rushing towards Pomme in an arc. At the same time, Pomme twirled to swing its tail in an arc around itself. A green light flashed from the tip of the pansage’s tail, and the leaves adorning it twisted and lashed outward into a lithe, green vine. Grabbing it with one hand, Pomme smashed its new whip into the floor just inches from Scout’s face, splintering the boards instantly. Scout leapt over the whip and continued bounding toward Pomme, but the pansage swung its tail again to lash it at the rodent. Despite how close he was, Scout was still far too quick for the monkey, and once more, the tail slammed into the floorboards.

Grinning, Door cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted, “Keep it up, Scout! When you’re close enough, Crunch Pomme’s weak point!”

Scout leapt over Pomme’s last Vine Whip and shot directly at the monkey’s broken arm. His glowing teeth clamped down on it, and he jerked his head, tearing it clean out of its socket with a loud snap. Sparks flew from the pansage’s damaged side as it reeled back and screamed. And then, it swung around, slamming its tail into Scout’s side. Scout was thrown off his feet, and seemingly on instinct, he released Pomme’s broken arm just before he crashed back down onto the battlefield. The arm clattered away, coming to a rest just outside of the ring, while Scout struggled to stand. His side had been torn open by Pomme’s Vine Whip, just enough to expose his slick exoskeleton, and Door hesitated at the sight of it.

“Pomme, let’s return the favor!” Sage said with a grin. “Vine Whip the patrat’s weak point!”

Door shook off her shock and threw a hand forward. “Counter with Crunch!”

With its good hand, Pomme snatched its tail and lashed out, swinging it once again at Scout. This time, Scout was ready. He opened his mouth and crouched down, and as the vine slammed into his face, he twisted and clamped onto it with his glowing fangs. At the sight of this, Door grinned and balled her hands into fists. She could feel her confidence pouring back into her.

“All right, Scout!” she said. “Toss it!”

Scout spun, jerking Pomme with him until the monkey was ripped off its feet. Then, with a snap, Scout threw his opponent into the air as hard as he could, and Pomme shot like a bullet to the ceiling and smashed into a light fixture. Its body burst into a brilliant, white light as sparks rained down on the battlefield. Scout chirruped and dashed back to Door’s feet, narrowly missing the rain of electricity … as well as Pomme’s charred and broken body. The pansage slammed hard into the floor, and although its eyes flickered, it otherwise fell still.

“Pomme is unable to battle!” Savory announced. “Match goes to the patrat, and with two victories against the gym leader, the challenger wins!”

Door couldn’t help herself. She shouted once with joy, then swooped down to scoop Scout into her arms. Without thinking, she held him close, ignoring his squirming protests.

“Oh man, that was awesome!” she shouted.

“Indeed it was,” Sage replied. She strode forward, recalling her pokémon as she approached Door. “My goodness, that battle did a number on my pansage.”

At once, Door froze, her smile fading quickly. “Oh. I … sorry. I-I didn’t mean to—”

Sage chuckled and held up a hand calmly. “It’s all right. I’ve had Pomme’s core reinforced specifically because of how intense gym battles can get. The rest of him can be easily replaced.” She pocketed the ball and turned her sheepish grin towards Door. “I can’t tell you how many times Pomme has been overwhelmed like that. But he doesn’t seem to mind. He just wants to do his best for me.” Sage sighed. “I know it sounds barbaric, but it’s a comfort, really. No matter what happens, your best friend will always be okay.”

Door gave her an uncertain look. That did sound barbaric to her. Why would anyone want to let their friends battle in the first place if they were just going to get injured that badly? Back in the days of Hilda King’s first journey, there were regulations and rules and restrictions put in place to prevent real pokémon from getting injured. In Door’s opinion, ever since fake pokémon became the norm, people forgot how to have a proper battle. Sure, the rules and restrictions were never lifted—and they were observed whenever a foreigner brought a real pokémon into a match—but no one cared if battles between fake pokémon got extreme. So now, battles didn’t have the same spirit that they used to. And Door thought that was a shame.

Still, she said nothing as Sage stood before her and shrugged.

“In any case, that was a great battle, young lady,” she said. “What you did with Pomme’s arm was particularly clever, and tossing Brioche out of the ring was a fantastic idea. My only criticism is don’t be afraid to use a variety of techniques. You were relying on Crunch quite a bit throughout your second match. A great trainer knows how to hold back their power and rely on a variety of moves to outwit their opponent.”

Door took a deep breath. She remained silent, even as the temptation to point out the fact that she won nagged at her mind. Instead, she watched as Savory and Sumac joined their cousin on the battlefield. Sumac drew out of his pocket a small, velvet cube the size and shape of a ring box, and cracking it open, he presented its contents to Door. She glanced down and took in the sight of the object: a small piece of gold in the shape of three diamonds in a chain. Each diamond was inlaid with a different jewel—sapphire, ruby, emerald—and as Sumac held it up, it glittered in the remaining light of the dining room.

With a sharp inhale, Door mentally put a name to this object. Of course she knew what it was. She had seen it in so many pictures, and she secretly envied the people who had the opportunity to hold it. So, as she placed Scout on her shoulder and reached for the trinket, her hand began to shake … and continued to shake even after she grasped its warm surface between her fingers.

“Nonetheless,” Sage continued, “you battled well, and in recognition of your victory against the Striaton Gym, we, the gym leaders, present you with the Trio Badge. Congratulations, Door Hornbeam.”

Door swallowed hard. “I … I can’t believe it. I finally…” She looked up and couldn’t help but crack a grin. “Thank you. It was an honor battling you.”

She held out a hand for Sage to shake, and as the woman grasped it and pumped it once, she smiled broadly.

“Now, if I recall correctly, my cousin always offers the challenger a second, bigger reward,” she said. “A meal on the house, perhaps? I’m sure we could—”

“Excuse me! Terribly sorry!”

Door and the three gym leaders turned their heads to Geist, who stood at the edge of the battlefield. In his hand was a communication device. Its screen was still glowing from recent use. Glancing at his face, Door noticed that he was looking at her with not an expression of elation over her victory but instead a solemn glare.

“Door, we need to go. Now that you have the Trio Badge, that should get us into the Dreamyard,” he said.

“What’s going on?” she asked. “I mean … I won. That’s a good thing, right?”

“Oh, it is,” Geist replied, “but I just got a call from Dr. Fennel. Something’s going on over there. It’s covered in a fog of dream smoke.”

“Dream smoke?” Door whispered. She looked back at the gym leaders to find them exchanging glances.

“I can’t go,” Sage said. “Not with my pokémon out of commission.”

“And I’d better stay here to man the restaurant,” Sumac added.

Savory didn’t even need a cue. He was already taking off his apron, and the moment Sumac finished, he tossed it at him. “I’ll go. Don’t worry about it.”

“Wait, what?” Door said. “I mean … isn’t it important for you to stay at the gym?”

“On the contrary. As gym leaders, it’s our responsibility to lend a hand whenever something unusual is happening in our city, especially if it’s not yet clear whether or not the police should be involved.” Savory walked forward and put his hands on his hips. “Are your pokémon ready for another battle?”

“Sure,” Door said with a blink. “I’ve got one other pokémon, and Scout seems tough enough.”

The patrat punctuated this thought with a slow blink and a rumbling bark, and Savory responded with a smirk and a gentle pat on the rodent’s head.

“All right,” he said. “Then let’s go.”

Well, it's good to know that at least the people who were actually there haven't forgotten about Plasma yet, even if everyone else has. I guess forty years is long enough for even pretty major events to fade. Sometimes I think there's no force on earth as powerful as the bored disinterest of people trying to live through major historical events.

It's also nice that there are people looking out for Door. She's liable to get herself – or, y'know, 80% of her team – killed, without guidance, and she could really use some old hands at saving Unova in her corner alongside her robot butler. Though it is good to see her learning from Geist, too. She's got a knack for this, you can tell – but it's really undeveloped, at this point; when confronted with a new kind of opponent that renders her previous strategy moot, she doesn't quite have the experience to know how to come up with a new idea. So Geist steps in, and surprisingly enough Door actually listens, and what d'you know, it works out and she banishes a rare pokémon to another plane of existence. Which, uh, Amanita is surprisingly cool with, but okay, I guess she can always summon another.

Actually, rereading that chapter, it is a hell of a solution to the ethical issue of battling a pokémon till it dies, which I've always thought of as the main problem with nuzlocke fics. Either the pokémon aren't 'real' so it doesn't matter (and even then, the fic itself pushes us to consider that maybe it does matter after all, with the way it makes a clear distinction between the two binaries of natural/artificial and real/false) or if they are real, they're simply sent back to the Dream World. From my admittedly very limited experience, I don't think most nuzlocke fics really consider the ethical issues their rulesets raise, which has always put me off; Electric Sheep is the one that made me think actually, wait, this is a genre with legs. That said, I think eighteen hundred-odd words is a lot of worldbuildy exposition to take all in one go, even leavened as it is with dialogue and snark – though it's difficult to see how you'd break it up any more than you have done. Maybe the Entralink stuff could be left till later? I'm not sure; the format you've chosen, where one chapter equals one location and there's a very strict mapping of Door's journey onto the games, is probably working against you a little bit there, because I'm finding it hard to see where else you could move this information to in terms of the story's general arc.

Onto a much more pressing issue: Striation Gym, and its Leaders' hair. I've never been sure if people in the pokémon world just have a naturally wide variety of hair colours or whether everyone really does go to the hassle of constantly dyeing it in zany colours that match their themes; the fact that Sumac and company are direct descendants of Chili and company makes this question weigh heavier on me than usual. They could have inherited their hair from their respective fathers, I guess, or they could just be dyeing it for the sake of the show. Your Unova really is the society of the spectacle, after all. Anyway, it's certainly interesting that they've inherited the Gym. It's a thing that does seem to happen in the pokémon world – Janine inherits Koga's Gym, Falkner inherits his dad's – but it always feels weird to me, especially when it's three separate people who've all inherited the roles their fathers played. That seems like a thing that shouldn't happen to me. Possibly the Unova League has issues with nepotism, or possibly I'm just too suspicious of people who hold public (or semi-public in this case, I guess) office.

Also there was a battle in that chapter, I should totally actually comment on that. It's a pretty good one, especially given the material you had to work with; Striaton Gym is not desperately interesting, honestly, but you get the lillipup out of the way quickly and spend most of your time on the pansage, which is definitely a good idea. The elemental monkeys have a lot of fictional potential, I think, being monkeys and therefore highly mobile and devious, and the image of Pomme (redacted: tangent about what a dork Sage is when it comes to naming her pokémon and how much I love it, Brioche, oh my god) creating a vine whip and using it as a hand-to-hand weapon rather than simply whacking Scout with its tail is a nice way of showing moves adapting to the unique physiology of individual pokémon. A creature with hands is instinctively going to manifest vine whip differently to one without, for instance.

It seems a bit odd that Sage has such a small stable of pokémon that having just two weak ones put out of commission prevents her from doing her duty as Leader, though. Like, even if everyone does the Unova Gym circuit in the same order as in the games (which I can't imagine they do, since that would be a logistical nightmare for Pokémon Centre staff, Gym Leaders and the people who manage the safe routes alike, to say nothing of how difficult it would be for the actual kids involved) and so she has no stronger pokémon for tougher challengers, surely she has backup pokémon for consecutive challengers, or strong partners of her own to help her in her leaderly duties? Especially given that those duties might involve dealing with opponents tougher than the usual Gym challengers.

Also, I love how quick Sumac is to say “nope, not going, I'll man the restaurant”. Like there is zero hesitation there. Sage is like “can't do it, no pokémon”, to which the proper response is “don't worry, I'll go”, and yet Sumac's first instinct is to keep the restaurant going rather than to investigate the giant cloud of dream smoke. Nice, dude. Striaton's finest, right there.

One minor correction:
“Use” and “and” have got transposed here.

A reply to a reply that technically isn't related to any of this:
Thanks for the encouragement! I mean, I'm always writing about the boundaries of what's human, I guess, since I'm so interested in abjection; this story is pretty definitively about people who aren't human by any definition of the word, people who are either literally or discursively constructed by humans to do specific things for them – but of course, it's hard to talk about what isn't human without talking about what is. So that will probably come up after all. And wow, that was a super pretentious paragraph I just wrote. I'm … going to hit the post button before I have a chance to regret it.

So, our first glimpse at a gym battle in future Unova. I know I've seen you mention in passing that the gym leaders have been changed out to account for the passing of time, but in the pains I have taken not to spoil myself, that's about all I know. Still, glad to see that the Striaton Gym stayed in the family, but I have to wonder if the gym leaders and their anime protagonist hair are genetics or dye.

The battle itself moves along at a good clip, and I'm realizing what an early-game powerhouse Patrat can be. It never appealed to me aesthetically, so I never trained one, but to learn a move like Crunch early on is actually pretty awesome. After the battle, in Door's little debrief with Sage, it was a little strange how she was referring to her mangled Pansage both as a friend and companion, but clearly saw it as nothing more than a tool to fight with. I'm sure it's deliberate, and it's also a pretty interesting look at how humans will anthropomorphize everything, even if we know full well it's just a very lifelike simulacrum. Door's discomfort with this speaks to her growth over the last few days traveling with Geist, and now that she's getting over her instinctive distaste of fauxkemon and starting to see Scout as a partner, it's pretty jarring to see Sage get right back into the mindset of only seeing the fauxkemon as unfeeling tools.

Because Door is definitely not the kid who set out in Chapter 2. Sure, she's still recognizably herself, but even now, I can see the seeds of her further character arc, as she grapples with the idea of fauxkemon and what it means to battle with something that she's been told can't feel pain, and to travel with something that can only go through the motions of companionship.

You've also started sowing the seeds (subtly in other chapters, but I think more overtly here) that there's something more to the disappearance of pokemon in Unova, more than just overhunting and overdevelopment. I should certainly hope this isn't a blank in the proverbial Chekhov's Gun, especially not with the interesting Dream World incorporation you dropped on us with Amanita, so definitely looking forward to see how you totally blindside me with something out of left field there.

I admit to chuckling at that.



Jack just gets cuter each time. Also,"were real ones actually that strong" hmmm interesting point...

Nice confrontation with Team Matrix here. I'm guessing the Musharna was the one that made Oppenheimer there. Speaking of illusions, curious if the Dreamworld stuff plays a more important more than in the original games.

And we get Door having an Audino! I've heard some fun stuff concerning Audino, so it should be fun seeing how she handles it. Look forward to more!

Replies!



And now, the meatiest chapter yet. 8)

In all seriousness, given the length of this chapter, I'mma gonna take a short break to avoid overwhelming y'all. The next update will come a week from now, right ... smack in the middle of Memorial Day weekend for you American folk. Uh, excellent time to start a new arc?

Ah well.

---

To call the ensuing hour in Amanita Fennel’s laboratory awkward would have been an understatement. Savory had parted ways with them at the gate, with the excuse that he had a thing or few to discuss with his fellow gym leaders about the Dreamyard, and Geist had carried Opal upstairs to be repaired and to “upload her memory of the events that transpired this afternoon for analysis.” That left Blair and Door standing awkwardly next to each other against a set of desks—the same ones Scout and Amanita’s snivy had used for battle. For the past half an hour, Blair had stared at her feet as if her shoes had become the most fascinating objects in the room, and Door, meanwhile, had kept herself busy by turning her new audino’s poké ball over in her hand as a thousand conversations filled her head. Every so often, Door would look at the other girl and open her mouth to say something, but just as quickly, she would shut it again and stare at her ball once more.

Finally, she took a deep breath.

“Hey, um, just wanna say I’m sorry,” she said quickly.

She swallowed hard and reached up with her free hand to rub the back of her neck. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Blair look up.

“I … what?” the girl replied.

“Sorry,” Door repeated. “Just, um. About Wilbur.”

“What about Wilbur?”

“You know…” Still, Door refused to look at her. She even turned her head away from Blair as she twirled her empty hand in the air. “Scout biting him on the leg. Making him bleed. That kind of thing?”

“Wilbur’s fine.”

Door shifted her head and caught the other girl’s eye. Blair looked bewildered, eyebrows knitted and eyes wide and uncertain. Yet despite that expression, Door relaxed.

“O-oh?” she said.

Blair nodded slowly. “He’s at the pokémon center. The wound wasn’t deep. It’s okay … all right?”

Door relaxed a little more. “Kinda surprised you’re not pissed off at me.”

Looking at her shoes again, Blair shrugged. “Why would I be?”

“I don’t know.” Door rubbed the back of her neck again. “I feel like we got off on the wrong foot.”

Blair didn’t respond. She scuffed her toes against the floor and refused to look up. In that silence, Door stopped, searching her mind for a way to keep talking.

“So … why were you at the Dreamyard anyway?”

“I told you,” Blair responded. “I noticed there was dream smoke coming out of there, so I snuck in with Opal.”

“Yeah, but if Wilbur was in the pokémon cen—” Door stopped as a part of Blair’s statement sunk into her head. For the second time that day, her mind immediately switched gears, and she gave her conversational partner a wary glance. “Wait. What do you mean you snuck in?”

Blair looked up at Door with wide eyes, but this time, her eyebrows were raised. It was clear she had meant to say something else, but the moment to correct herself had long passed.

“I mean I went in before anyone like the police or something got in,” Blair replied quickly.

Door narrowed her eyes at that. “Come to think of it … only those who’d earned the Trio Badge or who’re working for Amanita have permission to be in the Dreamyard. If you’re a fresh graduate from Trainers’ School, then that means…”

Blair bit her lip and cringed, leaning away from Door.

At that, Door frowned and slumped her shoulders. “Blair. Did you earn the Trio Badge?”

For a second, Blair didn’t react—didn’t say anything and didn’t move to indicate an answer one way or another. Then, slowly, she shook her head.

Door pulled her hand from the back of her neck to the front of her bangs. Worming her fingers through her hair, she realized then that she was going to have to say something mature. Responsible. Sisterly.

“Well, look,” she said. “Not everyone can be, y’know. Perfect. We all do things that aren’t exactly by-the—”

“I didn’t graduate from Trainers’ School.”

Door stopped. Narrowed her eyes again. Quirked an eyebrow at Blair. “What?”

Blair tightened her shoulders and pulled them close to her head. “I … I didn’t graduate.” Then, when she spoke next, her voice dropped into what was barely above a mumble. “I wasn’t failing, but my grades weren’t good enough for me to graduate with a trainer’s license.”

“So … what? You’re just getting a starter and going back to school, or…?”

Blair cringed a little more. “I’m dropping out. I-I got a trainer’s license at the pokémon center instead.”

Door’s expression shifted immediately. Her features softened, eyebrows moving from a confused knit to a concerned furrow, and her body leaned towards Blair in an effort to see the girl’s face.

“Blair,” she said.

The new trainer sniffed and wiped her eyes with a sleeve. “Sorry. Please don’t tell my aunt. I won’t tell her about the stuff you said to me. But she was only gonna give me a starter on the condition that I’d graduate, but if I didn’t, then…”

Door held up her hands, palms towards the other girl. “Blair, hold on. I don’t get it.”

“What’s there to get?” Blair asked. “I suck! I screw up all the time on my tests, I can’t even win a single battle except against a stupid patrat, and you know what that girl said to me when she beat me in the Dreamyard? She just tossed Toto aside like she was nothing, and she called me pathetic, and…”

With a sigh, Door slung an arm around Blair and pulled her into an awkward half-hug. Door rolled her eyes and groaned, filling the silence Blair left behind the moment she stopped speaking. Then, with a dramatic dip, Door brought her face close to Blair’s.

“Okay, look,” she said. “Sure, you suck at tests. Everyone sucks at tests. Tests suck, period. If you ask me, the whole concept of a school where you learn things before you go out and become a trainer’s kinda stupid. Training isn’t something you train for. It’s a thing where you do stupid things on the road because the journey itself is supposed to be the thing that teaches you about how much life does whatever it does. I don’t know. I’ve had a long day, so I can’t even tell you whether or not this makes sense, but my point is, just because you suck at school doesn’t mean you suck at everything, got it?”

Blair sniffled and looked at Door from over her arm. “But what about that girl?”

“What girl? You mean the inbred punk rock chick who hasn’t seen a shower in God even knows how long?” Door asked. When Blair cracked a smile at that, Door couldn’t help but grin herself as she said, “She’s a complete jerk. Not to mention she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Jack, my oshawott? Took out her patrat in one hit. Took her out too in another.” Using the hand slung around Blair’s shoulders, Door mimed shooting a gun. “Boom. Just like that.”

Slowly, Blair lowered her arms and widened her grin. “Really?”

“Really.” Door patted her shoulder. “Anyway, point is, don’t listen to her. Everyone sucks at first, but that’s the whole thing about a journey. You don’t actually know what you’re good at until you kinda figure it out by accident along the way.”

“So … you think I should still drop out and go on a journey?”

Door snorted. “Hell, kid. I’ll walk you out of town.”

“Don’t call me ‘kid.’ I’m fourteen.”

Pocketing her audino’s poké ball, Door held up a hand. “Okay. Blair it is.”

Blair’s grin softened. “Thanks, Door. Not … not for the name thing. For everything.”

Door crossed her arms and shrugged again. “Don’t mention it. But … you did mean the thing about not telling Professor Ironwood about the … other thing, right?”

“Were you serious about not telling her I dropped out of Trainers’ School?”

“Yeah.”

“Then we’ve got a deal.”

With a smirk, Blair offered a hand for Door to shake. Door snaked one of hers under her arm and took it, and the two trainers pumped their hands once.

And then, Geist cleared his throat.

“Well,” he said from his spot on the stairwell, “I suppose this would be a good time to tell you Opal’s ready.”

On cue, Blair’s Companion trotted down the steps and waltzed across the laboratory floor to approach her trainer. Her hands were out to her sides, palms parallel to the floor to allow her to show off the polished, new panel that covered her stomach. All the while, her eyes were glowing bright blue, as they always had when she was active.

“Opal!” Blair cried. She pushed off the desk and practically ran to her Companion. Reaching out for her, Blair took Opal’s wrists and looked into her face. “Opal, are you okay?! How’re your power cells?!”

“Fully functional and charged, Blair! Better than new, even!” Opal replied cheerfully. “It helps when the person repairing you has the right parts on-hand, and Dr. Fennel has plenty!” Then, she hesitated, pulling one of her hands out of Blair’s to touch her fingertips to her lips. “But what did I miss? My memory core seems to have a blank between the Dreamyard and now.”

“It’s … it’s a long story,” Blair replied. “We should head to the pokémon center now. I want to see how Wilbur’s doing.”

Opal pulled one of her hands away from Blair’s to salute her partner. “Okay! Destination set! Ready when you are, Blair!”

With a soft grin, Blair whirled around, keeping her hand on Opal’s other wrist. As the trainer stepped towards the entrance to the lab, Door pushed off the desk.

“Hey, Blair?” she asked.

Blair flashed Door a surprised glance. “Yeah?”

“When I said I’d walk you out of town, I was serious,” she told her. “If you’re going to be hanging around the pokémon center for a while, I’ll swing by later on, and we can talk about that. Okay?”

A relieved smile broke across Blair’s face, and with a nod, she replied, “Okay.”

And then, she and her Companion walked out of the lab.

The moment the door shut behind them, the stairs creaked. Door looked up to see Geist standing straight in the stairwell—straighter than he had a second ago.

“Dr. Fennel will see you now,” he said.

Door tightened her arms and walked towards the stairs. As she reached for the banister, she hesitated and looked directly at Geist.

“I didn’t do anything wrong, did I?” she asked.

He smiled at her. “No. Why would you think that?”

“I mean…” She flicked her eyes towards the door. “The whole ‘Dr. Fennel will see you now’ thing. Kinda sounds like meeting the principal if you messed up in school.”

“Oh. I can assure you, you did absolutely nothing wrong.” Then, after a pause, Geist added, “But you did make up with Blair, did you not?”

“Guess you walked in after that,” Door muttered. “Yeah. We talked things over. She’s apparently gone through a lot.”

“Ah.”

“Poor kid. Kinda feel sorry for her now.”

Geist frowned for a moment, then reached out to motion towards the top of the steps. “You’d better go upstairs. Dr. Fennel is waiting.”

Without even a nod to him, Door climbed the stairs and brushed past him. She emerged into the living quarters a moment later—or, more specifically, what was apparently a living room. Two couches were arranged around a glass-topped coffee table in the center of the space, and the wall closest to Door was lined with framed pictures and low bookshelves filled with books. Straight ahead, she saw a set of three doors, one of which opened into what appeared to be a small repair shop; Door could see the types of chairs Companions would sit in when being serviced through the doorway. To her left was a simple, open kitchen, in which Amanita stood with one hand on a tablet computer and another on a coffee pot.

“Dr. Fennel?” Door called. “Geist said you were waiting for me.” Amanita looked over her shoulder. “Hmm? Ah! Yes, of course! Close the door, dear, and come on over. I don’t want Geist to hear our conversation.”

That request struck Door as a little odd, but nonetheless, she shrugged and did as she was told. Closing the door quietly, she stalked across the living room, hands jammed into her pockets, until she stood behind a set of stools at the divider separating the kitchenette from the living room. From that angle, Door could see the pair of coffee mugs sitting on the kitchenette counter in front of Amanita. The scientist finished pouring one cup, then shifted the pot to the other, all while keeping her eyes on a tablet computer.

“Interesting turn of events in the Dreamyard there,” Amanita said. “Never pegged Belle and Starr as someone else’s hired hands when I met them. They always seemed like a standup pair of potential scientists.”

Door snorted. Maybe Starr would have been—one could program a Companion to be anything they wanted it to be, after all—but Belle was an entirely different matter.

“You really think so?” Door said.

Amanita cracked a grin. “Sure. And before you ask, Cassius Cassine was a lot worse off before he got his training. You could rehabilitate a lot of folks, so long as they’re willing to listen to you. That’s what Bill always taught us, anyway.”

“Um … right.” Door rubbed the back of her neck. “So … what did you need to talk about? Reward for delivering Geist or something?”

With a click, Amanita slid the coffeepot back into place. She was quiet for a second as she picked up one of the mugs of coffee and placed her tablet on the divider’s counter, in front of Door. Tapping something on its face, she let the tablet’s holographic projector flicker to life. Above the screen, a small image of Door appeared, standing with one fist clenched at her side and the other hand waving wildly in front of her.

“And now you're being open about it?!” the image demanded.

Geist’s voice, from a source unseen, responded, “Being open about what?”

“That you're a Companion!”

Amanita reached over to tap the tablet’s face, and the image of Door dissipated.

“Coffee?” Amanita asked as she extended one of the cups to Door.

Door could feel her face burn with an embarrassed blush, and she shook her head. Amanita frowned and dumped the coffee back into the pot.

“Suit yourself,” Amanita said.

“I, um … thanks, but…” Swallowing hard, she glanced at the tablet again and chuckled nervously. “S-so, uh, you grabbed all the video from Geist’s memory core?”

Amanita grasped the other cup. Her free hand reached for a small sugar bowl in the shape of a munna, just next to the coffeemaker.

“Mmhmm,” she replied.

Door stared at the counter. She could practically feel a part of her curl up and die in her chest. “So I guess you saw all the things I said to him already.”

“Not all of it. Just the Dreamyard so far. Geist told me I’d be most interested in what happened there.”

Amanita removed the lid of the sugar bowl and started spooning sugar into her coffee, and Door watched the spoon dip into and out of the container. Instantly, she felt relief. Amanita hadn’t seen much, then. Not the time Door tried to hurt Scout, not all the things she said about Companions … nothing except the Dreamyard. Relaxing, Door sat back and thought about what Amanita had just shown her—about the clip in particular.

“So … so was it interesting?” Door asked at last.

“Oh yes.” Amanita replied with a chuckle. “I got a kick out of that part in particular.”

All at once, Door’s face burned again, and she turned her head away from her host. “To be fair, Geist looks just like a human at first glance.”

Amanita’s spoon clinked against her mug a few times—slowly, as if she was choosing her next moves carefully. And then, at last, she tapped the spoon on the edge of her cup and placed it in the mug that she had offered Door.

“Oh, I know,” Amanita said. “Geist was specifically designed to be as close to human as possible. Even newer models aren’t as close to human as he is.”

Door furrowed her eyebrows. “Then what was so funny about that clip? Why show me that clip if you knew I wouldn’t have been able to recognize what Geist was?”

“Well, two reasons,” Amanita said as she lifted her eyes to the ceiling. “First, I’d like to apologize to you because it is rather rude to lead you on like that. Second…”

Amanita’s voice trailed off briefly as her eyes fell onto Door. The trainer shifted uncomfortably on her feet as she brought her cup back to her lips.

“Second?” she asked.

“Second, truth is…” She exhaled pressed her mug against her chin. “After seeing that clip, I thought it’d be best to have Geist send you up for a chat. I’m sure you’ve got plenty of questions that need answers.”

At that, Door held up her hands to stop the older woman in her tracks. “Whoa. Look. I’m sure this all is fascinating, but I don’t need answers. I delivered Geist as promised. I’m good with not knowing what’s up.”

Peering over the counter, Amanita raised her eyebrows at Door. “A granddaughter of Brigette who isn’t curious? Now that’s something.”

She stopped to sip her coffee. Door watched her tilt her head back and smack her lips afterwards in thought.

“Well, dear,” Amanita said, “I can’t very well make you stay and chat, so if you really don’t want to ask, you don’t have to. Feel free to go back downstairs. Geist has been instructed to give you an appropriate reward before you leave.”

Huh. That was easy. Door shifted from one foot to the other as she mulled over Amanita’s words. Was this too easy?

“Thanks,” she said cautiously. Then, as an afterthought, she added, “And, um. Sorry. For, y’know. Seeming rude here.”

“Not at all! Take care, Door.”

And that was that. Amanita turned her back on the living room and brought her mug to her lips, and Door was left standing awkwardly in the middle of a stranger’s living room. Frowning, Door tilted her head and waited for a beat, as if expecting something else, but when Amanita only continued to sip her coffee in silence, Door nodded and moved to the stairs. Without a word of goodbye, she reached out, her fingertips brushing the doorknob…

...before stopping altogether.

Door sighed and cursed internally and profusely. She whirled around, walked back to the divider, and took a seat on one of the stools.

Once again, an adult played her like a fiddle.

“Okay,” she said, her voice dripping with exasperation. “First question. Is he a Companion or isn’t he?”

Amanita shifted to face Door with a wide, friendly grin. “I thought you’d ask. Yes, Geist is a Companion, through and through. One hundred percent artificial human.”

Door arched an eyebrow and nodded slowly. “Uh huh. So does he … I mean, that’s a stupid question because he said he knew in the Dreamyard, but—”

“Yes, Geist knows he’s a Companion.”

At once, Door’s curiosity burned away into a spike of frustration. “So why’d he pretend he wasn’t?! Why’d he talk about himself like he was just some garden-variety amnesiac?!”

“Can’t say for certain, dear,” Amanita replied with a shrug. “Sometimes, Geist just likes to be coy.” She hesitated, her eyes drifting to the ceiling again. “Although come to think of it, he did say something about how you didn’t care for Companions. Maybe he was just trying to avoid making you feel uncomfortable. He’s designed to be sympathetic, you know.”

Door cringed. Of course he had to tell Amanita that part. As if she needed to look even worse in front of another human being. Sure, her reason for hating Companions was, in her mind anyway, completely understandable and her own personal opinion that no one in their right mind would judge her for, but she knew that Geist, with his soft sighs and posh accent, would find a way to make it seem like hating his entire kind was a bad thing.

And then, there was the part where Amanita thought he might have simply been coy, which to Door sounded as if he had deliberately—

Wait a second.

“What do you mean you can’t say for certain why he was pretending? He’s a Companion! It’s not like anything’s actually going through his head! Wouldn’t you have, you know, known that he was acting on the protocols for a mischievous Companion or something? Like … doesn’t he have set characteristics like every other Companion?”

Using one of her hands, Amanita rubbed the back of her head. “Well … that’s true, but Geist is a bit … special.”

Door did not like the sound of that. “What do you mean?”

Amanita gave her a long, serious look. “You’ve noticed it, haven’t you? How Geist sometimes seems … human, as it were?”

Of course she had. That was the first thing she noticed. Door felt her frustration bubble up and fill every part of her body. Her throat constricted, and it felt as if something large and cold was welling up in her throat. All she wanted was a straight answer, but…

Taking a deep breath, Door tried to calm herself. Maybe she wasn’t asking the right question. Maybe … maybe it wasn’t so much what Geist was but instead why he was.

And maybe Door had to dig in a different direction to figure that part out.

So she began. “Dr. Fennel—”

“Amanita.”

“Right. Amanita.” Door hesitated. The first question was the most important. That much she knew. “Who made Geist?”

The scientist smirked. Apparently, the first question was the right one.

“Your great aunt,” Amanita replied.

Door paused again, but this time, it was for a short moment. She punctuated it by slapping her forehead.

“Oh my God. I’ll dismantle him,” she groaned. Then, peering at Amanita, she added, “He’s from Kanto. If he’s with you now, then he meant he lived with my great aunt, didn’t he?”

“Technically yes, although Kanto does have its own administrator he could’ve been with.” Amanita brought her cup to her lips. “Still, you’re not wrong.”

Door winced at her response. Geist had another owner. Things were starting to click into place.

“So … when he said he doesn’t remember anything before he came to you,” Door said slowly, “that meant…”

“That he was wiped, just like any other used Companion before they end up with new owners?” Amanita took a sip, then pulled her cup away from her lips only just enough to let her speak. “Yep.”

Door rubbed her face, trailing her hand slowly downwards until she reached her chin. Then, she shoved her elbow against the counter and leaned in, squinting once more at Amanita. “Chrissake,” she said. “Why couldn’t he just say that?”

With a grin, Amanita swirled her cup, splashing lukewarm coffee over the rim and onto her hand. “Already went over that, dear. But … wouldn’t you like to know why he’s so special—or why your friends with Team Matrix are after him?”

And there, Door paused. Before that point, Door didn’t think she could narrow her eyes at a person any more than what she was already doing as she stared at Amanita. But that statement—not only the way it was delivered with the woman’s coy smile and teasing tone but also the actual content of it—allowed Door to transcend to a completely different plane of fed up with literally everything. So, she found a way to narrow her eyes even more without closing them completely.

“What.” Her reaction was not a question. It was a statement.

Amanita’s grin softened a little, easing from coy to sheepish as she brought her cup to her lips again. “Team Matrix is after Geist. Or at least, I think that’s one of the things they’re doing. Who’s to say about organizations like these? But in any case, they are. Don’t ask me why; I just know. And I know because … well, that’s why your grandmother had me hold onto him for a few years.”

So that was it. Door relaxed, exhaling through her nose. Granted, she didn’t know whether or not Amanita was telling the truth, but if she was, then it would have made sense.

After all, Door knew her grandmother. Or, rather, she didn’t know her grandmother, and that was the problem and point all in one. Brigette Hamilton-Hornbeam—former administrator of Pokémon Bank, former CEO of Halcyon Labs, former a lot of other things related to innovative tech Door could barely comprehend—had not spoken to her own son and granddaughter for over ten years. Linus had tried, of course. There was always a voicemail message on Brigette’s birthday, cards on holidays, anything to stay connected, but Brigette never bothered visiting them and certainly showed the minimum amount of warmth towards Door.

But if there was one thing Door knew about Brigette—other than the fact that she was practically an ice queen as far as she was concerned—it was that Door was poised to inherit this great big family history full of things like a massive tech empire and the words “revolutionized the face of” … and the only reason why she knew about any of it was because she was taught about it in school. She wasn’t told any of it by her grandmother or her often scatterbrained father. It was fed to her by some musty textbook in the back of a classroom, through lectures peppered with kids swiveling around to look at her, through secondhand stories flavored with the excitement of people who apparently knew her family more than she did.

So yes. She understood that Amanita had no idea why an evil organization was after a Companion Brigette had dumped on her. Dumping important things onto the heads of innocent bystanders with as minimal an explanation as possible was just something Door’s grandmother did.

And so, Door felt a little bit of sympathy for Amanita as she finally responded.

“I’m listening,” Door said.

Amanita sighed, and Door couldn’t help but notice the slightly relieved note it carried.

“You see,” Amanita began, “Geist is a lot older than he looks, and … well. Your aunt died—what, ten years ago?”

Door shrugged. She knew she should have felt a little somber at the mention of her great aunt’s death, but the truth was she didn’t feel anything at all. “Yeah.”

Amanita flicked her fingers across her tablet, and its holographic screen flickered to life once more. “Well, Geist has only been with me for the past three years.”

Shifting her eyes to the ceiling, Door did the math and nodded slowly. “Okay. So…”

“So where was he for the past seven years? Bouncing between all of us.”

Amanita’s fingers struck the glass surface of her tablet once more, and a photograph popped up on the screen above it. Door sat in silence, her eyes scanning across the row of people before her. Eight people stood frozen in time, gathered on the stone steps of a brick building Door couldn’t recognize. All of them looked happy and excited to be there. It was strange for Door to see her grandmother smiling, yet there she was, right in the center, proud and happy and young beside Geist. Lanette stood on his other side, just as young and happy, with her arm looped in his as she smiled shyly to the camera. And next to Lanette must have been Amanita, a literal child perched on the concrete banister. Door couldn’t recognize the others—not the perky blonde woman next to Amanita, the tall punk on the rightmost edge, or either of the two bespectacled human walking sticks taking up most of the left side. And even when Amanita named them, she still didn’t.

“Let’s see,” Amanita said. “Well, for the first few years, he was with Rachel McKenzie in Johto, who isn’t pictured here because this was taken before all that. After then, he spent a couple years with your grandmother in Hoenn.”

She prodded at the photograph, at Brigette’s smiling face. The image distorted beneath her touch, rippling like water until it resolved. Somehow, Brigette’s smile looked wrong when it did. Fake somehow. So did the others as Amanita shifted her finger from face to face.

“Then it was a couple years in Sinnoh with Bebe Larson,” Amanita continued. “Then, so I’ve heard, a very brief time in Kalos with Cassius Cassine, followed by, finally, yours truly.” Her finger lingered on the image of her childhood self, and her voice dropped in volume. “Right around Johto, Team Matrix suddenly popped up, and apparently, the messages they sent Ray scared her enough to force her to send him off to another region. But … well. You can probably figure it out from there.”

Door didn’t need to think about it. She barely needed to say it, but it spilled out of her mouth all the same. “They all got messages.”

Amanita pulled her finger away and rested her hand on the counter. “Got it in one. All of them demanded that we hand Geist over.”

She flicked the tablet again, and the photo shifted to the side, just enough for another window to appear. Door leveled her eyes on it, staring hard at the email client with a single message open and glaring back at her.


Zero-One is a mistake that must be fixed. You have one chance to do the right thing. Our agents will be in touch shortly.


Door furrowed her eyebrows at those words. Something didn’t make sense.

Or, well, none of it made sense, but there was something about Amanita’s story that seemed … odd. It nagged at the back of her mind, even as Amanita continued.

“Dummy email from a server in Kalos, of course. Perfectly untraceable,” Amanita said. “So, figuring I couldn’t put up a fight myself, I hoped that by sending Geist to your father, I could at least hide him until all of this blew over—or until your father could get him to your company’s headquarters in Castelia.”

Door reeled back at that statement. “Wait. Geist was delivering starters, not coming for help … wasn’t he?”

Amanita gave her guest a wry smile. “Door, I still don’t know how Team Matrix found him. I had to be cautious, so I told all three of my assistants at the time that that’s what he was doing and sent them off. I figured that Professor Ironwood would know what to do, and hey, it couldn’t hurt. Her niece had been asking for a starter for months anyway, and if Geist ran into trouble, well. Then he and my other assistants were all armed. Win-win for everyone.” She hesitated for a beat. “Except for the part where Belle and Starr turned out to be the agents in question, anyway. Shame, too. They were with me for a year, and they came highly recommended. Girl has a head on her shoulders, really.”

How Belle could pass off as anything remotely legit was beyond Door, but she didn’t think to ask. In truth, it didn’t seem quite as important as a lot of other oddities about Amanita’s story, and a thousand more questions spun through Door’s mind. Why was Belle at the Dreamyard? Why did she try to steal the starters? What was Team Matrix, really? If they were after Companion liberation, then what could they have wanted with a real snivy and a real musharna?

And most importantly…

“So … why does Team Matrix want him?” she asked.

Amanita brought her coffee cup to her lips and stopped. “Hmm?

Swallowing, Door pressed on. “I mean, when you wipe a Companion, then they’re completely reset. Stealing Geist would be just like stealing a fresh-out-of-the-box Companion. If Team Matrix is all about Companions, you’d think they’d know that.”

“Oh, no doubt, dear, but Geist is a little different. You see, it doesn’t matter whether or not he’s wiped. The point is…” Amanita hesitated, glancing at the ceiling as if the right words were painted above her. “Well, he’s the prototype.”

The ensuing silence was short, but it was thick and heavy as Door processed that thought.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “What?”

Amanita motioned to her with her mug. “I told you he was older than he looks.”

“But…” Door screwed up her face and shook her head vigorously. “The prototype as in … the first Companion?”

“That would be what ‘prototype’ means, yes.”

Door’s eyebrows rose. “But that would make him, what? Forty years old?”

“Probably closer to forty-five,” her host replied.

Door splayed her hands out in front of her, palms up. “But … how?! Companions start experiencing massive slowdown when they’re half that age!”

Amanita gestured to the ceiling with a finger. “Ah, and therein lies the interesting part. While I don’t rightly know for certain what in Geist causes that, I do know that he was not only the prototype but also your great aunt’s personal Companion.”

“Yeah. We already—”

“Which means that whenever she had a new feature to test out, she most likely tried it on Geist first.”

As Amanita downed the rest of her coffee, Door opened her mouth again to speak, but then, after a moment of silence, she closed it again. A realization descended on her in that time, settling into her brain gradually, as if it was a liquid filling the crevices of her cerebral cortex.

“So,” she said, “you’re saying…”

“That when I say Geist is the prototype, I mean for literally everything?” Amanita nodded. “Yes. It also means that there’s a possibility that he’s got cutting edge, experimental tech inside of him. Not just tech that’s been keeping him running all these decades either. I’m talking about tech that your aunt never had the chance to release before she … well.”

Another silence descended on the room, this time cold and empty, not thick and expectant. Amanita didn’t need to finish that sentence, but frankly, Door wouldn’t have minded if she had.

Because the first and last time Door had ever seen Lanette Hamilton was at the woman’s funeral … which was funny to Door, given that Lanette was apparently the reason why her family was famous at all.

But Door didn’t want to say that. Amanita was a stranger, after all. What kind of guest would she be if she dumped old family drama on her? So, swallowing her frustration, Door nodded and said, “Yeah. I get it.”

Amanita must have noticed how awkward and quiet Door had become, because at that point, she coughed lightly into her hand. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be. Barely knew her.”

“Of course.”

Amanita turned away and set her mug on the kitchen counter. Door’s eyes settled on the coffeepot as the scientist pulled it free and began making another steaming cup of coffee. There was something soothing about the motion, the way Amanita swept the carafe out of the machine and the way the coffee hit the mug with a splash. Door inhaled deeply, taking in the scent of freshly brewed coffee, and already, she was regretting the decision to turn down a cup. The conversation and onslaught of revelations already left her feeling drained, and she had the feeling she was only partway through the story. And given the fact that she hadn’t had a decent cup of coffee in almost two days, Door wasn’t looking forward to hearing the rest of the story without a hefty dose of caffeine.

But then, Amanita shoved the carafe back in place, and Door’s mind was forced to refocus on the woman, sans coffee.

“Anyway,” Amanita continued, “point is, that’s the long and short of it. Team Matrix wants Geist because he could be carrying around tech to make whatever it is they want to do possible.”

Door grimaced again. “And I’m leaving that hunk of junk with you.”

She reached up and placed a finger on the hologram still projected in front of her. Pressing her fingertip into her grandmother’s face, Door twitched the picture back and forth as she digested everything Amanita had just told her. Then, she stopped and gazed through the picture at Amanita, who was busy pouring milk into her coffee.

“Wait,” she said. “Why are you okay with me going back to Nuvema City if Team Matrix is desperate to get their hands on your Companion?”

“Because after looking at Geist’s video memories, I called in a favor from the Striaton gym leaders, and if absolutely no one else is available, then Sage will take him to Halcyon Labs,” Amanita replied casually.

“Oh.”

“Oh.” Amanita added sugar and stirred, clinking the spoon against her mug as if to punctuate her words. “So you probably shouldn’t worry about it, dear. We’ll be fine. I have no doubt Savory’s gathering the troops to make sure we’re safe through the night too.”

“I dunno. Maybe,” Door mumbled.

Amanita tapped her spoon against the rim of her mug and took the first sip of her new cup of coffee. As she pulled it away, she sighed in exaggerated contentment and let her shoulders sag. Door smiled a little. For an old woman, Amanita was a character, and if everything she had shared was true, then Door felt a little bit guilty. Even with the reassurance that the Striaton gym leaders were going to do everything they could to protect her and get Geist out of her life, the fact of the matter was that anything that would happen to her—and, in truth, all of the things that had already happened—would clearly be Brigette Hamilton’s fault. What else could Door do but feel for the woman?

Probably feel a little guilty by extension, but it wasn’t as if Door was about to do the noble thing and claim responsibility for it. And she knew that made her a slightly terrible person, but did she really want to get involved with an evil organization and a generations-old dose of family drama when she could just go home and forget all of this? No. No, she did not.

Her eyes settled back on the picture of her grandmother. This was where she came from. This was who her grandmother was. But this was all in the past, and it technically didn’t have anything to do with Door, so could she really be blamed if—

A pop-up appeared under her finger, snapping her out of her daze. At first, her mind waved it off as a perfectly ordinary part of the system—just a tiny box that listed off all the basic information about the image—but then she looked at it.

Really looked at it.

And then she did the math.

“Hey … Amanita?”

The woman didn’t turn around. It was as if she knew what the question was before Door had asked it. “Yes, dear?”

“You … you said that Geist is about forty, right?”

“Forty-five at the oldest, yes. Why?”

Slowly, Door pulled her finger away from the image, but the pop-up remained.

“This photo was taken over fifty years ago,” she said quietly.

“Oh. Yes, I suppose it has.”

Amanita whirled back around and eyed the photograph. She prodded it with a finger, minimizing the email client and forcing the photograph to take up the entire holographic screen again. Then, she flicked the pop-up itself to flip it around.

“This was a picture of all of us—the original set of core administrators for the storage system, I mean,” Amanita explained. “Last Pokécon we attended together, in … maybe 2005? Ah. Guess it would be, if the date created’s right.”

Door raised her eyebrows and nodded. “Yeah, that’s great and all, but if that was five to ten years before Geist existed…” She jammed her finger into the image of the man at the center of the photograph. “Then what the hell is this?”

Amanita’s face blanked. Just blanked, all of a sudden. Door froze, finger still poking halfway through the projection, as she watched Amanita’s expression shift and darken until it was almost … sad? Bewildered? As if she had just realized Door lacked a vital piece of the puzzle, and this was the worst possible thing in the world.

All of a sudden, any suspicion Door had that the woman was hiding anything from her vanished.

“Is … is that why you didn’t know Geist was a Companion?” Amanita asked softly.

Door blinked. “What?”

Amanita covered her mouth with a hand and turned away. When she spoke, her voice was low and hurried, as if she was talking more to herself than to Door. “Oh. That makes so much sense now. I mean … it’d be a little odd that you would assume he was human if you knew who—Lanette went to great lengths to make him look identical, and there’s no way a human being could look that close.”

She had missed something. But what? Door screwed up her face and drew her shoulders in defensively. “What?”

“Then again, how could you have not known what he looks like?” Amanita continued, as if she hadn’t heard Door either time. “Or … maybe you kids don’t know anymore. Kids in my day didn’t know what Steve Wozniak looked like, never mind Paul Allen, so maybe … nah, that still doesn’t explain…”

Right about then was when Door had had enough. She threw her hand out of the projection and slapped the counter in front of her, drawing the woman’s attention back to her.

“Amanita!” she barked. Then, she pointed to the image. “What?!”

The scientist set her coffee cup down. One of her hands curled by her face, and the other rested its fingertips on the rim of her mug.

“Door,” she said, “did your grandmother ever tell you anything about … I mean … don’t you have pictures of…?” She motioned to the man in the center of the projection.

“No?” Door squeaked.

For the third time in their conversation, there was a long pause, and this time, it was once again cold and awkward and stifling.

And then, Amanita huffed and shook her head.

“I’m gonna have to have a word with your grandmother,” she sighed.

Door winced. “Why?”

“Because, Door, this”—she pointed to the man, as if to emphasize her thought—“is not Geist, as you’ve already realized. Instead, I’d like for you to meet the reason why all of us are where we are today: the original inventor of the storage system, Dr. Bill McKenzie.”

Door stared at her with complete incomprehension.

“Really? Nothing?” Amanita groaned and rolled her eyes. “Geez, what do they teach you kids in school these days? Fifty years ago, Bill was a household name!”

“Uh … we might’ve covered him in history class? I dunno. I kinda … wasn’t paying attention.” Door cringed.

“Dear.”

Door splayed her hands out in front of her. “Well, come on! If I wasn’t gonna hear it from my grandma—”

With one hand held up to Door, Amanita used the other to pick her mug up again. “All right. I get it. Really, I’m a little disappointed in Brigette myself. We all swore we wouldn’t let Bill be forgotten, and here we are, fifty years later…” She trailed off with another shake of her head.

Door’s eyes settled on the photograph again, on the figure at its center. She knew she had been traveling with what was apparently his robot double for the past two days, but to her, Geist’s human predecessor was … somehow less impressive. She couldn’t quite put her finger on why, although it may have had to do with how casual he looked. How very … ordinary, for someone her grandmother and Amanita swore should never be forgotten.

“So … what? He was a big deal?” she asked.

Amanita snorted. “Was he a big deal? Oh, goodness.” She motioned to Door again with the hand that held her mug, splashing coffee onto the counter next to the tablet. “Like I said, he’s the reason why any of us are here—including trainers like you. Imagine what life would be like without the storage system. A lot of things about pokémon had been complete mysteries to us. Trainers never bothered catching a lot of pokémon, researchers couldn’t catch or keep samples … heck, even the regional leagues couldn’t sprawl as far as they do now. Then Bill came along with his system, and boom! Training as you knew it completely changed.”

Door furrowed her eyebrows in confusion. “But … my aunt invented the storage system.”

Placing a hand on her hip, Amanita grinned and held up her coffee cup. “Is that what they say nowadays? Ha! I’m sure Bill woulda gotten a kick out of hearing that. Honey, no, the original idea was his.”

She stopped for a second to take a sip. As she drank, she glanced at the ceiling in thought. Then, slowly, she pulled her mug away.

“Granted, your great aunt was brilliant in her own right,” Amanita continued. “The original storage system was a text-based interface. Nearly unnavigable to anyone who wasn’t fluent in line code. Your great aunt gave it a GUI and even bashed the entire concept of user accessibility into Bill’s head until he stopped cooking up stuff only code monkeys like us can use.” She chuckled. “Those two were a pair, dear. Bill was brilliant. Lanette was creative. And the two of them just had a way of bouncing ideas off each other unlike anything else the rest of us could’ve achieved. And that’s why…”

Her voice trailed off, and Door stared at her for a beat until she realized the woman wasn’t going to continue.

“That’s … why what?” Door asked.

Amanita set her mug on the counter and arched her fingers over its mouth again. Her expression gained a frown and a faraway look, and her mouth twitched.

“That’s why Lanette was closer to him than any of us,” she said at last.

Her voice was low, quiet, and just barely audible, and because of that, Door waited again, letting the woman gather her thoughts. Then, after a deep breath, Amanita continued.

“All of us looked up to Bill,” she explained. “He … he had this way of looking at things. Everything had a purpose. Everything had a reason for being. So no matter who you were or where you came from, he’d look at you and just know how to push you to do your best. So when I say everyone looked up to him, I mean it. But Lanette? Lanette was his best friend. She didn’t see him the way we did. She was … well, she was his equal—his partner. Those two went together like a left hand and a right hand. Whenever you saw those two working … it was something magical, dear.”

It didn’t take a genius to know where this was going. The distant, soft tone. The past tense. The way Amanita was carefully choosing her words. Door knew she wasn’t being tactful because Lanette was dead and gone; she wasn’t stupid. But the story had to be finished. She could see that in Amanita’s face, in the way she was pausing to think of a way to press onward. So when Door spoke next, it was out of obligation: out of her own need to hear Amanita’s words and out of Amanita’s need to speak.

“So … what happened?” she asked.

Amanita looked almost relieved to hear Door ask. She shrugged, and as she brought her shoulders down, her body visibly relaxed. “Well, Bill died. Went pretty young, too. Probably … oh, fifty years ago, I guess. Not long after this picture was taken. It doesn’t matter. The point is, all of a sudden, we were this fledgling group of people whose lives had been irrevocably changed by this one person, and that person was dead and gone. You’d better believe it hit us all hard, but it hit some of us harder than others. Your great aunt, for example.”

Door shifted uncomfortably in her seat. The metaphorical pieces were coming together, and the picture was starting to get uglier in her mind.

She thought briefly about what she knew of her great aunt. Lanette Hamilton, the former administrator of the Hoenn network, the founder of Halcyon Labs, the supposed inventor of the storage system. Only she wasn’t one of those things apparently, and that was bad enough, but to Door, there was more. This was the woman who shut herself up in a remote corner of Kanto, the woman who cut all ties to her family and the rest of the outside world, the eccentric inventor who supposedly went the way of Nikola Tesla and Howard Hughes and all the other brilliant crazies before her.

And now, Door knew her as something else: as the woman who made a robot butler that looked exactly like a dead man.

“So … you’re saying that she made Geist look like her best friend because he died?” she asked.

“That’s my theory, yep,” Amanita replied. “No one’s really confirmed that. Not to me anyway, but your grandma might be able to shed some light on that.” She pushed her coffee cup a little further away from her. “Which brings us to the point of the matter! Door, I’d hate to do this, but I have another job for you.”

“Huh?” Door shook her head vigorously. “Uh … sure. I guess. What’s up?”

“I need you to deliver Geist to Halcyon Labs HQ,” Amanita replied.

Door jolted. If her mind was calm and methodical before, it was running at the speed of light now, and every muscle in her body was just as electrified as her brain was. She sat bolt upright, back straight and stiff, hands balled into fists on the counter in front of her, eyes wide and fixed completely on Amanita.

“What?!” she exclaimed. “But that’s all the way in Castelia City! And didn’t you just say Sage was gonna do it?!”

In response, Amanita gave her a shamefaced smile. “I know. But if you’ve made it to here from Nuvema, you should have no problem getting across Nacrene and the Skyarrow. There’s even a gym in Nacrene, if you liked Striaton’s.”

“But…” Door gazed at Amanita helplessly. “Why me?!”

“Well, dear, if Team Matrix is after Geist, then there’s no safer place for him than Halcyon’s HQ,” Amanita said. “Unfortunately, poor Geist can’t go there himself, being a Companion and all, and while Sage could be the one to take him, she’s got gym duties to attend to. It’d be much easier for all of us if you went, sorry to say. And besides, wouldn’t you like to ask your grandma a few questions? Like, for example, why she never told you about Bill?”

Door settled into her seat and narrowed her eyes at her host. She grumbled a few words under her breath about not knowing about Bill because she didn’t care, about how secretive her grandmother was, and about how stupid Geist was, but she didn’t string together a sentence coherent or audible enough for Amanita to catch. She made sure of that. Part of that was because she didn’t want the attached argument, and part of it was because she knew that somewhere, deep down, she was just a little bit curious.

Nonetheless, Amanita held up a hand again to calm her. “I know. You’d rather just go back to Nuvema and forget about all this Companion business, wouldn’t you? Or at least, that’s the impression a certain little birdie told me while I was downloading his memories and fixing up the other girl’s Companion. And you know what he also told me? That another certain someone wants to be a researcher someday. So why don’t I make you an offer? Do this for me, find out what your grandma knows, and I might just be able to work something out with Professor Ironwood. Transfer your internship over here. Let you work with real pokémon. What do you say?”

She moved her hand, extending it for Door to shake. Door hesitated in response, and her expression—and, for that matter, her entire body—relaxed. Her eyes flicked from Amanita’s hand to her face.

“Seriously?” she asked cautiously.

Amanita grinned. “Seriously.”

For a moment, Door merely sat where she was, considering the offer. It wasn’t because she wasn’t sure whether or not she should take it; she knew this could be her dream job. But the problem was she wasn’t sure whether or not she should believe Amanita. Sure, she had believed her about the story—she had seen the photograph, and she knew her grandmother would lie to the woman, after all—but this wouldn’t be the first time someone had duped her into a job. What if the reward wasn’t real? And what if, beyond that, Amanita had told her what she thought was the truth, but in actuality, Brigette had lied to her about everything? What if Door was walking into one big mess, far bigger than she had ever dreamed of?

But on the other hand, what if everything was real, and in a week, she would be working with real pokémon?

Real pokémon. Was the risk of a mess worth that?

Door bobbed her head back and forth and then finally decided that, yes, it was.

“All right,” she said, shaking Amanita’s hand. “But I’m holding you to that.”

Amanita smiled as if she knew Door would say that. “Naturally, dear! Now, I know it’s gonna be a long walk to Nacrene, so if you’d like, I’ve got a couch and a blanket you’re welcome to use for the night.”

“Huh? Oh, um. N-no,” Door quickly said, her mind flashing back to Blair. “I have … I promised someone I’d meet them at the pokémon center.”

Amanita’s grin gained a warm, knowing shade as she broke away from Door. Flicking her pad, she dispelled the photograph and brought up a folder in its place.

“Ah, the Whitleigh girl, is it?” she asked.

Door felt her face burn with a blush. “It-it’s not what you think!”

Amanita waved a hand in the air. “Don’t worry, Door. It’s good to have a healthy rivalry on journeys like this! Now, you’d better run along. Blair’s not the only one waiting for you.”

For a second, Door hesitated, staring at Amanita blankly until it dawned on her that the scientist had meant the very person she was supposed to be escorting. Shaking her head, Door jolted herself alert.

“R-right,” she said. “And, um … thanks. For the offer, I mean.”

Amanita tapped a file within the folder, bringing up a window with plain text sprawled across it. “Don’t mention it, Door. Just be careful out there and stay in touch as much as possible, okay?”

Door nodded, then started for the staircase. As she opened the door one more time, she glanced over her shoulder at Amanita, who was already busy scrolling through the file. With one last grin, Door slipped into the stairwell and shut the door behind her.

For that reason, she didn’t read the words filling Amanita’s screen.




> README.TXT
> Author: Cassius Cassine

First of all, if you’ve found this file on your own, congratulations. You’re one of the rare people who’re capable of bypassing the security measures of not one but three of the original members of the Pokémon Storage System’s core development team. In plain Common, that either means technology has advanced to the point where what we do is child’s play, or it means you’re a straight-up computer genius. Either way, take pride in getting this far.

Now, I don’t like beating around the bush, and I know you probably have better things to do than read a readme file—if you’re reading this at all. So let me just lay it out for you straight.

Enclosed in this folder is a whole stack of documentation which was cobbled together by me, Bebe Larson, and Lanette Hamilton herself. All of them detail the inner workings of this very specific Companion you have in your possession, as well as some history behind why I needed to write this. Read these files carefully and think about them.

Once you’ve done that much, you’ll probably be a little weirded out. That’s okay. I was too when I found all this stuff. But unlike you, I was a dumbass and a coward. I didn’t have the guts to fix things myself, and I own up to that. And between you and me, that’s why I wrote this file: so maybe, just maybe, someone like you will come along and do the right thing.

What I mean to say, reader, is my name is Cassius Cassine, and in the following files, I’m going to walk you through everything you need to know to fix Bill McKenzie’s biggest mistake.

One of the most endearing things about Door is that she just can't stay aloof, no matter how she tries. She hears Blair call out? Boom, she is there, no hint of her earlier superiority. And of course once she's done that, once she's seen Blair holding her disembowelled robot butler in her arms, with her pig all beaten up, she has to back down completely and actually reach out, in that awkward, adorable teenagery sort of way. The gap between cool exterior and squishy meat heart is such a teenage thing, and you represent it really well here – understated, but unmistakeable.

The Dreamyard fight is pretty cool, too; I like that it's this disorienting series of shifts in perspective, as Door is yanked from place to place within the giant cloud, desperately looking around for things lurching menacingly out of the mist. It's almost a little bit horror movie, honestly. She's so out of her depth! And yet, with her, Jack and Geist working together (validating the “trainer, pokémon, android” style of trainer journey that she despises so much, although of course she doesn't have the analytical chops to realise it), they just about manage to pull through.

I actually forgot how that event ends in-game till I read it here, and when I did I found it kind of weird; maybe the illusion fools Belle despite the fact that it's obviously fake (see: splitting in three at one point) because it's drawn from her subconscious, and therefore she's less able to see it for what it is? I thought that was strange in the games, too, honestly, and when you translate it into fiction it makes it more obviously odd.

And then Knives makes her grand entrance! Or kind of, anyway, since she doesn't actually appear here. Audino, saviour of nuzlockes, refusing to die and doing decent damage in return. As a kid I never liked any pokémon that wasn't just some combination of high speed and high attacking stats, but then, I also had pokémon with movesets like “cut, rock smash, frenzy plant, body slam”, so what did I know. Anyway, I've come to appreciate pokémon with more survivability, especially as the games have got longer and left you fighting opponents in the high 60s as part of the plot. What was I saying? Right, audino are cool, was I think all it was. I feel like I didn't need a whole paragraph to say that but okay.

As for chapter nine … well, you know what the issue with it is, I think; it's a giant wall of information, and while it is delivered pretty much as effectively as it possibly could be, in this long, interesting conversation where we get to see everyone's reactions and comments and stuff as the information is shovelled out, it kind of is still a chapter in which a huge amount of information gets shovelled out.

“So you accidentally caught a real audino?” Blair asked.

Door shrugged. Since departing from Striaton early that morning, she had led the way out of the city, marching along the lit, tiled path of Route 3. By her side was the audino in question, who had seemed all-too eager to leave the Dreamyard. At every noise and every new sight, the rabbit-like creature would hum and crane her neck and twist around to look at the grass, the trees, and the humans around her. Blair had called her adorable and even “squishy,” words which, in Door’s opinion, fit the pokémon and her abundance of pink and curls and puffy fur a little too well. For this reason, Door had decided to give her the most appropriate name she could think of at the time: a name that not only fit the pokémon’s apparent softness but also felt like one Door wouldn’t mind calling out in the heat of a battle.

Knives.

“Yep,” she said presently. “Not that I mind. Knives looks tough … even if she’s pink and all.”

“Uh … I guess,” Blair replied. “But I thought that audino were supposed to be gentle.”

Door slipped her hands behind her head and cast a smirk back at the other trainer. “I’m sure I can teach her how to be a vicious killer.”

Blair grinned right back and snorted. “Ha. Good luck. Anyway, it’s cool that you caught a pokémon at all.”

At that, Door’s smile fell, and she furrowed her eyebrows. “What do you mean?”

“Well…” Blair crossed her arms. Her shoulders rose, tensing around her face as she frowned. “I’ve been in Striaton for years. There’re lots of pokémon that live around town, and not once have I ever come close to catching one myself.”

Door blinked and raised her eyebrows. “But when we met, you caught that patrat, right?”

“Correction!” Opal exclaimed. She trotted forward, one finger raised to the sky, until she fell into step beside Blair. “That patrat was defeated, not caught. According to my sensors, the patrat was dispatched with utmost efficiency with a single Tackle!”

Blair cringed. She turned her head away from her friends as she bit her lip. At the same time, Door stopped and stared at Blair, forcing the rest of the group to halt in their tracks.

“You … you took it out?” she asked.

“Y-yeah,” Blair mumbled. “Completely.”

Door groaned, faced Blair, and put her hands on her hips. “Don’t they teach you how to catch pokémon at that trainer’s school you went to?”

Blair fidgeted as she forced herself to speak. “Y-yeah. They … they do. It’s just that I … I … um.”

“You were never good at it, were you?”

She lowered her head. “No.”

With a heavy sigh, Door ran her fingers through her hair and looked out towards the sea of grass. This route, like the ones bordering Accumula and Nuvema, was maintained. Perfect. It looked like a sea of tall grass, but all of the grass was at uniform height. All of the trees were evenly spaced. The route cut through everything too cleanly, as if the grass simply stopped at a perfect line across the prairie to make way for the road. And as if that wasn’t enough, Door realized that the whole thing looked like a carbon copy of Routes 1 and 2. The only difference was that Route 3 was far more populated. There were several trainers out there, each creeping along the manicured fields or battling one another, but no one was on the road itself.

But beyond their welcomed absence on the road, none of the trainers interested Door. They wouldn’t be able to teach Blair how to catch a pokémon, after all. But something else caught her eye, something completely relevant to Blair’s predicament: movement in the grass. Every so often, waves would form, with grass shaking against the wind as something passed through it. Some trainers chased after the trails formed by these waves, but other trails were left to weave across the field and disappear. Door let her eyes linger on each trail as she contemplated her next actions. The presence of trainers here would make what Door had in mind a bit of a challenge, but she knew she had to do it. For a friend.

“Yo, so those dumb-sounding pokémon capture courses. How did they teach you to catch pokémon?” Door asked.

Blair visibly relaxed before answering. Her shoulders lowered, her hands laced together, and when she spoke, her voice was a little louder, a little firmer, a little more like the Blair Door had first met on Route 2.

“Kinda stupidly, like you said,” Blair said. “They explained how you need to weaken a pokémon and taught us how to use a poké ball, and then they had us practice on fauxkémon owned by the school.”

“But you never actually went after wild pokémon, did you?”

Blair scratched her arm nervously. “Well … no. Students aren’t technically allowed out on the fields without an escort and a Companion, and even then, they have to stick to the roads only. Not the fields. It’s too dangerous.” On the last two words, Blair mimed quotation marks around her head.

Door snorted this time and held up a hand, palm up. “There’s your problem. All talking, no hands-on learning. Really dumb way to figure things out, I think. Hey, Geist. Gimme a poké ball. I gotta teach Blair how it’s done.”

Seconds later, she felt Geist’s hand press into hers to place a poké ball in her palm. It took all her willpower not to shudder at the suddenness of it all. She couldn’t even hear the Companion approach, and the time between her request and his reaction was practically negligible. Yet his hand—the warmth, the softness of his skin, even the particular smoothness of his fingernails—felt too real. She had to take a moment to remind herself of what he was, and that was one moment too long for her tastes.

With a cough and a shudder, she yanked her hand away from Geist’s and curled her fingers around the poké ball at the same time. Then, inhaling deeply, Door started into the field.

“Door,” Geist said, “I’m detecting a—”

“I’m fine,” she snapped.

“Did you not want—”

“I said I’m fine.” She glanced over her shoulder, first to send a cold glare to Geist, then to offer a soft look to Blair. “Catching pokémon is the most basic thing a trainer can do. At least, until you start getting into the harder routes, anyway. But regardless of where you are, you should be able to do it without a Companion.”

Geist crossed his arms and gave Door a worried frown. “Well, yes, but a Companion’s assistance is—”

“Completely, 100% optional,” Door growled as she turned back to the field.

He sighed behind her. “Very well. Good luck, Door.”

“Right,” she said. “So step one is finding a suitable pokémon.”

Door didn’t expect step one to take long at all. Even with the route crawling with trainers, there were more spots of waving grass than there were humans. All she had to do was pick one, and conveniently enough for her, there was one directly ahead of her. She pressed her lips together and crouched, watching it dart back and forth mere feet from where she stood.

“Step two: battle it!” she announced. “Knives! Pound whatever’s making this grass wave!”

The fact that the rabbit bounded past Door without question came as a pleasant surprise to her. She didn’t even think that the creature was paying attention. Yet there she went, the fluffy audino, cooing eagerly as she dove into the rustling grass.

“Why’re you using Knives?” Blair asked. “Isn’t she too new to fight?”

“Ha! That’s the point,” Door replied, flashing a grin at Blair. “See, part of step two is doing everything you can to avoid making it faint. Sometimes, it’s better to go with a weaker pokémon than a stronger one because that way, you’re sure to avoid knocking it out accidentally.” She held up a finger. “In fact, I’m willing to bet that’s what happened with the patrat. Toto’s a fake pokémon, right? They’re stronger than real ones, and sometimes, they don’t even know their own strength. Sure, the patrat had to’ve been fake too, but—”

And then, a lillipup flew past Door and crashed onto the pathway right beside Blair. Both trainers jumped and screamed, with Blair leaning into Opal and away from the downed lillipup. Door took a few more seconds to let her heart rate stabilize, and then, she looked down to find Knives at her side, grinning up at her with a broad, almost stupid smile. The audino tilted her head and chirped, her lips bubbling open and shut in as cute a manner as she could muster. Upon seeing that smile, Door shifted her gaze back to the lillipup, just in time to see it rise shakily to its feet.

Geist, meanwhile, stood a short distance away from Opal and Blair. Up until this point, he had been watching patiently, but as soon as the trainers screamed, he reached up to massage the bridge of his nose with another sigh.

“Health is at 21%,” he intoned. “Door, I realize you would rather not take my advice, but perhaps now would be a good time to use that poké ball.”

“Uh … r-right,” she said.

Flicking her wrist, Door tossed the poké ball at the lillipup and watched it smack the puppy in the forehead and suck it inside with barely a struggle. Once the ball snapped shut, it fell onto the pathway and rocked back and forth for a few seconds. Door didn’t even have to hold her breath; she knew the moment the ball struck the lillipup that it was as good as hers. And sure enough, after those few seconds, her poké ball went still with a final ping, and Door was left to gape at the pokémon standing next to her.

“Jesus,” she muttered. “Where’d you learn to do that?”

Knives giggled, drawing her paws to her mouth as she squinted her sky-blue eyes. Then, she reached out to tug at Door’s pant leg, leading her back to the path like a small child leading her parent through a toy store.

“I … did you know about this?” Door asked, her voice high-pitched as she threw a glare towards Geist.

In the time that it took for Door to reach the road again, Geist had moved to the poké ball and picked it up. His eyes were glowing faintly as he stared at its surface.

“Yes,” he said. “Knives is a young pokémon, and audino themselves don’t possess much in the way of offensive talents. However, it’s rather clear to me that your audino is eager to please.”

Door furrowed her eyebrows. “A-and?”

“And sometimes, when a pokémon is eager to please, they go to great lengths to make their masters happy. Including attack repeatedly without being ordered to do so.” Geist turned his hand, dangling the ball from his fingertips. “Lillipup. Female. Moderate experience level. Serious natured but prone to playful outbursts.”

His trainer took the ball from him and stared at it as if it was an alien artifact. A question was forming in her mind, specifically about how Geist could tell what the lillipup’s personality was, but she couldn’t find her voice. So in her silence, Geist turned away from her and folded his hands behind his back.

“As you can see, Miss Blair,” he said, “capturing pokémon requires a level of skill and attention, but Door is right in saying both of those traits are easily acquired with practice. Weaken a pokémon first to disable it, then throw a poké ball at it once you’ve determined whether or not it’s weak enough to be captured. Be sure not to go overboard on your attacks, else you’ll encounter the same problem you did when you tried to capture that patrat. When in doubt, rely on your Companion. We have the ability to calculate a pokémon’s health from a distance and advise you on the best time to attempt a capture. Understand?”

Blair nodded, her eyes wide and on Geist. “Y-yeah. I think so.”

Geist’s hand snaked into the pocket of his coat to draw out another poké ball. “Then would you like to give it a try? There was another lillipup not far from the one Door battled. Opal will be able to tell you where it is now.”

With a deep breath, Blair steadied herself and straightened her back. She balled her hands at her sides and lifted her chin to look deep into Geist’s face. Her hand quivered as she reached up, slowly, for the ball in the Companion’s palm.

And then, a scream rose from the field behind them and stopped her.

“Somebody stop them! They took my pokémon!”

Blair and Opal whirled around as Geist and Door looked up, all in time to see two figures leap onto the road and dash away. Two very familiar figures.

“Belle!” Door shouted.

She shoved Geist out of the way and dashed forward, but before she could take more than a few steps beyond him, he reached out and snatched her arm. Pain shot up to her shoulder as she twisted around, her hand clawing at his.

“Geist! Let me go!” she screamed.

“Now hold on!” he snapped. “You can’t just run after two criminals, just like that!”

“Watch me!”

“Hold on!” Blair said.

She flicked her arm out, as if to bar Door’s progress with her own body. Door stopped, took a calming breath, and followed Blair’s glance to see what had caught her attention. A boy stumbled out of the tall grasses, crying and gasping for breath. He snapped his gaze towards the retreating backs of Belle and Starr, whimpered, and turned his head towards Door and her traveling party. His eyes shone with tears as he limped towards them.

“Please,” he cried. “Please! They took my patrat!”

It was Opal of all people who trotted forward. She reached out for the child and grabbed him by the arms, then held him up. Her eyes flashed as they trailed down the boy’s leg and stopped at his ankle.

“I’m detecting a sprain,” she said. “It’s pretty bad. You have no business running around, I’m afraid.”

He shook his head and looked up at her. “But I have to! Patrat’s all I’ve got! If they get away with Patrat…”

“Where’s your Companion?” Blair asked.

The boy sniffed and shook his head again. “They broke her. The girl has this really strong snivy, and she snuck up behind us—”

Door shoved Geist away from her and bolted down the road, heading quickly in the direction Belle and Starr ran. It didn’t take long for Geist to catch up to her, and he skidded to a halt directly in front of her. By the time Door realized he was in front of her, it was a second too late. She barrelled into him, and the moment she did, she shoved her hands into his chest and stumbled backwards for a few steps. He remained where he stood, calmly, with his feet planted on the road and his arms extended at his sides.

“Get out of the way!” Door shouted.

“I thought I told you we shouldn’t be rushing off like this!” Geist snapped.

“The longer we stand here talking, the more likely Belle and Starr are gonna get away!” She waved her arm wildly to the side. “I’m not playing around, Geist! Get out of the way and let me go after them!”

“We need a plan,” he growled. “This time, we don’t have the advantage of being covered by dream smoke, and we’ve just found out that Belle has no problem with using pokémon to attack people and Companions. If you run after them, who knows what they’ll do?”

“How’s this for a plan?” Door hissed, jabbing a finger at Geist’s face. “Go find that kid’s Companion and get her back online. You were Amanita’s assistant. You should have some tech knowledge or whatever under your belt. In the meantime, I’m going after Belle and Starr, whether you like it or not. I’ll figure it out when I get there.”

“Door—”

“Knives! Get him out of my way!”

Geist widened his eyes as he opened his mouth in protest, but before he could say a word, a blur of pink and cream shot at him and slammed into his chest. He fell onto his back with a bang, and Door dashed past him without even looking back. All she was aware of was her audino bounding beside her on the left and, a few moments later, a second presence joining her on the right. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Blair catching up with her, and with that, she smirked.

Two human trainers. Multiple real pokémon. Two thieves to capture. This was going to be easy.



It didn’t surprise Door in the least that their chase would lead them off the roadway and beyond the manicured fields. The geography of Unova had barely changed since Hilda King’s day; everything was still there. It was just that most people stuck to the neatly trimmed fields and steel-and-glass pathways. But all it took to access the wild parts was to climb over a small fence and cross into even taller, denser grass—places where the fauxkémon grew obscenely strong and where the rougher sorts of characters went.

And Knives, of course, had no concept of fences. She had grown up within the boundary of one large wall, sure, but what did a short, wood-and-wire barrier even mean to her? So for that reason, she led the way, ears twitching as she guided Blair and Door right to that wild place, deep into the overgrown fields, and right to a forgotten cave.

Stopping at the mouth, Door peered in, then looked back at her audino.

“In here?” she asked.

The audino’s ears twitched once, and then she smiled and nodded with a soft coo. With a deep breath, Door turned back to the opening.

“Pretty cool, isn’t it, Blair?” she said. “Got any idea what this is?”

Blair took a step forward until she joined Door at the mouth. Peering down into the darkness, she said, “I dunno. But the only major cave system in the area is Wellspring Cave. That’s probably where we are, but…”

Door looked at her. “But?”

“But Wellspring Cave’s off-limits.”

“What do you mean ‘off-limits’?”

Blair turned her eyes to Door. “I mean we shouldn’t be here.”

“You didn’t seem to have a problem with climbing over that fence back there.” Door motioned to a vague point behind her. “Which, by the way, was a really crappy fence. Seriously, how’s that supposed to keep anyone out of this place?”

A nervous smile crossed Blair’s face. “I-I know. But I’m starting to have second thoughts.”

Door chuckled and laid a hand on Blair’s shoulder. “C’mon, Blair. Where’s that self-confident jerk I’d met back on Route 2?”

Blair crinkled her nose at that. “First of all, shut up. Second, you didn’t look that dangerous.” She turned her head towards the cave, and her smile fell. “Not compared to this, anyway.”

“I was seconds away from taking that the wrong way,” Door said.

Shaking her head, Blair said, “Sorry. It’s just … maybe Geist was right.” She looked at Door. “I mean, these are criminals, and that’s a dark cave. Who knows where they are, and who knows what’s in here? We could be ambushed by them or whatever’s living in the cave. I-I mean … they say strong pokémon are in there, you know.”

“Who says?” Door snorted. Then, rolling her eyes, she drew her hand away from her friend and stepped into the darkness. “Anyway, we can’t go back. There’s a patrat in trouble. And besides, I’ve faced Belle and Starr before. They’re no big deal. Just stay close and be ready to fight, and you’ll be fine.”

“But I’ve faced them too,” Blair replied quietly.

Door stopped. Her eyes widened as she thought for a few seconds about what Blair had just said. That was right; she had faced Belle and Starr before then. Back in the Dreamyard. Back when they took out Blair’s team and her Companion.

Back when Door had Geist’s help to fight back.

“Look,” Door said, flashing an awkward smile at her partner, “no big deal. Like I said. Just stay close. We’ll double-team ‘em, okay?”

She extended a hand to Blair. For a long while, Blair merely stared at it, unmoving and uncertain. Then, slowly, she reached out and grabbed it. Door grinned and pulled her in, leading her into the cave.

Thus, they descended, down a rocky, dirt-covered path winding into the darkness. Knives passed them and trotted forward, and for a long time, all that Door and Blair could hear was the soft humming from the audino. Door squinted in the darkness, desperate to make out any semblance of shadows, but in the meager light still filtering in from the gaping cave entrance, she could see no sign of Belle or Starr. Blair drew close to her until Door could sense the girl’s body heat against her back. She could feel Blair trembling, feel Blair’s hand tighten around her wrist, and she was just about to tell Blair to calm herself when she ran into Knives’s back.

“Knives?” Door hissed. “Everything okay?”

The audino’s paw curled around her free hand, and in the dimness of the cave, she could make out Knives pointing straight ahead and slightly upwards.

“You know what sucks about these caves?” Belle announced. “You can’t see jack in them. So if, for example, two gullible sacks of crap waltzed in to get all kissy-faced with each other, you miss out on all the good parts!”

“Belle, we have a mission.”

“Oh, Starr. You’re such an absolute killjoy. Monkshood, go say hello!”

Door’s reaction was immediate. Without thinking twice, she plunged her hand into her pocket and threw the first ball she grasped ahead of her.

“Huntress, Bite!” she shouted.

“Huntress?” Blair asked.

Before Door could answer, the ball cracked open, and a brilliant, white light shot out of its heart and slammed into a dark shape several feet in front of her. As the light burst, Door could see a snivy—the snivy—held within the jaws of a small lillipup. Then, the light faded completely, and the cave plunged into what seemed like a thicker darkness than it had before.

“Where’s your adorable Companion, kid?” Belle called out. “Not with him today? That’s a shame. He was a real help in the Dreamyard, wasn’t he? Bet he could see just as well in the dark as he could in dream smoke!”

“You talk too much!” Door snapped. “Huntress! Bite harder and drag that snivy back here!”

“Aww, girl, I was just pointing out that only one of us can see!” Belle replied. “Monkshood, Vine Whip!”

Somewhere in the darkness, Door could hear a snap, followed by a dog’s high-pitched whine. She flinched and squinted, desperately seeking out her pokémon.

“Huntress!” she called. “C’mon, girl! Bite it and get back here!”

“Ha! You’re hilarious! Monkshood, Vine Whip again!”

More snaps. More yelps. Door cringed again, gritting her teeth as she struggled to think of what to do. The answer, consequently, was more or less an accident.

“Huntress, throw it off!” Door called.

“Monkshood, Vine Whip again!”

Door sucked in a breath. She heard the snap, but this time, there was no yelp. There was only a muffled growl, and something inside Door’s chest tightened. Was this it? Was Huntress as fast as Door prayed she was? The growl was joined by soft scuffling, then a snivy’s scream, and finally, silence.

Punctuated with a splash and a curse from Belle.

“Monkshood, return!” she cried.

For a brief second, the darkness was lanced by the red beam of a poké ball. It was too faint for Door to make Belle out, but it was just enough to tell her exactly where the thief stood. Grinning, she tugged at Blair’s hand to pull her close.

“You saw that, right?” she whispered.

“Yeah,” Blair said. “And I have a plan. Can you keep her busy?”

“No sweat.” Door released Blair’s hand and shoved at the girl’s shoulder. “But be careful.”

Without another word, Blair slipped away. Door could hear her retreating, and because of that, she prayed Starr couldn’t. But just to be sure, she had to keep Belle talking and battling.

“You got lucky,” Belle snapped. “But trust me, your luck ends here! Pride! Scratch its eyes out!”

Another burst of white light flooded the cave, and Door breathed a sigh of relief when she realized she couldn’t see Blair out the corner of her eye. The girl was hiding, which no doubt meant Starr couldn’t see her. So with that in mind, Door edged towards Knives, scanning darkening cave for any sign of her lillipup.

“Huntress, keep an ear out, and Tackle if that purrloin gets close!” she ordered. Then, after what felt like a suitable pause, she added, “Hey, Belle! Mind if I ask you something?”

“Oh? The baby knows my name? Did you hear that, Starr? I’m famous!”

Door snorted. “Hardly. My Companion used to work with you, genius. He told me who you were, but what he didn’t tell me is why you’re going around kidnapping pokémon.”

Huntress’s growl filled the cavern, followed shortly by a bark and the sounds of a scuffle. Belle’s purrloin hissed and yowled, and then both pokémon’s cries were cut off by a dull thump.

“Scratch again!” Belle ordered.

“Keep it up!” Door responded. “See, I understand why you tried to take that munna. Dream smoke’s got hundreds of different uses, especially as clean energy. Totally valuable. But why’d you take some kid’s patrat? Those’re literally one of the most common species in the region.”

“If you don’t get why, then you don’t get what Team Matrix is after!” Belle responded.

Door smirked. “Ah. So you do work for Team Matrix.”

“Duh! And for your information, I might be a lot of things, but a hypocrite isn’t one of them,” Belle continued. “If we set the Companions free, we have to set the fauxkémon free. It’s just how things work!”

More growling. More scuffling. Door’s eyes darted to the source of the sound as she scrambled to come up with a way to keep the conversation going.

“So, what? Are you pretending to be good guys now?” she asked.

“We are the good guys, dumbface!”

A rip, a whine, a thump. Two attacks landed. Door squinted again into the darkness, and slowly, her eyesight began to adjust. She could just barely make out the small lumps that had to have been Purrloin and Huntress. The taller of the two—the purrloin—darted away from the short, squat lump beside it but then fell into a slow creep as it circled its prey. At the same time, the shorter lump crouched and began to growl again.

But where in the world was Blair?

“Don’t give me that crap,” Door said. “You jumped Geist in that alley! You stole a snivy from him, and you tried to steal a tepig and my oshawott! How’s that supposed to be what a good guy does?”

Belle screeched with laughter. Looking straight ahead, Door could just make them out: the slender form of Belle rocking back and forth on her feet and the looming, taller form of Starr, staring straight back at her. Both stood on top of a rocky outcrop overlooking what Door realized was the finger of an underground lake. How she didn’t notice the latter up until now, she couldn’t say. In the dim light, the lake undulated, its waters lapping softly against rock.

And there, on its shore, just below the outcropping, was something else: Blair’s silhouette. She paused at the sound of Belle’s laughter, then crept up the side of the rock until she disappeared behind Starr.

“Look, kid, if you’re gonna get stuck on your own moralities and whatever, I’m not gonna explain a thing to you,” Belle said, her voice squeaking with the remnants of her laughing fit. “Y’know, it’s gonna get real annoying to refer to you by anything other than your name if I don’t know what your name is. What’s your name, kiddo, so I can blatantly ignore it later?”

“Wow, no. How about I don’t tell you?” Door asked.

“Rude.” Belle flicked a hand into the air. “Well, fine. I’ll find out eventually. You did challenge the Striaton Gym, after all. All I have to do is ask Starr to look up the gym’s records and find out who the last challenger was.”

“What? How did you know I challenged the Striaton Gym?”

“Um, hi? We’re following you?” Belle put her hands on her hips and leaned forward. “Why do you think Starr and I lured you out to some cave where no one would ever think to look for a lost, dumb trainer? Speaking of, Pride, finish off that mutt with Scratch! And Starr? Reach behind you, sweetie.”

Belle’s purrloin lunged for Huntress as Starr twisted around. Door’s eyes flicked back and forth frantically as she scrambled to decide which one to pay attention to, but in the next moment, that decision was made for her. Blair shot up, throwing her entire body into the Companion’s. Her feet slammed into his back as she hooked one of her arms over his face. Starr wrenched around, stumbling erratically on the outcropping as his partner shouted and scrambled away.

“Door! Your lillipup!” Blair cried.

The second Door snapped her eyes back to the battle, the purrloin latched itself onto Huntress, its paws snapping over her eyes. Huntress howled and scrambled, bucking wildly as the cat dug its claws into her face. At the sight of the struggle, Door sucked in a breath and forced herself to calm just enough to see what else was there on the battlefield—what else was mere steps from where Huntress stood.

It didn’t take long for a plan to hit her.

“Huntress, bash that purrloin into the ground with Tackle!” she called out. “Then whip your head up and forward!”

With a low growl, Huntress acted immediately. She threw herself forward, slamming her entire body onto the cat clinging to her head. Belle’s purrloin yowled, its paws flailing, but the lillipup pinned her down. Then, Huntress jerked, lifting the cat onto her head, and with a snap of her tiny frame, she flung the creature away from her … and directly into the lake. For a second time, one of Belle’s pokémon plunged into the waters with a splash and sank at once.

“Pride, return!” Belle snapped. “Starr, don’t let that twerp get away!”

Looking up, Door saw Blair leap off the outcropping and bolt towards her. Under one of Blair’s arms was a small bundle, and her other hand snaked to her waist. She plucked something from her belt, and twisting around, she snapped her arm forward.

“Wilbur! Ember!” she called out.

“Oh no you don’t!” Belle screamed. Both of her hands snapped to her own waist, and as quickly as she could, she threw a pair of balls forward. “Watcher! Stalker! Double Tackle!”

Two. Belle had somehow picked up a second patrat, and now she was planning on a two-on-one match. Door scoffed, thinking back to Belle’s insistence that she was one of the good guys, but she knew this wasn’t the time to dwell on it. Instead, she recalled her lillipup and motioned forward with her other hand.

“Knives! Quickly! Help Wilbur out with Pound!” she called.

In a flash, Blair’s tepig and a pair of patrat materialized onto the cave floor, and Knives scrambled forward to meet them. Rushing past the pig, Knives shrieked and raised a muscular paw. At the same time, Wilbur inhaled, rearing back on his hind legs before exhaling a jet of flame. Light danced off the cavern walls as one of the oncoming patrat was engulfed in fire. The second slammed face-first into Knives’s paw, only to be thrown into the flames.

In the time that it took for the battle to begin, Blair caught up with Door and grabbed her by the arm.

“Run!” she shouted. “Wilbur, keep attacking! Make sure they don’t follow us!”

Stumbling into her first steps, Door followed Blair but pivoted at the same time to face her audino. “You too, Knives! Keep it up with Pound!”

“Don’t you run away from us!” Belle shouted. “Watcher! Stalker! Tackle! Don’t let them get away!”

Neither Door nor Blair looked back. Both trainers only knew their pokémon were following them from the pounding of their running feet, the cries of Knives, and the heat and light of Wilbur’s fire. They didn’t look back until they emerged into the brilliant afternoon light, squinting against the pain. And then, they only afforded the battle behind them a cursory glance as they ran through the tall grass and back to and over the fence. Eventually, their pokémon’s attacks cut off, and Belle’s screaming grew fainter with distance.

And then, at last, all Door could hear were her footsteps, and the footsteps of Blair, Wilbur, and Knives. Nothing more.



They found Geist and Opal exactly where they left them: on the road, kneeling next to the boy. This time, they were joined by a young-looking female Companion who sat beside her trainer with a weary look on her face. Geist’s hands were at her back, threading wires over and under a gap in her internal machinery, and as Blair and Door walked towards them, Door realized what had once been in that space: a crushed battery pack that was now sitting on the road beside the Companion. When they finally approached, Geist shut the panel and pressed his hands into the Companion’s back.

“That should do it,” he said. “I’ve rerouted your power completely to your auxiliary battery. What’s your time on it?”

The kneeling Companion tilted her head. “Three hours and counting.”

“Good. That should be enough to get you back to Striaton City.” He glanced up at Door and Blair. “How did you two do?”

Blair stepped forward and pulled the bundle out from under her arm. Door noticed then that Blair had wrapped her jacket around it, and as she pulled it in front of her, it wriggled in her arms. Opening it, Blair revealed a battered patrat, which she carefully pulled free and cradled in one arm. The boy jumped to his feet, winced, and—against his sprained ankle—scrambled forward to reach for his pokémon.

“My patrat! Is he okay?!” he cried.

Opal was at his elbow immediately, steadying him as she helped him to her partner. “Careful! Remember, your leg is injured. You shouldn’t jump up so suddenly like that!”

The boy looked down at the road. “I’ll … I’ll be fine. But … is my patrat…?”

Smiling, Blair took the boy’s free arm, bent it, and transferred the patrat to his trainer.

“A little beat up, but he’ll be all right,” she said. “I don’t think they were trying to hurt him that much, but get him to a pokémon center so they can check him out, okay?”

With a sniff, the boy held his patrat close. “I-I don’t know how to thank you, but—”

“I do.”

The boy’s Companion rise shakily to her feet. Geist shot to his own, helping her just like Opal helped her partner. Soon, she wobbled forward with her hands extended towards Blair and Door. Both of her palms began to glow white, just as Geist’s did when he healed the Dreamyard munna, but this time, six small, pink spheres appeared in the beams of light—three for each hand. When the light faded, the orbs fell into her palms and rested there, and Door could see what they were: poké balls in their retracted states. Not just any, either. Actual heal balls, high-class poké balls that were hard to find in Nuvema.

“Please take these,” the Companion said. “It’s the least we could do to thank you for all your help.”

Blair shook her head. “No, it’s okay. It was really nothing. Just the right thing to do, you know?”

“We must insist,” the Companion responded. “You have done much more for us than we can describe. So please.”

With his signature soft smile, Geist collected three of the spheres. Opal followed suit, and the two of them slipped the balls into their pockets.

“Thank you,” Geist said. “Now hurry back to Striaton and be careful from here on out.” He turned his head slightly and gave the boy a stern glance—the kind a parent would give his child. “And remember. Stay within the safe zone.”

“I will,” the boy replied. “Thank you.”

With one last smile, the boy’s Companion scooped her partner into her arms and began hurrying away, back towards Striaton. Watching the Companion race away with the boy in her arms was almost a comical sight to Door, something that nearly ruined the otherwise nearly heartwarming moment. So at first, Door didn’t notice Blair slink up to her side and stand there with her arms wrapped around her frame. She didn’t notice, that is, until she shoved her hands into her pockets and bumped Blair’s arm, and as soon as she did, she gave Blair a side-glance.

“Hey,” she said. “Good battling. You’re a pretty tough girl, and man, Wilbur’s Ember was—”

“Door,” Blair interrupted, her voice quiet and low. “There’s something you need to know about that boy’s patrat.”

She blinked. “Oh? What’s that?”

Blair turned to face Door, and in that second, Door could see her uncomfortable expression. Eyebrows furrowed. Eyes worried. Frown deep and tight. Something was wrong.

And then, she said three words that made Door stop.

“He was breathing.”



> File1.txt
> Author: Lanette Hamilton
> Notes: From the personal audio research notes of Lanette Hamilton. Transcript only; sound file has been lost. Transcriber unknown.

Companion: noun, an advanced humanoid computer capable of socialization and service.

Note to self: Terrible definition. Edit later.

I wish I could just define things simply. It’s already getting to be more complicated than it should be, but to be honest, this whole thing’s a mess. I blame myself a little. I thought this would fix things—maybe make things a little easier. But to be honest, I’m not half as good at lying as Cassius or half as confident as Bebe or Brigette, and I’m certainly not half as clever as Bill. I don’t even know why I lied about … well. You know.

Right. Right. Sorry. The point of this message.

I don’t know why I lied. I just did. And now I need to figure out how to make more of these things when that’s completely impossible! How am I supposed to emulate—

Right. I can do this. It’s just a balance, right? Perfectly logical. With modern technology as it is, we’re already almost there. It’s just a matter of changing a few settings, finding the right configuration of hardware—simple!

Besides, I have Zero-One to help me. This won’t be so bad.

Maybe?