Electric Sheep

Rereading a Nuzlocke sure is An Experience. Knowing who's gonna bite it... there's a nice little sting of dramatic irony when a pokémon fitting that description joins the story. At the same time, it doesn't seem to kill the punch when someone does go down--especially when said down-going is particularly brutal (see: any fauxkémon death by electrocution) or especially sudden (see: a certain death by deer feet). I'm by no means an expert in the genre--or in much of anything, really, except maybe Dynamite Headdy, sort of--but I think it's a pretty safe bet that those are qualities of a Nuzlocke fic done well.

Whether I noticed anything new this time around, I can't say for certain. So maybe the little snips 'n' bits I'm about to remark on are things I've singled out before and, perhaps, responded to in much the same ways. At any rate...



I like how N's insinuation just sailed right over her head. It's realistic, really. I think that oftentimes we don't process information that we weren't really prepared to hear.



Oh my god, that's so cute...



So's that, even if, y'know, ow. Boop!



so cute



Kind of neat, not to mention amusing, seeing a character regretting gifting their pokémon to the main protags. Specifically, regretting it in a "frick why did I do that, what was I thinking, that was A Dumb" kind of way.



What a good response.



How is it only just clicking with me that Ironwood = Bianca?



Heckin' bee puns. Ilu Geist.



This makes me feel somewhat better about naming a heatran Bilbo Face for no good gosh dang reason more than a decade ago. I still have that heatran, incidentally. Currently chilling on my copy of X.



All the time, I forget that monkeys can bite like nobody's business. Even though panthings all learn bite.



I love the fact that "Big Mclargehuge" actually came up in this.



I sure do seem to be getting xerneas vibes here...



That's a fantastic euphemism for what may or may not have been actually kind of gory af.



founded in where now



Oho. Ohohohoho. >8D

Again. The reread dramatic irony is just... <3



Props for figuring out how a whirlipede uses poison tail. Not sure I ever would've myself. XD


So yeah. Still love this, still love the characters, still love the HECK out of the setting. :D Very curious about what's next, given the especially heavy toll on the protags in good ol' Magnetic Nightmare Cave. I'm inclined to think that maybe?? things aren't quite as dire as they might seem there at the end, but exactly what might allow that to be the case... that, I can't say.

What I can say, as the thought came up several times during the reread, is that Knives remains an international treasure. Interdimensional treasure? Yeah, that sounds about right. :D

The sunlight hurt.

Door squinted and shielded her eyes with one hand. Blair held her other as she led Door through the gate at the northern end of Mistralton and onto the safe zone of Route 7. In front of them, Opal led the way with a glowing map suspended between her hands, and with every meter the group crossed, a tiny, circular icon traced up an illuminated path winding across the air in front of Opal’s face. Every so often, Opal announced a distance—1.5 kilometers to destination, 1.25 kilometers, 1 kilometer—and eventually, Door learned to tune it out, listening instead to Knives’s humming at her side.

Tea, followed by withdrawing her remaining pokémon (on Blair’s insistence), followed by working their way through Mistralton. It must have taken more than an hour to work through that process, yet the sun had just barely passed its zenith. Apparently, Door had lost all sense of time. She hadn’t realized it was still early morning when she left her room, but that explained the foot traffic in the Mistralton pokémon center.

She shifted her gaze to her right, still shielding her eyes with a hand. Route 7 was a lot like all the other routes in Unova: just a plexiglas, elevated surface fringed on both sides by tall grass. But the grass here was taller, probably to emulate the Route 7 of Hilda’s day, and it hid a lot of the trainers who must have been out there. The only clues Door got that they were there were the sounds of battles: kids shouting commands, pokémon crying out, attacks landing and exploding…

...and Companions. Every so often, Door could hear their mechanical voices guiding their trainers through battles, and every so often, light from holographic screens would paint the grass a rainbow of colors. Door felt herself crack a wry grin, even though her heart twisted in her chest. All of them seemed so fake. Just following orders and doing the things that would make their users happy.

Geist probably wouldn’t. As Door listened to the Companions around her, she thought back to the first battle Geist guided her through after she knew for certain he was a Companion. The one where she had caught Storm. She remembered his words, laced with a mixture of extreme patience and exasperation. He didn’t rely on screens or tell her where to go every five seconds. Not like these Companions. He only pointed her in the right direction and gave her hints.

And treated her like a human being.

Door breathed in. She hadn’t broken down since the pokémon center, and she wasn’t going to now. She had to keep it together. She had to keep walking.

But then, Opal stopped, and Knives’s ears twitched. A tiny dot appeared close to the line on Opal’s map, and she whirled around to face the rest of the group.

“Oh! Miss Blair!” she exclaimed. “There’s a wild deerling only a few feet from us. Would you like to catch it?”

Blair stopped. Then, she grinned and nudged Door’s side.

“Why don’t you go for it?” she asked. “Go on. The battle will make you feel better.”

Door took another deep breath. Her mind had wandered back to Prongs, back to the last time she had seen her first deerling. She didn’t want to tell Blair about him. She couldn’t put into words why; she could only feel her throat close up a little, cutting off any sentence she could have said.

So instead, she nodded.

“O-okay,” she rasped. “Knives—”

Knives was already gone. Door straightened, staring at the empty space Knives had occupied just a moment ago before frantically looking around.

“Shit,” Door cursed. “Knives? Knives!”

Door tore her hand away from Blair’s. She scrambled to one edge of the safe route and frantically scanned the tall grass for any sign of her audino. She couldn’t help it. She thought of Jack in his last moments—his expression when he died and how scared he looked when it happened—and her heart pounded at the possibility of Knives looking like that.

“Knives!” she screamed. “Knives! Get back here!”

Knives answered with a literal bang. A wild deerling burst from the grass, propelled by a thin but bright beam of crackling electricity, only to sail past Door and Blair and into the field on the other side of the route. It crash-landed just at the edge of the field but slid backwards, plowing the soft earth until it came to a rest in a bed of bent grass and tilled soil several feet away. There, the deerling lay, smoking and unmoving.

A second later, Knives climbed back onto the route, padded to Door’s side, and grabbed her hand with both paws. She tilted her head and trilled, and her tail wagged vigorously.

Door looked at Blair.

“I … might have taught her Charge Beam while you were asleep,” Blair said sheepishly. “Hope you don’t mind.”

Door shook her head vaguely. “Uh … nope. Don’t mind at all.”

“Hey!”

At the sound of the new voice, Door stiffened. She whirled around, facing the grass Knives had just come out of, to see a boy about her age climb onto the walkway, followed by a green-haired female Companion in a maid outfit. The boy shoved his hands into the pockets of his baggy jeans as he slouched and glared at Door.

“Was that your audino kicking my deerling around?” he asked.

“Excuse me?” Door deadpanned.

“Oh, you must be mistaken!” Opal said, clasping her hands together. “That deerling was not registered to a trainer!”

The boy snorted. “Just because it wasn’t registered don’t mean it wasn’t mine. You know how long I’ve been tracking that thing?”

Blair stepped forward, holding her hands up. “H-hey. Hold on. We don’t want any trouble. We’re sorry. We didn’t see you, okay? Right, Door?”

Some part of Door knew what she was about to do next was a bad idea. She had just lost most of her pokémon, and she nearly had a panic attack over the prospect of losing another one. But something else tugged at her the moment this kid walked up. No. The moment Knives killed the deerling in one shot. The idea of power, the idea of wielding it against someone else.

All of a sudden, those ideas sounded nice. Because for the first time in three days, Door suddenly felt something other than this deep chasm of nothingness or the edges of pure pain. She felt something other than sadness and frustration and self-hatred.

She felt a fire. Not an ember, even. It was like her entire heart just burst into flames and threatened to consume her.

She needed to hurt something else. Badly.

“It’s fine,” she said, her voice toneless but sharpened to a knife’s edge. “You’re right. Let’s settle this like trainers.”

“Door?” Blair whispered.

The boy cracked a grin and pulled his hands out of his pockets. In them, he held three poké balls. Not one. Not two. Three. Door eyed them without shifting her expression.

“I wasn’t gonna actually challenge you, but sure,” the boy said. “Triple battle sound good to you?”

Door narrowed her eyes. She thought back to the last three-on-three battle she had—the one against Heartbreaker. The one where she lost Boomer. The one where Geist was shot. She narrowed her eyes and stepped forward, in front of Blair. Blair reached out and grasped her shoulder.

“Door, wait,” Blair said.

She shrugged Blair off and drew three poké balls out from her pockets. Without a word, she flicked them forward, and in a second, Neptune, Queen, and Huntress were standing in front of her. The boy’s smile grew, and he released his own pokémon. Swoobat. Watchog. Liepard.

“Door, you don’t have to do this,” Blair said.

“Neptune, Air Slash on that watchog!” Door commanded. “Queen, Fake Out on swoobat! Huntress, Helping Hand on Queen!”

The boy sucked in a breath through his teeth. “Ooh. You a newbie or something? Swoobat, Air Slash that ducklett back into the ground. Watchog and Liepard? Use Crunch.”

Huntress was the first to move. She thrust a paw out as a red light washed over her body, and she pressed her paw into Queen’s shoulder. Queen arched her back, forcing her hair to stand on end, and as a long hiss escaped Queen’s lips, the red light flowed from Huntress into her body. She shook off the red light, ground her paws into the earth, and leapt forward, claws out, at the swoobat. Before the swoobat could move, Queen clapped her front paws together, sending a shockwave through the air and into her opponent’s body. The swoobat shrieked and shot from the air into the plexiglas ground, leaving a spiderweb of cracks as it rolled across its surface. Queen landed gracefully, then bounded forward and jumped onto the swoobat to keep it pinned.

The problem with that was, as Door realized a little too late, that focusing most of her attention on a single pokémon left two more free to attack.

That and she had barely trained Neptune. Which was probably why he had chosen that moment to give her an uncertain glance.

“Neptune! Move!” she shrieked.

The ducklett quacked and flapped his wings to take off, but he couldn’t get much further than half a foot into the air. Abruptly, the boy’s watchog caught Neptune in its enormous jaws, and before Door could even think about it—in a move so fast she almost missed it—Neptune snapped in half.

And just like that, he spilled, in pieces, onto the walkway at his trainer’s feet.

Door froze. She stared at the two halves of her ducklett. Her mind had blanked. She didn’t even see the liepard dive at Queen, nor the two cats roll off the boy’s woobat and away. She simply stared at the ducklett at her feet.

Then, Blair’s arms were back around her, and the girl’s voice was in her ear. “Door! Call off the battle! You don’t have to do this!”

And somehow, that made the fire in her chest burn hotter.

“Huntress, Crunch!” she screamed. “Queen, Pursuit! Knives! Charge Beam!”

She couldn’t hear the boy’s orders, but she knew he called them. The swoobat took to the air shakily, only to be shot through the chest by a quick beam of electricity from Knives. Queen dove at the watchog with a hiss, and as the watchog’s teeth clamped down on her shoulder, she slashed at him with her claws.

And then there was Huntress and the boy’s liepard. The two dove at each other once, its claws slashing at Huntress’s shoulder while Huntress snapped at its face. They landed, teeth bared, hair raised, circling one another. Door said nothing as she watched, but the boy yelled and whooped, his fist flailing in the air above him as he cheered his liepard on. Without even thinking about it, Door let her eyes fall on the swoobat not far from where the boy stood. Its body lay still, wings spread, smoke rising from the hole Knives had made.

The boy didn’t seem to notice. Or care. Or maybe he did, and he was just as angry as Door. She looked up in wonder.

And then, just as Huntress bit through the liepard’s neck, it impaled her forehead with its claws.

And the two fell over, still and silent.

And Door realized the fire in her wasn’t a feeling.

Not really.

It wanted to consume her, yes, but it wasn’t pain or anger or fear or sadness. It was something else entirely. Just a blind, emotionless want.

It should have scared her … but it didn’t.

“Queen, Fury Swipes. Knives, Charge Beam.”

Her voice was even but quieter than usual. She could feel Blair respond to it by tightening her grip on her waist. But Door didn’t care.

Instead, she watched.

She knew about the cliche—the one where everything would seem to go in slow motion when something terrible happened. And so it went then, with the four remaining pokémon lunging at one another, paws skittering across plexiglas and over the broken bodies of fauxkémon all over the battlefield, until they met in the center.

The boy’s watchog moved first, launching itself at Queen. Its teeth sank into her shoulder before she could dodge. Her left paw rose, its claws fully extended, but as she raked them across the watchog’s back, the watchog bit clean through her neck. Her head rolled off her shoulders and bounced onto the ground, and the rest of her slumped sideways.

The watchog looked up, eyes blinking lazily, just as a beam of electricity engulfed its head. This one was larger than the others—far larger and more powerful—and at the other end of it, Knives screamed with her paw raised above her, fingers splayed and beam bursting from her hand.

The watchog fell over, head melted in, edges blackened. The air reeked of rubber and metal and burnt plastic. Door felt Blair gag against her back, and she felt sick herself at the sight of the decapitated watchog and the smell of its dead flesh. But she didn’t move.

Knives cut off her attack and pivoted on her back paws. The boy’s liepard was on her in an instant, head slamming into Knives’s chest. Both pokémon fell, Knives beneath the liepard, flat on her back with the cat’s paws pinning her own to the plexiglas. The cat leaned down, its jaws snapping, its claws poised above Knives’s face, held back only by Knives, physically holding the liepard at arm’s length by its parted maw.

And then, right then, Door realize she was about to lose her last pokémon.

Not just any pokémon, either.

Knives.

“Knives,” Door whimpered.

And then, she thrust herself forward, held back only by Blair.

“Knives!” she screamed. “Knives! GET UP! FOR GOD’S SAKE!”

Beneath the liepard, Knives’s ears twitched. She tensed, and she glared at her opponent.

And then, she opened her mouth, and a ball of bright yellow light swirled in her throat.

The Charge Beam that erupted from her mouth ripped the liepard off her and sent it flying, head over paws, onto the plexiglas. It slammed into the path, smashing it beneath its weight as it skittered backwards. Electricity crackled off its body, and smoke curled up from its frame, and given the way the boy’s watchog went down, Door half expected the battle to be over right then and there.

Except it wasn’t.

The liepard pushed off the ground and rose, shakily, to all four paws. Its head cocked with jerks and jolts, and each slow step it took was halting and erratic. But somehow, it began to crawl, inch by inch, back to Knives, and when it was halfway there, it yowled—its voice not much more than a mechanical screech—and dove at Knives with its jaw unhinged and ready to rip her to shreds. She flinched, holding her bleeding paws up to catch it.

Without warning, a stream of boiling hot water blasted from the fields, slamming into the side of the broken liepard and into Knives’s arms. The liepard screeched, both mechanically and in its own cat-like voice, as it toppled to the road and slid to a stop at its edge. It tried to get back up, but the moment it did, a shower of sparks rained out from its open and soaked mouth, and it toppled over, its legs kicking uselessly beneath its twitching body.

Knives, meanwhile, was screaming. Blair and Opal were at her side first, pulling her up and onto her haunches. She cried out, paws reaching up and grasping for Door while Blair tried to pull her hands towards Opal.

And it was that sight—the sight of her helpless little rabbit crying and grasping for her that shook Door out of her daze. With a half-sobbing cry, Door dove down and scooped Knives into her arms, and as she frantically apologized into her rabbit’s pudgy side, her audino’s wails began to subside. Gingerly, Blair grasped Knives’s elbows and held her paws up to Opal, who finally spread her hands over the audino’s palms. Light drifted from Opal into the burns and bites stretching across Knives’s hands, and Door watched, rocking Knives back and forth and sniffling into the rabbit’s shoulder. Before her eyes, she could see the bites stitch back up and the burns dissolve, and with each passing second, Knives grew calmer and calmer until she rested in Door’s arms.

“It’s okay,” she whispered. “It’s gonna be okay. You’re okay now.”

Blair knelt beside Door. She kept one of her hands on Knives’s elbows, but the other reached out to grasp Door’s shoulder. The look on her face was one of sympathy. Eyebrows knitted. Eyes glittering not with judgment but with concern. From anyone else, Door supposed she would have felt a spike of disgust from that expression, but from Blair … she felt shame.

And the thing was … she knew she deserved that shame.

Knives was her only pokémon left now. Three pokémon died because Door wanted … what? Why did she even do this? To let off steam? Because she wanted some kind of cosmic revenge for the fact that so many of her other pokémon were taken from her? What?

Beyond Blair, Door was just barely aware that someone else had gotten onto the route. The boy was arguing with that someone else. He was getting close. His chest was pressed against the newcomer’s. A poké ball appeared in his hand. And Door felt a pang of jealousy. The boy had more pokémon.

The boy had more pokémon.

The boy had more pokémon, and Door had used four in the match.

Door’s heart thundered when she realized the implication. This battle wasn’t over. It wasn’t going to be over until she was out of pokémon. Knives was still in danger, and this was her fault. She held Knives tightly as she tensed, and Blair’s expression shifted into one of confusion before she looked over her shoulder and realized what Door had. Blair shifted her body between Door and the other trainers, her arm stretching out to block Door, but she didn’t need to worry.

The second trainer’s simipour took care of things—namely by rushing in and throwing its entire body at the boy.

He went sprawling across the plexiglas, and the newcomer stood over him, hands on his hips. The second trainer said something—what, Door couldn’t parse—and just like that, the boy blanched, scrambled to his feet, and took off running.

With a sigh, the newcomer’s shoulders sagged. He waited for a few seconds before whirling around and tossing black bangs out of his gray eyes. Sauntering forward, he slipped one hand into the pocket of his skinny jeans, but the other he hung at his side. When he was close enough, he knelt down and patted Knives on the head. Then, he smiled brightly at Door, drew his other hand out of his pocket, and offered it to her.

“Tu vas bien?” he asked.

Door took one look at his hand and punched him in the face.



> UNTITLED.txt
> Author: N/A
> Notes: From Series Alpha Zero-One’s audio-visual backup system. Transcript of audio track only; video component has been corrupted. File transcribed by Cassius Cassine.

████: I’m sorry for scaring you.

[BACKGROUND: Metal-on-metal clicking. LANETTE does not reply.]

████: You’re mad. I know. I should have listened to you. But we nearly lost two months of work. I thought—

LANETTE: Is that what’s most important to you? A hunk of metal?

████: Well, you know me.

LANETTE: Yes, I do.

[pause]

████: I mean, it’s not that serious, is it?

[BACKGROUND: Clicking stops.]

████: Look! You did an amazing job. See? I’m almost as good as new! No big deal.

[pause]

████: Anyway, this is why you’re letting me help you in the laboratory, isn’t it?

[BACKGROUND: A piece of metal strikes a concrete surface.]

LANETTE: I’m letting you work with me because I need your help, not because I can put you back together if something happens to you.

████: Lanette. I’m okay.

LANETTE: No, you’re not! Don’t you get it? It’s not about me having to fix you. It’s about—

[pause]

████: What?

LANETTE: I’m shutting down the LFA system. Maybe you’ll start to get it then.

████: What? No! Wait—

[END RECORDING.]

Aaaaand here we are, folks! If you've been waiting for content not previously posted to AO3/the Nuz forums before my little hiatus this year, this is the first chapter of fresh content. Enjoy!

(And a s/o to Manifold and Gangster Garchomp of the Nuzforums for betaing ... which is significant only because oh my god minty actually had someone beta for once)

---

Door ran. Just sprang up and ran.

She didn’t know why. Her head was a mess right then, and she knew that much. But why did she punch that one trainer? Sure, said trainer had hurt Knives, but why would she punch him? Why was her heart pounding the way it was, and why was she so angry, and why was she running, and why was she doing all of these things all at once?

The more she thought about it, the more she realized the answer was right there.

Everything was supposed to hurt. And in a way, everything did. But at the same time, she couldn’t feel anything anymore. It was like the moment she had told Blair about Jack dying, the moment she let it out, what happened next wasn’t a moment of release. It was a moment of emptying, a moment in which she haphazardly spilled everything inside her all over the table for the entire world to see, and there it was, festering in the open like a rotting carcass.

It was everything she was afraid of. She was weak. People knew this now. And she hurt people over and over again, and she didn’t want to keep doing it, but she did it anyway and didn’t know how to stop and—

She stopped dead in her tracks.

Fifty years ago, the road to Celestial Tower was a wild one overrun with grass so tall the only way to cross some of it was by a complex series of balance beams—a precursor to the safe zone system. But now, because the tower was part of the tourist experience, of course there would be a road leading all the way there. Door stared at it, looming over the fork between the road to its door and the one to Twist Mountain like a shadowy needle. And in that moment of hesitation, she felt something slip into her hand and scratch her skin lightly. She looked down to see Knives nibbling on her other paw as she gave her trainer a concerned frown. Door dove down to embrace Knives tightly.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

She felt Knives’s arms stretch around her and her paws patting her back. The coo that came out of the audino wasn’t her usual happy, energetic coo but instead something soft and quiet, a little sympathetic but also … sad.

This, Door knew, was her fault. She held Knives tighter, which made the audino chatter softly and rub her ear against her trainer’s cheek. Door had a feeling she knew exactly what those coos were: Knives was telling her how much she hurt, how sad she was about losing her friends, how scared she was of—

“Strange.”

Door stiffened. She didn’t look up, but she felt N’s presence loom over her.

“Your audino says she trusts you completely,” he told her. “She wants nothing more than to travel with you and make you happy.” He hesitated. “I’m not sure what’s going on here, but she is very insistent on this point.”

Door trembled. She still didn’t look up. Pressing her cheek into Knives’s neck, she murmured, “Is that true?”

Knives chirped and nodded, patting her trainer on the back with both paws.

“Why?” Door rasped.

He shrugged. “Pokémon don’t judge us. They know that there are many things that can be gained from bonding with us, so they do their best to understand us, just as we humans do our best to understand them. It’s fascinating, isn’t it? Both pokémon and humans. We’re all so different, with so many ideas, that you wouldn’t think we would be able to get along. Yet our need for connection overrides both our drive for truth or ideals.” He paused for a beat. “Do you understand?”

Door lifted her chin, resting it on Knives’s shoulder. “No.”

“I see. Then come with me.”



The inside of Celestial Tower looked almost exactly like what Door had expected. It was a massive space, dimly lit, with a high ceiling obscured by shadows. The walls were lined with vestibules containing urns and poké balls. A spiral staircase wound upwards along the edges, disappearing to a second floor far above, and the longer Door stared at it, the more she noticed the purple pinpricks of light that had to be the litwick that lived here. The only thing Door didn’t expect was how pristine everything was. Granted, it was an active point of interest, so she supposed someone had to maintain it, but still, she had expected it to be dilapidated. She had expected its old stone to be crumbling and its urns to be dusty and decades old. But these? These were new.

Tearing her eyes away from the staircase, Door found N speaking softly to a Companion in a blue aviator costume. The Companion motioned to empty spaces on the wall, and N nodded to her, then beckoned Door forward, right to a row of holes right about eye level for her.

“Door,” he said, “do you know what Celestial Tower is for?”

She wanted to say yes. Everyone knew what Celestial Tower was for. It was one of the most sacred sites in Unova—perhaps one of the only sacred sites in Unova, besides the Abundant Shrine or, according to some people, Dragonspiral Castle. After all, this was where all of Unova’s dead came to rest.

But she couldn’t. Her throat constricted, and she could only stare at the wall, at the little cubby holes made from stone and lined with dust. She knew. She knew exactly what N had asked the Companion.

He reached out and took her by the hand, like a father leading a child. Door couldn’t help but notice how rough his skin was, how calloused his fingers were, as he guided—not pulled—her closer to the holes. His other hand came to a rest on the lip of one of them.

“I know about your dewott,” he said. “The others as well. I’m sorry.”

Door swallowed. The hard lump in her throat traveled down just enough to let her speak. “How do you know?” she squeaked.

“I can’t hear his voice anymore,” N said. “And I watched you battle that other trainer. Your audino’s rage back then was … painful. How many did you lose?”

Door set her teeth. One by one, she named them all—all the ones whose poké balls still sat in her pockets. Jack. Needles. Storm. Prongs. Huntress. Queen. Neptune. Seven pokémon. Two of which were real.

Did Unovans bury dead fauxkémon? How many bodies in Celestial Tower weren’t real?

But more importantly … could she bury her pokémon together?

Could she bury her pokémon at all?

Door swallowed again. Her eyes burned from both the dust and the thought. She didn’t want to cry. She didn’t want to do it in front of N, the notorious king of Team Plasma. She barely even knew this man; all she knew were the stories. The misguided hero who could hear the voices of pokémon, the man who nearly split the world in two. How could he understand what Door was thinking right then?

“Door,” he said. His voice was gruff, and it somehow made him sound older than he must have been, if he really was Hilda’s rival all those years ago. “Place your pokémon here.”

She shook her head. “S-some of them aren’t…”

“It doesn’t matter.”

She looked at him, her eyes staring into his. But the expression on his face was perfectly neutral, his gray eyes locking onto her with an indescribable intensity. He was studying her, yet it felt like he was silently encouraging her. Not judging her but rather … waiting for her.

With a deep breath and shaking hands, Door reached into her pockets and placed her poké balls into one of the holes. One by one, without thinking twice about her actions. Neptune. Queen. Prongs. Needles. Huntress. Storm.

And Jack. She hesitated with Jack’s. Stared at it for a long while. Clicking its button, she expanded it, but she knew there was no way it would open any more. The light on its face blinked an angry purple-black at her, as if screaming at her over and over again that this was her fault.

She felt tears prick at her eyes, and one of her breaths caught in her throat as a half-sob, but she didn’t cry. Instead, she planted her lips gently on its surface, then slipped it into the hole with the others. Her fingers lingered on it, unwilling to let it go, until she felt N’s grip on her forearm.

Taking a breath to steady herself, she wiped her eyes. “Here’s the part where you tell me all about how it’s natural for a pokémon to die or give me some kind of story about how there’s hope for me yet.”

“No,” N said, “it isn’t.”

“So it’s the part where you lecture me on how all pokémon are living creatures, and this all is my fault?” Door asked.

“No.”

She ventured another look at him. His expression hadn’t changed. He was still staring at her with those intense eyes that almost seemed to be studying her but not really.

“The stories always said you preached at Hilda,” she said.

N was silent for a long while, and then, for reasons Door couldn’t understand—and wouldn’t thereafter—he smiled.

“I did a lot of things when I was young,” he said. “I’ve traveled for many, many years, and I’ve seen many things. Far more things than most people dream of. But do you know what fascinated me the most? People.” N let go of her arm. “When I was young, I dreamed of a perfect world. I saw pokémon as perfect beings, held back only by the imperfection of humanity. Hilda taught me I was wrong—that the world is far more complex than a dichotomy of black and white, truth and ideals, perfect and imperfect. In other words … everything changes, including me. Sometimes, you must change and accept the truths around you in order to move forward.”

He stepped back from her, and Door swung her eyes to look back, just in time to see the Companion standing a few feet from her. The Companion’s hands were folded over waist, and her eyes were glowing ghost-like blue.

“Please follow me, Miss Hornbeam,” she said.

Door hesitated. She looked back at N for advice, but he stood, hands in his pockets, eyes on the hole where Door had placed her pokémon.

“This is a place for closure, Door,” he said. “You need to let go of the past in order to move forward. Follow that Companion to the top of the tower. There, you’ll find what you need to say goodbye.”

He turned on his heel and started walking away, back towards the entrance of the tower. And Door watched him, half in curiosity and half in confusion. Part of her thought that maybe she had him all wrong, that he wasn’t just some weird relic of Hilda’s day. But the rest of her? The rest of her was turning over what he had said, about finding what she needed to say goodbye.

Sometimes, you must change, he said. Sometimes, you must accept truth to move forward.

Sometimes, things are just complicated. Sometimes, it’s not your fault, and sometimes, it is. Sometimes, life is stupid, and death is definitely stupid, and you do stupid things, and everything is a mess.

And maybe what N meant was that sometimes, that happens. Sometimes, you’re left behind with a mess that you quite possibly made, and that itself, devoid of context, is neither good nor bad. It just happens. But what you do about it? That’s what makes all the difference.

That was the next part he said, wasn’t it? Figuring out what she needed to say goodbye. That part was still a complete mystery to Door, but now—now she felt just grounded enough to figure out what he meant.

So Door exhaled and nodded to the Companion.

“Okay,” she said. “I’m ready. Let’s go, Knives.”

The audino, who had been oddly silent and fascinated by the ceiling that entire time, tore her eyes away from a spot far above her. She chirruped and trotted to Door’s side, then slipped her hand into Door’s.

And Door couldn’t help but think back to what N had said. About how Knives trusted her. Door took a deep breath and shook her head. She wouldn’t cry. She would be strong. She needed to hold herself together, at least until she figured out what N meant by “what she would need to say goodbye.”

“Okay,” she said to the Companion. “Lead the way.”

The Companion smiled and, without another word, led Door to the stairs. Door hesitated yet again, walking slowly as she led Knives across the room and to the first step. By then, the Companion had ascended three stairs and glanced back.

“Come! This way!” she beckoned.

Knives ran ahead, chirping as she bounced. She didn’t seem to notice that behind her, her trainer only partly sped up, walking briskly after her with stiff steps. Door was too distracted to give in to Knives’s infectious curiosity or enthusiasm. Her eyes were too busy settling on the hole in the wall, on her dewott’s poké ball just visible inside.

“Come! Come!” the Companion said.

That would have annoyed Door, had this been the start of her journey. It would have amused her slightly if it had been the day before Jack died. But now, she just barely noticed the Companion’s insistent tone at all, opting instead to nod vaguely and tear her eyes away from the wall at last.

“R-right. Right,” she said.

Her foot found the first step. Then the next. Then the ones after. Knives pulled her paw out of Door’s grip, and her blue eyes were fixed on the ceiling, as if to watch something far overhead. Door followed her gaze, not out of interest but instead to find something else to watch, but all she saw was the purple lights of the second floor, floating lazily above her. She watched one without taking it in, without really noticing it. Just watched it as her mind wandered.

Door didn’t notice when they reached the second floor or the third or the fourth. Every floor was the same: dark, stone spaces lined with walls of arched holes. The further up they got, the more those holes were filled. Dust-covered poké balls sat in each alcove, as if waiting for a trainer to pick them up and give them life again, and the further they went upwards, the older and more forlorn the collection of poké balls looked. Soon, Door could see old models: antique, decorated things. Custom jobs or items made before mass-production. Retro-looking balls from the 50s and 60s, all rusted steel and clunky wiring. These were poké balls owned by Trainers, with a capital T—the brave and the bold who carved paths and routes and gym circuits out of the raw terrain of Unova. The pokémon contained in each ball must have had their own battle stories, their own battle scars, their own memories of glory in days long past, when battling meant bloodshed and bonding, not breaking and obedience. She should have been impressed. She should have been interested. She should have been invested on so many levels.

But she wasn’t. She didn’t want to be there, she realized. She didn’t want to be surrounded by thousands of ghosts.

She didn’t want to be burying her first partner, the first living creature that wanted to be with her.

“At the top of the tower, my friend is waiting,” the Companion said at the landing of the fourth floor. “Today is his day off, I’m afraid, but he is always looking for new and promising trainers. When that gentleman announced you at the first floor and asked for space, he said to me that you had promise. You may be one of the trainers my partner is most interested in meeting.”

Door cringed. Judging by the language, she recognized a Thalia when she heard it. Perhaps a Calliope at most, but the floral prose left no doubt in her mind that this was not a Companion meant for the open road but rather a Companion meant for show. What kind of person was her user, then, if he was looking for trainers, but he kept a Thalia?

And why did she care? Companions were just machines, right?

Except … Door let her mind wander to the cubby full of broken fauxkémon. To Boomer and Scout and Storm and Huntress. And to Geist.

There was a question there, one half-formed and still forming even as Door opened her mouth and let another one tumble out.

“Cool,” Door said. Her voice was distant; her mind hadn’t fully come back to the conversation. “Who’s your user?”

“My friend,” the Companion replied simply.

Door felt an uncomfortable twinge in her chest. The Companion reminded her of Geist, but there was something in the way she said those things—something in the way she described her user as her friend without actually giving a name, something in the way she apparently took Door literally—that sounded as if she was merely following a script. Definitely a Thalia, then. Thalias followed scripts. It was what they did.

“Your ... friend,” Door replied.

“Oh yes,” she said. “My friend chose me. He needed a partner who may interact with the public. Someone who is observant and listens.”

Door felt her attention settle on the Companion, like a moth to a lamp.

“It ... doesn’t bother you?” she asked. “That your friend gave you orders?”

The Companion grinned. “Oh no. How could I argue with my purpose?”

Door nodded and looked away. “Of course. Your programming.”

“On the contrary,” the Companion replied, “my friend taught me that all living beings have a purpose, even artificial ones like me. While it’s true that I am programmed to obey him, he has always told me that my purpose is whatever I believe it to be. I trust him, and thus, my purpose is to do what I can to make him happy.”

Definitely a Thalia. Door tried her best to hide her wince.

The Companion stopped at the last staircase. From it, beams of sunlight filtered through, and Door realized that when N said she would find what she needed at the top of the tower, he meant, literally, the top of the tower. As in, the roof, not some holy chapel on the top floor.

“Through this door, you’ll find my friend,” the Companion said. “Please. After you.”

Door paused, shoulders sagged, eyes glued onto the square of blue sky at the top of the stairs. She glanced at Knives, who wasn’t looking at the doorway but instead at a tiny pinprick of violet light across the room. The light danced low across the floor, drifting lazily ever so slowly towards them.

“Hey, Knives?” Door asked.

Knives’s ears twitched, and the audino whirled around with a happy coo. Door gave her a soft but forced grin, then reached out to take her by the paw.

“Come on, girl,” she said. “Let’s see what the fuss is about.”

With that, she led Knives up the last set of stairs and into the sunlight. She had to blink a few times and walk slowly as she pushed into the open air. Her feet ground into the stone of the roof as a cold wind pushed at her—not hard enough to take her off her feet but just enough to be uncomfortable. Slowly, her eyes adjusted to both the sunlight and the wind, and she opened them fully to see what was on the roof.

Straight ahead of her was a giant, brass bell set within stone supports. A thick, braided, red-and-white cord hung from its side, and even though it was clearly old, it gleamed in the afternoon sun. Perched atop it was a swanna—fake, Door realized, because it looked too perfect. Its feathers were snow-white and brilliant in the sun. Its neck swooped upwards with graceful curves, and everything about it simply fit together on top of that bell like nothing natural could. And Door, for the first time in her life, felt her breath catch a little at the sight of a fauxkémon. It was beautiful, she realized. The swanna and the bell.

So it took her another moment to realize that in front of them, with a dirty rag in one hand and an open jar of polish at his bare feet, was Ari Sokolsky, Mistralton gym leader.

And then, her breath caught in her throat for a different reason: the one standing right next to her, paw in her hand.

“Hello,” he said, his voice deep and rumbling. His back was turned to Door, but she nonetheless felt like she was being watched. Like he had already passed judgment on her. “Come forward, friend. Come see this.”

At first, Door didn’t. She held Knives’s paw tightly in her hand and felt her nerves vibrate. The Mistralton gym leader, right here, right at the top of the tower, ready to hear her challenge. Was this what N meant? Throw her last remaining pokémon at a gym leader? Did he want her to fail? No, that couldn’t have been it. N loved pokémon too much for that, right? So why did he send her up there?

Question after question roiled in Door’s mind, and the seconds ticked to minutes, and the sunlight beat down on her and made the face of the bell glare, and … and…

And she felt a tug at her side. Looking down, she saw Knives smiling, pulling at her arm, urging her to walk forward. She stared into Knives’s blue eyes, so trusting and happy, and one by one, the questions in her head died down until she thought of nothing at all but the bell, the swanna, and Knives. So, slowly but surely, with one cautious step in front of the other, Door let Knives lead her to the center of the tower.

To Ari Sokolsky.

Ari Sokolsky. Mistralton gym leader. Door knew about Ari because he was the reason why she knew, well, about herself. She was a teenager. She went to an all-girls’ school. Of course she knew about him through the many times her fellow students watched and rewatched and giggled over the battle vids. And she knew him from the way her classmates squealed over his rolling foreign accent or from how much they went on about wanting to run their fingers through his dark, wavy hair or (even more uncomfortably for Door) down his tanned abs. And of course she knew that months ago, she cared more about that swanna on the bell than him but didn’t know how to say that without intruding on an entire school’s collective fantasies.

But now? Now was something entirely different, and now she felt like she was intruding on something else. Now she was face-to-face with a gym leader with only one pokémon to her name, and that gym leader looked … ordinary. He was shorter than her classmates said he was, for one—only about a head taller than Door herself. And for another, he wasn’t exactly pristine and perfect. There he stood, in front of the perfect bell and swanna, hands on his hips, streaks of polish up his tanned arms, and a dirty rag hanging from one of his calloused hands.

And for that reason, because of those hands, Door felt herself come back to the present. In fact, she almost relaxed. Almost. She felt her heart slow and her breath steady. Maybe he wasn’t there for a gym battle. Maybe this was his day off. Maybe he would just say his piece and let her go.

Maybe she didn’t have to lose Knives too.

“What do you think?” he drawled, his back still to her. Even his accent was different in person. Richer somehow. Bubbling, she would call it. Something from one of the Eastern European regions, she recalled, although she never bothered to find out which one.

“Um...” Door flicked her gaze away from Ari and to the edge of the tower.

He glanced at her and motioned to the bell with the rag. “Looks good as new, yes?”

Door shifted her eyes to the bell. Even from where she stood, she could see her reflection in the brilliantly shining brass.

“Y-yeah,” she said. “Looks great.”

Ari smiled. “Ah, good.” He placed his hand back on his hips and breathed in. “You know what I like about this place? It’s peaceful. The air up here? It has all the winds of all the cities in Unova. You breathe in, you can smell Castelia. Go on! Give it a try!”

Door gave him an odd look but did as he said. She closed her eyes and breathed in deep, and at first, she couldn’t smell anything at all. But then, taking another breath, she could almost smell something—a faint odor of rubber, spiced with the aroma of fried onions and something indescribable and sweet. Instantly, Door remembered North Castelia, the night Geist led her to the pokémon center and the night she sampled her first real taste of true defiance by running away from her mother. A small smile crossed her lips, in spite of herself.

“See? Peaceful, yes?” Ari asked.

Door opened her eyes and snorted. “I guess. So, uh, I’m—”

Ari waved a hand in the air. “Yes, yes. Challenger. Wendy brought you here.”

“Wen—oh. Her.” Door looked at the Companion, who was standing a few paces back, hands folded over her waist again. “Yeah. I-I guess she did.” Turning back to the gym leader, Door added, “But, um. There’s something you should know.”

Ari raised a perfectly manicured eyebrow at her. “Yes?”

Door took one more deep breath, then let it out slowly. As that last breath left her lips, she lowered her head. “I … I’m not ready. I only have one pokémon.” She motioned to Knives for emphasis. “And here she is.”

Knives’s ears twitched, and the rabbit trilled and brought a paw to her mouth. Ari chuckled, then stepped forward and knelt down to look Knives in the eyes. One of his rough, tanned hands patted her on the head, then gently pet her, eventually covering one of her ears. She huffed and barked, squinting the eye closest to Ari’s hand, but she didn’t move away. Rather, she stood there, chewing on her claws, as she stared right back at him.

“You know,” he said. “She looks like a good pokémon. A strong pokémon. It is not so easy to train audino.” He looked up at Door. “You must be good, if this is the pokémon you bring me.”

Door bit her lip and crossed her arms. “I’m … I’m not that good.”

Ari rose, slipping the oil-stained cloth in his free hand into a back pocket of his jeans. “Why do you say that?”

Hesitating, Door took another deep breath. This one smelled like sulfur. “I … there’s a reason why I came here. I-I didn’t know you were up here. I just…”

“I am sorry for your loss.”

Door bit her lip again, but this time, she didn’t say anything afterwards. She only looked up, into Ari’s eyes. It took everything she had to not cry again, but somehow, she managed. Especially when he gave her a sympathetic smile. Something about it felt warm. Felt familiar. Felt … like Geist.

A small realization hit Door. Just the spark of it. Like she was on the verge of realizing something important, but she couldn’t quite put it into words. Not yet.

She just thought, above all else, that it felt nice to have someone smile at her like that. Like she was finally safe and like everything would be okay, even though she couldn’t possibly put into words what she felt safe from.

“Everyone comes here for that,” Ari explained. “I know what you’re thinking: Ari, they’re mechanical. How do you mourn for mechanical pokémon? Trust me. It is not an unusual question at all. Many trainers come here with the exact same thought you do. They think, ‘But the reason why I train these fauxkémon is because it doesn’t matter if they break, yes?’ But let me ask you: what’s the difference between a machine and something else? When you spend long enough time with something that can walk and speak and look at you, don’t you feel for it just as you would anything else?”

Door looked away. It was a familiar question, and less than a month ago, she would have answered it immediately. She had answered it immediately, hadn’t she? But now, her voice caught in her throat. She was starting to see what N meant; it hadn’t even occurred to her that there might have been someone else struggling with the exact same problems she had. But now that she thought about it, there were countless burial plots beneath her feet, weren’t there? How many of them were full of fauxkémon? How many of them were full of real ones?

And … did people feel this way when they lost pokémon? She could almost hear it: the voices of people who lost countless real pokémon and realized a little too late what that meant. What was the difference between that pain and the pain of anyone else still reeling from the pain of a team-sized hole in them? She mourned for Jack, sure, but she mourned for Scout and Storm and all the others too.

And she feared for Geist. But why?

“You see what I mean,” Ari said. “I understand, you know. When I was young, I did not see how one could care so deeply for something that has no heart. Where I come from, things like pokémon and Companions—they are weapons. They fill the streets with fire and blood. It took me a long time to learn that this is not what they are.”

But why? That question kept bouncing off the walls of Door’s skull, even as Ari continued. Slowly, cautiously, Door looked at Ari from the corner of her eye. “What are they, then?”

And at that, Ari laughed and raised his hand, and the swanna swooped from the bell and settled beside him gracefully. It pressed its chin into his palm and rested there, clicking its beak in faux contentment.

“Anything you want them to be! Including friends,” Ari finally said. “But! As I’ve said, it took me a long time to learn that. I was a very angry person when I came to this country. I did many things I should not have done.”

That. That Door could relate to. As her eyes drifted back to the floor, she thought about her pokémon. About the reason why she came to Mistralton and the possible gym battle. And about what Ari could have meant. Was that why N brought her here? Because Ari was like her once?

“Are … are you angry now?” Door asked, so softly her lips barely moved.

Rearing back, Ari laughed, and the sound sent an embarrassed blush across Door’s face.

“No, no,” he said. “People change. That is what’s so great about them! And you may ask, ‘Well, what changed you, Ari?’ And I would say … this place.” He swept an arm to the side, motioning to the whole of the tower. “Love. Knowing people. Try as you might, my friend, no person can go their entire lives alone. The more people you see when they grieve or when they celebrate their love or when they understand what it means to live, the more the sight of them worms its way into you.”

Door furrowed her eyebrows at his words. In a way, they didn’t entirely make sense to her. She couldn’t understand how someone could get all of that from watching someone else grieve or bury their dead or something else.

On the other … she almost understood. She couldn’t define exactly what she understood, but she had that feeling of being on the edge of something, like standing on the edge of a great canyon and looking down and just knowing.

So she hesitated. Shrank back from that thought and stepped carefully onto another. Anything to help her understand.

“You came here just to watch people?” she asked.

Ari shook his head, his smile fading. “No. No, I came here for the same reason you did.”

Door felt her body tense. “Oh. I’m-I’m so sorry. I didn’t—”

He held up a hand. “That was years ago. I miss them—my pokémon. But how can I regret what brought me here? There is a saying in this country. What is it, now? ‘A reason for everything,’ yes? Yes—a reason for everything, including death. I’m glad to be here and to take care of this place. If it can be a comfort to others, then that’s enough.”

Ari straightened his back, lifting his chin a little. The swanna pulled away from him and studied the both of them, as if waiting for something—perhaps more attention from its trainer. And in her hesitation, Door’s eyes flicked back and forth between them. She had nearly forgotten Ari’s other job—and the challenge she had issued just by being there—until she saw the look in the swanna’s glass eyes. So when Ari reached down and rested his hand on Knives’s head, Door tensed again, waiting, as the fear crept back into her heart. She wasn’t ready. She wasn’t ready for this.

“Learning? It was not easy,” Ari said. “It never is. I know that. So I know how hard it must be for you. I was alone on my journey; it was only here that I met someone who taught me to open my mind. She gave me—what is it now?—a second chance. She gave me a swanna and took me to Skyla. But if I did not open my eyes and see that she was helping me, where would I be? Angry. Alone. Who knows?” His voice dropped a little. “Who knows?”

Ari stooped again to scratch Knives’s chin. Knives hummed and leaned in, and Door? Door relaxed again. Just a little.

It was just that Knives seemed so … happy. She lost most of her friends, and she was stuck with Door. Yet she seemed happy. Like losing Jack or Huntress or the others didn’t matter. Like the battle that had taken place earlier that day didn’t matter.

“Everyone has someone like that,” Ari said. “Someone who will be there when you need them. Someone who will push you to be better. And not a lot of people realize this, but that someone? They do not have to be real. They can be metal or plastic or whatever you want.” He tapped his heart. “What Companions say and what fauxkémon do … that’s what’s real. That’s what matters.”

Door froze again. Her mind flashed to so many faces at once. Knives. Blair. Opal. Geist. And then back to Ari. Back to Ari because a single question surfaced in her head.

“Who was your someone?” she asked. “The one who helped you?”

Ari smiled at her knowingly. “Wendy. And who was yours, friend?”

She could have answered many things. One of them was standing right beside her. But she knew right then what that realization she had stood at the edge of actually was.

“Geist,” she said quietly. She looked at her feet. “I … um. I made a lot of mistakes with him. Or, well, with a lot of people, but especially with him. He’s not here right now because of them.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “I mean, they-they say he can be fixed, but … some things can’t. You know?”

“Some things can’t, yes,” Ari agreed, “but other things? Maybe. Don't bother with was. Work on now. Do good from there. That’s all that matters.”

“Do good…” Door looked up again to see him smile.

Ari patted Knives on the top of her head, then backed away. His swanna followed him, pushing off the floor and sliding through the air until it stood next to the bell once more. Its trainer stopped a few feet away from it. A poké ball appeared in his hand, sliding out of his pocket with the dirty rag.

“Your audino,” Ari said. “She is a good pokémon. Look at how happy she is to be by your side! Oi! Audino! You want to battle for your trainer, little one?”

And to Door’s surprise, Knives’s response was quick: she trilled, raised her paws, and ran forward, without a second thought.



> EURYDICE150.txt
> Author: Lanette Hamilton
> Notes: From the audio research notes of Lanette Hamilton. Transcript only; sound file has been lost. File transcribed by Bebe Larson.

LANETTE: Project Eurydice notes, day 150, subject—the Aura Engine. Summary of sub-project, as well as full report of experiment logs detailed in audio notes one to 149.

What separates pokémon from animals? Besides species and physical attributes, of course. Simple: their control over the elemental energies that course through our planet. I’ll be frank. It’s basically magic. Unexplainable wonders that, somehow, can be tamed. And of course, the unexplainable nature of these moves makes replication a little … difficult.

Our efforts aren’t the first when it comes to creating artificial life. Man has already done it with pokémon like porygon, but these were flukes: the accidental merging of organic, inorganic, and magic to create actual life. Their very creation isn’t compatible with the entire point of Project Orpheus. We don’t have the organic or magical components to recreating this process; that’s why we’re pursuing this entire project in the first place. I mean, we’re scientists—engineers at our least favorable. We work with something a little more tangible and easily explainable than magic.

Yet we can’t have pokémon without that spark of magic driving their abilities.

That used to be our hardest challenge. The solution, of course, was my partner’s, but it’s elegant. The Aura Engine. I don’t know how, and I frankly don’t want to know, but somehow, my partner was able to gain access on old research files concerning Infinite Energy from Devon. He claims he’s always had them. I … believe him, knowing what his methods had been back when he said he obtained them. In any case, he studied these files, and he did something Devon’s top researchers could never do: figure out its key components. The petroleum molecule to gasoline, if you will. And from there, he was able to figure out how to synthesize that energy from electricity and oxygen, then force the result through a device to convert it into the elemental magic needed for pokémon techniques. That’s what the Aura Engine does: create artificial infinite energy to emulate the elements themselves—or “aura,” as the latter is colloquially known.

[long pause]

But as elegant as the solution was, its practical application was less so. It was unstable, and … there was an accident, to put things professionally. A valve in the infinite energy channel jammed, and the fail-safes were unresponsive. This allowed excess energy to leak into the electrical system, which triggered a chain reaction, ultimately ending in … well, detonation.

It wasn’t a stable device, in other words.

To put things in short, my partner figured this out with an incident that destroyed the prototype as well as some of our most valuable equipment. I took over the project at that point. It took me months to get both the lab and a new Aura Engine up and running, but … it helps to have no distractions. I rewrote the code controlling the fail-safe system, streamlining it to prevent further mishaps. As for the hardware, reconfiguring the valves to face outward at an interval .01 millimeters further from one another has been effective in preventing jams in later tests.

Designs have been sent to headquarters. Once approved, they’ll be implemented in our first-gen faux pokémon.

Fauxkémon? I’ll need to work on that.

[Edit note: The following seems to have been appended during the editing of this log. —Bebe]

Lanette, we need to talk. I’m sorry.

First, replies!



To be fair, I don't know any asshole rich boys any more. I kept the nice one (I know, right, I feel the weirdness of me saying that), who is the one (1) rich person I now know, and none of the assholes. :V Hence why my sample size is so skewed. But, uh, yeah, you're right, I did know a lot of them at one point. Maybe that's why I have as strong a reaction to Roland as I do? Oh, this is … a revelation that I 100% was not looking for at eleven o'clock on a Tuesday night.



While Dianetics has the distinction of having earned my favourite book review of all time (“more promises and less evidence per page of any book since the invention of printing”, is I think how it goes?), I was actually thinking of his long career as a science fiction writer. I feel like this was a man for whom quantity seriously trumped quality, because – so I hear; I don't have enough time as it is without wasting it reading L. Ron Hubbard of all people – it's pretty much all unreadable.



You can really see that. And obviously, as someone whose stories are mostly composed of tactical conversations, I'm hardly going to argue with anyone who wants to write character drama rather than straight-up action; these chapters I'm about to review don't have much battle stuff going on, and that focus makes them a lot stronger than most of the more battle-heavy chapters. I also think it's very easy to get more into what you're doing when you're writing someone completely falling apart and being helped back together (which, maybe that's just me, but I think you know what I mean anyway), and if that was the case for you, then perhaps that goes some way to explaining it too.

Anyway, I wish you the best in synthesising the various elements you've been left with. Wrestling serial fiction into shape when it's gone on long enough that you have different ideas about what it should be now than you did when it started is difficult – I know I've written things before whose endings turned out a complete tonal mismatch with the beginning because of that exact process. I have faith you'll manage it, though! Like, there will still be that difference between what you started with and what you ended up with, but honestly, you can cheat as much as you need to and as long as you do it with enough confidence people will go along with it, if only because the story has been going on for so long chronologically that they don't remember how it started any more. (I've, uh, definitely been guilty of that one myself.)



See, that makes perfect sense! The thing is … usually, when Door's wrong, we have enough outside context to know that she's wrong, even though we're following her POV. For instance, we know from having met Roland already that the people at the gym aren't there to see her get savaged; they just want to see one or other of these entitled rich people be embarrassed in public. In this case, however, we don't have the context that you gave me here, we've only got Door's opinion to go on, and so while it's pretty clear that something doesn't add up about her explanation, as I said, I'm not sure there's enough evidence for the reader to work out that they were really just going to beat up a child for fun. Using approximately thirty-six pokémon. Because … throwing massive resources at a tiny problem for modest gain is fun? Or no, no, because Door isn't a person to them but a symbol of things that aren't right, and smashing that is fun. Or no again, I'm being too generous to these people who are using something very close to lethal force against a child, because power and its abuse are intoxicating and here, for a little while, they have it.



Sorry, I don't think I explained what I meant as well as I intended to. I don't think it's melodramatic, exactly (Door's reaction is very reasonable for a fifteen-year-old who's just had her whole pre-existing complex of guilt and anxiety sucked into one massively traumatic incident), it's just that the order of events seemed odd to me. Door's described as sobbing, right? And then she screams, and then there's a paragraph dedicated to the final thing which pushes her over the edge into tears. Thing is, I got the strong impression from the description of her as sobbing that she was already crying, so the final thing which pushes her over the edge into tears kind of isn't the thing that pushes her over the edge into tears– she crossed that edge some time ago, when. It just seemed strange logistically, is all, to have her be crying and then have her very pointedly start to cry.

… okay, I've successfully confused myself now through overexplanation. I hope that ended up making some kind of sense?



As someone who has never been a Christian but who had to sit through hundreds, if not thousands, of compulsory chapel services at school, I am glad that all of those wasted hours have finally borne fruit. :V

Anyway, with that out of the way, let's actually review a thing here! And let me just start by saying oh Blair. Blair, I'm so glad you got a hug, because if you hadn't then I would've had to get mad about it. Like okay, on the one hand, this is you retconning an explanation for Blair's inconsistent character at the start, but also … she's so sweet. She's been doing this for Door, and she's telling her this, and she's … she's so sweet. I am a sentimental fool, I know, but at least I'm embracing it; there's just something about these kids who are stumbling through the experience of bigger feelings than they know how to deal with, and who like, really need to go on a date or something before their hearts actually literally explode with pent-up infatuation, you know?

This chapter also marks an (apparent) huge leap in intellect for Knives, except of course it's not a leap; she was probably capable of this all along, it's just that Door only really used her as a tool and she never had a chance to showcase her capabilities, which means that her scene here has a sting to it that I really like. But she loves Door anyway, because … well, because, mostly, and I think that the second chance to be found in that uncomplicated affection is ultimately less bitter than sweet.

I think if I had any critique to offer of that chapter, it'd be that this … shouldn't be happening? Door was rescued, by adults, and taken to a place where children are looked after; people know what happened to her. So why has she just been abandoned for three days? I don't quite see why it's fallen to Blair to do all this; sure, Geist is out of commission, but like, the Centre staff should know that too, and given how carefully supportive the Unova League is these days, with safe zones and Companions and all, it seems really weird that Door should have fallen so completely through the cracks of the system, even though everyone knows what happened to her. Maybe there's an explanation here that I'm missing, but if so, I'm not sure we're given enough context to find it; this is all Door, Blair and Knives, and obviously none of them notice that something's wrong because they're kids (or a pokémon) and don't necessarily think of these things.

Anyway, look, we all know I have a soft spot for lost kids and damaged people in my fiction (I'm, um, not a monster, I swear), so like, there's a lot about this whole three-chapter sequence that lands for me emotionally, even if I'm not quite certain how the logistics are meant to work out. Because it's not just Blair, it's Door as well: she's not wrong, exactly, she wasn't a great trainer to most of her team, but she's misguided, because that's not why everyone died, because while she made mistakes, sure, but in admitting to one fault she's taken all the others on herself too, and aahhhh you know what, we've already established I'm a sentimental fool, let's just finally put a full stop down so we can all move on.

So, Lanette's aura engine! A terrifying weapon that absolutely should never have seen the light of day. I am sure that in the world beyond that which Door and Blair know, this technology has been horribly abused by a cynical military junta. Like seriously, bringing this tech to mass-market production was … really dubious, and we're talking about a woman who invented true AI out of grief-stricken desire to raise a dude from the dead here. Then again, power is already very easily accessible in the pokémon world, with predictable results – you know, what Ari says and all – so maybe you could argue that it doesn't make a difference? I don't know, it doesn't quite sit right with me either way, and I suppose that's probably the point.

Another point where I think I'm lacking in context is Door's battle against the kid over the deerling. I think what I'm meant to take from this is that she's not thinking straight because of what happened to her the other day, so it doesn't occur to her that casual battles don't have to be to the death and she could just, like, forfeit and walk away if she really wanted to (like what's the kid gonna do? Be mad? Yeah, right, she's seen so much worse than that, it would barely even register). But we're so completely in her head that the narrative seems to entirely endorse her point of view – there's no external reference point to remind us that wait, this isn't a fight against Matrix or whatever, this is a casual fight against someone who just lost a pokémon or two of his own and therefore probably would not be averse to calming things down before he loses more. I feel like a touch of outside perspective, however it was delivered, would not only make these events make sense – like of course casual battles aren't to the death, this was already established way back at the start of the fic, where Geist characterised trainers who want to battle as pushy, rather than like, actually dangerous – but throw Door's reaction into much sharper focus by making it clear how far her thinking has been warped by her trauma.

Anyway, I obviously really like all of this: we all know I have a lot of time for characters who think they're poison and that their weak, destructive hearts have been torn out and put on display for the world to see. It's taken us a while to get to this point where characters are changing and being tested rather than replaying the same interactions over and over, but I am all about it now that we are here.

N is a great guide for this moment, too, a pseudo-psychopomp here to take her to the underworld. I feel like grown-up N is a popular choice for like, a sage guide kind of person who can swoop in out of nowhere to deliver some gnomic wisdom (I'm basing this sweeping generalisation on like two fics, by the way, so, uh, take it with a pinch of salt?), and for good reason. By BW2 he's clearly on the road to becoming a much more rounded person, his hyper-empathic nature focused now on humans in addition to pokémon as he starts to recover from what Ghetsis inflicted on him. It sets us up very nicely for the next scene, where Door finally starts poking at her thoughts about Companion personhood, and kinda trying to trick the Companion into admitting she's a person.

Here I have a note in my book that just says 'insert robot digression', so … here's a robot digression! :D There are a couple of things I find really noteworthy about what Door's doing here. First, this sort of hesitant 'are you sure you're okay with being a robot?' thing, interestingly, is really close to what my protagonist is doing with the robot she finds at the beginning of my own robot story, like constantly trying to push the conversation protocol to the limit and figure out if that's simulated curiosity or real, and I actually think that that sort of hesitant, am-I-being-rude, can-I-even-be-rude-here-or-would-you-just-not-get-it kinda poking at a person to try and figure out if they exist or not is a fascinating device in android fiction that doesn't have a lot of parallels in other genres.

But the real point here is the conclusion that Door is led to, in the end: you can fuss about whether something's artificial or not all you like, but it's still hard to differentiate between the 'real' and the not when they occupy a similar place in the world, when they're similarly embedded in the matrix of human connections and emotions that make up our social universe. Nobody ever knows anybody else is a person, really. But (unless you're like, horrible) you can't help but act as if they are other people, and through your faith in them their personhood starts to exist and escapes your own control to become its own thing, something that you can't separate from them even if you know that it only exists for you because you believe in it. (And I know I've brought up this idea, or one very similar to it, in these reviews before, so forgive me if I'm being a bit repetitive, but this time it's actually relevant, so.)

It's a bigger thought than Door is capable of, right now. But she's reaching for it, and she's like glimpsed part of it, and long story short, you know how to twist that feeling of parental disapproval you make your readers feel into the glow of parental pride in Door's progress, I think. Obviously it's terrible that this is what it took to get her here, but, well … if not for her trauma, it would probably have taken her a very, very long time to actually reach this point.

I think one of my favourite ways that we can determine her progress is that this is not the first time that an adult has talked to Door like an equal, but it is the first time (iirc) that she hasn't acted like a child in response. And on the earth-shattering revelation that Door might actually be growing up, this review is really, really long, so I am cutting myself off here and going to bed.

Okay, so it's been forever since I last reviewed, but I wanted to say that I'm finally getting back into this. I've read up to Chapter 6, and I'm still enjoying the world you've created here. It's odd to read it like a retelling of Black and White, but know that it is set in the future. I was particularly thrown off by N being in the crowd during the one rally, but I thought that the antagonists' message and his response to it were very fitting, and felt like a real future version of Unova that could eventually happen. It seems like the type of region to fall into this robotic era where real pokémon are rare to come by and to have a villainous team who wants to liberate the bots in some shape or form. Door's reluctance to all of it is still a very nice characterization of her, and I think it presents a nice inner conflict for someone who is on this journey despite not wanting to be.

I'll let you know when I read more!!

Speaking of seeing…!

---

“Ahava, Acrobatics!”

Ari’s first pokémon, a swoobat, launched herself back down to the tower. Door tried to keep her eyes on it, but the thing was too fast and too erratic for her to keep track of. One moment, Ahava was only a dot far above the battlefield, and in the next moment, she was a blur, she was three swoobat, she was a mere foot above the roof of Celestial Tower. Door heard a thwack, and Knives cried out and tumbled head over heels backwards, and just like that, Ahava was back where she started.

Door couldn’t think. This was bad, and she shouldn’t have been battling. She tried to say this, but her voice wouldn’t work.

Knives got back up and glared at the bat. She cupped her mouth with her hands, and a golden ball of energy swirled between them. Ahava banked, ears twitching in preparation for another command, but before Ari could call out to her, Knives released. Electricity danced across the beam she created, and when her attack struck—dead on, right in Ahava’s belly—it did so with the crack of thunder striking a tree. Ahava’s cry was silent, drowned out by the bang, but to Door’s surprise, she didn’t drop to the floor. Instead, she wavered and bobbed in the air, desperately trying to regain her altitude, even as sparks flew from her fur.

“Your audino is strong,” Ari said. “But you must be stronger! Ahava, Amnesia!”

The swoobat sailed upwards as a blue glow surrounded her head. As she flapped her wings, the glow rushed down her body, finally flicking off her forked tail. But Door knew the energy Ahava had just summoned wasn’t really gone. It was still there, surrounding Ahava like a shield. Still, Door couldn’t say a word, even though she could feel a knot form in her own belly. Knives wouldn’t be able to take Ahava down in one hit. She knew that. Not with the amount of distance between her and her opponent, and now with that shield?

Knives didn’t seem to care. Again, she cupped her mouth and breathed out a beam of pure light and electricity. But this time, the beam seemed thicker. Stronger. More forceful. It cut through the air with a bang and struck Ahava in the chest this time, and the bat fell but caught herself just feet from the rooftop.

Ari frowned. “Ahava, stay strong! Strike with Heart Stamp!”

With a shriek, the swoobat dove once more. Door stood by, watching as Ahava grew closer and closer to Knives. Halfway down her dive, Ahava’s nose flared to life with a bright, pink glow, and as she sailed through the air, the pink glow streaked backwards, making her look less like a bat and more like a violently magenta comet. She almost looked beautiful against the bright, blue sky, and once more, Door felt herself hesitate at the sight of it.

Except ... this time, she wasn’t silent for long.

“Knives!” she cried. “Look out!”

Knives’s ears perked, and without question, she rolled out of the way, just seconds before Ahava cut through the space where she had been a moment ago.

“That’s right, girl!” Door called out. “Strike back now! Hurry!”

Rolling back to her feet, Knives flashed her trainer a grin and a nod, then cupped her paws around her mouth once more. This time, the golden orb she formed was far larger—nearly the size of her head—just before it exploded into a brilliant Charge Beam. It struck Ahava from behind, engulfing her entire midsection and sending sparks dancing across her skin. The pink light shining from her face flared like a cotton candy flame before going out completely, and the rest of Ahava arced through the air and began plummeting back to the rooftop.

“Ahava, return!” Ari called, throwing his arm skyward to hoist her ball up. As soon as she vanished from the sky, drawn back into the poké ball, he examined its face. “Excellent job, my friend.” He looked up. “And you! You said you weren’t ready! I admit, I worried for you when you said nothing, but your audino is strong.”

Knives barked happily and pumped a paw in the air. Door smiled awkwardly; in her chest, she could still feel her heart thrashing. Her mind was still rushing, unable to settle on the idea that Knives had survived round one—that Knives was still standing.

“I-I guess she is,” Door finally said. Her voice practically stumbled out of her throat.

“She is,” Ari replied, firmly but with an encouraging grin. He clipped Ahava’s ball onto his belt and drew out another one. “But! Let’s see if she’s strong enough for my next pokémon. Aviv! Let’s go!”

Another pop, and another light surging to the sky. Door watched as it rose, as wings formed within it, as it flicked itself free from the light and soared. A tranquill—the color of earth and soot—shrieked as she circled overhead. Far overhead, out of reach of her opponent.

Door looked up, shielding her eyes belatedly from the sun. As she hissed a curse, she tried to think. Knives survived. Knives survived. Knives survived.

And slowly, her mind settled back into the present. Knives survived. She was still there, standing in front of her. And now she was standing right there, on the roof, as above them both—

“Aviv, Quick Attack!”

Oh.

Door cursed again.

The tranquill dove downward, but it did so far faster than Ahava had. She was like a bullet, barely perceptible from Door’s perspective, except as a thin, brown-gray blur that cut through the air, across the rooftop, and into Knives. Knives was ripped off her feet, squealing and flailing as her back hit stone, and by the time she got back to her feet, Aviv was already almost back to the altitude she had been a moment ago. Knives squinted at the retreating bird and cupped her paws around her mouth and angled herself to face Aviv…

And that was when Door finally regained that precious moment of lucidity.

“Wait!” Door cried. “Knives, don’t! She’s too far away!”

Her audino stopped with a soft bark, then twitched her ears and looked at Door.

“Wait until she gets within reach,” Door explained. Granted, she had no idea whether or not this would even work. Aviv was too fast, and that wasn’t even considering Quick Attack.

But Door couldn’t just stand there anymore. Knives got through the first match, yes, but that didn’t mean this one or whatever others after would be as easy. Knives needed Door … just like she needed Knives. She desperately needed Knives to do this. As in, her chest hurt with panic, with the memories of Jack and Geist and everything else.

So she had to hope … and maybe leap a little.

Ari chuckled. “Yes. Good observation, little one. But don’t wait too long! Aviv! Quick Attack into Air Slash!”

Door ground her feet into the stone, as if bracing herself would help Knives do the same. “Knives, keep holding!”

With a grunt, Knives followed her trainer’s lead, bracing herself for impact. Aviv practically vanished from her spot overhead, shooting downward as nothing more than a blur edged with brilliant, white light. Once again, Knives was launched off her feet and sent tumbling backwards as Aviv rose back into the air. Knives rose back up, grunting softly as she went.

And Door continued to squint. There had to be a way to stop her. There had to be something she could do to clip Aviv’s wings without sacrificing the power of Charge Beam. But she was too fast to see and too fast to anticipate.

Door watched the bird overhead, watched her flap her wings as she circled around. And far below, Door noticed something else: Knives twitched her ears.

“Oh,” Door murmured.

“Aviv, stay back and use Razor Wind!” Ari ordered.

“Knives! Close your eyes and listen to it!” Door responded.

Knives gave her an inquisitive hum and a glance over her shoulder, but she did as she was told. Closing her eyes, she braced herself, just as Aviv vanished from overhead.

This, Door knew, was the perfect moment.

“Shoot when you hear her flap her wings!” Door shouted.

Knives’s ears twitched in response to the command, and she cupped her mouth as she was told. In the next second, Aviv slammed into her, forcing her to whirl around in place, but Knives planted her feet hard into the stone. Aviv came out of the attack, and at that second, in an attempt to right herself and gain altitude, she did the one thing Door knew she would have to do: she flapped her wings. And Knives’s ears twitched.

The resulting Charge Beam engulfed every part of Aviv except her wings. A deafening bang cut through the air, swallowing any noise Aviv could have made, and in the following second, she fell, electricity crackling off her singed feathers, body just as still as Ahava’s.

She, too, disappeared in a red beam of energy, drawn back into the ball Ari held at arm’s length. Door stole a glance at the ball’s face to see what color its button flashed before Ari slipped it away. Red—out, not dead. She relaxed. Everything was going fine. She was fine. Knives was fine. She was fine.

Her heart slowed a little, and the knot in her stomach began to unwind.

“Ah, such strength!” Ari said with a laugh. “How could you say you’re not a good trainer when your audino trusts you that much?”

Door’s eyes fell on her audino. She knew better than to quip that this was a good question, although part of her felt that it was. As if to answer her, Knives looked back at Door with a happy grin, even through her panting. There were deep, dark bruises blossoming across her pudgy body, bruises that told Door she shouldn’t push Knives much further, but it was the look on the audino’s face that made Door stop. Knives was happy to do this for Door. She wanted to throw herself into this battle, and she wanted to keep going.

But why?

Why did Knives do this? Throw herself into a battle like that, even after seeing what happened to Door’s other pokémon?

“Door.”

She looked up to catch Ari’s eye. He held a third poké ball out, brandishing it before her eyes.

“This is my final pokémon,” he said. “You’ve done well so far, but it is still a gym battle, yes? And this. This is my signature pokémon. It is Skyla’s signature pokémon. This is the pride of the Mistralton Gym.” He tossed the ball into the air, then caught it and pointed directly up with his free hand. “Searah, take to the sky!”

Behind Ari, his swanna burst into flight. She flew higher than Ahava, than Aviv, right up until she was just a dot in the sky. Then, silver light glittered off her body, and she sailed back down to earth. When she was within view, the swanna opened her golden beak and cried out, and Door felt a shiver trail down her spine.

The pride of Mistralton Gym. Skyla’s signature pokémon. Ari’s signature pokémon. Door had seen videos of Skyla’s swanna. She had even seen a few videos of Ari’s, courtesy of his hoard of fangirls back home. Swanna were fast. Graceful. Powerful.

Extremely weak to electric moves.

And so the panic’s grip on her loosened even more.

Part of Door was elated that maybe she would win this without losing Knives. But then, part of her remembered what this swanna was to Ari, and so, she held back. Thought for a second.

Charge Beam strengthened if a trainer used it consecutively. But if they didn’t, if they used something else in between…

“Knives, hold up for a second!” Door ordered.

Ari laughed. “Why do you hesitate now? Searah, Aerial Ace!”

With another cry, Ari’s swanna flapped her wings and shot into the sky. Knives cupped her paws around her mouth and exhaled, and a golden ball of light—far larger than any other she had produced—quickly formed in front of her. Overhead, Searah hit the peak of her flight, her elegant form flashing against the sun just before she shot downwards.

“Wait until you hear her, Knives!” Door ordered. “Then grab her with Take Down!”

Huffing, Knives closed her eyes and perked her ears. Searah continued to dive, closer and closer to the rooftop until she was mere inches from it. Then, abruptly, she banked upwards. The air around her burst with a bang, and she shot forward, straight for Knives’s chest. But at the same time, Knives’s ears twitched, and she crouched, ready to spring, with her front paws raised…

Bang. And there was Knives and Searah. Knives planting all four paw on Searah’s wings. Searah screeching and writhing beneath her opponent. Searah just where Knives and Door needed her.

“Okay, Knives,” Door said. “Okay. We’re going to do this easy, all right? Just a low-powered Charge B—”

Bang. Knives fired a low-powered Charge Beam all right. Right into Searah’s wings. The spot the two of them occupied instantly lit up with a brilliant, yellow light, and Door cried out in surprise. She heard the swanna screech, then fall silent, and then, everything fell completely still.

When all was said and done, Door’s ears rang from the panic and the sudden loud, close noise, and her eyesight was still a little fuzzy, as if she had stared straight into the flash of a camera. It took a few seconds for her hearing to readjust and a few blinks for her eyesight to resolve, and when it did, she saw Knives standing at her side with her tail wagging and a grin on her face. Searah, meanwhile, was lying where Knives had left her, singed and sparking, with her trainer kneeling next to her. Ari drew Searah back into her ball and stood up. He whistled and placed his hands on his hips, then strode back to the center of the field.

“Knives!” Door hissed. Then, she jogged towards Ari. “Ari! I’m so so sorry. I-I didn’t mean to—”

Ari’s laugh cut her off. He faced her and wiped his hands on his jeans as a broad smile crossed his face.

“That was great!” Ari said.

“But…” Door rubbed one of her arms. “Your swanna…”

Ari snorted. “You think you’re the first one who’s thought, ‘Ah, I should bring an electric-type against these pokémon’? Relax, little one. Searah, Aviv, and Ahava? They have backups just for this purpose. In a day, they will be good as new. You wait and see.”

Door felt her heart drop into her stomach. All that anxiety, just falling into a pit inside her. At her side, she heard Knives’s bubbling giggles and felt the audino’s claws on her hand again.

“Are you serious?” Door whispered.

“Of course,” Ari laughed. He pointed to Knives. “You listen to her. She knows.”

Door swallowed and squeezed Knives’s paw, and in response, Knives rubbed against her side. At the same time, Ari reached into his pocket and drew out a tiny object that flashed in the sun—his badge, Door knew. As his fingers played with it, he grinned, as if reminiscing about a fond memory.

“Now,” he said, “I think your actions prove that you deserve this badge, but just to be sure, what did you learn today?”

“I…”

Door took a deep breath. She tore her eyes away from Ari to look at Knives. She knelt down and shifted her hand, from the audino’s paw to her forehead.

“I want to say I learned a lot,” she said, “but I still don’t get it. Knives … why are you fighting so hard? Why did you just run off into battle like that? And why didn’t you hold back like I asked? Aren’t you … aren’t you scared?” She frowned and lowered her eyes. They stung with fresh tears, but she tried to hold herself back. “I know I would be. I mean … after I got Jack killed, why—”

Knives reached forward and slapped a paw onto Door’s face, right between her eyes. She slapped that spot twice, then pushed forward, beyond Door’s arm. Reaching up, she placed both her paws on Door’s shoulders, then wiggled her back legs in an attempt to squirm onto Door’s lap. Door was forced to plop down, right there on the rooftop, as Knives sat on her legs. The audino nuzzled her trainer, twitching her ears against the side of Door’s face as she went, and as she pressed her face into Door’s, she purred and hummed in contentment. At first, Door was dumbfounded by the act, but then, with a soft but uncertain smile, she wrapped one arm around Knives and used her other hand to pet her pokémon.

“You’re the weirdest audino ever,” she muttered.

Knives cried out with happiness, then stopped and twitched an ear. A shadow cast over her and Door, and Door looked up, right into Ari’s smiling face.

“So?” he asked. “What did you learn?”

Door hesitated as she wrapped her arms around her audino. “I guess … no matter what, someone out there will fight for me.”

Ari’s smile brightened, and he held out the badge. “Exactly.”

Door stared at it for a second. Her sixth badge was right there, sitting in Ari’s palm, and it was exactly like she had remembered it from the videos: a sleek feather in shimmering sky blue, framed with brilliant gold. She realized she should have been proud to see it, especially since for the second time in a row, her audino had handled a gym battle without breaking much of a sweat, but she couldn’t help but sit there and stare at it.

“I still don’t get it, though,” she said. “I screwed up badly. Why would anyone want to fight for me?”

Ari’s smile faded a little. “Why would Wendy and Skyla want to help me? Why would anyone want to help anyone else? Some things—they don’t make sense. The important thing is you are not alone. If you do something bad, you can change, and if you want to change, people will believe in you. You must believe in them. Let them in. Learn to love and trust.”

He extended his hand a little more to her. Slowly, Door reached out and grabbed the badge. Ari’s other hand gently circled her wrist, and with a tug, he helped her to her feet.

“Door,” Ari said, playing with the syllable on his tongue.

His grin returned, and he started leading her to the bell. Door let him, but she reached down for Knives as she walked. Her audino obliged, tucking her paw into her trainer’s hand.

“Door,” Ari said again, “I think you’re ready to ring the bell.”

He shifted his hand to her back and gave her a gentle push. She stepped forward, slowly, until she approached the bell with Knives in tow. After slipping the Jet Badge into her pocket, she reached for the cord with her newly free hand and tugged it towards her, just enough to examine it. Knives gripped the end of it, just below Door’s hand, and the two of them exchanged glances.

And then, they pulled.

The sound was clear and low—the sort of ring that shook one’s bones and vibrated deep into their soul. Door and Knives leaned back and let themselves be pulled forward, following the motion of the heavy bell, filling the air with that sound.

And somewhere in it, Door could almost hear the distant cry of a dewott on the wind.

And it felt good. Her muscles burned with the weight of the bell. Her lungs burned with the crispness of the wind. Her soul burned with the sound of brass on brass. And somehow, with all of that burning deep within her, she felt something shift. She felt Knives’s warmth and strength. She felt Blair’s words in her head and Geist’s hands on her shoulders. And all of a sudden, she felt like she was part of something.

Because … she was, wasn’t she?

Door lost count of how many times she had pulled that cord. She meant to do it for every pokémon she had lost, but somewhere after the third ring, she simply lost herself. But after a while, it just felt right to stop—to let go—and so, she and Knives brought the cord down and let it slip from their hands. And they stood in silence, watching the bell swing to a stop.

“Door Hornbeam,” Ari said.

She and Knives turned to face him. He stood, with his hands on his hips, Wendy at his side, and the brightest smile Door had ever seen on his face. As soon as their eyes connected, he tilted his head and gave her as intense a look as he could muster.

“I feel as if I should expect great things from you,” he said.



a9!kjv2-1q.TXT
> Author: [CORRUPTED]
> Notes: Document found among Lanette’s research notes. Timestamp places this shortly after the creation of the Aura Engine. Writing styles indicate two authors; editing tags indicate only one computer. Second editor is probably, given the contents here, ████ ████████.

████, I know you’re here and reading this. Let’s get this over with.

Here? Why not a chat server?

You’re lucky I’m talking to you at all. Editing my research files. Bold move.

Right. Sorry.
Lanette, I wanted to apologize.

For?

Upsetting you.
Lanette? Are you still there?
It’s been quite a long while.
Although I admit my sense of time is a bit off.

Stop.

Stop?

You don’t even know why I’m angry, do you?

If I were to be honest, no, but that’s why I need to talk to you. I never wanted to hurt you—you know that. But somehow I did, and I need to know what I did to make things right. We need to talk about this.
Brigette is worried about you. █████ is asking where I went. It’s going to be a mess if we don’t try to fix things.

You’ve been reading my emails?

I don’t mean to blame you for anything, but you haven’t changed my notification settings.
No. I’m sorry. You’re right. I absolutely would have read them on my own. And I did. I realize now that it’s a breach of trust. I’ve just been
Well, I’ve been worried about you. You haven’t been yourself lately. I care about you, and I want to help.
Okay, that’s not the whole truth. I care about you deeply. I was worried when you [TEXT CORRUPTED]. The moment I saw it, I realized I would [TEXT CORRUPTED]. And I did. I was afraid for you during the rest of Project [TEXT CORRUPTED]. You were giving up too [TEXT CORRUPTED], and you nearly gave up too much. What’s worse, [TEXT CORRUPTED]. I know you miss Hoenn. [TEXT CORRUPTED] Northern Kanto isn’t your home, and I know this. I can’t stand watching you hurt yourself for my sake.
So I’ve been doing a lot of thinking since we last spoke, and I want to propose a solution. [TEXT CORRUPTED] figure things out from there. You can go back to Hoenn; I’ll [TEXT CORRUPTED]. You won’t even have to hear from me again. You can [TEXT CORRUPTED]. How does that sound?
Lanette?

[TEXT CORRUPTED] one of the Clios. I need to give you a piece of my mind in person.

---

It was easier to come back down than to go up. Door had left Ari on the rooftop, and Wendy had escorted Door back to the ground floor. Once there, Door made her way back to the entrance, but not before hesitating in the middle of the chamber. She took a deep breath, and her eyes trailed to the hole where she had left her pokémon. Slowly, she walked to it until she stood before it, and with a gentle hand, she reached in and brushed her fingers against Jack’s poké ball.

“So long, guys,” she whispered. “Thanks for everything.”

She stood for a few seconds, lingering and unwilling to let go. And then, with another deep breath, she turned away.

Knives was still in the middle of the room, ears twitching, eyes on the ceiling. But her back was turned, and after a few seconds, she lowered her head and swiped at something with a paw.

“Hey…” Door jogged to her. “Knives? What’s up?”

Knives happily whirled around and held up the thing she had caught. Her paws circled around a violet light, like the ones floating about the upper floors, and as she held it up, something misted into view around it. A glass bulb encased the light, with two yellow eyes blinking into existence—inside the bulb? On it? The longer Door stared at it, the less she was sure. Just as a headache was about to wrap around her brain, she broke eye contact with the thing as it shifted again. Black metal sprouted from the top and bottom of the bulb, and two spindly arms snapped outward from its base, reaching for Door. As Door yelped, the lampent in front of her squirmed violently until it freed itself from Knives’s hands and floated feet above the floor. A sound vibrated from somewhere in its metal-and-glass body, like a cross between a whistle and a steam organ. Door reeled backwards at the lampent’s cry and flicked her eyes onto her pokémon.

“Jesus, Knives!” she exclaimed. “You can’t just grab the ghosts here! Who knows what they’ll do?!”

“Oh, they’re normally very friendly,” Wendy called out. “Sometimes, they like to scare visitors.”

Door looked over to see Wendy by the door, hands folded over her waist again. She grinned as soon as she was acknowledged.

“The lampent and litwick were created to maintain the tower,” Wendy explained, “but some of them are a bit restless.”

“Restless?” Door repeated.

She looked at the lampent before her, who flitted around her with curiosity. In a way, it reminded her of Red, but according to Wendy, this was just as real as Scout had been.

“Oh yes,” Wendy said. “They were each programmed with a desire to be trained, just like any other fauxkémon, so they’re often curious of visitors. But recently, some of the litwick and lampent have been a little unsatisfied with just interacting with humans. According to what my friend tells me, they may be growing curious about the outside world, if you’ll believe that. It seems that this lampent is one such curious fauxkémon. If you’d like, you may take him. We have plenty more, and my friend has instructed me to encourage visitors to adopt litwick and lampent that have gotten restless.”

Door blinked at her. “Okay … why? I mean … they’re maintenance bots.”

“All fauxkémon were created to emulate pokémon in every way,” Wendy replied. “That includes our litwick and lampent.”

“No, I mean…” Door looked at the lampent, watching it—him, Wendy said—bob up and down almost enthusiastically beside her. “Is it … is it okay to take this little guy? Does he even know how to battle? And doesn’t Ari need him?”

Wendy’s smile brightened. “We have plenty. No need to worry. And as for battling, you’d be surprised. The litwick and lampent here are quite competent, even though they may not look it. Besides … I’ve been told you could use more pokémon, Door.”

Door froze. She looked at Wendy—really looked at her. How did she know? Sure, she had been standing by the entrance when Door told Ari that Knives was her only pokémon, but … Door said that so softly she barely heard herself. Even taking into consideration how sensitive a Companion’s ears were … could Wendy have heard her? And even then, that could have easily meant Knives was the only pokémon Door had on her at the time; Wendy couldn’t have known that Knives was literally her only pokémon. But then again, Companions took things literally, didn’t they?

That’s right. Wendy heard and took it literally. Door tried to tell herself this, but then one last thing occurred to her.

Why would Wendy care?

Companions, generally speaking, only cared about requests and their users’ needs. If you weren’t a user and if you didn’t ask for something, they wouldn’t keep track of you. They would barely even register how many pokémon you had on you if you weren’t engaged in battle against a user.

Or at least, that was true for all of them except…

Door focused on Wendy again. The Companion smiled and giggled, then turned on her heel and began walking away, towards the staircase.

Were her eyes glowing, or was that a trick of the lampent’s light?

“Hey!” Door called. “Before you go, who told you? About my pokémon, I mean.”

At the base of the staircase, Wendy whirled back around and slipped her hands behind her back. “A friend,” she said.

“A … friend,” Door repeated incredulously. The fact that Wendy had gone from talking about her friend to talking about a friend did not escape Door.

The Companion smiled brightly again, head tilted and eyes definitely glowing. “See you again soon, Door.”

And with that, Wendy turned and trotted up the steps. Door watched her until she disappeared, then stood, dumbfounded.

“I … Knives? What just happened?”

The audino trilled and reached for the lampent, to which the pokémon responded with a sound not unlike distressed windchimes before floating out of Knives’s reach. The two pokémon chased each other around and around Door, but Door didn’t pay them any attention. She pulled out the Jet Badge and examined it in the lampent’s erratic light. Tilting it, she let the ghost’s glow catch on its gold and turquoise surface in quiet thought.

And then, the lampent shifted, sliding into view in front of her with a pleading tinkle, followed immediately by a two-note song of panic as Knives grabbed his arms and dangled from his body. Watching both pokémon, Door snickered. The cascade of questions in her head—ranging from “what was I thinking, just getting into a gym battle like that” to “no, seriously, what’s up with that Companion”—all vanished at the sight of her audino harassing yet another pokémon. So she palmed the badge and sighed like a mother.

“Okay,” she said. “If I promise I’ll keep Knives off you, would you like to come with us?”

The lampent whistled again and bobbed until he shook Knives off, and as soon as he did, he circled Door’s head and came to a rest by her shoulder. His metal appendages curled around her arm, and he leaned in until he pressed his glass bulb against the side of her head. He was cooler than she thought he would be—warm, sure, but not blazing hot like most fire-types. And as she felt the lampent draw close, Door couldn’t help but think of Wendy’s last words to her.

Besides … I’ve been told you could use more pokémon, Door.

See you again soon, Door.

Door turned those words over in her head, but not with the same confusion she had felt earlier. She wondered … what could Wendy have meant? What if, somehow, this was connected to Team Matrix?

What if…?

Door shook her head. She had a hacker, a research Companion, and … whatever Geist was at her side. She would figure this out. Just not alone, and just not now.

And if this was a Team Matrix thing, if this was some weird Companion thing, if this was a thousand possibilities that wouldn’t end well … at least it was a lampent. And at least it was one more way she wasn’t alone.

“Okay,” she said, grinning at the lampent. “You can come with me, but you’ll have to follow. I don’t have a poké ball for you right now.”

The lampent gave off another whistle, let go of her arm, and swung away from her until he hung next to her head and out of Knives’s reach. And with another breath out and one last glance to the hole, Door nodded at her miniscule team and walked onward, into the brilliant afternoon sun.



Door found Blair, Opal, and the trainer she had punched right where she left them: at the fork in the road. N was with them, seemingly waiting for her arrival. He took one look at Knives and the lampent and frowned, and without a word, he pulled an old hyper potion out of his pocket. Door wasn’t even aware that anyone made the spray bottle type, but she thought it might be a good idea to hold her tongue, opting instead on watching N walk over and spray Knives’s bruises. The audino squealed and pressed herself against Door, but Door patted her on the head, calming her enough to let N finish the job.

“I see your match went well,” he said. “Your lampent…”

“Oh, him?” Door thumbed towards the ghost-type floating at her side. “Yeah. I don’t know. They just kinda let me have him. Something about how he was curious and restless, and they have loads of ‘em anyway.”

N narrowed his eyes at the lampent. “Interesting.”

“It’s … also fake,” Door said.

“I know. I can’t hear his voice,” N replied. He stood and shrugged. “Then again, he seems to be more proof of what your audino was saying.”

“What, about trusting me?” Door said.

N nodded. “Yes. While it’s true that I feel saddened for the pokémon you’ve lost, it’s difficult to argue against your pokémon’s enthusiasm.” He cocked his head. “They have faith in you. Maybe having a little more faith in yourself will help.”

Door pressed her lips together. N’s encouragement only made her think of Ari’s, and that only reminded her that N was the one who brought her to him. N, of all people. N, former king of Team Plasma. N, who had, up until this point, given Door every indication that he barely even registered her existence beyond a slight acknowledgment or some distant cousin to encouragement whenever Hilda was around. And most importantly, N, who seemed to know Ari and thus could probably shed a little light on what Wendy had meant.

“Um,” she said. “A-about that. Why did you … why did you bring me to Ari?”

For a moment, N hesitated, and not for the first time, Door found herself studied. Yet this wasn’t like Roland’s cold, intense stare or Geist’s and Ari’s warm look of mild curiosity. No—this was something else. Something older and more tired and alien. That was the word for it. That stare felt alien, like a pokémon’s somehow—like N was taking her in and breaking her down because he didn’t fully understand her.

It made Door feel bare and uneasy. She already was, of course. With everything that happened that day, she felt exhausted, drained, and almost empty, but now, with N so close by, she felt all that and unbalanced, uncertain of what her next step should be.

“Sorry,” she said quickly. “I, um. Thank you.”

If N had been almost anyone else Door had ever met, he would have smiled at her awkwardness. But N wasn’t those other people, so of course he didn’t smile. Instead, his eyes fluttered shut, and he bowed his head.

“Hilda had taught me many things about being a trainer,” he said, “including the ability to have patience. But she never taught me why humans let their pokémon die during matches. But then … this wasn’t a problem before your robots. It’s only a problem now, after you all have let yourselves believe a pokémon is somehow lesser, just because you’ve created it.”

Door swallowed. She was about to tell him she thought he wasn’t going to give her a lecture, but her body seemed to know better. So she stood, stiffly, arms at her sides and mouth glued shut.

N opened his eyes a little and emitted a wavering noise that, to Door, almost sounded like a chuckle. Almost. “It’s all right, Door. I have no intention of telling you how I feel about pokémon or how you should feel, either. I saw it in your eyes when you placed your pokémon in the mausoleum. No, you understand, and I respect that.”

Without thinking about it, Door let her shoulders sink. A pressure in her chest slowly dissolved, and she drifted, slowly, back into that odd, tired feeling she had felt a moment ago.

“To answer your question,” N said, “I brought you to Ari because he understands too. I realize that I’m the last person you need to hear from. I know what I did when I was only a little older than you, and even to this day, I don’t think my philosophies were entirely wrong. Hilda and I have been watching you, Door, and I’m sorry that I was the closest one to you when you needed someone. So I took you to one of our allies, with the hope that he could help you. Gym Leader Ari has been through a lot, and your temper and outlook when we first met reminded me much of him. I thought he would know what to say.”

And it was Door’s turn to look at him oddly. This was … weird, in Door’s opinion. Natural Harmonia Gropius. The infamous King of Unova and antagonist to the Hero of Ideals. And here he was, in his sixties, stumbling from one word to the next to explain that he wasn’t perfect. That he was the exact wrong person for this particular job. That he was vulnerable.

Door didn’t know how to react to that. She was just so tired by then, and N was the sworn enemy of her hero. Yet he was just a man. Not a legend. Not a ball of nefarious intent. Just … human. One who, now that she thought about it and about Ari, had a point.

Suddenly, she found her voice again.

“Yeah,” she said quietly. “He did.”

And at that moment, Door could have sworn the corners of N’s mouth shifted upwards, just a little.

“So … you’re watching me,” Door said.

“Always,” N replied. “You’re important to a lot of people, Door.”

“I know. Wish I wasn’t.”

The hint of a smile on N’s face vanished again. “Hilda and I … we’re working on a way to help you. We may not be able to stop Team Matrix ourselves, but we’ll be by your side.”

He stuffed his hands in his pockets and looked up. Door followed his gaze, only to realize he was staring at the top of Celestial Tower. As soon as that realization hit her, Door smirked, then glanced at her pokémon.

“Heh. Never thought I’d have so many—” She shook her head. “Never mind. Hey, um. Thanks, N. You’ve been … it means a lot, what you did.”

N didn’t respond. Door took one last look at him, then stuffed her own hands in her pockets and walked back to Blair, Opal, and the trainer. As soon as Door drew close, Blair launched herself to her feet. Door thought Blair would throw her arms around her, but Blair stopped just short of doing so, instead awkwardly wringing her hands as she stood before Door.

“Door,” she breathed. “Um. Is-is everything okay?”

She gave Blair a reassuring grin, then pulled the Jet Badge from her pocket. “Yeah. Met the gym leader on the roof of Celestial Tower. Worked through some stuff. I think I’ll be all right.”

Blair’s eyes went wide when she saw the badge, and she cupped Door’s hands in hers.

“That’s awesome!” she exclaimed. “Your sixth badge!”

“Indeed,” another voice chimed in. “Bravo, ma amie!”

Door looked up to see the other trainer walking towards her, clapping his hands as he went. A large bandage stretched over the bridge of his nose, and Door cringed a little at the sight.

“Oh! Uh, sorry about…” She motioned to his face.

He stopped and laughed, touching the bandage lightly. “This? Don’t worry about it! I must say, you have quite a left hook, Door.”

Door looked at Blair, who smiled sheepishly.

“I had to tell him your name,” she said. “And, well. Apologize for you. Profusely.”

He held up his hands. “But it’s okay. As soon as Blair told me what you’ve gone through, of course I couldn’t hold it against you.”

Door furrowed her eyebrows at Blair. “How much did you tell him?”

Blair’s sheepish look grew a little more, but before she could say another word, Opal chimed in.

“Incoming call on your holo caster, Miss Blair!” she chimed. “Would you like to take it?”

Blair’s expression dissolved from sheepish to confused as she glanced at Opal. “Who’s calling?”

“Amanita Fennel!” Opal replied cheerfully.

Door and Blair exchanged glances, and after a moment’s pause, Blair faced Opal again.

“Okay,” she said. “Patch them through, Opal.”

Opal clapped her hands together and fanned them out in front of her, palms up. Both of her palms snapped open, and a holographic field flared to life above her hands. And within that holographic field was an all-too-familiar figure.

“Oi!” Belle exclaimed, leaning in to what had to have been Amanita’s own holo caster. “You’re keeping us waiting, you know!”

Door shoved herself forward. “You!”

“You!” Belle parroted. “I have a name, you know.”

“Like I care,” Door hissed. “What’re you doing?”

“Also, how did she get my number?” Blair asked as she leaned towards Door. “I didn’t give it to Amanita.”

“You weren’t that hard to find, kiddo,” Belle replied with a smirk. “As for Doreen’s question, nothing bad. Just visiting a friend in the hospital. So very irresponsible of you to just leave him behind while you run off to who-knows-where, you know.” She clicked her tongue and folded her hands behind her back.

“Visiting a friend at the…” Door stiffened, then launched herself forward so violently she had to be held back by Blair. “You! You’d better not do anything to Geist or my dad!”

Belle leaned back and snorted. “What, like you didn’t do enough damage? Really, Doreen, maybe Geist would be better off with us. We’d know how to treat him. As for your dad…” She snickered. “Who cares about that hypocrite?”

“Don’t touch them!” Door screamed.

“Geez, temper, girl.” Belle stuck her pinky in her ear and twisted it, as if cleaning it out. Then, withdrawing her finger, she flicked it with her thumb and said, “Anyway, if you really want to make sure your precious Companion’s perfectly safe, why don’t you get your plump little butt back to the Mistralton Pokémon Center? Mr. Oppenheimer wants to have a word or few with you ‘cause, you know, you kinda broke Zero-One and all. He ain’t too happy.”

“I don’t care whether or not Mr. Oppenheimer is happy,” Door growled.

“Yeah yeah.” Belle waved a hand in the air. “All you care about is whether or not the people you care about are okay and blah blah blah.” She jabbed a finger towards the camera. “Mistralton Pokémon Center. Be there. We’ll be waiting.”

And with that, the call cut off.

Door didn’t even wait to discuss it. She was already running back towards town, with Blair and Opal calling after her and her pokémon in tow.



The outside of the Mistralton Pokémon Center was rather unassuming. The lights weren’t on, sure, but other than that, there were no extra pokémon, no Companions, no sign of forced entry—nothing. Just a building sitting in the middle of Mistralton City, looking plain, ordinary, and … abandoned.

Door didn’t think about any of this as she ran towards it. She didn’t even think about how her lungs were burning from the exertion or about Belle’s call or anything else other than the possibility that two of the very short list of people she cared about in her life might have been in danger.

So she also didn’t notice when Opal finally caught up to her, grabbed her from behind, and hoisted her off her feet when she was just inches from the door. She kicked at it, nearly banging one of her heels against the glass, as she screamed bloody murder—or, that is, she did all of that shortly before Blair’s musharna appeared and fixed a pair of glowing eyes on Door. The second Door locked eyes with Alice, she felt her rage melt away, and she was consequently calm and quiet by the time Blair approached with N, the trainer, the lampent, and Knives trailing behind her.

“Door!” Blair hissed. “Are you suicidal?!”

Door hung from Opal and glared at the glass in front of her. “I. Have. To. Go.”

“I know,” Blair said.

“You don’t understand,” Door said. “My dad’s in there, and so is Geist. Who knows what they’re doing?”

“I know,” Blair said.

“Then why are you stopping me?!” Door snapped.

“Because you’re an idiot who’s trying to run into a trap on your own.” Blair smirked. “At least let it be two idiots. Maybe three.” She looked over her shoulder. “What do you think?”

The trainer smiled, then reached into his pocket. He pulled out of it a holo caster and tossed it to N.

“Better call for backup,” he said. Then, pulling out a poké ball, he nodded to Blair. “I’m ready when you are, ma amie.”

Blair gave him a nod right back, then turned to Opal. “Okay, Opal. Put Door down.”

Door waited to be set on her feet, but to her surprise, that didn’t happen. She looked up at Opal to see the Companion staring straight ahead, eyes burning a bright blue.

And she felt the bottom drop out of her stomach.

“Opal?” Blair asked.

Knives took a step forward, a low growl rumbling from her throat and pink light dancing on her paw. Door kicked at Opal and cast a warning glare towards her pokémon.

“No! Knives, don’t! It’s still Opal!” Door twisted in the Companion’s arms. “Blair! Get help!”

Blair jumped. “What?!”

Before Door could elaborate, Opal stepped forward. The doors to the pokémon center whirred open, and the Companion carried Door through. Over Opal’s shoulder, Door watched Blair start forward, but the Kalosean trainer, grabbed her arm and pulled her out of sight. Matrix agents swarmed Door and yanked her out of Opal’s grasp. As if by magic, Belle appeared at Opal’s side and leaned against the Companion, who had yet to shift her expression from the eerie blankness it had taken on a moment ago.

“Thanks, doll!” Belle said. “Couldn’t have reeled her in without you!”

Realizing that she was trapped, Door glanced around the lobby, her eyes frantically scanning for some form of help. How could a pokémon center be attacked so easily in broad daylight? Her answer, to her dismay, was all around her. Trainers were huddled to either side of the common room, pinned down or held at bay by their own Companions. Door even spotted the boy she had battled earlier, watching her with wide, helpless eyes. Behind the check-in counter, the nurse sat stiffly; a medical Companion had a large pair of hands clamped onto her shoulders, keeping her in her seat. As the Matrix agents guided Door through the pokémon center’s lobby, she gave the nurse an apologetic look. It might not have been Door’s fault that Team Matrix was here, but it was her family’s, wasn’t it?

Door took a deep breath and let the agents guide her footsteps. She wasn’t going to think about this. She wasn’t going to plan. She was just going to see where they were taking her to get whatever they had in mind over with before they did something stupid, like hurt her dad or Geist or that entire lobby full of people. Yet, despite the fact that she tried not to think about any of this, it wasn’t at all surprising to her that they led her through the clinic, down the hall, and to the Companion repair and recharge room, where the first thing she saw was Geist.

Geist.

Door had expected to see Geist. Of course she did. Where else would he be? And she knew he would be opened up. They had to extract his cores, after all. It was standard procedure.

But somehow, something about seeing him there caught her off guard. The sight of him—prone, lifeless, open—forced her breath to catch in her throat. His eyes were shut, and his face was slack, as if he were simply in a deep sleep, but mere inches beneath that, his torso, from his chest down to his pelvis, was open. The skin was cut off, and the subdermal cushioning—the stuff meant to emulate muscles—was peeled back. And beneath that was a mess of wires, curling upward like petrified arteries, framing empty spaces where Geist’s cores should have been. But to Door, it didn’t look like the inside of a machine. It looked like someone had cracked open his chest and scooped out his internal organs, and all that was left was plastic and copper jammed haphazardly into the resulting carnage.

And to see someone who had been so strangely real—so full of life in ways a Companion really shouldn’t have been—lying prone like that…

Door took a breath to keep herself from throwing up.

“Door!”

Normally, she hated when her father fussed over her or held her like a child, but right then, she welcomed his embrace as he threw his arms around her and pulled her close.

“Honey!” he exclaimed. “Pumpkaboo! They didn’t hurt you, did they?!”

She wanted to say she was fine, that she was fully capable of holding her own in a battle, but she could only nod and croak out something decidedly non-combative.

“N-no,” she said softly. “I’m ... they didn’t hurt me.”

“Oh thank God.” Linus smoothed Door’s hair. “Pumpkaboo, I’m so sorry you got involved in all of this.”

Door squirmed, taking her eyes off Geist for a moment to return her father’s embrace. Over his shoulder, she saw Amanita standing in the corner, looking pale and keeping unusually quiet.

Next to her was Oppenheimer.

Door froze, clutching her father, as the Matrix grunts gathered around them. All of a sudden, she felt uncomfortably small.

“Dad?” she said. “What’s going on?”

He pulled away and cupped his hands around her face. “It’s a long story, sweetheart, but I swear I’ll tell you when I can.”

Oppenheimer clicked his tongue. “You are your mother’s son, Mr. Hornbeam.”

The older man strode forward, his cane tapping against the floor with every step. Door stiffened as she watched him approach, and the sight of his knowing grin flooded her with a mixture of rage, disgust, and fear.

He stopped only a foot from them and gazed at them warmly.

“I must say, though, I find your dedication to your family touching,” he said.

And the way he said it made Door think he was being genuine … and somehow, this angered her more.

Linus, meanwhile, pulled out of his hug and clasped Door’s shoulders protectively.

“Whatever you’re thinking of doing,” he growled, “I’m not going to let you hurt my daughter.”

Oppenheimer fanned one of his hands out to the side. “My dear boy. I wouldn’t dream of laying a finger on her. She is only an innocent bystander in a game that’s grown tiring a long, long time ago.” His eyes settled on Door. “May I have a word with you privately? There is something I need to tell you.”

“You can say it in front of my dad and Amanita,” Door spat.

Oppenheimer took a deep breath. “I wish that were the case, Door, but you know that’s impossible.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Even if that were remotely true, why would I go with you when your goons could easily hurt everyone in this pokémon center the second you get me alone?”

“If it makes you feel any safer, I give you my word that no one will be harmed if you come with me,” Oppenheimer replied.

Door considered that for a moment. She had no reason to believe him, and she knew that. But on the other hand, she had no reason to believe he wouldn’t do something drastic if she didn’t agree. And of course, like an idiot, she left her pokémon with Blair, which meant she didn’t even have a means to fight back, and who even knew if or when Blair, N, or that other trainer would get help, or when help would arrive? So, with all of that in mind, she exhaled.

“Fine,” she said. “But promise me: no one gets hurt.”

“My dear Door,” Oppenheimer replied, “you have my sincerest word.”

She nodded, then turned to her father, looked at him intensely, and gave him a hug. He embraced her tightly, holding her head close to his shoulder.

“Be careful, and don’t do anything without thinking, okay?” he whispered.

With another nod, she said, “I promise. Just trust me.”

And so, she slipped away from her father and strode towards Oppenheimer, and the old man turned on his heel and led Door out of the room. To her surprise, no one followed. Not the Companions. Not the humans. Not even Amanita or her father. It was just her and Oppenheimer, striding out into the hallway, then into a side room of the clinic. There, surrounded by the resting bodies of fauxkémon on tables and a handful of imported, flesh-and-blood pokémon in healing capsules, Oppenheimer came to a halt and tapped his cane on the linoleum floor. Door stopped a few feet away, just out of arm’s reach, and she prayed he didn’t own any pokémon.

Unfortunately for her, Oppenheimer’s next move was to reach into his robes. Door dropped into a fighting stance, cursing the fact that her pokémon were outside, but then again, she knew she could hold her own. She lasted for five years wandering the streets of Nuvema without them—ten, if one counted the years in which she wasn’t eligible for her trainer’s license. So how hard would it be to take down an old man if she had to?

Oppenheimer paused and regarded her with a friendly laugh.

“Easy, my dear,” he said. “I have no intention of harming you either.”

He drew his hand out and held it out for her. There, in the palm of his hand, was a tiny, black drive, the sort that one would plug into a Companion’s wrist to store or transfer external media. Door stared at it for a long while, dumbfounded, but she didn’t dare ease out of her fighting stance.

“Come now,” Oppenheimer continued. “I’m offering you what you really want.”

Door’s eyes flicked to his face, and she scowled. “And what, praytell, do you think I want?”

“The truth,” he told her.

That made her relax just a little. Upon seeing this reaction, Oppenheimer tilted his head and broadened his grin.

“I know,” he said. “My subordinates must have made you believe I would be angry with you for nearly destroying Zero-One, but you must understand, Door, that the Messiah does not speak of anger. He speaks only of forgiveness and progress. All humans make mistakes. That is, after all, what makes us human. Letting go of your past misdeeds and rising above them makes you worthy of your purpose; thus, I trust that what happened to Zero-One was only an accident that you’ll likely not repeat. Perhaps we are partly to blame, even. The Hero of Ideals had journeyed through Chargestone Cave. Why would you assume you weren’t meant to do the same if all this time, we’ve been pushing you onto her path?”

There was an explosion outside, one that shook the building. Oppenheimer and Door lifted their eyes to the ceiling, but only Oppenheimer found this at all amusing. Door simply felt her stomach twist and wondered if that was the help Blair was supposed to call.

“It seems the Hero of Truth may be close,” Oppenheimer said as he lowered his eyes back to Door. “I’ll make this brief. I cannot offer you the answers you seek. I find it disappointing that even your father wished to withhold it from you, but it is far from my place to judge. If by the time we meet again, you have yet to learn the truth from your family, give this drive to Zero-One and tell him to run the program that it contains. Don’t worry. It won’t harm him. It will merely help him answer all of your questions.”

He shifted the drive to his fingers and held it out for Door. She stared at it but didn’t move to take it. Overhead, another explosion pierced the silence, followed by the enraged cries of a dragon.

“Trust me,” Oppenheimer said.

And she considered this as well. On the one hand, she knew Oppenheimer was the bad guy. That was incredibly obvious. He was leading a criminal organization attached to a cult. He was responsible—indirectly, but it still counted—for kidnapping, pokémon theft, pokémon abuse, and never mind the whole intimidation and harassment thing.

On the other, he hadn’t technically lied to her yet, nor had he wanted to withhold anything from her. In her opinion, he was a few pokémon short of a full team, sure, and also in her opinion, none of this meant that he wouldn’t start lying to her or that she should ever really trust him. But if he was offering her a way to get answers—actual answers—to what was going on and why she was getting dragged into it … why shouldn’t she take it?

And so, cautiously, she crossed the distance between them and took the drive out of Oppenheimer’s fingers. The act was punctuated with a smile from him and a louder explosion somewhere overhead, and Door couldn’t help but wonder if she had made the right choice.

“Excellent,” he said. “Now, I’m afraid I can’t spend much longer with you, as much as I wish I could. Go back to the recharge station. My subordinates should have finished with Zero-One by now.”

Door stiffened. When she spoke next, her voice was hot, angry, and rough. “I thought you said you wouldn’t touch him!”

“I wouldn’t dream of harming him, Door,” he told her lightly. “But I wouldn’t trust the people here to repair him. I’m sure they’re competent, but they wouldn’t know what an LFA core is, would they? Luckily, my people have been studying Zero-One long enough to master engineering copies of his more unique aspects, in case situations like these arise.” He shooed her with his free hand. “Now go. Quickly! He should be waking up soon, and I—”

A final explosion resounded above, followed by one final, long pained cry from the unseen dragon.

“Well,” Oppenheimer said, “I suppose I should take my leave.”

He twisted the crystal head off his walking stick and tossed it onto the ground. Door’s eyes widened, and she flinched, covering her mouth and nose frantically. And as the ball spewed a thick, dark smoke, she ran, bolting for the door as fast as her legs could carry her. The smoke swirled around her, stinging her eyes and lungs, even though she did her best to shield herself. But … it didn’t knock her out. It wasn’t like the smoke Oppenheimer had used in Nimbasa. It was … just smoke.

So when she reached the clinic door, she slowed to a stop. Her curiosity and confusion had gotten the best of her, but when she looked back into the thinning cloud, all she saw was an empty space where Oppenheimer had been. Her eyebrows knitted in confusion; there were no doors, no windows he could have passed through. Or … there weren’t any he, an old man with a walking cane, could have reached without her seeing or hearing.

The sounds of a stampede on the other side of the door shook her out of her daze. Boots slammed against tiles, and the shouts of people and pokémon flooded her ears. The door rattled on its hinges under her touch, but Door held it closed by leaning her entire body against it. For some time, she braced herself against the door, gritting her teeth and riding the waves of chaos on the other side. In the distance, she could swear she heard Rosa’s voice, barking orders too far away and too muddled in noise for Door to make out. And above that, she heard the voice of the dragon again, loud and clear and booming, sending waves of electricity deep into her core.

Abruptly, the door burst open, and a blur of uniforms charged into the room. The world dipped and spun for Door as she stumbled out in the confusion, and before a single officer could grab her, she bolted. She ran and ran and didn’t stop, dodging hands and barely listening to shouts, until she finally careened into the Companions’ repair and recharge room.

And there was Geist.

Still asleep, still unmoving, but with his chest’s coverplate in place as if he hadn’t been a mess of wires and insulation just fifteen minutes ago. Ignoring her father and Amanita, both of whom were busy with a team of frazzled mechanics and Mistralton’s finest, Door surged forward and skidded to a stop beside Geist’s pod. She hesitated for a few beats, her eyes frantically scanning the monitors above him, until finally, she reached out and grasped his arm with one hand.

Her eyes had fallen on one particular screen above him, one that displayed, in full, brightly colored letters, two words:

SYSTEMS OK

OK. That word flitted through Door’s mind over and over again. OK. He was okay. She was okay.

They, despite everything Oppenheimer threw at them, were okay.



> UNTITLED.txt
> AUTHOR: Bebe Larson
> Notes: Audio transcript of conversation between LANETTE HAMILTON and █████████████, through a Companion unit identified as SERIES CLIO-15, UNIT NAME “SEBASTIAN.”

████: You’re recording this?

LANETTE: Of course I am. And when I’m done, I’m uploading it to the LFA system so you can review it whenever you say something that stupid.

[pause]

████: Lanette, I’m—

LANETTE: No. Shut up. You need to hear me say this, okay? You don’t get it. You really don’t.

████: Lanette—

LANETTE: I could walk away from this at any time. You think I don’t know that? Nothing is keeping me here.

████: That’s what I mean. I don’t want—

LANETTE: Stop.

[pause]

LANETTE: I choose to be here, okay? I want to be here. I’ve never turned my back on you, and I am not going to start now. Do you think I would have started in on Project Galatea if I didn’t know what I was going to sacrifice? Do you really, seriously think I didn’t once consider how much time, effort, hard work—even friendships—I would have to sacrifice to get as far as I did? Now you tell me. Why do you think I did that?

[pause]

LANETTE: It’s because I chose you, okay? I always have. I care about you so much more than you know, and I have never once regretted it. Nothing is going to change that, not even this.

████: You—

LANETTE: I said stop. I get why you made that offer. But you’re not a burden, okay? I don’t have to help you; I want to. So does everyone else. We’re not letting you do this on your own, and you need to stop feeling sorry for yourself and for once in your damn life realize that.

[pause]

████: I don’t know what to say.

LANETTE: Good, because I’m not done. Do you really want to know why I’m upset? Just think for a second, okay? Imagine what it’s like to lose your best friend. Think about what it’s like to hear the gorey details of exactly how his sister found him, and imagine me standing there while his family, gods have mercy on them, cremated and buried half of their only son. And then I had to hold everyone else together too. There are hundreds of people in the storage system administrative network who relied on him, and suddenly, he was gone, and they had no professional or emotional direction. I had to be the person supporting all of that. I was the one putting everyone back together because somebody had to. And never mind how I felt. Do you know how much it hurt to hear that the closest friend I’ve ever had die—or that he died alone, and no one found him until weeks later? And do you have any idea how hard it was to come here with his sister after all of that?

[pause]

████: [voice low] I have some idea.

LANETTE: Yes. Well. How do you think I felt when I watched him get his chest blown open?

████: I—

[pause]

████: Lanette, that wasn’t—that really isn’t—

[pause, followed by the sound of a deep breath]

████: It’s a robot, Lanette. That’s all.

LANETTE: Seriously? Are you seriously going to do this? You seriously can’t think of any way that could be—that that wouldn’t be okay?

████: No. Lanette, that’s not—let’s just—

[sound of an exhale, followed by a very long pause]

[CONTINUED IN SECOND FILE.]

I love charge beam. :D



Every time she tries to reassure herself, every time the mantra repeats, it adds to my sense of "oh god something's going to go wrong". Which I suppose puts me in her shoes, in a way. Or at least in the same brand.



Nice and gruesome, particularly the "petrified arteries" comparison. :D



...

Welp, helplessly imagining the smell now djghhdfjghsjdhg...


So, then. Lampent! :D Somehow, for some inexplicable reason, I seem to frequently forget the litwick line is even a thing. Even though litwick is precious, and lampent has one of the best cries ever (uOOOwehhh...) and chandelure is just rad as hell (especially that shiny dear lord). Anyway, this little guy is precious and I'm curious to find out what he'll be called.

Meanwhile, the drive. Hmm. To trust or not to trust. Heck if I know. Also wondering if we can really trust Geist's repairs--not in a "they hecked it up out of Sinister Intent" way, but rather a "even though they basically worship this guy this is a really complex and unique system they're working with; there's a lot that could go wrong even with the best intentions". So hmm again...

Okay, so I may have dropped the ball on continuing to read this since I last posted. But over the past couple days I read through the Striaton "arc" and ho boy is this fun! I never thought I would be so interested in the storage system developers but after all of the information in Chapter Nine, I am totally hooked. Like, you already had me with the world design and having this take place in Unova, but the chapter in Amanita's lab just totally added another level to this that I was not expecting. You did a really good job of getting to that point without revealing too much about what was going on and I really appreciate that- rarely do I find a story where the plot isn't mostly clear right from the beginning.

The character development you've got going on with Door and Geist is nice, too. Their interactions feel very natural for the types of people (or, person and person-imitation) they are. When Door finds out that real pokémon are reappearing in the Dreamyard, I went through all of the same emotions that she did and I think that's because I started to care about her a lot more around that time in the fic. I felt the disinterest that she did being in a world of robotic pokémon and Companions, and to be told that Unova might be on the mend I felt like there was this bit of hope for her. I'd really like to see her become a researcher and study real, live pokémon under the apprenticeship of Amanita, and I'm going to do my best to continue reading more regularly!