36-43

We took off from the forests southwest of Viridian. We did it the same way we got to Cinnabar, with Luna handling lift while I handled thrust. At first we weren't sure how we were going to handle navigation, given this was a bit more than going south in a straight line until we hit the big island with lots of people. Then we smacked ourselves and just looked at our poketch. It was clearly not meant to handle the speeds we were going at, it glitched out regularly, but it was enough to more or less point us towards New Bark Town. Two hours and change later of flying and we touched down about three kilometers northeast from the town.

Then we smacked ourselves for being silly. It'd have been faster to go to Blackthorn City directly from Viridan than to come all the way down here to New Bark and then back up to Blackthorn. Ugh. Fine, whatever. We'd just take the time to visit Professor Elm's laboratories. Make the detour worth the time. We walked out into the fairly homey town, it was really quite similar to Pallet, which kinda made sense in a meta sort of way.

It tooks us about thirty minutes to get to the outskirts of the town, and then ten more to reach Professor Elm's labs. The lobby was really quite nice, very modern and with lots of informational posters about pokemon. The basics of what to do and not do if you wanted to survive as a trainer. It occurred to us we'd never actually seen the lobby for father's compound, given that we simply used the private entrances or teleported in directly. Something to do, maybe see if we could use that to start fixing our relationship with father. Yes, once we'd taken care of business we were definitely spending more time with everyone. We missed our mothers.

There was a tall, thin man with half-moon glasses, and a lab coat, he was reading a notepad, occasionally scribbling something in it. He looked up and saw us, a smile sprouting on his face.

"You must be Marina! Excellent, a little early, but that's fine. I must say, you seem much younger than your age would imply. Come, we'll get you your first pokemon and you can get started on your journey!"

I smiled. It felt weird. What the fuck, since when did smiling become something we did so little of it felt weird to do? Still, it seemed we'd walked in at just the perfect time to get a show. That was great. The name seemed pretty familiar too. They must be someone with a destiny we didn't fully remember. This had to be Professor Elm.

"Wrong person professor, we're just passing by on our way to Blackthorn and decided to visit such a famous lab. Though now that we know a new trainer is starting out we may just hang around, if that's okay with you."

"Ah, a visitor! My apologies. I'm Professor Elm, and here at my facilities we focus on studying pokemon evolution. I'm afraid I can't give you a tour at the moment, but if you wait until after the starting trainers coming in today leave, we can arrange something."

We shook hands.

"Pokemon Trainer Red."

"A pleasure. It's always good to see young trainers aiming high, although I would recommend starting with Falkner's Gym in Violet City. It's better for newer trainers."

"Thanks you for the advice, we'll take it into consideration."

"Hello? I'm here for my starter pokemon!"

A third voice, also female, rang out. She walked up to us. She was a bit older than us, though we didn't know how much, with blue hair and green eyes. And taller. I had this feeling people being taller than me was going to become a recurring thing. Damn you future sight, at least I had hope before.

"Ah, Marina, excellent. Come, come, the starter pokemon are this way."

We followed Professor Elm deeper into his compound, with Marina chatting all the way. She was… nice, very sweet and full of life. Hopefully she had a bright future ahead of her. Professor Elm gave her a pokedex too, which was good. When she stood before the pokeballs holding the three regional starters, she went with Totodile, and turned to us, an expectant look upon her face.

"Aren't you going to choose your own starter?"

"Ah, no. We just wanted to see someone get their first pokemon. It's such a special moment. Besides, big sis would probably get jealous if I were to choose another pokemon as a starter."

"Ralts." Luna poked her head out from my zipped up jacket.

"Yes, sis, I know no one compares to you."

"Has she been there this whole time?!"

"Sis can be very lazy." We all ignored her indignant cry of "Ralts!"

"Ah, a Ralts. You're very far from Hoenn." Professor Elm chimed in, looking fascinated by Luna. "Remarkable pokemon, truly."

"We're actually from Sinnoh, but we moved to Pallet Town a couple years ago."

"Oh, I know! We can have a pokemon battle! My Wani-Wani against your Ralts!"

"It wouldn't be fair to you, Luna and I have been together since I was born. She's actually older than me, but if you want, we recently got a new member for our team that would be perfect for a starting trainer."

"Alright, let's fight then. Go, Wani-Wani!" She was so energetic, she even did a little dance number when she told her Totodile to step forward. "Pokemon Trainer Marina challenges you to battle!"

We felt the future pushing us to go with our Torchic. We were loath to break our naming pattern for our pokemon, but my past life had always used a specific name for her Torchics, and we wanted to honor that. It was funny though, the name totally didn't fit.

"Pokemon Trainer Red accepts your challenge. Go, Zeus!" Our terribly misnamed Torchic came out of his pokeball, and did the cutest roar-chirp we'd ever heard. Holy fuck, that thing was hella cute. We did something we remembered from an old story and held out our hand to her. "After you, trainer."

"Water Gun!" Her Totodile spit out a very decent jet of water for a new starter. A mental command had Zeus dodge the attack, and it splashed against a barrier in front of us. "Again!"

This time Zeus was too slow on the dodge and got splashed back a few meters. A mental command had him jumping back to his feet and spitting a tight grouping of Embers at her Totodile.

"Dodge, Wani-Wani!" Unfortunately for her, my lack of a need for voiced commands gave us a speed advantage and the little balls of flame hit the Totodile full on. "Oh no, fight back with Bubble!"

We countered with more Embers. There was a simple joy in fighting a battle with no stakes. We didn't think Zeus could beat her Totodile even with our advantages, but we were certainly willing to try. They traded blows for a few minutes, before a Water Gun laid out Zeus again. The little guy had heart though, and spat out one last barrage of tiny fireballs that laid out Wani-Wani at the last second. Well. A double knockout. Better than we'd been expecting.

"Oh wow, that was amazing."

"Yes, very much so. You'll make a great trainer, we can feel it."

"Thank you!" She hugged me and then Luna, before running out. She'd been so warm, and we really wanted to follow after and keep hugging her. She was amazing. If only we weren't pressed for time we could maybe travel with her.

"Keep your eye on her professor, she'll go far."

Then she came running back in and gave us a slip of paper with a string of numbers on it. "I almost forgot, here's my pokegear number so we can talk later if you want to! I'd love to be friends with such a cutie, we'd look great together as pokemon idols!"

Then she ran out again. The fuck just happened?

"Yeah, okay. Uh, I'll see you later professor."

We needed breakfast. Yeah, food would help us process all of that. We found a diner after a few minutes of walking and we sat down to delicious greasy breakfast food. So, we needed to get a pokegear. Yes, definitely, we wanted to talk to Marina again, so we needed to buy a pokegear. That way we could call her without having to go to a city or town and find a terminal to use. We'd find a store that sold one, get it all set up, and then we'd continue on to Blackthorn City. It'd help with calling Daisy too and… yup, a quick look around our bag had yielded us Lucky-tchii's pokeball. Guess she wasn't giving up on that.

37

Buying the pokegear took out a large chunk of change from our already significantly diminished account, but it was definitely worth it to keep in touch with Marina. Getting it set up was fairly easy for trainers, all we really needed to do was tie it to our Trainer ID and then an available number would be assigned. We'd call Daisy to test it out when we got to Blackthorn. Judging by the distances we'd traveled so far it was likely to take us about two to three hours to get there at our best speed.

We definitely needed to find some form of entertainment, as great as flying was, hour after hour of blurry scenery kind of got old. Hopefully podcasts existed already. Probably not well established yet, since smart devices weren't really a thing. Hm. Idea. Needed to make sure we stopped the Rockets at Silph Co. so we could snack on some of their scientists and then use their knowledge, my memories, and our phenomenal cosmic powers to make the first smart device.

We reached Blackthorn a little after noon, and got a room at the Pokemon Center there after getting our team looked over by the attending Nurse Joy. Now, to wreck the dragon Gym now or wait for tomorrow. Decisions, decisions. It not like there was much to do in the city if you weren't interested in the Dragon Den. Yeah, Gym time. We found it fairly quickly and an aide took us to the battle arena, where we found some random trainer walking out looking like he just got owned. Poor dude, but, well, get good scrub. We really should try to not be such huge cunts, but it was hard.

"Another challenger already? My, what a busy day. Alright then, this shall be a four pokemon match. My aide will register your ID." The woman who'd guided us her took my pokedex and scanned it with that nifty wireless device we'd seen a couple times before.

"Pokemon Trainer Red challenges Gym Leader Clair for the Rising Badge, choose your pokemon."

We were distracted. She looked a lot like Marina. Like an older version. Was this what she'd look like when she was older? She looked great. We'd never been big fans of rompers as clothing, but hers was better than most we'd seen. The skintight look definitely made it better. The half-cape was kind of dorky though, seriously, a cape?

"Go, Gyarados!"

Still, dorky outfit aside, she was pretty and we found ourselves wanting to call Marina already but we couldn't because it'd only been a few hours and it'd be weird and-

"Are you going to choose a pokemon, trainer?"

Wait, what? Oh, right. Battle.

"Oh, yes, uh, Yue!"

Our perfect and beautiful ice fox came out of her ball and nothing was amiss. Well, that's what everyone saw. What actually happened was she opened with a minor illusion that made it seem like she sprinted away from her landing to a spot two meters to her right, and in actuality moved to the left.

"An Alolan Ninetales, interesting. You chose your typing well, but it won't be enough to win. Gyarados will beat it and then your ace in the hole will be for nothing."

"Sure." Run your mouth more, you're just letting Yue set up more and more illusion bullshit.

"Fine. Gyarados, Fire Blast."

The water serpent spat out a very adequate fireball, but really, after Blaine's Gym it was kind of a let down in comparison. Also, and this was important, it aimed at the illusion. It detonated with a nice shockwave and heat wave, and then the Gyarados was surrounded by dozens of ice foxes. Which then all fired Confuse Rays.

"Aqua Tail through all the illusions!" The Gyarados proceeded to knock out a wall with its tail. It also went through a few of the illusory clones, but we had this feeling Not-Marina wasn't pleased regardless. "Again!"

This time it actually succeeded, but Yue jumped over the tail and answered with Freeze-Dry. Suffice to say getting hit with a double type advantage move doesn't end well for anything. It was fascinating to look at in a pokemon as big as a Gyarados though. You could actually see the skin drying out and then freezing over. Every single movement it made had the skin cracking horribly and only a few seconds of trying had rivers of blood running down all of its body. It was pretty fucking hardcore, but Not-Marina seemed to know when to recall, because she pulled it back before Yue could attack again.

"Go, Dragonair, Flamethrower!"

We could feel she was already resigned. She may not have known what to expect from us at first, but illusory ice kitsune bullshit was a hard to counter without effective access to area of effect attacks, and well, fairies were fully immune to attacks with a dragon typing. The Flamethrower was still nicely performed though, and showcased her training skills because the Dragonair spread it over most of the arena very thoroughly. Not nearly enough though, and Yue's return Blizzard hit full on and froze it solid.

"Return. Go, Kingdra. Hydro Pump!" Her water dragon spat out a wide torrent of water in a circle that actually managed to nail Yue and smacked her into a wall, and followed it with another Hydro Pump, this time aimed directly at her. She dodged, barely, and countered with a Freeze-Dry, to similar effect as the Gyarados. "Return. I forfeit the match. There's clearly nothing that my last Dragonair could do to beat your Ninetales, and then you'd still have three more."

She walked up to us and gave us a Rising Badge.

"I would be interested in a rematch at some point, although, perhaps without the Ninetales. I'd like to see what other pokemon you have."

Yeah. It really didn't get better for her even without Yue. Thinking on it, us fighting this Gym was even more unfair than us fighting Janine's. At least with Janine it was only a type advantage and not the full immunity to the main typing of this one. We took one last look at Not-Marina, trying to commit her to memory. We'd decided. We would call Marina from Ecruteak City tomorrow morning.

"One day, though for now we must go. Thank you for the fight."

We got back to the Pokemon Center and to our room. It was time for Lucky-tchii to do her thing. We let her out of her ball, and she was all over me in no time. Then she was marching us back out of our room and to the cafeteria. Right. Food. Nausea. Pill time I guess. I grabbed one, downed it dry, and then Lucky-tchii planted us at a table before she went out to grab us food. Guess she didn't trust us to eat well on our own. Twenty minutes later I was trying my best to eat everything the pink blob of love had told me to eat. It wasn't going well. It took another half hour to stuff it all down.

Well, time to call Daisy. We found her number and called her. We really shouldn't have been so excited to use a cell phone, especially when it wasn't much better better than a flip phone from my past life.

"Hello?"

"Hi Daisy."

"Azula? You got a pokegear?"

"Yup! And I'm keeping my word, obviously. Here's Lucky-tchii to give you updates."

Then Chansey babbled out a rapid fire string of "Chansey!"

"Well, that's good. How's it going Azula, where are you now?"

"Blackthorn City, we just got our Rising Badge."

"How the hell did you get to Johto so quickly?!"

"Fuck you, that's how."

"Azula."

"Sorry."

"Whatever. So, how are you doing?"

"We met this girl in New Bark Town, she was starting out as a trainer. Professor Elm gave her a Totodile, and we got a chance to fight with our new Torchic. Marina, that's her name, she was amazing, she's going to be a great trainer, I just know it. She managed to force a draw against me in her first battle! She's so pretty too! She has blue hair, and the Gym Leader here, Clair, she looks like an older Marina-"

"Alright, I get it, you have a crush on this girl. Okay. Wow. Never thought I'd see the day."

"Whaaaat?! No! No. She's just nice and amazing and-"

"Yes, yes, whatever you say. Oh Arceus, I can't believe this is happening. I'll talk to you tomorrow, okay 'Zula?"

And she hung up on me. The fuck just happened?! Us, a crush? Ridiculous. Marina was just that amazing. Ugh. Daisy was being crazy, and that was saying something when it was us speaking. Whatever. We had delicious feelings to enjoy before I could never have them ever again. Let's hope we never get seriously injured enough to need painkillers again. Or that there are painkillers of sufficient strength that aren't opiates. Pain sucked. We spent a few hours in bed just feeling before we drifted off to sleep. Tomorrow we would defeat Morty, as we now knew the leader of the Ecruteak Gym was called, and then we would be ready for the Conference. Then the hard stuff would start. By which we meant detoxing, not the fighting at the Conference. That would likely be a walk in the park.

And no, future, we were not going to pay attention to you, so fuck off and leave us alone already, you are extremely irritating. Unfortunately, we were unsurprised to see that the future ignored us and continued to be a fucking cunt.

38

We woke up early in the morning, and got ready for the day ahead. We were excited. We checked out of the Pokemon Center and this time we did get to fly in a straight line for an hour and half until we reached a city with lots of people. Well that and it was kind of hard to not just aim for the city with the big ass burned tower where a bunch of legendary pokemon used to live. It kinda glowed to our psychic senses. We were so checking it out after we won our last badge. The time was almost right. We couldn't wait, we missed walking to places a little. There was a certain charm to it that couldn't be found in skipping over the journey straight to the destination via application of lots and lots of fire and phenomenal cosmic powers.

Ah, well. We touched down in the forests to the northwest of the city, and walked the rest of the way to the Pokemon Center. We didn't hold out much hope that this last fight would be much better than Clair's, since, you know, Ozai, but maybe Morty could make things interesting. We were remembering vague memories about him being a master of ghost pokemon, reputed to be second only to Agatha. Unfortunately that didn't mean much when you considered the general rarity of ghost pokemon and the rather lackluster showing of a few of the other Gym Leaders we'd fought.

A quick check in at the Center and some deliciously greasy breakfast later, we were back out and heading for the Gym. We walked into a large dojo-like room fucking teeming with ghosts. We'd sensed them halfway to the Gym, and they were making us, by which we meant us and our Gengars, really hungry. We refrained from eating them though, wouldn't do to make an enemy of Morty by eating his pet ghosts. It was hard though, place seemed like a fucking buffet to our senses, all those naked souls, ready to be devoured. Could we switch entirely to a diet of souls? The withdrawal wouldn't really affect our appetite on that front. Better not to, it'd seemed like the start of tragic villainous backstory.

We were still going to swing by the Burned Tower and eat a bunch of the ghosts there though, they were probably special and tasted extra nice, what with the ridiculous amount of energy free floating there. Morty was blonde, tall, and dressed stylishly with a ragged purple scarf, a purple headband, and a black sweater with purple cuffs. At least the dude had style. He was in the room with a bunch of kids, apparently teaching a class on ghost pokemon. Or something. Then an invisible Ghastly got too close and suddenly they were all running the fuck away from us. Huh. Morty noticed a second later, probably sensing the sudden wave of terror from all his pets.

He turned to look at us, curious, at first, and then his demeanor turned extremely wary. Could he sense Ozai? Could he sense me? Or perhaps he could sense all of us and our liking for eating souls. It didn't matter in the end, he took the initiative, standing in front of his students as if to shield them from a threat, three Gengars rising up from the floor between us. Probably definitely us. It was almost enough to make a couple of girls from Snowpoint feel unwanted. Well, not like that had ever stopped us.

"Who are you?" He asked us, trying very hard to seem intimidating.

"We are Pokemon Trainer Red, here to challenge for the Fog Badge."

"Really, that's all, a badge challenge." He was clearly sceptical, which was probably understandable, given that either he could sense something about us or his ghosts could and had told him, we were pretty much walking, talking abominations of nature.

"The fuck else would we be here for? Literally the only interesting thing about this city beside the towers is your Gym. Not even the ghosts, since we have better."

He was silent for a moment, likely considering our challenge, before finally speaking. "Very well. I accept your challenge on the condition that do not use the abomination in your shadow, or allow it to surface." He said the last part with a glance to his students. Oh, right. Kids who'd probably end up terribly traumatized from witnessing Ozai's magnificence.

Still, rude. Name calling was not cool. Let's just ignore the fact we knew him to be right and generally agreed with him about Ozai. Or that we'd in fact referred to our biggest Gengar by that exact same name before, more than once. Just now, even.

"Very well. We shall fight, then."

Luna hopped out from our jacket, walking a little bit ahead of me. It'd been a couple days since either one of use had a chance to cut a little loose with our powers, and well trained ghosts were prime targets to let go. We even had the added handicap of having to be careful not to hit Morty's students to add a little challenge. A Gym aide walked up to me and scanned our pokedex

"Pokemon Trainer Red challenges Gym Leader Morty for the Fog Badge. This shall be a three pokemon match. Choose your pokemon." Luna continued to stand where she was, because no one ever said we were anything but showy battle crazies, and a Haunter appeared out of nowhere in front of Morty. Wrong pokemon. So wrong. Worst possible move. He'd have been better off throwing the three Gengars at us. We liked Gengars. Haunters? Not so much. Pretty much hated them, really. My scars itched and burned just looking at it, and we could swear I felt colder just being close to it. It was a Haunter not under our control and needed to be eliminated.

"Shadow Ball!"

Fuck dodging, fuck Teleport, fuck Protect. We were going to fucking destroy that thing. Luna reached out with an effort of will, seizing the Shadow Ball mid air, much like Gardemom had done to us in the past with our Psychics, and squashed it like an evil grape. Credit where it's due, Morty didn't stop, and ordered his Haunter to keep shooting. It was a mistake, because thirty seconds later there were fifteen Shadow Balls just floating before us, and then they were all exploding against his Haunter. He recalled the blob of gas and a Gengar rose up from the floor. Weird, why didn't he keep his Gengars in his shadow like normal people?

We went on the offensive this time, teleporting to its side and slamming a Psychic into it, we didn't let up though, and another Psychic was flying to intercept it. Sadly it missed then the Gengar vanished and went to wherever the fuck it is ghosts go to when they're not in real space. It appeared right beside Luna and ate a Psychic to the face, because combat precognition bitch, a Haunter already tried that one on us once. We minraped it and made it our loyal minion.

It was a surprisingly tough Gengar. Sure, Luna wasn't putting her full power behind her attacks, but it'd still eaten two solid hits and kept going. So of course we nailed it with a full power hit. What else were we supposed to do? Give it a fighting chance? Hah. As if. It collapsed into that weird puddle of gas the whole line seemed to faint into, before Morty recalled it.

"Go, Dusknoir! Shadow Sneak!"

Ugh. Fuck. This was going to take ages. That thing looked strong a hell and the whole fucking line were solid tanks. It crashed against a Protect, about the only move we could have used to defend against bullshit moves like Shadow Sneak, and we countered with a full power Psychic. It hit and did damage, but we could tell we really were in for a long fight. Fortunately Dusknoir were brawlers, so Luna had the advantage in speed and range.

They traded blows for about five minutes, playing a game of cat and mouse where the mouse hit much harder than the cat and the cat was slow as fuck with sudden bursts of incredible speed, courtesy of Shadow Sneak. Okay, so the metaphor didn't really fit, but eventually the floating tank died and just collapsed to the floor. Damned hard counters, what was next, facing an overpowered special wall on our first match at the conference and barely scraping by? Ugh.

"Winner: Pokemon Trainer Red."

Morty's aide walked up to me and gave us our last badge. Finally. The future was about to crest too, we could feel it. Maybe calling Marina was what was so significant? She was pretty great, I could see her being super important in the future and-

"You've won your challenge, trainer, now leave. You are not welcome here."

"Wow, sure, fuck you too." Cunt. Luna got back into my jacket, and we left Morty's Gym, feeling extremely unwelcome, and like the metric kilofuckton of ghosts around it would try to eat us if we didn't leave right the fuck now. Well then. While we had no problems adding another massacre to our tally, we'd much rather it not make the kind of waves it would cause if we threw down right here, right now. We'd visit the Pokemon Center and get our team checked out, then call Marina on the way to the Burned Tower.

We had maybe three weeks of pills left, that meant we had about that long to get registered and do some light training for Zeus and our still unnamed Bagon. No time like the present. We walked up to the resident Nurse Joy and once she checked out our team, we made our request.

"We'd like to register to compete in this year's Indigo Plateau Conference please." Unsurprisingly, she looked a little startled, but to her credit she didn't doubt us immediately.

"Of course, I'll need to see your badges and your ID."

We handed her our case and she slotted each badge into an opening next to her computer, and our pokedex into the usual ID slot. The screen showed our information and the record of all our fights, we smiled again at the golden pokeballs signifying Blaine's Champions, and then the word "Authenticating" blinked across the the screen. Each of the badges on the screen lit up one by one until "Authenticated" replaced the previous message, and a computerized voice came out of the speakers.

"Congratulations on registering to compete at the Indigo Plateau Conference, good luck trainer." Nurse Joy smiled at us and then gave us back or badges and pokedex.

"Congratulations, I hope you do well Miss Red." Our smiles were so wide they hurt, and for once they didn't seem to be scaring the people around us. We were one step closer.

"Thank you."

39

We dialed Marina's number and she answered after two rings. Her sweet voice came through the line and we couldn't help feeling giddy.

"Hello?"

"Hi Marina! It's Red."

"Oh, Red, hi! I'm so glad you called. How are you?" She seemed pretty upbeat about hearing from us.

"We're doing great, we just got our Fog Badge. Although we didn't really like Morty, that's the Gym Leader, he was super rude. Good thing Luna smacked his whole team."

"Wow, you have your first badge already?" She sounded so impressed! Marina was impressed! "It's too bad the Gym Leader was rude to you though. How's Zeus by the way? Is the little guy doing well?"

"Yup. We got him healed up a couple hours after our match, but we've been setting such a fast pace we haven't had the time to train him."

"That sucks, but hey, you've got your badge now, you can take a little time to train him, yeah?"

"That was the plan."

We chatted for the fifteen minutes it took us to reach the Burned Tower, before we had to hang up and get down to business, to eat some ghosts. Heh. The place was so saturated with energy we couldn't sense anything more than a couple of meters ahead of us. It didn't take long for it to start getting to us. We wouldn't be able sense an attack coming until the last second. Or easily find pokemon to devour. Well, there went that idea… and that was a cloud of Ghastly attacking a pair of Koffing. Well, lucky us.

Power coursed through us, and then we grasped them all, pulling them to us. There was so much energy around that the pokemon living here had to be special by exposure alone. Pulling the Ghastly apart was easy, they were weak and already a naked soul given form. The Koffing took more effort, but we still managed to rip their souls out easily. We crushed them together, breaking any coherence they may have had left and turning them into, well, whatever the fuck a soul's building blocks are. Then we started eating. It was disappointing. There was nothing special about it. Damn. We still kept eating. Waste not, want not, and all that.

We Saw the attack an instant before it hit us. A torrent of water unlike any we'd ever seen before, smashing our broken bodies into a wall behind us, dead on first impact. Luna barely managed to raise a wall of force in front of us, the Hydro Pump slamming into and through it, and through the wall of force I'd raised behind it. We focused as much power as we could around our bodies, trying to resist as much of the attack as we could. It hit harder than anything we'd ever felt, agony ripping through my ribcage, and then we slammed into the wall, the back of my body erupting in pain near uniformly before we crumbled to the floor.

I felt my ghosts boil out of my shadow, rushing a massive previously hidden presence ahead of me. Luna Teleported out from under me, in much better shape than me, and went on the offensive as well, jumping straight to lethal force against whatever had attacked us. Everything was fuzzy, except for the blinding agony of course, that was perfectly sharp, and the world was spinning. I couldn't concentrate enough to sense what was happening, but it seemed like we were losing. I Saw the future again, saw from my position on the floor as my sister was crushed by a blast of water, as our Gengar were hit over and over until they collapsed into blobs of gas, and then felt as one last blast of water crushed me against the wall behind me.

I couldn't allow that. Had to fight the pain. I reached for Starmie and Yue's pokeballs, my rib cage protesting every single movement we made with more pain, barely managing to press the release and send them rolling away. They came out and I commanded them to help Luna. Maybe they would be enough. I tried to concentrate through the pain, and Saw as after a long battle my pokemon came back to me after forcing whatever had attacked us to retreat, and Luna deposited Starmie's body beside me, its once brilliant gem completely crushed.

Rage was starting blossom in my heart. It helped fight through the pain. This… thing thought it could try to assassinate us and succeed? Thought it could try to assassinate us and flee after killing one of our own? No. Definitely not. It would either die or be captured. I pushed myself up until I was on hands and knees, pain and rage turning my vision red, I pushed myself even further, until I finally managed to lay my back against the well behind me. When the pain from moving so much faded a little and I could finally see, I saw something that didn't make any sense.

Suicune.

Suicune had tried to kill us. One of the legendary beasts had just tried to kill us. Had, in a way, succeeded twice in futures that would never come to be anymore. I didn't understand, couldn't understand. It made no sense. I projected my senses, trying to feel Suicune, and felt its hatred for us. It despised us completely, wanted nothing more than to destroy us. In its eyes we were abominations, monsters of the worst sort. I pried deeper, looking for why, and Saw the moment it noticed us, saw through its eyes as we destroyed the souls of over a dozen pokemon and ate them. Ah. Well, fuck. Fuck. It would never stop hunting us, not that I wanted to, or thought we might be able to escape without having to sacrifice at least one of our pokemon, and that was not acceptable.

Fine. If Suicune wanted us, it could try. I didn't need a healthy body to contribute to the fight, and we were going to make it regret ever attacking us. I grabbed at my power, letting it out to a degree we'd never done before, and then we were one again. We could feel the headache starting to build already, my body still incapable of fully handling so much of the future. We were going to have to replace another jacket. We had no doubts as to whether I'd end up bleeding all over the one I was wearing. We'd need everything to win this.

We extended the mental connection to all of the others, and the change was instantaneous. Their dodges became cleaner, faster, their attacks hit harder and more often, and their coordination rose to a whole new level. Yue wove illusion over illusion that helped cover for the others, kept them safer from attacks, the Gengars popped out of reality faster, sometimes without even needing to see the attack coming, or positioning themselves to capitalize on forced moves better. Starmie rained Thunderbolts and Psychics at a rate of fire that made it impossible to dodge even a quarter of them.

We would win, even if it was the last thing we did.

Luna and Ozai were the frontline. They kept Suicune's attention while the others took mostly free shots at it, taking care to face him away from me so it couldn't take a shot at my largely defenseless body. Thank fuck it didn't seem to be truly intelligent. I started charging the strongest Psychic we'd ever thrown, while letting my eyes and future sight give my monsters the edge they needed not only to survive the fight, but win it. A stray thought occurred to us, and the rage it caused nearly made us to lose concentration. No. A command to our Gengars and they all used Mean Look. No, Suicune, you were not going to get away.

If we'd called our previous charged Psychics "Naval Artillery Strikes" then they were the naval guns of early cruisers or battleships. What we were charging now was more like a full broadside of 18 inch guns. We were going crush Suicune. Slowly, but surely, our monsters turned the legendary dog so it was presenting its flank to me. Break, or die, dog, we cared not which. We let the Psychic go, saw it blur through the space between us in an instant, and heard it strike Suicune with an explosion of force and sound that would have knocked down our own team if not for the forewarning that allowed them to vanish at the last second or hide behind Protects. We felt the shockwave with bruising force all the way to where my body lay crumbled against the wall.

And were before one of the legendary dogs had stood strong, now there was a broken beast, unconscious, defeated. We laughed. We laughed even though every movement was agony, we laughed because we were alive, and we laughed because we were going to capture a legendary, even if we may never be able to use it at all. We took out a Premier Ball, and with our powers sent it out on an arc that landed on Suicune, absorbing it in a swirl of light. The ball didn't even shake and locked immediately, before it was transported to father's ranch. That… was not ideal. We weren't sure how long we'd be out of commission, and we needed to make sure father didn't let that thing out. It was too dangerous.

Fuck. Again. More, even, because now it could be a danger to our mothers. We had to flag it, and we had to flag it now. We recalled our pokemon, and Luna Teleported us to our room at the Pokemon Center. The pain was unbearable, and the adrenaline was fading fast. We grabbed Lucky-tchii's ball and let her out, she could help. She took one look at us and went into action damn near instantaneously, checking us over, poking all over and getting a scream of pain when she barely even touched my ribs. Then she grabbed the egg in her pouch, did something with it, and then she was shoving a gooey liquid down our throats, mostly mine.

"Chansey, Chansey!" Cracked ribs, concussion, extensive tissue damage, hairline fractures all over, and a nervous system so frayed she was worried I'd suffered nerve damage. Luna was mostly just very bruised and exhausted. Thank fuck for pokemon biology. The egg she'd fed us would accelerate our healing to a ridiculous degree, to the point we weren't in any danger anymore, but it had been a close call, on many different levels. Luna jumped up to the computer terminal included in the room and set about flagging Suicune as "Stay the fuck away from this if you want to live, don't even heal it, hell, don't even look at it." Or as close to that as she could manage. Lucky-tchii had meanwhile guided me to the bed and tucked me in, then tucked Luna in as well.

We tried to sleep, but the pain from my cracked ribs was intense. We reached out to our bag, grabbing two of the pain pills and bringing them to us. I took them, and realized as I did that I'd been sobbing in pain the whole time. Slowly, the pain faded and we drifted off to exhausted sleep. So much blood spilled, so much.

40

We woke up and immediately wished I hadn't. We grabbed two pills and downed them. Fuck. There went our fucking timeline. Four days of pills in two, and we had a feeling we'd end up taking more before the day was over. The pain slowly faded, and we managed to start moving. Then the pain from my ribs sent me back to not moving. We'd have to separate, physically, at least. Luna was feeling better, and she grabbed all our pokeballs, let Lucky-tchii out of hers, and walked out. Had to get our team healed after getting thrown around by a legendary. Ozai had looked ready to fold when our Psychic ended the fight.

"Chansey!"

"We know I'm fucked and overdoing it with the pain pills, you don't need to reminds us."

"Chansey!"

"No, we didn't know opiate dependence causes hyperalgesia, but it's obvious in retrospect. Now egg me, we want me to heal faster since we're not delaying detox."

"Chansey!"

"We don't care if it strains our system, we'll make sure to eat well. You can even be there to force us to eat as much as you like."

She looked dubious, but eventually grabbed an egg, cracked it open into my mouth, and left in a huff to look for Luna so she could bring more food. That's fine, the… huh, what even were the pills I was taking? We floated the bottle over to read the active ingredients and… morphine sulfate, 60mg. The fuck, morphine came in pill form? Right, well, the morphine combined with the egg had us feeling delicious. If we focused hard enough, we could even feel the egg working its magic and my body healing. Or it could just be the morphine, who the fuck knew?

Luna came back ten minutes later carrying more than a few plates of food and our pokeballs, Lucky-tchii behind her. We ate, and spent a few hours just letting the Chansey egg do its job, reviewing our trainer record and seeing what information the storage system had gotten out of our new Suicune. It wasn't much beyond its weight and size. Not surprising, it was probably the first ever formally captured Suicune. We had a feeling we'd never be able to make use of it. It hated us too much, and trying to mindrape a legendary seemed like a quick way to end up a vegetable. That thing had a lot of power. Maybe after Luna evolved? Thoughts for later.

We called Marina while we healed, chatted with her for hours, just enjoying the sound of her voice. It helped that the longer we talked to Marina, the longer we didn't have to talk to Daisy. Eventually she had to hang up to fight a battle someone challenged her to, and then we were out of excuses. Lucky-tchii was giving us this look too, like she was completely unimpressed by our delaying tactics. Fine. We dialed my niece's number like women condemned. She was so not going to be happy with us, and she was going to ask awkward questions like "Why would Suicune try to kill you?" and "What did you do to make it hate you so much?". Ugh.

"Hi 'Zula, how are you?"

"Hi, uh, how about we let Lucky-tchii answer that one for us? It'd probably be best to just get things over with."

"What? Azula, why are you slurring your words? How many pills did you take? What did you do this time, Azula Luna Sato?" Ouch, full name. Wait, had she really called us both out at the same time?

"Chansey, Chansey!" Snitch.

"What?! How?" Yeah, there she went. "You two, explain, now."

"Uh, we were attacked, unprovoked, by a vicious pokemon intent upon doing us harm. We were just minding our own business, eating a light snack at the Burned Tower here in Ecruteak City and then we foresaw an attack on our persons and defended ourselves."

We could almost feel her unimpressed glare through the pokegear. Yeah, didn't think so.

"Try again, this time maybe with more details and less obfuscating doubletalk."

"Right. Uh, so we were eating a light snack and uh, well, a Suicune tried to kill us with a Hydro Pump. We Saw the attack coming in time to block most of it, then we took it down, captured it, and here we are." Silence.

"Uhuh. Now the truth."

"It's the truth! Look, you can go ask father what our last capture was if you need proof."

"So let me get this straight, a legendary pokemon tried to kill you, which you survived, and then your fought back while concussed, with broken ribs, extensive soft tissue damage, and a bunch of other injuries, for long enough to beat it and capture it."

"Yeah."

"And did at some point occur to you to escape instead of staying back and risking your life?!"

"Well, duh, but we wouldn't have managed to get out without losing at least one of our pokemon, and that was unacceptable."

"So you fought a legendary pokemon?!"

"Yeah. Please don't tell anyone."

She made this sound we couldn't quite decipher. Frustration, exasperation, worry, hysterical laughter. It was like a bunch of different reactions crashed together and fused into an unholy amalgamation of all of them at the same time, and that was what came out.

"Azula, you captured a legendary. I don't need to tell anyone, it's in the system already."

"We meant about the other stuff, it's not like it's an issue anymore and father has been so worried lately he's been drinking a lot, and we also really don't want our mothers to worry. Besides, it'd get in the way of detoxing if we had to deal with handling the fallout from all of this."

"Damnit. You suck Azula. So much." She took a deep breath and blew it out. "Fine. Just… when?"

"Probably next week. We'd planned to delay a couple weeks to get things in order, but my ribs hurt so much we're going to run out of pills faster than expected."

"Do you want me to help?"

"We… don't think it'd be safe for you. Lucky-tchii and our team should be more than enough to hold me."

"Okay, I love you two, please be careful." She sounded so tired. We needed to spend some time with her, help her destress a little, take her on an adventure. We'd make a day of it. More importantly, we were slurring our words, which meant that we'd slurred through all our conversation with Marina. Oh no. We must have sounded so weird to her. She was an angel for not commenting on it. "After all, how will you gush about your crush to me if something happens to you?"

"Shut up! We don't have a crush! Marina is just awesome, okay? But fine, we'll be careful. We'll let you know before we start, okay?"

She was giggling at us when she hung up. Mean. Nevermind, she clearly didn't need us to take her out on an adventure. She needed an insane asylum to help her with this crazy talk about us having a crush. A crush. Ridiculous. We did not have crushes. Marina was just our friend, nothing more. Besides, if ever it came to such we would have lovers, not crushes. It sounded much classier that way. Oh... We saw my face through Luna's eyes, and we couldn't help thinking that being as pale as me lead to some pretty impressive blushes. Uh. Better not think about such things anymore.

"Hey, Lucky-tchii, what do you know about opiate withdrawal?"

"Chansey!"

"Of course you do, are you like a fully trained nurse or doctor or something?"

"Chansey!"

"Oh. Yeah, makes sense. Of course father would have shelled out for the best training available for you. Anything to increase her life expectancy, no matter how little, or how big, or how expensive."

"Chansey!"

"I'm glad you've kept her safe. So, paint us a word picture. How bad is it going to get?"

"Chansey, Chansey."

Well, fuck. Let's hope Luna can keep my phenomenal cosmic power in check while detox happened. All the same, we should probably do it someplace people won't miss too much if I trashed it. Hopefully we could channel some of the horrible stuff coming at me into fighting. Do the train into exhaustion thing so that we were too tired to be in horrible mental and physical agony. Hopefully. We weren't really holding out much hope. Anxiety was starting to claw at our insides just thinking about it. Fuck. We'd think of something, we had some days left to plan things out.

As the pain from my still cracked ribs started inching into agony again, we took another two pills, and in so doing felt the date I would have to quit inch a little closer. We didn't have too much longer to worry about after that though, and again drifted off to sleep after a couple hours of enjoying the feelings inside me.

41

We needed to find the best place to detox. Lucky-tchii had said it could take anywhere between three days to two weeks to really be out of the woods with regards to the super gnarly physical symptoms. We were certain we could handle any psychological symptoms with enough application of psychic surgery. Cheating? Definitely. Taking the easy way out? Definitely. But we weren't taking any risks with this. We would be rid of this completely, even if we had to rip chunks out of my soul to do it. Hopefully it wouldn't come to that, it wasn't something we wanted to go through again.

We couldn't do it in Johto, there was too much of a chance that another legendary beast could find us when we were vulnerable and we couldn't be sure it wouldn't attack out of hand. That left Kanto and whatever we could reach quickly in Sinnoh from Snowpoint City. Maybe one of the islands around Cinnabar? Yes, that seemed like the best option. It was time to start setting things up. We showered, wincing when we saw the bruise covering pretty much the whole of my front, father must never learn of this. We finished getting ready and checked out of the Pokemon Center, Teleporting to Cinnabar Island near Blaine's arena.

We would find a good island and then bring in materials to establish an acceptable temporary refuge. We could be too dangerous to do this near other people. We found one before too long, between the Seafoam Islands and Cinnabar. It wasn't too big, and had a small jungle we could use for materials to build shelter. We landed at the center and made a clearing, then using the trees we'd uprooted to make flooring and supports for a roof. Thank you ninja memories for more or less teaching us how to build safely, even if it was mostly meant to build hidden boltholes from which one could do surveillance or retreat to after a mission.

A Teleport later and we were in Celadon, where we threw on a quick disguise before buying a cheap mattress and enough bottled water and travel food to last three weeks. Our poor bank account was dying a slow death after being healthy for so long. Then we Teleported back to our island straight from the department store where we'd bought the mattress. It was almost time. We would wait until we were out of pills to give my ribs more time to heal, and then I would suffer horribly for being such a stupid fucking idiot and hope that Luna and the rest could hold me down. Ugh. At least we got to actually do touristy stuff on Cinnabar while waiting, even if it was only a little.

We managed to last a week. We mostly spent it training Zeus and Bagon, which we'd decided to call Sozin. We didn't make much progress with them, but we were certain we would manage to get them up to speed way before the Conference came rolling around, or at least Zeus. Say whatever you like about the traditional starters, but they grew fast. Two, maybe three more weeks of intensive training and we'd have a Combusken on our hands, then a month or two more and it'd be a Blaziken. Sozin on the other hand we may have to train right up until the Conference to get it to a Salamence.

We called Daisy and Marina daily, chatting away about whatever came to mind, and the latter told us about her first Gym Battle, where Wani-Wani and a Misdreavus she'd caught led her to victory against Leader Faulkner. She gave awesome names. There was something appealing about a girl-like ghost called "Little Miss". We'd told her there was a chance we wouldn't be able to call for some time, but that we'd call her as soon as we could. Daisy continued to be silly about Marina and us, but was generally encouraging about talking with her.

Lucky-tchii had tended to my injuries and the bruises were almost entirely gone by the time we took our last pill. Her eggs had also managed to accelerate the healing of my ribs to the point just moving wasn't terribly painful. Progress. So we settled down for the time of our fucking lives, continuing to train Zeus and Sozin, while our Gengars and Luna kept an eye on me. Actually, better not take any risks, so we let Yue and Starmie out. We were actually a little jealous, Yue looked like she was really enjoying a nice day at the beach.

Night came and went, and I woke up with chills, excessive sweating, a runny nose, and fucking pain everywhere. We were forgetting something. Hm. Well, we'd remember eventually. Hopefully. Time for Lucky-tchii to come out and make sure I'm not going to die if I get a fever or something. She popped out of her ball and started checking me over.

"Chansey!"

"Thanks. I already feel like hell, and if what you said before is true then this is barely the beginning. Please be careful and let our pokemon handle things if things get bad. We need you awake."

"Chansey!"

By the time night came about I felt like I was dying. By the time the morning came again, I wanted to die and the pain was so bad I hadn't slept a minute. That's when the hallucinations started. It started with the faces of the Rockets from Mount Moon, seeing them out of the corner of my eyes. Then they started asking me why, over and over again, you know, despite the fact we didn't even remember their voices. Then the five from the Game Corner, followed by shadowy silhouettes joined in. Misao Kirk was, perhaps, the one that seemed most real.

"I am real, little murderess." The hallucination talked to me. Huh. "I'm here to avenge myself upon you for killing all of us."

Kinda hypocritical if you ask me, since she'd tried to drug and kidnap us, but hey, anyone stupid enough to join the Rockets couldn't be that smart, or burdened with a solid grasp on reality, to begin with.

"You're an abomination, you little monster. You stand there all high and mighty, and yet you thought nothing of murdering so many people."

Eh. Someone had to take out the trash, might as well have been us, and if we profited immensely from doing so, all the better. There was a reason we'd labeled most of the people at the Game Corner base as "Necessary Collateral Damage", and anyone who went around trying to kidnap kids deserved whatever they got.

"Die!" Apparently the hallucination hadn't liked what we had to think about her and she lunged at me. When her hands closed around my throat and her hallucinatory attempt to strangle me actually seemed to be strangling me, I started thinking there may have been something more to this. I focused my power on her, fighting her, but she was strong, far stronger than she should have been. I couldn't breathe.

I pulled at the bond I had with Luna, borrowing enough of her power to break whatever the fuck was strangling me.

"Just die already, monster!" She looked a little unhinged. Then she looked a lot unhinged. Was she reading my mind? She kept lunging at me, but well, now that I had advance warning, the combat training I'd gotten from her made it trivial to dodge her crazed attacks. "You ate me, and I'll kill you if it's the last thing I do!"

Oh. Oooh. Could this be the remnants of Misao Kirk? We'd been high as fuck and blackout drunk when we'd eaten her. Likely hadn't taken any precautions to keep mental contamination at bay. Hm. How the fuck was I supposed to fix this? Maybe we could kill her? I grabbed her on her next lunge, and tried to break her neck. Just tried, because apparently I wasn't strong enough to actually manage it. Fuck.

She threw me off, and then she was straddling and strangling me again. I saw behind her the faceless shadows of the people my Gengars had eaten, of the ones we'd eaten, and then the faces of the two I'd killed… with my knife. I reached for it, barely managing to pry it out from under me, and I stabbed her side, over and over again. I felt each stab, deep inside, but I kept going, I didn't want a parasitic consciousness living inside my soul, and if I had to kill a part of me to destroy the remnants of Misao Kirk, then so be it. She started going limp, so we rolled her over and kept stabbing. My knife went through her right eye and then I was on the beach of my island, feeling like when the Haunters had bitten me, except less bite-y and more stabby.

Well, not a hallucination. Fuck. We'd failed to properly kill Misao Kirk's soul when we ate her, and enough had managed to hang on and coalesce into something solid inside of us. The bitch had likely been feeding on all the other souls we were eating to get stronger and stronger, waiting for a moment of weakness to do us in. I could feel Luna's pain across our bond, her soul feeling similarly stabbed as mine. At least I'd only needed to kill one of her to rid both of us of her bitch self.

Ugh. We'd have to be more careful next time we ate someone for their knowledge. Then my body decided to remind me that it wasn't just our souls that were in pain. Maybe we could have just half a pill?

"Ralts."

Okay, okay. No pills.

"Chansey!"

"D-don't worry L-lucky-tchii, I had t-to deal with a s-squatter. Do y-you think one o-of your eggs c-could help with the p-pain?"

"Chansey!"

"O-of course not."

"Chansey!"

Fuck. That's what we'd forgotten. I grabbed our pokegear and dialed Daisy's number. It took a while. My fingers wouldn't stop shaking.

"Hey Azula, what's up? You didn't call yesterday."

"Uh. W-we f-forgot to c-call. Lucky-t-tchii reminded u-us just n-now."

"What the hell 'Zula, are you okay?"

"Chansey!"

"W-what s-she said."

"Oh. Where are you? I'll come help."

"Too f-far. Don't w-worry, we'll b-be fine." And I hung up.

The pain kept getting worse, and worse. Someone was screaming. I felt Luna get closer, felt her struggle to keep down the pain and contain my power, keep it from hurting her, hurting me, and from hurting our pokemon. It was too much. We were near equals, her extra month of life giving her a tiny edge, and she couldn't contain me on her own anymore than I could her. She'd tried Imprison, but the seal had broken within minutes, so she was forced to act upon me and my power directly. I could feel the heartache my suffering caused her, could feel as she came to the conclusion that there was really only one thing she could do if she wanted to both spare me the pain and contain my power. I felt her sadness as she prepared to let go and make a choice she couldn't ever take back.

I reached out to her, stopping her. I couldn't let my idiocy take that choice away from her. She would evolve when she wanted to, and no sooner, my mistakes would not be a factor in that choice. She refused to back down though, and I loved her for caring so much about me. Clearly there was only one choice I could make in the face of this. She was incredulous when I told her. I don't think she expected me to ever even consider doing what I asked of her. She asked me if I was sure, because it would risk so much, change so much, but she mattered more and really, we were Red Azula and Luna, fucking nothing could stop us if we didn't want it to. Finally she nodded and reached deep inside of me, then darkness.

42

"Whatever. So, how are you doing?" That girl, I'd worry that her mouth would get her in trouble one day if she weren't, apparently, some kind of psychic powerhouse with a second ridiculously overpowered psychic powerhouse as her sister. Then there was the entirely too terrifying and creepy Gengar living in her shadow, and whatever other ridiculous monsters she may have caught. Didn't grandfather say she had two other Gengars she kept on her? I shivered, how the hell did she live like that?

"We met this girl in New Bark Town, she was starting out as a trainer. Professor Elm gave her a Totodile, and we got a chance to fight with our new Torchic. Marina, that's her name, she was amazing, she's going to be a great trainer, I just know it. She managed to force a draw against me in her first battle! She's so pretty too! She has blue hair, and the Gym Leader here, Clair, she looks like an older Marina-"

Wait, what? What the hell? Was I hearing this right? Azula… had a crush? Oh Arceus, oh what. I could already see her normally blank, pale face pinking at the thought of this Marina girl, and actually smiling. Smiling! Those girls only ever really smiled for their mothers, but just hearing Azula gush about Marina this and Marina that I could hear the smile on her face, and if Azula was smiling and talking in plural, then Luna was smiling too. Well, good, they needed reasons to smile. Asami, Garde, and Ashely needed to hear about this. They worried so much about her, they'd be happy to know she had her first crush. Grandfather too, he'd been down lately.

"Alright, I get it, you have a crush on this girl. Okay. Wow. Never thought I'd see the day."

"Whaaaat?! No! No. She's just nice and amazing and-"

What's this? Azula in denial? Oh, I could already see a brilliant blush on her face while. I wish I had video of that. She had it bad. That Marina girl must be something else.

"Yes, yes, whatever you say. Oh Arceus, I can't believe this is happening. I'll talk to you tomorrow, okay 'Zula?"

Okay, it was nearing dinner time, so Ashely and Garde were likely cooking while Asami "helped". Poor woman, she was a genius with desserts, but if she tried anything besides sweets more complex than pasta it ended badly. Well, time to "help" them cook, by which I meant eat some snacks while we gossiped about their daughters.

I found them exactly where I expected them to be, in the middle of some rather racy flirting. Good grief, with how those three kept on, I wonder how Azula and Luna ever managed not to walk in on something daughters shouldn't witness their mothers doing. I coughed to get their attention, and was rewarded with Asami and Garde blushing bright red at being caught in their little flirt fest, then blushing harder when Ashely bit Asami's ear lightly and groped Garde. Oh, we definitely needed to get a camera on Azula and Luna when they were with that girl. If Asami was any indication, their reactions were bound to be amazing. Those two took after their birth mothers hard.

Garde sensed my eagerness to talk as soon as she calmed down a little, and I could feel her curiosity peaking. Asami and Ashely felt Garde a moment later and I had three pairs of eyes looking at me expectantly. How best to tell them about it?

"So… I spoke with Azula."

"What? Really? How?"

I grabbed my pokegear from my back pocket and showed it to them.

"Apparently, keeping in touch with the terrible twosome is as easy as having one of these so it's easier for her to call you. Well, that and a secret ingredient~"

"What's the secret ingredient?"

"Them meeting someone they wanted to call so much that they bought a pokegear of their own."

They were instantly hooked. They knew their daughters well, and for someone to get them to notice them, much less want to talk to to them, well, that was nothing short of miraculous.

"My tiny aunt called me and we talked a little, but then when I asked her how she was doing…" Huge smirk ready. "She told me about this new trainer she met in New Bark Town. Apparently she visited Professor Elm's lab just in time to see a starter choosing ceremony."

"Must have been a pretty impressive trainer if they got those two to give them the time of day."

"Oh, yes, from what your daughters told me in between gushing about how wonderful and pretty this girl is, they think she'll be a great trainer."

"What?!" The sheer incredulity coming from them was tangible.

"I could practically feel the blush in Azula's voice when she talked about her. She's got it bad."

What followed was prime gossipy girl talk the likes of which could only be achieved when the subject is the baby girl of the family and her first crush. Grandfather walked in on us looking for a picture of Leader Clair so we could have a better idea of what Marina looked like. Then I had a better idea and wheedled grandfather into looking up her trainer ID with his credentials and huh, those two had good taste. The girl was very cute. She also definitely had to be related to Leader Clair. They looked like sisters. She was probably someone's dirty little secret.

Grandfather didn't react right though. Oh sure, he seemed a little happy for the girls, but he was so subdued. Something was really weighing on him. We'd all tried asking, but he wasn't telling us what was wrong. Maybe if Azula asked him? He had a soft spot the size of a Wailord for his baby girl.

The next time Azula called she sounded so high she couldn't speak right, and for a second I was backstage at the Hoenn Grand Festival with him again, watching him fail out because he couldn't even stand up from the couch he'd fallen on. Then Lucky-tchii spoke and my insides turned to ice. It only got worse when Azula explained that a legendary pokemon had tried to kill her and come very close to succeeding. It had to have been after that Gengar of hers. It was wrong on a level I'd never seen before.

Then she'd guilted me into not saying anything about the rather extensive injuries she'd received. That girl was a menace whenever anyone let her open her mouth. At least it seemed she was finally going to stop taking those pills. I still teased her about Marina though. If the brat was going to put me in a tough spot, I was at least going to get something out of it.

I still checked if she'd really captured a Suicune. I had to be sure. He'd lied about so many things to so many people so he could keep up his habit, I couldn't just trust Azula, not when it came to this. I was happy to see that she'd been telling the truth, and astounded to see a fucking legendary pokemon captured. How had she done it? Grandfather even came out of his funk for a little bit to research it, even if he was limited in how much he could do, given the flags Azula, or most likely Luna since my little aunt had probably been too injured to do it herself, had set on it.

I made myself scarce after that, her mothers and grandfather likely wanted to talk to her, or ask me if I'd spoken with her, and I didn't want to have to lie to them. We spoke daily, always after she was done talking to her little girlfriend, so I got to hear her gush about her and how well she was doing. She put up a brave face, but I could hear fear and anxiety eating her up inside as the days passed. Then she missed a day.

The next time she called I could hear pain in her voice and she was stuttering heavily. The day had come. I wanted to help her, but she was scared. She thought her gift would be dangerous to people around her, and refused, before hanging up on me. I was glad her mothers had left for Viridian that morning on some sort of security business about Team Rocket, because Garde was getting suspicious. I didn't sleep that night, and I barely slept until the day they came back. I don't think I'll ever forget Azula's screams.

43

My little sister was many things, intelligent, crazy, anxious, scared, fiercely loyal, fiercely stubborn, arrogant, prideful, amoral, a liar, a killer, loving, maybe even a coward about some things. However if there ever was something she was not, it was unwilling to sacrifice her health at the altar of her ambitions. She would go as far as she needed to fulfill her goals and deal with the consequences when she couldn't ignore them any longer. She couldn't be bothered to care about a great many things, but she positively loved and thrived when in the pursuit of power.

I'd often wondered why she lusted after power so much, it'd been her main goal in life since we both had had memory, and I'd come to the conclusion that at its root it stemmed from a deep hatred and terror of not being in control. She believed that if she became powerful enough, eventually there wouldn't be anything or anyone that could force her to do something she didn't want to. I wasn't sure she was wrong in trying, even though I knew that might shouldn't make right. She couldn't trust the world, could barely trust a vanishingly small number of people, few enough as to count them on the fingers of her hands and have fingers left over. So she was determined to gain the power to force the world to bend to her will.

I loved my sister more than I loved anything else in the world. For her I would do anything. Nothing else mattered. She would be happy, she would have no need to be afraid, even if we needed to slaughter our way to enough power to challenge Arceus itself. There was nothing we couldn't do, and there was nothing short of harming our mothers or family that we wouldn't do. Already we'd accomplished so much, had gathered such power as to challenge a living legend of the world, even if the one we'd broken was perhaps among the weakest of them all. Not even the sky was a limit for us.

Pain had made her feel out of control, so she'd sought to counter it, and in so doing had lost even more control than the pain took from her. I could feel her fear, frustration, and rage whenever she let herself dwell on it, at herself, at the world, at everything. She feared losing herself to the drugs she'd taken, and she feared the suffering stopping taking them would bring her. In the end, she feared and hated the loss of control more, and she'd prepared to stop taking the pills that'd caused her so much trouble.

Lucky-tchii had told us how bad it could get, but there was a difference between being told something and living through it. It started bad and quickly got worse. By the end of the second day I couldn't stop her pain and stop her out of control powers from devastating everything on the island, us included. The pain was so bad it leaked through our bond even when I tried to actively silence our connection. It was at this moment that I finally truly understood my sister's fears of losing control. I couldn't let her suffer, and I couldn't let her be hurt any more than she already was. I wasn't powerful enough to keep her safe from both the pain and herself at the same time. If I wanted to have the necessary power I would need to evolve. To finally take that plunge, to let go, to make a choice I didn't want to make yet.

I cried, over the loss of my form, over the loss of control. Truly it was something abominable, and my sister had the right of it. Power was the answer to any problem. I felt the well of power inside me, always ready to burst forth, always pushing to be let loose and transform me into something else, and slowly let it slip from my grip. For you, Little Sis, only for you.

Then she stopped me. My sister reached out through the agony that had become her world and held back the power herself. She knew the pain and fear of losing control just as well as I did, maybe better since she'd lived with it for longer, and she refused to let her mistakes take mine away from me. I loved her. I loved her and just for that, for caring more about me than herself I would not let her suffer, no matter the cost. She still refused. Stubborn Little Sis.

Then she told me what she wanted me to do instead, and I couldn't help but think that maybe the pain had driven her crazy. Crazier. Going home, asking our mothers for help… She was willing to face her greatest fear for me. I asked her if she was sure, for this was a big decision, and she was resolute. I mattered more to her, and whatever else, she was still my arrogant, confident sister, and she was certain that we could get through anything if we had to.

So I gathered my power, gearing up for the strongest Imprison I'd ever put on her. It wouldn't last long, but hopefully it'd be long enough to get her home and get our mothers to help. It suppressed her power, and held. Then I could finally spare the energy to render her fully unconscious through the pain. I took a minute to gather my breath. Sister wrangling was exhausting work! I recalled Starmie and Yue, and our ghosts went back into her shadow. Lucky-tchii came close and then we were in the Oak family dining room.

For future reference, Teleportation after your sister excised a malignant tumor from your souls and left behind an open wound hurts a lot. At least it hadn't been sis who'd done the Teleporting, it would have probably been even worse given her peculiar inability to Teleport like normal people. Unfortunately it was bad enough already, and sis woke back up screaming from the sleep I'd put her under. Doubly so because we'd apparently dropped in during dinner, and Daisy and sis' father were very, uh, startled to hear Little Sis' screams. When I asked Daisy where our mothers were, I couldn't help cursing at a higher power, because of course when she finally decided to ask for help, our mothers were out of town on business in Viridian City.

They sprang to action immediately, trying to help Little Sis, but there was nothing they could do. We'd needed our mothers' help. Sis had finally asked for help, risked so much, and all for nothing. I told her father the basics when he asked, because sis already felt bad enough about her relationship with him, but there was no way he was ever finding out why she was in pain and her power out of control, at least not from me. She would tell him when she was ready and no sooner, if she told him at all.

That's when he surprised us. He had something that could help? How? His lab coat was hanging from his chair, and he took a case from one of the pockets. He opened it and took out a familiar silver rectangle. The project he'd finished working on the second time we caught him drinking. He placed it on her throat and it snapped out into a choker around her neck, above the the one that had her Key Stone. Then he took out the small rectangles that had been with the silver choker and put them on her temples. They stuck to her skin, and a red light blinked on at the front of the choker.

Her power vanished completely, to the point I could barely feel her at the furthest edge of my senses. What? No. How could he? I didn't need to read his mind to know why he had those things on hand, why he'd created them at all, why he'd finished them just after sis threatened to use her power to keep him from stopping us. I barely kept myself from lashing out. His treachery was to our benefit for now, but I could tell he felt my instant hatred for his device, and to an extent, for him. At least it kept him from asking questions. I levitated sis to her room, Daisy and Lucky-tchii following behind us. At least keeping her asleep was easier now that her power was suppressed.

"Ralts." I asked Lucky-tchii if she could take care of Little Sis if I kept her unconscious until the symptoms subsided.

"Chansey!" Then so be it. I dove into her mind and set it into a loop of unconsciousness. Without her power it would take her a couple days to wake up on her own, and if she got better faster, I could wake her ahead of time. We stayed with sis all night, and I crashed after barely sleeping for two days.

After what felt like barely an hour of sleeping, but was likely more like ten, I was awoken by mom shaking me lightly. The first thing I saw was our mothers' worried faces and I knew I was in for an interesting morning. Sigh. Always one thing after another.

"Ralts."

Better to take things someplace else. This had the potential to get loud and I wasn't sure Little Sis would sleep through it if it got loud enough. Better not risk it.

"Okay, but you will explain why you Teleported in with your sister screaming in pain."

To quote Little Sis, "How best to squirrel out of this one?". Maybe her tendency towards being overdramatic had some merit. I felt like a woman condemned while walking to the dining room. Fuck. All of it made worse by the fact I could barely sense her. It felt wrong. Whatever her father had made was an abomination. Imprison didn't have a tenth of the effect those things did. I teleported on top of the table, and everyone else sat down. I felt like I was about to be interrogated.

"Alright Luna, start talking."

"Ralts."

"Don't be cute. What's wrong with your sister?" Mama Asami had a way of giving even Little Sis pause, and having that directed at me was very uncomfortable. I didn't want to tell them. It wasn't right. I didn't want to betray Little Sis' trust, and this seemed like the kind of thing they should hear from her, not from anyone else, even me.

"Ralts."

"Baby, you have to give us something. You can't just expect us to leave this alone until Azula wakes up." Mom was right, of course, but I was at a loss on how to handle this.

"Ra-Ralts!"

"So you're saying that due to reasons you're not willing to divulge, Azula was in pain and as a result her gift was out of control. Despite this you two decided to solve whatever the problem was on your own, instead of coming to us for help from the start. Worse, the only reason you tried to come to us at all was because whatever it was, was worse than you expected, and you couldn't handle it on your own. Have I got that right?"

"Ralts…" She didn't have to make it sound so bad. It had been a perfectly reasonable plan. The only reason it hadn't worked was because of an unforeseen interaction between the stronger than expected pain and her powers. Besides, we'd had Lucky-tchii to help us.

Curiosity, worry, and accusation spread through the room, focused on Daisy and I. Ah. Fuck. Mistakes were made. Probably shouldn't have dragged attention to the fact that Daisy must have been involved if we had her pokemon with us when we arrived. Judging by the rather impressive facepalm going on, Daisy agreed.

"Leave me out of this for now. To be honest, I kind of agree with her about having Azula tell you herself. As things stand, I'm pretty sure I'm going to be persona non grata with you all by the time this is over. All I have to say is that I did what I thought was best to keep her safe, and that I felt a different course of action would lead to much a worse situation. I did my best to make sure she wouldn't get worse. Judging by the fact she's here as she is, things went nearly as well as they could have."

Alarm.

"What do you mean 'nearly as well as they could have'?!"

"It was the Haunter licks, wasn't it? Or a side effect of them."

Terror.

Fuck. Way to go traitor. You've barely said a word since you found out about those and you choose now to speak up. Seriously. Now I had to clear the air about that because our mothers looked like they might throw up, or cry, or start yelling, or something.

"Ralts."

Judging by the ashen complexion on their faces, my explanation hadn't done much to make them feel better, but at least now they weren't actively thinking their youngest daughter was about to die. Now they just had to deal with the fact said daughter had come so close to dying that she'd been clinically dead a few times before she stabilized. Progress, sort of. She hadn't come out of the whole Haunter debacle unscathed, fucking not at all, especially if you counted the dependence to morphine as coming from that, but at least she was going to be fine now. Wait. Idea.

"Ralts."

Perfect. Deflect attention from us by pointing out what the traitor had done. Little Sis would be so proud of me. Now everyone was frowning at him, and the looks on their faces were getting angrier by the second. The ensuing shouting match lasted long enough to let me sneak out. Right, I'd feel bad for the traitor, but he'd created the abomination binding Little Sis' power. He deserved whatever he got. When the fighting continued for two days without any sign of stopping, I couldn't help thinking that perhaps I'd miscalculated. At least the traitor acknowledged what a terribly fucking stupid idea creating those things had been. If the Rockets ever got their hands on the technology… It could never be allowed.

Which led to my current course of action. I grabbed Porygon, and uploaded him into the compound's network through the pokedex's authenticated connection. That little exploit made everything so much easier. No need to worry about how to get through what must be ridiculously overpowered defenses when you could have them let you walk in through the front door. Our sneaky little AI hijacked the traitor's supercomputer and turned it to searching for all information about the abomination. Before long, we had everything. Psionic Suppression Choker, and Neural Dampeners. Even what little I could read about the specs was horrible. Porygon understood more of it, and I had it download everything before thoroughly deleting the files, wrecking the hard drives they'd been stored in, and finishing by leaving a programmed reboot of the whole network. There would be no trace left of those things anywhere but in Porygon. We'd reverse engineer them later so we could learn to counter them if we had to.

I walked to the kitchen from the traitor's main lab, Porygon's pokeball floating beside me. The kitchen was rather fuller than I'd expected though. Everyone was there. But if everyone was in the kitchen, then who was with Little Sis? The sudden spike of terror and pain that blasted through our bond, which had been completely silent since the traitor had locked her power, told me that the answer was probably "no one we want there". Pain meant she was hurt. She needed Lucky-tchii. I Teleported to her, and then the fear and pain Little Sis was feeling washed over the whole house and not just through our bond. We Teleported in to the smell of burned meat, and saw her writhing in pain, burns cutting through the Neural Dampeners and a horrible burned hole over the side of her throat showing where she'd burned through the choker.

Lucky-tchii sprang into action, three eggs flowing over the burns in an instant. Our full bond established itself once again and information flowed through our mind. Oh. Oh Little Sis. I held her hand as she was slowly pulled back into unconsciousness by Lucky-tchii's soft singing, drawing comfort from my presence, from the knowledge that she was safe, that I was safe, and I would watch over her. She'd almost died again, all because of the abominations the traitor had put on her. When the rest of the family ran in, I seized the advantage of surprise, smacking the traitor into the wall with a weak Psychic, Teleporting on top of him and destroying any mental defenses he might have had.

There would be no trace left of that accursed technology outside of our control, not even in his mind, nor would he be allowed to try to recreate it. A moment of frozen eternity passed, and Mama had ripped me away from him, confused and terrified over everything that had happened. That was fine, it had been enough time. Our command had rooted itself deep in his mind and soul, and nothing was left of his knowledge or memories of the abominations. Good. Whatever else happened, whatever I needed to to do, Little Sis would be made safe, and if I had to help her burn the world down and remake it in her image to make it safe then so be it.