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Chapter 85
Part 2
"What do you mean, you can't find Domo?" I repeated, suppressing the heart-flickers of panic. "He's not with Team Remorse? Where else would he be?"
"Look, I don't know what else you want me to say," Kerzek said plainly, crossing her arms. "Daemon has no idea where Domo is."
"Did he go on a mission or something?" I tried, my voice reaching a humiliating squeak. "He can't just run off for no reason! What about Team Cog? Do they know where he might have gone?"
"I like how you assume I can just walk into Team Cog and check their surveillance logs," Kerzek returned, sticking out her tongue at me. "I'm not a member anymore. No longer have the privilege."
I paced in a nervous circle in front of the wall-portal. There were only three minutes left until I promised Hunter I'd be back to speak with him. "Aughhh! Why are all the Pokémon I need nowhere to be seen?!" I roared at nobody. "How do you expect me to pull off anything clever when I have none of the resources I need?"
"Well, to begin with, maybe you could explain what your bright idea was to begin with?" Kerzek said. "There's a few minutes left. We could think of a workaround, maybe."
I peered at the frozen flame I'd fished out of the supply closet and sat carefully in the center of the planning table. I grumbled. "I was planning to set up a scenario where Hunter would have the easy option to betray Char," I explained. "Like something where he could trap me in a rocky cave-in… or something. Depending on what he would do, I could have saved my life with the frozen flame, or I could have made Domo take his Mew form and read Hunter's mind. Failing that, I just wanted to see if he contradicts what he told me if he thinks he's speaking with Char in secret. It was the best I could come up with at a moment's notice, because it's the last thing he would have been expecting."
Kerzek shrugged at me. "Yeah, I got nothin'," she said. "Maybe just wait until Char comes back and talk with him? Seems like the most straightforward option to me."
Grumble, grumble, went my inner ember. I could feel the tingle in my quills, ready to explode in frustration if I didn't suppress them. "No, I can't let Hunter trap me in a conflict of interest like this," I said, mostly to myself. "I don't care what he tells me to do. I'm not going to manipulate Char into making a decision he wouldn't have otherwise made. But at the same time, I do want to help him get into the base if he really is trustworthy. The question is… how can I find out for sure whether he's trustworthy?"
"Hmm! You need to think smart!" Lyre encouraged me. "Think like a human!"
I cast an evil glare at her. I never told Lyre, or anyone but Char and Eva for that matter, the truth about my past. Even knowing how Lyre gets most of her odd ideas from the ether somehow, that one caught me off-guard. "Who said anything about humans?" I muttered at her.
"Human like Char! Think like Char, think like humans!" Lyre elaborated.
"Who told you that Char is a human?" I half-demanded, my suspicious glare intensifying upon her.
"Meh. Fine. I told her," Kerzek admitted, scratching the back of her head. "Something I knew from back when I… had access to the classified information. Didn't see much harm in telling her. Always figured Char would eventually tell everyone that secret himself."
"I don't suppose you know any other classified information about any of your other teammates," I tested.
"Oh, yeah. Plenty," Kerzek said with the most annoying mysterious grin. "But I'm bound by honor. Not saying a word. Unless, y'know, circumstances call for it."
I wasn't worried about anyone knowing the truth of my own history, mostly. I never spoke word of it to anyone in the base before. So unless there were extremely intrusive psychics lurking in the shadows somewhere that also liked to blab about what they knew to undeserving individuals, I had nothing to worry about. "Y'know, though, you're right," I said to Lyre. "I need to think more like a human."
Think like Char. If I were Char, how would I go about judging Hunter's character?
Or would I even trust him myself? Would I get someone else to help me judge him?
Well, yes. Of course I would. That would be Eva, obviously. I'm sure she pries into everyone's minds all the time at Char's mere whims. But if it weren't for Eva… and Domo isn't an option at the moment, either… anyone else?
Another loose connection came together in my head just then. And let me say, it was a very loose connection. More like the hint of a possibility of a connection. Char was recently given top-secret orders by High Intelligence that only Team Ember knew about. That being the mission to track down Scythe. Funny thing: it wasn't just High Intelligence that always came up when it came to official business like this. It was always a particular member of High Intelligence that was always mentioned.
"Kerzek… this is somewhat a shot in the dark, but… is it true that Xatu and Char have a confidential relationship of some sort?" I randomly asked. "If there are any confidential secrets you happen to know about Char and Xatu… I believe current circumstances are calling for it."
"…Yes," Kerzek admitted, looking sideways, as though scared that someone would catch her spilling a secret. "Who wants to know, exactly?"
"Perfect," I said, settling on a new resolution. "New idea. Go get Xatu for me. Tell her Char wants to talk to her at the academy."
"Why me? Dark-type? Because she won't know that I'm lying?" Kerzek asked.
"Yep. Exactly," I said.
"Alright, sure," she returned half-heartedly. "And while I try to go personally bother a specific member of High Intelligence, what exactly are you doing in the meantime?"
"Well… not much, to be honest," I told her, eyeing the portal. "Just taking a little walk, more or less… and we'll see where things go from there."
Before I stepped through the portal, I was sure to take a moment and simmer myself down – I knew that a fellow fire-type would easily sense whether I were emotionally compromised. I stepped back through the portal and thankfully found the Flareon waiting patiently in the exact same place I'd left him.
"Any luck?" he asked, perking up in interest.
Instead, I half-ignored him and beckoned him to follow me. "C'mon, we're going to take a walk," I called to him. "We're going to take a little walk to Iron Town. Just you and me."
I could tell he wasn't thrilled about not immediately getting the answer he wanted, but he knew I was up to something. He tentatively followed behind as I crawled up and out of the secret hideout and locked the door behind me. Surprisingly enough, his personal servants had not been waiting for him outside this entire time. Interesting. I wasn't expecting Hunter to give them time off like this.
But once we were alone together, walking the lonely and barren path beneath the chilly afternoon sky, I nonchalantly asked him: "I know how much Eons hate being asked this, but I'm too curious: what made you decide to be a Flareon?"
"Is this some sort of interview?" Hunter mumbled at me. "Please tell me you're not trying to make friends. In my line of work, friends aren't exactly something I can afford."
I hummed. "Well, at any rate, if you expect me to help you win over good rapport with Char, you're going to have to try a little harder to win me over first. Merely being 'fellow flamekeepers' isn't good enough. Not unless you're willing to tell me why you chose to be a flamekeeper."
"Depends which answer you want," he replied. "Do you want the glorious narrative that I'd put into my autobiography, or the painfully uninteresting real reason?"
"Look me in the eye, and figure that out for yourself," I challenged him.
The Flareon rolled his eyes at me. "I was cold," he admitted, fluffing up his fur. "I decided one day that I hated being cold and I didn't want to be cold any more. That's truthfully the only reason. It was only later that I learned my resilience to extreme temperatures gives me certain advantages in the particular line of work which I chose. I possibly would have also chosen the ice-type evolution, but I did not have the materials needed at the time, which made my choice a bit easier."
"I see," I hummed. "Not the worst reason for evolving I've ever heard, to be honest. Next question: what made you decide to be a skip tracer?"
He blinked. "That's a question I'm not generally asked, and I'm not entirely sure if an answer exists," he told me. "I realized one day that I was good at the job."
"What made you realize you were good at the job?" I pressed. "What exactly made you realize you had this particular skill?" I wondered. "Did you find a Pokémon who'd gotten lost?"
"I found a legendary Pokémon," he explained. "I found Cresselia. Based on nothing but rumors. From there, I considered becoming a legendary hunter. Until one day I realized the thrill never came from finding a legendary Pokémon. The thrill came from finding a Pokémon who didn't wish to be found. After finding a few lost Pokémon for sport, I realized I could charge for my services. Since then, I've only taken jobs more difficult than the last."
"What gave you the impression that you had a talent?" I asked. "What made you better than the rest?"
I could tell he was getting annoyed – like I said, it's easy for one fire-type to tell when another fire-type is annoyed – but I knew he wasn't going to refuse to answer my questions. Not when he needed my help. "I realized one day, the way a Pokémon's mind works," he said to me. "It's all about the internal narrative."
"The narrative?" I pressed relentlessly.
"Pokémon don't just live," he told me. "They tell themselves a story about their own life. About why they made all the choices they make. Why they're the good guy. Why they've always made the best decision possible in any circumstance they've encountered. It's this life story which they tell themselves, over and over, which dictates all their beliefs and their actions. And as I've learned, if you figure out what a Pokémon's narrative is, you can predict everything they'll do. Once I learned to ask the right questions and learn about a Pokémon's narrative… it was like I could start reading everyone's minds. Of course it's easy enough to read body language, but I started to see the narratives forming in the traces which a Pokémon leaves, or doesn't leave, behind them everywhere they go. It's like reading body language of a Pokémon who's not even there."
"Is that why you couldn't find Saura?" I asked. "Because you couldn't decipher his narrative?"
He grumbled at the ground. He was still clearly peeved about the whole Saura incident, but in a strangely honorable way. And I agree, it's nice to find a worthy opponent sometimes. Sometimes.
"In part, yes," he said. "In the end, it seems Char was the piece I was missing from Saura's narrative. Though I'd heard a Charmander had joined the local resistance, I didn't realize he'd become close friends to Saura. Had I known that… I'd have leveraged Char somehow. Mark him as a high-profile criminal, have him captured at first sight, use him to draw out Saura. But without that part of the picture, I didn't understand his motive for joining and staying in the resistance. Didn't understand his motive for abandoning his family he seemed to adore. Once I realized far too late that he joined the local resistance force, I was faced with the option of finding the base entrance, or flushing him out. Went with option two. Decided I could lure him out using his family. But you likely know how that went."
I found it interesting; Saura hadn't exactly told me that part of the story. But I gave him a knowing look and I commented, "And now you're going with option one. You're finally weaseling your way into the resistance base. Is that right?"
"Again, if I'm to find Adron the Terrible, I absolutely must speak with anyone and everyone who knows him personally," Hunter insisted, huffing at me. "This is my last mission. I'm taking it seriously. If I cannot take it seriously, you cannot expect results."
I waited until the base was far behind us before I said what I wanted to say.
I waited until we were as secluded as possible, at the corner where the country road merged into the main road going to Iron Town. No trees around, nowhere Pokémon could be hiding or listening in on us. I think Hunter understood the gesture; there was a worried spark in his eye as he turned to look at me, as though he finally registered that I might be a threat to him personally.
Before turning onto the main road, I stopped and turned to Hunter. I picked my words carefully. I mentally asked Jacaranda, perhaps for the last time, whether he thought this was a good idea. Deep down, I already knew it was what he would have wanted.
I said: "If I'm going to get you into the base, I need to make sure our interests align. And maybe this is the part where I come out and tell you that I'm something of a hunter myself, and although I don't specialize in finding the same kinds of Pokémon that you find, it would be a mistake to think you could betray the Gold Division and get away with it."
I could have pushed it a bit further, but… I figured that was enough. I didn't want to be Eva.
"Hmm. Understood," he said tentatively. "Though I am not sure I'm quite understanding your insinuation, I expect that I'll come to understand in time. I will keep that in mind."
"But that might not be the direction I want to take this conversation," I said further. "Hunter… if your line of work is what brings you the most joy, I think you should reconsider your retirement. I can already tell you don't actually care about that money. You only care about your track record. You care about being the best. You accepted this assignment only because you find it a worthy test of your skill, and you know this sort of assignment doesn't present itself every day. You should not have to retire just because you've proven yourself the greatest in the world."
He twitched his ears like I'd struck a nerve. "I don't see how else to circumvent the conflict of interest this creates with my future clients," he said. "At least not without choosing a side between the resistance and the Master. And a life where I must answer to someone other than myself is a life I do not consider worth living. Unless, what? Are you going to present me with an alternative?"
"When this mission is over," I said to him, "would you consider working for me? Full-time?"
In his black beady eyes, there flashed a whole gambit of reactions to my question. Confusion, intrigue, appall that I could possibly be so presumptuous to ask for his undying loyalty. But those reactions didn't matter; the only reaction that matters is the final one he lands on.
"That would greatly depend on your expectations," he said sourly.
"Well, as I said, I am something of a hunter myself," I replied nonchalantly. "And like you, it's my life's true passion. I've long since retired from my original endeavors, but only due to the loss of my business partner. Ever since, I've been awaiting the resources and the right opportunity to start over. Char has been a potential candidate for a new partner, but it seems like you'd be more suited to the position. As for my expectations: I hunt a very particular kind of Pokémon. A kind of Pokémon which is by nature a rarity and a challenge to find."
"Legendaries, then?" Hunter scoffed. "You're a legendary hunter. I've heard of your type before. I've told you; I've little interest in that line of work. I don't see why I should be excited to meet Pokémon who are intrinsically superior to me."
"Rarer than legendaries," I told him.
"Don't tell me you're a shiny hunter," he grumbled. "Another career prospective I cannot stand. Absolutely pointless."
"Rarer than shiny Pokémon," I said further. "A type of Pokémon so rare, it can prove to be a challenge convincing anyone they even exist."
He looked sideways at me, trying not to betray his growing curiosity. "And what happens then, with these particular Pokémon?" He asked with forced indifference. "Kill them?"
"No, quite the opposite, actually," I hummed. "I hunt them because they are endangered. The rest of the world wants them dead. But I think they deserve better. Especially because I am one of those very Pokémon myself. I am referring to Pokémon who are reincarnations of… deceased humans."
That got a nice explosion of shock and awe from him. First he looked at me like I was crazy. Puffed all his fur up. Then he narrowed his eyes and got all serious again, giving me a look like I was Mew or something. "You're very lucky that I've heard of this phenomenon before, and from very official sources," he told me. "Otherwise I absolutely would not have believed you."
"I figured you would, in your line of work," I said. "My kind are hunted ruthlessly by the Master. If you haven't been given an assignment before, I imagine you've at least heard of other hunters being given such assignments. As for me, I intend to build a sanctuary where humans might find safety and support in acclimating to this world, the kind of support that I wish I once had."
He tilted his head at me like a confused dog. He clearly wasn't sure how to react to this situation. He didn't know whether to be reverent, or indifferent. I could tell he was only just trying to imagine an image of what my human soul might look like squeezed into my body.
"Yes, you are very correct," Hunter stated, still looking amazed at me. "I've heard of human hunters. The Master has at least two internal divisions dedicated to sniffing them out and eliminating them as a presence on this continent. I've never involved myself because I've only ever accepted jobs for specific targets."
"Do you think I might convince you to try?" I asked gently. "I'm certain you'll find that humans have far more interesting personal narratives than most of the Pokémon you've ever met."
"I suppose I might try," he told me. "But to begin with, I'm going to need more clarification on how you intend to implement this plan."
"Well, as for the logistics of such a project, they haven't been entirely decided," I explained in earnest. "I might leverage the Gold Division as a catalyst and make this a resistance team, which seems like the most ideal route to take given their security and their access to resources, and given that the Master wants humans dead, I probably won't have trouble convincing humans to ally against them. Otherwise, I might make this an independent community and attempt to hide them underground somewhere. Or I might convince Char to shift focus and accept humans to his own team, since… he just so happens to be one of them himself. I have a feeling it would align quite well with his own interests, though I'm waiting for a better moment to present him with the possibility. That's all up in the air at the moment. But if you're on board, I'm not passing up the opportunity to make this happen."
There. That was the final nail that I hoped would stabilize this entire plot of mine: the thought of working toward a unified goal. Even if such a thing never actually came to fruition, just the planting the idea in Hunter's head that he, Char, and I might potentially have a business partnership in the future, I hoped would be enough to unify our interests and give the Flareon a reason not to consider us all useful idiots he might play games with whenever he gets the chance. Besides, I could tell just by the look in his eye that he, like all the rest of Amberan Pokémon I've ever met, has bought in to the general sentiment towards humans. He regarded me with a new, likely subconscious, layer of respect.
I knew immediately, at least, that he would think more than twice about double-crossing a human.
"So, what do you say?" I said, finally turning the corner and leading him down the mainline path towards Iron Town. "Is this a prospect you'd consider? Granted, this is an altruistic endeavor more than anything, but I guarantee it would provide you with a never-ending challenge befitting of your skillset. You would never need to retire if you don't want."
"And I would not need to consider myself strictly an ally to the resistance or the Master, depending on how arrangements are made," Hunter considered. "Hmm. Quite favorable. Of course, I would need consultants to help me understand the way humans fundamentally behave. At least to begin with. I assume you would help in that regard."
"Yes, and possibly Char as well," I assured him. "I'm hoping he eventually agrees to be on board with this project. He seems to have his own agenda at the moment."
"And Saura?" Hunter said curiously. "How do you envision Saura reacting to this idea?"
"I think Saura will go wherever Char goes," I told him.
Hunter grinned to himself for only a moment. He actually enjoyed the idea of working with Saura. I think he enjoyed the thought of being friends, or at least allies, with the one Pokémon who ever bested him. Maybe it was his way of pretending his one true failure wasn't really a failure in the end.
Hey, I can analyze a Pokémon's narrative too.
As for me, I began to feel happy flickers in my soul. Just the thought that the Lost and Forgotten project could be returning at last… Just the thought that it was so close…. It deeply pleased me on a level I can hardly explain.
I, too, had failed once, and still had yet to really make up for that failure by doing it again, and doing it right. I always envied Jacaranda for that – just knowing that when he performed his final act, when he died, he had such a smile on his face, knowing he was finally accomplishing what he'd once failed to accomplish. I knew he died as happy as a Pokémon could possibly die, and I made a silent promise to him that I'd somehow go out the same way.
The old flames, those I'd long-assumed had burned out, were ever-so-slightly returning – the flames I could only describe as my Cyndaquil flames. And while I didn't want to completely revert to the inner Cyndaquil again – that would bring back far too much pain – it felt nice to have the older flames come back and dance with the new. Made me understand myself a little more, if that makes sense. Gave me more of a complete picture of who I really am.
There was still something missing – something I couldn't quite put a finger on. I knew I was not yet a full and complete person. I had a sneaking feeling I knew what it was, and I wasn't quite ready to confront that fact just yet. But I realized that's why I wasn't yet ready to be a Typhlosion. I decided I would save the feral-shard for the day when I was finally ready to confront that final part of myself, that final hole in my heart. Until then, I was more than happy with who I was. Zachel would be getting my feral-shard to put into storage as soon as I next met her.
After we made the whole walk to Iron Town, mostly in professional silence, I brought him to the Cliffside Academy, and I think he realized at once that it was a front for the resistance. Probably smelled it in the air, felt the echoes of thousands of Pokémon deeper down in the caves. And there, before we activated the memory-wipe, we met up with Xatu. I asked her telepathically if she was upset at me for deceiving her into coming. She silently replied that she did not consider it a deception – she trusted Char, and therefore also trusted my judgment.
Fair enough. Though still, it made me wonder what sort of rapport Xatu really had with him.
Xatu gave Hunter the mind-exam and determined him to be trustworthy enough for the resistance, even though she noted to me that her mind-exam only tests a Pokémon's current intentions; it doesn't predict with much accuracy whether those intentions will change in the future. I told her I probably had everything under control. Still, she told me to keep an eye on him.
But the weirdest thing, though, was that before we entered the mind-wipe zone, we ran into Eva. She was just… wandering around there, in one of the Cliffside Academy classrooms, and she seemed rather shocked and unprepared to see us.
"Hey, girl. Where've you been?" I said, probably a little more passive-aggressively than I wanted. "Could've used your help today. What's going on? Char doesn't even know where you went!"
Eva got all shifty-eyes on me, which I thought was pretty strange. "Where do you think? I've been searching for Adron," she told me.
"Searching for Scythe? On your own?" I said, blinking away my disbelief. "Why? Just, why? What do you think we hired him for?" I accused, motioning to Hunter.
Eva gave an evil glare to Hunter. "I figured that if I could find Adron on my own, we wouldn't need him to begin with," she said to me, probably a little more passive-aggressively than she wanted. "We wouldn't have to let him into the base, and we wouldn't have to waste such an extortionate amount of funds on him."
Now, Eva was an odd one. I accepted this by now. She was a little crazy, but I figured it was the Lyre kind of crazy where a lot of it is just genius you're too dumb to comprehend. Or at least, that was the benefit of the doubt I gave her, seeing that she was thousands of years old. You probably couldn't live that long of a life without learning a thing or two about the world.
And I know she's a little crazy when it comes to Char. But that's just… love. That's just what love does to some people. But I knew that we all have different tastes in partners, and this was Char's problem to deal with. If this is what he really wanted in a partner, it's not something I had any right to judge.
But this… when I met Eva at the academy that day… something was bothering me about her much more than usual. It was something in the way she stood, the way she acted, the way her fur stood on end, the way she twitched whenever I accused her of something. Like I'd just walked in on something when she was expecting absolute privacy.
And yes, I considered the fact that it might have been Domo in disguise. It wasn't. I found out soon after that Domo was in the base all along and Kerzek was just an idiot who didn't consider he might have been in the mess hall having lunch.
Weirder still, I got the impression this odd behavior of hers had nothing to do with Char, either. Like if it'd been Char who walked in instead of me, she'd have acted the same way. After all, she knows I'm a human, too.
"So… where've you searched?" I awkwardly tried asking her.
"Everywhere," she said blankly. "Everywhere I could."
"Any luck?" I tried.
"No," she said, almost stomping her foot in frustration. "No. I've had no godforsaken luck. And believe me, Scarlet… if I'm having no luck, I doubt your Flareon is going to fare any better. But I won't stop searching."
I almost wanted to laugh at the way she'd just barely stopped herself from calling me 'human' and I was about to tell her that Hunter knew my secret now. But then she darted out the room, inexplicably, like there was no time to lose. I tried following her, wanted to shout something at her like "Hey, should I tell Char you said hi?" but by the time I peeked into the hall, I'd already lost sight of her.
I gave Hunter a "Don't mind her, she's crazy" look, and at last I led Hunter down through the tunnels and into the Gold Division base proper.
Like every fire-type Pokémon I've seen, Hunter's face lit up like a newborn hatchling the moment beheld the majesty of the central column, with all its symmetry and ghost torches and glimpses of dozens of doors on each floor leading who-knows-where. Yeah, I felt the same way, and it's a lot to take in. So I gave him a moment and enjoyed his reaction.
He burst into a long, maniacal laughter. As though he couldn't get over how easy it had been in the end to just walk in here.
When he stopped laughing for long enough, he said, "Oh, Adron, Adron. You're not hiding from me now. This is where our games truly begin. With this much access to your past, I'll do what even Adiel failed to do… and I'll find you."