The sky threatened rain, but Chivonne and August were still out in the back field. "Good one," he said, coming over to pat Chivonne on the back as she landed from doing multiple flips while flaming, creating a loop of fire. "Let’s take five. So anyway, I was going to bring this up before. Do you want to have another meeting with what’s-his-name, his charizard you saw yesterday?"
"No."
"Just 'no'? What was wrong with this male, huh?"
Chivonne lay on the grass, rolling around just to feel it on her back. As if it was any one thing; there didn’t even have to be anything "wrong". This male had been intelligent and easy to talk to. But those raised by trainers grew up so quickly that they were often left in the dust, emotionally and sexually; and their philosophies on life were different. This male believed in loyalty to his trainer and the "honor" of doing battle.
"After all, you battle just like me," he had said.
"I do. For the money. I plan to buy a future for our kind in the wild. Me and my future mate," she had lain out next to him, "could fly out and live in the Charmountains. Or Charizard Valley, or wherever. . ."
"You’re joking," he had said. "Living in a drafty den, being attacked by who knows what, not even knowing where your next meal is coming from?"
That had pretty much ended their discussion. There were some kinds of experience that battles didn’t cover, and likewise, that being wild didn’t either.
"I mean, Chivonne, I left the room and everything. I understand if he wasn’t perfect, but come on, no one is."
"I’m not asking for perfection. I’m asking for competence. I have to know he can take care of himself. "
"He looked good to me."
Chivonne gave him a look that asked how in the world could he be judge. "Maybe he had his own reservations. Male charizards, those ready to mate for good, aren’t slobbering for every female they see. They’re as picky as us. We didn’t hit it off."
August sat down next to her, his hands resting on his shins. "I’m just saying it because this is the fourth male you’ve seen. Even I dated the first girl I went out with, for a few months."
"I used to 'date' too. I knew several males back in the Charmountains. But I’m done playing around."
"This isn’t playing around. I want you to be happy. You want a mate, so I’m doing all I can. You will eventually pick someone?"
Chivonne swished her tail, charring the grass below it. "I appreciate what you’re doing, it’s very thoughtful. But I have no idea. Would you be in the mood if it were a blind date arranged by, say, Pokémon?"
"That’s not the same."
Chivonne nodded silently. She felt bad putting August through this, but she was not going to compromise something that would last six thousand years just to suit him. It was not his life. Was she really being picky in wanting this to be arranged and developed by her and her future mate, certain things kept to themselves? Was she so unreasonable in wanting there to be aspects of her life that humans didn’t have a hand in? August’s species had a way of forgetting they didn’t have to control everything just for it to work.
"It’s the same, August. It’s just as mysterious and complex."
August shook his head, his arms draped on his knees. "It is different. There aren’t that many mates for you to choose from."
"I have more time to do it," said Chivonne. "You don’t. Why haven’t you chosen anyone?"
As soon as Chivonne spoke those words she wanted to snatch them back. Both of them knew that she was a good chunk of the reason why August had problems with his girlfriends. But he didn’t argue now, and she admired him for it. What a charizard he would have made.
"I’m sorry. I know I make things difficult."
"The thing is that you shouldn’t. It just shouldn’t be a problem, you’re a Pokémon. Those girls--if they’d been serious they would have stuck it out."
"Do you miss any of them."
August shrugged. "A little at first, but it goes away. Did you every have a--boyfriend before the war and everything? You’ve said you had other. . ."
"Not before the war. I was too young to feel any interest. But after it--one day I had just eaten and then I flew looking for shelter, another lair towards the other end of my home range. A huge male--the biggest one I’d ever seen--swooped down on me. I was completely surprised. He grabbed me and flew me to a cave--he could practically tuck me under his arm. His name was Chub--he said I looked like his mate, whom he’d lost in the war. The poor male had gone mad. He pinned me on the rocks at the edge of the cave."
"He forced you?"
"Almost. I scratched him hard in the belly; it took him by surprise, and I slipped out from under him. Once we were in the air, I defeated him. He was as shocked as I was."
"I thought this was a dating story."
"Yeah, I mated with him when he came back from hunting. He flew off after the fight." To collect his dignity more than his prey. "He was very good. Mostly his size."
August was blushing. "Why did you--after what he did?"
Chivonne shrugged. "He aroused me. I just wanted to make it clear that he wasn’t going to mate me unless I wanted it too." After a few months it had burned out, a fire without fuel. He was as willing to fly away as she was. She never saw him again. Chivonne rolled onto her back, feet in the air. "I met a few other males, before everyone was gone."
"Do you regret--doing any of that? Do you miss--him?" August shrugged, red as a charmeleon.
"I don’t regret anything." What was there to regret? “I. . . miss everyone I knew. Not that I long to see Chub again--I’ll just always remember him. We only lived together because we wanted to mate. We didn’t like each other much.” But he had been wild. They all had been. They all had stirred something in her that trained Pokémon failed to. They were standing on opposite sides of a river, too distant to connect.
“Guess it’s not as personal for your kind.”
Chivonne rolled back on her stomach, picking at the grass. “When you share it with your real mate, it becomes something you don’t talk about, like I’ve just been talking. That was play, it was masturbation.” I wonder sometimes if my soul mate’s dead, she almost added, but held back, afraid, like she were looking over a cliff’s edge with her wings tied. She ducked her head, trying to look under at his lowered face. “Do you feel better knowing we’re even?”
The deep blush began to leave his face as he smiled back. “We’re not actually even. Guys don’t get that lucky.” Blushing again, he said, “Well, I guess it’s not all it’s cracked up to be anyway.”
“It isn’t.” Actually it was.
The wind picked up and the first tiny raindrops fell, they got up to head back to the house. Daninger and Lunia were leaving for a private Pokémon tournament tomorrow morning.
“I can’t get her to breed, I can’t get her to go to another meeting with that male, I’m sorry,” said August to Daninger as he and Lunia packed their suitcases. It rained hard outside; Chivonne was downstairs making dinner. “She says she wants a wild male.”
“Sounds to me like a disobedient charizard,” said Daninger. “Sure you don’t want me to train her for a few weeks?”
“Thanks, but she wouldn’t agree.”
Daninger folded a suit jacket and placed it on top of matching pants. “I know. That lizard dislikes me.”
“Why?”
“She’s very stubborn, and very smart. Not to mention her ego could barely fit in a gym. She doesn’t like the fact that Lunia and I head this household. Plus the mating thing’s making her moody. And if she does find a mate, she’ll be ten times worse. If you try to prevent her from seeing him, she could become hostile.”
“Not to me.”
“She’d turn on you in an instant. Wild charizards are unpredictable.”
“Chivonne’s trained.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.” Daninger pressed the clothes down, leaned on the suitcase and zipped it shut. “Chivonne would be roughly 600 years old now. She was alive when they flew wild all over this continent. Her perspectives are different. She’s acting like she’s trained because it’s her best option, not because she has been moved in any way by this family. Chivonne means to see charizards fly wild again, and she’s making money to put towards it. Took me a while to figure her out, but I knew there had to be a reason she throws so much energy into something she hates.”
“Well there’s nothing wrong with that, right? Would be good for nature.”
“What concerns me is what else she could be planning in order to achieve it.”
He shrugged. “What?”
“I have no idea. Just don’t be so quick to trust her.” Daninger stood both suitcases side by side on the floor. “But there is something important I wanted to tell you. While Lunia and I are gone these three days, make sure Chivonne doesn’t try to leave the property. There have been several reports of Team Rocket hitting the area and they’d love to get their hands on a specimen like Chivonne. I’m saying this because she tends to make her trips and things when I'm not here. She’s doesn’t realize how the big wide world could hurt her, and that I made that rule for her protection. She’s been lucky so far.”
That wasn’t the impression August had of Chivonne. And he had heard no reports lately about Team Rocket, other than the usual. “Yeah, sure, no sweat,” he said, waving as he backed out of the room. “Good luck on the, uh, tournament.”
Chivonne clicked and typed on her computer. The war had set technology back; she wondered how many things had been lost.
Hacking, though, had easily reinvented itself. Daninger apparently still did not know, even after six years, about her hacking into his computer through the Internet, and then when he had ceased to use a continuous connection, routing his machine to hers one-way with the main power lines. As long as the house had power, she had access to everything. However, as she sifted through the files, she encountered a new firewall. Apparently the suspicion was two-way.
Her tail burned brighter as she began hacking it. Like flaming through masonry, the new challenge only motivated her more. If it was protected, it was important.
At last she found a file titled “list57” (1557 was this year) and clicked it.
Be @ Yellow Town on the 28th, all will stay at Jemma’s house. Meet @ Yellow Gym in the gym room @ noon on the 29th. Lunia has to be in uniform beforehand.
A reminder that he had not yet deleted, was her best guess. Either way, tomorrow was March 28th. Chivonne clicked up her map and looked the place up. Yellow Town was abandoned, ghosted since the end of the war. It was some distance, but not too far to fly in a day. Flying might be the only way to get there, since no express routes or even roads led to Yellow Town anymore.
She poked August’s shoulder. He turned around from hanging up and tucking away his phone to see Chivonne with her free-Pokémon ID tag around her neck on a gold chain. Daninger had left about an hour ago. “Is Dan clairvoyant or something?” he said as he looked her over from head to toe.
“What, he thought I might be heading out?”
August gave a laugh. “Well I already knew you’re clairvoyant.”
Chivonne laughed too. “What did he say?” she said as she got something from the fridge, to snack before the flight.
“He warned me not to let you go anywhere.”
“All the more reason for me to go. August, please promise to tell no one I was gone. I’ll be away a day at the most. This is important.”
“I can’t lie to Daninger. He’ll see it all over my face.” August leaned his head down into his hand.
Daninger lies to you all the time.
“Where are you going?”
Chivonne walked in a circle. “I don’t want to endanger you by telling you. Please trust me, and don’t tell Daninger. I don’t know what he’d do to you or me if he found out.”
“Can I go with you?”
“No.” Chivonne looked at the floor.
“Just ‘no’?”
“I’m going into a dangerous area.”
“Why?”
“Because there’s something I need to know, it’s personal. Please, if you tell Daninger about this it could put--me--in danger.”
“I should know then! Are you going to a city? Just tell me where. . .”
“I can’t.” Chivonne covered her face. “I wish I could.” She hugged him; he was a good head taller than her now. August hugged her back.
“I trust you,” he said stroking her wing.
“And I trust you.”
"Take care of yourself."
Chivonne glided in the early evening, putting up with the sting of the light rain. Using her natural sense of direction, she beelined it for the hilly, forested area that hid Yellow Town, traveling over areas that nothing ground-bound could cross. The government needed to do something about criminal activity in the ghost towns. They should level them.
The forest was reclaiming the roads and buildings that had once been a young town killed before its time. Chivonne lit on the outskirts, in a small clearing near a cracked, weedy road. It was still drizzling, and afternoon was losing its light. She had not seen anyone, but she would not fly up to look; she was too visible from the sky, especially at night. A charizard couldn’t hide in darkness.
Now to find Yellow Gym. The note had said to meet there tomorrow, so maybe she was ahead of them. But Daninger and Lunia had to be somewhere besides home. She came to a large building in the town square, not a far walk from the outermost roads. Holding her tail as low as she could without lighting anything, she crept out of the underbrush. She had better get in there before it got too dark and anyone passing by would spot her.
She debated trying to find this Jemma’s house, but would probably see all she had to at this gym meeting. Besides, there would be less risk of being found.
She found the gym doors and tugged on them. They were locked. She knocked hard on the door before dashing into the shrubbery and watching for someone to come out. No one did; this town still seemed deserted. She began trying the windows till she found one, on the 3rd story of the building, that was not locked. She perched her toes on the sill, slid it up and climbed into the dark.
Holding her tail in front of her, she saw a floor just a few feet down and landed inside. She heard a noise. Whirling around, she recognized the sound as a water drop. The roof was leaking. Limp with relief, she set about looking for the gym room. Finding it, and seeing that it too was abandoned, she circled it to find somewhere to hide. A loft near the ceiling, was stuffed with old boxes, mats, and other equipment coated with dust. The metal stairwell leading to it had fallen apart; Chivonne landed on the railing and leaped in, sneezing in the dust. Stomping on the floor, it felt sturdy, so Chivonne began rearranging the objects to create a cubby. The floor was so far below that if she allowed herself only a small peephole, any light flickering within would not be noticed by near-sighted humans. All she had to do was avoid lighting these wooden boxes and combustible, mostly plastic mats. She extended the whole cubby all the way to the window, so that if someone sent a flying type up here she could slip out unseen. She took out the few panes still hanging onto the frame, and popped the frame out. All the better to hear noises outside.
The smooth, cool floor was fireproof, like virtually all gym rooms, so it was tail-safe. In her cubby, Chivonne napped. For the first time in a while, she dreamed about Blue-eyes, and woke with a wonderful, painful throbbing up her belly and down her tail that quickly retreated. Light was coming up through the square peephole. Chivonne uncurled, stretched everything but her huge wings. She crept over to peer out. Late morning light streamed in the dusty windows, and down on the floor human voices murmured in conversation.
All the humans, about two dozen, were dressed in black uniforms with big red R’s on the shirt fronts, and black boots and gloves. Her suspicions had been right. Daninger was in Team Rocket.
And Lunia?
Everyone but Daninger and Lunia seemed to be there now, making about forty people. The light through the window looked like noon. Then, from the far end of the room—Chivonne’s right—two separate doors opened.
All the members arranged themselves in two rows on the outsides of the doors, so whoever stepped through would pass by all of them.
Lunia stepped in through one door, fully dressed in Team Rocket uniform except for one detail: the R was missing.
“Prepare for trouble,” she shouted, striding forward.
Out the other door came Daninger, dressed in a black suit and holding Lunia’s R out in both hands. “And make it double.”
He was a Team Rocket boss.
“To protect the world from devastation,” said Lunia, walking past the other members.
“To unite all people within our nation.”
“To denounce the evils of truth and love.”
“To extend our reach to the stars above.”
“Lunia.”
“Daninger.”
“Team Rocket circling the galaxy day and night.”
“Bow in terror to our might.”
“That’s right!” said some small, unseen Pokémon beside Daninger. Chivonne couldn’t see what it was--people were blocking her view.
At the end of the rows Daninger and Lunia faced each other. Daninger pinned the big R on her black shirt. “You are now my partner. Every mission we ever take on will be with us as a pair.”
“Our first mission,” Daninger said as he turned out to the two rows of people, “will be to investigate the missing ball of Marius Mewtwo. As you well know, we have the one Master Ball in our possession already, but we must find its other half. We cannot allow the existence of an invention that would render all Poké Balls useless. In my research I have uncovered a hint that was previously overlooked. In the tapes made of his last hours of life, Marius’s last word before he dropped dead, was not a word, but someone’s name. I cannot reveal it at present, for it is too top secret. Lunia and I will be working on this mystery, and everyone else here will be on call to investigate should anything come up in his or her field of work. Other than that, you can continue on your current assignments. This is just to let you know that this new lead has surfaced and I will be actively working on assignment again. This means, of course, that if anybody tries to bother me with trifles, I may have to do some re-assigning. Is everything clear?”
They murmured yes’s.
“Are you still looking into the capture of your brother-in-law’s charizard?” said a member. Daninger turned on his heel.
“For now that is on hold. The specimen is proving more difficult than I imagined. As for my brother-in-law, he has no idea I or Lunia is associated with the Team. That makes him safe.”
The other members mumbled agreement.
Chivonne smelled smoke. Her stomach flipped as she turned to see that her tail had lit a neglected dust bunny, which, lifted by the flames' wind, brushed against the side. The fire grabbed the box, gaining new life in the bone-dry timber. Her hands came down on the flames; in mockery they slithered around her fingers.
"Hey, is that smoke up there?" said a human voice below as Chivonne pressed her wing against the box. But it crackled from within, and the flames licked higher, framing her wing like lace.
"That's not smoke, that's a fire! Go, Gyarados!" said a woman as Chivonne crawled through the smoke-filled cubby and launched herself out the window.
Behind rocks well clear of the gym, Chivonne torched her wing clean, and started the long and secret journey home.
She stayed under cover in the woods, trying to put as much ground as possible between her and them. Making her way up a low mountain face bordering the bulk of the town, she spied Daninger on a walk. Half a gasp escaped her before she slipped behind the trees. He had not seen.
No one, not even Lunia, was with Daninger as he walked along the path. The boss must be on his lunch. Well she was on hers. She crept up behind overgrown rocks, and peered out, her long neck stretching out like a snake’s; her orange eyes watched him stroll the trail below. No one would connect the deed to her, after she ate her fill and incinerated any remains. She thought of swooping down and getting her gold claws in that flesh; she crouched, her wings lifting against the leaves. Her tongue swam in saliva.
But he was the only one with information about this Marius ball, on which the survival of her species and many others could rest. Pokémon everywhere, free at last. If nothing else, they could know again the passage of days, and life outside a battle arena. What other one thing could grant so much? The chance would never come again, or to anyone else. She let her wings fall, and Daninger walked on in the sun in his black suit. He might lead her to the light after all.
