Chương 23: Chapter 19

I released my knights quickly to reassure them that I was okay, and then recalled them so we could begin the trip back. We loaded up onto Cruiser's saddle, and the Salamence took off, making for the mainland at a leisurely rate. Of course, the colossal Dragon's speed meant that we would still be arriving back on the shore in less than ten minutes. For the first half of the ride, Drake was mostly silent. Some part of me thought that a bit callous, I had almost just died, after all.

Then again, considering what Janine had told me about other regions, perhaps near-death experiences were just par for the course in his experience.

"Sorry Drake, that I went out too far. You warned me, but I wasn't paying attention. Was stupid."

"No lass," the former champ replied, after a few moments, "it's on me. I should have swept the area, made sure it was safe."

"We were fine on the rock," I refuted, "I'm the one who decided to go for a swim, like an idiot. I should have known it was a bad id-."

"That Dhelmise could have snatched you off of the outcropping just as easily as it got you while you were swimming," he cut me off.

"Serpent's taint, it could have done the same to me. I should have made sure the fishing spot was secure, but I was in a hurry. Got sloppy." It felt like we were at an impasse with the blame game, so I changed subjects.

"What's the rush?" I croaked out, "we have all week." Drake's response was silence, but I could tell that he was marshaling his thoughts. When he finally figured out what he wanted to say, he was quiet, barely audible over the wind.

"You know Fe, not too long ago, I was accused of being out of touch. Of not understanding what the world looks like today," I couldn't see his face, but I could see his hands tightening on Cruiser's saddle, "and of not caring enough about our youth." My brain flashed back to statistics, a vindictive whiteboard maintained in Janine's office, but I didn't say anything, waiting for the former champion to continue. Eventually, he went on.

"See, it wasn't a coincidence that I spotted you out in the Battle Warehouse."

"You were looking for someone young?" I postulated.

"I was. I wanted to prove something, I guess. That I still had it. That I could still mentor someone. That, I wasn't, well, I'm not, not too…"

"Old," I finished for him, after a couple seconds of silence.

"Right," was his reply, "That." Neither of us spoke for a while, but eventually, Drake broke the wind-blown silence once more.

"So you see, I came into things determined to make you and yours stronger. It seemed straightforward enough," the man let out a dry laugh.

"Of course as it turned out, I'm too good at picking. You all came right close to beating Cutter. I thought it might have just been beginner's luck, but afterwards, watching you train those Falinks, I could see it was all effort. You didn't need my help working on things with them."

"We didn't beat him, though," I protested.

"Sure, but the fact that it was even close is telling," Drake shook his head.

"You're already doing a great job training your partners, so that was a bust. And since I couldn't help you make your Falinks stronger, I figured that I could at least have you catch a Dragon, something that I could help you get a handle on," the old sailor sighed.

"We were supposed to do that yesterday, but that didn't work out for obvious reasons. Then, when you brought up that Magikarp that was close to evolving, I figured he could work as a substitute. Gyarados are pretty close to dragons, so I figured if I helped you train the Magikarp for the rest of the week and prepped you for what to do after he evolved, I'd be able to leave you with a strong partner. Of course, that fell through for equally obvious reasons."

"So you didn't mean to evolve the Magikarp on the ship?" I asked him. No, of course I didn't." The old sailor replied, sounding upset.

"That'd be insane. I mean, I knew it was a possibility, but it was pretty much the worst case scenario. Gyarados are damn dangerous," Drake sighed.

"It was the abattoir. I didn't realize you butchered the Magikarp right there on the barge. It freaked the fucking Karp out so much, just a whiff of my aura scared it into evolving, and handing you a raging Gyarados for a partner wouldn't be doing you any favors."

"So that didn't work out either."

"Nope," he shook his head.

"You should have seen me down there, Fe, sprinting through the corridors, carrying this glowing Magikarp, looking desperately for a window to throw it out of," he chucked.

"I got lucky there was an arena down there to use, or it could have gone really bad." The mental image did elicit a small, quiet laugh from me, and I felt some of the tension drain out of my body.

"And so now today?"

"Well, since the Magikarp didn't work out, I brought us out today to try to find something. Had to go out into international waters because capture laws are so strict in Ferrum."

"Unless you're bounty-hunting," I supplied.

"Right, but most Dragons aren't exactly overproducing," Drake replied, dryly.

"So to the ocean we went. A Skrelp or a Horsea would make a great partner, and I've trained up plenty of both."

"But we didn't have any luck." Drake shook his head.

"Not a lick. And the longer the day went, the more I felt the schedule slipping away. It takes a bit of time to get a Dragon-type to respect you, and I wanted as much of it as possible this week to guarantee we could work through that stage. So, I got sloppy. Didn't fully check out the areas we were fishing in." I couldn't see the old sailor's face, but I had a clear view of his back, of the way it tensed, "And you almost paid for it." He slumped, like a dozen years had just fallen on him.

"I'm sorry Fe. I should have been watching out for you. Serpent's balls, I shouldn't have let you get into the water at all. Not without Marin escorting you, anyway." He leaned back, and his voice went low once again, as he stared up into the blue sky.

"Really, everything we've done over the past couple of days has just been me screwing up over and over," and then, even quieter, barely audible over the wind, "Actually, feels like it's been going on for more than a couple a days." I went to speak, and ended up having to cough a few times, to clear my still-scratchy throat.

"Maybe so," I finally started after getting the Lotad out of my voice box, "but you're still the best shot I have at learning how to battle properly. My next best option is practice matches at the Battle Warehouse, and I don't think that's a long-term method to getting better."

"I already told you that I couldn't really find anything for you to do better with your Falinks."

"My knights are the best," I said with full confidence.

"They're not the problem. Maybe you've been overthinking this, Drake. It's not my Pokémon who need help, it's me. There's so much depth, so much strategy to standard battles that I just don't know about, and you could teach me." The former champion fell silent, staring out over the ocean from Cruiser's back. He didn't continue, just brooding, apparently, but I found the reticence suspicious.

Drake wasn't stupid, he would have known that the best way for us to improve would have been for him to fill me in on standard battles. Which meant… what? That he couldn't? That made no sense, the man was a former champion. Even if he was 'out of touch' any advice he had to offer me would be worth it weight in gold. So he wouldn't tell me then. That left the why. Why wouldn't the old sailor teach me? It had something to do with the former champion's philosophy, it had to.

"Answers," I started musing out loud.

"It's about answers." Drake turned to look at me over his shoulder, but he didn't interrupt me.

"Your answer is that understanding should be taken. The answer you came up with," I continued, gaining certainty.

"You had no problem telling me yours, when we first met, but now you won't give me any. You won't answer my questions– which means you want me to find my own answers," the realization dawned on me, "And you think if you provide them, I won't go and seek them out myself."

"They never do," the old sailor turned back to look forward, while shaking his head.

"Don't get me wrong, kids can go far with someone else's answer. Hell, I've met gym leaders who are just regurgitating what their momma fed 'em."

"So, really gross imagery aside," I suppressed a shudder, "what's the problem?" He turned to face me again, fire in his eyes.

"The problem is that it squanders their potential. It makes for bright sparks, snuffed out under the weight of another's truth." The former champion scoffed, "The best of the best, the true masters? They all have their own answers, Fe. Some of them claw their ways out of it, like the Wataru kid, but most of those poor folks who never get a chance to find it for themselves?" His voice dropped, a potent cocktail of frustration and sorrow.

"They don't make it. They keep using someone else' answer until it doesn't work for them anymore, and then they try to beat themselves into shape to match, and it doesn't work, Fe. It never works." A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. I gave him a few seconds, but the rant was apparently over. The old sailor slumped, his fury spent, and turned back to face the oncoming city.

"So what changed? Why were you willing to tell me then, and not now?"

"Because you've got potential, Fe. I see it in you. You have the spark. You could be a master. And if I give you the wrong advice, say the incorrect thing? I could crush that spark forever," the man broke off, turning away again, but somehow, the wind carried his quiet words to me, "and I'd forgotten what that responsibility feels like." I felt the thrill run through me. The validation. The recognition.

"Anyone can be a master," I made a protestation I didn't really mean. Drake snorted dismissively as he turned to face me again, "Sure, anyone could be a master, just like any Pokémon can be strong, but how many of them will?" I didn't even get a chance to answer, an actual objection bubbling up in me at the comparison.

"Precious few," he continued, "It takes a certain determination to get there. Or maybe a certain insanity. Whatever it is, it's vanishingly rare, and seeing that chance wasted? It burns me up." It took me a few seconds before I made the connection.

"So is that what the whole 'journey' thing is about?" I asked the foreigner with dawning comprehension.

"About finding your answer." Drake nodded, his cap bobbing in the wind.

"It is. Something about being out there, seeing the world, testing yourself against it. That gets more people there than anything else. And still, the odds aren't good," he shrugged, "But hell, even if you don't make it, I still think most people benefit from a journey. It helps you find yourself. Helps you grow up."

"Well I don't have that opportunity, it's not something we do in Ferrum," I explained, "but I still need to find my answer." The wind whistled by us for a few moments, before Drake said quietly, "You could." I looked at him, uncomprehendingly.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, if, and this is just an if," Drake clarified.

"If I joined the Stone brat's Elite Four, I would have a few sponsorships to give out every year. They'd go to first-year trainers, who would represent me on the circuit. In return, I provide them a bit of support, here and there. It's all a bit political, but forget those games. You could come to Hoenn, and do your journey there. You could do some gyms, hell, you could compete in the conference, if you make it, all on my dime." I hadn't ever thought about that as an option. It seemed like a generous offer.

An extremely generous offer. Even still, it wasn't tempting at all.

"I appreciate that Drake, I really do, but I don't think it's right for me." My answer seemed to throw the former champion for a loop, and he had to fight down a coughing fit, my answer startling the man so much he lost control of his diaphragm for a few seconds. In fact, I'm pretty sure I even felt Cruiser slow down, just a bit.

"It's not that I don't appreciate the hypothetical offer," I told him, hurrying to explain.

"It's an honor, I think." I didn't have the cultural context to be sure, but it seemed like the right thing to say.

"It's just, Ferrum is my home. My world. It's where my family, my friends, my job all are. I can't just leave for a few years. What would my life look like after that? What would my career prospects be?" Drake turned to look at me, and there was a pressure, in his glare. Maybe it was aura, maybe it was just the look in his eyes. Whatever it was, I got the message loud and clear. If being the best was important to me, being a master, then none of the stuff I brought up should matter.

That gaze told me a lot about Drake, and it also forced the real answer out of me.

"And–" I took a deep breath.

"It would feel like failing. Like, I couldn't cut it here, in Ferrum, so I had to go somewhere else. It would feel like running away." That got Drake to simmer down. His eyes went from suspicious back down to considering, as he looked at me.

"What motivates you, Fe?" he asked me after a few moments.

"Why do you train?"

"Because we need to be strong," I replied with conviction.

"Why? Why does it matter?" The old sailor insisted, his eyes boring into mine. Why? Why was it so important to me, that my knights and I were strong. As strong as possible. Stronger than anyone else. Why did it matter? In my heart of hearts, I knew. I could still remember that moment in perfect clarity, could remember, watching Bernard Cuprin ascend that podium, and begin his reign as the strongest. The very pinnacle. A moment that I knew I would never forget. I brought my eyes up to meet Drake's gaze.

"Because we have to be the best that ever was," I told him.

"Because there's no better way to tell the world that we were here. That we were someone. That we will be remembered." The dragon master held my eye for a few seconds, and I thought for a moment there was pity in his eyes, but then it was gone, fast enough that I wasn't sure, replaced by the same flinty glare.

"You'll never be the best in the way that matters to the people here, you know that, right?" The question stabbed deep, right to the heart of me. It brought up bile and hate and rage and pain that I'd been burying, but the wound was old, scarred over.

"I know," I told him, through a choked throat, but I had no more tears to shed.

"Still I– we won't let that stop us. We can't." My ankle hurt, and my throat burned.

"Now more than ever." He stared at me for a few more seconds, and then looked away, with a grunt.

"Fine. Fine. Good enough, I suppose. I won't give you any answers, but we have a week. Maybe that's enough time for you to find some." - We were almost back at my apartment, flying over the city, but we had to slow down, to comply with air traffic laws. Janine had drilled some of them into my head, the most important boiling down to 'don't go fast over buildings.' but there were still a ton I hadn't memorized yet. As Cruiser leisurely flapped through the air, Drake spoke up again, breaking me out of my musings.

"Look, Fe, about that fish of yours," I looked up at Drake in confusion.

"What about them?" Drake didn't reply immediately. The former champion wore a look that seemed unfamiliar on his face. It took me a few moments to realize that the normally assured sailor was feeling conflicted about something. A moment of silence passed, and then another, as Drake came to his decision.

"Look, there's one more thing about Yowashi that I didn't tell you. Most people'd say it's just silly trivia but… it might be something more. I just don't want to get your hopes up." I thought of the brave little fish, of their fruitless attempts to save my life, which might have ultimately cost them their own, had things gone differently.

"Tell me, please." The former champ levered a sigh.

"Ok, look. Don't know why, but you can stuff any number of Yowashi in a Poké Ball." I blinked a few times, unsure of how to parse the statement.

"What do you mean?" I finally settled on trying to clarify.

"I mean that you can get two, three, hell twenty or thirty of the little suckers all in the same ball, if they're all near one another, and they all agree to it. I don't know what the upper limit is." The sailor leaned back, so he could look at me over his shoulder.

"They were vanishingly rare, back in Hoenn, even before they died out, so I mostly never saw more than a few dozen in the same place. There was a big rules debate over it, long while back. Eventually the league decided that Yowashi count as individual Pokémon, so you couldn't fight with more than one at a time, no matter how many were stuffed in your ball."

"Ok…" Drake was right, it was interesting trivia, but I wasn't yet seeing why he'd been so reluctant to tell me.

"Right, look, there was one time, back when I was a squirt, little older than you." The former champ's eyes took on a far off tint.

"This was back before the war. Things weren't the same, it wasn't– the world was a different place. A scarier one. I ran into this one trainer, once. He was older, maybe in his twenties, real rugged type, one of those explorers, who disappears into the wilds and doesn't come out until they've got something new to parade in front of everyone. You know the kind."

The old sailor looked at me like I should be familiar with the sort of person he was talking about, but the only thing his description conjured up were images of movie archaeologists from trashy Unovan action flicks. My unfamiliarity must have been apparent, because Drake sagged, somehow looking more tired in that moment then I'd ever seen him.

"Right. Like I said, world was a different place. Anyway, I thought I was hot stuff, and challenged him to a battle. This guy agrees, but when he pops his Poké Ball, he releases what must've been hundreds of Yowashi. Serpent's Balls, maybe thousands of them. I've never seen anything like it before or since. All those little bodies, acting as one, undulating and hovering in the air.

It looked like the most powerful Infestation attack I'd ever seen, except with fish, instead of bugs, and an actual Serpent-damned Pokémon, not a move. Damn thing swept through my entire team in a couple of minutes, wasn't even close. When it was all over, I yelled at him, screamed how it wasn't fair. This was after the ban on cramming a bunch of Yowashi into a single ball and using them like one Pokémon, so I accused him of cheating.

Guy calmly looks me in the eye, and tells me that the whole mess of fish is actually just one Pokémon. And sure as shit, at his order, all the other fish vanished, leaving just one Yowashi behind."

"Was it an evolution? Some kind of alternate form?" I was having a hard time envisioning what Drake was talking about from the description, but I was hungry for more information, for some way to empower my new partner.

"No. It was a Yowashi, I'm sure of it," the old sailor shook his head.

"Just, not like any of the ones I'd met before. Something about that Pokémon Fe…" Somehow, the old sailor's eyes grew even more distant, "Something about it was off. Wrong. I didn't like it. Not then, and not now." He levered a huge sigh, "But it was strong. Serpent's taint, it was strong." He looked up, making sure to catch my eye.

"I wasn't really sure if I wanted to tell you, but I figured you and that fish deserve to know, if you're in it for the long term. Just… be careful Fe. There is potential in that little fish… but I'm not sure what lengths you're going to need to go to if you want to draw it out." It was my turn to look down, at the ball clutched in my hands.

"Well, I owe it to them to try," I said, finally.

"They tried to save my life down there, Drake, when the kelp thing had my ankle. They must have pissed it off, because it grabbed them too. I caught them because– because I thought at least one of us should make it out." Drake was silent for a few moments, before grinding out, "They didn't just try, they did save you." I looked up at him, uncomprehending.

"Them, and one of your little partners. I'm not sure which one. They started causing a ruckus when you went under the water, and got my attention. I released Marin where I last saw ya, but visibility in the kelp was shit. He probably wouldn't have found you in time, except for your little fish." It took me a moment to put it together.

"The eyes," I finally said, my own lighting up, much like my new partner's had.

"They glowed in the dark."

"Bright as the Wishmaker's Star, them peepers," Drake confirmed.

"I could see 'em from the stone we were fishing from, and Marin could certainly see 'em, down there in the dark with you. I breathed out heavily, trying to get a hold of myself. I looked down at the still Poké Balls in my hands, and then clutched them to my chest.

"Thank you," I whispered as I lost control again. Apparently, I wasn't all out of tears yet. The spheres shook comfortingly in my hands. The reminder was good, that even when things were at their darkest, I wasn't alone.