Chương 33: Chapter 27

Calling Donna annoying was unfair, really. It wasn't that I thought she was obnoxious inherently, it was just that certain personality traits she demonstrated wore on my nerves sometimes. Her incessant cheer. Her irreverence. Her tendency to gossip. Her inability to leave well-enough alone.

"So what's gotten into you lately?" Normally, I would have dodged the question, but Donna had timed her attack well. Janine and Wilson had gone ahead, utilizing the latter's teleporter. I'd since learned that the mysterious bird Pokémon was a Xatu, a Flying and Psychic-type known for its precognition. The rest of us had to endure two hours in the saddle as we skirted the edges of the forest, running along the plains for as long as we could. Philip took the lead of course, atop his Gogoat, Pauline.

The Luminosian pureblood left a vibrant trail of grass behind her that the entire herd of Skiddo glided over with practiced precision. Mark, our tech expert, was next in line, followed by a small procession of Skiddo carrying loads of Maus-wrangling equipment. Donna and I brought up the rear, and the green-haired ranger was mercilessly taking the opportunity to interrogate me while I had nowhere to go.

"Everything's fine, really," I tried to deflect, "Just working through some stuff, is all." I vainly looked for some method of escape, but as I already knew, the line of Skiddo was set, and there wasn't going to be any adjusting it until we made it to our destination.

"Nuh uh," Donna's normally lackadaisical expression was uncharacteristically sharp. We'd finished my combat training a few weeks ago when Donna had pronounced me good enough to run away at least, so it'd been some time since I'd seen this side of her. It was easy to forget because of lackadaisical nature and her carefree demeanor, but Donna was strong, as was her team.

Stronger than everyone at the station, bar maybe Janine, from what I understood, and the sergeant only had two truly powerful Pokémon partners, for all Stella could do strange and amazing things. Donna had three. I tried to stand up to her scrutiny, which poked and prodded at my exterior like a sharpened blade, trying to slice through the awkward atmosphere between us. Eventually, the woman groaned.

"Look, Fe, your excuses might work on people who care about your opinion of them, like your friends, or family, but it's not gonna float with me," the green-haired ranger explained.

"I don't need you to like me, just be willing to work with me. Especially if I'm going to be taking responsibility for you on this mission. You have to admit, it's weird. You disappear for a week and come back way stronger, but then your head's not the game, and you've been showing up at the station less and less. What's gotten into you?" It was gratifying to hear that Donna thought I'd gotten stronger, but that praise also came with a tinge of bitterness.

More powerful we may have been, I'd still yet to beat any of the older woman's partners in a training battle. I tried to keep my expression from showing my sour feelings as I composed my response.

"It's– complicated," I finally said, after trying, and failing, to find a way to summarize my feelings. I let the silence stretch for a few moments, and then reluctantly continued.

"It's not that I don't want to talk about it, it's just that– I have a hard time finding the words."

"Usually that means you don't want to talk about it," Donna dryly cut through my lie.

"Ok, yes, I don't want to talk about it," I acknowledged with a bit of frustration in my tone. The other woman answered with silence, and I took a steadying breath. Getting upset with Donna wasn't going to help anything. Worse, it was unfair. The ranger corporal had stuck out her neck for me so I could go out on this mission, after all. Even if the older woman often got on my nerves, that didn't mean I had any right to be ungrateful.

"You know how you always knew you wanted to be a ranger?" I finally started to explain.

"I do remember telling you that, yes," the green-haired woman remarked.

"Right. Well for me, growing up, the only thing I wanted was to be a battle trainer." I couldn't see Donna's face, since looking over my shoulder while riding a Skiddo was a recipe for disaster, but I could easily hear the confusion in her voice.

"Hold on, I thought you had synergy sickness. Didn't you get tested?" I actually knew the answer to this one, and I couldn't keep the bitterness out of my voice as I replied.

"Mandatory testing got discontinued eight years ago, three years before I was old enough for it. We could have paid to get a test, but they literally discontinued it because there hadn't been a documented case in five years."

"Ah," I heard from behind me, "and so you didn't know until just recently?"

"I found out right before school got out, so a bit over six months," I replied, trying to keep my tone airy.

"So after I was a bit adrift when I found out that I wouldn't be able to do a normal battle break."

"I see. And then you ended up with the ranger corps?"

"Yeah. A recruitment letter made it to our apartment, and it seemed like a good way to still get to train with my partners while exploring a career path." After a few moments of silence passed, I realized how that statement, in conjunction with my recent lack of enthusiasm for ranger training, might have made things sound to Donna, who was very firm in her belief in the ranger corps and its mission.

"Not that I feel like I'm settling or anything," I hastened to explain.

"Learning how to be a ranger has been really interesting, there's just been some other things distracting me recently."

"Mmmmmm," I heard a considering hum coming from behind me, surprisingly audible over the rustling noise of hooves siding across grass.

"And is this mystery thing going to keep distracting you?" I thought about lying, I really did. I could probably pull it off too. We were so far apart, and there was a lot of ambient noise around us. In the end though, the only thing lying would accomplish was protecting the status quo. And if Donna's impromptu interrogation was proof of anything, it was that my current efforts probably weren't going to cut it.

"Probably," I admitted, both to the other woman, and to myself.

"So what's going on then?" The green-haired ranger asked impatiently after a few moments of silence passed.

"It's not easy to explain, okay?" I replied defensively.

"Give me a bit."

"Fine. I guess we've got time." A few minutes passed, as I composed my answer. The passing landscape whirred by us as we made haste to the clearing created by the mauses, but like Donna had said, it'd be close to an hour until we arrived. I wasn't going to be able to stall that long. Eventually, the wearying sense of pressure coming from behind me forced me to start.

"So that week back at the end of April, when I was suspended? I took the opportunity while we had the time off to look for places to battle."

"Back-alleys?" I heard the other ranger ask behind me.

"At this point, I'd rather call them standard battles," I told her.

"But yeah. My partners and I can't do Ferrum Battles, after all."

"Right," Donna acknowledged.

"So did you find your fights?" There was something in her voice that I couldn't place. Maybe if I could have seen her face, I could have interpreted it. Without that recourse, however, all I could do was continue to explain.

"Eventually. First, I went to the harbor district, figuring that foreigners would be my best bet."

"I guess I see the logic," Donna acknowledged.

"Weren't you worried about the danger though?"

"This was before the murders," I refuted.

"The docks have been locked down since. But when I was able to get in, I found this facility called the Battle Warehouse. It's a semi-official battling venue for sailors. Apparently they're pretty ubiquitous in ports and harbors. While I was there, I met a really experienced foreign trainer who was willing to do some mentoring while he was in Ferrum."

"So you spent the week getting tutored by a random stranger?" Donna asked, skepticism heavy in her tone. Honestly, I was surprised by how critical she sounded. I wouldn't have thought the whimsical woman would be so opposed.

"We're actually related, as it turns out," I reassured her. Sure, the relation was incredibly distant, and also by marriage, but Donna didn't need to know that.

"And like I said, he was really experienced." Something flashed in my mind's eye, an old man, brow furrowed in concentration, locked in a staring contest with a pair of enormous, ochre orbs.

"More than that, actually, he was a master. I know it sounds unbelievable, but I'd swear it to anyone." As much as my opinion on my mentor as a man had soured, my impression of him as a trainer had only improved with hindsight. It turns out, you didn't need to like someone to respect them.

"That's– quite the tale," Donna replied, doubt obvious in her voice. It was honestly sort of refreshing how straightforward she was, in retrospect. Especially now that I was semi-unconsciously comparing her with a certain someone.

"Well whether or not you believe me, he taught me a lot. Showed me that there's so much more to Pokémon battles than what we learn here in Ferrum. He was– proof. Proof that my partners and I can be strong without needing to be able to synergize. But ever since he left, it's been hard for my knights and I to improve. Honestly, we're struggling to even maintain the same level."

"Because you can't find battles anymore?" When I didn't answer for a few moments, she took my silence for the agreement that it was.

"And getting stronger is important to you?"

"Crucial," I told her, putting as much determination into my voice as I could.

"It's– it matters. To my partners and I. More than anything." I braced myself for demands of an explanation, or at least some kind of question, but Donna remained conspicuously silent for some time. I didn't break the peace, content to ride quietly, so it was almost five minutes before either of us spoke again.

"Ok. I get it. Tell you what, Fe. Put your all into this. Follow instructions, learn something, show me you can still lock it in, and then we'll see if I can help you with your little problem." The other woman sounded uncharacteristically solemn, and I had to resist the urge again to turn around and look at her.

"You don't need to bribe me. I get that this is a big deal. I'll put my all in, no matter what."

"Good. That's the right attitude." - My situation wasn't the only thing we discussed on the way to the clearing. Donna also helped to expand my understanding of mauses, their behaviors, and what we did about them. This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

Like I'd surmised based on the specialized equipment and prepared response, Maus outbreaks were something that occurred, while not frequently, at least often enough that most rangers had experienced a few instances over their careers. A maus itself was an individual creature, sort of like an animal, except that it lacked many vital characteristics common to non-Pokémon creatures. Most important organs present in the majority of animals, for example, are nowhere to be found in a maus.

Instead, the creature is little more than a nervous system, something approximating a brain, a cartilaginous skeleton, and a rudimentary digestive system, all formed out of syn. These maus-constructs, as they're often called, act sort of like extensions of their progenitors, Tandemaus and Maushold. These are actual Pokémon, and they produce the animal-like creatures in the same way many other Pokémon species would create eggs. Unlike an egg, however, a maus is not disconnected from the creature that spawned it.

Rather, a link exists between the two, and most of what a maus consumes is converted to energy, and sent along this link to fuel the progenitor. Towards what end? Producing more mauses of course. Most of these constructs are destroyed by ambient dangers or wear and tear, but by law of averages, some small percentage of them survive long enough, and consume enough mass to kickstart their metamorphosis into an actual Pokémon.

These individuals, also rather confusingly known as mauses, catalyze enough energy to turn their syn-derived bodies into actual flesh and blood. They develop organs and brains, and are far closer to normal animals than in their previous forms. Except, they still lack proper digestive systems, which puts them into a tough situation.

If they don't consume enough, fast enough, their body will break down, now that it has actual functions to support, but if they consume too much, their body, unable to expel the generated waste, will develop sepsis. The only escape is to metamorphose, joining together with another maus to form a Tandemaus. This induces another transformation, their heads growing larger to support a full brain, further organ development occurring, and syn and type-energy blooming as they fully turn into an actual Pokémon.

But most mauses never find another maus to pair with. Their time to live is devastatingly short, and they're mostly surrounded by false fellows. Investigating these imposters takes time, and that's not to mention other sources of attrition that might claim a maus before it finds a partner. The end result is a savage numbers game, one rather unfriendly to the average maus. Except for instances where a Tandemaus or Maushold finds its way into an area where there is a lack of natural predators to cull their offspring.

Certain Ghost and Grass-types can extract the syn stored from a maus-construct, and these natural predators mostly keep mauses and their progenitors in check, but mundane predator Pokémon will find little sustenance in a maus-construct, made mostly of syn as they are, and therefore have little incentive to hunt them. At least at first. Without the constant pressure of predation, maus counts can quickly balloon out of control, especially in places with sufficient vegetation.

The resulting population explosion is both difficult to control, and has the potential to be ecologically devastating to the area the mauses move into. And the issue doesn't end there. Rather, it becomes an exponential problem. Higher maus-construct survival rate means higher maus survival rate, which means more of them pair up and metamorphose into Tandemaus. More Tandemaus means more maus-constructs, and that brings us back to the start, in an exponential cycle of reproduction.

According to Donna, in another two weeks or so, this rogue group of Tandemaus may have annihilated Cesnine forest in its entirety. The Pokémon of the forest would slow their efforts down, once they realized the existential threat the mauses presented, but it was hardly guaranteed that they'd get far enough ahead of the problem to answer it. A few sufficiently powerful Pokémon may have eventually been able to handle the situation, but that wasn't for sure either.

After all, the Tandemaus and Maushold would be growing more powerful as well, as their numbers swelled, and they have a vested interest in protecting their expansion. Negotiation was sometimes a possibility, but only for small conclaves. A large group of Maushold and Tandemaus would work themselves into a feeding frenzy, their incessant need to consume and reproduce forming their intent into a sort of unstoppable gestalt.

From there, the ferocity with which they would then decimate their surroundings precluded fully peaceful resolutions. Which is where our specialized equipment came in. First were capture stylers. I'd heard of these before– apparently they were popular in the ranger union– but I'd never actually seen one.

The strange, top-like devices were supposedly used in place of Poké Balls to temporarily ally with wild Pokémon, acting as a conduit to assist rangers in calming down and communicating their intentions to their temporary partners. They'd be instrumental both for requesting help from local Pokémon to suppress the maus-constructs, and for pacifying the wild Tandemaus and Maushold leading them. Next were the pacification arrays. A rather ominous name for what turned out to be a rather benign device.

These energy cages used similar technology to battle arenas to create a full enclosure into which we could deposit captured mauses. The array would put any small creatures inside to sleep, allowing us to keep the non-construct mauses contained until they could be safely relocated somewhere they wouldn't be an ongoing ecological disaster. The final tool we needed were specialized Poké Balls. These I was actually familiar with, as I often bought them from the ranger station myself for catching Wigletts.

Unlike a standard Poké Ball, these spheres came with locks, and automatic data transference, allowing authorized users to instantly send the ball and its contents into a linked storage system. Using this, we could separate and contain the Tandemaus and Maushold responsible for the outbreak, once again keeping them in check until they could be safely released. With this equipment in hand, my colleagues would be working to pacify the encroaching mauses before they destroyed the forest.

We'd even called in help from another ranger station, this one attached to Tellur Town, to the north. And my job, as it turned out, would be babysitting one of the pacification arrays, making sure the device went unbothered while everyone else brought their captures back to the device. - It's not that I didn't understand the importance of my role, I reflected bitterly. I wasn't even the only one stuck doing it.

A half a kilometer away, Mark and his partner, Icebox the Arctibax, were doing the same thing as my knights and I. Further on, Wilson's team guarded a third device, as the man himself coordinated with groups of wild Pokémon. Across the clearing, I could just make out the glowing barricades formed by one of the arrays brought by the Tellur rangers, and I knew from the short, impromptu briefing Janine had conducted earlier that two of their number were guarding two additional devices.

If anything, I should probably have been honored that I was being trusted with such an important responsibility. Protecting the arrays was key to the operation's success, and if one of them was breached by a Tandemaus or Maushold, freeing its inhabitants, it could set our work hours, perhaps even days behind. So I understood all of that. But, to use a phrase I'd learned recently: Serpent's taint, it was boring.

Just a few hundred feet away from us, there was the equivalent of an active warzone, and we were relegated to rearguard duty. The roiling carpet of mauses and their progenitors were matched by an equal tide of wild and trained Pokémon in an all-out brawl that was both blinding and deafening. The mauses themselves were, mostly, of little consequence. Except that they were in the way.

We couldn't just indiscriminately blast everything in the clearing, because those sorts of wide-area attacks wouldn't just knock out the wild Tandemaus and Maushold, it would also kill untold numbers of innocent, living mauses. So instead, the other rangers had to carefully pick through the flood of bodies, gradually weeding out the real mauses from the constructs, bringing the former to the pacification arrays and destroying the latter.

Our wild allies mostly just killed all of their victims indiscriminately, but there was little we could do about that except try to save as many of the actual mauses as we could. Unfortunately, this procedure was complicated by the presence of Tandemaus and Maushold on the field. These Pokémon were almost indistinguishable from their progeny at a distance, and blended well into the roiling mass, only popping up to strike with fierce resistance, before fading away once again into the press.

Those represented the real challenge. The opportunity for a battle that my knights and I were loath to see denied to us. We had the discipline to hold our position, but it was more than a little frustrating, being relegated to just watching the action. At least we were making some kind of progress. My coworkers each demonstrated their expertise in spades, working together to churn through the mass towards the center of the clearing.

Philip was paired up with Mark, the older ranger leading the charge from atop Pauline. Man and Gogoat worked together to coordinate the entire Skiddo herd's efforts, and they made quick work from their end, the Grass-types gentle vines the perfect tool for scooping up errant mauses and testing their nature before taking the appropriate action, whether that be crushing them into motes of dust or delivering them safely to the pacification array. Much closer to me, Donna rampaged along with her partner, Mitt.

The Copperajah could force the ground to roil like water, sending out waves of Ground-type energy in carefully controlled arcs. The attacks weren't all that physically debilitating, just some slight swaying and rocking, but their effect on syn was far more dramatic, making them the perfect tool for dispelling the constructs while leaving the real mauses mostly unharmed, and ripe for Saber the Skarmory to scoop up and deliver to us.

A high-pitched keening noise to my left proved that Janine had adopted the same strategy, directing Stella the Clefairy to let loose successive Disarming Voices to weed out real mauses from the constructs. Wild Pokémon recruited by Philip would descend on these revealed animals, scooping them up and bringing them to the array he was guarding with his team.

None of the rest of us had any chance of convincing the wild Pokémon to act so delicately, but Janine's second-in-command was, as always, in a class of his own when it came to interspecies communication. Across the clearing, other lights and sounds indicated the activities of the Tellur rangers, though the distance and the hilly terrain precluded me from getting a good view of what was going on. Not to mention that I was trying to avoid focusing on the distracting battle as much as I could.

After all, for all it was boring, my role was important. And there was no way I could conduct it correctly while diverted. At least my knights were with me, doing a far better job than I at keeping focused on our surroundings. Their spherical bodies were constantly casting about, eyes wide open for any errant mauses, or worse, an actual Tandemaus, creeping up on us to free their fellows. Their determination was honestly inspiring.

I knew they were itching for a real battle just as much as I was, but they'd been given their assignment, and nothing was going to keep them from completing it. Mana was out of her ball as well, floating under her own power for now. She couldn't maintain the hydrokinesis indefinitely, but there wasn't any reason not to let her help out.

The more eyes we had for now the better, at least until we cleared through the first layer of defenses and started working our way towards the more powerful Pokémon at the horde's center. Progress had been slow at first. The sheer volume of maus constructs flooding the clearing already dwarfed the numbers I'd first observed with Wilson earlier in the day. It really put into perspective the term 'exponential.'

They'd been moving furiously, gorging themselves on the vegetation and trees at the edges of the barren expanse they'd opened up in the forest's heart, and then retreating back towards the center of the clearing at the behest of their unseen masters. But now, we were making headway, pushing back the tide of white bodies incrementally.

The pacification arrays were filling up with captured mauses, and the snap/hiss of closing Poké Balls periodically rang out across the clearing, proof of a Tandemaus or Maushold captured and safely stored. I waved at Saber as the bladed bird dropped off another pair of mauses, gingerly depositing their quivering forms in front of me so I could slip them into the array. They joined a growing collection of still, white bodies, peacefully sleeping inside the shimmering barrier formed by four metal corner-posts.

Things weren't completely smooth sailing, though. A huge crash caught our attention, and Saber took off again, diving back into the fighting. Mitt was staggering about, flashes of white energy erupting around him as small, while shapes darted between his towering, tarnished legs. With a flash of light, Grinder emerged. The Ferrothorn had been deemed a poor fit for the mission, his spiky exterior too dangerous for fragile mauses, but apparently, something had changed.

Sure enough, a crackling voice came from the radio I'd been given, and I recognized Donna's aery tones. Her words were dead serious, however, as they broadcast to all of the rangers nearby.

"This is Techne five, I've got three Maushold on me, and twice as many Tandemaus. We've got the main horde moving and coordinating now. Everyone brace, over." Janine's voice followed a few seconds later, "Techne one here, copy that. I've got two Maushold on me. Confirmed, we're seeing a concerted push. Sun's getting low, so things are just gonna get more active from here on, over."

"Techne two, copy," came Wilson's voice, followed by Philip as Techne three. I made sure to sound off when my turn came, like I'd been taught. I had the designation Techne six, and after me came similar acknowledgements from the four rangers from Tellur Town. As I clipped the radio back on my belt, the fading light cast over the clearing gave me my last clear views of the absolute frenzy of activity in the clearing. Flashes of energy erupted as the maus horde's main defenders awoke to protect their claim.

White beams and shimmering coronas accompanied by the roar of a dozens of moves proved that things were just getting started, and as the floodlights we set up earlier powered on, my team and I settled in for a long night, intent on guarding our little piece of the rapidly accelerating battle.