Chương 43: Chapter 35

What did a Pokémon trainer look like? On the one hand, it was sort of a stupid question. If anyone could be a Pokémon trainer, then a Pokémon trainer looked like anyone. Ipso facto. And yet that wasn't the full story, was it? Because while anyone could be a Pokémon trainer, not every trainer would be remembered. And something I was starting to realize, was that the ones people remembered, the ones people identified as trainers weren't just great battlers.

No, to stick in people's minds, you had to be strong, and you had to have style. What did that mean? Well, case-in-point, my recent match against the woman calling herself Peaches. Sure, she hadn't impressed me overmuch with her battling prowess (though she was certainly holding back, using weaker Pokémon, if nothing else), but I couldn't get her out of my mind. Everything about her, the neckerchief covering the bottom half of her face, the rancher hat, the navy-blue cotton shirt, it was all telling a story.

I was starting to think even the mud-splatters on her outfit were strategic and carefully positioned. Let alone how she talked and held herself. But was that authentic? Was it who she really was? A rancher cum battler, who came into the city on weekends to fight below the concrete jungle's underpasses? Or was it all a production? A character she created to really sell her identity as a Ground-type specialist. A carefully crafted fiction that she knew would stick fast in people's minds?

Short of trying to hunt the woman down, which struck me as more than a little bit of a faux pas, I had no way of knowing. So, what did it matter? Was it important, if that was the real her, versus one she'd just decided she would show to the small world of the underpass? That thought plagued me, as I stared blankly at the television, the news a static hum in the background.

"Scary stuff. What is City Security doing?" A voice broke me out of my reverie. I leaned my head over the back of the couch, seeing my Mom hanging over the edge of the kitchen counter, eyes on the screen. Some part of me filled me in on what I'd been missing as I blinked a few times.

"Yeah. I actually passed by one of the security cordons with Alyssa last week, when we were going to get our ears pierced."

"Eight murders, in just two months!" Mom tutted, "Just what is this city coming to?"

"Some people are saying these might be Pokémon attacks," I pointed out, "Which would make these killings, not murders." Mom made a face.

"I hadn't heard that theory. Aren't the attacks all carried out in an identical way? Pokémon can definitely be dangerous, but I've never heard of a Pokémon serial killer before. As far as I know, that's a purely human phenomenon." Serial killer. The sort of words better suited to Unovan crime dramas and cheesy true-crime magazines sold at grocery store checkouts than our safe, modern metropolis. The last 'serial killer' in Ferrum had been– actually, I didn't know.

Ferrum's general murder rate was so low as to be almost nonexistent. Probably. I couldn't rattle the statistics off the top of my head, but considering the hullabaloo that cropped up every time there was a killing, it really couldn't be very high. Needless to say, the press was having a field day with current events. Still, two murders in two weeks wasn't that scary, when you thought about it.

Your chances of getting hit by a car remained higher, and that was saying something, considering how few people actually drove in Techne.

"Stranger things have probably happened." I replied with a shrug of my shoulders. My eyes flicked to the clock on the microwave behind Mom.

"Hey, it's getting close to seven, aren't you going to be late." Mom's face lit up.

"Nope! I've actually got today off. Things should be much calmer for the next month or so. I'm only scheduled for four days a week until August."

"Nice!" I said, finding myself actually meaning it.

"You were looking pretty worn out these last few weeks." At least, she had the few times I'd actually seen her. It felt like Mom and I barely intersected anymore with our disparate schedules.

"Dad still asleep?" Mom nodded.

"You know how he is. A Loudred wouldn't be able to wake him up before his alarm." Having dad back at home was– nice. We didn't talk much, we were both pretty focused on our own things, but his was a comforting presence. Plus, my knights really liked him, for some reason, so they were always happy when he was around.

"Do you want something for breakfast?" Mom asked, as she retreated from the counter. I couldn't see her anymore, but I heard the fridge open up, followed by the sounds of her sifting around inside.

"I already ate, actually!" I called out to her.

"I've actually got to get going in like, ten minutes. Early shift at the station today."

"Aright," Mom called out from the kitchen, "be careful on the way there, okay?"

"Will do."

"And be careful while you're working! That sergeant of yours gives me updates, you know."

"Pretty sure Sergeant Egao wouldn't let me get near anything dangerous with a ten foot pole, right now," I called back.

"But I'll be careful, I promise." - Work was– boring was too strong a word. I loved working with Pokémon, and I was really getting to know the station's colorful cast of rescues and strays. But I wasn't learning anything new anymore while taking care of them. I got better at it of course. Caring for Pokémon was a skill you improved at with experience, just like any other, but that sort of slow, steady progress wasn't nearly as interesting as the sort of learning I'd been doing every day when I first started.

Training was good, at least. Having access to the station's gymnasium and facilities was a huge help for improving my partners' (and my) basic conditioning, and even if all the other rangers were busy, I could still recruit amongst the station's Pokémon, those interested in battles anyway, for training partners. I even got to test Professor Birch's gift a little bit, scanning the various Pokémon and then giggling with them about what it said. A lot of the data was valuable, but some of it was laughably incorrect.

Whoever had written that Teddiursa maxed out at a meter tall had clearly needed to do some additional data gathering, considering the bear sitting next to me just a few centimeters shy of my height. And that wasn't even mentioning the bit about 'every Spinda having a completely random fur pattern.' Everyone (or rather Wilson, and he told me) knew that a Spinda's fur pattern follows certain patterns depending on which troupe they're from. Eventually, six hours passed, and it was time to head home.

I found myself pondering style once again as I boarded the bus back into Techne proper. I wasn't going to wear that damn helmet again. Or rather, I wasn't going to wear it in its current iteration. It just interfered with my vision too much. And also, perhaps more importantly, it was unbelievably uncomfortable, sliding all over the place and twisting at the slightest jerk of my head. No, I definitely needed to either get new headgear, or do something to fix what I already had. Luckily, I already had a plan.

And best of all, it took care of two Pidove's with one Smack Down -"Maushold, can I get some help from you tonight?" We'd made it home safely, not that it was ever in doubt, and eaten dinner with everyone. My mom had made her signature hotpot, and Mana and Maushold got to learn why that had the rest of us so excited. Eating dinner around the table with my family. It should have been welcoming and unfamiliar. In some ways, it was. In others it felt… odd.

My whole family was home for the first time in– I actually couldn't really remember how long. Adding Mom, Dad, and Chansey for dinner didn't sound like that much more on its face, but if you counted my multi-mons as individuals, it actually almost doubled the amount of people eating around the table. It was chaotic, but I liked this better than the alternative. Now, after helping clean up, we'd all split up to do our own things.

My knights had managed to convince Chansey to battle them in chess, and Mom's partner was playing in three games at once. And winning them all handily. Mana was sleepy, like usual after training and dinner, and had retreated to her tank to nap. I knew she was pushing herself to her limits, and maybe beyond them, but I didn't have the heart to try to convince her to stop. She wanted this, more than anything, and so long as her health checkups kept coming up okay, I'd agreed to train her as hard as possible.

Mom and Dad were watching TV, churning through a whole season of some show that Dad had been saving on the DVR for the past couple of months. Which just left Maushold and I. The three of them looked up at me, their unblinking eyes fixed on mine. I was still struggling to read them, but I thought I sensed, surprise? Maybe apprehension? Or It could have just been curiosity. Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

Either way, they hadn't said no outright, so I went on to elaborate.

"You see, I know you three have a good sense of how you want to look, and you're good at arts and crafts. I want to work on something tonight that could really use your authority on both subjects. They leaned forwards a bit, expressions unchanging, but interest still coming through clearly in their body-language. We ended up setting up on the kitchen table, which still smelled of spilled hotpot and seasoned bean sausage, so that we wouldn't disturb Mana.

The extra crafts supplies left over from Maushold's nest, plus a smattering of other things we'd had laying about the house, were splayed out in front of us, along with my current sartorial nemesis. The cheap, plastic helmet looked even uglier under our kitchen's bright, fluorescent bulbs.

I'd done a bit of research on today's bus rides to prep for this, using my jailbroken Macross Gear to visit the publicly-available website of the Hammerlocke Museum of Nobility and History, and apparently this style of helmet was called a Pignite Bascinet. Rather unhelpfully, it was not one of the styles commonly worn by early Galarian knights. Go figure.

Unfortunately, the open-faced helmets that the website said they favored weren't particularly identity-concealing, which sort of precluded them as an option for my purposes.

"Okay, so here's the problem." I put the helmet atop my head, and had to resist gritting my teeth when it immediately fell forwards.

"As you can see, it doesn't really stay on properly," I growled out from underneath the plastic abomination.

"Also, it gets really stuffy in here. Also, it's gonna be a massive pain in the ass to wash."

"Language!" I heard mom shout from the couch.

"Sorry!" I shouted back, before turning to my partners. I took the stupid helmet off and put it down on the table in front of them.

"Oh, and also the thing is hideous. That's an issue too. Thoughts?" Maushold made considering sounds and scampered around the table, heads darting about, one second on me, then the helmet, then the supplies scattered about, finally, to the grainy images on the Macross Gear's screen, and back on me again. And so on. Eventually, they reconvened, heads together as they discussed. After a minute or two, they came out of their huddle, and ran over to the helmet.

They pulled it over to me, the two bigger mauses propping the unwieldy plastic prop upright while the littlest one held up three paws.

"Three options?" The little one nodded, and then changed their paw to hold up one finger. The two bigger mauses pantomimed decorating the helmet with the various things on the table, particularly emphasizing the leftover sound-proofing foam that they'd originally used as the insulation for the nest they made under my bed.

"Okay, opinion one is to leave the helmet as is, but decorate it and use the sound-proofing foam to make it fit better?" The little maus gave me a thumbs up, and the larger ones immediately launched into their second pantomime, grabbing a pair of scissors, and pretending to cut the front half off the prop.

In the meanwhile, the little one scrolled down on the Marcoss Gear's screen until they found what they were looking for, pointing at a particular helmet that maybe sort of looked like the cheap plastic costume piece I had if the big protrusion on the front was chopped off.

"Okay, so the second option is to take the front off of it and then decorate, right? But that'll expose my face, which kind of defeats the whole point." Apparently I should have had more faith, because the Maushold went scurrying off, returning with, of all things, a pair of pantyhose, presumably pilfered from mom's dresser. I blinked a couple of times, admittedly completely nonplussed, as one of the mauses held up another (hopefully) borrowed object, this one a sock from my dresser.

The littlest one took the sock, and pulled it over their head, before turning back to me with a ta-dah gesture while the bigger ones pointed from me, to the pantyhose, and back again. Comprehension dawned on me.

"You're saying I could wear something to cover my face under the helmet. Something sheer that I can see through, but that keeps people from seeing me?" The little trio of rodents gave me emphatic nods, before divesting themselves of their socks for the third pantomime. The last one was by far the simplest. One of the bigger Mauses just punted the helmet from the table, letting it fall to the ground with a satisfying thud.

"And the third option is just getting rid of the things entirely and starting over?" I clarified. Judging by the satisfied nods, we were three-for-three in our impromptu game of charades. Which just left the question of what to do from here. I leaned over, scooping the plastic helmet up off the ground, comparing it to the more faithful reproduction featured on the Macross Gear's screen.

"You know, I just sort of hate the way this thing is shaped," I professed.

"And also, it's completely inaccurate to what I'd like to go for. I think option one is right out." Maushold nodded in acknowledgement, the smallest one pantomiming taking a note in some sort of book or clipboard.

"Option three would be the easiest, but really, it's just kicking the can down the road to deal with later, not really a solution at all. So, how about this. Let's try number two, and if it goes really wrong, no big deal. We just throw this thing out and try again. Sounds good?" My proposal got nods all around, which meant it was finally time to go from ideating to acting. This helmet wasn't going to know what hit it. - Okay, so, as it turned out, maybe we should have done a little bit more ideating.

The craft scissors we had were, perhaps unsurprisingly, woefully in sufficient for cleaving through the pliable plastic helmet. The stupid thing had had seams where the 'nose' portion of the helmet was seemingly attached to the back part of the helmet. Okay, great. Scissors were out, but Maushold was pretty good with their viciously sharp incisors, so it hadn't been that much trouble to get the front part of the helmet off all told.

Except, as it turns out, the stupid thing looked somehow even more stupid sans front end. It just wasn't shaped right to look like a proper helmet without that front part. So the first helmet was a wash. But that was okay, because it was day two! A quick stop at the costume shop for a new helmet, this one open-faced to begin with, and an equally fast trip to a corner shop for a pair of pantyhose that we could cut into a face-covering, and we were good to go! - We were not good to go.

Turns out, insulating foam doesn't take to glue very well. Well, it can, but you need the right sort of glue. And that glue also needs to bond to whatever you want to stick the foam to, in this case plastic. Also, pantyhose don't actually make a great face-covering. They cling way too-tight, which gives the double whammy of making it hard to breath, and irritating my new piercings. But that was okay, because the solution to our first problem was a quick jaunt to the crafts store away! We had this.

We could figure out the second part later. - We did not have this. Turns out, no matter how much you paint and decorate plastic, it still looked like– well– plastic. Maybe that should have been obvious. The helmet (v2) now fit, and I was sort of digging the whole, faceless knight aesthetic the black face mask gave me. Except, the helmet was still freaking ugly.

It might be passable in the low-light of the underpass, but we'd already put so much effort, and for the result to turn out like this was just completely unsatisfying. I felt it, and I could tell Maushold did too, little perfectionists as they were. If anything, it bothered them more than me. So, progress so far was a wash, but we'd learned things! That was the most important part! Or so I kept telling myself. - Day five, our first foray into the wonderful world of metal.

Probably, I didn't have any metalworking skills, nor did my family, nor did any of my partners. Enter, Donna. As it turns out, the other woman and her partners had actually worked together to create her own surprisingly intimidating steel mask. Which meant she knew a place in the city where you could actually rent a forge! Apparently, there were even two options, one run by a retired ferrier, and the other headed by an experienced Magmar who'd been making bespoke cutlery and knives for longer than I'd been alive.

Luckily, renting out the space wasn't too expensive, and Donna even offered to go half on it while we were collaborating. Unluckily, helmets were, as it turned out, were harder to make than masks. Well, that wasn't exactly true. Neither was super challenging if you were willing to settle for something simple, like Donna had, just a mold of her face pushed against heated metal. Similarly, making a plain, conical helm that would perch atop my head wouldn't be prohibitively challenging.

It would also be, as we were all keenly aware, ugly as sin. Donna was no less concerned with the appearance of the end result than my partners and I, and what I'd hoped to be a one-day project quickly ballooned into two, eating into the weekend. Then three, as we rented the forge for another couple of hours on Sunday. Then four, when we went back again after work on Monday. Then five. Fortunately, as it turned out, five, finally, was enough.

It wasn't perfect, but as I'd been forced to try to convince Maushold, perfect was the enemy of good. And I thought that what we finished off with was pretty good. It was still a little big, on purpose mind you, so that as I got bigger, it would still fit. Some generous internal padding meant that it shouldn't be a problem, and I was confident enough by now in our ability to strip it out and replace it as needed.

A sheer fabric built into the front of the helmet fixed my mask problem, covering my face without constricting it, and easily see-through from my end as long as there was enough light nearby while doing a good enough job at hiding my identity that I could get away with it. The whole thing was a bit on the heavy side, for sure, but I didn't really need to wear it for all that long, just a few hours, usually, so it wasn't intolerable. And it looked good! Professional.

Like something we'd labored on for hours and hours. I was probably biased, since I knew that we'd worked on it for hours and hours, but my knights certainly liked it, as did Mana. They weren't exactly objective, but I'd get more thorough opinions in a couple of weeks, when I made it back out to the underpasses for my third badge. And we were almost ready for that next challenge.

Mana was steadily improving, now able to release Brine without any setup at all, and my knights' Bulk Up was starting to improve qualities beyond just their Attack and Defense, a clear sign that it'd almost transitioned into No Retreat. Once they had that move down, they'd get an immense power-up. But I didn't want them to just sweep through the third battle on their own after Mana gave it her all. Which meant I needed to figure out what was going on with Maushold.

- I'd noticed it as we were going through the week. Their movements had been getting more sluggish, instead of sharper, as we trained, and the little one especially often seemed out-of-sorts. At first, I was worried that they didn't really want to battle, but they reassured me that it wasn't the case. I thought our continued struggles with the helmet might have been getting to them, but even a few days after we'd finished the project, they still seemed off. If anything, it seemed to be getting worse.

Which brought us to today. Friday, after work, the weekend in front of us, which I knew was going to be busy with mandatory 'family fun' as mom put it. I was looking forward to it, as much as I pretended to grouse. It'd been nice having them around for a couple of weeks, and I was going to miss them when dad left back to Neos next week and mom's hours picked up again. But it also meant that I was on a time-limit if I wanted to figure out what was going on with Maushold.

They'd insisted they were fine, but I wasn't having it anymore. It was time to go to the Pokémon Center.