Chương 67: Chapter 54

It was obvious we had no chance from the first exchange. No, even before that, it'd been blindingly clear. Mana was strong now. So much stronger than I ever could have imagined her being, even just a couple of weeks ago. And she had room to grow yet, untapped potential just waiting for us to explore. But Grinder was every bit her peer, if not her superior. That was a galling thing to admit. It always was and it always would be, but the impact was deadened a bit because we respected Donna and her team.

We knew just how much effort they put in and exactly how strong they were. That we could even put up a fight against them, let alone take wins or draws, was a sign of our monumental growth over these last eight months. It was proof of the blood, sweat, and tears we put into every day of training, every hour of self-improvement, every moment of sheer, stubborn-minded effort. The PSS laughed in the face of all of that.

It didn't give quite the same boost that Battle AR did, in a stadium, with access to a Great Synergy Stone and a gaia spot. But it came damn close in my opinion. Grinder came at us fast, which was not an attribute generally awarded to either Steel-types or Grass-types. His legs churned through the sand with frenetic energy, the three vine-like appendages a blur as he hurled himself at Mana's school.

She unleashed a lake's worth of water in a moment as a Water Gun that put most Hydro Pumps to shame practically sand-blasted the rushing Ferrothorn, but the assault barely slowed the Steel-type. He threw himself into a twirling roll, steel shell sparking off the iron sand beneath him as his limbs whirled like a buzzsaw, glowing green with a head-on Power Whip.

Mana's school sluggishly ascended, trying to get out of the way while blasting Grinder, but she wasn't able to move far enough in time, and the churning vines lanced through her constructs, scattering them for a few moments. The school reformed in seconds, but already it was smaller, reduced by the brutal assault. The waves roared, and my ear felt warm where the crystalline shard connected to its metal fixture.. I could feel my partner.

Could hear her churning uncertainty as a thousand voices cried in alarm and dismay at our opponent's strength. Things like this had been happening more and more, as I grew closer with my Pokémon, but it manifested itself in different ways. With Maushold, I now had an almost instinctual sense of their needs, of their priorities. Where before their sounds and body language had been inscrutable to me, now they were, if not like an open book, then at least legible writing, something I could squint at and understand.

When we were touching skin to skin, when they ran their little paws on my hand or I rubbed their fur with a careful finger, I felt almost like I was one of them. Not quite, not exactly, but it was close, tantalizingly so. And I wanted that. I wanted us to be family in truth and in name, just as my Mom was for me. More than wanted it, I owed them that, after what they'd experienced, after the hard choices they'd made.

They would be cared for, and content, and loved, and nothing would keep me from giving them all they were owed. My knights, on the other hand, I had a different connection with. They, I could command. It was an expression of my syn, and a statement on the bond we'd formed. I loved them, would always love them, and I knew they loved me too. But I also understood that there was, and always had been, a hierarchy between us. It was how Falinks understood relationships. Brass and troops. Commander and commanded.

With the connection we'd cultivated, they'd obey my orders without question, and if I had the syn to convey my intentions, they'd understand those orders perfectly, every time. It was a harrowing amount of power to wield over six of the people I loved most, which is why I always made sure Lance felt able to challenge me, to make his voice heard. It was why overriding him so he'd accept Tristan as a new brass had been so hard.

He was our safety valve, the emergency brake that controlled his brothers' unflinching loyalty. Lance had to question me, had to challenge me, for my sake as much as the troops'. But in the end, even he would fold to my will, if I proved that it was for all of our good. As long as I demonstrated that I was still pushing us towards our mutual goal, that we were going to become the strongest, together, he'd accede. That determination bound us together, an agreement, a promise made and honored.

As long as we strove together, we'd be together. And then there was Mana. All of my partners were my family, as much as my parents or grandparents, or maybe even more so. And Mana was even more than that. She was of my blood. That wasn't just an expression. I could literally see it, floating in her school, pinpricks of red masquerading as eyes. I could feel it, when my wounds wept or I bit my tongue or the first week of the month arrived.

Little droplets, stolen here or there, wicked away and sequestered, preserved and yet not diluted amongst the swarm. Mana and I were two, but two closer to one than I would have ever imagined possible when I first learned I had synergy sickness. And never was that clearer than in battle. A thousand voices screamed as Grinder tore through the school, arms an emerald blur, and I screamed with them, voicelessly willing my partner to fight. No orders were necessary between us.

I felt as she felt, and she heard as I did. Our will poured out. And the surf answered our combined call. A ten foot swell ripped free from the otherwise placid sea and engulfed the beach. The towering wave soaked Donna and I's boots on either side of the impromptu arena, and slammed into Grinder with an unearthly roar. And yet somehow, the Ferrothorn didn't even flinch. He stood unyielding against the ocean's might, two legs buried deep into the ferrous sand while his third lashed through my partner. Dive.

I howled into our mind, and the constructs split, the entire azure collection scattering in mere moments, descending into the surf and becoming indistinguishable from the water below. And an instant later, darting forms tore free from the rogue wave, slamming into Grinder with a staccato crash. Each piscine body exploded after its assault, but a little mote of red came free from every dissolving form, falling back beneath waves once more to coalesce into yet another finned-projectile.

Grinder whipped about him with two arms while one kept him anchored in place, all three glowing. The Power Whips sent great gouts of sea water into the air, and the Ingrain drained the iron sand beneath Grinder into nonexistence, fortifying the Steel-type's already gleaming shell. Two could play at that game though, and little bands of water surrounded the darting constructs, their regeneration accelerating as we discovered Aqua Ring, employed it immediately, the sea water providing all we needed and more.

Unfortunately for us, with Donna gleaming silver behind him, Grinder could have weathered a tidal wave. The darting bodies didn't even scratch his metal carapace, and while his Power Whips were having little effect when his targets were so diffuse, every splattered body brought us just a little bit closer to defeat. We needed to do something, try something new, or we'd have no chance. No chance against the PSS, or anyone else wielding something like it.

Forever a burden, when our opponents might be synergizing, or worse, suffering, like Butterfree. We'd defeated the Bug-type, but they hadn't been a fighter, and I'd be the first to admit our victory could only be counted as a technicality. Ferrum was changing, warping beneath our feet, more uncertain than the shifting sands eroding under Grinder's absorption and Mana's assault. I could feel it coming out from under us, our lives as we knew them about to change forever under the weight of the times.

We screamed against it. Mana and I roared, a leviathan's call that momentarily drowned out the crash of the waves. Something opened up underneath Grinder, a great yawning mouth that uprooted him, tendrils and all. Mana's school erupted from the water, engulfing the Steel-type and hauling him up into the air.

They hung there, suspended for one infinite moment, and then the entire school dissolved into water once more, forming a swirling Whirlpool that began desperately drawing in water from the beach and the ocean waves. The suction threatened to pull Donna and I in, and I could see her exposed skin gleaming silver even as I howled, blasting the ocean's grasp free from my legs.

Darting forms erupted from the Whirlpool, slamming against Grinder with elongated tails before diving back into the maelstrom, a cascade of crashing impacts that would have put a drum line to shame. I could feel my energy draining, leaking through our bond, just as I could feel my partner's flagging, feeding back into me in a loop that left us both just a little bit reduced with every rotation. But we weren't out of this just yet. We were still fighting, still battling, still had our place.

We'd come so far, and grown so much, and had so much more to offer. And then the world went white. My arms instinctively covered my face as the entire whirlpool glowed, Grinder's form momentarily more incandescent than the sun. Mana barely got a Protect in the way of her main body as the eruption of crashing steel put any noise previously issued from my partner or I to shame, a roar that I was certain could be heard for kilometers.

The water surrounding Grinder burst outwards, iron grit and crystalline salt and oxidized hemoglobin scattering into the wind as the Whirlpool was vaporized. And with it, almost all of Mana's school. I'd never seen Explosion in person before, but there was no mistaking the attack for anything else. The outpouring of heat and energy hit before the shockwave, the former charring my skin like a sunburn and the latter sending me sprawling into the surf.

I rolled as I went down, the impact splitting some of my scars and the salt water making them erupt in fiery aches, but I came up within moments, screaming my voice raw. Grinder was slumped in the cratered sand, his limbs buried in the earth, depleting the iron grit. Mana erupted from the water, her true form revealed with the school dispelled.

She had burns all along her flanks, and a cut above her eye, but she was howling as I was, and the water rushed in, a huge wave that tried to dislodge the Steel-type from his impromptu planter. But Grinder weathered it, ignoring the waves beating his shell like a drum and casting his topaz eyes about. One lash whipped free from the earth, striking faster than a Seviper. Our eyes widened, and then the Power Whip crashed down, spiking Mana down into the waves.

I felt the impact like I'd suffered a physical blow, slamming to my knees as all my energy left me at once. If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. It was all I could do to keep my arms straight as I heaved, trying not to vomit into the slurry beneath me. I heard a pitious cry, and raised my head to see Mana, somehow pushing herself out of the surf. A chunk of the scales on her head looked cracked, and one of her eyes was crimson.

That side weeped blood, even as bioluminescent fluid fell from the other. Twin streams, one of red and the other yellow, that dripped into the water below. Grinder stared at us, his topaz eyes unreadable as behind him, his trainer did the same, her gaze equally inscrutable behind the device mounted to her head and back. I spit blood, and ignored the little churn of water where it landed.

"Enough," I rasped, my voice rougher than Janine's, "Mana, enough. Return." She looked back at me, eyes filled with the will to continue, but I shook my head.

"Please. It's enough Mana. We've done– we've done enough." She held my gaze for a moment, two, and then she sagged, her fins and tail going slack.

"Washi," she exhaled as she fell through the air. I thought myself completely depleted, but I still had enough to whip a hand out and recall my falling partner. I wasn't able to support myself on just one arm though, and I collapsed face-first into the gray sand, fighting the reflexive urge to take a breath as my head hit the ground. A moment later, a gentle vine wrapped around me, pulling me out of the slurry and laying me on my back a few meters away, out of the inundated sand.

Winter boots splashed through the muck to my side, and after a few moments, a green-wreathed face stared down at me. Donna's shoulder-length hair was thrown into wild disarray, and the crown of lilies on her head looked wilting and sad. The older Ranger was covered in water, and probably sweat judging by the way she was panting, and her face was nearly crimson with exertion.

"You," she accused, pointing at me, "are completely ridiculous. What the hell was that?"

"Losing, "I replied Mudbrayishly. To my mortification, I felt tears threatening to build at the corner of my eyes, but I couldn't work up the strength to wipe at them with my already-soaked sleeves.

"Ridiculous," Donna shook her head again as she turned around and planted her bum in the sand next to me.

"You almost fought Grinder and I to a standstill, while we were using the stupid piss thing, and you have the temerity to complain that you lost?" Somehow, I couldn't help a juvenile snort at the puerile joke. I'd definitely been thinking that PSS did sound uncannily like a certain excrement, but I hadn't expected Donna to just come out and say it!

"But we still couldn't win," I complained, trying to recapture some of my earlier gloom.

"It was hardly a fair fight," Donna demurred, turning my own argument back on me.

"It wasn't," I agreed, as my mood actually swung down again, tears threatening the corners of my eyes once more.

"But like you said earlier, the world isn't fair." Donna sighed, and turned her gaze out to the now-placid ocean.

"No, it really isn't." We sat like that for a while, me looking up at the sky while Donna gazed into the surf.

"I saw you using your syn there. Well, more like I heard you."

"Was stupid," I muttered.

"Almost whited out again." Donna was silent for a few moments, before she leaned over and flicked me in the forehead.

"That's the risk you take when you feed so much of yourself to your bond," she chastised, laying clear a lesson I'd been learning the hard way over the past couple of weeks.

"You need to know when to pull back, save some for yourself, or you're going to keep ending up like this." I gingerly rubbed my skull with a leaden arm.

"Well maybe if there was someone to teach me, I'd know how to do that." My grousing got a wan smile from Donna.

"Fair point Fe, fair point." She fell silent for a few moments, before continuing.

"Don't tell the sarge I told you this, okay? We're not supposed to teach this stuff until you get to the academy." I sat up, or tried to. My arms shook, and a gentle vine caught me as I collapsed back into the sand. Donna ignored the byplay in favor of continuing her lesson.

"Okay, so the guy who teaches this stuff at the academy is this ancient mystic from Oblivia. He must be like, one-hundred fifty years old, his accent makes his Galarian almost impossible to understand, and half of what he says is complete mumbo-jumbo that'd make that Weaver asshole jealous– but some of the shit he taught us makes too much sense to be fake." I could sense more than a bit of animosity in Donna's description of the man, but her final statement had an odd tinge of fondness and nostalgia to it.

She took a deep breath, and I considered interrupting to inform her that the woman who can turn her skin to metal shouldn't be complaining about any sort of mystical shit, but before I can work my way up to it, the older ranger continued.

"I'm sure you've noticed by now, but the bond you form with your partners makes them stronger."

"Yeah, we've uh, we've started to pick up on that," I confirmed, my voice coming out raspy and soft.

"It's like synergizing, just you get less of a boost out of it."

"Right, exactly like that," she paused, "well except for one big difference. Normally, the bonds we make with our partners are two-way streets. They give us some energy, we return some, and both of us end up greater than the sum of our parts. Like, if Grinder is one-hundred percent alone, and I'm the same, together we're both at one-hundred twenty. That make sense?" I nodded my head, dragging my hair in the gray sand. I was going to need to take a long shower tonight.

"Okay, well Battle AR changes that dynamic. It shrinks down one side of the bond, causes it to become a one-way street. When Grinder and I are synergizing, he's at like, two-hundred percent, and I'm at forty. The total amount of energy we've got hasn't changed, but he gets to use more of it," she paused to think for a second.

"Well, that's not exactly true, we actually get a little bit more, since we're stealing some energy from the synergy stone and the gaia spot we're using, so maybe Grinder is at like, two-hundred ten percent or something."

"But you don't need to be synergizing to give your partner more energy," I realized aloud.

"I can send energy to my partners through our bond even without Battle AR or a synergy stone."

"Yep," Donna popped the p even longer than usual.

"Except, the energy conversion when you use Battle AR is almost completely efficient. What you send through is what your partner gets."

"And when you don't use it, they only get a fraction," I continued for her, the conclusion obvious.

"Exactly. The exact efficiency isn't really something we can measure, and it varies from person to person, and partner to partner, but even with the least efficient bond, it's possible to force through too much of your energy, which is how you end up like this," she gestured down at my limp form.

"Really 'talented' people can even white themselves out by feeding their bonds. If you ever meet someone who just straight up faints after you knock out their last Pokémon, you know you should watch for them in the future. Those are the fuckers who get really scary."

"I bet they teach kids all this stuff in like, kindergarten, overseas," I groused, remembering Donna's assertion that this sort of knowledge was 'common enough.'

"I'm sure," Donna nodded in agreement.

"Which is probably awesome for the precocious little brats who want to risk it all to get stronger, and terrible for the people who have the impossible job of keeping them all safe." That brought to mind an image of Janine, weeping as she held me in her arms, or of my parents, desperately clutching my hands while I lay in a hospital bed.

"Good point," I acknowledged, finally feeling well enough to sit up.

"Still, it'd be nice to have enough background on this stuff that I didn't feel like I was stumbling around in the dark." Donna was silent for a few moments. When she finally spoke again, her voice was low.

"You know Fe, there was someone else at Outpost Seven who admired the way they do things in other regions. Mark always hated how limited the FerreNet is," she took a shuddering breath, and her face was long.

"He'd always be telling me about the net in other regions, how much faster it was, or easier to navigate," she let out a wet-sounding laugh.

"He even had this theory, that the reason our net is so underdeveloped isn't because we don't have the proper tech, but because the powers-that-be benefit from keeping us ignorant." Talking about our deceased comrade caused something in my gut to churn. It felt like my chest was trying to sink into my stomach, and also expel its contents all over all at the same time.

"He, uh, never struck me as being very anti-authority," I finally replied, after swallowing thickly a few times. Donna turned an incredulous gaze at me.

"Fe, he jailbroke foreign communications devices and handed them out to people. How is that not anti-authority?!" I felt my face color as the realization dawned, embarrassment chasing away some of the malaise choking my veins.

"Okay, yeah, when you put it like that, I sort of see it." Donna chuckled, but the noise was weak. Anemic. It lacked her usual upbeat exuberance, and it got me to turn my head a little bit to look at her.

"Yeah, Mark was a big ol' scaredy Purrloin, but he never liked being told what to do," she said with a far-off look. The older woman fell silent for a few moments, and then continued.

"He really wasn't the greatest of rangers. Didn't follow orders well, wasn't super fit, never really got the hang of using his syn, couldn't battle worth a damn."

"He was a good friend." I said quietly, interrupting Donna when she paused for breath.

"He had a gentle soul." It felt like a stupid thing to say as soon as it came out of my mouth, but it also felt… right. Apparently, Donna agreed, because a sob tore free from her mouth.

"He was," she said, her voice thick and wet.

"He really was. Never met someone who was just so happy to be helpful." Hearing Donna cry, seeing tears roll unrestrained down her face, shattered something inside me. I could still see the big guy in my mind's eye, staring intently as he took apart some machine, or pensively fussing over the station's sole truck, or begging his partner for a bit of cool air to keep his machine running. I'd never get to ask him another question about how stylers worked, or why our radios only had ten channels.

He couldn't ever tell me how he and Icebox met, or where he planned to be in three years. Mark was just– gone. Gone forever. My body was wracked with sobs, and tears dug furrows down the iron grit pasted to my cheeks. Hiccups formed in my chest, and it was all I could do to breathe as I lost all semblance of control over my grief. Seconds passed, and then minutes, as we cried ourselves empty onto the beach. And all the while, we said not a word, only our sobs and the crash of waves breaking the winter silence.

Tears shed for a friend lost, for a life cut cruelly, unfairly short. - Eventually, we had nothing left to shed. Grinder helped Donna pick me up in a grumpiggyback, and then hefted her bag. We set out across the beach, making our way back towards civilization, and the nearest Pokémon center.

"You know Fe, you shouldn't be here." The sentence caught me off guard, but before I could ask what she meant but that, the older woman continued.

"In Ferrum, that is. It's such a damn waste," her green hair swayed back and forth as she shook her head, threatening to tickle my nose.

"Mark used to show me videos, you know, of non-Ferrum battles. He was always fascinated with other regions, always liked perusing their nets. He was never brave enough to join in at the underleague, but he loved to watch, to theorize and plan. The stuff you and your partners can do, the strategies you employ, he'd have loved it, Fe. Loved it so much." A few seconds pass ed, before the older woman let out an explosive curse." Golems, I wish he could have seen that battle.

He would have been chatting our ears off about it for a week."

"I like being in Ferrum," I protested weakly.

"This is my home."

"Why?" the older Ranger asked bluntly.

"Near as I can tell, this region hasn't done anything for you. What about it deserves your affection?"

"It's where I was born, Donna," I replied, "where I was raised. This is where everyone I know and love is."

"Sure, but half of those folks will go with you wherever," she nodded down, indicating my Poké Balls.

"You're only a few years out from moving away from the others anyway, and how many friends do you have outside us at the ranger station, anyway?"

"I have other friends," hurried to retort, though the defensive tone of my voice probably didn't do me any favors.

"There's Alyssa. And…" I hesitated, scrambling for another name. I'd had other friends, back when we'd all been in school, but I hadn't kept in contact with any of them. There were a few names that came to mind, but if you asked me whether or not I'd still consider us friends after failing to speak to one another for over half a year, I'd have to respond in the negative.

"Ok, so one other friend," Donna acknowledged dryly.

"I'm sure you'd miss them, and your parents, but is staying near them worth continuing to suffocate, here in Ferrum, when you could thrive somewhere else? There's a whole world out there Fe. Places where you could really be someone." Unlike here, she was implying, where I was nobody. I wanted out of this conversation, but unfortunately, I was beholden to Donna until she got me to the Pokémon Center, unless I could recover enough to walk there myself.

I tried to move my legs a little bit, and the jolt that ran through me told me that the latter just wasn't an option yet.

"How would I even get to another region? What would I even do there?" I finally replied.

"The same things you do here. Learn to be a ranger. Battle people, get stronger," Donna replied instantly, as if the statement had been prepared. I blinked a couple of times.

"That didn't sound like a hypothetical."

"Well, you didn't think that Janine came to Ferrum and then became a ranger, did you?" Donna asked leadingly.

"So, the ranger corps has, what, inter-region exchange programs?" I asked, reluctantly probing for more information.

"That's right," I felt Donna's nod with my whole body.

"Connections the sarge has got? I bet she could get you stationed just about anywhere. Almia? Hoenn? Paldea? Any place the Ranger Union has treaties, I bet you could go."

"And what if I want to keep being a ranger here?" I asked, my voice quiet. The normally-exuberant ranger fell silent. Long moments passed where neither of us were willing to speak until, finally and with a heavy sigh, Donna broke her peace.

"It's not looking good Fe. The sarge is arguing with the powers that be, but the higher-ups want everyone on active duty using these new personal synch things." My chest was trying to burrow into my stomach again.

"But do they even help that much? Sure, they might give a powerup, but I bet you can't move yourself around that well while synchronizing, and it's a big piece of kit to carry around on every mission. Plus, they're dangerous! They could make more Shadow Pokémon, or cause–""I know Fe," Donna interjected, interrupting my babble.

"There are good arguments against these things, there really are, but the tides are in their favor. City-security is definitely gonna start using them, and the poachers aren't going to stop either. It– it feels like we're backed into a corner on this one Fe." I didn't agree. I didn't agree one bit. But at the same time, what right did I have to complain? After all, we'd lost. All our progress, all our hard work and effort, what was it worth in the face of the strength the PSS could offer? Nothing.

Absolutely nothing. And at the end of the day, that was that. - Donna dropped me off at the Pokémon Center, where I handed my partners over to Nurse Joy. I spent some time convalescing on one of the couches in their lounge, but eventually, I was recovered enough to leave, and didn't have a good enough excuse to stay. Which meant I was once again alone, facing a future uncertain, just as I'd been half a year ago, at the start of the summer. Except, things were different now. I was different.

I'd picked myself up once, I'd found another path once. What was one more time? And this time, I wouldn't just wait for some solution to drop into my lap. I wasn't going to rely on luck to dig me out once again. No, I'd make a choice for myself. Or rather, we would. My family and I, together.