Chương 73: Chapter 59

"Hmmmmm." I hummed angrily at the Scrafty (which I knew wasn't really a Scrafty), but to my continuing consternation, Ink's illusion remained completely unruffled in the face of my sonic assault. Okay, assault probably wasn't the right term. Probing. Ink had no problem maintaining his illusions in the face of my sonic probing. According to Mr.

Gima, a Zoroark's false form (and the other hallucinations they could cause) were almost impossible to pierce with mundane senses, unless the perpetrator was doing a rather bad job of it. That meant defeating them required relying on more… esoteric methods. Much like syn expressed itself differently for everyone, the methods by which you might overcome a Zoroark's illusory tricks were similarly disparate.

According to what the Unovan man had told me (and only me) before taking Alyssa aside, he could generally 'see' through illusions. Or rather, he could see small, minute disturbances made by the special energy Zoroark manipulated to create their apparitions. That seemed like a pretty distinct advantage when it came to perceiving the wily Dark-type's tricks, but according to the Dark-specialist, the evidence was generally very minute, especially if the Zoroark in question had time to be careful.

Apparently, his best chance of seeing through the illusions was when they were in motion, but he had a hard time picking out stationary hallucinations. Unlike our impromptu mentor, I didn't manifest my syn in my eyes, so I wasn't going to be seeing straight through Ink's projection anytime soon. That didn't mean I was without recourse, however.

All of which was to explain why I was now doing my best Zubat impression, humming in Ink's direction, trying a variety of methods by which I might defeat the wily Dark-type's illusions. Because by now, I'd long since figured out the best method by which I could project that internal pool of energy: my voice. My efforts started with me trying to see if I could hear a difference in the way my syn-enhanced humming bounced off Ink's projections, but I quickly realized that was mostly a dead-end.

While there might have been perceivable differences in how my voice sounded rebounding off Ink versus the real Scrafty, I couldn't hear them. Maushold had a hard time too, and they had substantially better hearing than any of the rest of us. Maybe if we had an actual Zubat, or a Whismur, or another specialist in the minutiae of sound, we might have had a viable strategy, but as it was, none of us had the capability to perceive the minute differences my efforts were generating.

Next, I tried brute force, directing a shout in Ink's direction in an attempt to blast the illusion away like I had the crashing waves during Mana and I's battle against Donna and Grinder. Unfortunately, Ink had no issue defending against that, and I didn't have nearly enough energy for repeat attempts, not to mention the scratchiness just one shout was already causing in my throat. That was probably for the best, though.

Just howling at everything I thought was suspicious loud enough to shatter glass didn't seem like a viable long-term strategy for sussing out Alyssa's unseen pursuer. That led directly into what I was trying now, which was blasting Ink's projection with hums of various volume and pitch. Modulating my tones up and down didn't seem to have any effect on the phantasm, and neither did increasing or decreasing the volume.

As far as any of my senses could tell, I was standing across the room from a Scrafty (even though I knew I wasn't)! I trailed off, and cleared my throat a few times. It was starting to really ache, and I resolved to start carrying cough drops around from here on.

"Okay Ink," I said through the scratchiness, "I've got one last thing I want to try. Are you ready?" The 'Scrafty' nodded his head up and down, and even let out a cheeky, "Scrafty, scraft!"

"Alright." I took a deep breath, and focused on that almost empty well of internal energy. Maushold and Alister had made a quick run to a nearby Berry Blasters for Alyssa and I and picked up some Sitrus Berry smoothies for us after Mr. Gima's impromptu test. The sweet refreshments had helped us recover a bit, but humans couldn't digest the burst of power from a Berry nearly as well as Pokémon could, even when it was blended up.

I was already running low once more, but I had just enough energy in me to try one more thing. I closed my eyes for a few moments, centralizing my focus, pulling almost all of my threads into one braided band of attention. With a start, I opened them once more, and pointed directly at the 'Scrafty' just a couple of meters away." Waver." I ordered, injecting as much syn as I could into the command without whiting out. The Scrafty took a step back, his eyes widening in surprise.

The yellow reptile held up an arm defensively, gesture completely reflexive, and for just a moment, barely perceptible to my eyes, but clearly there, the scaly illusion shimmered, warping and wobbling as if I were viewing it through churning water.

The hallucination stabilized after just a moment, returning to a now rather peeved-looking Fighting-type, but the moment of weakness had been there. It was rather draining, but I had a way of getting around a Zoroark's illusions. - Of course, Ink and I weren't the only ones working hard in the training room. All of our Pokémon were assigned to various tasks, and Mr. Gima had pulled Alyssa aside to work on her one-on-one.

The various activities created a chaotic tableau, but it wasn't beyond my ability to keep an eye on. My knights were all trying to internalize the use of Upper Hand, with Kay instructing his brothers as Alister pelted them with Sucker Punches. Mana was working on Dive with BB, which made little sense to me, but apparently, once you were good enough with Ground-type energy, having 'dirt' beneath you for Dig became more of a suggestion than a requirement.

Supposedly, the same was true for Water-type energy and Dive, and the Krookodile was trying to instruct my piscine partner on using her move on theoretically solid ground, to mixed results. Pikachu was playing a cat and mouse game with Neirah, rodent and feline trading unpowered blows in an extreme version of tag that saw them darting through the entire room and treating everyone else as impromptu obstacles. Maushold was working with Scrafty.

The scaly Dark-type had pulled a training dummy free from a corner and was instructing them to use Pound on it repeatedly. To what effect, I wasn't sure, but I could swear every once in a while, they were landing a harder hit than usual on the dummy. And last but not least were Alyssa and Mr. Gima, closer to Ink and I than everyone else and discussing things at a volume that, while difficult to hear over the general din, wasn't impossible to pick up.

"Okay, so how does all this work?" Alyssa had started with, right after the Unovan man had pulled her aside.

"It's… a little bit complicated to explain," I could hear the frown in Mr. Gima's voice.

"This is going to sound like a cop out, but the truth of the matter is, there's no one way or correct way to go about learning how to tap into your stamina pool. What works for one person might not work for another, and telling you a method that doesn't work well for you might end up hindering your progress, rather than helping." That was met with a few moments of silence, and then a quick burst of laughter.

"I guess that explains why Fe's old mentor spent so long giving her the run-around."

"I knew someone else had gotten their hands on her first!" Mr. Gima groused, his complaint peaking over the ambient noise for a few seconds, "I just knew it."

"That's an odd way to phrase that," Alyssa replied, her voice low and suspicious.

"When you see a hand with an ace in it, you want to play, even if it's not your game," Mr. Gima explained.

"Kid with that sort of potential? You don't want to see that go to waste."

"Well what about my potential?" my best friend responded.

"Remember who you're working with right now."

"Okay, sorry, focusing up," a few moments of thoughtful silence had gone by, and then the Dark-specialist continued.

"Alright, I need you to think of a time when you and your partner were both in sync."

"Mr. Gima, I'm a Ferrum Battler. Pikachu and I are almost always in sync."

"Right, right your guys' weird battling. Okay, maybe we can work with that. Have you ever purposely fed your partner more energy while doing your whole synergy thing? Isn't there that whole thing you do…" the Dark-specialist trailed off, obviously uncertain.

"Synergy Burst?" Alyssa prompted.

"Exactly!" the Unovam man confirmed with a snap.

"That's gotta be some sort of powerup. You've got to feed your partner more energy to pull it off, yeah?"

"I mean, yes, but there's a button on the AR visor that you press that draws more energy out, so it's not like I do it consciously." Mr. Gima had groaned.

"Seriously? A button? You never just like, you know, went for it? Poured your heart and soul into it? You just flip a switch and boom, your partner gets stronger for a while?"

"I mean, there's more to it than that," Alyssa defended Ferrum battling.

"And there was that one time…" Now it was my best friend's turn to trail off, her eyes narrowing in thought. For a moment, it looked like Mr. Gima might interrupt her, but he held his piece, letting the brunette teen work through the problem on her own.

"The first time we used synergy burst, I didn't have time to press the button. I wasn't even wearing an AR gear rated for synergy burst. I just knew Pikachu needed help, and if I didn't give it to her, she was going to get hurt."

"That feeling, right there!" The Unovan man interjected.

"That sense of desperation, of crushing awful need, do you still remember it?"

"Of course I do," my best friend replied with a shudder.

"I'll never forget it."

"Well think about it right now, and don't look away."

"What? Oh, shit!" That exclamation had almost gotten me to break off my training with Ink, but contrary to my concern, Alyssa didn't immediately go scrabbling away from Mr. Gima like she had earlier, even when he ambushed her. This time, she endured under his gaze. For one second. Two. Five. Thirty seconds. A minute.

I wasn't sure what mechanism she was using to defend herself, it wasn't obvious based on just watching what was happening out of the corner of my eye, but whatever it was, it earned her a whole two minutes under the Dark-specialists damning attention, before she squeezed her eyes shut and covered them with both hands.

"That's it, I'm out," she gasped from between her palms, taking deep breaths between each word.

"Golems, that's exhausting."

"A pair of aces indeed." Mr. Gima had said, his lips curled up in a grin.

"I can't wait to see how this hand develops." - Shortly after that, I finally got Ink's illusion to waver, and Alyssa and I were well and truly tapped out. Our exhaustion coincided nicely with the end of my best friend's reserved time in the training room, and we trooped out of the dojo once again covered by Ink's phantasms. This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

We emerged into the cool night air, and grouped up on a street corner to discuss our schedule from here on out. Mr. Gima told us in no uncertain terms that he intended to keep following Alyssa around, and neither of us were much interested in contesting him on that point, considering the clear and present danger plaguing my best friend.

For her part, Alyssa didn't want to let the nebulous threat prevent her from pursuing her goals, and she told us that she fully intended to continue going to matches and advancing her battling career. My future plans were a little bit more uncertain, especially in the immediate-term. I still had a week to go before I could return to the ranger station, but it wasn't clear to me that, at the end of those seven days, I'd still have a position to return to.

In the meantime, I was resolved to spend as much time with Alyssa as possible, to better mitigate the chances of something happening to her. Which is why, the very next day, I was at Alyssa's apartment, bright and early. A full night's rest had done wonders for my reserve of syn, and seen my partners recovered from yesterday's bout with Mr. Gima and his Pokémon. Mrs.

Peters let me in with a warm smile, and I found my best friend on the living room couch, using the large television in the otherwise austere space to review a battle tape. I settled onto the couch next to her, my partners scattering throughout the room, and we fell into old patterns, discussing the match on the screen, theorycrafting countermeasures, and plotting potential combos to defeat the battlers on the screen. The routine was reassuringly familiar, even after almost a year away from it.

Except, things were even better now, because my best friend could actually put the ideas we came up with together into actual practice. Because even though she didn't have a room at the dojo reserved today, that didn't mean that Alyssa was skipping out on training. Which today, meant pickup battles at the nearest Pokémon Center. Apparently, Friday was good for finding the impromptu matches, with competitors at all skill levels participating in some casual, quasi-weekend battling.

The center's four arenas were all humming and occupied, but one minute rounds in the best of two matches meant that battles went by fast. A volunteer was organizing the bouts, and it didn't take much time from when Alyssa got her name in for her to find her first opponent. It took her even less time to trounce said opponent, and to discover some holes in our proposed combo. And the next few battles went by just the same.

Just a few months ago, I don't think I could have stomached spending so much time around the bustling battle arenas, and there was still a hardened little pit of envy within me, but I could stomach it, if it meant being near Alyssa, being able to keep an eye on her. Because she certainly wasn't keeping an eye on herself. She was so engrossed in the battling, I wouldn't have thought she'd ever felt any sense of danger in the first place. And yet, the memory of her nervousness yesterday persisted.

Maybe it wasn't that Alyssa wasn't cognizant of the peril she and Pikachu were in, maybe she was distracting herself from it? That thought had me casting about, a grim reminder that I wasn't just here to keep my friend company, I was here to keep her safe. Which was currently easier said than done. There were plenty of people and Pokémon milling about the center's battlefields, and any of them could be disguised assailants, operating under illusory pretenses.

The thought was more than a little disturbing, and it evoked more than a little paranoia in me. Fortunately, my concerns were unfounded, and the afternoon passed peacefully, with Mr. Gima approaching us a few hours later to offer some more training. I ended up taking them to the beach, my partners' and I's perennial impromptu training ground. Mr.

Gima seemed interested in the gray sand, apparently a novelty to him, but before too long, we were focused on training, the three humans further developing our countermeasures illusory intrusion while our various partners worked on moves and fundamentals. And for all intents and purposes, that's how the rest of the week went. Alyssa and I would meet-up in the morning, find battles in the afternoon, and train with Mr. Gima in the evening.

Of course, not every day ended up going the same, and there were blips in the impromptu routine we'd established. On Saturday, Alyssa had to travel for a match, which meant sneaking a fair-dodging foreigner onto a commuter train (a feat made simple by the auspices of a certain illusionist extraordinaire). On Monday, a protest in the city-center developed into a full-blown riot that saw all of us sheltering in Alyssa's apartment for the whole day.

On Wednesday, I convinced my mom to let me sleep over at my best friend's, and the pair of us spent the whole night watching battles, going through PokéDex entries, and puzzling through the journals Drake's associates had sent while our partners absolutely Grumpigged out on Mrs. Peter's amazing cooking. On Thursday, Mr. Gima showed up to our training session late. Apparently, he'd thought that he'd caught the scent of something, but by the time he ran the lead down, there was nothing to find.

And on Friday, Janine reached out to me and asked if I could stop by the ranger station in the afternoon. It was time for a long-overdue conversation about my future as a part of Ferrum's ranger corp. - Janine's office looked different from what I remembered. The last time I'd seen it, it hadn't been overflowing with half-full cardboard boxes. The ranger sergeant herself was different too.

She wasn't in uniform, something I'd never seen before (even when she'd visited me at the hospital), and the sight of it took me so far aback that a full ten seconds passed before either of us broke the awkward silence that had heralded my arrival into the cramped room. Eventually, the sergeant cleared her throat, and gestured at a chair barely visible through the sea of cardboard.

"Thanks for coming in on a Friday Fe, go ahead and take a seat." I had to clamber over overflowing boxes and various half-packed supplies, and when I finally got to the simple metal chair, I found that it was pushed so close to the sergeant's desk that I was forced to sit in it cross-cross.

"Apologies for the mess," Janine told me as she and her partner watched me navigate the scrum.

"As you can probably tell, I'm packing up to leave, and I've accumulated rather more than I had thought during my tenure here at Techne seven."

"Leave?" I asked as I climbed into the seat.

"Are you going to another station?" The Johto-expat sighed, and to my eyes, the years I'd long had a hard time seeing on her seemed to settle like snow on an over-laden roof. She sagged, and Stella put a steadying claw on her arm.

"Sort of Fe, but not exactly. I'm- we're," she nodded down at her partner, "leaving Ferrum." My hands felt cold, but her words weren't anything I hadn't expected after seeing the state of her office. I just hadn't wanted to believe it.

"Were you- did you quit?" I asked, trying to make sense of the situation. The former sergeant nodded.

"I tendered my resignation yesterday. Come the Monday after next, I'll be on a flight to Oblivia." Oblivia. A hinterland region I'd barely heard of. In fact, I was pretty sure I only knew of it because I'd spent some time researching the Ranger Union.

"What happened?" I asked, disbelief plain in my tone.

"I mean, what is even going on?" Another sigh.

"Sorry Fe, things have been so hectic around here. I've done a bad job of keeping you appraised, but Donna did tell me that you'd probably know what to expect." The woman dug around the interior of her desk, pulling out a few papers and setting them on the cluttered surface.

"Let me catch you up. The corps here in Ferrum has decided that, at the end of September, any rangers who cannot or will not synchronize with their partners are to be discharged." She pushed the papers over to me, and a quick scan while I listened to her talk revealed that it was a brief detailing the same as she was saying now.

"Anyone who resigns ahead of that deadline will receive the full benefits of their employment, as well as the benefits of the proceeding level of seniority."

"Benefits?" I asked, even as I continued running my eyes across the papers Janine had passed to me.

"Right. Normally, as a ranger trainee, you wouldn't be entitled to any, but the corps didn't want people kicking up a fuss, so everyone who quits on their own terms gets their rank and seniority bumped up for calculating payouts." I found a section near the last couple of pages detailing what Janine was talking about. Pensions, partner count increases, special insurance plans, educational vouchers.

"The corps will pay for any institute of higher learning I get into in the next six years?" I asked, reading the report with wide eyes.

"And I'm on their insurance for the next three years? I know there aren't a ton of people with synergy sickness anymore, but I bet a ton of trainees would jump on this! How is the corps planning to pay for it?"

"That's a very, very good question," Janine replied darkly, and the twinge of syn she let off for a moment told me that she had her suspicions, and that she wasn't happy about them. I looked up from the papers back at my former boss.

"But, wait, you can synergize, right? Why are you quitting? Or, transferring to Oblivia?"

"The latter," Janine clarified.

"And it's, well–" the Johto-expat looked, embarrassed, maybe? I wasn't exactly sure how to read the expression on her face.

"A few of us senior rangers told the corps that we didn't agree with these changes. That if they went through with them, we'd pull up roots and quit." A few moments of silence passed.

"I didn't ask you to do that for me," I muttered, suddenly unable to meet the other woman's eyes.

"It wasn't about you, Fe," Janine was quick to insist.

"Well, it was, but not just you. Philip has synergy sickness too, I don't know if we ever told you. He's being forced into retirement too. All told, there were fifty-six rangers and one trainee who can't synergize for various reasons. We were making a stand for all of you."

"Oh," I said, my voice quiet.

"Um, thank you Serg– Janine, for trying."

"It was the least I could do," the former sergeant muttered darkly.

"The least any of us should have done. These changes Fe, the motivations behind them– I think there are dark days ahead of Ferrum, Fe." I wanted to protest. To tell Janine that she was wrong, but I found the words stuck in my throat.

"What is Philip going to do? And Wilson, and Donna?" I asked, in lieu of contesting her ominous claim.

"Philip's decided to retire. He's going to buy a ranch up the north, and settle down there with his pension and his Skiddos. Wilson resigned with me. He told me that he wants to do a bit of traveling for a while, but last I heard, he hasn't settled on where he wants to go yet. Donna's staying on. I haven't heard much from her other than that."

"And Liken? Bakiru?" I kept probing, even as the queasy feeling that'd been percolating in my gut intensified with each revelation.

"Liken's said he's applying to schools. I guess that was always his plan, so this whole debacle works out well for him. Bakiru's resigning as well. That's been coming for a while, I think but this whole situation pushed him over the edge." I leaned back in my chair, and had to reach out a desperate hand to steady myself on the desk when the unsteady seat almost pitched over.

"So that's it, then? Everyone in Outpost Seven is going their separate ways?"

"Not just Outpost Seven," Janine told me.

"Last I heard, over twenty-percent of the force is retiring or resigning. The ranger corps here in Ferrum hasn't had an exodus like this in… ever, I don't think."

"And all this, just so people can use those damn PSS things," I muttered, unable to keep the disgust out of my tone.

"Yes. I think the expression in Galarian is putting the cart before the Mudbray." I let out a helpless laugh, "you can say that again." A silent malaise settled between us, sitting thick and heavy in the cluttered office. Eventually, I broke the uneasy quiet.

"What if I wanted to keep being a ranger in another region? Would you be able to help me with that?"

"In a heartbeat," the former sergeant nodded.

"Any corps would be lucky to have you Fe. Say the word, and I'll do my best to make it happen."

"I'm not sure that's what I want yet," I hurried to clarify.

"I'm still figuring out what I want to do next, what's right for my partners and I." And thinking about my partners, I realized I had another question.

"Hold on, do my partners also get the next tier of benefits?"

"You know what, let's go over just what exactly resigning will earn you. Maybe it'll help you with your decision on what to do from here," she snagged the papers back from me, and circled several sections with a pen, before handing it back.

"Firstly, like you noticed earlier, you're entitled to an educational voucher that will fully pay for any institute of higher learning that you decide to attend for the next six years, with a few caveats." - We spent the next half-hour digging into the minutiae of what my partners' and I's five months in the ranger corp had earned us. In an objective sense, we'd made out like bandits. The educational voucher, obviously, was a large boon.

Anyone who tested well enough could get into a university, but like with many things, money could get you opportunities that simple test scores couldn't. With the voucher, no school would be out of my reach, provided I had the grades and the scores to make it in. I'd also earned a permanently upgraded carry limit, and since I was getting the benefits of a full ranger corporal, that meant I could legally have as many as five partners.

Like I had seen earlier, my health insurance was covered by the corps for the next three years, and I'd forever qualify as a 'ranger veteran' when making certain purchases and applying for government programs. Really, the infrastructure around what we earned from our time in the corps was shockingly robust. Which made it all the stranger that the organization seemed to be in the midst of burning itself to the ground. And finally, my partners did in fact earn the right to test for independence.

Any Pokémon partnered with me at the time my resignation was processed would have that opportunity. My partners were going to have to have a long conversation with one another when I returned home today. Like I'd been worried, a door had closed for us today, but I did my best not to focus on that, to ignore the strange, sinking feeling pulling on my guts. Better instead to investigate the paths that'd opened.

- And one last thing, something I got from Janine, unrelated to the benefits I'd (perhaps unfairly) earned for my short stint as a Ferrum Ranger. Six phone numbers, a set of promises that I could still reach out to the people on the other end, that even though our paths had diverged, we weren't without recourse to find one another again. A promise I was exercising already, because I still had one last thing to take care of before this chapter of my life closed out. One final duty I had to attend.

The droning dial tone grated on my ears, coming out of our home phone's tinny receiver. One second, two, it rang, until with a click, a smooth voice came through the device, as someone picked up the line on the other end.

"This is Philip. Who's calling?" I took a deep breath, and spoke over the line.

"Philip, it's Fe. Sorry to call you out of the blue like this, but I was hoping Clover would be willing to speak with me sometime this week. I owe her an apology. One that's long overdue."