Chương 77: Chapter 62

When the collapse began, it wasn't in the foundation I'd been expecting. I knew my best friend was in danger. It was an all-consuming fact. Something unignorably omnipresent, even as (or maybe especially because) we worked day-by-day to get just a little bit stronger. It felt imperative, that we invest as much time as possible into it, even if it only made us the smallest bit better-equipped to deal with whatever threat was after her.

I also knew that the region-at-large was experiencing turmoil, both from the news, and from my own personal experiences. Riots and protests were almost daily occurrences, and no one walked the streets alone anymore. And yet, the former was so much more present in our group's consciousness than the latter. The sense of malice, of threat swirling around Alyssa was cloying, was stifling.

In many ways, it was almost blinding in its intensity, and under its shadow, the wider concerns at large seemed, distant, seemed unimportant. Until, all of a sudden, they weren't. - It started one Friday night in mid-September. My partners and I got home late as usual after eating our fill at Alyssa's apartment. Mrs. Peters was spoiling the lot of us, but her cooking was impossible to resist, and it saved me a lot of time on meal preparations.

Valuable time that I was more than willing to reinvest in catching up on sleep. Between the training, the stress of watching over Alyssa, and the sense of unease pervading the whole city, every day was exhausting. Sometimes, it felt like no matter how much I slept, I'd still inevitably wake up tired. My partners were getting ready for bed, a routine we'd all but perfected over long months living together.

They had first claim on the bathroom, where Mana hosed my knights down in the shower while Maushold sudsed themselves up in the sink. After she was done rinsing them, I'd take over with a cloth and a tin of armor polish, lest we wake up tomorrow to find my spherical partners covered once again in a sticky layer of Falinks spit. For her part, my little fish could keep herself mostly clean, and she didn't even really need periodic reminders anymore to do so.

I'd still detail her scales at least once a week, but with the level of hydrokinetic control she had, it wasn't a necessity, just something for us to share. And as for Maushold, well, they needed less than zero supervision when it came to hygiene. I just had to make sure their supply of fur-safe shampoo and conditioner were well stocked and that I poured a bit of clog-be-gone down the drain every couple of days.

After my partners were finished cleaning up, I'd take my own shower, but in the meantime, I was taking care of some small chores around the apartment. A quick spot of vacuuming to get Maushold's fur off the couch, some wiping to remove a bit of Falinks drool from the kitchen floor, making sure all the windows were shut and the front door locked. And checking the answering machine on the corded home phone mounted on the wall next to the kitchen's entrance.

The red diode was flashing, which meant there were unheard messages waiting for a listener. Usually, this was one responsibility I'd leave for my parents to deal with, but mom was on the night shift this week, and dad was on a business trip, so answering messages on the landline fell to me, lest the inbox fill up over capacity. It was a pain, especially since a lot of what came through was spam from 'Pory-callers,' but important stuff showed up sometimes, so we couldn't fully ignore it.

The most common diamonds amongst the metaphorical rough were calls from extended family (especially mom's), but there were other valid reasons someone might reach out to us via landline, as opposed to any of our Pokégears. I picked up the handheld, holding it up to my ear and twisting the cord around my index finger as I listened to the device's tinny speaker.

"You have: five unread messages," said the electronic voice. I thumbed through the first, an automated message offering a cable package. I slapped the delete button. The second started, trying to sell us on a magazine subscription. Into the proverbial trash bin. I almost dismissed the third, before realizing that the synthesized voice wasn't trying to sell us on a medical journal, but rather informing us that our current subscription to one was expiring.

I knew mom faithfully kept up with PokéHealth Monthly, so I took a note and stuck it to the fridge using one of the magnetic clips we kept attached to the appliance for that very purpose. The fourth voicemail was a request for donations to a local charity, which I decided to leave on the machine for my parents to deal with. The last I didn't get a chance to hear before a disturbance from the bathroom distracted me.

The banging and shouting was alarming enough that I left the corded phone dangling from its cradle as I booked it for the commotion. I opened the door to a scene of barely-restrained chaos. Tristan and Lance were squaring (or more like sphereing) up across from one another, both still covered in a thin layer of water. Kay and Galad stood behind the former while Bers and Percy backed up the latter, and the two factions had split the bathroom, all six of them bristling in the midst of some sort of argument.

Mana floated above the tableau, silvery eyes unreadable as she stared down at the scene, and Maushold were mostly-submerged in the suds-filled sink, only the tops of their heads visible as they peered over their makeshift-bathtub's porcelain rim.

"Alright break it up, break it up," I interposed myself between the pair of trios.

"What's gotten into you six?" That maybe wasn't an entirely fair question. The stress and malaise seemingly afflicting everyone in Ferrum had not left my partners nor I unscathed, but that didn't mean that there wasn't some other catalyst that might have inspired this sudden confrontation.

"Links, fafalininiks!" Lance complained, making a sweeping gesture with his shield that seemed to encompass Tristan and his cohort, as well as Maushold, who I now noticed was positioned behind the formation's rear brass and his troops (relative to Lance's group anyway). The front brass' assertion was met with an indignant "Falinks!" from Tristan, who puffed up and crossed his shields in front of his body. I looked between them, piecing the context of the argument together as best I could.

From what I could tell, Lance was asserting that Maushold should be putting more effort into their training, while Tristan was defending them. The back-and-forth started picking up in volume again, and I had to shout the arguing down again.

"Hey, hey, no yelling at each other!" I could see the two sides metaphorically digging in, and I knew I would need to weigh in on this. On the one hand, I could sort of see where Lance was coming from. Maushold were definitely falling behind compared to Mana and my knights, especially when it came to direct power. They just didn't have the same passion and drive for training that the others possessed.

It's not that they were lazy, or unwilling to put in the effort, but my knights lived and breathed to get stronger, and Mana was just about as determined as they were, even if her motivations for improvement differed. Lance had high standards, and he expected the same from everyone around him, human or Pokémon. Seeing Maushold put in effort, but maybe not as much effort as he thought they were capable of, had apparently been wearing on him, until he couldn't keep it contained any longer.

And on the other hand– my eyes went to the subject of the argument in question, the trio of quivering Normal-types peering between me and the warring Falinks from their perch atop the sink. I turned to Lance and his cohort, my resolve firm.

"I told Maushold they'd be welcome here, no matter what, and anything they do on top of that is their prerogative, not an expectation." Ten pairs of eyes turned to look at me at the proclamation, and my mind worked overtime to catalogue reactions. Lance looked frustrated, while Percy and Bers seemed confused. Tristan had on a smirk of validation, while Galad and Kay were nodding.

Maushold were huddled close with one another, muttering amongst themselves in a way that I couldn't interpret without the tactile communication that they preferred.

"Washi, washwish." To my surprise, it was Mana who refuted my proclamation, her voice low but carrying, causing all the water in the room to vibrate and thrum. I looked up at her, surprise on my face, and she did look apologetic, but also unyielding.

"I know things are getting more dangerous lately, but that doesn't make protecting me their responsibility," I spoke up at her.

"Links, Falinks!" Lance refuted, emboldened by the unexpected backup.

"Fafafalin."

"Just because you don't see their contributions, doesn't mean they aren't helping! And like I said, their place with us isn't tied to their utility!" I felt my voice increasing in volume, and carefully took a deep breath to control my tone.

"That's what it means to be a family. We watch out for each other because we care for one another, not because we get something out of it, right?" Lance and Mana both rocked back a bit, but I couldn't tell if it was because they actually felt chastened, or if it was because they were surprised by the vehemence with which I disagreed with them. I looked to Maushold to see their reactions to things thus far, only to see them looking at me. No– they were staring past me, their heads tilted, ears perked.

"Maushold?" I asked, blinking in confusion.

"Maus, Maushol!" they leapt from the sink, splashing water all over the already soaked floor. They took off past me, towards the front door, and for a second I feared they were trying to run away from me, from us, but as I tore off after them, I found them waiting below the dangling hall phone, pointing up at the hanging receiver with frantic cries. Confused, I walked over to them, even as another part of my brain catalogued the sounds of my other partners trooping behind us, soaking the hall carpet even further.

"Something on the phone?" I asked, as I picked up the plastic device.

"-wish to repeat this message? Please wait, or press one now." came the machine's electronic voice as I held it up to my ear. I furrowed my brow, and clicked the handset's 'one' key, replaying the voicemail again. The voice of a breathless woman came out of the speaker, her tone frantic and desperate.

"Pern, why the hell aren't you picking up your Pokégear!?" she spat, venom in her tongue.

"I swung by a few hours ago, but no one was home. You need to get over to Techne General right now. It's Ella, she's– it's– she's hurt. There was an accident, and she's unconscious. We don't– it's not–" the woman on the end of the line took a shuddering breath.

"Look, I don't know how long she's going to last. If you can't make it, send Fe. We need a surrogate for medical decisions at the hospital. Now. Every minute counts. Hurry." The message clicked off, and Maushold finished reciting what they were hearing to my knights and Mana.

"Do you wish to repeat this message? Please wait, or press one now." the dangling phone spoke to the empty air, as my partners and I tore out of the front door. - The buses used to run late in Techne, but nowadays, with all of the unrest, they were on an abbreviated schedule. Similarly, it was all but impossible to hail a Cyclizar taxi without calling their headquarters ahead of time and arranging for a pickup.

That'd still make it the fastest way for us to get Techne General, and it was still going to be an hour before I could be by my mom's side. Except that I knew that there was another possibility. The suspicion came from Juan's journal, and more specifically, from one of his many, many flowery descriptions of various Water-type moves.

"Dive," the entry went, "a move so fundamentally tied with Water-types they might as well be synonymous!" Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there. Ignoring the fact that the journal said the exact same thing, word for word, of at least three other moves, the passages that followed were profound. Profoundly impenetrable, that was.

"To Dive is to be one with water. It is to become of the currents, to join the flow of life and essence that suffuses all beings and surrounds this great blue earth. Just as those that fly can become one with the air, and those that haunt can become one with the dark, those that dig can return to the earth, and those swim can rejoin the swell, if only for a moment.

And more, just as flyers and diggers and ghasts can haul their prey and carry their fellows, so too can swimmers learn to take company along with them in their efforts to recapture their most primordial state-of-being. And therein lies the true power of Dive. The privilege to join the flow underpinning reality, and to ride those waves to reaches previously unattainable." The words were, frankly, impenetrable on first blush. And second. And third.

But I'd peeled through Juan's journal cover to cover this point more times than that, and somehow, impossibly, his oblique ramblings had begun to make a sort of sense to me. It sounded like Drake's associate was asserting that Water-types could, with the proper training, bring others along with them when they used the move Dive. And I'd already seen Mana use Dive to travel between completely separate bodies of water.

The only questions that remained then were how quickly could we figure out how to do what Juan said was possible and what was Mana's range between different pools. And the only way to find the answers was to give it a try. I held my piscine partner close to my chest, my eyes closed. My right ear burned in tandem with a little pocket of heat beneath Mana's tongue. For all we'd just been arguing, been on opposite sides, we were still a single whole.

After all, both of us were well aware of how one could be at odds with oneself. An eruption of water surrounded us, an azure school apparating out of thin air, lifting me up and into the air. Mana pulled free from my arms, melding into the school, and I reached down, digging my hands into the wriggling maelstrom, anchoring myself amongst the tide. The leviathan bellowed and exploded upwards, leaping into the air as if breaching the ocean's waves.

We went up, up, hurtling into the air at speeds that threatened to pull me free from my watery perch, until we reached the apex of our leap. The city shimmered below us, visible as flickering lights gleaming through Mana's azure school. And then gravity took hold of us, and we went down, down, crashing back towards the earth. A nearby park ended up being our first target, the water feature there making for a convenient portal.

The pond hosted several families of Swanna and Ducklett, and it almost seemed like I could feel their shock as Mana and I crashed towards the water like a comet. Right until the very last moment, I'd felt some doubt. We'd felt some doubt. What if this didn't work? If I got separated from Mana before she Dove, or even worse, after. If I couldn't handle the stress of whatever process Mana went through to travel between different pools of water.

If I just plowed into the surface of the tranquil pool and splattered all across it as Mana went on without me. But while there was doubt, there was no hesitation. We rammed into the pond as if we were a meteor. Except, instead of smashing into the surface and shredding ourselves, we flowed through it, down, down, vanishing the depths below in one smooth motion. Not physically. The water feature was actually rather shallow all told, only deep enough for an adult to wade in.

No, we were descending to a level beneath. I desperately held my breath, and squeezed my eyes tightly shut. I could feel water rushing around me, tearing at my skin and clothes, a current that threatened to pull me free from Mana's embrace. But my hands held fast to her form, and her constructs refused to relinquish me to the tide. My lungs started burning, and the count in my mind reached a minute, and then seventy-five seconds.

And then we were out, flowing into the air once again, breaching the surface of reality in what I felt should have been a cacophonous crash, but was in reality just a whispered squelch. We ascended, rising high into the air once more, and I spluttered water out of my mouth and blinked it free from my eyes as I felt the air whipping my hair out behind me. I looked out, taking in the city once more. My mind scattered, cataloging the sights, and I realized we'd traveled a couple kilometers in a little over a minute.

I risked pulling a hand free to point, and a thousand eyes followed my finger off into the distance.

"That way Mana, as fast as we can." The wind picked up, and we descended once more. - In the end, it took us just over fifteen minutes to reach the hospital. We crashed into a parking lot that looked more like a warzone than a place to store cars. Craters pitted the asphalt, and huge spires of stone and mud erupted from the earth in haphazard waves. Mana's school exploded as we landed, water flying everywhere as the constructs slammed into the pavement.

A few lingering azure forms slowed my descent, before vanishing as well, leaving me to pluck my exhausted fish out of the air and bustle past a few open-mouthed people in the parking lot who'd witnessed our descent. The building's lobby wasn't in much better shape than its exterior. Cracked flooring and shattered walls abounded, evidence of something gone horribly wrong. Doctors and nurses bustled about, while construction workers and their partners taped off damaged areas, or worked to effect temporary repairs.

Amidst the wreckage, a makeshift reception desk had been set up, several nurses' carts pushed together and stripped of equipment to play host to a few ancient looking PCs instead. Harried looking staff processed a queue in front of the impromptu desk, and I quickly joined the line, ignoring the odd looks I got for walking into the building soaked like I'd just been taking a shower.

A few minutes passed, during which a Magmar with a janitorial cap and a baleful expression dried the floor I'd dripped all over (and me, presumably as an afterthought). Eventually, it was my turn at the front of the queue, and I must have been, at least to some extent, an expected visitor, because as soon as the receptionist heard my name, he told me to wait just a couple of minutes.

Sure enough, barely two had passed before a woman with a beeping pager came fast-walking down the corridor, almost tumbling to a stop next to me. It took me a moment to place her, but in my defense, Millicent Joy looked almost exactly like my mother, and also her other two sisters. And a hundred other women in this city alone.

"Aunt Min," I breathed, "I got a voicemail. It said mom was hurt?" The older woman took a couple of deep breaths, before gesturing for me to follow and taking off down the corridor once more.

"Fe, thank the Golems you're here. Ella is– an accident happened, and she was injured. Badly." I felt my heart pounding in my chest and my stomach roiling.

"The message said you needed someone here to make medical decisions? What about Chansey?" Aunt Min groaned.

"It's complicated. Ella's injuries– we can't treat them normally. Not here in Ferrum." I stumbled. I would have fallen on my face had a few azure bodies not caught me and set me back on my feet.

"What do you mean? What happened?" I couldn't see Aunt Min's face, but I could hear her shuddering breaths.

"While she was treating a wild Pokémon, it went berserk. She ended up getting hit by a few different attacks, and one of them struck her in the head after her syn was exhausted. She suffered a severe TBI and a complete SCI from the neck down." It took me a few seconds to parse the acronyms, and when I did, I almost fell again.

"That's– Guardians."

"We still have options though!" Aunt Min said as we stepped into an elevator.

"But to exercise them in time, we needed you or Pern here."

"What can we do?" I asked, confusion bubbling beneath a layer of uncomprehending horror.

"I mean– that's not– people don't get better, after injuries like that." Even if mom survived, she'd be paralyzed, and if she took a head injury bad enough to break her neck, what were the chances she'd ever wake up again?

"They might from now on," Aunt Min said with bone-deep determination.

"There's an experimental treatment, in Kanto-Johto. It might be able to do something about cases like Ella's." The elevator door opened, and Aunt Min strode off into the corridor, fast-walking through the halls at a rate that had me almost running to keep up. I felt as if I was moving through a dream, disconnected moments strung nonsensically together.

"Okay, so let's do that!" I told her, as we skipped down the hallway.

"Why do you need Dad or I to make that decision? You have her partner here, right? And you're her sister!" The older woman sucked in a breath.

"It's an experimental treatment, and it doesn't count as a life-saving measure. To authorize it, we need a designated surrogate, and in Ella's case, that's only Chansey or your father."

"Is it– is it safe?" I asked, taking one harried step after another.

"Is it better than trying to help her here?" Before I knew it, we had arrived at an open door. Aunt Min stopped and turned to face me, speaking words that I could barely understand past the persistent buzz at the edge of my ears, "it's not completely perfect yet, but I promise you Fe, it's Ella's best shot." Aunt Min's eyes were red, and I got my first good look at her face, and the anguish clearly present on it.

"They're on the cutting edge of medical technology there. Without this treatment–" the older nurse trailed off. She stood there for a few moments, clearly composing herself, before she forced herself to speak again.

"Without it, Ella has better than even odds of making it through the night. If she wakes up over the next few days, she'll probably survive. But by the time we know, it'll be too late for this treatment to help."

"And what are the odds on the treatment? What's the result?" I asked her, even as it felt like the walls were closing in on me.

"We're not sure, like I said, it's experimental," Aunt Min admitted.

"But I'm told a full recovery is possible, and even failing that, it improves her chances of survival." The roaring in my ears was getting loud, and I pulled Mana tight against my chest. Her leaking tears would stain the skin of my hands for days, but I couldn't find it in myself to care at this moment.

"So why do you need me to make this choice," I asked, my voice horrendously plaintive, even to my own ears.

"Bureacracy," the older nurse glowered.

"Pokémon don't have the same rights in Kanto that they do here, so Chansey can't authorize the treatment." I felt my mind firing sluggishly, fighting to make connections, even through the haze.

"And legally, I'd be an adult over there?" I guessed. Aunt Min looked a bit surprised, but she recovered quickly.

"That's right. And in Kanto, unlike here in Ferrum, your adult children are automatically designated as your surrogates for medical decisions, unless you specify otherwise."

"So, if mom and I make it to Kanto, I can authorize this experimental treatment?" I clarified, clenching and unclenching my free fist while Mana gently lifted free of my other arm so she could nestle herself in my hair.

"Even if we're not citizens?" In answer, Linnette Joy appeared before me, as if stepping wholesale out of the ether. She was brandishing a form on a clipboard, with a black pen tied to the top with twine.

"That's right Fe. If you're on-board, then sign, here, here, here," she pointed at various places on the piece of paper she was holding. I hesitated for just a moment, and then I took the proffered clipboard and uncapped the pen. It was the work of moments to sign my name across the dotted lines, even as my mind skimmed at max speed. I was holding a citizenship application, except it clearly wasn't a standard form. For one thing, the paper was Joy pink, the same color as my mom and Aunt's hair.

For another, several parts of the document were already pre-filled out, clearly referencing my mom's family. I handed the completed form back to Aunt Linnie, who vanished from view as she glanced at the document. Before I even had a chance to breathe, to try to pierce the veil of unreality surrounding me, Wilma Joy, mom's eldest sister, appeared, another piece of paper in hand. This one was written in a foreign language that I only vaguely recognized as Kantonian.

She'd taken the liberty of circling the places I needed to sign in red marker.

"This authorizes the treatment," she told me.

"I'm sorry to rush you Fe–" I was already taking the form from her hands, signing the paper even as I spoke to her.

"You said every second counts, right? Especially if we need to travel to Kanto-Johto first." Aunt Min shook her head as Aunt Wilma disappeared with the completed authorization.

"No time for transit, Fe. Odds on this treatment turn bad after more than six hours have passed. Your mom has an hour left, at best." I felt my whole body lurch, and the haze closed in around me.

"What? Then why did I sign that? There's no–" Whatever I was going to say next was cut off by a flash of light that banished the creeping veil of unreality that'd been closing in on me. It came from mom's hospital room, and Aunt Min didn't miss a beat, grabbing me by the hand and tugging me insistantly through the doorway. The room was packed. Between mom's bed, all three of my aunts, a doctor I didn't recognize, Chansey, Mana, and I, it felt like there was hardly a centimeter of free space.

Unfortunately, I couldn't see what state mom was in through the crowd (which might actually have been for the best). And yet, the press of bodies wasn't what truly filled the room to bursting. No, the thing actually pressing against us, absorbing every millimeter of open real estate, was the sense of presence, of power roiling off the trio standing right by the hospital bed.

A woman and two Pokémon, all three emitting churning waves of energy that drove everyone back from them and threatened to crash through the walls of the room into the hospital at-large. One had straight black hair, and eyes that were visibly glowing even through her closed lids. She stood in the center of the barely-restrained maelstrom, her entire body tensed as if braced for some sort of impact.

Next to her, a pair of slender Alakazam stood, their four spoons pointed at their presumed partner and their eyes squeezed shut in concentration. One was male, judging by the way his mustache trailed down almost to his toes, and his torso was a deep brown, almost black. The other seemed younger, smaller, but she was no less focused and intent, and her spoons were practically glowing with barely restrained power.

A moment passed, two, and then the woman took a single deep breath, somehow audible over all of the beeping equipment and background noise from the hospital behind us. The energy waned, retreating back into her, leaving the rest of us space to breath, to exist. The glow faded from her closed eyes, and she opened them, turning twin orbs of piercing red towards us that transfixed the entire room. The powerful psychic didn't waste a moment, recalling the male Alakazam and feeding his Poké Ball into a beeping machine.

With a whoosh, the sphere glowed white, and vanished, and the device let out a pleasant 'ding.'

"Alakazam is back in Kanto," the woman informed us in almost completely unaccented Galarian.

"He's ready for the transfer." Her eyes turned to me, "this is the girl?" Aunt Wilma nodded.

"This is her," she replied as she pushed me forwards.

"Thank you, Miss Natsume. The clan owes you."

"As long as you hold to your deal, all will be settled," the woman replied. She put one hand on mom's hospital bed, and held the other out to me.

"Come, I'm told time is short." I recalled Mana, and grasped the proffered hand. I had just enough time to idly note the saffron nail polish adorning the woman's fingertips and wonder where the hell my father was, before the world whirled away, and all I knew was nausea and blinding light.