Chương 81: Chapter 65

My partners were fully exhausted, and I was almost as bad off as they were. A full day of training, capped off with one of the most dramatic battles of our careers thus far, had left the eleven of us completely drained. A glance at my watch told me that it was nearly eleven PM back home, which contrasted sharply with the gleaming sun illuminating Saffron's towering ochre spires.

It was little wonder I was so spent, and something in my demeanor was doubtlessly giving away my current state, because I found myself, (and by extension, Maushold, still held tight in my arms) bundled away from the interested crowd by Kantonian Joy who'd instigated my match with the foreign gym leader.

"Great battle, Fione," she reassured me as she maneuvered our way free from the curious onlookers.

"Technically, we just needed you to participate in a gym battle, but there's nothing wrong with going the extra mile." There was a forced grit in the woman's tone that I recognized from seven years of having a Joy as my mother. I glanced up at the foreign woman, and found her achingly-familiar features twisted in a grimace that belied her reassuring words.

"Is everything okay Nurse Joy?" I asked in rasping tones, my throat still stripped raw from shouting orders and encouragement. My question shocked the woman out of her dark ruminations.

"Oh, I'm sorry Fione. Everything's just fine. I just hadn't expected Miss Nastume to release a member of her personal team to battle with you."

"I didn't have any other Pokémon available that would have made for a suitable challenge," remarked a voice dryer then the heart of the Nacal. Both Nurse Joy and I jumped, as did Maushold in my arms, all five of us looking around frantically. Somehow, without any of our noticing, Miss Nastume had caught up with our group and was striding alongside us back into the hospital.

"You– how?" I asked, my exhaustion-addled mind struggling to connect the requisite dots.

"Most people think psychic-techniques should be flashy and loud. The more bombastic and dramatic the demonstration, the more the common man celebrates it. Any real practitioner, however, knows that the truest sign of mastery over oneself and one's abilities is to leave the smallest mark possible when working the greatest miracles." The Gym Leader rushed through her explanation, speaking almost as many words in one sentence as I'd heard from her in total before this point.

And if she wasn't blowing hot air, she had reason to be proud. Even at high levels of competition in Ferrum Battles, I'd never seen Teleportation that didn't leave behind some evidence of coming and going. It was what allowed skilled fighters to combat the technique. Golems, even the Gym Leader's Alakazam hadn't been able to prevent the flashes of light and whooshes of air associated with the Psychic-type move.

That the woman might have more psychic capability than the Pokémon she commanded was an intimidating prospect, and I felt my assessment of the foreign woman ratchet up another notch.

"Thank you for the battle Gym Leader Sabrina," I nodded respectfully.

"It was– a good match," the woman replied. She seemed, almost surprised somehow by her own admission.

"Better than I expected." For some reason, that elicited an intake of breath from my escort, but before I could turn to look at Nurse Joy in askance, I found my field of view dominated by an outstretched hand, upon which rested a saffron badge. Two concentric circles of gleaming metal polished stared up at me, shining under the summer sun.

"For you," the foreign woman told me, as she deposited the yellow pin in my instinctively raised palm.

"This Marsh badge is proof that you've defeated me in battle. Seven more like it, and you can compete in the Indigo Plateau Conference at year's end." I found my attention captured by the glittering badge, the heavy metal and careful craftsmanship so different from the cheap imitations handed out by Techne's underleaders. Even just casually holding the foreign accolade gave me ample understanding of the gulf that existed.

Suddenly, the evidence of our hard work, of our accomplishments and achievements back home, felt so– so– lacking. Like the blood and sweat and tears we'd poured into chasing those little hunks of metal meant– less. Because back home, holding those pins was a curiosity, a source of pride only in the smallest of circles. Here, in this city halfway across the world, this badge was proof I'd accomplished something, and anyone from Kanto would know that.

Slowly, painfully, I dragged my attention away from the awful, saffron reminder perched on my outstretched palm.

"Thank you," I forced myself to say, holding my gaze steady on the Gym Leader's crimson eyes. Sabrina held my stare, her expression inscrutable. A beat passed, then two, and then the woman spoke.

"You should get some sleep. You're going to need it." And with that cryptic statement, the Gym Leader was gone. I missed a step, almost unable to believe my eyes. Sabrina had vanished in the space between instants, next to us one moment, and gone in the next.

"That girl," I heard my escort muttering as she pulled me back into the hospital.

"Have you known Gym Leader Sabrina for a long time?" I asked the nurse as we returned to the labyrinthian halls of her place of work.

"Only personally since she set up shop here in Saffron, but I've certainly known of her quite a bit longer than that," my escort replied.

"You make that sound like a bad thing," I probed hesitantly, sensing some potential gossip.

"Well she has a bit of a reputation," the woman hemmed and hawed.

"She's an oracle, you know. Many say the best one currently alive. She'd tell you she was the best one that ever lived."

"An oracle? Like, the sort that can see the future?" I asked, the information recontextualizing the woman's cryptic statements in my mind.

"Exactly the sort," the foreign nurse replied, before she levered a sigh.

"In poor Sabrina's case, I worry she sees altogether too much of the future, so thanks for rattling her cage a bit Fione. Never hurts to give that one a reminder that no person is above being surprised every once in a while." The words were supposed to be a compliment, and I wanted to take them in the spirit they were given, but something about them stirred an undercurrent of unease in my gut. Was my future so uncertain that the best oracle who had ever lived couldn't see it properly?

The Kantonian nurse took my ability to surprise Kanto's greatest psychic as a portent of something positive, but I was pretty sure that prophecies weren't written about those destined to be nobody, and if I was barely legible in the future Sabrina envisioned– what did that say about my chances of becoming someone worth remembering? The question haunted me until I fell asleep in a room at a nearby Pokémon Center, along with the rest of my worries. Was my mom going to be okay?

Was everything alright with Alyssa back home? And where in Distortion's darkest hell was my father? - I awoke to the feeling of someone jostling me back to wakefulness. I pushed against the intrusion to my slumber, fitfully attempting to fend off whatever intruder was interrupting my rest, only for that thought to crystallize into a hard and sharp bead of panic. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Someone unfamiliar was in my room, trying to shake me awake. I shot up, scrambling away from whatever had been pushing against my shoulder, my hands scrabbling at my belt for Poké Balls that were currently unavailable. My mind fired with a start, cycling and sputtering like an ignited engine as converging threads and scattered shards of attention reoriented towards a potential threat"Good, you're up," a dispassionate voice called out of the darkness.

"And already dressed, excellent. Take these," From the gloom, Gym Leader Sabrina materialized, the Kantonian woman's features illuminated by three glowing Poké Balls, slowly hovering in a straight line across the room, flying directly from the pale apparition haunting the doorway to my outstretched hands.

"Leader Sabrina," I said carefully, as I intercepted the balls in flight and inspected their familiar contours.

"It's," a glance at a nearby digital clock informed me, "three AM?"

"Indeed, and I would really rather be sleeping right now, but needs must," the woman replied without actually offering any information.

"Now, stow your Poké Balls. We need to be on our way."

"Our way to where?" I asked more directly as I carefully placed my partners' balls on my belt.

"Back to Ferrum," the woman said in a tone that was maddeningly matter-of-fact.

"I told you earlier that she'd need you, and that time has now arrived. Now come along, I've let you rest as much as possible, but now we're out of time." I barely had time to blink a few times in confusion and wonder how the older woman had jostled me awake while standing on the other side of the room, before I found myself wrapped in a shimmering cascade of light. Almost before I could comprehend what was happening, I found myself floating across the room, caught up in a gentle telekinetic grasp.

"Wait," I held up a hand while my stomach did a few flips. I'd recently filled it at the Pokémon Center's cafeteria, not expecting nauseating psychic-shenaningans in my future (more the fool I).

"We can't just leave! What about my mom! They haven't– I haven't heard how she's doing." Somehow, fractionally, the Kantonian woman's icy facade warmed. Just a little. So slightly I wasn't sure if it was real or I was imagining it.

"She'll be fine. You have my word. The same can't be said of your best friend unless you're in place, however, so less objecting, more going, please. That hum makes it rather hard to move you." Mention of Alyssa made me cease in my resistance. I hadn't even consciously realized I'd been doing it, but I'd been letting out a low rumble that'd been causing Sabrina's psychic hold to waver.

The thread controlling the instinctual response fell silent, and I went from tenuous floating through the air, to shooting towards the foreign Gym Leader, along with my shoes and satchel. A flash of light enfolded us, and moments later, we were in an unfamiliar room, two Alakazam's, a Hypno, a Venomoth, a Mr. Mime, and a purple, cat-like Pokémon I didn't recognize surrounding the Gym Leader and I.

More than one of the doubtlessly-powerful psychics flinched away from us as we appeared in their midst, but they got themselves under control after an uncertain moment, and one by one the congregation's eyes began to glow, as did the Gym Leader's, signifying that some unheard communication was passing between them all. All was silent in the room for a few moments, giving me precious seconds to recover from the bout of nausea brought on by the sudden teleportation and parse my new surroundings.

The room we'd been teleported into looked like some sort of meditation chamber or psychic study. Various incense burners blazed away, releasing a variety of scents into the air, and hypnotic patterns flitted across the otherwise austere walls. Spoons of all shape and size rested along various racks, and the entire floor was festooned by a menagerie of cushions and futons.

Wordless chanting filled the air, as did a humming thrum, and a ceaseless drone, all of them layered overtop one another in an endless babble that should have rendered all three inaudible, but somehow left each distinct. The only sense not under overwhelming stimulation was taste, and I had no doubt that the contents of the carefully hidden refrigerator tucked in one corner of the room would take care of that.

"This isn't just a training room, this is a sanctum," I muttered, as my mind unpacked some of the mesmerizing patterns drawn across the various walls. It came through in the care put into the room's interior. Each cushion was obviously arranged just so, every spoon meticulously affixed exactly in place. This room was deeply personal to Sabrina and the Pokémon that inhabited it, to the point that I almost couldn't believe I'd been brought here.

I felt like an interloper, and part of me wanted to look away, but the barrage on my senses demanded my attention, screamed for it. I imagined that was rather the point. For most people the cavalcade of sensations would be overwhelming, let alone for most psychics, which probably rendered this an ideal training environment. Judging by the way the Gym Leader and her partners stoically maintained their focus in the face of the room's myriad distractions, they were not most people. And neither was I.

Each assault on my senses was catalogued and filed, threads spun up and attention splintered to process them all in turn. My nausea receded as I whirled about, taking in the room as a thousand scents playing at my nose and the dizzying arrays on the walls caught on the edges of my mind. It took effort to unpack the eldritch arrays displayed on the chamber's facades, especially with the onslaught pounding my other senses, but eventually I got the trick.

The pictures needed to be viewed from multiple angles at the same time to be perceived properly. Looking in one direction, and then taking what I'd seen and putting it over another perspective, and then another, allowed me to pierce the uncanny effect obscuring the images from proper sight. What appeared at first glance as inscrutable, unending scrawl were in fact drawings. Hundreds of them, such as might fill a sketchbook, almost all made in a childish and unsteady hand.

Drawings at first of a girl, and a short yellow figure accompanying her. More silhouettes joined them, a tall, white figure, a stout, trunked creature, an ochre worm, a brown fox, and another yellow being, similar to the first except smaller, all frolicking through hills and rivers and forests. Almost every piece of paper was covered in a child's passion and overflowing with feelings of joy and warmth. Only a few stood as exceptions, sketches surely made later in the artist's life.

Forged of graphite and concentration rather than crayon and whimsy, there were only six of these portraits, standing distinct from the other pieces. Each one was of the Gym Leader's partners, drawn in exacting, clinical detail. None of this was visible in a normal sense. Somehow, the sketchbook containing the various drawings had been stretched and warped, forming a sort of wallpaper that crawled across the chamber like Spinarak laying silk.

The result looked like nonsense from only one perspective, but resolved itself when multiple points-of-view were laid atop one another. Most people wouldn't be able to understand what they were looking at. I shouldn't have been able to understand what I was looking at. It was deeply, unaccountably impossible. A warping of space and perspective that could challenge Ink's illusions. And Grimsley's Zoroark was an elite Pokémon, one whose entire biology and speciality lay in fooling perception and twisting perspective.

To see his expertise matched by someone not possessed of his innate gifts was staggering. I looked away from the dizzying walls, casting about in the room for the culprit responsible, only to find my stare matched by wide-eyes looks from each of the Psychic-types in the room. Epiphany struck, of course it was a joint project. No one of Sabrina's partners had the necessary knowledge and expertise to encode their trainer's art, but together, they'd created something beyond each of them individually.

Something they could only see by sharing senses with one another. Something they treasured beyond all measure, and hid in their deepest refuge. Suddenly, that sense that I was an intruder returned. I'd become an invader of this sacred space, a marauder pillaging that which didn't belong to me. And along with the realization of exactly what I had stumbled upon came another epiphany; something was causing my head to ache. Well, something beyond the constant and ongoing assault on each of my senses, anyway.

I hadn't noticed it as my thoughts ablated and reformed under the pressure, but a dissolving thread finally pulled my attention away and brought to my mind an overwhelming impression of shushing. Like the world's strictest librarian was in my face and holding a finger to their overbearing lips.

"Minna," the Gym Leader spoke for the first time in what must have been minutes.

"Doshimashitaka? Doshitekiga chitteruno?" The fizzling pressure resting atop my mind bubbled with an underscore of concern and panic, and belatedly, I realized that perhaps the stoic Gym Leader wasn't exactly aware of what was currently plastered about her partners' innermost sanctum. It hadn't taken this long for Sabrina to teleport herself and I across the world the first time, but back then, her Pokémon hadn't been trying to obscure a curious mind from a powerful Psychic's all-knowing gaze.

Quickly, I buried the memory of what I'd seen under my doubts and anxieties. They were the easiest and most distracting thing I could dredge up on a moment's notice. They were never all that far beneath the surface, after all. I felt a moment of unguarded relief from the pressure on my mind, and I thought out rapid-fire apologies and recriminations. A variety of reactions I couldn't parse flashed across my consciousness, but the overwhelming sense was one of forgiveness.

It only lasted for a moment, however, before the feeling of weight dissipated entirely. And somehow, even though my headache immediately eased, I wasn't comforted. Instead, I felt achingly, powerfully, alone. And I had but a moment to sort through that, before I felt the Gym Leader's hand clasp my own.

"Finally," she muttered in Galarian, "hold onto your stomach." And with a folding twist in reality, we were gone.