Chương 89: Chapter 72

For so long I'd been– reactive. Situations would arise, and I'd deal with them as best I could. And to some extent, that was life. My mom had once told me that we couldn't control the things that happened to us, only our reactions to them. Except, I was sick of letting life dictate who I was and what I could do. Sick of working around the parameters someone else had established. Sick of waiting for solutions that just weren't coming.

My problems, and the problems of those I cared about, were mounting, continuing to escalate and escalate ad nauseam. What I needed now was not to withstand those issues, but to correct them! To move proactively. To catch out life and knock its lights out before it could muster another blow of its own. I was determined! My path was set! Nothing would stand in my way! Not even the pile of exhaustively dry technical documents uploaded to a foreign server by my disappeared father.

Earlier today, I'd been fighting for my life. It felt like a gross exaggeration to say I'd rather be doing that than trying to pierce the inscrutable veil of corporate techno-babble scrawled across my PokéNav's screen. And yet. My eyes slipped downwards once again, my eyelids drooping as if I'd attached lead weights to them. Only a timely splash of cold water from an attentive partner kept me from slumping over and dozing off at the table.

I jolted with a start, as Mana kept me from falling asleep for the tenth time in the last hour.

"Thanks," I mumbled to her, as I refocused my sagging attention again on the tiny letters filling the foreign device's palm-sized screen. Unfortunately, in spite of my best efforts, much of what I'd opened tonight was completely illegible to me. Lines of code swimming across my vision, documents swarming with dense legalese, jargon-choked technical papers, all of them were equally impossible to parse. Some of it though.

Some of it I was able to piece my way through, and what little I could grasp impelled me to keep going. A photocopy of a patent dating back seven years, coupled with another image of the same patent, with the date advanced to just nine months ago. Incriminating chains of emails between men and women with 'executive' and 'senior' in their job titles. Version reports of technical documents showing strange revision timings.

I was hardly an expert, but it all seemed reasonably incriminating in my amateur eyes, but clearly it hadn't been enough for dad to go to the police. Maybe there was more sitting on my father's laptop somewhere. After all, he never got a chance to upload anything else to the website. The changelog was mostly blank, with only two entries. The first was dated to just under three weeks ago on August 29th, and must have been the day he batch-uploaded almost everything here.

The second was the addition of a single file, the 'read_me. txt' one, put up six days later. The evidence seemed compelling to me– but I wasn't a security officer. There was a narrative here, a damning one, but what laws were really being broken? What could the corporate executives responsible for Ferrum's ongoing nightmare really be charged with based on these documents. I didn't know, and judging by dad's request that mom and I leave the region, he wasn't all that confident in what he'd compiled.

Of course, just up and leaving Ferrum was sort of a tall order to ask of a teenager. It should have been ridiculous, except that I did have multiple potential avenues to leave. I had enough money to buy a plane ticket, though it'd be a trek to the region's sole international airport, on the west side of Neos city. At least Mom had forced us all to get passports years ago, so we could visit international relatives if necessary.

That thought had brought me up short, and a quick investigation of my parent's nightstands had revealed mom's, a hard plastic card with a picture half-a-decade old on it, but not dads. I'd slipped the pair of IDs into my wallet, just in case, slotting them into the same place I kept my Battle Card. Still, even so armed, I didn't think leaving through official means would be so easy. It hadn't been lost on me that RealTech was posting private security guards to stake out our residence.

They were just watching for now, but for how long would that remain true? There were no listening devices in the apartment itself, according to Mr. Gima, but what about the landline? Could I call a travel agent or the airline itself to order tickets? If I showed up at the train station to try to board a train to Neos, what would be waiting for me on the other side?

Thoughts like that had probably forestalled any attempts from my father of trying to leave the region in a similar way, and while I might not have the same degree of attention on me, the risks were present and obvious all the same. But a plane flight wasn't my only method of escaping from Ferrum. As I'd recently learned, inter-continental teleportation was possible, for the extremely powerful, and mom's family was capable of moving those sorts of actors when necessary.

If I went to them, told them I was in danger, it seemed possible they could arrange for me to escape Ferrum discreetly. But the thought of doing so made something heavy and leaden form in my chest. It wasn't a feeling I could explain, but I knew in my heart that I'd only turn to the Joy clan if I truly felt I had no other options. Which left one other solution I could come to on short-notice. Because while mom's family had connections, I had some of my own. Drake, I have something sensitive I'd like to discuss.

How quickly can Rhea arrive to carry a message? The text stared back at me, sent a half-hour ago. It was still unread based on the PokéNav's feedback, and after a few moments of staring, I thumbed back to the internet browser and its exhausting list of documents. I didn't know for certain that the former Hoenn champion would be able to get me out of the region on short notice– but it seemed like something he might well be capable of. Or at least, that he might have the connections necessary to arrange such a thing.

And while he'd sent back a panoply of gifts in recompense for the tenor of our parting, I knew from the brief communications we'd shared since then that, on some level, the Dragon master still felt like he owed me something. Suffice to say, I still had complicated feelings about that, and about him in general, but I felt less internal resistance turning to him than mom's family for some reason, so out the message went. And until I heard back from him, I couldn't really plan around my escape from Ferrum.

Or rather, our escape from Ferrum, because I had no intentions of leaving my family behind. Dad had made his choice, to hide rather than flee. I couldn't know for sure why he'd chosen as he did, but those motivations didn't need to inform my own. For so long, I'd wanted to get stronger. To prove I could stand at the very top. When I was young, that meant better grades. More laps in PE. More goals in scorball at recess. More friends on the playground. All in the service of one goal. Battle Trainer. The ultimate end.

The fixed point. The singularity. The thing that all that was Ferrum revolved around. I was five years old when I watched Bernard Cuprin and his Emboar beat Tera Mathers and her Tyranitar. I sat on our dingy couch, the one still resting in our apartment now, viewing the match on a flickering television in the darkened living room. Next to me was my father, his face no longer sallow and drawn like it'd been for the past twelve months.

He rested one hand on my shoulder while the other was raised up in the air, shouting and cheering for the underdog challenger. And next to him, smiling and looking with fond eyes, was a pink-haired stranger. A new woman named Ella, who he'd started dating three weeks ago, and introduced to me just that night. And only one year before that, he and I had stood over a slowly filling grave, burying the earthly remains of the woman I'd called mom. Eleven months. That was a long time. It felt like a long time.

Eleven months ago, I'd been a wholly different person. But Golems, did it feel like too short a time for my mother to be replaced. That feeling had been wrong. I'd wrestled with it for years, and in the near-decade since my dad remarried it'd been well ground into nonexistence by the constant and unrelenting love from the woman I now also thought of as mom. The resentment I'd felt, the anger, the mistrust. It'd all been misplaced. Grievously so. But even still. Even still.

No matter that Ella was the best person I knew. No matter that I loved her as dearly as I could imagine loving the woman who birthed me. No matter that I'd give up almost anything now to know that she was safe and sound. Even still, something in me screamed against the replacing of my mother. It wasn't dad's fault. Or mom's. Or mine. It was just– the way the world worked.

People lived, and they died, and those that loved them remembered the departed, sometimes, in the moments between living their own lives, which would invariably continue on without those they'd lost. We had to move on. We had to keep living. But did I really feel that way? Did I understand it? I'd told Mana that we couldn't let the past shackle us, that the dead shouldn't keep us from living. I'd related to her my own experiences. The loss of my first mom. Of the woman who named me.

The primary person whose existence my own was predicated upon. But I was four years old when my birth mother died. I hadn't understood death, hadn't understood why my mother was gone, and why a stranger had appeared in her place. In fact, there was only one thing I had known back then. One thing for certain, as I witnessed a man ascend to the adoration of millions.

One thing above all others, as I witnessed my dad shout and cheer with more animation than I'd seen in him for months for the benefit of a man he'd never meet in a place he'd never see. One thing I could be absolutely, completely sure of. Someday, that had to be me. I had to become one-of-a-kind. The absolute best. The pinnacle of everything. Irreplaceable. And in the end, I'd been blind. Unseeing of a truth so evident it'd been invisible under my nose.

I felt tears forming at the corners of my eyes, as the PokéNav slipped from nerveless fingers. Somewhere between my musings, I'd gotten through the pile of evidence. What I could understand of it anyway. And at the bottom of the repository, tucked away, almost like an afterthought, were a database of all of dad's work emails, dated up until the 26th. Most of them were sorted into files and folders, with only a few populating the main inbox.

But one stood out, flagged with a little red exclamation mark, denoting its importance. The subject line was: 'About your Project Proposal.' The body text was equally direct: Pern, after much consideration, we will not be moving forward with your proposal for a product that focuses on decoupling synergization from AR technology.

While the applications of such technology seem novel and interesting, and there is surely a market niche for such a product, the financial team have no confidence in the long-term viability in such a market. The project would require substantial research and development time, and the market for it would quickly become saturated, making it difficult to recoup our expenditure. Thank you for your proposal, and great work on the BfG release, Kairai Stern.

Vice President of Product Development RealTech The reasons for the long nights, the unending business trips, the ceaseless cavalcade of work that'd kept him away from mom and I for almost a year-straight. The impetus that kept him grinding away on a suspicious product that was even now tearing Ferrum apart. It'd all been for this. For the merest chance to try and convince his bosses to let him work on developing a product that would let people synergize with their Pokémon without the addition of VR equipment.

The VR equipment that made it impossible for people with synergy sickness to compete in Ferrum battles. People like me. As it turned out, some of my darkest fears had been borne out. My synergy sickness, my defectiveness, was the reason my father had been spending less time with us as a family. But not because he was disgusted, or resentful, or disdainful. No, he'd been seeing us less, so he could put all of his efforts into giving me a chance to see my dreams become reality.

What he'd written on the first page of the website really had been true. It'd had all been for her. For me. All for my stupid, impossible dream. And now, there was a very real chance I'd never see my father again. - It'd been an emotionally fraught day. Not the worst I'd had– but there wasn't much value in comparing these sorts of things. The day I'd learned I had synergy sickness. The day I'd almost ruined the most important friendship in my life. The day I'd barely avoided dying in international waters.

The day I'd failed to save a grieving soul. The day I'd heard that I'd lost a coworker and a friend. Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation. The day I'd found out that my mother was injured, possibly beyond help. They'd all hurt, each in their own, special, cruel way. And in that regard, today was no different. But at least it was over. And the day had not been without its triumphs. For my efforts, someone that otherwise would have died will hopefully wake up tomorrow.

And as long as I was able to get some sleep, I'd be there for them when they did. My family was in danger of shrinking, but it also had the potential to grow. Those two possibilities chased one another in my head like a Rockruff and a Litten as slowly, my exhaustion overtook my racing mind, and I drifted off to sleep. - I woke up feeling like Mitt had ran me over. But even if I had been trampled by a Copperajah, it wouldn't have changed what I needed to do.

So I forced myself out of bed, in spite of my complaining muscles, and went about the things I needed to do to start the day. Brushing my teeth, cooking breakfast for myself and my partners, checking my devices for any messages or alerts. That last one brought me up short, as a text from Drake flashed on my PokéNav's screen. He'll find you sometime in the next fifteen hours. That'd been sent six hours ago.

It was slightly ominous, and I could only hope that the mischievous specter restrained his sense of whimsy enough to keep from scaring the pants off of me and my partners. We were on edge enough already as it was. I spent a quarter of an hour penning a letter to Drake, outlining the circumstances I found myself in and my request for him.

After that, I did a quick check on various news channels to make sure no dramatic developments had occurred while I slept, and committed another thirty minutes to collecting everything in the apartment my partners and I might want to take with us if we had to leave in a hurry, assembling it all into a duffle and leaving it stuffed in the hall closet.

From that, I extracted an even more pared-down go-bag, just in case, and I made sure to seal everything inside it in waterproof zip-up bags, before slinging it over my shoulder.

"Mana, we need to get to the Pokémon Center we left Klang at last night, but discreetly. Are you up for it?" I had to speak up a bit, so I could be heard over the sound of the bathtub filling.

"Washi, wawash," Mana nodded, her eyes certain.

"Okay," I took a deep breath. One hand hovered uncertainly over the flickering shard of crystal on the bathroom shelf. The earring the shard of synergy stone had been affixed to had all but melted, but the stone itself was completely unharmed. I wasn't eager to risk putting it on anything metal again, and Maushold had done me the favor of affixing it to three rubber bracelets that they'd somehow glued together.

The silicon wristbands had various advertisements and slogans embossed on their fronts, but they'd all been turned inside out before getting stuck together. The result was a multicolored mess, but it'd be easy to remove in a pinch, and it wouldn't leave me with second-degree burns when the synergy stone started heating up. I swallowed another breath, and then slipped the band over my wrist, hiding it beneath my long winter jacket.

We were three days out from spring, but as was fitting the mood of the region at large, Techne was still bitterly cold, with snow and slush leaving the roads and sidewalks a matted, grey mess. And that needling chill extended to the city's lakes, ponds, and fountains as well, as I discovered firsthand. Mana did her best to wick the water off of me, but she wasn't quite capable of disentangling it from my clothes and hair.

Fortunately, I'd thought my little escape act through, and after a quick change and dry-off in a nearby public restroom, we were on our way to the Pokémon center, my wet clothes safely stowed with a damp towel in a few of those zip-up bags. I arrived just around nine AM, and had to spend a few minutes waiting in line for the nurse (not Joy) at the counter to call me up. She did a double take as I told her who I was here for.

"Ah, give me just a second," she told me as she picked up a receiver from behind the counter.

"Agrasia, your special case is here," she said into it, her words pricking something in my memory. The name was familiar, but before I could place it, a matronly-looking woman with distinctive pink-gray hair came bustling out of a door to the side of the counter.

"Fione," the elderly Joy said, her voice flat and dry, it is actually you. What the hell are you doing here?"

"Ah, Aunt Aggy," I finally placed where I knew the name from.

"Um, I can explain?"

"I would hope so," the woman demanded darkly, before turning and gesturing for me to follow.

"And it'd better be a good one." - Aunt Aggy was family, and not in the nebulous, Joy sort of way. No, she was my mother's mother's sister. AKA, my great aunt. As far as Joy relations go, that's basically immediate family, which meant she was certainly clued into my mother's current condition. Hence, her understandable concern about my current location. To her knowledge, I should still be in Kanto, by mom's bedside. I– I didn't want to explain what was going on to her.

I didn't want to drag mom's family further into this mess– and I'd never had any particular affection for Aunt Aggy anyway. Unfortunately, until I gave an explanation that satisfied her, I wasn't going to be able to see my newest partner, and also for as much as she was a crotchety old Houndoom, she loved my mother, and indeed all of her family dearly. She deserved to know who'd hurt her, and why.

"Did you see the news about the terror attack on Mercury Stadium?" I asked her as we stood outside my newest (maybe) partner's treatment theater.

"Yes," the woman nodded simply, her expression unchanging.

"What does that have to do with you?" I took a deep breath, fortifying myself for the explanation.

"The target of that attack wasn't the stadium in particular, nor the Mechy family, or even Ferrum at large. The perpetrator was after one person in particular. Or, one Pokémon, more specifically." The elder Joy's eyes sharpened, and her already-crinkled brow furrowed further.

"That's a dramatic claim."

"It's true," I replied simply, letting my conviction leak into my voice. Aunt Aggy rocked back on her heels a bit, and her slate-blue eyes grew thunderous.

"Young lady, that is no tone to take with your elders," she pushed back, as ominous creaks and groans came from her wizened frame. Somehow, before my eyes, the hunched elder stood two inches taller, even as her wrinkles deepened and her sallow skin sagged further.

"But you believe me, right?" I asked, refusing to back down as the woman unlimbered her own syn.

"That I'm telling the truth?" She hesitated, before nodding.

"I believe you think you're telling the truth," she acknowledged.

"Now explain, and no more tricks, I'm too old for that sort of thing." I didn't believe that for a second, and made a mental note to look up Aunt Aggy's battle training career, but set aside my suspicions for now.

"I know, because the same person who perpetrated that attack has been trying to hurt or kill my best friend's partner for weeks now. Maybe months." Aunt Aggy's eyes narrowed once more.

"The Madaka girl," she said after a moment, her mind making connections.

"The one Ella went to bat for, right?"

"Yeah," I nodded.

"The very same. We thought Mom had been injured in an accident, right?" My question got a nod, so I kept going.

"Well when I heard what happened, I figured it couldn't have been an accident. A hospital would never fail to notice the evidence of a Shadow Pokémon," I lowered my voice as I said the last few words, dropping my volume to just above a whisper. Now, my great-aunt's eyes were sharp enough to cut glass.

"And you know what that is?" she asked, her voice as low as mine.

"I have to assume you've looked at Klang's charts," I replied, nodding towards the room we were both standing in front of. The older woman sucked in a breath, and to my surprise, her mouth widened in a grimace that I could almost read as fear.

"Fione, just what the hell are you involved with?" I hesitated, genuinely unsure how to answer the question for a few moments, before the dam broke.

"Everything Aunt Aggy. Almost everything." - Of course, that statement bore further explaining, so I filled my great aunt in. On how my best friend's family had hired a killer to assassinate her partner. On how mom had become collateral damage on that quest. On how we'd made a deal with a specialist to track this killer down, and that we had a plan to corner him and make him, and her family, pay for what they'd done.

On my part in thwarting the attack on the stadium, and how the Klang I'd brought to the center factored into it.

"So, you're saying Sabrina Natsume, the gym leader we contracted to teleport Ella to Kanto, sent you back to Ferrum so you could intervene in this incident?" my great aunt asked, disbelief plain in her tone.

"That's my theory," I nodded, "and as far as I can tell, it did work out. If I hadn't knocked Klang free from the gaia spot when I did, who knows what would have happened?"

"That's," the older Joy's face twisted, something I couldn't recognize flashing across her features.

"Guardians Fione, what an absolute mess you're tangled up in."

"You don't have to tell me," I replied without humor. The woman stared at me unblinking for one second, two. Five. Finally, she sighed, and turned away.

"Well, it sounds like you've been doing the best you can, and also like you saved this Pokémon's life," she nodded towards the treatment room, "but you shouldn't be in this position in the first place. Why haven't you gone to city-security, or us?" That question was straying into territory near topics I didn't want to discuss.

"The Madaka's are powerful, we weren't certain we could fully trust city-security," I told my great-aunt.

"And as for coming to you– we didn't know exactly how much danger Alyssa and Pikachu were in until yesterday, and I'm telling you now, aren't I?" That earned me a few moments of glaring, before she relented.

"I suppose you are. And now you'll wisely leave this mess to us, instead of putting yourself in further danger?" I rewarded that question with a glare of my own, and a growl so low it makes my jaw rattle.

"I suppose that would have been too much to hope for," the elder Joy muttered as she shook her head.

"Fine, Fione. I can't actually stop you from throwing yourself into harm's way again, but would that be what your mother wants? Ella is going to need you, if she wakes up."

"When," I shot back instantly," trying to ignore the hit her question had scored on me.

"When she wakes up. And I will be there. But I can't leave while my best friend is still in danger, and while the man that hurt Mom is still out there."

"And your partners?" Aunt Aggy asked, unknowingly retreading the same ground I'd fought through myself last night.

"Are you willing to put them in danger for your own selfish desires?"

"They stand with me," I replied.

"And if I ran from this, if I didn't stand by Alyssa, I wouldn't be the trainer they've come to respect." A rattling of metal accompanied my statement, as the Poké Balls on my belt shook and roiled in affirmation. A few tense seconds passed, and I felt pressure bearing down on me, Aunt Aggy, poking and prodding, searching for doubt or weakness in my stance and in my syn. I stood firm, the resolution I'd come to last night still fresh and burning in my mind.

With a sigh, the intent lessened, and my great-aunt sagged.

"Fine. Fine. I'm too old for this shit anyway." The matronly Joy nodded towards the door into the treatment room.

"Come on then. Let's go check on that Klang you brought in." - We stepped into the room together, and for a few moments, the only sound was the hum of the generator set up in the rear of the room. Normally, the device was used for treating a variety of maladies for Electric-types, but it also simply produced electricity, which was important for the Klink line. While only pure Steel-types themselves, the Gear Pokémon were, like Magnemite, notorious energy pests.

While Klink and Klang produced no electrical power within their own body, unlike their Electric-Steel counterparts, they were excellent at storing it, converting the kinetic energy of electricity into the mechanical energy they needed to survive. Just a small amount of charge was enough for a Klink to spin for a week, using and reusing the initial electrostatic charge to power their gears.

The differing polarity between said gears let them extend the usage of said charge, losing very little power for as long as they kept rotating around one another. The same held true for Klang's, though they could store power even more efficiently than their pre-evolution. A change arose, however, when the Steel-types reached their final evolution.

Klingklang could actually generate electricity, the addition of their third and fourth gears giving them the elements necessary to form rudimentary generators from their own bodies. And unlike most Pokémon, the electricity created by Klingklang wasn't type energy, but true, actually usable electrical power. Normally, Electric-type energy was a very inefficient source of energy. It decayed quickly, most of its power was lost in conversion, and extracting it was extremely unethical. Not-so with Klinklang.

Their electricity was extractable with perfect efficiency, and the Gear Pokémon were generally quite content to spin and generate power all their lives without complaint. But Klingklang were an exception among Pokémon. One that the law didn't carve out or acknowledge. Extracting energy for commercial use from Pokémon was unbelievably illegal in Ferrum. The sort of crime that saw entire companies and organizations dissolved to atoms. Lighter sentences had been given for first-degree murder.

So, while Klinklang had been extremely valuable in the region during its industrialization period, today, they and their line were seen primarily as pests and nuisances. As multi-mon, they couldn't synergize, and without trainers and partners, the number of Klink and Klang that ascended to their final form was relatively low. That left an energy deficit in their populations, one that they could only solve by parasitizing the region's power grids. All of this, I knew from my training with the ranger corps.

While the Steel-types were of more significant concern to the rangers that dealt with districts five, nine, and fifteen, they could show up anywhere in the city or its outskirts. Fortunately, the way to deal with them was generally pretty simple. Just get them some electricity. That wisdom was borne out before my eyes, as the Steel-types happily spun atop the whirring generator, absorbing visible arcs of power from it with twin, cheerful expressions.

It was a bit challenging to read the Steel-types' faces as they spun round and round and round, but the joy and relief was so plain in their squinting eyes that I'd have had to have been blind to have missed it. Just like I couldn't help but notice the wariness that came over their expression as they finally noticed the interlopers in the room, which gave way just as quickly to surprise when they recognized just who it was that'd joined them.

"I was wondering if you'd recognize me," I admitted to the pair, as I waved at them.

"Hi. Can I come over there?" A moment of hesitation, and then they responded.

"Klangangang." It took me a moment to parse the agreement, but after I was sure I had it, I slowly walked over to their side.

"Enjoying yourselves?" I asked, as they continued to spin atop the generator, sparks of electricity flicking off them in visible arcs. I winced a bit as some stray sparks shot across my skin, but the expression was quickly overtaken by an amused grin, and a giggle forced its way through my lips. For some reason, the pair slowed, and the minigear opened their mouth in a silent question.

"Oh, just noticing that you're sort of a messy eater. It's cute," I told the pair, as more sparks spiraled off of them.

"Klang!" a sharp rejoinder emerged from the larger gear, and the two levitated up, apparently full enough that they could tear themselves away from the generator to contest my statement.

"What?" I asked, protesting my innocence with raised hands.

"There's nothing wrong with being cute. Just ask Maushold." At their name, the trio of Normal-types emerged from their ball, posing dramatically on the room's unoccupied bed. All three were wearing smocks they'd fashioned from a familiar blue fabric, and they took turns showing it off with various poses and struts.

"Angk. Klang angk!" the duo of gears refuted, spinning with agitation.

"Maushold maus!" my partners responded, feux-flexing their tiny, furred arms. It took me a moment to follow the conversation, but the Normal-types actions gave me the context I needed.

"Cute doesn't mean weak," I told the protesting Steel-type.

"Some people would even call it a strength of its own." My statement earned me a snort from behind my back, and I wheeled to face my geat-aunt.

"What?" I asked, surprised by the sudden betrayal.

"Oh, nothing," the elderly woman replied with faux-innocence.

"Just thinking that's sort of a hypocritical statement when you show up dressed like that," she nodded towards my practical black winter coat and brown canvas pants. I pulled uncertainly at the too-tight clothing.

"That bad? I thought this jacket looked good?" Some mutters behind me had me whirling again, this time to find Maushold looking pointedly away from me, their tiny mouths parted so they could let out soft, meandering whistles.

"That bad!?" I asked again, actually aghast. I'd very quickly come to respect the little Normal-type's sense of fashion, and if they were reacting like this…

"Why didn't you guys say anything?" They looked at one another, and then back to me, before shrugging. The intent was clear. We thought you liked it?

"I mean, it's classy right? Elegant? Simplistic?"

"You look like you're going to a funeral, dear," Aunt Aggy said, her lips quirked in amusement.

"I'd call that jacket conservative, and when I was a child, we weren't allowed to show men our necks." That had to have been an exaggeration… but maybe not by much.

"Fine," I threw up my hands, "if it's that bad, we can stop by the mall today and find something better, alright?" My question was met by cheers from the trio of Normal-types, a snort from my great-aunt, and uncertain spinning from Klang.

"And you two," I turned to the hovering pair, who shrunk back at my sudden attention. I purposely softened my voice, and leveled my expression.

"How would you like to come with us?" My question caused the pair to stop rotating, for just a moment, before they jerked into motion once again. As if their heartbeat had momentarily stopped.

"I'm sorry I caught you without your permission, and I totally understand if you don't want to have anything to do with me– but I still have space on my team, and if you're interested, we'd be happy if you joined us."

"Holdmaushold!" my partners agreed, nodding their oversized heads at the hovering gears.

"Klang," they both spoke at once, their voices similarly uncertain. To me, it sounded like they'd asked: Us?

"You don't need to make a decision right away," I rushed to clarify, holding up my hands.

"Joining up won't be all sunshines and rainbows. There will be hard training, battles, and danger. I know you've probably already experienced enough of the latter two for a lifetime," I acknowledged, "but we'll face it together. Of that, you have my word." The oath hung in the air for a few moments, as the pair of rotating gears slowed, until they were almost completely still. And then, with a start, they jerked into motion once more, determination etched into the steel of their faces.

"Klang," they announced together, their twin voices combining into something ringing and resonant. Again, I needed no translation for their words. Together.

"Always," I swore to them.

"Always." At my promise, the pair sagged down, resting atop the generator again, and humming with consumed electricity. I pulled one of the chairs in the room over and sat down next to them, warding off the errant sparks with a lazy hand as I released the rest of my partners.

"Thanks for hearing me out. Let me introduce you to the team, and we'll let you know a little about us and what's going on." The Steel-types whirred contentedly, as my Pokémon all began introducing themselves over one another, and I felt a soft smile settle on my face. My parents were still in danger, my best friend's stalker was still out there, the region was still burning down, but here were two lives we'd saved already. And if we could accomplish that, then in the end, what were a few more?