Chương 3: The Choice of Teeth

Rine spent three days in medical isolation. The official reason was recovery. The real purpose was observation. His room contained a bed bolted to the floor, a steel toilet, and a black glass dome in one corner of the ceiling. Meals arrived through a slot. Twice each day, a masked technician changed the dressing around his bruised throat and asked whether he experienced guilt, anger, suicidal thoughts, or hostility toward Team Rocket. Rine answered as though taking an examination. Yes, he regretted Tomas's death.

No, he did not blame Team Rocket. Yes, he understood the necessity of selection. No, he had no intention of harming himself or others without authorization. The lies tasted clean. When he slept, he returned to the arena. Sometimes Tomas killed him. Sometimes the clock reached zero and gas flooded the room. Most often, Rine drove the knife in again and again while Tomas calmly discussed the weather in Pewter. On the third morning, Matron Halden entered carrying fresh clothing. Rine sat against the wall.

She looked older than she had four days earlier.

"You're alive," she said.

"Was that in doubt?" Her gaze moved to the camera. Rine understood. He made room beside him, and she sat on the edge of the bed without touching him.

"Mira?" he asked.

"Safe."

"Does she know?"

"She believes you and Tomas were assigned to separate placements." Something twisted beneath his ribs.

"You built the lie." Elara's hands tightened around the folded shirt.

"I maintained it."

"How many years?" She did not answer.

"How many children did you blindfold?"

"Too many." Rine wanted to hate her. Hatred would have been simple and warm. Instead, he remembered fever medicine hidden beneath his tongue, library books without acquisition stamps, and Elara standing between Gideon and an eight-year-old boy who had broken a window. Good deeds did not erase complicity. Complicity did not make every kindness false. The contradiction exhausted him.

"Why?"

"Because before I came here, more of them died." Her voice barely carried.

"There was no proper infirmary. No one checked whether the little ones ate. Gideon recruited from the streets and juvenile cells. I believed I could reduce the harm."

"Did you?" Elara looked at the bandages around his throat.

"Some years, I tell myself I did." The door opened behind her. Gideon entered in uniform. Elara rose immediately. Whatever authority she held aboveground evaporated in his presence.

"Matron," he said. She left without looking back. Gideon placed a small black case on the bed. Inside lay a Rocket Watch identical to the one fitted during processing, cleaned now and paired to Rine's fingerprint.

"Seventeen candidates survived the initial trial," he said.

"Eleven remain medically viable. Today begins the partnership assessment." Rine stared at him.

"Another child?"

"Pokémon." Relief came so suddenly that he despised himself for it. Gideon noticed.

"Do not mistake a different test for a kinder one." The selection hall lay two levels beneath the arena. One hundred Poké Balls rested in individual metal cradles, far more than the surviving recruits required. Armed handlers lined the walls beside emergency recall emitters, tranquilizer rifles, and Pokémon of their own. Rine recognized a Machoke, a Golbat, two Raticate, and a Hypno whose pendulum never stopped moving. The recruits stood in a single row. Cassian occupied the place nearest the table.

A bandage crossed his nose, the first visible evidence that his partner had resisted. Gideon paced before them.

"Each ball contains a recently captured Pokémon judged suitable for entry-level operations. None has been conditioned. None belongs to you yet. You will select one, register it, and establish functional control within thirty days." Functional control. Not trust. Not partnership.

"The ten recruits producing the best results receive field status. The remainder will be assigned according to demonstrated usefulness. Combat failures, unstable Pokémon, and disobedient recruits will be processed." No one asked what processed meant. Their watches activated. Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. > INITIAL ALLOCATION: 1, 000 ROCKET CREDITS > Food, treatment, equipment, and training facilities are the recruit's responsibility.

> Debt beyond authorized limits results in labor reassignment. Gideon gestured to the table.

"Choose." Cassian moved first. He walked directly to a ball in the second row, either guessing or acting upon information purchased beforehand. Others followed, some grabbing the nearest option as though speed itself were being evaluated. Rine remained still. The pressure behind his eyes returned. He focused upon the first ball. Identify.

> Occupant: Zubat > Level: 6 > Sex: Male > Ability: Inner Focus > Innate Potential: White — Common > Current Potential: Gray — Defective > Suppression Factors: Malnutrition; damaged left wing membrane > IV summary: Below average > Additional information requires greater proficiency. Pain tightened around Rine's skull, but the result remained long enough to understand. Potential had color. Not current strength—capacity. The Zubat had been born ordinary and damaged through neglect. He moved along the table slowly.

Ekans. Level 7. Green potential. Koffing. Level 5. White. Rattata. Rine's hand stopped above the ball. His stomach clenched so violently that saliva flooded his mouth. For an instant, the steel cradle became blood-slick concrete. He stepped away. At the third row, Cassian released his selection. An Ekans materialized in a coil of purple scales, hissed, and struck at his face. Cassian caught it behind the jaw with a restraint fork supplied by a handler.

"Good," Gideon said.

"Commitment begins with clarity." The room erupted as others opened their balls. A Spearow clawed a boy's scalp. A Mankey struck its assigned recruit in the sternum and pursued him between tables. The handlers intervened only when a Pokémon threatened the observers. Rine continued searching. Every use of Identify worsened his headache. Details began collapsing into fragments: species, level, flashes of color. Blue potential appeared twice, purple once, but those balls were snatched before Rine reached them.

Then he felt heat. The final ball in the final row was warm enough to fog its metal cradle. A strip of yellow tape marked it with a handwritten code: D-ASSET 17 / INSTABILITY Rine touched it. The world flashed gold.

> Species: Houndour > Sex: Female > Level: 5 > Type: Dark / Fire / Unknown > Ability: Early Bird > Secondary Ability: Unresolved mutation > Innate Potential: Gold — Elite > Current Potential: Green — Uncommon > Maximum Attainable Potential: Iridescent — Mythic > Condition: Severe malnutrition; chronic elemental feedback; muscular atrophy; dehydration > Temperament: Feral; terrified > Maternal Lineage: Houndoom > Paternal Lineage: Unknown Electric canine — Galar origin > Mutation: Stable triple-type expression; physiological regulation incomplete > Known Moves: Leer, Ember, Thunder Shock > Latent Move Affinities: Information unavailable.

Rine nearly dropped the ball. Galar. The name meant almost nothing. His remembered knowledge ended before that region entered the games of his first world. He knew Houndour should be Dark and Fire. He knew offspring generally followed the mother's species when breeding outside Ditto pairings. But an Electric canine compatible with Houndoom—something Field-group, presumably—belonged to the blank portion of his knowledge. Gold innate potential suppressed to Green.

Team Rocket had starved an extraordinary newborn nearly into ruin and labeled the result defective. He closed his fingers around the ball.

"That asset is available," Gideon said from behind him, "but inadvisable." Rine turned.

"It has hospitalized two handlers. The mutation produces uncontrolled discharges and recurrent fever. It may not survive the month."

"Why put it on the table?"

"Because selection measures judgment." It was a trap, then. Perhaps every ball was. Rine could choose a healthier, weaker Pokémon and improve his chance of surviving thirty days. The rational decision was obvious. Then he looked at the instability label again. Captured after hatching. Imprisoned, starved, hurt, and evaluated only for what its suffering could produce. He knew something about that.

"I choose her." Gideon's expression revealed nothing.

"Irrevocable once registered."

"Register her." A technician took the ball, placed it against a scanning plate, and ordered Rine to touch the screen. His Rocket Watch displayed a provisional Trainer identity under his own name. Lines of ownership data populated beneath it. > REGISTRATION COMPLETE > Registered Trainer: Rine Frostfang > Pokémon: Houndour > Legal Status: Provisional working partner > Ball transfer restrictions: Rocket Administrative Authority The ball returned to his hand. From inside came one sharp impact. Then another.

Houndour was throwing herself against the containment field. Rine stared at the ball while the other recruits fought, shouted, and bled around him. He had wanted his first Pokémon for sixteen years across this life, and longer if the years before it counted. He had imagined wonder, recognition, some impossible moment when two lives pointed toward the same future. Instead, he held a starving infant that wanted him dead. It was still the first thing Team Rocket had given him that he intended to keep.

The selection did not end when the final Poké Ball changed hands. Handlers ordered each recruit to report to a separate registration booth. Rine waited behind reinforced glass while technicians tested Houndour's ball for structural damage. The containment battery had been depleted to sixty-one percent by her attempts to force release. Scratches marked the inner layer of the shell—something the technician insisted should have been physically impossible.

"Replacement ball costs two hundred credits," the technician said.

"The damage existed before registration."

"Prove it." The phrase had already become familiar. Rine activated Identify and focused on the scratches until pain gathered behind his eyes. > Damage age: approximately nine days > Registration age: eleven minutes > Probable cause: repeated internal energy discharge He showed the result to the technician. The woman saw only his empty projection screen. Identify existed inside his perception and apparently could not be shared.

"One hundred fifty," she said.

"Administrative courtesy." Rine understood the intended lesson. Facts had no value unless the organization recognized the method used to obtain them. He paid. Across the hall, a recruit named Jory released a Koffing inside his booth. The Pokémon expanded with panic and filled the enclosure with violet gas. Jory clawed at the sealed door while technicians watched oxygen readings descend. They intervened only after he collapsed, venting the booth and charging the cost of emergency treatment against his new account.

Debt before the first day. Cassian passed with Ekans restrained inside a clear transport tube.

"You should release yours," he told Rine.

"Let us see whether the pretty numbers can bite." Rine gave no sign that the comment troubled him. Cassian could not know about Identify. He meant the warning label, the handler reports, perhaps the mutation marks visible on Houndour's scan. Still, Rine filed the words away. Gideon dismissed them near midnight. Each recruit received a training-cell assignment, market access, and a provisional schedule containing sixteen hours of recommended conditioning per day.

Rine stood alone in the lift with Houndour's ball held against his chest. Once, he and Tomas had spent an entire winter designing their imaginary teams. Tomas chose Pokémon by whether he believed he could wrestle them. Rine argued for balanced coverage, reliable abilities, and species capable of adapting to multiple opponents. Neither had ever included Houndour. You'd tell me not to choose her, Rine thought. The remembered answer came easily. No, I'd tell you she has teeth. You'd choose her anyway.

The lift doors opened. Rine carried his first partner toward a concrete cell and tried not to notice that he was walking alone. Behind him, another booth alarm began to sound. He did not turn. Three days earlier, he would have looked for whoever needed help. Now he counted the footsteps approaching from the opposite corridor, noted which guard carried a sidearm, and kept Houndour's ball on the side farthest from them. The change was small enough that no one else could have seen it. Rine felt it anyway.

Team Rocket had not yet taught him to enjoy suffering. It had taught him that someone else's emergency might become his opportunity—or his danger. The lesson followed him into the lift and stood beside Tomas's absence. Neither companion spoke. The ball struck his palm once from within.