"You're all supposed to at least act surprised!" Lane fumed.

  "Rare stone," Marley simply said.

  "Yeah, dude, I don't know who's gonna be jumping up and down for a rare stone. Like, is it an evolutionary stone? Some kind of gem?" Green leaned on the table, trying to look innocent. "Maybe you should show us. Real slow like."

  Mina looked up from her sketch. "I'm sorry, what were we talking about?"

  "It's a rare stone and that's all you're gonna get from me. Just know that it really is rare for this region and you probably would never see another one around here if you don't get this one from me. We're gonna be attracting people to sign this document pledging to get a pokédex. Think of this like a—" he tapped his lips with increasing vigor. While he was unused to the campaigns there, the ones he was familiar with broke language on their backs and changed casual lingo forever. It would've been silly to think that pokémon exempted humans from being affected by an advertisement. "Have you guys ever heard of 'Just Do It'?"

  "Oh, that's the Nike ad. Right?"

  Lane stared blankly at Green before addressing the group as a whole again. "This is my—our marketing campaign. No cool slogan. We're gonna be selling these pokédexes like hotcakes regardless. They've got instant appeal with all the worrywarts and nerds, with even more features promised down the line. All we've got to do is connect people! Professor Oak can't do it 'cause he's an old scientist and scientists got the charisma of a rock."

  "Wait, it's Professor Oak who you're working for?" Marley interjected.

  "Yeah? Yeah. I—yeah." He looked around at the other girls. "I said that before, yeah?"

  "Professor Oak," Marley repeated, as if in a dream. "You're advertising for him? I suppose I misjudged you."

  "I'm not even going to ask what that means!"

  Mina lazily tilted her sketch around, taking a look at different angles. "So we're doing this? Sounds fun. I can pretty easily win this."

  Their casual atmosphere chilled. Suddenly the infectious cheers seemed to be waving through them and the scraps of ice cream forgotten, because it's impossible to have a conflict when there's supple niceness with extra bits of sugar that perfectly compliment the churned loveliness—chocolate syrup and, Lane's favorite, that fake caramel that you drizzle over on sundaes if you're feeling nice and normal cones if you're not. Green's eyebrows danced as she processed the words, not expecting a tiny girl being so boisterous. Of all the people, even Marley actually seemed to be offended from the one-off comment.

  "What is that supposed to mean?" Marley asked. Her quiet voice had turned rough like sandpaper.

  Mina looked back up from her sketchbook with a confused frown. "I'm used to promoting my own work. Spreading awareness about a thingy that looks useful will be easy for me."

  "Oh? I'm a pretty memorable person. That's all advertising is. Making the whole thing memorable," Green said.

  "There's more to it than that," Marley responded.

  Lane decided interjecting instead of waiting for the girls to tear their throats out. He expected that trainers were more competitive than normal people, but the ferocity was working too well. They were supposed to be working thankless hours, not battling! "Okay! Let's, uh, put that behind us and think about the future. Most signatures win! And I'm competing too, so don't get too complacent. I'm literally the best advertiser this side of the universe."

  Already their competition was dulled by his words. Every girl was staring at him and making him feel embarrassed when he shouldn't. He was the organizer, darn it! They should be groveling so he's tempted to fudge the counting on their behalf!

  Green was the one to put her chips down. "Fine. I'm in. What's the time limit?"

  Four fingers were held up. "Three hours!"

  "Three hours," Marley repeated. She smiled. "Easy enough."

  Lane spun his hand around. "The timer has started! Go, go, go!"

  Despite the hesitant start, they'd gotten into the competition. The girls spread out throughout the town. He looked to the only one who wasn't moving. She had stood up to start bouncing on her heels, giving him a meaningful look.

  "S'up? You know that you're giving them extra time." He leaned over, hand over his mouth like he was hiding his words even if it was on the opposite side from their only audience, Lulu. "I think you've got a pretty good chance. Neither of them are very salesman-y. You? You're a salesman-lite."

  She pushed his shoulder playfully. "C'mon, I'm actually asking something here. You took the mega stone that I left behind, right? Can I see it again?"

  Without really thinking about the request, he set the backpack onto the table and fished out the stone. Describing what exactly was in his hand was easy—it was a stone. Cool, smoothed to the point of feeling unnatural, hard. Turning it around was when the supernatural malarkey happened. No matter which direction you stared, the design floating in the center glared back. It looked like a figure standing at the precipice of a fog bank, just barely peeking out with his backside fading. This particular one had a green and pink pattern. Otherwise the rock was mostly transparent, though opaque, slightly sickly-colored skin wrapped around the other side of it as seen through the blue-tinted glass.

  Lulu had hopped onto his shoulder, blades hanging on as she poked over to get a closer look. The stone had immense power and showed that by hitting the uncanny valley of reality. It was convincing enough that sediments had been naturally pressed down through the years, if the symbol weren't a slitted eye glaring back at them. Lane took it that he was holding the equivalent of a poké-nuke. It was more dangerous than a measly pipe bomb, surely.

  Green had leaned into it, squinting, before pulling back with a smile. "Huh. Didn't really get a good look since I was in the cave but that looks different from mine, doesn't it?"

  Her mega stone was normally pointing at the inner side of her wrist instead of flaunting to the world, hiding in plain sight. Lane himself had to admit that it was only by chance that he recognized it. From a certain perspective it looked like a novelty bracelet instead of the accessory that made the person you're talking to about ten times more dangerous. Hiding that innocuous thing was immensely easy, meaning the future of customs was forever ruined when a gumball-sized nuke that slid by metal detectors could be held by anyone.

  Lane shook his head to clear the mystique. Yes, it was interesting, but Lulu was cuter than any stupid mega pokémon. "It definitely does. I think they all have different appearances."

  "I betcha they do. Not many people can say they've seen a mega stone, much less two, but we're both different, obviously."

  "I didn't need a dumb rock to tell me that."

  Just to show he wasn't commanded by a rock, he stuffed it back into his backpack and zipped it up.

  "S'pose not. I guess I should get going, huh?" Green asked. She pointed into the horizon. "Tally ho! That sounds like something you'd say."

  "How'd we talk long enough for you to know that? Regardless, you're right. Best of luck and tally ho! God save the queen and thanks for the fish and chips!"

  There was only a single strategy in Marley's mind that could lead her to victory: getting the most prominent people in town to use the pokédex. If she were to convince community leaders that the pokédex was useful, then it'd follow that the people who looked to them for guidance would also be convinced. It was a bit more of a complicated process than what it sounded like on its face. Three hours wasn't the best for convincing somebody to convince another person, as for that to happen, patient zero would have one of two motivations: material or genuine interest. Cultivating a genuine interest usually didn't happen within a single conversation, and Marley knew the limits that her charisma could take her. Material interest was entirely different yet was also abusable. Ruining the spirit of competition by bribing people felt sick to her, also being entirely impractical considering that this 'rare stone' probably couldn't pay back the price for bribing people.

  It wasn't lost on her that this group had been caught by material interest, with both a prize and their pride on the line. She conceded that Lane may have had a point about being a great salesman.

  So of the two, she needed a way to get the community leaders interested. She took inspiration from herself: it was Professor Oak's device which he wholeheartedly recommended—the spiel that she'd give the community leaders in the area, which would be used as the foot in the door. Then the only matter would be finding people faster than the others to mention that their beloved gym leader personally approved of the device by tapping his signature as proof.

  It brought her to the front doors of the gym. Standing in front of the plain glass reinforced her general antipathy for the region that had a stock gym, customized inside yet standing out like an ugly hospital outside. Tradition—so comforting back home, so stifling in Kanto. Art was wrapped in a noose with how constricted she felt. Buildings which should have so much more personality stood lifeless as if it were robots constructing and managing them. Soulless, the only word that came to mind with the four walls that housed the electric-type gym. Some memories of staying up late to research Kanto came to mind. A veteran from the war that shook the two Leagues was housed there, less than a decade away from the military and bringing the same attitude for any trainer who dared challenge him; in short, he roughed them up much harder than any other gym leader to try scaring them away from fighting further. A disproportionate number of trainers gave up on the circuit in his gym, only surpassed by the sheer girth of broken hearts at whichever first gym was tackled that filtered out those who had no talent for training.

  From the descriptions, Marley found the man distasteful. She genuinely believed that battling was one of the primary ways that people grew closer to their pokémon, and personally advocated for gyms to become easier so most trainers can at least beat a few. But that was a thought she wasn't going to entertain when a macho military man was brought into vision immediately upon entering the gym.

  The inside was extraordinarily simple. A front lobby had a single chair sitting across from a desk. Ahead were trash cans equidistant from each other, filling up the entire room. Some complicated mechanism with coils lining the walls and pylons jutting outwards laid dormant between her and the arena, a room that wasn't nearly as big as some of the ones she'd seen. Must not use fast pokémon, she mused, or he was that confident in his strength to maneuver in such a small space. Technically you could look up the favored strategies of the gym leaders online, but she personally never exploited that resource, especially since it'd be a casual battle if she actually roped Surge into it. Researching the person you're going to fight for fun was slimy behavior.

  The only people present were standing at the far end of the arena. She noted the lack of gym trainers, wondering if she should even bother, before steeling her nerves. For the prize, she charged on. For her pride, she repeated, and repeated, and repeated, skipping across her head with each step that made her more nervous.

  Getting closer made that thought disappear with a loud pop as three different sets of eyes turned. Surge was there, with his impeccably styled hair and crisp uniform that fit his body like a glove. The man's version of a friendly smile had jagged edges that would scare away the typical city-goer, so he'd say. Surge happily acted as one of the many capillaries for Kanto and would loudly denounce those who questioned his region. It was a machine with purpose: live for the region, live for his job, and always stay in movement. The whole existence was foreign to her.

  The other two were still familiar figures. Contra-Surge was the darker skinned man with a messier hairstyle, a curly black that was styled into manageable spikes. Marley could see that they were clearly different people yet couldn't remove the idea that they were some kind of doppelgangers. The muscular arms, clothing made to be roughhoused, and strong stances all suggested they were men down to the thoughts on washing machines and working out. It was the more easy going smile on Brock that made her relax. Technically the gyms could be done in whatever order but most went all the way over to his gym because of its reputation of being encouraging towards new trainers. Many hundreds had at least gone to their second badge thanks to his advice (for further statistics, drawn from the Kanto and Johto Bureau of Our Shared Future, known as JOHOSF for those who are outside as it mostly works in Johto, BOSF for those who interact with it often within the government, named so whimsically because the Champion who pushed it at the time had a flair for the dramatic, the disparity is even starker; a startling 88% of trainers who fight Brock first manage to gain a second badge afterwards, above the Johto median of 45% of trainers getting a second badge, Kanto median of 51%, and still above the surprising next gym that manages to make it's trainers competent enough for a second badge, Koga's, with a 74% success rate; with the full list going Brock, Koga, Sabrina, Misty, Erika, Surge, Blaine, capping it off with Giovanni refusing trainers with no badges.).

  The final one was a twist that literally twisted her mind to a halt. Purple hair that clumped together and his short stature made him a bit recognizable, a forever young appearance that clung to his sweet fourteen. A Johto resident being over in Kanto wasn't unheard of, but Marley's understanding was that the sister regions did their absolute best in remaining separate when they could. There was a war or something; she didn't like war, she didn't like history, her parents had instilled the Sinnoh value of keeping your nose out of the southern part of the continent's business, and Sinnoh as a whole was trying to pretend that it never happened.

  So she waffled at the edge of the arena. To do or not to do? Important or not important? So many different suggestions flung around her mind that she stood paralyzed there. It made her way too obvious to be ignored.

  "Hey!"

  She leapt in surprise. Surge was waving her over. With only another thought lambasting herself (look at what you did, idiot, interrupting the gym leaders for their important meeting for a rock that probably isn't that cool), she shuffled over awkwardly at the three gym leaders that were standing there. Surge looked pissed, Brock tried looking welcoming, and Bugsy seemed like he was soaking up some of her awkwardness.

  Surge was, obviously, the one who bulldozed the conversation into existence. "Did you get lost? This is the gym. To be even clearer, this is my gym, the electric gym. Only people who have a clear path forward are allowed here. You don't seem to fit that description."

  "No need to be rude. If she didn't have anything to say, then she wouldn't be here." Brock kept his tone as welcoming as possible, making up for any ambiguity with the clear smile he presented. "What are you here for? If your business is solely for Surge, then can we ask for a minute to wrap up here?"

  Many sorts of thoughts came to mind that would've been great to say. Her mouth opened and said, "why is he here?"

  She snapped it back shut so hard that her teeth clicked together. Bugsy actually seemed amused with the question and butted ahead before Surge could say anything. "Are you talking about me? It's nothing private, else we wouldn't have called you over here. Ever since the Orange League has been formed, travel between our regions has been escalating towards heights never before seen. Initially our scientists predicted the dissolution of the border wouldn't impact the ecosystems, since pokémon don't care about human borders and we're rather similar in the first place, but—"

  "We've got Togetic eating the same food that our Caterpie do and if that isn't the most ridiculous statement then we've got plenty more," Surge said.

  Brock broke his cheery demeanor with a rare sigh. "Not too many people have given their support since it's not that big of a problem yet. Pretty much all the people in the Orange League who care about this are standing here right now. We're hoping that another joint statement will get people to care about pokémon being displaced into habitats that they're not meant to be in. I still have high hopes that this'll get Erika on board. She's quite passionate about plants which is adjacent to what we're doing."

  "Girl cares more about playing with her manicured garden than real world issues," Surge said.

  Neither of the others contradicted that.

  "We're mostly hoping to rope in an even more renowned person than ourselves. Somebody like Professor Oak," Bugsy said.

  Marley's pupils dilated.

  Chance.

  "Speaking of!" She interrupted, trying not to cringe at the cool glare. "Um, what I mean is that I've got right here something that Professor Oak condones—made!"

  Brock gave a sympathetic smile. It hurt her to look at. It was exactly the type that you gave your niece after she just face planted during her dance routine at the school talent show. "Are you talking about the pokédex?"

  "Yes!" She held out her little paper that she was given. "I'm advertising these right now. I'd appreciate it if all of you would show your interest in the pokédex."

  "I'm sorry, but I think that I'm missing some context here," Bugsy said.

  "Me too," Surge groused.

  Thankfully, Brock didn't even question it. The paper was taken from her hands. Slinging off his backpack by twisting his body, he used it as a hard surface to write down his signature. It was passed around to the others. Even Surge jotted down his signature after making sure there wasn't any fine print, double-checking the back of the page and twisting it around for any cryptography.

  "It's a device that he's been working on for the past year or so. It's meant to do everything: be a pokémon database that updates whenever we discover new pokémon, have little doodads that make everyday life easier, and a bunch of other features that went straight over my head." Brock swung his hand over his head. "I don't know the whole science for it. Oak's been excited about it though and he just won't stop talking about it. Hey! Is it done if you're spreading it around?"

  Therein lay a good question. Was it done? Marley wasn't sure either. It wasn't like she had been hired directly by the man.

  Taking the paper back, she glanced over all their signatures. Recognizable, of course. These were the written representations of the men that moved their cities and ran the region. Brock's was stoic, blocky, not exactly cursive yet still connecting all the letters. The one below it was done with meek pen strokes that didn't dare take up the entirety of the given space. The final one had sharp movements, sleek, making good use of the space beyond the given line and violating the other signature's sovereignty.

  "Why don't you ask him? I'm sure that he'd be happy giving you a copy of it. You could also talk about getting him aboard your initiative," she said.

  Brock brightened. "Hey, that's an idea! It's even on the way home so we don't have to go too far."

  "I wouldn't mind meeting Professor Oak himself," Bugsy said. His eyes were elsewhere, which is exactly how Marley imagined herself if she ever met the man.

  "You two can go yourselves," Surge said with finality. "I'm currently dealing with a wave of trainers. Which, speaking of, I've got an appointment in twenty minutes. I'll visit him later."

  Marley shook hands with a bunch of strong, famous trainers.

  An artist saw something different with the landscape. It's what made them artists. A poet saw the emotion, felt in the moment, and was concerned with putting down his heart onto the page, which gave them an unfortunate tendency to party—either living in the moment or trying to smother their unbearable, unique sorrow that needed to be uniquely expressed. Then came the writer, who was a persnickety individual who sat in the corner of their room with bent fingers and swollen knuckles from rewriting the same paragraph for an entire day, agonizing over whether their specific word fit that situation in a unique, interesting, proper way; just as sad, not nearly as fun to be around. Then came the photographer who would become one with the frame as they sat in a single place waiting for their single moment that would be seared into eternity, or constantly looking around in unimagined corners of the world where they could rip a space out of its context to make it look vastly more interesting than it'd ever achieve by itself. A musician was more concerned with themselves than anything around them.

  "Is that so? Then what does a painter see?"

  A painter saw everything—that's what made them the best. Encapsulated within every brushstroke was the anger in the hardness, the passion in the controlled motions, the sadness in the palette, everything that a person could feel in the visible and invisible spectrum of colors and movements which was perfectly translated to the greatest neophyte and smallest child. Not only was the frame as a whole unique but each of their muscle twitches put down onto palette making every single effort interesting in its own way; not good, as some would think, but having merit in giving it at least a glance. It was a smear of eternity given life as she sat watching the horizon, with the emphasis that it was a smear. Every single breath of air changed the winds as her eyes adjusted to the dimming sky. Each moment giving life to a new part of the painting readjusting her expectations of the final product. It wasn't a single moment she painted but a whole event given life; take that directors!

  "Then what do you see here?"

  An ocean. A coast like any other. Yet she could easily dispute that being a painter of many coasts. Each one she could remember down to the specific decisions that she made at any one moment. No rocks were there. A Krabby wandering into frame wasn't immortalized. There was something about the Kanto water, unlike her home, that constantly glared into her eyes. Never had she redone a painting. Every mountain is its own mountain, every street its own, and every coast its own. She never painted on the same ground, never visited the same restaurant. The river moves, and who was she to fight that? Her job was to capture it.

  "What's this paper?"

  She didn't even glance back at the person asking. "Some device. pokédex. Sign it if you want. In my opinion, it's going to be the greatest invention that humans have ever made. Because technology's purpose is to bridge what humans lacked. We didn't have a method of understanding what's outside and inside us so we made art. We didn't know how to tear down the borders of knowledge so we made the computer. I have a personal experience with that. It was really hot at my home when I was young. I can remember that I was sticky all the time and it made playing really annoying. Every kid that I played with only ran when we needed to. It was around that time that the islands started talking about opening up to the rest of the world. I guess a lot of people didn't want to do that for some reason but I've never really gotten that. I've traveled a bit and I really like other people. They're cool, I guess. Kanto is cool and it has air conditioning in some places. It has a lot of stuff that I like and I feel like there's people that I never would've seen if I didn't leave home and a bunch of landscapes that I'd never be able to paint. That's the thing about painting…"

  She barely stopped to breathe.

  Marley was clutching her paper to her chest with a self-satisfied smirk. 26 people had pledged to get their own pokédex when they were released. It was an immensely satisfying feeling that her plan had ended up working.

  Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

  Walking around town had gotten her most of the signatures. She avoided going door to door, thinking that most of them were at work anyways. It let her run into a rather peculiar sight. There was a playground next to a construction site where Machop were patting down the ground into a firm flatness. It was about the most simple construction that she'd ever seen; only a single swing and a little roundabout laid dormant on a bed of sand. The metal pipes were slavishly painted black and green—Surge's favorite colors. Surrounding a flustered figure was an entire class of older kids, mostly boys but with a few girls standing as the outer ring.

  "Shouldn't you be in school?" one of them asked. He had a bandage on his jaw that made the wound look puffier than it actually was.

  "Where do you go, kid? I'll walk you there myself." His oversized jersey was completely at odds with his scratchy voice and earnest attitude. He sniffed, a disgusting one that sounded like it actually sucked something in. "Educations 'portant."

  "S'why you ditched the study group we had, Marvin?" one of the girls asked. It looked as if she raided her mom's makeup drawer for the first time in her life.

  Marvin's cheeks flared into a furious blush. "I told ya. I gotta date."

  "Yeah right! Like Yukiko would date you!" another boy said. Marley considered him the most boring of the group with the look of a manga protagonist. Black hair, near-black eyes, a blank t-shirt created a background character. "Can we go? Who cares if the kid's playing salesman?"

  "I'm not playing salesman! I'm no Honey Boo Boo or Maddie Ziegler or whatever thing you're thinking of! I'm grown like a successful stock investment! There's no crashing around here!"

  "He's talking nonsense."

  "Kids tend to do that when they're lying."

  "Yeah, it's obvious that you don't have any siblings."

  Lulu watched, swinging herself gently. Eventually one of the girls got bored and went over to the pretty pokémon. Another left, then another, until the swings were fully occupied. One girl, the only blonde, had taken the job of pushing Lulu to heights that she couldn't achieve by herself. Soon enough she had to grip tightly on the chains so she wasn't sent like a trebuchet shot.

  It took them actually approaching for her to finally intervene. She forced herself in between all of them and quickly forgot what she was going to say.

  The bandaged boy tilted his head. "What's wrong? We're just getting him to school."

  "Kids need to be in school!" Marvin insisted.

  "I'm at school! In the streets!" Lane hooked his thumbs together and flared out his fingers separate from each other. He mimed a little flap. "Caw caw!"

  "Ain't South Port's pokémon a Pidgeot? Maybe he's from there," one of them suggested.

  She decided to improvise since it had been working so well. With arms forming an 'x', she said, "no can do. He's actually selling pokédexes for Professor Oak. Speaking of, sign my petition to show your support for Professor Oak's newest invention."

  "Aw sick, it's real? I've heard of it! I'm fo' sure gonna get one myself!"

  "I love Professor Oak! You remember when he came down to give a lecture at school? He's the greatest!"

  "So humble! Gotta get me one of them pokéthings!"

  Lane was left fuming as the older kids slowly departed after signing her petition without even an apology. Lulu walked up to his side, nudging an elbow into him, just at the same time when Marley's self-satisfied smirk had turned onto him. There wasn't any easy way to salvage his dignity after an incident like that.

  He threw his hands up into the air. "Fine! You're right! I should've battled them instead of standing passively aside. I thought that a battle would just annoy them, which is the worst time to sell things. Sue me that I didn't want to force them to sign it after beating them!"

  She gestured to the paper that had been wrinkled in his tight grip. "How many do you have?"

  "A big fat two! I've been having such great luck 'till I've come to this town. Guess since big sis has gotten that many, I should just hang up my hat."

  With a sigh, he opened his backpack and shoved the paper inside of it. A strange expression came onto his face as he began digging around the bottom of it.

  "What?" she asked.

  Lane's attention snapped back to her. The pack was reslung. "Nothing. Well! Gotta go see how the others are doing."

  She didn't get the opportunity to ask another question before he started speed walking away with a confused Lulu at his heels.

  With a shrug, she walked towards the closest neighborhood. It didn't matter what she did from then on. Despite what Mina thought, she was too slow to reel in a catch and Green was much too aggressive. People liked the demure lady that she was, Marley thought to herself with a self-satisfied blush. Thoughts of what her prize could be filled her head as she wrapped up her signatures.

  Green fumed as she circled back inside of town. Sure, she could've jumped the fence, but a litany of problems including 'getting caught when she was doing a relatively minor crime' was included amongst those. Included too was that she didn't want to trek through the wilderness after crawling around a cave that had forced her to her knees one too many times to be pleasant. Even the least delicate girls wanted a break, and that's her excuse for walking through the town rather than diving straight back into the forest.

  So instead of arguing with the corrupt cop who wanted a drink if she was going to pass, she walked to the other gate. The small town was mostly boring with a few highlights. There was a pokémon fan club that she'd been kicked out of for stealing somebody's shiny, thankfully never reported. Aside from the few other sights was an empty landscape not considerate at all for the young and the frugal. Relatively few parks were built alongside being the lamest places she'd ever seen and businesses weren't exactly attracted there for the average naysayer—nayseaer?—as much as for a sailor's own amusement. Being a major port city that serviced the larger cities inland had given the town an attractive seaside-centric commercial center. It was amusing walking around once. The second time Green realized she didn't have the money to do anything.

  There was a constant presence of ships that overlooked the city. Off the coast she could see a cruise ship leaving. One day she'd shanghai herself a ticket and deal with the motherlode that certainly made up the clientele.

  Unfortunately her pathing had been messed up by being in a mostly unfamiliar town. Instead of hanging around the outskirts, she walked into one of the most bustling parts of the city. The entrance to the dock had a modern cobbled pathway and metal archway above it. Not a step outside their rented property was allowed, leaving the shops to have colorful exteriors and amusing gimmicks to attract people. Still none of them competed with the girl that had set up an easel facing the docks.

  Green blinked in shock at the girl who was sitting in front of the half-completed painting. Almost lost in the crowd that she'd gathered, Mina chatted while keeping her attention squared into the work that laid in front of her. It was almost mesmerizing enough that she approached. Each movement of her hand was gentle, the brush a sixth finger tapping against her environment. Flicking eyes kept track of both what laid behind her depiction and the simile itself. Green couldn't see the details, but from a distance it almost looked like a smaller, blurrier version of the scene that was happening in front of her. All the while Mina's mouth lazily spat out words at a constant pace. Obviously the girl had no mind for the questions that were coming from behind her. That didn't seem to perturb the onlookers. Whenever one left, another took their place, giving her a solid pillar in front of a fish and chips shop.

  The people thinned. The businesses became less tourist-y. Near the edge of the town, she appreciated the close-hauled movement that carried her towards the eastern exit. Down the main street was a dead land, curtains that hadn't been bothered to be drawn peering into families watching television together. Nobody stared back. A long shadow stretched down between her legs. She stopped, feeling the first pokéball she could think of. A glimmer of the sun hit the mega stone. Standing at the center of the street was a Lurantis. Her legs were spread wide, head tilted down underneath the cowboy hat that was slightly oversized.

  They breathed deep. Both sides faltered, started, then relaxed. Green licked her lips.

  "Now if that isn't an admission of guilt then never let me pass the Bar."

  "Eek!"

  She whipped around and threw an empty pokéball. Lane tilted his head to let it fly past him.

  "You really should not have that as your go-to reaction," he dully said.

  "Lane!" She patted down her body to quell the anxious prickling of sweat. "What are you doing here?"

  "Tracking down a Rattata. Have you seen any around here? I was thinking that it might've slipped me 'till I laid down a trap," he said.

  Without beating around the bush, she pointed to Lulu. "Did the trap have to include a cowboy hat?"

  "Yes."

  He held his hands out. The jig was up. Without so much as a twitch, she fished out the rocks that she hid in her waistband. One was shaped like those gems she'd seen only on television, with the pointy ends and flat top, rainbows glinting onto the ground as it passed ownership. The other was the other mega stone that he'd taken in the cave. It'd been easy to pilfer them. With Lane and Lulu transfixed by his own gem, she'd sidled around and taken the first hard things that were floating freely in the pack. She guessed that he wasn't pretending, meaning that he'd only noticed because of bad luck.

  Only once they were secured back in his bag did he speak again. "So?"

  "So what?" she asked. Her head was turned away from him.

  "C'mon, you were being straight with me. Let's keep it up. Why did you take these?"

  Her lips pursed. "Dunno."

  "Yooooooooou dooooooooooon't knooooooooooooow," he slowly said. Each word was dragged on long enough that it became obnoxious even for him.

  That did the trick. She finally stopped avoiding his gaze.

  "Ugh, what do you want to hear, man? You said that you had some kind of rare stone and I assumed that you weren't talking about the mega stones. I wanted it for myself. What's the big difference here?" she asked with a growl.

  "Because you waited for me to say that instead of, I don't know, taking the much more valuable mega stones back in the cave. In fact," he jiggled his pack, "you took that back. What's the deal?"

  Crossing her arms and rolling her eyes, tilting her head away and screwing her mouth into a scowl, everything made her the picture of an obstinate teenager.

  She finally spoke when he transitioned from a tapping foot to a stomping one, to make sure that she heard it. "Ugh, come on! Are you stupid? I dug into your pack without looking and took what I needed until I found the gem you were talking about. It's pretty easy to understand if you're not an idiot."

  "Okay, I'm an idiot. You need money and you decided to rob," his landing gear slowly rose until fingers popped out towards his chin, "the literal child instead of selling those mega stones yourself."

  That managed to slip out a blush. "Yeah!? What's the problem? You're the one who gets into weird areas and, I don't know, loots them like you're a pirate or whatever. So what if I played up the quirky traits and made you feel more comfortable around me? Is there a problem with that? Does it make you uncomfortable?"

  "And you're playing up the anger right now, 'cause I don't think you'd be this angry for getting caught," he said. It was meant to be a casual statement but her mouth immediately puckered. Apparently that was a sore spot. "In fact, weren't you quirky back when we first met? I think that's more you than, uh, whatever the heck this is. Or were you playing that up to hide that you were being aggressive? Hm. Come on, don't leave me hanging over here. I need clues if Sherlock's gonna find anything."

  "Why aren't you angry?"

  She whispered, trying to hide behind her thick mat of hair as she asked that. It made him embarrassed. Touchy feely heart to heart!? Him!? Truly it'd be better to pin googly eyes on a pineapple, call it George, and vent your feelings to its soft heart. But he was trying to be better. Not great—better. Didn't he say that? Didn't he realize that someone else wasn't going to take control of him and make his mouth work in words that weren't stupid?

  "Because," he rubbed his elbow, now the one to look away, "I kinda understand? If you were stealing Lulu or Dunsparce or li'l Fomantis, then we'd have a problem, but you didn't. And, uh, I kind of understand, and you probably need the money which I also get. So, yeah, uh huh. I also don't really need anything other than my pokémon. Everything's fine, see? So, uh, yeah. I don't really care, basically. Plus you're a client. Can't antagonize the person who's gonna give me money, y'know? Haha, that wasn't that funny."

  A predator's eyes poked through the brush of the wild forest.

  "You don't understand. It wasn't only about stealing from you. I genuinely had to keep myself from fighting you since we met in that cave because it was maddening seeing you come to someplace that was mine. I feel the exact same way about that Champion." Claws raked against the vines as her eyes turned vicious. "I need to steal or fight him. There's no question either way. He's taken what's mine."

  Some distant memory tickled the back of his head that stopped the questioning. The language was throwing him off—need. The only things that he needed were a good time and the essentials, such food and water and petting his cute little Lulu. It would've been rude to say straight to her face that he already trusted her as far as he could throw her, as he would to anyone whose first reaction upon seeing an unfamiliar person was to threaten them.

  "Sure, don't poke the sleeping bear. Got it. I'll keep that in mind in the future. We're cool, right? Now that you've attempted to steal from me?"

  She wasn't working at full efficiency. Sticking a hand in her face made her stare in confusion. "Uh, yeah? I don't feel like I need to anymore, if that's what you're asking."

  Raising his hand in an attempt to be nonchalant, he started walking back. "Good! Welp, I'm going back to the ice cream place. Did we say that we're meeting there? Either way, you should get moving. Marley and Mina've got a huge head start over you. Might as well earn the stone legitimately, yeah?"

  Lulu clapped her blades together and ran up to his side.

  "You're forgiving me!?"

  He threw his arms up, not bothering to turn around. "Yes! Whatever, water under the bridge and all that stuff. Come or don't! I've got things to do!"

  She was left behind, dumbfounded. Usually this was the point where she ran away from the police, fought against them and then ran away from the police, got caught in a screaming match. It wasn't meant to end like this. There wasn't supposed to be a person who accepted her, as she understood that it wasn't normal to think this way, weird logic. With only a single hitch in her step, Green joined too. She bumped shoulders against his own, nearly knocking him over.

  "I owe you one," she whispered.

  "Mhm."

  "And, like, are you really okay with it?"

  "Mhm."

  "...thanks. I, haha, I haven't really talked about it before because you just don't tell people about this. You're kind of weird for being okay with it, aren't you?"

  "Keep talking about it and I'll second-guess my decision."

  "Haha! Yeah. I'd do that too. Hehe. That's—" she shook off her lingering doubt, a brilliant smile taking over. "What do you think of that Marley person? I know you call her big sis or whatever, and that's weird too, but…"

  A one sided conversation continued until she offhandedly mentioned that fairy-types weren't real again.

  By the time that he had made his way back to Pallet Town, they had a new champion. Lane knocked on the door to the lab. It had barely turned light but the clamoring inside spoke of either extremely late nights or extremely early mornings, which he assumed was the latter given the Professor's advanced age. Professor Oak's face expressed clear surprise at the little cabal that he had made.

  "What in the world?" Oak said, stunned.

  The youngest came up first with her hand already raised. "Hello. My name is Mina. I'm from Poni Island, over in Alola. I heard that you made this pokédex thing and I was wondering if you had any on hand. We have problems with kids not knowing what typing Oricorio is and this thing would probably cut down on incidents out on the road if they could just scan 'em. Can I come in?'

  "By all means," Oak said.

  The next person walked up with their arms crossed out of discomfort. "Hello. I'm Marley. I'm from Sinnoh. I can spread the pokédex and I-I guess I want one. Yeah."

  "An aspiring trainer!" Ninjask took that moment to appear from behind Nana, doing spirals around her head. "How presumptuous of me. It looks as if you're already a fine trainer. Please, come in. I would love to help out anybody with a passion for pokémon."

  She bowed graciously and walked inside. The next person walked up with their hand already extended, making Oak squeak in surprise when their handshake emphasized the 'shake'.

  "Hey, I'm Green! Best trainer in the entire region on the hunt for strong pokémon. This pokédex thing sounds super neat. It'll make it way easier to find strong pokémon. Can I pretty please have one? I'll pay even!"

  Oak's smile was brittle. "Green. Yes, I remember you. You used to live across town before your parents moved, didn't you? But the time that you 'visited' last year was much more memorable. I believe a person who, once she was scot free from stealing our only Gyrados, had yelled back to brag that 'Green was here'. Maybe that was a different Green? Maybe there were three different Greens."

  She froze, smile locked still. It took a long time to formulate a sentence that wouldn't get her arrested.

  "Uh, oops? My mistake."

  Oak sighed, letting go of her hand. "If you're trying to clean up your behavior, then I see no reason not to give you a pokédex. Knowing you, I'd be missing one regardless of my response."

  Lane had unfortunately started to piece together the life of an unfortunate person: somewhere in the region, there were people wailing about their stolen mega bracelet and blastoisinite. He doubted the master ball was gifted, or at least the money used for it didn't come from innocent sources.

  Green walked inside. Another person walked up with their arms spread.

  "Professor Oak! When were you going to tell me that your project was finally done? I had to hear about it from some trainer that barged in the middle of a meeting!"

  Oak laughed, clapping his friend on the back. "Brock! I thought that I sent you mail explaining that it was done. Maybe it's still traveling?'

  "I hope so. I'm only two cities over and you're already forgetting about your old pal."

  Oak shook his head, moving aside. "I assure you that's not the case. Take comfort that you'll be the first person working for the League that will have a pokédex."

  Brock brightened up with that tidbit. "That's a good first step. If this thing is as amazing as you say it is, then I'll consider it water under the bridge. Hey, maybe we can set up my trainers with it too? Let's put a pin in that and talk about it when there's less people waiting."

  The next person that came forwards meekly, trying and failing to smile good-naturedly. Professor Oak had a much easier time giving a genial smile.

  "Hi," Bugsy greeted, giving a small bow. "I know that our regions don't have—well, we're trying to be better, but—"

  "I won't begrudge you for wanting a pokédex, Bugsy," Oak said. "This was made for all of humanity. You can get one and tell all the League over there that they're free to get ones also."

  Bugsy brightened, walking inside with the rest of them. Finally came the papers proving the existence of over three hundred interested parties.

  "And though they can't be here, the people of Vermillion would like to say that they can't wait for their own pokédexes either."

  Oak couldn't help it. He gave a belly laugh.

  "Lane, my boy! When I said that you needed to spread the word, I wasn't expecting all of this! So many regions! You've guaranteed that three regions will have the word spread. This will go a long way towards making these standard issues to every new trainer!"

  "I didn't do it entirely out of philanthropy, if you need to know," Lane said. He reached forwards, rubbing his fingers. "This is a taste at the sheer advertising power that is held within this mortal form. It happens that I'm going to Hoenn within the year too. Accept me as part of your cadre, with pay, and I'll spread it to all corners of that region."

  Oak appraised the boy. Within two weeks he'd been able to catch the attention of so many important people. If that same magic were worked in another region, along with concerted effort on his own part, then it wasn't fantasy to think that the technology would spread to every profession that dealt with pokémon within a year. The hurdle was the people who doubted that it could be that useful. Seeing hands-on demonstrations of the practical side of the machine should make the supporters spread the word. Even two regions serving complimentary pokédexes would have vast international consequences that could lead to the worldwide adoption of them within all Leagues.

  Carefully, the professor said, "I should have a contract with a manufacturing company finalized by the end of this month. Bulk shipments of the pokédex should be possible by the end of the year. If you're willing, then we can work something out. This is way beyond what I was expecting you to do."

  Lane could already taste, feel, smell the money. Traveling wasn't cheap. His entire bank account had been relying on Green since they'd been traveling together—which made her earlier behavior even more bizarre. He genuinely tried not thinking about that situation too hard. Not only was he afraid that sudden hurt feelings would sprout from nowhere, but it was also very strange. Usually he liked strange. Apparently this particular flavor of strange was disagreeable with his gut.

  With the next leg of his journey funded, Lane started to think about practical concerns such as not being able to pay for his continued existence at that moment. An idea came to mind. His fingers played against themselves deviously.

  "You're acting weird again," Green said from the entrance. She didn't go any further, leaning against the wall and keeping her head towards him. He wondered how the compulsion worked and if that was rude to ask about. Was she worried about it activating if she stared into the lab?

  He charged inside, waving the papers around. "Never you mind that. With the audience of the brightest minds of Kanto and the greatest battlers of the Orange League and me, the most awesomest person, I present the winner of our contest with a whopping 162 signatures!"

  He took broad strides towards Mina. Polite clapping came from all gathered except a single scientist who looked like he pulled two all-nighters.

  Marley crossed her arms and shook her head. "Only three signatures off."

  Green wanted to taunt her but held off to keep conversation between them at a minimum.

  Out came a cut rock that had the color of a pearl, yet the opacity of a gem thousands of times more expensive than it. The gem exchanged hands. She held it at multiple angles trying to find what was unique about it. Realization set in as those sleepy eyes turned to him.

  "This is a normal gem. These are everywhere."

  That choked the last remnants of clapping out of the lab. Even if nobody else was familiar with it, they were willing to believe more in the gym leader than the kid who organized the event. Only Oak still had interest in the prize as he circled around it and took notes on a clipboard.

  Lane shamelessly made an 'ok' symbol with his hand.

  "I did say rare specifically for Kanto. So long, and thanks for the fish!"