Cynthia had made saving money before going on her journey a priority.

  It was one of the many things she had taken more seriously than most trainers her age, who were content to rely on their parents for funding. Not that there was anything wrong with that, it was just a situation she had wanted to avoid.

  She already had enough people assuming she was coasting off her grandmother, she wasn’t about to give them another reason.

  So, while other kids spent their summers playing, Cynthia had spent hers searching for odd jobs around Celestic. Most of the time, that meant babysitting, but if she was lucky, she’d get to assist one of the researchers working under her grandmother. She didn’t get to do anything important, of course, but it had still been the highlight of her summers.

  Though if she was going to be honest?

  Most of it was babysitting.

  Still, it had paid off.

  By the time she left, she had saved enough not just to cover her journey’s initial costs but to last her until at least the fourth or fifth Gym. By then, she figured, she’d have proven herself enough that people would trust her with real jobs. Like clearing out invading Bug-types from a farm, retrieving lost Pokémon from tricky terrain, or maybe even escorting people through dangerous routes.

  She had even set aside an emergency fund, just enough to keep her from starving for a week if it came down to it.

  So, when her grandmother had offered her extra money before she left, Cynthia had turned her down with a proud smile and firm words.

  “I’ve got it under control. You know me, Grandma. I’m not like one of those trainers who dive in without a plan and beg their parents for money when things go south.”

  Now, broke and regretting every financial decision she’d ever made, those words came back to haunt her.

  Maybe, maybe she could have swallowed her pride and asked, even if it hurt. But she could still picture the way her grandmother had smiled at her, that knowing smile adults sometimes had, paired with a single raised eyebrow.

  “Of course, dear.”

  Cynthia gritted her teeth, her skin crawling just remembering her tone.

  It had been frustrating then, knowing her grandmother thought she would struggle.

  Now? Knowing she had been right?

  Well, there was a reason she had failed three times already.

  Of course, if Myst were here, he’d probably ask, “Cynthia, if you had everything figured out, why would you even need more money in the first place?”

  And it would be somewhat fair to ask that, because honestly, she should have had everything under control. She had gotten all the ridiculously expensive items she had needed for her journey way in advance after all.

  Her limited edition Umbreon print backpack? Already paid for.

  Her extra-warm, self-regulating sleeping bag? Bought two years ago.

  Her top-of-the-line, miniaturized tent, equipped with camouflage? It had cost her two summers’ worth of savings, but even that was paid off.

  Now, if Myst were here, he might ask, “Well, Cynthia, if you had all those things, why didn’t you use them when we were in the forest?”

  And to that question there was multiple simple answers.

  The mini tent strapped to the side of her backpack? Gone. Ripped away by the river’s current when she jumped in.

  Her sleeping bag? Apparently, “self-regulating temperature” didn’t mean “capable of surviving a stray Venoshock.”

  Even three of her four spare Poké Balls, each one expensive enough to cost her nearly a month of babysitting, had somehow managed to vanish in the chase.

  Still, if Myst were here, he would probably squint at her and say, “Okay, but even if you lost those things, that wouldn’t have taken money out of your account. Shouldn’t you still have all the money you saved up, as well as the emergency fund you had set aside?”

  And, fine, that was reasonable.

  But the problem was that while Myst was being force-fed Chansey eggs, she had made the mistake of wandering into the Poké Mart.

  And then she had walked out again.

  With a brand-new tent.

  And a brand-new sleeping bag.

  And half a dozen Antidotes.

  And a couple of Ice and Fire Heals, just in case.

  Really, the only thing she didn’t replace was Poké Balls, and that was only because by then she was already dead flat broke.

  “But Cynthia,” she muttered under her breath, spitefully mimicking Myst’s voice. “Shouldn’t you know that spending all your money at once isn’t smart? Just because someone tells you it’s a good deal doesn’t mean you have to take it if it leaves you broke afterward. You don’t need a top of the line tent or brand new backpack, after all. Something being on sale doesn’t mean buying the cheaper option wouldn’t be better.”

  Queenie let out a long-suffering sigh but kept working beside her, dutifully helping with the only job Cynthia had managed to find.

  Cynthia stabbed the shovel spitefully into the pile of shit, scowling.

  A decent amount splattered back over her legs.

  She didn’t notice.

  Instead, a low laugh came out of her, a sound only a betrayed teenage girl could make.

  "Of course you're right, Myst. But that doesn’t mean you get to abandon me here just because you found out the government’s paying you every month." She muttered darkly.

  She couldn’t see Riolu and Roselia looking at each other, nor the way the latter’s eyes opened slightly, like to say this is our trainer now?

  ……

  The darkness of the night hadn’t made the trip back to the Pokécenter easy. But after working for fourteen hours straight, she wasn’t going to lie.

  Getting to collapse into a bed was going to feel heavenly.

  Honestly, it made her appreciate the Pokémon center’s policy more than ever: as long as a trainer was actively competing in the Gym circuit, they could stay in the dorms for free.

  Not that it was anything luxurious. With half a dozen trainers crammed into a single room, there was a reason more experienced trainers usually opted to rent a place instead.

  But right now?

  Free was all that mattered.

  The door swung open with a chime, and Cynthia shuffled in, utterly exhausted.

  Lifting her head from her slouch, the first thing she saw wasn’t the cashier of the food quart, the one who smiled like she wanted you to gouge yourself on her grossly overpriced food.

  It was Myst.

  He was leaning against the checkout desk, grinning, like he had all the time in the world.

  Before she could even process the sight though, he slid out of his chair, took a couple of easy steps, and stopped next to her, giving her a slow once-over.

  "Let me guess, Queenie finally staged a mutiny after realizing she was doing all the actual work?"

  Cynthia stared at him.

  She wanted to be mad.

  She really wanted to be mad.

  But honestly? She was just too tired.

  So instead, she trudged forward, too drained to care about the way people in their booths wrinkled their noses as she passed. The fact that she did smell awful was neither here nor there, but it certainly wasn’t helping her mood.

  Myst plucked her backpack from her hands with ease, slinging it over his shoulder before she could even think to protest. Normally, she wouldn’t have let him, but right now, her muscles felt more like jelly than anything remotely useful.

  So instead of arguing, she just gave him a bleary, exhausted smile.

  Myst grinned back. "Looks like you got beat up. And here I thought you'd finally embraced your true calling as a farmhand."

  Cynthia paused mid-step, then slowly turned to give him a flat look.

  "Seriously, right now?”

  He tilted his head, looking about as repentant as a Murkrow that had just swiped something shiny.

  “I mean, you have to admit I told you shouldn’t take the job.”

  She just glared at him.

  “Well, you were right. Now did you get it out of your system?"

  Myst shook his head. "No, no, wait, I got one more."

  Cynthia rolled her eyes but waited.

  She should have told him to shut up.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  He cleared his throat, then spoke like he was in some old-timey drama, “So, Cynthia, what grand revelations did you uncover while toiling among the common folk? Did they teach you the value of hard work, or was that already beneath you?"

  For a second, she didn’t react.

  Then she blinked.

  She ran his words through her head once.

  Then twice.

  Slowly, painfully slowly, some of the exhaustion drained from her. Not because she was waking up.

  No, she was still so damn tired.

  But there was something else as well.

  Annoyance.

  No, anger.

  Because of course Myst would say that. Of course he would make fun of it. He made fun of everything, so why would this be any different?

  But it was different.

  Her fingers curled into fists, and Myst’s smirk flickered, just for a second.

  Was it really so hard to understand that she had heard those words enough? That she had spent years proving herself only to have it dismissed every time? It wasn’t her fault people assumed things about her just because of her grandmother. It wasn’t her fault no matter how hard she worked, people always, always, found a way to twist it into some unfair advantage.

  She could still picture the farmer’s son, the way his eyes had lit up with recognition the second he realized who she was. She could still hear him asking his father, too loudly, too eagerly, if she could be the one to shovel shit.

  Not because she was new.

  Not because it was the worst job.

  But because of who she was.

  Her stomach twisted.

  Myst opened his mouth to say something else. “Eh—”

  She ripped her backpack from his hands.

  He shut up.

  People took everything about their journeys so easily. They coasted on optimism, on luck, on safety nets waiting for them if things went wrong. Meanwhile, she had planned for years, made sure she would be prepared for anything.

  And yet, somehow, she was the on who ended up having to do this.

  Shovelling Tauros dung while some smug little brat took pictures of the area, pretending it wasn’t of her.

  Myst tried again, softer this time. “Cyn—”

  She cut him off.

  “You know what, Myst?” Her voice was eerily calm. “You’re right. I did learn something.”

  She clutched her backpack to her chest, jaw tightening as her eyes burned.

  “I learned that you don’t know when to keep your fucking mouth shut.”

  Myst stiffened.

  Before he could say anything, she spun on her heel and marched toward the showers.

  She didn’t look back.

  ….

  Cynthia wasn’t avoiding Myst.

  Not really.

  She just decided that, when she went out to train this morning, she’d take the back entrance. The fact that she had snuck down before sunrise, two hours earlier than she usually woke up?

  Pure happenstance.

  Honestly.

  “You agree right? This isn’t too out of the normal for me?”

  Queenie didn’t look convinced. The Gabite levelled her with a flat, sceptical stare, as though debating whether Cynthia was trying to convince her or herself.

  “Gabite,” she said, her tone an unimpressed deadpan.

  Cynthia waved her off.

  “Right, right. We are still focusing on you, it was just a thought.”

  She ignored the muffled laughter coming from Roselia.

  Mostly because karma did the work for her.

  Distracted, Roselia misjudged Riolu’s next move, allowing the Fighting-type to charge straight through his buffed up Magical Leaf using Leaf Defense. And for all that Roselia might have wanted to recover, Riolu didn’t let the opening go to waste, Metal Claw smashed into his side, sending him skidding backward.

  Brutal.

  Cynthia almost missed the faint flicker of satisfaction on Queenie’s face, but when she caught it, she couldn’t help a small smile.

  It didn’t last.

  She exhaled, the weight of reality settling back onto her shoulders.

  Lately, they had focused on perfecting Dragon Claw, but that was mainly because they hadn’t had much time to train properly. With everything going on, simply refining a move Queenie already knew felt like the best use of her time.

  Still… that hadn’t been the original plan.

  “Okay, so we are still stuck on step one?” Cynthia asked.

  Queenie shot her a look that said everything about how she felt about that comment, but she still nodded.

  Cynthia pursed her lips, brow furrowing.

  She hadn’t expected teaching Queenie to learn Fire Fang to be this difficult.

  Queenie had always been exceptionally talented when it came to picking up physical moves. Normally, the hardest part of learning one was getting the Type Energy to stick, for lack of a better word. It was one thing to coat a limb in Ice-type energy, and another to actually throw an Ice Punch.

  Most of the time, Queenie just got it.

  Cynthia had even come to think of it as normal, until she saw how complete newbies struggled.

  New trainers made that mistake all the time.

  Cynthia smiled a little, recalling her first real introduction to Rei. The little Buneary had made that exact mistake herself, slamming her fist into a boulder without the proper protection a real move would’ve given her.

  At the time she had thought Mys—

  She cut that thought off before it could form.

  Taking a deep breath, Cynthia forced herself to focus.

  She had been thinking about…

  Infusions, which were usually the hardest part of learning a new move.

  Cynthia ignored Roselia’s roar of defiance as he broke the rules of their training, firing off a flurry of Poison Stings.

  But "usually" didn’t mean "always."

  There were, of course, exceptions… and this was one of them. Because to struggle with infusing type energy, you had to be able to produce it in the first place.

  And that was the crux of their issue right now.

  The real problem.

  Furrowing her eyebrows she absentmindedly recalled Roselia, who had fainted after Riolu landed another Ice Punch. She’d tried everything the books suggested, even the method she’d used when helping Riolu learn Ice Punch.

  Visualization, Fire through Movement, Heat Source Focus, and even Move Similarity.

  Nothing worked.

  She wasn’t completely out of ideas, but the ones left were… less than ideal.

  Because, really, the day she asked her Pokémon to bite a tree while thinking warm thoughts was the day she quit as a trainer. Not because it couldn’t work, but because if that was the best she could offer, then she wasn’t useful to her Pokémon at all.

  Pokémon might not be intelligent in the same way humans were, but that didn’t mean they weren’t intelligent in their own right. They might not come up with Fire Visualization, the idea of meditating on the image of fire, but mindlessly repeating a task while thinking about fire-related things?

  Yeah. They didn’t need her for that.

  Queenie gave her an expectant look, waiting for another idea to come from her trainer.

  “Give me a second.” Cynthia mumbled, tapping her pants as she thought.

  When Riolu had learned Ice Punch, she’d used Move Similarity, bypassing the need to generate Ice-type energy from scratch by taking advantage of his familiarity with punching moves. Instead of forcing him to create Ice-type energy first, she’d guided him straight into using Ice Punch itself.

  And it wasn’t like she couldn’t try the same thing with Queenie, she knew Bite, after all.

  But skipping a step was a lot harder when the move didn’t align with a Pokémon’s natural typing.

  Honestly, she almost wished she could just bounce her ideas off Mys—

  Cynthia froze.

  “Ah.” Her voice escaped unbidden as she suddenly remembered.

  She’d forgotten.

  They were supposed to test it, but after everything that had happened, it had completely slipped her mind.

  Now that idea couldn’t be more fitting.

  “Queenie, I got an idea,” she said, ignoring the twinge of guilt that whispered it wasn’t really her idea.

  Queenie snapped to attention.

  Cynthia took a deep breath, trying to recall exactly how Myst had explained it.

  “I let her develop her own understanding of what Fire-type energy was.”

  Or something like that.

  She turned back to Queenie. “When you think of fire, what do you imagine?”

  Queenie blinked at her, then wordlessly gestured toward the smouldering embers of their bonfire with a claw.

  “Eh, no…” Cynthia paused, fumbling for the right words. How did Myst make this seem so simple?

  “I don’t mean the physical fire, I mean what is fire to you?”

  Queenie, who had already looked skeptical, now stared at her like she’d completely lost her mind.

  “Gabite,” she deadpanned.

  Cynthia translated the meaning in her head.

  Heat.

  “I don’t mean the feeling coming off it,” she tried again. “I mean…” She hesitated. How was she supposed to ask if that was what fire was, conceptually, to Queenie?

  Because even if Queenie understood her words, Pokémon didn’t process language the way humans did. Research showed they relied on Aura for communication, something instinctive, fluid. In some ways, that made things faster, even better.

  But in moments like this, when she needed nuance?

  Yeah. That was exactly what she didn’t have.

  “Okay, how about this,” she tried a different angle. “What is a Dragon to you? What is Dragon-type energy?”

  Queenie opened her maw, then hesitated.

  Cynthia blinked, feeling somewhat surprised at the lack of immediate response.

  A few seconds passed before Queenie’s jaw shut again. And then, when she opened it once more, it was with certainty.

  “Gabite.” She said firmly.

  Cynthia considered that.

  People had all sorts of theories about what unified the Dragon type. They were famous for being stronger than other Pokémon, for being harder to train, for demanding respect rather than giving it freely.

  For simply being dangerous.

  She’d even read that, before the modern typing system, people used to call it the Tyrant type. A fitting name. She could imagine plenty of Dragon-types answering with something like that.

  But Queenie hadn’t.

  No, the closest word Cynthia could find for her answer wasn’t something as crass as tyrant.

  It was majesty.

  She should have guessed.

  To Queenie, a Dragon wasn’t just power. It was something grander. Something beautiful.

  A being of unprecedented scale.

  Because in the end, Queenie was always watching, always standing guard against anything that dared intrude on her domain. Dismissing challenges, making the final call.

  A queen watching over her subjects.

  "Okay, okay. So, to you, Dragon-type isn’t just about being a powerful Pokémon with scales, right?" Cynthia gestured as she spoke, trying to get the idea across. "That’s how I want you to think about Fire. Not just what it is, but what it means, like you just did with Dragon-type. What is Fire to you?"

  Queenie nodded slowly, like she understood what Cynthia was asking of her.

  Still, Cynthia could tell she didn’t quite grasp why she was supposed to do it.

  Even so, Queenie listened and so she thought.

  A few moments passed.

  Then a few more.

  Cynthia felt her expectations rising, barely able to contain her anticipation as she watched Queenie, completely absorbed in thought. When her partner finally spoke, it wasn’t with the same confidence she’d shown when discussing Dragon-type energy. This time, Queenie’s voice wavered with uncertainty.

  But she still answered.

  "Gabite," Queenie murmured, her gaze flicking toward the embers of the campfire. "Life."

  Cynthia frowned. "Life?"

  Queenie nodded, her tail swishing behind her as she glanced back at the smoldering fire. "Gabite. Gabite-gabite.”

  Cold is death. Fire keeps warm. Fire you move. Fire keeps weak alive in dark.

  The hairs on Cynthia’s arm stood on end as she stared at her partner, into those golden eyes, where the fire flickered and danced.

  Queenie’s answer just…

  Fit.

  For a moment, Cynthia felt a strong urge to dig deeper, to understand why this was how Queenie felt about fire. But she forced herself to hold back, to keep her curiosity in check. Instead, she took a deep breath, cantering herself, before refocusing on the reason she’d asked in the first place.

  “Life, okay.” She took a moment to gather her thoughts, “Well, I want you to apply that understanding to your type energy. Try to form it through the image of life…”

  Cynthia stopped, noticing Queenie staring blankly at her.

  She sighed, rubbing at her temple. “Okay, let’s take this one step at a time.”

  Queenie tilted her head, waiting patiently.

  Honestly, when Myst had explained it, he’d made it sound so simple. Just have Rei apply the concept of devouring onto her Type Energy, and bam, Fire-type energy.

  Now, trying to explain it herself, Cynthia felt the weight of her own words.

  She exhaled slowly, trying to refocus. “Alright, you see fire as life. So, instead of forcing the energy, try…” She paused, searching for the right words. “I don’t know, make it alive. Let your energy imitate movement and life.”

  Queenie hesitated, doubt flickering in her golden eyes. But after a moment, she closed them.

  Cynthia watched her closely, holding her breath.

  At first, nothing happened.

  Seconds stretched into minutes, the only sounds around them the distant rustling of leaves and the occasional crackle of their fading campfire.

  Cynthia nearly spoke up, once, twice, but each time, she caught herself. She could speak when Queenie gave up.

  Not a second sooner.

  Then Queenie’s claws flexed.

  Her breathing slowing.

  A deep inhale, a slow exhale.

  And then—

  A spark.

  Faint, flickering, gone as quickly as it came.

  Cynthia’s pulse leapt. She forced herself to stay still, hardly daring to breathe as Queenie tried again.

  This time, the energy held.

  Thin and unstable, like a candle’s flame on the verge of dying, but unmistakably there. A dim, reddish glow coated her talon, fragile and weak, nowhere near enough to form even a single move.

  And yet.

  Cynthia stared, hardly able to believe it. Because Myst had told her Rei had figured it out almost instantly. The moment she understood what fire meant to her, she could produce the energy as naturally as breathing.

  Cynthia had found the idea fascinating.

  She just hadn’t believed him.

  Because if there was a method this effective, people would have caught on. It would have spread. Pokémon had lived alongside humans for thousands of years. Even if treating them as partners, structured training and research were relatively new concepts, someone should have discovered this by now. Someone should have written about it, studied it, refined it.

  But she hadn’t read about it.

  Hadn’t even heard about it.

  Maybe it was a fluke. Maybe Queenie was just particularly responsive to this kind of training—just like Rei had been.

  But if not…

  Her eyes flickered toward the town.

  And with a growing sense of dread, she realized what it meant.

  She’d have to talk to him about it.

  Because she wouldn’t, couldn’t, let this go.

  They had to research this properly.

  Even if it meant apologizing.

  Shit.

  scale…