Take it slow.

  They agreed to take it slow.

  After all, Myst had been right about one thing, she did want to focus on the Circuit. That had always been part of what she planned to say. That she was open to trying it, to seeing where it might lead, but that there were other priorities that had to come first. In the end, even though it felt like so much longer, they’d only met a little under two months ago. So, for as much as she wanted to make this work, she wasn’t going to sacrifice her dreams for it.

  She just wasn’t that type of girl.

  Or, well, that was what she told herself as his thumb brushed gently against hers.

  Ever since they’d set off that morning, he’d seemingly been unable to stop himself. Brushing past her whenever he could, flashing her smiles so bright they made it hard not to smile back. And then, the instant the others turned their backs, he’d grabbed her hand, as if he’d already forgotten that the other thing they’d agreed on was not to show off too much.

  …Which she really should do something about before somebody noticed.

  “Myst,” she said quietly.

  He immediately shot her a dumb, lopsided grin.

  “Yes?”

  She closed her eyes, trying, and failing, to force down the blush that crept across her cheeks.

  “You know what, never mind,” she said with a sigh.

  She dragged her attention forward, and just in time, too, because Volkner came to a stop ahead of them. Instantly, she slipped her hand out of Myst’s before the three figures ahead could turn around and see.

  “We stop here for a second, okay?” Volkner said, scanning the area around them, while the Pikachu on his shoulder jumped off and stretched. “Considering how much vegetation there is already, I have a feeling we’re getting close to the boundary where we might start running into Grass-types.”

  Cynthia exchanged a quick glance with Myst and met his wry smile.

  “You think he’s stopping us for a reason this time?” she whispered.

  Myst shrugged, leaning closer. “He had a reason the previous times too. And honestly, if this were the first time, I wouldn’t even mind.”

  Cynthia stared at him for a long moment, then let out a soft sigh.

  Considering they’d been walking for almost four hours, stopping a few times shouldn’t have been a big deal. It wasn’t a big deal. No, the problem was the half-hour they’d wasted because Volkner felt the need to go over their bare-bones plan half a dozen times.

  Still, Myst wasn’t wrong. The earlier stops might have felt unnecessary, especially when they hadn’t seen so much as a hint of green, but that was clearly no longer the case.

  She took a small step away from Myst and followed Volkner’s gaze across the ground ahead. In the last half hour the terrain had slowly shifted. Gone was the jagged, unforgiving stone that had followed them since entering Mt. Coronet. In its place, a thin carpet of grass stretched out before them, not the brittle, grey tufts she’d occasionally seen clinging to cracks in the rock, but real grass. Green, alive, and impossibly out of place.

  She frowned slightly, glancing toward Volkner

  “You said the area was slowly expanding, right? How much further inside were you the last time you encountered grass like this?”

  Volkner opened his mouth to answer, but Flint beat him to it.

  “Maybe half an hour?” he offered, then paused and gave a noncommittal shrug. “Though, honestly, no clue. When we first came out here, we weren’t exactly keeping track of that sort of thing. Still, I’m guessing that’s not really what you’re asking, is it?

  Cynthia turned toward him and met his somewhat cocky smile.

  “The expansion, it’s slowed down, hasn’t it?”

  “Yup. I can’t say by how much, but the spread’s definitely slowed. And by a lot too, honestly,” Flint said. “The first ranger told us that if it had kept going at its original pace, it should’ve reached the halfway house a week ago. But now…” He glanced up the slope, then down at his Monferno with a grin. “What do you think, buddy? We’ve been walking for, what, three hours, give or take?”

  “Make it closer to four.” Johanna purred.

  Flint waved a hand dismissively. “Whatever. The point’s the same: we’re heading into their territory now. That means we should start paying a bit more attention…” He paused, then grinned. “Then again, we do have our detection system ready, don’t we?”

  Cynthia forced her eyes away from Johanna’s almost euphoric smile, just in time to see Rei fix Flint with a look that promised violence if he ever called her that again.

  Flint instantly raised both hands in surrender. “Hey, it was a compliment, you know. Being a detection system—”

  Myst cut him off with a wry smile, patting Rei’s head before she could decide if the insult was worth acting on.

  “The detection system will keep working,” he said dryly, “as long as we stop referring to it as one.”

  Flint opened his mouth, but before he could say anything Navi’s voice rang out in her head.

  “I don’t mind!”

  Cynthia turned to find the little Kirlia raising her hands and planting them firmly on her hips, as if striking a heroic pose to show just how ready she was for the task. Then, when she realized everyone was staring at her, she faltered slightly, and Cynthia felt her lips twitch.

  Myst simply nodded, playing along with full seriousness.

  “At least somebody takes their job seriously. And, I mean, nobody’s getting through you, right?”

  Navi straightened again, confidence returning as both orange horns flared with light.

  “As long as it’s not a particularly sneaky Dark- or Ghost-type, I can sense anything that comes within a hundred meters.”

  Myst stared, then looked at the ground with a sigh.

  “Navi… what did I say about jinxing it? Just say nothing can come within a hundred meters. Adding qualifiers only increases the odds of exactly that happening.”

  Navi’s eyes widened, and the faintest ripple of embarrassment flickered through the link. For a moment, her presence wavered, just slightly, before settling again.

  Cynthia shook her head at Myst, but her gaze lingered on Navi, a small warmth blooming in her chest despite herself.

  Really, she was just—

  Incredible.

  She had grown up around Psychic-type Pokémon, but maybe because of that, she understood just how incredible Navi’s skills were. How incredible her progress had been. Once she’d figured out how to use her ability, her growth had been nothing short of monstrous. She could now hold conversations with multiple people at once, sense the presence of unshielded Pokémon nearby, and, as of only a few days ago, even connect two people directly to each other.

  Honestly, if either Volkner or Flint knew even a little more about Telepathy and Psychic-types, they’d probably be losing their minds.

  …But since they didn’t—

  Volkner cleared his throat, trying to reclaim the attention he had only had for a couple of seconds.

  “Anyway,” he said, “as I was saying, I have a feeling we’re getting close to the point where we’ll start running into wild Pokémon. So I just want to go over the plan one more time.”

  Cynthia let out a small sigh, quickly joined by Flint’s, Johanna’s, and Myst’s in a reluctant little chorus.

  If Volkner noticed, he didn’t seem to care.

  “If we meet any Pokémon, we take them out fast and then we run. We don’t try catching anything, and we avoid staying in one spot. If we meet any with bloodshot eyes or whatever, we just run. While some people here insist they’d be able to take one on, it’s not worth the risk. Even if we could, if we get surrounded—”

  As he kept talking, Cynthia felt herself sag slightly. Honestly, she wasn’t against a good plan, but really?

  With nothing left to lose, she walked over to Myst, tugged on his sleeve, and shot him a look.

  From the way his face hardened, she knew he’d gotten the message.

  “Volkner, we don’t need to go over it again,” Myst said instantly, cutting him off mid rant. “We all know what to do. We went over it like twenty times yesterday, and we’ve already talked about it twice on the road.”

  Volkner paused, eyes flickering to Flint, before he shot Myst a look.

  Myst just sighed again.

  “I mean, don’t get me wrong, going over the plan again isn’t bad, but at this point, if anyone forgets it, I feel like we just call it natural selection and move on.”

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  Volkner opened his mouth to protest, but before he could get a word out, Flint tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Dude, I’m not gonna lie… I kinda agree.”

  Volkner slowly closed his mouth, then slumped slightly. “Okay. Fine. If you don’t think we need it, I guess we keep moving.”

  Without another word, he turned and started walking. Beside him Pikachu gave Flint a look that was halfway between betrayal and amusement before hopping lightly to keep its balance on Volkner’s shoulder.

  Cynthia shot Myst a look.

  She wanted him to stop him, he didn’t need to do it like that.

  He just shrugged with a grin and, as if it were the most casual thing in the world, walked over and laced his fingers through hers again, leaning down slightly.

  “Cynthia,” he murmured, “before you tell me I should’ve gone easier on him, just remember the last time he stopped us to go over the plan. You looked like you wanted to strangle him. If you think of it that way, I stopped his murder. You should give me a reward, honestly.”

  She paused, replaying her own reaction in her mind, then cringed slightly.

  Yeah, she was being unfair, wasn’t she?

  “I guess you’re right,” she whispered back with a small sigh. She hesitated then, her gaze lingering on his cheek. “And…”

  A reward…

  Should she…?

  Myst tilted his head.

  “And?”

  She blushed and quickly looked away.

  “And thanks… and sorry, I guess. I didn’t mean to make you do anything. It’s just…” She shrugged, “I mean, I feel like, at this point, you know them better than I do.” She hesitated, then huffed softly. “Honestly, though, I am a little surprised. When Volkner asked if he could lead because he’d been here before, I agreed because I thought he’d be laid-back. Not like… this.”

  “No worries.” Myst glanced toward Volkner’s back, then grinned lightly. “Still, I don’t think you’re wrong. In my opinion? I think he is pretty laid-back, but he’s probably used to having to say things a couple of extra times.”

  Cynthia blinked, then followed his gaze to see Volkner waiting slightly ahead for Flint to catch up, a soft smile tugging at his lips.

  …

  She almost stumbled as the smell hit.

  Because it wasn’t a gentle drift of scent carried on the wind, it slammed into her like a wall. After hours of breathing nothing but cold stone, stale air, and the faint metallic tang of Mt. Coronet’s depths, the change was overwhelming. The moment they started cresting the hill, the air seemed to come alive.

  The fresh, sharp scent of grass filled her lungs, threaded through with the sweet, heady tinge of flowers. It was so vivid, so wrong for where they were, that for a moment it felt like they had stepped out of the mountain entirely, as if just beyond the next tip lay a sunlit meadow full of flowers, and not more plain grassland.

  Beside her, Johanna wiped a bead of sweat from her forehead and let out a huff.

  “Okay, fine, but what about the air? The fact that I feel better now than I did ten minutes ago? How do you explain that? You’ve got to feel the difference, right? You say a Grassy Terrain can’t be the cause, but what else could make something like this happen?”

  Volkner didn’t slow his pace.

  “I didn’t say Grassy Terrain couldn’t be the cause,” he corrected calmly. “I said one Pokémon using it alone couldn’t do this. I mean, unless we’re talking about something straight out of legend, and I feel like the Rangers would’ve mentioned that if they suspected one, then it’s impossible for a single Pokémon to sustain this. Probably even impossible to create it in the first place. I mean, maybe,” he stressed the word like it would break if he did it any harder, “if you pushed a Champion-level Grass-type to its absolute limit, it could create a Grassy Terrain this strong, but even that wouldn’t last.”

  Flint nodded beside him.

  “Yeah. Like, we didn’t really talk about it with you guys,” he said, nodding toward Myst and Cynthia, “because there was already too much to go over. But after our first trip here? We basically didn’t discuss anything else.”

  He rubbed the back of his neck, glancing up the slope.

  “I mean, we got far enough to reach this place, or its equivalent anyway, and realized we were tiring a lot less. But after talking about it, Grassy Terrain didn’t seem to explain everything. Like, why do you start running into grass first, and only deeper in do you get the full-on healing aura? So our best guess is that it’s a collective effort. All the Grass-types serving this so-called king, or ‘Majesty,’ or whatever they’re calling it, have been expanding the territory slowly through coordinated type-energy manipulation. And the Grassy Terrain-like effect?” He gave a humorless laugh. “That’s just a side effect of the overwhelming amount of Grass-type energy saturating the area.”

  Cynthia glanced down at the ground, brows knitting.

  “But how would they even coordinate that? This place was, what, ninety percent stone originally? At least Grassy Terrain is somewhat self-sustaining, but with manual manipulation—if you’re not constantly supplying energy, everything would just die, wouldn’t it? And even then, it still doesn’t explain why we were finding grass before we ever felt this—” she gestured around them, “—Grassy Terrain-like aura. What’s the point of forcing anything to grow if it’s just going to wither without constant support?”

  “And that? That’s exactly where we stumped ourselves too,” Flint admitted easily, then turned his head with a cocky grin. “Still, I’m guessing you guys don’t have any better ideas either, right?”

  Cynthia lifted a finger, then paused… and slowly lowered it again.

  Okay, yeah. For as much as she wanted to come up with something, nothing she—

  “I mean, it doesn’t have to be a Pokémon using a move, though,” Myst said, breaking the silence. “I don’t really know how strong it would need to be, but there are Pokémon that can set terrain just by existing. If we’re excluding legendaries, both Rillaboom and Arboliva can do it.” He paused, “Or, well, Arboliva is kind of a question mark I guess, since it need to take damage to use its ability, but Rillaboom just does it when existing.”

  Flint stopped dead in his tracks. He turned around fully, blinking at Myst like he’d just spoken another language.

  “Uh… a what and what now?”

  Myst shrugged as he walked past him, not bothering to stop. “Pokémon from another region. Their Hidden Ability lets them set up Grassy Terrain automatically. And usually, anything done through an ability takes a lot less energy, right?”

  Flint mouthed the words for a few seconds, like repeating them might somehow help. Then, when it became clear it wouldn’t, he finally opened his mouth—

  Having missed the way Volkner had frozen mid stepped.

  Before Flint could get a word out, Volkner spun around, stepped in front of Myst, and blocked his path.

  “A what ability?” he bit out.

  Cynthia blinked slightly, at their reactions.

  Honestly, why were they so confused about Myst—

  She paused. And then, almost instinctively, scanned their faces.

  The confusion.

  The slow, disbelieving blinks.

  The way Flint looked like his brain had momentarily short-circuited.

  It was ridiculous, but something about it made warmth bloom low in her chest.

  He hadn’t told them.

  She’d gotten so used to Myst casually dropping impossible facts into conversation that she had, more or less, learned to ignore it.

  But clearly, even though Volkner and Flint had been hanging around him for a while now, they’d never been hit with anything like this before. And, she wasn’t going to lie, every time she got to watch him break someone else’s brain for once… it was strangely satisfying.

  She pressed her lips together to hide it, but the smile still tugged at the corners of her mouth.

  “Uh… did I not talk to you about that?” Myst took a step back and glanced between Volkner and Flint. “Actually… did I even mention the whole amnesia thing?”

  Flint stared at him.

  “The amnesia thing,” he repeated flatly.

  Myst glanced between Volkner and Flint, then shifted his gaze to her.

  She shook her head at his unspoken question.

  He turned back to them with a guileless smile.

  At that, Volkner exhaled slowly, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Right. Okay. I’m guessing you have amnesia or something? That’s… I mean, I get why you wouldn’t want to mention it, so we don’t need to. But Hidden Abilities, what do you mean by hidden—”

  Flint cut in before Volkner could finish. “Hey, wait a second—I want to know. You have freaking amnesia? For how long? How?”

  Myst shrugged. “Eight months? Maybe nine? Hard to say. I was stuck in Eterna Forest for, like, the first six or so. No idea about the how, I just woke up with no memories.”

  Flint stared at him. Then at Volkner. Then back at Myst.

  “Wait. You’re telling me I lost to some guy who’s been a trainer for less than half a year?”

  Johanna finally let out a low giggle at that. “Don’t take it so seriously. It’s you and every other trainer he battled your age at the halfway house, right? And, I mean, haven’t you all technically only been trainers officially for a couple of months?”

  All that escaped Flint’s lips was a long, wounded groan as he sank to his knees, before proceeding to hug Monferno like his partner was an oversized stress toy. In return Monferno patted his trainer awkwardly, then glanced up at the ceiling of the cave with a resigned look, as if silently asking why this was the human he’d ended up with.

  Volkner didn’t spare Flint so much as a glance. He simply stared at Cynthia, brows drawn together in concentration.

  “Hidden Ability,” he repeated, unwilling to budge from the subject. “What do you mean by that? Do Pokémon have the chance to evolve an extra ability, beyond their usual two? Maybe one that people haven’t found because it doesn’t show up naturally?”

  Cynthia glanced at Myst.

  He lifted an eyebrow.

  She sighed and turned back to Volkner.

  “Honestly? We don’t know. When Myst told me about it, my first instinct was the same as yours, that it’s called hidden because it doesn’t occur naturally. But that’s not the case. Both Navi and my Roselia have their Hidden Abilities as their natural—”

  She stopped herself.

  Wait.

  Why had she never thought about—

  “—abilities,” Volkner finished for her, then frowned and glanced toward Myst. “Hold on. Myst told you? I thought this was something you told him. Some kind of clan secret or cutting-edge research or something.”

  Cynthia blinked.

  “Oh. Right. You wouldn’t know about that.” She gestured toward Myst. “He doesn’t have memories of anything beyond the last half-year, true, but that’s only if you don’t count what’s basically an encyclopedia of Pokémon knowledge living in his head. And I’m not exaggerating, you can ask him about anything, and he’ll have an answer. Every region’s species, their moves, their abilities—”

  Volkner held up a hand, stopping her.

  “Wait. Wait. Give me a second—”

  Everyone went quiet, waiting for him to continue.

  One second passed. Then another.

  But instead of saying anything, Volkner’s hand just… slowly dropped back to his side.

  Johanna sighed and stepped forward, giving him a light pat on the back. “I know it sounds insane. I don’t really get it either. But as far as I can tell, she’s explaining it as best she can. Myst just knows everything about Pokémon.”

  “Okay, let’s not exaggerate. I don’t know everything,” Myst corrected with a resigned sigh. “I mean, when I woke up I didn’t even know what Aura, or Type Energy was. And really, it’s not like I know everything all the time, like everybody else, I can only recall what I remember.” He paused, seemingly realizing how little sense he was making, and then just continued anyway. “But yeah, aside from that, they’re summing it up pretty well. I just know stuff. There isn’t really a better explanation than that.”

  Volkner stared at him for a long moment, then looked between Cynthia and Johanna before finally letting out a long, slow breath.

  “Okay then,” he said at last. “I guess I’ll just… take your word for it.” He sounded like he barely believed his own words.

  Myst shrugged. “I mean, it doesn’t really make sense. But it’s not like I can make it make more sense.”

  A beat.

  “Oh my god, it all makes sense!”

  Flint exploded up from the ground, eyes blazing with sudden revelation and manic energy.

  “I didn’t lose to some guy with no experience, I lost to someone blessed by Uxie herself!” he declared, throwing his arms skyward like a prophet.

  For a moment, everyone just stared. Then Volkner groaned, dragging a hand down his face before, without a word, seizing Flint by the collar and hauling him uphill like a misbehaving Growlithe.

  “…They might need some time,” Cynthia mumbled, watching them go.

  “Maybe…” Myst started, then glanced down at her, a grin tugging at his lips. “But honestly? All things considered, that went pretty well, no?”

  She looked toward Volkner and Flint, then back at Myst, rolled her eyes, and started walking again.

  It took Myst a quick minute to catch up, but when he did he bent slightly toward her, peering at her expression.

  “You are smiling.”

  She tried, and failed, to force her lips into a neutral line.

  “I am not.”

  His grin, somehow, grew even wider, but before he could make another teasing remark, he suddenly froze mid-step.

  Cynthia blinked and glanced up from the ground, only then realizing they had finally crested the hill.

  “Uh, Cynthia?” he said, pointing ahead. “That’s not normal, right?”

  It was, in fact, not normal.

  Cynthia stared.

  She had expected more grass, sure. A thicker carpet spreading across the stone, maybe a few scattered shrubs or wildflowers breaking through the cracks. What she had not expected was this.

  Trees rose into the air, their roots splitting stone and slicing through gravel as they climbed toward the light. Impossibly healthy green leaves covered each one, their branches tangling together to form a loose canopy that cast the ground below into shadow. An honest to god forest, sprouting up cleanly through stone, ignoring every boundary of what should and should not be possible.

  “Uh, not to be dramatic or anything,” Flint started slowly from the side, “but I can confirm that was not here the last time we checked.”