Chapter 168

Chapter 168

CHAPTER 168

I ended up spending the rest of the evening with Cecilia, which consisted of taking care of her a bunch. I didn't mind, of course. Helping her to walk to open the door to the bathroom, bringing her dinner, hair drying and brushing her hair, just being together were things that made us feel a hundred times better than before. I had even told her about Togetic changing me since she evolved, but aside from the initial surprise, she only cared because I did. She'd fallen in love with that version of me, and it was who I was now. She was so understanding with me.

I did ask her to keep it from the others. I wasn't comfortable with telling them yet.

"And you've got to talk to someone, okay? Even when I'm gone. You've never spoken to a therapist before. You could even go into stuff with Clarence if you want," I said, gently stroking her soft hair as we lay in bed. I basked in the comfort of her warm skin.

"I will... try."

"Not try. You will," I insisted.

"Okay, I will. I'll book an appointment tomorrow morning while you're doing yours."

"Great! What do you want to do tomorrow?" I asked.

"I'd like to swing by and see what happened to that old couple," Cecilia said. "Daniel and Marge? I want to see if they made it through the darkest day okay."

"You're using the term?" I asked. "And it's pretty far with your leg. Didn't the doctors say that you needed to let it rest?"

"Nothing I can't handle, love."

"I'll keep you confined to this bed if it's the last thing I do."

She laughed, which was music to my ears. Hearing her do so after so long filled me with untold amounts of joy.

"Oh, I wouldn't mind," she playfully said. I felt my cheeks heat up. "We can just stay inside until you pick up the rest of your team then. I wish I could fly on Talonflame, but she's too small to fit me."

"You don't even have a license."

"That was more of a general thought, sorry," she said. "I've done some more research into Golett, you know? Did you know that they could fly when they evolve into Golurk?"

I scoffed. "You're fucking with me."

"No, I'm not! They can retract their legs and hands to fly like one of those rocket ships in Hoenn. It turns out I do have a flier after all... I was worried I'd have to buy and teach Slowking Teleport quicker than he could handle. I could have asked Mira's Kadabra for help, but they tend to hog their knowledge instead of sharing."

"Kirlia can help too. Won't Hydreigon be able to fly you though?

"It took my brother months for his Hydreigon to even let him touch him, so I wouldn't rely on that."

"That's fair. I still don't believe you, by the way."

Cecilia grabbed her phone, snuggled up closer to me and played a video of a Golurk slowly taking off from the ground and then breaking the sound barrier as soon as it was far enough. Somehow, it could retract its hands and legs into its body just like she had said. The process just looked so unnatural... what fuel did they even run on?!

"Holy crap," I choked. "Can they do that in battle?"

"I mean, he could, but the retracting process actually takes a decent while, and so does the initial take-off, as you saw. It wouldn't really work in practice. There are also a bunch of rules for it too. Golurk generate too much noise to fly in cities, and it can't even do so alone because breaking the sound barrier can cause property damage and bother people, so it looks like I'll have to rely on Slowking within cities. I'll still wait a while to get the TM, though. I'd like to focus on mind-shielding while in Veilstone."

The psychic type nodded in his usual corner. For some reason, since every Pokemon Center room was built the same, he had a specific corner he liked to stay in. It was the one below the television, where he liked to listen, but not to watch. Nothing was playing right now, though. He was quirky like that.

"Say, you never told me the sixth Pokemon you wanted. Obviously you want a Spiritomb, which I won't comment on—"

"You saying that might as well be commenting," she smirked.

"—but since Cynthia told you to wait, who are you gunning for right now?"

"I don't know."

"What?! I thought you had the entire thing planned out!"

"Well, I just know I want it to be a fighting type, but I don't know which one I want. It'll probably be the first one I end up encountering. Other than Mankey, because then Pauline would cry foul. You still have to make up with her, by the way."

"Right. I will before I leave. She was staring daggers at me."

"Yeah. She'll come around easily though. She's been hurting from the group coming apart too, especially with Justin, even though she hides it well."

"Take care of them for me. Denzel too."

"I will."

—

I woke up due to nightmares.

Unlike my previous ones, I did not wake up screaming. I woke up with a sense of dread overtaking my entire body. My hands and lips quivering like leaves as Crobat's final screams faded away during my return to consciousness.

At least that'd help during travels. I wouldn't alert the wildlife this time.

Unfortunately for Cece, she'd been clinging to me like a baby Komala to its mother, so I ended up waking her up too. She didn't mind, though. She said that it would allow us to spend more time together before I left.

She didn't even say anything about having to change the sheets— which would probably have to happen every single day.

My first session with Amanda hadn't done much to heal, but it felt nice to talk to her after so long. She was nowhere near as busy with trainers as she was earlier in the year, so we'd be able to have one of these at least once per day until I left. We ended up talking about my journey instead of what happened the entire time... it was just me dictating everything like I'd done with Sunshine and he had thoroughly hated it. One of Amanda's jobs, however, was to listen, and it felt really good to have someone to talk to about this stuff. I could tell her things I'd never be able to tell my friends, like complaining about them.

Pauline for example. She was one of my closest friends, but she did have her flaws. It was expected of her to get mad and throw a fit, whereas if I did the same to her, I knew she wouldn't forgive me anywhere as easily as I did with her. Of course, I didn't just focus on her. We were all flawed human beings, deep down, but being able to lay it all out was good for me.

That was the plan. Sunshine already had a plethora of moves he had to get familiar with again, and Buddy needed to work on his Night Shades. First, he'd need to make them not explode on contact with everything, then strengthen the moves they could use, and finally, he'd be able to work on making more than one.

When I first started training him, I had no idea the move would be able to go that far. Fantina's Frillish had been able to summon multiple too.

Though if push came to shove and I was targeted by too many at the same time...

"Now let's go and enjoy ourselves. Sweetheart's been dying to see you," I smiled at Turtonator.

He swaggered up in the middle of the team and Togetic groaned.

But she didn't glare.

—

The next day, Cynthia was supposed to meet us all, including people not in the Internship Program. Thankfully, she didn't do it in the Pokemon Center like before, because I knew that would have excited the trainers around here way too much. Our Center was the most packed in the city because people wanted to catch a glimpse of the Champion, but the rest were relatively empty now. Most trainers had left as soon as they could, and something told me they'd wait a long while to ever go to Solaceon again. It wasn't like people had to go through here to get to Hearthome. Route 212 was a thing, although it was extremely long, tedious and dangerous because of the massive swamp next to Pastoria.

Alicia's Xatu Teleported me back in the same office where we'd joined the League, and my friends came soon enough. Only Cynthia was here today, so we wouldn't be seeing any Elite Four members. Maeve was a nervous mess, barely able to comprehend that she was meeting Sinnoh's Champion, but other than that, reactions were pretty muted. We had all seen her at least once before. Then there was Justin, who obviously didn't care whatsoever. Togekiss stood by her side, and his wings were behind his back like a scholar.

"Welcome. This is the last meeting we'll have. When we're done here, you'll be free to leave Solaceon whenever you please," Cynthia immediately started. She seemed busy. "A veteran League Trainer will be assigned to each of you in every city, and you probably will never see or hear them. There won't be a need for you to speak. If you need to talk to the League talk to me. Lucian will sort through the message and see if it's important enough or not."

She paused to see if we understood, and we all let out small affirmative grunts.

"I will reiterate that everything we've spoken about these last few days is confidential. Don't let the media get a rise out of you or bait you into giving answers..."

She ended up giving us a ten-minute spiel on ways to keep safe, but we had some of her tips covered, like keeping a Pokemon out as much as we could, or training our psychics to get better at tracking people to see if anyone was following us— sort of like Slowking had done at the start of the tournament. An interesting one I hadn't known about was that was more specific to me was that I could train Togetic to sense malicious intent from people. It wouldn't go as far as mind reading, but it'd be useful to know if someone wanted to hurt us or not.

Of course, it wasn't infallible. Some people were good enough to mask their intent, but most were not. It was more of a long-term project for us though, because it took her Togekiss a long time to learn. The best way to start was to have Princess try to feel others' emotions but she'd only be able to do so with strong ones, and only faintly at the start. It would take months for it to even be reliable.

"Congratulations. You're now free to go out into the world," Cynthia smiled. "You may leave. A few Teleporters are waiting for you in the hallway. Justin, stay back for a few minutes please."

The pale boy shrugged.

I wondered what she wanted to talk to him about. Something to do with his condition?

"Grace. Can I come with you for a sec?" Pauline asked. "I mean Teleport with you. You're not going back to the Center, right?"

"Yeah?" I frowned.

We weren't placed exactly where I wanted, but Xatu had probably never been to the forested area I liked. They did put us as close as they could though, so I appreciated that. It would take around fifteen minutes to get there.

"Can we start over?" Pauline said out of the blue.

"What?"

"We're fighting and I hate it. I don't want us to be fighting before we separate, because then it'll make things even worse for when we meet again."

"Oh. Oh."

I never thought that she'd be the one to apologize first. I thought I'd have to ask her to forgive me for dropping off the face of the earth.

"Oh? Is that bad or is that good?"

"I mean, yes!" I yelled. "I just wasn't expecting that. I mean, I still want to apologize for not telling you anything, it wasn't cool of me. I sent a message to Emi too."

"She told me," Pauline smiled. "Just remember that you've got us. Carrying all that shit on your shoulders gets exhausting."

"What about you? Are you okay? Mentally, I mean."

"Oh, I'm fine. I'm mostly annoyed about my fucking arm. It'll take months for me to be able to move it without feeling pain, but the people that did it to me paid it back tenfold. Justin still worries me, but right now I'm just hoping that he'll get back to normal soon."

I nodded, not knowing if that meant killing or injuring. It did make sense though. She'd always been mentally the strongest out of all of us.

"I was going to train my Pupitar to stand for a bit. Want to come with?"

"Sweetheart evolved?! Holy shit! Yeah, I'll come!"

Twenty minutes later, I almost choked on my own saliva when she released a Charizard.

—

Cynthia

Your entire group is clear of any influence from Togetic.

"Thank fuck," I breathed out as I read the message again. I assumed that Togekiss had checked while she'd been speaking to us as a group.

If it hadn't been the case, I would have had to talk to everyone about it, and it wouldn't have been pretty. A few days ago, it looked like I'd never be able to recover, but things were getting better, little by little. Denzel was cheering up and trying to get Justin to open up with Louis, although they had very little success. Mira was back to her usual self, and even though some of it was fake, some of it was real too. She was even starting to pester me about Chase again. Justin actually ended up leaving the day after.

No matter what, life went on.

Three days after Cynthia gave us the okay, it was time for me to leave. My friends sent me off at the edge of route 210. We all cried— and Cecilia especially so, but we'd be back together soon. She had to stay back another week because of her leg, and Denzel and Pauline were obviously going to wait for her. Louis, Mira and Maeve were planning on leaving in two days.

I released Princess and began to walk.

And so, for the first time since I went to Twinleaf with only her by my side, I was traveling alone.

My legs felt light.