Chapter 179

Chapter 179

CHAPTER 179

Like every Ranger Station in cities, Veilstone's had been built somewhere near the gate. It had only taken ten minutes for the Rangers to take me, and I was immediately taken to a neat office room that looked like the one I'd been in back when I had told them about catching Sunshine. There was a simple metallic desk, a computer monitor that looked like it was from the 90s, and two chairs in front of it, where I currently sat. I could see Veilstone out of his window. It was a city of concrete, stocky buildings, and the sky was clouded by pollution. There was a reason Bella hated the city. Veilstone was known for its heavy industry and was probably the worst offender of city expansion. Even Hearthome, Jubilife and Sunyshore knew to control themselves. Oreburgh was polluted as well, but it was small and self-contained within a valley. Veilstone had none of the charming architecture that other places were known for, and its noxious air could easily spread to the other routes. Only Snowpoint looked worse than this, and that was because of its harsh environment. The same Ranger leader that had spoken to me sat down with a heavy sigh.

He was probably having a terrible day.

"Let's get started. You can call me Ranger or Mr. Gibbs. Can I see your ID first?"

"You know who I am," I said. "But you pretend not to?"

"They're just the rules. Procedure. I have to verify your identity no matter how obvious it is."

I paused. "Fine."

I handed it to him and he mulled over it, his eyes drifting over the card.

"Thank you, Ms. Pastel. I'm going to need you to sign something— just an oath that you're telling the truth. Again, procedure."

I nodded as he handed me the paper and a pen. While I was still capable of lying if needed, I felt like doing so would be horribly wrong just because of how ingrained Bella's teachings had been. I'd rather obscure the truth or go around it if needed. I'd called it a weakness, which had sent her into a thirty-minute rant about the superiority of fairy types and how that reputation made it easier to trick people.

Good times.

"So, Ms. Pastel. Can I know why you had an Arceus damned army at my gate and how the hell so many Pokemon followed you?"

His tone was harsh and snappy, which I didn't appreciate.

"I told you already. They were just sending me off. I befriended them during my stay on the route."

The Ranger irritatingly drummed his finger against the steel table.

"Befriended hundreds of Pokemon in that short of a time?"

"Yes. Just because you can't fathom it doesn't mean that it's impossible," I shrugged. "I've done nothing illegal, and I know you can't keep me here."

"Will this happen again? Do we have to put a permanent presence on the route because of this?"

"You aren't listening to what I'm saying, and I'm starting to take offense."

"What?"

"They are harmless. Don't intrude on their home because you feel insecure about having them close by in large numbers. They know better than to attack the city."

"Look, the truth of the matter is, we just want to know how you communicated and coordinated so many Pokemon around."

"I stopped and listened."

He sunk slightly deeper into his chair. "Let's move on. That Hatterene and Decidueye aren't normally species seen in the wild in Sinnoh, and it doesn't take much to know that they're special. Powerful beyond what we'd be able to contain without League backup. Do you know if—"

"They're the same as the other. Harmless."

"You should look at the videos going around. The Decidueye seemed calm enough, but she made some threatening faces while we spoke."

"That's just like her," I smiled fondly. "She was just feeling protective, I think."

"Oh boy," he groaned. "So you confirm that they won't be of any danger to Veilstone? Can you be sure?"

"Yes, I promise."

Looking at his face, this meeting hadn't gone the way he thought it would. He was probably going to call the League since there was no way he was going to just trust anything I said. Rangers usually did so when something too powerful struck, but he'd be out of luck there. Bellatrix technically hadn't broken her deal with Cynthia by just revealing her existence. I wondered what Cynthia's reaction to all of this would be, but unfortunately for me, there was no way to figure it out. If I had to guess, she had her head deep in Team Galactic matters, and I wasn't about to call her. If she wanted to speak to me, she'd do it herself.

Ranger Gibbs just stared at me as a heavy silence settled into the room.

"Look, I'm in the League Internship Program," I said. "Cynthia invited me into the program herself. I wouldn't do something stupid or lie about this."

Arceus, it'd be so much easier if they had an empath around. We were just both wasting our time here. The Rangers' job was to keep people safe and I had just done something very unusual, so I knew where he was coming from, but it felt like he'd just brought me here with the expectation that I was going to reveal something big. Like a planned attack instead of it just being friends saying goodbye.

Which made no sense anyway. If they wanted to attack, they wouldn't have done something so obvious.

But I was worried about something else. Not Bella or Night's safety, but what if the Rangers encroached further on the route for the sake of 'safety' if I messed up here? I knew that I wasn't detained and I could just leave if he annoyed me too much, but I owed them better than that.

All the Pokemon on that route.

"That's a fair point," he said, his face tightening. "Can you go more in-depth? Tell us how you ended up connecting with Hatterene and Decidueye in particular?"

Well, I could answer that, at least.

"They sought me out and befriended me. We spent a week off-route together with my team," I explained. "Ranger Gibbs, they really want nothing to do with Veilstone. Give them the benefit of the doubt here. They're both just living their lives and— look, they haven't endangered any trainers either, right? Route 215 is weird, but it's certainly nowhere near the most deadly route. It's actually one of the safest."

"I see your point," he nodded after a pause. "We'll let you go."

"You had no right to detain me in the first place," I shrugged. "Erm, sorry. What will you do now?"

"Keep a few more guards posted at the end of the route and see if whatever happened with you happens again," he said, pinching the bridge of his nose.

I smiled. That was basically the best I was going to get.

"Thank you. Uh, I know I kind of sprung this whole thing onto you, but I really did only tell the truth."

He irritatingly waved his hand at me. "Go. Have a good day."

I stood up and left as Bella's complaints about human encroachment rang inside of my head. It might not have been much, but today, I had helped the wild Pokemon of route 215.

—

Veilstone was an ugly amalgamation of concrete and cement, but it also had a surprising amount of Pokemon out and about. Every city had a number of Pokemon that walked the street, but Veilstone especially so, and a lot of them did so without a trainer by their side. A Machoke curiously stared at me, and I dipped my head in return. Even though Pokemon would only feel a link to me in forests, it seemed like they could all sense there was something different about me. I grabbed my phone as I walked past a set of massive warehouses that must have altogether been the size of Floaroma. The port to Veilstone's northeast exported the majority of what they produced in the city and imported goods from abroad.

There were a few messages from people. Louis' group and Justin saying that they'd made it to the city almost a week ago, but also Emilia. I felt a burst of excitement. I hadn't seen her in what felt like a lifetime. Denzel, Pauline and Cece had apparently just entered route 215 as well, so they'd be here within the week. Knowing Bella, she'd probably subject them to some kind of weird test, but I'd secured their safe passage, so I wasn't too worried. Chase was also here, but he'd already signed up to battle Maylene. I probably wasn't going to have enough time to see his battle in two days. Justin, for his part, didn't want to meet. It was a miracle he'd even sent a text at all. I couldn't help but feel hurt when remembering how he used to be, but there was nothing I could do. Shiftry was already dead.

I held back a shiver as I heard the sound of my recorded voice.

"This is going to sound a little crazy," I said. They all laughed. "I'm serious. Keep this a secret for now."

I didn't know how common it was for titles to be given out to trainers, and I wanted to at least wait until I spoke to Cynthia again to reveal that entire thing.

I waited for them to agree, and started again. "Hatterene gave me this title that makes Pokemon in forests look to me as a friend, so they came together to say goodbye."

"Title...?" Maeve muttered. All four looked somewhat confused.

"I know, it sounds weird, but it's true," I said. "I traveled alone to figure myself out, and that was exactly what I got from my time with her."

Emilia sighed. "I still can't believe the stuff you all get up to sometimes, but I'm happy for you."

"Thank you. And by the way, how are your Pokemon?!" I asked her. It'd been so long since I'd seen Beldum, Aipom and Rockruff. "They must have grown a lot with how you're this big deal coordinator now."

"Well, I wouldn't call myself a big deal," she shyly said. "I'm no rising star, but I'm good."

I blinked. I'd usually never seen Emilia this confident. Her voice had been steadfast when saying it.

"I don't know if you've seen, but I managed to catch Antoine Nguyen's old links to Team Galactic. He was someone the League had missed, which is where most of my fame came from. I've got... three hundred thousand subscribers. I'm doing pretty good."

"Told you she was badass," Mira said. "Hey, tell her how you caught him."

"Arceus, don't make it sound so crazy. I was looking for corruption first... there were rumors about him altering his scores for people he liked and disliked, but they'd never been substantial. I managed to sneak into his office at night and looked through until I found some old documents linking him to some weird packaging company that I had never even heard about, and I know business. That screamed shell company to me, so I looked deeper until I found out the whole entire thing was fake... that was the extent of my involvement, really. I warned Fantina about it, and it turned out that was a Team Galactic shell company, so they caught him. People keep saying it was me who did it, like I confronted him or something. Metang pointed me in the right direction, and Vincent helped a lot with research—"

"Wait, you said Metang?" I gasped.

She bit her lip. "Well dang it, my surprise is ruined, isn't it?"

"You have to show him to me!" I demanded. "I bet you have something crazy like a new Pokemon too."

"Or some new evolutions," Mira added.

"That is... scarily perspective," she said.

She opened her purse, pulling out four Pokeballs. She teased us, releasing only her original three. Her white and golden Metang appeared as pristine as ever, his red eyes flashing in surprise as he saw me. I had seen a few in the Solaceon tournament, but I'd never really been close to one.

"Long time no see!" I said, expecting some words back.

He stayed silent, however, opting to simply bow using his entire body.

"Metang's a little shy. Well, I call him he, but he has two brains," she said. "It gets a little confusing when they both talk to me at once."

"Metang are actually real interesting," Mira mused. She touched at the cold steel, and the psychic type let out an eerie mechanic resonance in irritation. "They can either form naturally after a Beldum's psychic powers are put under enough stress and forces itself to split in two to add to those powers, or when two Beldum meet in the wild and decide to fuse into one being. It makes 'em more likely to survive. A lot of Pokemon eat steel where they live."

I raised my eyebrows in surprise. "I assume you went with the first option?"

"Yeah... it was when I got into my second top sixteen during my first Grand Contest. I, uh, got crushed. Temperance's Dragonair and Meowstic combo destroyed me in style, but Metang still evolved, so I wasn't too sad."

She is lying. She cried.

I almost jumped in surprise at the voice.

"Metang! You're so annoying!"

The steel type didn't care to entertain Emilia's antics. She released Ambipom as she grumbled under her breath.

"Ambi. Say hello."

The monkey greeted the entire room with a snicker, then presented one of his tails to Louis.

"He wants you to shake it," I said. Louis looked to Emilia, who nodded.

Louis brought his hand forward, but Ambipom sneakily stole his Poketch from his backpocket while he was doing so. He quickly tried to grab it back, but the normal type jumped over the desk, hanging onto the ceiling fan as she laughed and looked through his phone.

"Ambi! Give it back!"

Unfortunately for her, it was locked behind a code. Ambipom's grin twisted downward as he threw the phone back at Louis' face. The poor man just couldn't catch a break.

"I'm so sorry, he's been getting more and more mischievous," Emilia apologize, helping the blond man up. Ambipom stuck out his tongue and spun himself around on the ceiling fan until Metang clicked annoyingly and grabbed him with a Confusion. "Thank you, Metang. I promise he's not always like this. He was my first evolution. It happened a little before the Solaceon tournament started during one of our training sessions after he learned Double Hit."

"He seems fun enough," Mira said, much to Maeve's annoyance. "What?"

"Read the room."

"It's okay. I just hope he'll mature soon," Emilia said. Ambipom shook his head. She released Lycanroc next. He'd grown a lot, but still had that light brown fur. His lean muscles flexed and his rocky fur rustled as he lazily stretched across the floor. "Lycan's the same as always."

I crouched, petting the rough fur around his neck and he flopped on his back with his tongue hanging out. I obliged him and rubbed his belly instead.

"He's been a huge help raising my new Pokemon. Without him, she'd be like Ambi already."

"Enough teasing, just show it to us already," Mira complained with a childlike pout.

"Well, you can't blame a coordinator for enjoying the spectacle a little bit," she smirked.

Her new Pokemon was a small yellow fox with red fluff coming out of her ears that I immediately recognized as a Fennekin. She was pretty young, if I had to guess, with how she quickly hid behind Lycanroc, Ambipom and Emilia. Maeve was over the moon, though, and she desperately tried to pet the little Pokemon. Fennekin's eyes settled on me, and I could tell she that she felt my title. She only spent a few seconds doing so, though, and quickly returned to dodging Maeve's advances.

"I got her as an apology gift from my parents," she said with a pained smile. "That was always how they thought I worked, and they haven't changed at all."

"Your parents are in Hearthome?" Louis asked.

"Hmhm. They desperately want me to go back to the meek little girl I was before, most likely because they can feel their control over me slip. I knew it was bad when they didn't blow up at me when I told them I was pan and dating Pauline."

"Well, at least you told them, right?" Louis said. "Imagine telling your old self that."

"I know, right? But you know... I still love them, and they're trying, I guess. And I'm happy that they gave me Fennekin, even if I wished they'd let me do my own thing. But anyway, enough doom and gloom. You've got to go more in-depth with this Hatterene business! What'd she teach you?"

"Well, let me go back to the beginning. First, she scared the crap out of me..."