The Friendly Necromancer

Chapter 16: To Strive


Dark smoky veils tickled Diya's face as it leapt through the shadow a tree cast in the phantom world. Shadows exploded around its feet as they plunged into earth and soil that was less substantial than it should be. All of it in the perfect silence of a world where sound couldn't be caused by anything as mundane as kinetics.

Then Diya dropped back into the physical world and there was nothing but noise.

The ground boomed as soil blasted out of the way of Diya's rematerializing feet, an Ariados in the distance hissed like a teakettle, Svartis shrieked right back at it, somewhere in the trees Madrabaz was cackling, and June swore furiously as she noticed Diya flanking her and yelled for her other Ariados to lay down webs between them. Too late though. Diya raised its hand and called darkness into a ball-

Wait.
It could see one Ariados standing guard between Svartis and June, and one spraying sticky noxious web fluid at the trees and ground in front of Diya to snare the Banette if it approached. That was two.

Diya let its shadow ball go in an aborted thwump of energy and threw itself to the side. Roots dug painfully into the Banette's hip as it hit the ground, and the ghostly trainer winced. But the pain was well worth it because when a nightmare spider with fangs longer than Diya's fingers surfaced from the tree's shadow, it didn't get those fangs on Diya's arm.

And surfacing from the tree's shadow wasn't a fancy metaphor for being stealthy, but quite literal. The horned spider emerged from the tree's shadow like it was breaching the surface of a pond. Diya had thought June's giant evolved versions of Spinarak were bad enough when they were just giant spiders. But no, it turned out the horrible pokemon could slip through shadows the same way ghosts did. Because of course they could!

The Ariados was a full meter tall and weighed almost as much as Diya did. Its body was banded dark red and black and its legs were ringed in bands of toxic yellow and purple that screamed 'danger, poisonous pokemon!'. Which Diya personally thought was overkill. Anything which looked at a spider that large and thought that it looked like a meal deserved its fate.

The giant spider pokemon hissed and lurched forward, putting an end to any wayward thoughts. Like all of June's pokemon it had been put through extensive conditioning programs and even in a fight would never actually inject its venom into a human - or in Diya's case something human-shaped. But that didn't mean Diya was about to stand still and let the Ariados put its mouthparts all over it.

So Diya screamed. Not with its mouth, but as it had done fighting June's Wurmple when they first met. The Banette pulled in power until its soul was stuffed to a buzzing, bursting overfulness, and then loosed it to screech out into the world. The air between it and the Ariados shivered, reality straining under the pressure until it began to give way, the burning purple which replaced darkness in the phantom world bleeding through. The space beneath the tree glowed a brilliant purple, denying the Ariados the shadows it needed to flee.

And it was trying to flee. June may have conditioned her pokemon for battle, but her spider pokemon were ambush predators to their core. When an ambush didn't immediately succeed, their first instinct was to retreat and regroup. When an ambush failed and their prey let loose a fear-inducing phantom howl that thinned reality, retreat became their panicked second and third instinct as well.

Diya grinned. Svartis was still pinning down one of June's Ariados and she was too busy micromanaging that fight to give new orders to her second Ariados, which was still -rather pointlessly now- laying down poisonous web between her and Diya. Which meant nothing was stopping Madrabaz from doing whatever it wanted.

"BOO!" Madrabaz burst out of the brush in front of the fleeing spider, solidifying from nearly complete transparency to full presence in an instant. In the same moment the Misdreavus wove a tricky little spell which directly converted shock into phantom force and-

Boom.

Flickering purple and black fire exploded around the fleeing Ariados' head. The concussive blast knocked it for a loop and down it went. Its legs collapsed out from beneath it even as it tried to jerk its head back, and the spider pokemon plowed into the cold earth in a jumble of limbs. The ghost was on it a moment later, its red and yellow eyes reflected in a thousand places in the Ariados' shiny compound ones. Diya didn't bother waiting around to see how that turned out. Once Madrabaz was inside its opponent's head the fight was over.

Svartis, meanwhile, was still screaming her lungs out as she pinned down one of the Ariados, keeping it tied up defending its trainer. But -Diya cocked an ear- her screams were starting to sound less terrified and more like that of a tiny berserker. Chips of bark and plumes of snow flew as she unleashed a furious barrage of night shades. The Ariados was trying to respond in kind -the cursed things could use night shade as well- but Svartis was simply better. It was all June could do to cajole her pokemon into sticking its head out to ineffectually fire back, while Svartis' ribbons twisted around cover to score glancing blows all over the Ariados' carapace and punished any attempt to seek better cover with devastating force.

The Banette's heart swelled and it couldn't help but smile behind its scarf. Svartis still trembled around Spinaraks and their larger evolution, Ariadoses. After the horrible experience of being liquified alive by one, Diya didn't think that would ever change.

But she wasn't letting that fear make her run. She'd demanded Diya ask for this matchup with June. She was a ghost, an incarnation of the very concept of death by poison come back to haunt the living. It wasn't her place to fear death by poison. It was her job to make things like Ariados understand that fear.

So Diya watched with unrestrained pride as Svartis turned fear into fury and relentlessly pinned down the dread pokemon which had been her greatest fear as a Snom. Her night shades filled the air with her special brand of toxic spiritual smog and before long the pinned Ariados was swaying on its legs as its lungs refused to properly draw in air.

"Shit shit shit shit shit," June swore as she recalled her ailing Ariados. She looked around, starting violently as she noticed one of her other Ariados was down, "Shit!". She swore even more viciously under her breath as she realized her only remaining Ariados, the one webbing the area between her and Diya, had been left tiring itself out doing something pointless. June opened her mouth to order it to her defense-

-and then closed her mouth a moment later as Diya stepped out from behind a nearby tree with a fully charged shadow ball in hand. The moment the ambushing Ariados had been dealt with, Diya had repositioned through the shadows, and now June's defending Ariados was on the opposite side of her rather than between them.

June let out a heaving sigh and folded over, placing her hands on her knees and taking deep breaths. "Alright. You win. Eugh, shoot, I'm too used to fighting Bashak. I need to change tactics."

<Good spar!> Diya texted. Off to the side, Svartis let out a delighted trill, leaping into the canopy for a celebratory dance. <Also, tell me about fighting Bashak?>

June walked over to Madrabaz's thoroughly mind-screwed Ariados and recalled it into its pokeball. "Well, you know, he fights like a herder. All of his pokemon clustered around him in a defensive wall, with Greta leaping out to launch probing attacks. Dealing with that is pretty straightforward. Not easy, gods no, but straightforward. I just lay down webs between him and me to prevent him from rushing me, use a harassing pokemon to probe his defenses, and then when he sends out Greta to counterattack, counterattack her back. I don't always win, but it's hard to lose against him when I do that, you know? I certainly never lose this badly."

Diya stroked the ends of its scarf -a brilliant yellow scarf with lightning motifs it had bought with some recent research bounty money- and thought about that. <So why do you think it didn't work with me?>

"Eugh. You're too damn mobile! Trying to harass you with my pokemon didn't pin down anything but Svartis. And if I'm being honest, that started to feel more like I was being pinned down pretty quick. Trying to set up webs between us did absolutely nothing but tie up one of my pokemon - yes pun intended, no I am not apologizing. And while I didn't see exactly what happened, trying to counterattack you just got my pokemon counter-counterattacked."

Diya stroked its scarf some more. <You're not wrong … but also I don't think that's the real problem.>

"Oh?" June perked up, standing up straighter and looking up at the taller trainer. "Go on."

Diya held up a finger to ask June to wait, and sat down next to her on a log as it typed. <The real problem is your multitasking. I'm sure you do fine when all of the fighting is focused right around Bashak, but you couldn't keep track of all three pokemon at once when their targets were separated.> Diya texted that to her and kept typing.

June opened her mouth to respond and Diya held up a finger again. It still had more to say. It could see June fidgeting, itching to say something, but she let her fellow trainer take its time to type.

<You're not wrong, your strategy would have worked *better* on Bashak. But if you'd seen the webs not doing anything and ordered your second Ariados to reinforce the one Madra counter-ambushed or to help take out Svartis, it would have worked okay. Not great, but okay. As is, you were fighting with one pokemon while another twiddled its mandibles and the last got taken out without support.>

The bug trainer glowered and drew in a grumpy breath. But when she let it out in a huff, she nodded. "Eugh, you're right. I hate it, but you're right. Mind you, I still think I need to change tactics. A tactic which might work against you -if implemented by someone better- is still useless if I can't pull it off. But you're also right about the multitasking. I've never been much of a combat trainer, so I tend to get anxious and tunnel vision on one conflict in a match. It's typically not a problem when you're practicing at school in one-on-one battles but…" June shrugged and glowered some more. "Wilderness battles don't care about letting you fight one-one-one, do they?

Diya shook its head sadly and patted her on the shoulder. It left its hand there and gave her a comforting squeeze. <Nope.>

June groaned. "The funny thing is, this is part of why I told Bashak we should come here. Kenomao Island has a reputation for gym challenges which mirror real life, rather than emphasizing league matchups. And I thought, you know, I get nervous about this stuff. I'm not great at it. So if I was gonna actually do my pokemon journey, and not just put it off forever, I should do it where I could learn how to really do it. That way I could go home and look out into the forests past the safe zones the rangers have marked out and know for a fact 'yeah I can handle that', rather than just having some league battle badges which say I should be able to handle it."

The bug trainer let out a laugh which Diya thought came out bitterer than she meant it to. "I just forgot that meant I'd actually have to, y'know, do that thing I'm bad at and get super nervous about."

Diya leaned its head on June's shoulder, shifting its hand to pat her beanie. <It's scary, huh?>

June snorted. "Yeah, a little bit."

An idea struck Diya. <What if I eat your anxiety? So you can know what it's like to fight without it?>

Diya's friend pulled back so she could turn and look at its face. "Wait, you can do that?"

The Banette nodded. <Pain, sadness, frustration, anxiety, anything that counts as 'grief'.>

A distant expression settled on June's face as she thought about it. "Huh. Huh. Yeah that's a thought. Maybe it would be easier to focus on not tunnel-visioning in a fight if I knew what that felt like."

<Wanna try it?>

"Sure. Give me a moment, I'll swap out the Ariados Svartis poisoned for Wurmy."

<It's not poison.>

"Diya, I love you, and I know you and that other girl who's always at the sparring center have got some bet going about this or something, but I do not care. If it acts like poison, floats like poison, and talks like a sentient cloud of poison, it's poison."

"Poissssssson," Svartis hissed at hearing a mention of her new favorite word.

Diya sighed and pushed exasperation at her. She was not helping.

-----

Bashak hummed as he spun thread.

There was something different about him though.

The herder was wearing the same jacket he always did, a heavy thing of green, red, and gold, thickly embroidered in abstract patterns. His shaggy black hair hung loose over his ears and tumbled about his glasses, just like it always did. He wore thin leather gloves, typical for him when he was spinning outside in the cold. And, as usual, the giant boy felt like he loomed over Diya even while he was sitting down on his folding chair and Diya stood.

Diya leaned against a tree and stared at Bashak. Whatever was up with him wasn't anything bad. The Banette risked a quick hiss of breath in through its mouth to enhance its phantom sense of taste, and even so couldn't taste any grievances wafting off of Bashak.

Bashak was clearly aware Diya was staring at him, but even so he took his time before looking up from his spinning. His lips quirked up in a smile when he asked, "Yes, Diya?"

Ah! That was it! Diya hadn't noticed until Bashak looked up at it - and didn't uncurl and roll his shoulders, to compensate for how he was hunched over. Diya's friend had a tendency to do that when he sat down, to crouch down over his work if he wasn't paying attention to his posture. But Bashak had been sitting up straight as a board.

The herder raised his eyebrow, waiting for Diya's response.

Diya fumbled off a glove -cursing in its head about the especially cold day- and texted its friend. <Okay, what's up with you?>

At that the herder only raised his other eyebrow too.

<You're holding yourself different. It's good.>

Bashak hummed to himself and Diya could see the moment where he took stock of his body language and it shifted minutely. "I suppose I was."

<So? What's up?>

That got Diya another hum in response. Bashak took a moment to wind his thread around its spindle and adjust the copper hook and wire that prevented the Mareep wool from shocking him. Eventually he answered, "I told you I wasn't going for a battle badge."

<The search and rescue and winter survival badges instead?>

"Mm. I'm going to go for it."

Diya blinked. <Really?> Diya had been under the impression that Bashak didn't care to collect battle badges. For that matter he'd never seemed to care much about being a journeyer at all. It had never been said out loud, but Diya wondered sometimes if Bashak might have journeyed out only to give June the courage to do the same.

"Really." Bashak leaned back in his folding chair. He let out a wintery exhale and watched the steam rise into the air.

"Alicia's been doing well," he told Diya. That was what Bashak had named the Pilowswine he'd saved. But Diya already knew that. Half the reason the ghost trainer was here was so they could see how she held up when interacting with Madrabaz and its sudden surprises. Bashak saw the quizzical look in Diya's eyes and clarified. "Real well. Leader Ahmad says she might even evolve into a Mamoswine one day."

<That's impressive.> Diya tried to compensate for the terse message with an earnest expression, but it didn't want to type any longer than it had to. It slipped its hand back into its glove. The day was so cold it could feel the inside of its nostrils freezing, and typing barehanded was miserable. Just because it could puppet a frozen hand didn't mean it liked the experience.

Bashak smiled. "It is, I suppose." He exhaled again to watch the steam rise. "Mind if I tell you a story?"

Was Bashak offering to talk? For an extended period of time? Of his own free will? Diya couldn't nod fast enough.

"Is that a yes you mind, or…?"

Diya shook its head.

"...I hate to ask again, but…"

The Banette snorted, cold fingers twitching irritably in its glove. It pulled off its other glove and slowly typed with its offhand, <Tell the story.> 'Of course, you dummy,' Diya didn't add, because typing offhanded was already hard enough. It loved being able to type to people, it really did, and it was so grateful to both June and Nurse Claire for their help with that. But sometimes the cold, the words it had to leave off for brevity's sake, the awkward pauses while people waited for it to finish typing, all those little annoyances made a growl rise up in the back of its throat.

Bashak was patient though, and waited unperturbed for Diya to give him the go-ahead. When he had it, he spoke in a musing tone. "I never worked one-on-one much with any pokemon. Except for Greta. But it was more that we worked together with the herds, if you understand me?" Bashak searched Diya's face for understanding before he continued.

"If we needed to scare off a Gabite, it wasn't Greta and I facing it down directly. It was Greta and I gathering up the herds, getting them into defensive formation, and keeping their backs firm while the dragon circled. There isn't call for your League's kind of fighting, how we live."

Diya tilted its head curiously. It really didn't know much about how shepherds like Bashak fought wild pokemon. It assumed that directing whole herds in combat would be different than directing just one or two pokemon, but it didn't know the details. It motioned for its friend to continue, eager to hear him talk more.

The herder was puzzled for a moment before realization set in. "Ah. Need me to explain that?"

The Banette nodded happily. It always wanted to learn new things.

"Well, you can't fight with a whole herd. Too chaotic. What you do is head off fights. Gabite's a Ground type, so it's immune to Mareep, but they don't care to tousle with prey which are a fairer fight. One comes around, we get all the Mareep in the center and surround them with Gogoats. Then we have our Chanseys sing, some to calm the Mareep and some to make the Gabite nervous."

With a quick rub of its hand for blood flow, Diya took off its glove and typed, <That works? Aren't Gabites powerful? What about Garchomps?> It didn't know too much about Gabites, but it knew they were powerful dragons. And their evolution Garchomp was considered one of the toughest Dragon types in the world.

"They are. Gabite could fight through, grab a Mareep and run off, two times out of three. Garchomp, nine out of ten." The herder shrugged. "That's not good enough. They have to eat a few times a week. A predator which took those odds would get injured every month. Injured predators can't hunt, so they're careful what fights they pick."

Diya regarded its friend with no small amount of awe. It knew that living out at the edge of settled lands was different, but Bashak was talking matter-of-factly like he'd done this before. Had he faced down Garchomps before even going on his pokemon journey? <It's that easy?>

"Hah!" Bashak barked out a laugh when he checked Diya's text. "Gods no. Getting Mareeps to not bolt around a Gabite is hard. And Gogoats may not be hunted by Gabites, but that doesn't mean they like standing between one and its food. Scaring off a Gabite means making every pokemon in your herd do something their instincts hate. And if one of them breaks and runs for it, the rest will too."

Bashak reached down to grab his thermos first, taking a long drink. Diya wasn't surprised he needed it. Bashak could go for a whole day without talking this much. "So no, it isn't easy. It is different than gym fighting though. Gym fighting is..." he looked for the right words. He took another sip in the meantime.

Eventually he shrugged. "I like it."

Diya blinked. It hadn't quite been expecting that. <Why?>

"Hmmm. Circling a herd, you're fighting against your pokemon. They're scared and you need to make them do frightening things. You don't have time to calm each one, you've just gotta give orders and hope they trust you more than their own fear." The herder's normally soft face twisted into a grimace. "You're surrounded by terror, trying to be calm, and relying on a hungry dragon that could kill you to make the smart decision."

A memory washed over Diya for an instant, the intensity of it spilling out from Bashak.

"-RRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!" The Garchomp screamed and he flinched. The young herder almost tumbled out of the saddle and only old Brigadier's skill as a mount kept Bashak from taking a nasty fall off his mother's Gogoat.

Gods, its fangs were longer than his hands. One of its terrible scything arms clawed at the ground and threw great clods of dirt into the air, showering the Gogoats between Bashak and the dragon. They bleated in terror, rearing back, and in a moment of shock Bashak realized he'd forgotten his duty.

The younger herder whistled for Greta to firm up their line and whirled around, tearing his eyes away from the dragon which wanted to kill him. What did he need to do, what did he- There! A clump of Mareeps were edging away. Bashak blasted his whistle to get the Chanseys' attention, pointed at a pair of them, and whistled again to order them to soothe the Mareeps. He whistled again to call another pair, the piercing shrill of it ringing in his ears. If he could just-

"RRRAAAAAUUUUUGGGGHHHH!" The Garchomp lowered its head and charged the Gogoat line, screaming to expose those awful teeth which filled the young herder's vision. Bashak's heart leapt into his throat along with a scream. It wasn't supposed to do that! It wasn't- At the last second the Garchomp aborted its charge, pulling up and screaming frustrated rage into the line of Gogoats held firm by Greta -bless her!- barking a steady staccato rhythm at their heels.

Where was Mom?! She was supposed to be just two hills over, where was-

Surfacing from Bashak's memory felt like emerging from an icy river, complete with uncontrollable shivers. <Sounds like a nightmare.> Diya's hand was getting cold again, but it didn't put its pokedex away.

"It is."

<And gym fighting isn't.>

Bashak closed his eyes and some of the icy fear of his memory faded. He smiled. "No. It's not."

With that smile, Diya caught a whiff of another emotion off of Bashak. It was positive, but with just enough of an aggressive bite for Diya to pick up on. The taste of triumph and vindictiveness. The Banette tilted its head. <That's not all though.>

The herder nodded. "Our home is temperate, except when Articuno flies overhead. Our Swinubs are more Ground than Ice and they rarely even evolve to be Piloswine." Bashak's eyes stayed closed even as his smile widened. "Not the ones here."

The ghost trainer tilted its head, something half remembered from another life's schooling niggling the back of its brain. Why would that matter, what was it about Ice that-

Oh. Diya's thoughts clicked into place. The elemental force Dragon types called upon was little understood, but one thing which was certain was that Ice abilities tended to disrupt it. An Ice attack could deal unusually disproportionate damage to a Dragon as its own draconic energy went wild inside of it. Ground types were also affected by Ice in the same way. And the pokemon of the Garchomp line were all Dragon/Ground pokemon.

Diya looked at Bashak with wide eyes, tasting the vindictive triumph rising off of its friend. <You're training a Garchomp killer.> Garchomps, and even their lesser evolution Gabite, were monstrously powerful. They were less likely to flinch in the face of their elemental vulnerability than they were to simply bite an offending Ice pokemon in half. But Mamoswines were huge, one of very few pokemon Diya could imagine taking a hit from such monsters and staying on their feet. And their tusks, formed from solid ice, could channel Ice energy to devastating effect.

Bashak's eyes opened and he met Diya's gaze. "I'm thinking about it."

No. There wasn't any anxiety which Diya could taste, and the way Bashak had been holding himself tall and straight-backed didn't speak to hesitation. He'd already made his decision. <No. You're not.> The Banette smiled and sent a second message to its friend. <Good luck.>

"Thanks, Diya. I'll need it."

Diya's hand was really getting cold now, but it kept typing anyway. <I'm no dragon, but I've got a scary scream. Want Alicia to practice holding her ground with me?>

Bashak smiled at his friend. "I'd like that."

-----

The wind whistled past the Banette's ears as it leapt through the cold night air. It landed heavily but silently on a house's sloped roof, sinking partway into its own shadow to absorb the impact. Its lungs burned and its mouth ached to open and pant, but it didn't stop. The Banette heaved its weight up and forward, trying to keep its momentum going. But to keep its footing on the snow-slick surface it had to let its feet sink half a centimeter into the shadows beneath them with each step, making every step take just a little bit more effort.

The shadows also kept its footsteps silent, which was important. People were sleeping in the home below, and the Banette didn't want to be rude.

Diya bent its knees as it reached the end of the roof, using all of its flagging strength to keep them from buckling. Its could barely think, its mind drained by the exercise to point where the Banette would have had trouble solving 3+4. But somehow it mustered the focus to step as it leaped, propelling itself into the phantom world where everything was a shadow of itself, even gravity if one knew the trick of it. The Banette soared not just across the gap between houses, but fully over a house, coming down on the house after that.

Sound reasserted itself in a whistling howl as Diya let itself fall back into reality, soaking the impact in its shadow again. Its nostrils flared as it sucked air in. Sweat stuck its exercise scarf to its neck, a thin black silk thing that nevertheless felt far too hot against its skin. But it pushed itself up again, running for the end of the roof at just under a sprint. Just one more roof, it told itself, just like it had for the last -Diya's exhausted brain refused to count- several? houses.

Throwing itself up and into another world took more focus than could share space with the thought and Diya let it go. It would run until it couldn't, that's how many more roofs it would do.

The body Diya inherited had been fit. The teachers in Ledos Village had seen to that. They made sure their students could hike a day without complaint and wouldn't sprain an ankle if they had to run from a dangerous pokemon. But it wasn't fit enough. There was a world of difference between hiking and fighting. Nothing could have possibly prepared Diya for how quickly combat drained one's body. Especially the kind of fighting Diya was suited for, hit and run tactics augmented by shadow walks and phantom steps.

It needed to be better if it wanted to earn a gym badge. So it ran.

Just one more roof.

One more.

One more.

Diya ran out of houses. The Banette came plummeting down in a park nestled in the neighborhood, staggering to its feet after the landing. Breathing as hard as it ever had in its life, Diya looked up at the houses around. It might be able to leap from one roof to another, one more time. But leaping up to a roof?

No. It was done.

With a heartfelt groan, Diya let itself fall backward. A thin layer of snow cushioned its impact and it moaned gratefully. Its body burned like a furnace, so much that it didn't even feel the cold of the snow on its skin. And, blissfully, its brain was too wrung out to be bothered by that.

A minute later Svartis and Madrabaz slammed into the snow beside its head, rolling over one another and sending up sprays of snow as the two ghosts argued excitedly about who got second place. Diya huffed and waved a hand through them, dispersing their bodies and shooing them somewhere they wouldn't get snow all over its face. It didn't tell them to stop though. The young ghosts were clearly enjoying the argument far too much for it to stop them.

Over the next few minutes Shuppets trickled into the clearing, each illuminated by the faint blue glow of fading faerie fire. The little ghosts had joined Diya at the start of its run, but been unable to resist playing catch the will-o-wisp as they flitted through the night sky. They'd still followed after the Banette, but as a darting cloud of blue glows loosely tethered behind Diya rather than flying beside it.

After a long night the Shuppets were all worn out and one by one they settled into trees and on park benches. Their fading faerie fires lit up the park with a low flickering glow, casting dancing blue shimmers and gray shadows across the snow. Diya smiled. It was pretty. The Banette giggled, something in its exercise-addled brain finding that thought hilarious.

"Whoa."

With an effort, Diya raised its head, peering about for who'd said that. At the edge of the park, a young girl half Diya's age peeked out of her front door. The child shuffled out of her house slowly, weighed down by a big fluffy quilt she'd wrapped around her shoulders. She shut the front door cautiously behind her, clearly nervous she'd wake someone up.

The child took slow shuffling steps down the front stairs. Oversized Buneary slippers poked out from beneath the quilt with each step. Once she was free of anything that might creak or make noise though, she rushed over to the park as fast as the quilt would let her. "Whoa," the little girl breathed again.

Diya waved hello to the child, though it didn't bother to get up. It was still, oh, approximately five times too sore to do that. The Banette even winced with the motion of the wave. It might have, just maybe, pushed itself a little too hard.

The child waved weakly back, barely able to muster the attention to notice Diya. She spun around in a slow awestruck circle, faerie fire illuminating her face. The Shuppets shuffled anxiously on their perches as the child's gaze passed over them, but she was only a small human and they were tired so her presence didn't send the shy ghosts darting for cover.

After three whole rotations staring at the blue-lit park, the child spared Diya a quick glance. She asked in an awestruck whisper, "Are these all your pokemon?"

Diya shook its head, then held up two fingers and gestured to Svartis and Misdreavus resting by its head.

"Oh." Diya could see gears turning behind the young girl's eyes. "Just those two?"

It nodded.

"And the others?"

The Banette was too exhausted to pull out its pokedex and type, so it shrugged. Let her make of that what she would.

"Oh."

Diya smiled. From the wonder in her eyes, the specifics didn't matter to her. She just saw the beautiful pokemon lighting up the park and wanted to watch them shine.

-----

Diya was in The Mighty Meowth, pondering the best way to get a bowl of spicy tofu into its mouth, when Cori suddenly threw herself over its back. The impact forced a "Glrk!" out of its mouth. "Hey! How are you doing?!" she exclaimed.

Before she even finished her sentence the Banette was gone, stepped out from under her into the phantom world. Diya lurched through the table and collapsed back into the real world in the chair on the other side. The table jumped as the trailing edge of Diya's cloak tried to reassert itself in the same location and they pushed each other out of the way. The Banette's heart pounded and it had to struggle a bit to keep breathing through its nose.

The back of the chair caught Cori in the ribs as she flopped down into the suddenly empty space. "Ow," she groaned. She looked up at Diya with wonder in her eyes. "Whoa, you can teleport? That's so cool! Did you need an Abra to teach you that or is it something you could learn on your own? Can all psychics do that?"

Diya's heart was still going two beats a second as it pulled out its pokedex. <PLEASE don't do that.> it wrote, turning the screen around for her to see.

She blinked. "Oh. Sorry." She adjusted her red beanie and lifted herself off the chair. "Do you mind if I sit with you?" she asked, and gestured to the chair it had just vacated.

The Banette was still focusing on bringing its breathing under control so it didn't pay too much attention to the request and waved for her to sit down.

"Cool, thanks." She pushed its bowl of tofu across the table towards it. "Hey so I-" Cori paused. "Uh, wait. Are you okay?"

<No> Diya replied. With a conscious effort the Banette took direct control of its heart and slowed it down to a more reasonable level. Its breathing relaxed a few moments later as its blood stopped demanding so much oxygen.

"What's wrong?" Cori leaned over the table with worried eyes.

<Bad memories of sudden yelling.>

Cori winced. "Ah. I'm sorry Diya, I know what that's like. Not exactly the same but … sorry. I shouldn't do that again, I assume?"

The Banette nodded. <Yeah, thanks.> It pulled down its scarf -a light blue and pale red plaid one- to smile at her, to show all was forgiven.

The energetic trainer smiled back. "Cool. Hey, you have a Misdreavus though. How do you handle that?"

Diya snorted ruefully. <A psychic bond to track it. And it's exposure therapy.>

"Hah! It would be, wouldn't it?"

Diya reached across the table to retrieve its bowl of spicy tofu and typed with its other hand, <So what's up?>

With a beaming grin, Cori pulled a black corded necklace out from under her fleece. Strung on it were three battle badges, and the one Cori held out to Diya was the ice battle badge from Canopy Gym.

<You got your badge!>

"Yup! Winter survival too, but that one's in my storage ball."

<Congrats!> Diya jumped out of its chair to hug her.

"Aw, thanks." Cori leaned into the hug and squeezed Diya before letting it go. "Anyhow, that means I'll be moving on to Zima City. I was hoping to get one more spar in with you this afternoon though, if you're free?"

<Of course!> Diya sighed and leaned in to hug Cori again, more gently this time, before retaking its seat. <I'll be sad to see you go.>

"Yeah, me too. It's been fun Diya. But hey, if you're quick you might make it to Zima before I clear out their gym too."

The Banette let out an amused snort. <Real quick, knowing you.>

Cori laughed and favored Diya with a wicked grin. "Hah, true! I still count as humble so long as you're the one who said it though, right?"

<Absolutely not.>

"Well, finish up your food and come meet me at the sparring center. I'll be waiting." Cori stood up and gave Diya a half wave before walking out of the restaurant.

With a shake of its head, Diya settled back into its seat. Of course Cori already had her Canopy Gym badges. That wasn't much of a surprise. It was surprised at the ache it felt over that though. She was a fun sparring partner to be sure, but Diya hadn't realized how much it enjoyed having her around. And Diya couldn't imagine Cori struggling with a gym, so if it wanted to move fast enough to see her in Zima city…

It would have to test for its badges now. As soon as the next testing sessions were scheduled. Were June and Bashak ready for that?

Was Diya ready for that?

The young trainer huffed out a breath and smiled. Well. There was only one way to find out.

Chapter 17: To Win


Most scholars credit the development of Apricorn balls for material transport and pokemon capture with humanity's development from the Isolated Era to the Pre-Modern Era. Apricorn storage and, critically, preservation caused an explosion of trade everywhere the technique spread. Furthermore, while early Apricorn balls did not slow time to a near halt within them as synthetic pokeballs do, they still slowed the relative time of larger pokemon enough to make feeding them tenable, giving humanity access to stronger and hardier protectors.

Understandably, many laypeople also credit the invention of mass-produced synthetic pokeballs or digitizing training modules with humanity's progress from the Pre-Modern Era to the Modern Era. The consensus among historians, however, is that neither are fully correct. After the introduction of synthetic pokeballs, the average percentage of trainers in a given population only rose from 5% to 7%, and the average number of pokemon per trainer remained unchanged at roughly 2.3. The development of digitizing training modules increased those numbers to 12% and 3.8, which was substantial but nowhere close to our modern world's nearly universal pokemon partnership.

What enabled that was the Gym system. The first program to introduce free-at-point-of-access pokemon gyms and care centers saw a jump over the next decade to 62% pokemon ownership among youth, with new trainers training 7.2 pokemon on average by the time they completed their gym circuit. The resulting universality of trainers in the population dropped wild pokemon fatalities near settlements to almost nothing and enabled a surge in casual trade and travel. This ability of every member of a community to contribute in the case of a dangerous pokemon event and travel safely in small numbers is what characterizes the modern age.

Today settlement walls and artillery, once present everywhere, are a distant historical figment in all but the furthest outposts. While synthetic pokeballs and digitized training were necessary to enable this, we should not forget that they were not enough to change our lives on their own. It is our continued commitment to our Gyms that secures the safety of the world we live in.

-Opening Remarks, 159th Annual Gym Leaders Conference

-----

Leader Ahmad clapped his gloved hands as loudly as he could and shouted, "Listen up everyone!" He wasn't the tallest person, so he brushed the snow off of a bench in front of the pokecenter and stood on top of it so the group of young trainers assembled outside could see him. Flakes of snow floating down around him immediately began replacing the brushed off snow with a thin layer of white.

The excited murmuring among the small crowd quieted slowly. Diya took a moment to type out a last <Good luck!> to June and Bashak before focusing its attention on the ice gym leader.

"I know, I know," Ahmad said, over the last vestiges of conversation, "you're all looking forward to your tests. But we need to go over some basics first, just to make sure everyone is on the same page. There's some folk who've never tested for a gym badge before too, so I need to talk about that too. Even if you've heard this before, just be patient and we'll get started soon."

Diya bounced excitedly on the tips of its toes. Its first badges! It was going to win its first badges today! Next to it though, June wasn't displaying quite the same level of excitement. Her face looked almost as green as her jacket and one of her legs bounced nervously, the motion sending the fluffy Venonat on her beanie bobbing back and forth. Bashak looked as unruffled as a mountain, but Diya could taste a whiff of nervousness off of even him. The big trainer buried his own anxiety by reassuring his friend. He ruffled June's beanie and whispered quietly to her, "It'll be fine. You're going to do great."

"I know, I know, I'm just worried about Igor," she whispered back, one gloved hand going up to where Igor usually rested on her shoulder.

That wasn't wholly true, Diya could taste June's fears and they were more complicated than that. But it understood her anxiety, and even shared it for the little food-stealing bug. As it turned out, the Blipbug hadn't just been stealing food for fun but because it was getting ready to evolve! Just last night it had started spinning a cocoon, preparing for its evolution into a Dottler, a tiny armored tank of a pokemon.

June had immediately sent Igor home by e-storage, transferring him by the thick underwater cables which let the settlements transmit matter as if it were data. Cocoon evolutions were risky events with much that could go wrong, so it was best that Igor be in the skilled hands and professional equipment of the Lepida family for the process. He would be safe and cared for, and scanned regularly so any problems in the process could be corrected. June had assured Diya and Bashak of that, over and over again.

But that didn't change the fact that the one June was reassuring was actually herself, and she'd been forced to drop out of the winter search and rescue test. Without Igor's eyes guiding her, she didn't have any way to track a quarry. She said that was fine, that she was happier to see Igor evolving than to get a single skill badge, but Diya could taste how it bothered her. June was anxious at the best of times and the sudden change in her schedule and team wasn't helping.

Diya took her hand in its and squeezed. Last night she'd turned down its offer to take some of her anxiety, but it could still be her friend the mundane way, standing next to her and holding her hand.

On the snowy bench, Ahmad launched into his speech. "First things first. I want everybody to remember, especially those of you who are new trainers, that failure is an option. If you don't pass a badge test right now, you can always try again later. The goal here is to learn. If you don't pass a test this time we will be happy to help you grow and try again. That's what we're here for. There is one exception to this however!"

The leader took the time to look over the small crowd, making suring each and every trainer had their eyes on him. "The exception is the winter search and rescue badge! Can anyone here tell me what the most important principle of search and rescue is?"

Bashak raised a hand high above the crowd. He needn't have bothered, Ahmad was already looking towards the semi-nomadic herder before he finished asking the question.

"You, Bashak."

The young man answered with a serious expression, "Don't become a casualty yourself."

"And why is that?"

"If you need rescuing, you're using resources the lost person needs."

"Right! If you go out trying to help someone and end up needing to be rescued yourself, the problem isn't just that you're in danger. It's that you're putting the person you're trying to help in more danger. Because whatever help you're getting, they aren't."

Ahmad scowled to drive his point home. "We do not play around when it comes to this. If you're taking the search and rescue test, you're going to be on your own for most of it. Each of you should be safe, you'll be issued a locator beacon, signal flares, potion spray, and a pokeball with a homing Pidgey, in addition to your own survival gear. There will also be gym teachers nearby and the area you'll be in doesn't have any hidden environmental hazards."

"But!" The leader's voice boomed out, "It is still winter and we have scheduled the test for intense weather conditions. If you get lost, or injured, or for any reason cannot complete the test, you are to use. those. safety. measures. Do not hesitate, do not take risks, use them as soon as you think you have a problem. Because that is the one scenario in which you will be barred from retaking a test. If you try to press on after you should have stopped, or you let yourself slide from a complication to serious trouble because you didn't want to get picked up and fail the test, we will not let you take the test again. That kind of attitude makes you a danger not only to yourself, but the people you might one day be asked to rescue. Have I made myself clear?"

Nods, gulps, and quiet "Yes Leader"s answered him.

"Good. Remember, these skills may one day help you save someone's life. They're important. Which is why it's okay to fail. Better to learn your limits and try again after you've improved, than to take uncertain skills out into the world."

That earned him another round of nods, these more confident. That, every trainer understood. The gym system existed for everyone, not just rangers, so that people would be sure in their abilities should the worst ever happen, as it sometimes did. The world of pokemon could be a dangerous place and the only way to make it safe was if everyone could be trusted to do their part.

"With that out of the way, let's talk about the tests! If you're doing the search and rescue test, we will be dropping each of you off in the forest. You'll be given one of our pokemon to track, and a sample of their fur. Your job is to find them. After that, as you can't take the search and rescue test without also taking winter survival, you'll build a shelter for yourself and them and weather at least one night in it. If you're just doing winter survival, we'll be dropping you off in a different area but the expectation is the same. Build a shelter, last the night."

Bashak raised his hand again.

"Yes?"

"To double-check, we can use pre-prepared shelters?" The trainers who had seen Bashak's yurt in the woods all stifled laughter.

Ahmad laughed openly along with them. "Hah! Yes, you can, so long as it's a shelter you prepared yourself. Preparation is nine tenths of survival, after all."

Another trainer raised their hand.

"Yes, Augustus?"

The trainer asked, "What about the battle part of the tests? When will that be happening?"

Ahmad smiled. "Good question," he answered.

The trainer waited.

The rest of the crowd waited too.

Leader Ahmad waited just long enough to make the tension awkward before laughing. "No but seriously, that is a good question. If you're only here for the ice battle badge, we'll handle that separately after everyone else is dropped off. But that's just … you, Mary? Right. The rest of you will be having your battles in the context of your other tests. Which is to say, we'll be simulating unexpected encounters with Ice-type wildlife for you. Those will happen exactly as unexpectedly as they would in real life, so keep your eyes peeled."

Oh. Diya perked up to hear that. That promised to be interesting. Madrabaz, who had concealed itself in the shadow of the bench Ahmad was standing on, sent out a pulse of cackling anticipation. Diya echoed the feeling back to its new pokemon, tempered with a note of restraint and all-in-good-fun. If it wanted to counter-ambush a teacher Diya would be more than happy to go along with that, but Madrabaz needed to keep in mind that the teacher and their pokemon would be friends who didn't deserve too big of a scare.

Madrabaz's red irises glowed under the bench. All in good fun, it agreed.

… sure, Diya responded. It was going to make the conscious and deliberate decision to trust its pokemon. Because that's how trust worked. If Madra did something to give a poor teacher nightmares for a week, they would talk about it then. Until then, Diya would take it at its word. Projected feelings. Whatever.

The young trainer swallowed its nervousness and refocused on the prelude to its badge tests.

Leader Ahmad answered a few more questions about the tests before wrapping up his speech, unaware of the ghost beneath him. "You are all good students. You've learned what we've had to teach you, and made the most of it." He smiled warmly, looking out over the assembled trainer. "I have no doubt you'll do us all proud."

Bashak reached out and wrapped an arm around each of his friends, pulling them into a big hug. "Good luck," he told them.

"Mmrph," June said into the side of his thick wool coat. She turned her head. "You too, Bashak." She turned to Diya. "You've got your snowshoes, enough firewood in your storage balls? Double-checked your flare gun?"

The Banette was tempted to conjure a brilliant ball of faerie fire, just to remind her how unnecessary some of those items were. But it had packed extra firewood anyway, and double-checked its flare gun, because being cautious was important. And there were much worse things in the world than a friend who cared. So it nodded to June's concern and reached around Bashak to hug her too.

Bashak gave them each one last squeeze, forcing a "Mrp!" out of Diya and a good-natured groan out of June, before letting them go.

The students and their teachers squeezed into small buses outside the pokecenter, which rode on treads and seemed determined to split the difference between a snowmobile and a truck. June left Bashak and Diya behind with one last hug and a wave, taking a separate bus with the group that was jumping straight to the winter survival test.

The bus trundled out of Canopy Town, carrying a tensely quiet atmosphere with it. Some of the trainers whispered quietly to one another in nervous tones. Diya closed its eyes and laid its head back against the wall of the bus. Next to it Bashak did the same, sitting close enough to Diya that their sides pressed against each other. It would be a lie to say Diya wasn't nervous, but it had trained for this. Bashak had trained his whole life for this. They would be fine, Diya reassured itself.

It mostly succeeded.

Outside, the noise leaking into the bus slowly quieted. Diya could hear the difference as snow came down faster and thicker. The quiet whir of the engine grew more and more muffled, and the crunch of the bus' treads became less sharp as fresh fluffy snow became the majority of what was being flattened. The gym had timed its tests well.

Almost half an hour later, the bus came to a halt. The doors at the back opened and Leader Ahmad hopped out. "Bashak!" he called, "you're first!"

The big herder rocked to the side, giving Diya a friendly shove with his shoulder that almost toppled the Banette over. "Good luck," he told Diya.

Diya fumbled to get its pokedex out. <Good luck to YOU!> it typed. He was the one getting out to be tested, after all.

But Bashak only smiled, and reached down to scratch Greta's ears, where she was sitting between his feet. "Don't need it. Got her." And with that he stood up, crouching to avoid hitting the bus' roof, and shuffled out into the snow.

Diya boggled at Bashak's back. That was the closest thing to a boast it had ever heard from the reserved trainer.

Outside, Leader Ahmad spoke quietly with Bashak. He handed the trainer a small tuft of a fur and pointed at a rapidly fading set of pawprints in ankle-deep snow. Without a word Bashak knelt down to let Greta sniff the fur, and she was off. She shot forward along the pawprints, bounding across the snow until she was almost invisible among the dense snowfall. The moment she was on the edge of sight she turned in place impatiently, barking for her trainer.

Bashak offered Leader Ahmad a parting goodbye. Straightening to his full height he strode after Greta, eating up the ground in long strides. He turned to give Diya one last parting wave, and then vanished into the snowstorm.

Leader Ahmad got back into the bus, slamming on its roof twice once the door was closed to signal the driver to move. The driver, a woman dressed in a full snow camouflage suit with a bright orange armband bearing the Canopy Gym's shaded tree logo, turned to look at Ahmad before moving. She smirked. "Hey boss. I'll bet you twenty pokedos that kid finds his lost pokemon before we drop the last kid off."

The leader snorted. "No bet."

One of the other trainers packed into the bus, a short little boy in a pink parka even younger than Diya, piped up, "Why?"

Leader Ahmad turned to face him, "Hm? What was that?"

"Um, I was asking why you think he'll do so well?"

A warm, teacherly smile formed under the leader's beard. "Ah. Well, how much do you know about borderlands herders?" At a shake of the boy's head, Ahmad smiled even wider, taking the opportunity to launch into an impromptu lecture. "Well let me tell you about them then. Because at the age when you and I were doing our first supervised forest expeditions in school, that young man had probably already saved his first lost pokemon from a blizzard. You see-"

Diya swallowed. The young trainer closed its eyes, leaned back again, and tried to let Ahmad's story about the transhumants who lived on the edge of safely patrolled territories wash over it.

It didn't quite succeed. With both of its friends gone, it was harder to not think about what it was about to do.

Svartis was still sleeping under its hat, but Diya felt Madrabaz stir from its hiding place on the underside of the bus. It reached out through their bond, bringing up dual feelings of concern and questioning. What was wrong?

The Banette smiled weakly, letting the way its smile tried to slide off its face bleed through their connection. Bashak was going to succeed, without a doubt. He was good at this, had always been good at this, could definitely do this.

The next thought that slid down their link was almost involuntary. Bashak could do this. What if it couldn't?

Only silence answered Diya. Long nervous seconds passed, filled with a fear Diya wished it could take back and leave unsaid. It wasn't like it wasn't excited! It was! But if it was being honest, being excited didn't mean it wasn't also scared.

After a long empty few seconds, Madrabaz's head quietly poked up through the seat Bashak had vacated. Flowing tendrils of gray mist surfaced from a pool of shadow on the seat, obscuring two glowing red eyes. The Misdreavus looked around with squinted eyes, taking in the bus. Two people, the one sitting next to where Bashak had been sitting and another across from them, startled at the appearance of the ghost pokemon.

The Misdreavus flinched and drew back further into its shadows. The other trainers were used to Diya's ghosts, after spending time in the training center with them, but that didn't mean Madrabaz was used to people yet. In spite of the eyes on it though, the ghost pushed itself fully out of the seat and floated next to Diya. Its flowing dress-like tendrils drifted back and forth across the seat, pouring small waterfalls of gray mist to the floor of the bus whenever they brushed over the edge of the seat.

It looked up at its trainer, meeting Diya's eyes. A memory pulsed out from it, an image of Bashak striding into the growing blizzard, along with a feeling of potential fear and a question. Translated into words it was asking, You think Bashak is not afraid?

No? Diya responded.

"Drea," the Misdreavus snorted. It held Diya's gaze as its tendrils shifted in place, and then it reached out with them. Not away from itself, but beyond itself. The mist of its hair-like and dress-like tendrils probed the air, pressing not through it but against it, until hairline cracks formed in the air. The mists wormed through those cracks into the phantom world on the other side. The round red gems on its neck throbbed with inner light, and Diya could feel them pulling on something through those cracks, an echo Bashak had left behind that wasn't quite the familiar grief the Banette consumed.

-Bashak swallowed. His shoulders tensed painfully and he could feel his palms grow slick inside his gloves. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat on the bus. "Say that again?" The Leader repeated himself, smiling carelessly. They'd released a Grass type into the blizzard for Bashak to track. He'd win the test only if he got to the pokemon before it expired of the cold. Bashak's eyes widened, calculating how much time he had and coming up short, far too short.-

-Bashak's head snapped around as the distant bleat of a Mareep just barely made it to him through the snowstorm. Where was it? It was just a kid, it couldn't survive a storm like this without the herd's warmth. Tweeeeeeee!!! He blasted his whistle as hard as he could. There was no answering bleat. Cupping his hands around his mouth, he straightened up and let out the loudest kulning he could. "HWIEEEE OOOUAAAA YEEEEEEE!" Still no answer. Was it okay? It should have heard him!-

Diya surfaced from the memories with a sudden sharp breath drawn in through its nose. No, not memories. Potential memories?

Fears, Madrabaz answered. The things that would make him afraid.

With its head swimming, Diya could barely even think straight enough to send Madrabaz any coherent memories. It only managed a jumble of feelings. Why? Why was that important, what did it matter, why?

The Misdreavus usually fumbled with the wordlike communication Diya and Svartis used, defaulting to the memory-feeling pulses it was more familiar with. But on this topic it had no trouble expressing itself. Everyone is afraid when they do something that matters to them, it told Diya. Because fear is important. Fear/concern/worry/anxiety -the flavors it expressed were more complicated than Diya could process- keeps us focused, makes us care. Bashak wasn't afraid of his task because he knew there was no risk. But if there had been, he would be afraid too. Should be afraid. Nothing wrong with that, it said.

The young trainer swallowed with its borrowed throat. But there wasn't any real risk in its test either. So why was it afraid?

Its companion's red and yellow eyes bored into its pink and brown eyes.

-Diya was exhausted. Two days out in the snow had sapped its strength as it turned around and backtracked and searched fruitlessly for a trail it had lost within the first few minutes of the storm. A trail it knew it would never find again. But then it crested a hill and saw it! The pokemon it was tracking! Diya rushed forward through the snow.

And saw Leader Ahmad standing beside the pokemon. He was frowning. He shook his head and Diya knew it had been too late. Would have been too late, would be too late if it ever had to rescue someone actually in danger of freezing.

It would have to watch the life leave another child's eyes.-

This time Diya surfaced from the fearful not-memory Madrabaz showed it with an audible gasp, a jerk that parted its mouth even though it was held shut by today's bright orange safety scarf.

Madrabaz watched Diya sadly, giving it a moment to recover from both the nightmare and the dizziness of some of its energy escaping its mouth. Its gems blazed a brilliant red. Slowly, the Misdreavus turned, laying its insubstantial head on Diya's arm. It waited before speaking to Diya. When it finally did, it said, This is important to you. Whether you succeed says something about whether your other fears might come true. That's a good reason to be afraid.

What did it do about the fear, then?

That thought got a smile from Madrabaz. Use it. Let the fear make you attentive.

And then?

The ghost chuckled. Wasn't it obvious? Win.

-----

Diya was still nervous as it stepped out of the bus with Leader Ahmad. But it was also excited. Its heart beat hard inside of its chest, steady but loud enough that it could hear the th-thump of blood in its ears.

The Banette accepted the leader's hand as it stepped down from the bus into the shin-deep snow. The lower hem of its robe pooled in the snow around it as it stood up straight, pulled its scarf tight around its mouth, and looked Leader Ahmad in the eyes. It had once poured out its very soul trying to save a boy from a cold and final fate, out in the cold. The boy's body and dreams still lived on through it, but it couldn't say that it had succeeded.

At Ahmad's gym it had shed sweat, blood, and tears training to make sure that was never the case again. Today it was going to prove that it could save someone else from the same fate. It might never be called on to do so. Gods willing, as June would say, it never would. But Diya would know. It would wear a badge with pride that said, to the whole world, 'You are safe with me. I will take care of you.'

Diya was nervous. Diya was excited. But more than that, it was determined.

Ahmad met Diya's gaze. The snowflakes between them glowed a steady pink. Behind them, Madrabaz flowed out from the bus. It pressed itself to Diya's back, letting its misty tendrilled face rest on one shoulder. Svartis stirred underneath Diya's hat, finally awake now that dawn had passed, and poured herself into a ring of purple smog with two eyes, around the peak of Diya's witch's hat.

The leader looked them up and down and gave them a firm nod. "One of our teachers released Beauty here, my Alolan Ninetails, about an hour ago. She'll play the part of your rescuee. Don't worry about her health though, she'll be fine in this weather. I have a tuft of her fur with me, if you'll need it to track her?"

Looking around, Diya saw a very shallow groove in the snow that might be Beauty's mostly filled-in tracks. At the rate the snow was coming down now -thick as a blanket and twice as heavy- the tracks might be fully gone in minutes. That didn't matter. Diya also shook its head at the offer of a tuft of her fur.

Ahmad nodded, as if he expected that answer. "Didn't figure you'd be tracking her by physical means. You'll be alright?"

The ghost trainer nodded. It would.

"Good. I'll see you in a couple days. And-" the leader smiled behind his neat silver-gray beard "-I'll have your badges waiting for you."

The young trainer blinked, not sure what to say.

Ahmad huffed. "I've taught your classes, Diya, and seen you training with your friends. Not to mention what Nurse Claire says about you, she won't stop gossipping about all the ghost research bounties you keep cashing in. You're going to go far kid; it won't be a challenge from my gym that trips you up."

A warmth settled in Diya's chest and it swallowed a lump in its throat. It hadn't realized anyone other than its friends had been paying attention to its progress. Acting on impulse, it lunged forward and hugged Ahmad, pulling itself tight against his chest. It hadn't really noticed until just then, because the concept of a Gym Leader loomed so large in its mind, but Ahmad was only a few centimeters taller than it.

Two strong arms reached around Diya and squeezed hard, hugging it back. "Good luck." And then Leader Ahmad was gone, taken away by the trundling tracked bus, leaving Diya to track Beauty through an intensifying snowstorm.

First things first, Diya opened up a storage ball, letting out a small wooden cabinet in a flash of red light. The cabinet settled in the snow deep enough that Diya had to clear some away to open the bottom drawer, where its snowshoes were stored. (That was a logistical problem, it made a mental note to fix that when it set up camp later that night.) Diya sat down on the cabinet and set about strapping the snowshoes under its boots, making sure the fastenings were firm.

Strictly speaking, the Banette didn't need snowshoes. It could walk on top of the snow by letting its feet sink into their own shadows a bit rather than the snow. It could push through the snow by more firmly puppetting its own body, driving its legs through the snow with more force than its physical body alone could provide. It could even melt a path through the snow with faerie fire, if it stoked the unreal flames hot enough. But all of those solutions shared the same simple problem: they were tiring.

Humans had already invented a perfectly good method of walking on top of snow that wasn't psychically exhausting, and Diya was perfectly happy benefiting from their shared experience. It set each foot on the snow with a dull fwamph and took a few exploratory steps, making sure the snowshoes didn't dangle or shift.

With that done, Diya replaced the cabinet in its storage ball and pulled out its pokedex. Its took its gloves off to handle its dex and conjured a faerie flame in its left to keep both hands warm. First it verified its position on the dex's map and placed a marker, sending out a ping to all nearby trainers that it was engaging in a practice rescue operation in the area. Diya made sure to wait for the answering ping that told it the local ranger station had received its message before moving on.

Next it zoomed in on the map and pulled up a topographical overlay and highlighted any known burrows or shelters. It marked the areas that were downhill from itself and any shelters in that area. Lost people and pokemon didn't typically go up unless they had a very specific reason to, and in this weather even a Snow pokemon would want to find shelter eventually. If Diya lost the trail, that area was where it would try to pick it up. But speaking of a trail-

Now Svartis, Diya told the Gastly, like we practiced.

Svartis flowed down from Diya's hat and hovered just over Beauty's quickly fading trail. She breathed in deep, swelling to many times her normal tiny size, and then slowly, oh so slowly, let herself compress back down. As she did a thin transparent purple smog leaked out of her and hung above the ground, floating slowly back and forth with the gentle wind. But where Leader Ahmad had been standing, and where Diya had been moving around, the smog stuck still in the air, congealing into thin strands where the air they'd breathed out had settled to the ground.

As natural as it was, carbon dioxide was still a poison in high enough concentrations. The act of building up toxic gas in one's lungs and expelling it was something that left a mark on the world, as Svartis interacted with it. Diya closed its eyes for a second and when it opened them bright pink light shone forth, sparkling off the fresh snow. Under the Banette's sight Svartis' congealed strands sharpened their definition and became darker, absorbing more light rather than reflecting it. Diya knelt. Over the shallow depression of Beauty's fading trail, thin black lines could be seen hanging in the air.

With careful deliberation, Diya pulled down its orange scarf. It opened its mouth a sliver and with a sharp phantom jerk on those threads, breathed in.

-A tinge of loneliness wafted through Beauty's mind. She would have rather her trainer had been here to see her off.-

-She didn't feel boredom as she set off into the snow, but maybe she felt its distant cousin, the distracted shifting of attention when one has done a task enough times that it's too routine.-

The grievances Diya could taste were minor. They felt out of focus too, in a way the Bannette was familiar with. It couldn't taste positive emotions the same way it did grief, but it could tell when they were present in an experience by how they drew attention away from the negative. If it were to guess, Beauty had been much more excited about getting to run around outside and play in the snowstorm than she had been lonely or bored. But the minor overlooked grievances of life were still grief, and with Svartis' help Diya could taste them. And now that it had the taste of Beauty's grief, it could follow her.

This way, Diya signaled its companions, and set off after the Ninetails' trail. Svartis hurried to stow herself under Diya's robes, out of the mild wind, and Madrabaz held on to Diya's back. The trail was faint, and at first Diya had to move slowly to avoid losing it. This form of tracking might be more useful in a true rescue, when fear and hunger and cold burned inside of whomever Diya was tracking, but it wasn't going to complain. It knew all too well that people didn't always feel the fear they should, as exposure claimed them. Better that it prove itself tracking an unworried and even happy pokemon. And besides, even as snow obscured the physical trail further, the phantom one sharpened.

-Lactic acid bubbled out of muscles and into the blood, a subtle poison capable of burning the body that birthed it in the right circumstances. It sizzled its way through tunnels and caverns of blood, forming as fast as the body would wick it away.-

The buildup of lactic acid in Beauty's body was something Svartis could taste, and she shared her perception with her trainer as Diya tracked.

Minutes stretched into hours as Diya pushed through the building storm. Diya regularly updated its position on its pokedex, broadcasting its location and waiting for the answering ping. The storm was intense enough that it sometimes had to stand still for minutes for the signal to go through, but Diya didn't begrudge the wait. Even if its quarry wasn't an Ice pokemon and was genuinely in danger, it wouldn't have begrudged the wait; Leader Ahmad's admonition still rang in its ears. The worst thing one could do on a rescue mission would be to mess up and require a long intensive search for themself which took resources away from the greater search.

Diya pressed on, oddly warmed by the thought. It and its ghosts were searching alone, to prove they could do this as part of an artificial test. But in a real emergency it wouldn't just be Diya looking. Half the town would turn out to help, every human and pokemon working together in a coordinated effort, and Diya would just be one part of that greater search. Because this was an island where people did that.

On its first night with its new body and mind it had danced for joy, understanding for the first time what it meant that humans made lampposts and roads. They worked together to make a world where people could feel safe walking around at night, and that was beautiful. But this was so much more than that. Canopy Gym trained hundreds of people every year on how to rescue people lost in the cold. The whole community poured funds into paying their teachers and building their facilities and holding tests like this, all so that when someone went missing in the snow, that person might be found.

So when it paused and held up its pokedex in the storm, waiting for the ping telling it that its location had been received, it didn't feel frustration at the delay or worry about what the wait might mean in a true crisis. Well, maybe it did a little. But that didn't matter, compared to what the delay of doing things the proper way meant. It meant it wouldn't be alone, in a real search. It meant that the community cared enough to develop and maintain formal procedures for protecting each other. It meant that they cared about people, like a boy a Shuppet had once lost.

By the pokedex's clock, it was three in the afternoon when the phantom trail led Diya to a crevice in the snow. A rocky overhang on the leeward side of a hill shielded a thin opening in the ground from the snow. Diya peered inside, squashing its inherited instinct to squint to see in the darkness and instead widening its eyes so that the interior space was lit with a dim pink light. It looked like some sort of large Ground pokemon had dug out a shelter under the hill. Diya breathed deep. It could taste Beauty and her tiredness inside, but any other emotional impressions were stale and faded. Nothing lived here that might object to an intruder waiting out the storm.

Svartis flowed out from under its robe. The falling snow was depressing most of the wind, but she still found it uncomfortable enough that she waited until the rocky overhang was sheltering them to show herself. I can feel her, Svartis told Diya and Madrabaz. She's in there. The thought was accompanied by the phantom sensation of kidneys working hard to flush the toxic byproducts of exertion.

Madrabaz concurred, echoing Svartis' certainty. The burrow was a place of thick shadows and stale scents that set Beauty's nerves on edge. Beauty knew she was safe enough to rest, but wariness tinged her thoughts nonetheless. She could smell the burrow's emptiness in the age of its scents, the lack of a present occupant who might object to her resting here, but her instincts would never let her be truly comfortable in an unfamiliar burrow.

Diya checked its map. This burrow wasn't listed on it. It marked its position, labeled the abandoned burrow, and added a note that it was going underground and would be out of contact. Then it gave its pokedex to Madrabaz to hold. Diya sent it a memory of the pinging noise the pokedex would make once it got a signal through, and told it to follow after when it heard that.

Diya lay flat on its stomach on the snow, grateful for the tightly woven wool of its robe which kept it from getting damp. The crevice in the ground was small, but it should be able to crawl inside. It took off its hat and pushed it inside, crawling in after it. It couldn't quite stand up all the way even once it was fully inside the burrow, but that didn't bother it. After all, small tucked-away spaces were where Shuppets made their homes.

And right there in the back of the burrow, curled against the back wall of the space, was Beauty. The Alolan Ninetails was a gorgeous blue-white vulpine pokemon as long as Diya was tall. And that was before including her tails, nine thick fluffy tails as long as she was that she had curled around herself and nestled into. Lit by Diya's eyes in the gloom, she became a dusky purple.

She looked up as Diya shuffled into the cave, waiting patiently for them to squirm all the way in. No alarm showed on her face or in her tails as she let them into her space. She'd been through this exercise dozens of times before, and recognized Diya and Svartis besides. She even yipped softly in greeting when Svartis flowed into the space, having spent some time with Svartis helping her learn the ins and outs of icy breath.

And then…

Diya breathed audibly in the space, not sure what it had expected or what it should be feeling. It had done it. It had tracked down a 'lost' pokemon in a snowstorm. Barring disaster, tomorrow it would wear Canopy Gym's winter search and rescue badge with pride.

Ping! Outside, the pokedex let out a cheery little beep. Its signal had been received through the storm and the ranger station knew where Diya was. Madrabaz floated down the entrance after Diya. When it didn't reach out immediately to take the pokedex, Madrabaz tapped the pokedex gently on Diya's arm.

Diya took the pokedex automatically. It typed in an update telling the rangers that it had found the 'missing' pokemon it was tracking, with an attached picture and superficial medical scan of Beauty. It would be sheltering out the remainder of the storm with her in the abandoned burrow, and possibly the night as well. It expected them to be back in town by noon tomorrow, weather permitting, and would send pings before going to sleep and when it woke in the morning. With that done, it asked Madrabaz to take the pokedex outside again to send the signal. It was still crouched there in the burrow, in front of a patient Beauty, when it heard the answering Ping!

This time when Diya took the pokedex, there wasn't only a notification of receipt. There was a personal note from Leader Ahmad. <Congrats Diya! You're the second fastest trainer this test, right after Bashak! Take care of Beauty for me. When she gets used to you she'll roll over for belly-rubs, but watch her tails when you scratch her belly. She can get overstimulated quickly, and her tails will twitch to let you know when to stop.>

With an emotion it couldn't name lying heavy in its chest, Diya put its pokedex away in its robes. With one hand it fixed a twist of power at the top of the burrow, setting a warm blue fire in the air. It would do to light the space and chase away the chill for now. Then it crept forward, holding a hand out with its palm to the ground, for Beauty to smell.

The gorgeous blue-white pokemon leaned forward to sniff Diya's hand. She huffed, acknowledging its familiar scent and then, without delay, rolled over onto her back. She fixed Diya with an imperious stare that said 'I know how this goes. I ran, you caught up, and now you give me belly rubs. Get to it.'

Which Diya did. It burrowed its bare hands in her thick silky fur, getting in deep so it could properly scratch her while taking care not to press too hard and overstimulate her. Beauty's head lolled back immediately and her tails slumped to the ground in a deflated puddle. She even purred, the rumble settling in Diya's bones. Encouraged, Diya kept rubbing, dragging its fingers and palms down her stomach. Beneath its touch, the pokemon it had been assigned to rescue was warm, and happy, and oh so very alive.

The Banette hiccupped, and its vision blurred.

It was crying.

Tomorrow, Diya would challenge Canopy Gym for its Ice battle badge. Standing side by side with its pokemon, it would hold a trainer's badge high and make its boy's dream come true. It had set out from Ledos Village to fulfill a dying boy's desperate wish and tomorrow it would take its first true step on that path. Tonight though, was for it alone.

It had never been happier.

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