A Winkle in Reality

[98ajaj]

So in this timeline Blaine didnt shun Giovanni? Sweet! Can't wait for peri to claim the badge by picking it up off his corpse!

 

[The Radiance's Follower]

Blaine patriotism used to make him fall from grace. It do be like that.

 

[ElysiaNightshade]

yesss

 

[HankPankylol]

Thank you for reading. Hopefully you enjoy. If you REALLY like it, I have a P-a-t-r-e-o-n, under the same name, where you can read 5 chapters ahead.

---

I had no idea what the hell was going on anymore, but I was really pissed off about it.

Crawling through the volcano had sucked, but that was seemingly my own habitual dumbassery biting me in the ass, so I wasn't going to bitch too much about that. On the other side, I'd even admit that it had been kind of fun – in a 'that was crazy' kind of way.

But Mewtwo attacking Mahogany Town? Adam the Rocket Grunt being in Cinnabar Gym? Blaine being affiliated with Team Rocket?

I was very confused, and very angry, so the first words out of my mouth when Gym Leader Pryce stepped through the doorway weren't the most polite.

"Occu-poto, dickhead, wait your turn-!"

"Where is Blaine?"

Pryce didn't yell. He didn't rage or scream; none of the fury he surely felt was to be found in his even, hoarse tone, like a man who didn't speak overly much.

Yet his eyes gleamed.

"I don't-!"

Cold.

I couldn't finish my sentence, all air driven from my lungs while, for a horrific moment, my heart went still in my chest from the shock. A howl of wind rushed past the white-haired man, littered with tiny snowflakes that were on me before I could blink, gently landing on my exposed torso, shirt removed because of the heat from the volcano.

As soon as the sprinkles of snowy geometry brushed my skin, they blossomed into ice flowers as big as my palm, sweat instantly flash-frozen into a thin layer of hoar-frost before being buried under the blooming bouquet. The moisture was sucked from my skin, leaving it dry and stretched as both Adam and I were swallowed by the chilly prison, nothing but our heads left exposed.

"Where is Blaine?"

It burned. That was the only thing I could think of, Pryce's words merely background noise in comparison. And the Ice-Type Master wasn't waiting for me to recover.

I was so stunned by the sudden entrapment that I didn't notice the cause of it gliding towards me with a strange, almost dancing grace until it was right in front of me. When I did, for a second, I thought it was a human, if a very short one. Bipedal, long blonde hair swayed behind the figure as it sashayed forwards, the hemline of the long red dress – with two golden circles over the… chest area – billowing with every step of hidden feet. But the delusion fell when our eyes met. Big white, saucer-like eyes sparkled at me from a round, uncomfortably humanoid face, full pink lips pressed together and forward in a trumpet shape. But it was the deep purple skin that tipped me off, the color of frostbitten flesh after days in the snow. No human would've survived such conditions, not even in the Pokémon world. My eyes tracked the dark purple hand attached to a white-skinned limb as it lifted, the digits curling until only the index finger was extended as it lowered to touch the middle of my forehead.

The Jynx's fingertip was like a red-hot coal searing into my flesh, but I barely registered it compared to the lance of cold that hammered into my mind, past whatever passive defense my part Ghost aura granted me that usually kept out curious psychics and-

-soft pop! of displaced air… "Hi Adam!"... empty office behind him, Blaine the presumed source of the Teleport…-

-"Son of a fucking whore! He never has, stubborn old-!" Blaine's voice… "how the fuck does he know!? Somebody… a Ratatta in the ranks... this place is burnt. We need to move," Blaine said... "Get it off this island tonight. The Sevii Lab can… the expansion's finished. Don't fucking wait until tonight; do it quickly; start with the… It'll take him a… through the mountain, but not long enough! Prioritize! Throw everything we have at the cunt, their sacrifice will be worth…

-"Blaine, you know, the Gym Leader?... totally not bodacious."...

-Lance grabbed the back of my chair… "fight me, ha!" The old, one-armed woman grinned… Lance stared at the massive skull… "not… great at that."...

-Lance leaned down over me… stop myself from averting my eyes. He snorted… Petrel glared as Honedge kept him pinned… Rocket base under the Game Corner…

It was like an axe had been driven into my skull, Jynx's finger feeling as if it had gone all the way to the knuckle and was trying to rip my head apart from the inside. A low, constant droning groan escaped my clenched teeth despite my best efforts. But underneath that sound, there was another moaning wail, higher-pitched and melodic.

-Blaine looked almost hungry… Professor Oak's humiliation… "This is Blaine Heatmoore, Clan Head-"... Walter Waterflower… S.S. Anne… "Thi-... Executive Proton-"...

-Mt. Moon... "... a Graveler." Adam sai-… Grant…

-blood, gore, death… Pidgey with stitched-on, extra wings-… red R in the da-... "they're kidnapping your children-"... … Slowking…

-Hyper B-... "SHARON!"... "Executive Prot-"...

-Orre…

-a swirling, endless kaleidoscope of colors humanity had never known surrounded me as I drifted through nothing/everything, every sensation bombarding me in my sensory deprivation chamber. Reality itself flinched strangely, crumbling unnaturally like space was trying to get away. As a shadow the size of a solar system spread its galactic wings – evident only in the abyss it painted across non-existence – there was a ripping noise as everything twisted and grew hazy. As the faintest sliver of planetoid crimson orbs opened to glare balefully at me – through me, beyond me – there was a shrill scream as the Distorted world imploded and faded to darkness. The red eyes lingered, like lanterns against the black as it refused to let go of the memory, growing closer and closer and closer and closer and closer, a row of ivory as long as mountains were tall flashing -

-"Awwwwww, what the fuck…" I moaned, clenching my eyes shut against the searing migraine. The lower part of my face felt wet and warm, and between grimaces, I saw a smear of red frozen on the ice beneath me, a strand of fresh crimson liquid connecting it to my chin. You knew it was a healthy nosebleed when it was a stream rather than drips.

At least it cut both ways, though.

"JYYyYYyYYyYYyYNNnNNnNN!" Jynx stumbled back with a musical scream, clutching her head in pain. She stepped on the hem of her dress and tripped, the red clothe-skin-thing rising over her head when she did a full backwards somersault and ended up face down.

"Jynx!" Pryce barked and rushed over to his downed Psychic, her frame racked with slight spasms. As her Trainer helped her roll over, I could see cracks in the frozen skin around the Jynx's eyes, large droplets of ruined, sludge-like blood leaving a trail across her cheeks. "What happened!? What did you see!?"

Pale, almost pure white energy flickered unsteadily in her eyes as their gazes met, and instantly, the Gym Leader flinched back with a stifled grunt, her right eye squeezing shut. "Don't show me, don't show me. Just tell me."

The flickering grew worse and worse as Jynx pushed through the second-hand backlash of my memories to relay what she found to Pryce. Based on his furrowed brow and the slight twitches of his eye, it was still far from a pleasant experience. The blackish blood began bubbling up from Jynx's cracked skin again, yet she persevered.

Finally, she blinked and disrupted their unbroken eye contact, and she went limp on the floor, not unconscious but far from okay.

"Well done." Pryce nodded stoically, recalling the humanoid Pokémon into her ball: a brown, knobbly sphere, almost twice the size of a PokéBall.

An Acorn ball, the precursor to the modern PokéBall. Just like Blaine used. There was irony to be found there if I wasn't busy trying to press my face against the large, protruding clump of ice on my shoulder, ignoring the way my blood froze against it and glued me to it in favor of the sweet relief.

"That's quite the mental defense you have there," the Gym Leader grumbled as he moved to stand in front of me, hands clasped over his cane, face back in the impassive folds he entered with and any signs of pain hidden.

"Eat my ass," I complained, not in a very sharing mood. Honedge, however, was. My shadow darkening as it began distending, the hilt with its blue eye narrowed emerging-

-and then just… stopping, like he was stuck. The shadow became pitch black and seemed to cling to him while he vibrated, jerking a little back and forth yet unable to get out.

My steadily refocusing vision saw that Pryce's own shadow was unusually large and overlapped with mine, both an abyssal void from which a pair of ice-blue pupils gazed up at me from within yellow sclera.

"I will let that one slide, in light of our… introduction," Pryce drawled. Something white and ethereal rose behind him: a white, kimono-like cloth billowing in an invisible wind, folding in a way that made it clear it was hollow despite the red band holding it closed. Those blue and yellow eyes stared at me with mirth from within a white skull, the edges of frostbitten skin, much like Jynx's, barely visible through the eye holes. Thread-thin arms dangled like earlobes, a disproportionately bulky hand rising to point at me while the other covered the Froslass' mouth as a ghostly giggle filled the room. "You will stand in the back and wait until I am done."

I didn't get to respond before the Ice/Ghost-Type flexed its hand and I started moving against my will. Despite being solid, the ice flowed around me like molasses, pushing me backwards while Adam rose to take my position across from Pryce, standing with his arms outstretched. I tried to help, to pull myself out, but the material resisted me as much as it ever had, refusing to bend for anyone except its mistress.

I stumbled, emerging from the living ice with a wet pop! My knees buckled, forcing me to grab onto the large, expensive desk to keep myself up. Shivers shook my body violently, pins and needles replacing the burning chill. A trembling hand lowered to the PokéBalls on my belt, yet ran into a thick circle of ice around my waist. Down at my feet, Honedge continued to struggle against the soupy shadow, an almost invisible line still connecting me to Pryce.

Shit. I hadn't felt so outclassed and screwed since Walter, and it wasn't something I'd missed.

"Where's Blaine?" The emotionless tone was kind of scary, but it fell a little short of Walter's uncaring death threats. Even Adam, whether due to his newfound courage or being unimpressed, didn't falter in the face of Pryce.

"I-I-I d-d-don't-!"

Tap!

"AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

I flinched back against the desk as the cane rose and fell, impacting his left forearm ever so lightly. In response, cracks rushed down the limb and over all five fingers, enveloping it like a spiderweb. There was a single second where it seemed like that was all that was going to happen.

Then, starting at the fingertips and working backwards, Adam's hand disintegrated into a fine, glittery powder that landed in a neat pile beneath him, hints of red twinkling in the light. The Rocket Grunt stared at the stump for a moment, a thin layer of ice capping the surgically even wound, while the last blood fled his face. As the reality sank in and his eyes widened, pupils dilating, he opened his mouth to scream, yet even that was denied to him as Pryce's hand closed around his mouth with deceptive strength.

"Silence. Where is Blaine? I do not ask thrice." He gave Adam a moment for the words to sink in before removing his hand.

"FUUUUUUUUUUUUU-!"

He was forced into silence again, but not by Pryce. Purple bloomed where Froslass' fingertips touched him, the skin cracking and weeping at the caress while the ghost leaned in almost intimately. For a second, I thought the Pokémon was going to kiss him as their noses brushed together gently, their eyes locked.

And then the muffled shriek leaked out from behind Froslass' hand, Adam's eyes rolling into the back of his head as he started thrashing in his ice block. Something cracked in his neck as he strained against the grip, powdered spittle and foam staining the ghost. Veins throbbed against his skin, blood vessels bursting in both his eyes and nose as the unearthly scream rose and rose and rose.

Until it didn't. Until Adam fell silent and limp in Froslass' embrace, the ice around him melting at a ridiculous rate. As he ragdolled to the floor in a boneless heap, he landed with his face my way, allowing me to see the blank eyes as he gaped, open-mouthed, into nothing. His chest rose and fell with gentle breaths, but there was nobody home, a black handprint marking both cheeks that went so deep I could see a glimpse of cheekbone.

"Wha-..." I breathed weakly, Pryce and his Pokémon staring at each other much like the Jynx and he had done. They ignored me long enough for the worst of the tremors to settle in the warm volcano air, and I found some painkillers in my backpack before Pryce finally glanced at me with a tiny frown, the edge of his lip twitching like it was threatening to curl into a snarl.

"Acquired my information. Or, attempted to. Unfortunately, precise details are often lost in translation." He glared between Adam and an apologetic Froslass. "I would have preferred to wait until my Psychic was available," the glare darted towards me briefly, "but I do not have that luxury. Blaine will know that I captured him and move bases quickly. You will tell me," his cane rose again to point at my forehead, my eyes crossing to track the tip. It felt uncomfortably similar to having a gun to my head. "where this 'Sevii Lab' that you raided was. How long ago, what island."

"Shouldn't…. shouldn't you know that?" Fucker had been in my head; what did he mean, 'tell him'?

"Do not play games with me." The cane lowered to hover just over my skin, a cold air radiating from the grainy wood. "Your recent memories were barely coherent, never mind that far back. I suppose your unnaturalness has its uses. Now, tell me."

"It doesn't matter…" I still couldn't catch my breath. "It… it was years ago, and it was destroyed. They won't-can't use the same base."

He sniffed disdainfully. "You would be surprised how often such a thing occurs. Between the resources required to make a new one and the idea that no one would check the same place twice, reusing bases is a fairly popular thing. It is one of Blaine's favorites."

I shook my head slowly to avoid agitating it too much, trying to peel as much of the coagulated blood off my face as possible. "Not that one. The locals know where it is, and they won't risk that twice. Not after what we did."

"'The locals'?" Pryce's gaze sharpened at my minor flinch. Shit, he had me rattled and off-kilter, making me overspeak. "'After what we did'? It was barely distinguishable according to Jynx, but she spoke of blood and carnage, pain and torture. That is the event to which you refer?"

I rubbed my arms to try and get the rest of the sensation back in them, eyeing Pryce silently as I chewed over my answer.

Pryce hadn't exactly endeared himself to me, so even if I had more to give him, I wasn't inclined to do so. Nah, let him run off into the Sevii jungle halfcocked on his own, asshole. I didn't need him. Sucked about his town, but that wasn't my problem. He was definitely on to something about the whole 'get there before Blaine can move somewhere else'; I was fully on board with that. As soon as Pryce left, I was going to call in some help – Blaine was a Master even during the Rebellion and was hiding in a whole-ass base; not even I was that arrogant – and head straight…

… wait, call who?

Grant and the Pebble Clan were out, as always when it came to Team Rocket. However, so were Walter and the Waterflowers. I had no reason to think they were involved with Team Rocket; quite the opposite.

Except that Walter and Blaine used to be friends back during the war. Fuck, they were still friends, it seemed like. I didn't necessarily think he would take Blaine's 'side' over mine, but he would be unusually driven to investigate first and probably involve way more people than was wise. Who knew how many random clerks and salary workers were secretly on the Rockets' payroll. All it would take was one hearing what we were up to and they would vanish into thin air. There was no way Pryce was authorized to be there, certainly not acting like he was. I didn't even know why he was on Cinnabar, or how he connected the dots, but it wouldn't hold up.

Blaine was a Gym Leader, and one of the most prominent figures of the Johto Rebellion. Before Oak, Blaine had been one of the leading generals keeping the Blackthorns, but especially Pryce, at bay, and a reputation like that lingered. I could only imagine even more so given the growing displeasure with the state of Indigo.

If the League got Blaine before I did, he was gone. But… he was what I'd been hoping, damn near praying, for. Blaine would know about Proton. He would know about the bases, about the Pebble Clan, about Giovanni.

Blaine could make the whole thing come tumbling down, and I couldn't see how I could do anything to him.

Clair? She wouldn't go for it; it was political suicide if it went wrong. Straight to Lance? I didn't have his number, and that was assuming he would trust me over one of his Gym Leaders – though that was a fairly decent bet, given Blaine's distaste for all things Johto. But I would need to get a hold of him, convince him to drop everything, fly to Cinnabar to pick me up, and then go further into the Sevii Island chain. I doubted he cared for Pryce much more than Blaine, either. And if I were Team Rocket, having eyes on the Champion would be one of my top priorities.

Briefly, Ash, Brock, Misty, and even fucking Gary flashed through my mind, but I discarded the idea as quickly as it came; Green's frightened face and teary eyes burned into my mind.

Not that. Not again. Yet, that meant…

… don't fucking tell me that the geriatric lunatic was my best bet. Worse, my only real bet.

Damnit.

I eyed him, making him tilt his head at the change in attitude. My eyes drifted down to Adam's vacant face as he gazed blankly at the ceiling. He definitely wasn't a fan of Team Rocket, that much was for sure.

"... They won't be in the same base-" Pryce tsked at my repetitive answer, clearly getting more and more impatient the more it dragged out.

"I will worry about the veracity of your intelligence-!"

"-but I know someone who will know where they are." Pryce rolled his eyes so hard I was impressed they didn't fall out of his skull.

"Who, then? Or are you unsatisfied with your dramatization?"

"What are you going to do to Blaine?" Might as well make sure we were on the same page.

"I will torture him for information regarding his disgusting abomination and then kill him painfully. Everyone that stands between me and that goal will die as well. Are you one of those people?" It was my turn to roll my eyes.

"Now who's being dramatic?" I stuffed my hands under my armpits after getting the worst of the blood off, not happy with how red and tingly my fingers were. "Okay, I have an offer for you. I'll take us to my… informant, who will tell us where the base is. We raid it-"

"We?" Pryce interrupted, Froslass giggling over his shoulder.

"Yes, we. My informant, so I'm coming. Unless you wish to search the entirety of Sevii yourself?" His eyes narrowed, but he said nothing. "Right. So, WE raid the base and find Blaine, who will tell us where Proton is, and everything about Team Rocket. Oh, and whatever you wanna know." Presumably Mewtwo, which would be included in the 'everything about Team Rocket' part.

I thought he might reject me for a second as he just stared at me. Then, there was a noise from outside the office, and he simply nodded.

"If that's what the information costs, then fine. What is your name?"

"Periwinkle. Or just Pe-" he didn't care, turning around and striding for the door.

"If you die, it is on you, Periwinkle. WE are heading for an active combat zone, and I will not have the time nor focus to save you. Do you understand?"

"Yeah, yeah." The usual spiel everyone gave when I was joining something dangerous. It had been a minute, actually. Most of my dumb-assery had been without adult supervision for a while. "Fairchild Island. That's where my informant is. Uh, Island Fi-Four?"

"Island Five." Pryce corrected, stepping over the melting slushy of ice dust that used to be the door and walking out. "I know of it. We will only require a single Teleport. Come."

I sighed while leaning against the desk, letting the rapidly changed situation sink in and doing my best not to look at Adam's prone figure. That was still disturbing. Instead, I glanced over the work surface as I pushed off it and made to walk away. A picture frame had fallen over, and I reached out to lift it out of habit more than anything else, glancing at the photo within as I turned to follow Pryce-

I froze, the world standing still as I stared at the image. Time lost meaning in my shock, words and events flashing through my mind as I was forced to re-evaluate so many things…

"Periwinkle!" Pryce's call from down the hall shook me from my stupor.

"Y-yeah, I'm coming!" I yelled back, grabbed the picture, and shoved it in my bag. It would have to wait; we were in a bit of a time crunch. Just outside the doorless doorway, I found a wet Zorua lying unconscious on the ground. She seemed fine, other than being knocked out, but I still glared after Pryce's shrinking form, my hand falling to my PokéBalls by instinct – only to find them free of ice and accessible again, letting me return her.

And then a flurry of worried Pokémon immediately beset me, all of them breaking free of their balls to threaten and soothe, forcing me back into the office to make room for all of us.

Reassuring them as quickly as I could, I rushed to catch up to Pryce, running by several doors that were wide open and filled with activity as I did so. Reaching the much older man, I tried to put what I'd discovered out of my mind and think about something else. Though that only led me in a circle back to the other thing I'd done my best to not think about.

"...is Adam going to recover or?"

"No."

"Hmm." I settled on a grunt. That… I think I would've preferred it if he'd died. Felt less messed up, somehow.

Probably wouldn't lose sleep over it, though. At the end of the day, it was Adam.

The rooms we passed were, as stated, filled with people, and I briefly thought that it was Team Rocket Grunts doing as Blaine had commanded and packing everything up before I noticed the calmness. That brief pause gave me enough time to notice the clothes. The top halves hung around their waists, goggles around their necks, and hats removed in the sweltering heat, but that didn't stop me from recognizing a onesie snowsuit.

My equilibrium was all kinds of off, but I was going out on a limb and trusting that those were with Pryce. It felt like a safe bet, especially when he didn't react.

We passed through the reception office, two of Pryce's Acorn balls flashing and returning a pair of Pokémon standing guard before I could see what they were, and then left the 'Gym' behind entirely. I looked to Pryce to lead the way out of the volcano – since I doubted he'd squeezed through that tiny-ass gap – but instantly saw that I didn't need him to show the way.

The way was clearly the twenty-by-twenty-foot tunnel that carved straight through the mountain. It was a perfect half circle with a dot of light at the far end, dead straight with the excess material pressed tightly together to make stable walls and ceiling.

"Mamoswine?" I asked as we started walking down the tunnel. The temperature had dropped as soon as we hit the tunnel, thanks to the fresh air making its way in, but now and then, we'd move by a particularly warm spot, and I did my best not to think of the magma flowing beside and over us.

"Correct." He gave me a mildly impressed glance at my identification. Jokes on him, I cheated and remembered that his ace was a Piloswine, which was part Ground-type. "It was the most direct path."

"I-yeah. Yeah, that's true." I didn't have a response to that. He was just objectively correct.

The sun was a lot lower on the horizon than it had been when I entered the volcano, but that was nearly all from spelunking through the caves.

A flash of red and a Jynx twirled in greeting, ending it with a sweeping bow before Pryce. I was impressed that it had shaken off the dive into my mind so quickly, as the aftereffects still throbbed in my head, only to look closer and understand.

"You have two Jynx?" I asked while returning Honedge to his ball. Something that took multiple tries since he kept breaking back out.

"Not mine," he grunted, which made sense. Otherwise, why use Froslass to mind-dive Adam if it was so inaccurate? "It is a short trip to Island Five. We shall learn the location of the base and then rendezvous with my men for the actual assault." I looked at him questioningly, only to be distracted by the Jynx reaching out for us. Not that my head wasn't being ripped in two or my blood frozen in my veins, I could fully appreciate how little I liked Jynx. Much like Mr. Mime, she was just too humanoid. And why did it look like she had boobs!? Who came up with that design? At least it was the purple-skinned one and not the black one; that one was just uncomfortable-

A cold hand grasped my shoulder and dragged me with it as it was sucked through a strawhole, reality twisting as we disappeared from Cinnabar.

---

"Which way?" Pryce asked, and that was a fair question.

"Uhhhhh," I mumbled, looking around to try and find something that looked familiar. In my defense, I did find something I recognized.

More trees. Lots of those on Fairchild Island.

"You don't know." I hadn't known Pryce's tone could get flatter, and I could've done without the demonstration.

"Well, I don't fucking-they found me last time!" I didn't bother to lower my tone, flinging my arms out as I gestured to our surroundings. We'd needed a second Teleport to get us to the part of the island that I recognized, but it was quickly done, and before I knew it, we were in the forest. Pryce almost had to drag me inside, but we did, and then we just had to find it. Them. Anything, honestly. "A Scyther showed up and took me to their leader, a Slowking-"

"Your source is a random, wild Pokémon you have met once?"

"Don't take that tone with me!" I pointed at him, Espeon mimicking me with her tail. Most of my team was out and about to try and help me find the Pokémon Senate's gathering spot. "Slowking's good people!"

"Not any kind of people. Not people at all." I snorted at the answer. In our brief acquaintance, I'd found Pryce to be a very dry and humorless person.

"Semantics! You know what I mean!"

Pryce stared at me blankly for a moment before sighing and gesturing, making his Froslass rise up from his shadow. I wasn't sure what he intended, but I was curious.

"Ice Age."

My eyes widened at the same rate as Froslass' grin, snow-speckled wind starting to swirl in her hands as she lifted them up above her head, palms to the sky.

"Wait-!"

Too late.

WHOOOOOOOOOSSSSEEEEE!

A hurricane erupted from Froslass, a torrent of howling wind and hammering hail that blanketed everything around us in a veil of whirling white. I dropped into a crouch, Espeon held to my chest and my other hand over my eyes to try and protect them, despite being in the eye of the storm. Something large, furry, and cold dropped on top of me – Sol, based on the way the cold swiftly turned to wetness – pressing me down until the screaming wind ceased and the world became visible again.

Or whatever had replaced it.

For hundreds of feet around us, the landscape stood frozen. Trees made of ice, leaves still stuck to their branches. Bushes of intertwined frost, each thin twig perfectly coated. As Sol shifted and let me up, I could see a drop of water hanging from a stick, stilled in the very last moment before it dropped.

It was beautiful. It was serene.

It was all gone, crumbling the same way that Adam's arm and hand had, every tree, bush, shrub, weed, and even rock, atomized into crystalline dust. As they faded, I could see my team through the rising clouds of ice mist, perfectly unharmed despite the most devastating attack I had ever seen.

Relief flooded me, and with the worry out of the way, it was free to be instantly replaced with anger.

"WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING-!?" I started yelling before being forced to flinch back from the tip of his cane pointing at me.

"There is nobody here," Pryce interrupted, eyes scanning the horizon as various Pokémon began sticking their heads out of the snow with stunned expressions on their faces. "Nobody important, at least." As I looked around, more and more emerged until we were soon surrounded by suddenly homeless pokémon.

Somehow, miraculously, I don't think he hit a single one.

"You have proved useless," he continued, not mincing words, "as I should have expected. We-"

"You will regrow those."

Pryce spun around in a flash, hands falling to his Acorn balls while Froslass simply turned around to be in front of her Trainer protectively. Standing there, arms crossed behind his back as he surveyed the ruined circle of decimation, stood Slowking, the same Pokémon that had helped me the last time I'd been on the island with a Rocket problem. He looked the same as the last time I'd seen him, though I had hardly expected anything else. The Psychic was very old, after all, unnaturally so.

"Wha…" Pryce's face was one for the ages, his mouth hanging open and eyes bulging as he stared at the shorter bipedal figure.

"I said, you will regrow those. The plants. The trees. The flowers. All of it will be returned by your hand." I couldn't blame Pryce for his shock. It wasn't every day you met a Pokémon that could actually talk. Not through telepathy, though Slowking was very capable of that as well, but by forming human words with his mouth.

"How-?" Pryce tried again.

"Silence." Slowking's voice offered no choice. "You come to our land, seeking our aid, and yet you bring nothing but destruction, tearing apart your surroundings like a child not getting his way. You still stand only because you came here at the side of my friend, and your little tantrum failed to touch any of my people. If a single one had been harmed, you would be dead at my feet." The two of them stared at each other, Froslass hanging unnaturally still over Pryce's shoulder. As the tension rose, I interjected, both to try and alleviate it and because I honestly felt bad. I'd brought Pryce with me; the blame was at least partially on me.

"Slowking, listen, I'm-I'm sorry about all this-" Slowking cut me off with a raised, stubby hand, eyes never leaving Pryce's. For a moment, I thought they might come to blows.

"I thank you for your consideration, but I am not talking to you. I am talking to him." The silence continued while they tried to glare each other into submission. All the while, more and more Pokémon started recovering from Pryce's attack, some of whom I recognized – like the blue-green mass of vines that slowly clambered back to its feet. Large, wet eyes gazed out over the destruction as it tried to scoop up some of the snow and shape it back into a tree shape, letting out a deep wail when it collapsed. Slowly, the eyes dried as they lifted, filling with an anger I hadn't seen even when Tangrowth was snapping necks as they landed on Pryce.

And then, Pryce's chin lowered slightly, his eyes never leaving Slowking's as he bowed his head.

"... as you say, Elder. I… was overly eager and have offended you. You will be repaid." The words didn't come easy, but neither did it take as much as I'd have thought from someone who seemed as set in doing things his way as Pryce did.

Then again, while Slowking was definitely unusual, it would make sense if most places with a big population of wild Pokémon had some sort of hierarchy, and as Gym Leader, Pryce would likely be the one to deal with those.

Slowking hummed, still looking around. One of his arms came up, palm and single finger, plus a thumb, extended as he slowly passed it over his fallen forest. As he did so, the large piles of dust and thick mist that hung in the air melted as if time were fast-forwarding, the newly turned water seeping into the muddy ground.

Based on the renewed tension in Pryce's frame and the way Froslass straight up flinched, it wasn't supposed to be that easy.

"You will replant them with your own hands. I shall allow your 'team' as you call it, to help you grow them. Then, there are a couple of areas that could use your expertise. After that, our debt shall be settled." He resumed staring at Pryce until the old man bowed his head again with a soft 'understood'.

Only then did Slowking turn his eyes towards me, some of the stoic seriousness leaving him in favor of giving me a small smile and his own tilt of the head.

"Greetings, Friend Periwinkle. As I said when we parted, we meet again, though you tend to play tricks on my divinations. The prophecy is not yet at hand, though the waves tremble at its coming."

"Hey, Slowking, good to see you. Uh, just Peri is fine," I smiled much bigger, making his own widen a fraction. I meant it too; Slowking was great. "Still not helping you with the prophecy, but that's not why I'm here. There's no easy way to say this, but Team Rocket has set up a new base here, somewhere on one of these Islands." I waited for a response, Slowking's smile fading and a look of sorrow overtaking it. But no surprise. "You knew." It wasn't a question.

Slowking slowly nodded. "I did," he admitted with a heavy sigh. "'Twas only a matter of months until they attempted to build a second base to restart their horrors. Or, rebuild, I suppose I should say, as they sought to use the same place, for some reason." I ignored Pryce's glance. "We destroyed it, of course. As we did the first, and as we would do the third. The fourth, as it would turn out, was a trap." A vicious gleam passed through his eyes, so at odds with his normal zen-ness. "It did not turn out as they wished, though it was our toughest battle yet. Kind-Sun-Roses, the Mightyena you met, was amongst those who fell."

"Shit," I sighed. The Dark-type had been an absolute monster, but she had done me a solid and seemed to be a decent parent. "How's the kid?"

"As well as can be expected." Slowking nodded his appreciation at the question with a quick flash of his smile. "Under the circumstances, at least. He is fully grown, if nothing else, and evolved himself in the battle that followed. His mother would be proud of him."

"That's good to hear. But if you destroyed all the bases…" I trailed off, letting Slowking finish it for me.

"Ahhh, but by the fifth, the enemy learned," he chuckled darkly, "slower than children, yes, but they learned. They learned that we tracked the scent of our own, so they brought their victims in from the mainland. They learned that no matter where they hid in our forests, we would find them, so they stopped hiding in our forests."

"Not in the forest?" I frowned. "No offense, but these islands are nothing but forest! What else is-"

"Knot Island," Pryce said it with certainty and annoyance, typing furiously on a PokéNav. "I should have known. Blaine is nothing if not unoriginal." Seeing my confusion, he smacked my leg lightly with his cane, making me jerk away, though thankfully my leg didn't crumple into dust. "The volcano, fool! He built his base in Mt. Ember."

"Ooohhh, that makes sense," I admitted. "That's what we needed, though! I knew you were the guy, Slowking, thanks, bro! Come on, let's go and-" I was cut off by Slowking shaking his head.

"I am sorry, Friend Peri, but even if we should want to," he paused briefly to shoot a glance at Pryce, then at everything around us. Or, the lack of anything around us. "We cannot aid you. Not with this. Not there."

"Why?"

"As I said, the enemy learned. They avoided the forest because we go there, and set up base where we don't go. They studied us, learned our patterns, and stay where we cannot get to them."

That didn't make any sense to me, and I was about to say as much when Pryce decided we were done.

"Then we thank you for your aid, Elder, and pledge our services to remove this cancer from your land," he declared grandly. Then he glanced around and continued a little sheepishly. "Let it be the beginning of repayment. Once more, apologies for the… as you say, tantrum. There is quite the history between our quarry and myself, and in my rush and anger, I forgot myself."

At that, Slowking had a little smile to spare Pryce as well. "Mistakes are a part of life, young one. The important thing is that we recognize them, and never grow so set in our ways that we believe ourselves right simply because that is, and has been, our way of doing things."

Pryce seemed unsure what to do regarding the 'young one' comment, something I suspected he couldn't remember the last time he was called. So he chose to ignore it and release his second Jynx again while I waved goodbye to Slowking, kind of sad at the short visit.

"I'll see you when I see you, I guess. And not for the prophecy!" I had only grown more convinced that I wanted nothing to do with the whole Lugia and the Birds nonsense. Leave that shit, and the fate of the world, to Ash.

...

Slowking's smile returned with a chuckle. "Even you don't believe that anymore, my friend! It warms my heart to see you again. You've made progress, even if the shadows still linger in your soul. But let me see you off with a warning. Be careful, Friend Peri." I looked over my shoulder to see Slowking staring at me with solemn eyes. "You will find much more than merely criminals in the fire of Mt. Ember. Stay far from the summit, no matter the temptation."

I didn't have time to respond before we were once again hurled through time and space, heading towards Knot Island to catch Blaine before he disappeared.

---

Slowking! Love Slowking; always good to see him.

Also, it's not really a secret what's atop Mt. Ember, so that'll be fun.

Thank you for reading. Hopefully you enjoyed. If you REALLY liked it, I have a P-a-t-r-e-o-n, under the same name, where you can read 5 chapters ahead.

 

[Pandaemonium04]

Ahhh Pryce just learned a very big lesson. First his Jynx got mind clobbered and then his tantrum is called out. He's gonna be looking back on this day and wondering about who TF is Peri for a while