The boat had been on open water for two days, and Adam had spent most of the second one at the rail, watching. Grey swell, white sky, the wake unspooling behind them. The team was below, sleeping off the last of Johto in a cargo hold the captain had given over to them once he understood that the alternative was the Larvitar eating the deck.
He was thinking about the Beedrill.
It had been a Weedle when he caught it, a soft thing the length of his finger, and now it could put a hole through a tree. He had watched it happen, twice, the shell and the second shell and then the thing that came out with lances for arms. He still did not really understand it.
Sage. What actually happens when they evolve?
She took her time, the way she did when a question was worth answering properly.
[ The honest answer is that no one in this world fully knows, Host. They have theories. I have a better one. ]
Give me the theory first.
[ A creature here stores something as it lives. Call it everything it survives, stacked up. Every fight, every mile, every night it did not die. It accumulates. And at a certain point the body cannot hold any more of it, so the body lets go. ] A pause. [ It is not growth. Growth is slow. This is the animal spending everything it has saved in one moment and buying a new self with it. The cells come apart and reassemble around the new shape. Seconds. It is one of the more violent beautiful things I have watched. ]
Adam looked at the water for a while.
You said you had a better one.
[ I did. ] Sage was quiet, and when she spoke again there was something careful in it. [ It is not only the body. When one of them evolves, the world answers. The energy that runs under everything here shifts to make room for it, the way a room goes quiet when someone with authority walks in. The creature comes out the other side standing a little higher in the world than it did. ]
Authority. He knew the word. He carried a version of it himself. Like mine?
[ No. Not like yours. Yours is taken. Theirs is granted, and it is small and clean. They will never wield it directly. But there is a feeling of it, under the skin, and it grows with each step. ] [ Every evolution moves them closer to the thing they were always going to be. Their perfect self. Most creatures in most worlds never get to experience this. Here they do, and they do it in front of you, in a flash of light, because you fed them and bled with them and got them there. ]
He didn't say anything for a moment.
That sounds nice.
He was still smiling at the rail when the horizon changed.
It came up out of the haze slowly, the way big land does. Green. A long dark sprawl of it, wet and heavy, with high ground behind and, far off to the north, a single peak trailing smoke into the flat sky. The air coming off it was warmer than the sea. It smelled of rain that had already fallen.
Ren came up from below and stood next to him and looked at it, and for once she didn't say anything smart.
"That's a long coast," she said finally.
"Most of your team is down there."
"You keep saying that." She was grinning now, the collector's grin, the one she'd gained in this world. "Say it again when I'm getting them."
They came in at Slateport in the afternoon, a hot bright working city built along a beach, all fishing boats and market stalls and the smell of salt and fried food. Nobody looked twice at two more trainers off a boat. Adam liked it immediately.
Ren caught her first Hoenn Pokémon before they were off the pier.
There was a man selling fish at the end of the dock, and in a tank of the day's catch, sulking at the bottom under everything else, was the ugliest thing Adam had seen in a while. Brown, blotched, gap-mouthed, a fish that looked like a mistake. Ren stopped to look at it the way you slow down at something unpleasant on the road.
"That," she said, "is a genuinely horrible animal. Who catches these? Why is it in the tank with the food?"
"Nobody catches them on purpose." Adam leaned on the rail of the stall. "The fishermen hate them. They're everywhere and they're useless and they're that ugly all the way up."
"Poor thing." She said it without much feeling.
"It turns into one of the most beautiful things in the water."
Ren looked at him.
"That," she said, pointing at the fish, which chose that moment to open its mouth at nothing, "turns into something beautiful."
"One of the most beautiful. Long, like a ribbon. People used to put pictures of them on the walls. You'd never guess it started like that." He was watching her face do the thing he'd waited for, the interest catching. "It takes work. They only change when they're cared for. Loved, basically. An ugly fish nobody wanted, that becomes lovely because somebody finally bothered."
"Okay," Ren said. "Now I want one. Obviously I want one. You did that on purpose."
"Find me a good one, Sage."
There were three of them in the tank and a dozen more, Sage told him. He walked the dock while Ren negotiated with a baffled fisherman, and looked over the rail at the water until Sage flagged the one worth having.
[ SCAN — Feebas (wild, under the pier) ]
Potential: Green
Type: Water
Affinity: B+
Ability: Oblivious (it does not notice insults; useful, given the life it leads)
Speciality: Tidewell Grace — a healer's line under the ugliness; what it becomes will mend more than it hurts.
Compatible Treasures: Prism Scale, Clear Bell fragment
Possible Route: Milotic, and further if she keeps it happy
"Green," Adam said. "Under the pier, the one near the post. That's your good one."
Ren caught it in about four minutes, most of which was her lying flat on the boards with an arm in the water going here, ugly, come here in the voice she used on the Weavile. The Feebas came, because it was Oblivious and did not know it was supposed to be afraid. The ball rocked twice and stopped.
She sat up with it, delighted, salt water to the elbow.
"Hi," she told the ball. "You're going to be gorgeous. You don't know it yet."
They took a room over the market and spent the evening the way you spend a first night in a new place, which was listening. Trainers talk. A port full of them talks a lot. Adam bought two dinners and a round of drinks for a table of locals and came back up with a map marked in pencil and most of what he needed.
There was good ground north, in the forest along the river, if you wanted small Pokémon with sharp instincts. There was a range of dry hills past that where nobody went much because of the danger. And further north than either, up where the land turned to bare rock, there was a place the fishermen wouldn't guide him to. A canyon under a waterfall where the sky burned. Meteors, they said, a whole lot of them fall there.
Meteor Falls, Adam thought. There it is.
"North, then north, then further north," Ren said, drawing a line on the map with her finger. Her Feebas was in a bowl on the windowsill, being ugly at the harbour lights. "Where do we find mine?"
"The forest and the hills. The place at the end is mine."
"Greedy."
"You're getting three tomorrow. I'm getting one, and it's going to be a nightmare to catch."
They set out in the morning, north along the river, and the country closed in green around them. Old trees, wet light, the constant drip of a forest that had rained recently. The Larvitar walked because it could eat more that way. The rest of the team spread out through the trees searching and scouting.
They found the Ralts because it found Ren first.
It came out of the ferns at the side of the path, small and white and hooded, the green fin on its head tilted toward her. It didn't run. It stood in the open and looked up at Ren with a face you couldn't quite see, and Ren was ready, observing.
"What's it doing," she said quietly.
"They feel what you feel." Adam had stopped a few steps back. "It came to you because you're happy. They avoid people who aren't."
Ren crouched down to its level, slow.
"Scan it," she said, not looking away from it.
Adam already had. He'd gone quiet a second before she asked, and Ren, who knew what his quiet meant, felt her breath change.
[ SCAN — Ralts (wild) ]
Potential: Black
Psychic Affinity: S
Fairy Affinity: S−
Ability:Synchronize (what you do to it, you do to yourself)
Speciality: Sworn Heart — it bonds once, wholly, and what it protects it will not stop protecting. The devotion is the power.
Compatible Treasures: Gardevoirite, Dawn Shard, Twilight Veil-glass
Possible Route: Kirlia → Gardevoir, and a step past that most never reach
"Ren." Adam's voice had become careful. "It's Black."
She went still in a way he recognised. It was the way he'd gone still on the mountain, in the scree, over the Larvitar.
"That's the same as your monster," she said.
"Same tier. Second one we've ever seen on this world. Very lucky." He watched the small white creature watch her. "The first one I had to beat half to death over eleven days. This one walked up to you, and you talk about fairness. Hmph."
"As you said, it's because I'm very happy." Ren said it strangely, like she was testing whether it was allowed.
"Yeah."
She held out her hand. The Ralts considered it, and then it put its small hand against her fingers, and something passed between them that Adam felt. Ren caught it without a fight. The ball closed like a door shutting softly, and she held it in both hands for a moment before she stood up.
"Okay," she said, and her voice wasn't quite even. "Okay. That one's important. That one I'm keeping forever."
"I know."
"Don't be smug."
"I'm not being smug." He wasn't. "Come on. We still have a long way today."
The forest gave out into dry country, low stony hills the colour of old brick, cut through with cave mouths that breathed cool air. This was the ground the fishermen had warned him off. Adam saw why within the hour, when Sage flagged something in a crack in the rock face and it turned out to be looking back at him.
It was small and black and gold and, from the front, almost unbearably cute. Round, mild, a little tuft, two big calm eyes. It sat in the mouth of its crevice like a pet waiting to be adored.
"Oh," said Ren, who had a real and undignified soft spot for a certain kind of thing. "Oh, look at it. Look at its little face."
"Don't."
"Adam, it's precious. What is it? Is it mine? Please say it's mine."
"It can be yours." He was reading the scan and keeping a respectful distance from the crevice. "Look at the back of its head before you fall in love with the front."
Ren looked. On the back of its head, folded up and pretending to be nothing, were a second set of jaws. Two great steel plates the size of the rest of its body, hinged, dark and clearly built to close on something.
Ren's smile changed into a different, worse smile.
"It's got a trap growing out of its skull," she said, with enormous approval. "It looks like that and it's got a bear trap on the back. It's horrible. I adore it. What is it?"
[ SCAN — Mawile (wild) ]
Potential: Green
Steel Affinity: A
Fairy Affinity: A
Ability: Intimidate (the cute face lowers a guard; the jaws do the rest)
Speciality: Iron Deceiver — everything about the front is bait. It has never once fought fair and does not intend to start.
Compatible Treasures: Mawilite, Steel Vein ore Possible Route: stays Mawile, but a Mawilite makes it a genuine problem
"It plays helpless and then it takes your hand off," Adam said. "The face is the weapon. The jaws just finish the deal."
Ren was thrilled.
She did not knock this one cold. She sat down a few feet from the crevice, out of range of the jaws, and had a conversation with it, the way she'd learned to on the mountain with the Weavile, which was to treat it not as prey but as a professional. The Mawile listened. Two predators recognising each other.
Ren chose to send out her Weavile. The fight started immediately. Weavile rushed in with Quick Attack and immediately switched to Night Slash. Mawile used Iron Defence to tank the Quick Attack and smoothly transitioned into Iron Head, clashing with Weavile's slash. Both were knocked back but Weavile came out worse. The typing played a role here. The fight continued. Weavile was never one to give up, so it rushed in again despite its disadvantage. Blow after blow, it kept coming. Ren had had enough. She knew what it was doing; this was training for it. "Finish it, we don't have a lot of time left today. Use the move we practiced yesterday." Weavile acknowledged the order and rushed in again, this time dodging the huge jaws closing in on it and performing a chopping move, hitting the Mawile on the head, then dodging again and using the same move. The Mawile couldn't take it anymore and dropped, exhausted. "Good job. Breaking all those bricks paid off."
Ren threw the ball and after a few clicks it stopped moving. She clipped the ball to her belt and let out a slow breath.
"Three," she said. "Feebas, Ralts, Mawile. In two days." She looked at Adam. "You kept your promise."
"One more region after this and you're done."
"Now we get yours." She nodded north, to where the hills went bare and the land climbed toward pale rock and a sound, very faint, of falling water. "The nightmare."
"Worse than a nightmare," Adam said. "It's smart. Nightmares you wake up from." He shouldered his pack and started walking.
The hills ran out into bare rock. Cracked dark stone, folded up into a canyon that a river had been cutting for longer than the region had been named. At the head of it a waterfall came down white out of a cave in the cliff, and the cave went back into the rock further than the light did. The stones underfoot weren't the colour of the rest of Hoenn. They were black, heavy and, in places, half-melted, as if they'd arrived hot.
Sage.
[ Yes. This is the place. The whole area is magnetically charged. ]
They went into the cave, and the team came with them, tense now. And a good distance in, was the thing Adam had come across an ocean for.
It was not a Beldum. He'd half hoped for a Beldum, a single floating eye he could out-patience over a week the way he'd meant to. This was bigger. Two bodies fused into one, four blue-steel limbs, two red eyes instead of one, hanging in the air over the rock without wings, without effort, held up by nothing he could see. It had already evolved once. It hung there in the dark of the cave, still, watching them come.
It looked at them. Both eyes. Its eyes were cold, calculating. It had done arithmetic on them before they finished walking in.
[ SCAN — Metang (wild) ]
Potential: Purple
Steel Affinity: S−
Psychic Affinity: A+
Ability: Clear Body (you will not weaken it with attacks; there are no cheap wins here)
Speciality: Twin Mind — two brains, one will, and both of them are smarter than the trainer. It does not panic. It calculates.
Compatible Treasures: Meteorite shard, Metagrossite, Star's Vein iron Possible Route: Metagross, and a cosmic-steel lineage past that
"Purple," Adam said. "It's already a Metang, and a very smart one."
"How do you catch it?"
"Carefully." He was already thinking. This was the part he actually liked, the part that had nothing to do with power and everything to do with a problem. "You can't scare it, you can't trick it, it doesn't get tired the way an animal does and it won't make a mistake out of fear. It's not a bear. It's a chess player."
"So you out-play it."
"Yes. It reads intent, so it'll see a plan coming." He looked at his team, spread tense across the cave floor, and then at the thing floating in the dark. "Which means we don't bring a plan. We roll."
It took the rest of the day and most of the next.
The Metang fought like a robot. It met the Primeape's rush with a psychic wall and folded the monkey back across the cave without moving. It saw the Beedrill's angle before the Beedrill committed to it. It ignored the Haunter's tricks because it could tell, somehow, which of them were real. Every opening Adam built, it had already closed. It did not tire. It did not err. It was, exactly as Sage had said, calculating, and it was solving them faster than they could take it down.
On the first evening he lost his patience with it. He built what he thought was a clean trap, the Haunter drawing its eyes while the Beedrill came in behind, and the Metang read the whole thing before it shut and put the Beedrill into the far wall hard enough that Ren winced. Adam pulled the team back and sat in the cold. He was angry for a while, not at the Metang, at himself.
Then he stopped feeding it problems it could solve.
He put the whole team in at once, which no sane trainer did against a single target, and told them not to coordinate. Every pokemon, except Marshadow, with different instincts, no plan for the Metang to read, just noise and pressure from all directions with a Larvitar sitting in the middle of it getting hit and not caring in the slightest. The Metang could out-think one attack. It could out-think a formation. It could not out-think the whole team, because there was no next move to predict when the things doing the moving didn't know it themselves.
It made its first mistake in two days on the second afternoon. A small one. It committed to blocking the Primeape a fraction early, and in that fraction the Larvitar, which it had written off as furniture, hit it in the seam where its two bodies met with everything a Black-potential rock-eater had.
The Metang rang like a struck bell and dropped into the ground.
Adam threw the ball before it recovered. Not to trap it easily, there was nothing easy about it, but to make the offer at the one second it might consider one. The ball took it. It shook, and shook, and shook, and Adam stood in the cold of the cave, not breathing, because a Metang that didn't want to be caught would break out of a ball all day.
It stopped.
Not because it was beaten. It could have kept going. It just stopped.
"Huh," Adam said, into the quiet. His hands weren't quite steady. "I got the motherfucker."
[ Congratulations. ]
Ren was laughing, up on the rocks, her three new Pokémon and her Weavile arranged around her like a court.
"Two days," she called down. "I caught all three of mine in an afternoon and you had your whole team thrown around a cave by one grumpy magnet."
"It's a Metang."
"It's gorgeous. I love its fighting spirit." She came down off the rock, still grinning. "Look at us. Collecting all these troublemakers."
Adam looked at the ball. The brain his team had been missing.
"Come on," he said. "There's a waterfall between us and dinner, and I'm not carrying the Larvitar."
Behind them, in the dark, the Larvitar found a bunch of meteor fragments and set about munching on them.
AN: If we get to 300 power stones, I will release an extra chapter on 500, another one. If you wish to support the story and read ahead, visit [email protected]/skeri123