Marshadow would not stay in the ball.
Adam had tried once, on the road out of Lavender, and got the distinct impression of a door being politely closed in his face. So now it just walked. Or rather it didn't walk. It lay flat in his shadow and travelled that way. When it wanted to be seen it stood up out of the ground and was simply there, a smudge of a person at his left, keeping pace.
It made the Mankey furious. The Mankey had not worked out where the new one ranked and clearly suspected it ranked above him, which was intolerable.
"Your monkey's going to start a war," Ren said.
"He's welcome to try."
They stopped to eat where the road bent, and Adam finally did the thing he'd been putting off since the tower, which was to find out how good or bad his new pokes were.
He let Sage look at the Gastly first. It hung upside down in the air in front of him, grinning, thrilled to be the centre of anything.
[ SCAN — Gastly (A. Varen) ] Potential: Blue Ghost/Poison Affinity: A Ability: Levitate Speciality: Grave-Born (dormant) — it grew up in a tower packed with the dead. After evolution to Gengar it will emit an eerie aura lowering its opponents stats slightly. Possible Route: Haunter → Gengar
"Blue," Adam said. "Haha, very good, a nice surprise."
The Gastly did a flip and blew a raspberry at the Mankey, who tried and tried to punch the smug ghost but failed every time.
Then the Cubone. It hadn't left his leg since Lavender and it didn't leave it now, standing there with the club in both hands, watching the road like it expected something to rush at it.
[ SCAN — Cubone (A. Varen) ] Potential: Green Ground Affinity: B+ Ability: Rock Head Speciality: Mourner's Weight (dormant) — the skull it wears is not its own. After evolution it gains traits of the previous skull owner. Possible Route: Marowak
"Green," Ren read over his shoulder. "That's not much."
"It's enough." Adam put a hand on the small helmeted head. The Cubone let him. "It doesn't have to be a monster. It just has to be alright."
Ren looked at him, suspicious.
Then Marshadow.
He waited.
[ Host. ]
Yes.
[ I have checked it four times. ]
And?
[ Big surprise. ] A pause. [ Divine. And I can't even get a proper read on the details. ]
Adam looked down at his own shadow, lying on the road in the perfectly ordinary shape of a man.
"Divine, wow," he said.
[ A true monster Host. ]
"...Right."
Ren was a bit jealous.
"Five," she said. "You have five. Including a god."
"He's not a god."
"Uh-huh, we both know it has the potential to be one."
"That's not the same as a god." He considered. "It's close."
Saffron was the biggest city they'd seen. Glass towers, wide clean streets, trams. After Lavender's grey it should have felt like waking up.
It didn't. People walked fast and talked quietly. Shops were open with nobody in them. There was a tension in the place, and it was all pointing at the same building: a low grey gym near the middle of the city with no queue outside it and a lot of people crossing the street to avoid it.
Ren looked at it.
"Something's wrong here," she said.
"Yeah."
"Aren't you going to ask what?"
Adam watched a woman steer her kid away from the place.
"No," he said.
Ren raised an eyebrow at him.
"I'm not here to fix all problems in my way." He shifted the strap on his shoulder and kept walking. "If something is in my way I will deal with it, but I won't go out of my way to solve every mystery and problem." He shrugged. "Somebody else can be the hero of this one."
"That's very cold."
"It's very much not my problem," Adam said, and she laughed, and that was that.
He did feel it, on the way in. A small tug, the old reflex that said you could fix this in about nine minutes. He let it go past.
[ You could, though. ]
I know.
[ Understood. ]
Sage let it drop, which he appreciated more than he said.
Inside, the air was cold and the lights were too even, and there was a little girl standing in the middle of the floor holding a doll.
She was maybe six. She was also not entirely there; the air around her felt wrong, and she cast no shadow on a floor that was lit from every angle. She looked up at Adam and smiled with enormous friendliness.
"Do you want to play?"
"No, thank you," Adam said.
The child's smile stayed exactly where it was, and behind her, at the far end of the room, a woman stood up out of a chair.
Sabrina was young, and pale, and her face showed no emotion. She looked at them the way you look at furniture you're deciding whether to move. Her Kadabra stood at her side without being called, and when she blinked, it blinked.
"Two challengers," she said. Her voice had no bottom to it. "Three on three. If you lose, you stay. I have a room for people who lose."
The little girl giggled.
Ren went very still beside him, and Adam felt the change in her. She was assessing the danger.
"She's not lying," Ren murmured. "She thinks she can keep us here."
Can she?
[ On a human of this world, easily. On you two, impossible. She is very strong for what she is, Host, a psychic. ]
"Then it's fine," Adam said aloud, and stepped up to the line. "Me first."
He reached for the Gastly. It was going to enjoy this. It had been sulking in its ball over the lack of anyone to frighten, and a room this humourless was practically a gift.
He never got the ball off his belt.
The shadow at his feet stretched, stood, and moved in front of him. It stopped in the centre of the ring, facing Sabrina.
Adam looked at its back for a second.
"Yeah," he said. "Alright."
He put the Gastly away.
Kadabra went first. It was fast, strong, and it had been beating grown trainers since before Sabrina stopped smiling. It came in with a psychic strike that folded the air.
Marshadow was not standing there anymore. It turned into a shadow and rushed towards Kadabra. Before Kadabra could make a second move it popped out behind it and ended the battle with a single strike. Kadabra dropped to the gym floor.
Sabrina's face didn't move. She returned it and sent the Mr. Mime.
Mr. Mime was the tank. It went to work immediately, hands out, laying down barriers, a shimmer of Reflect, a second of Light Screen, patient walls stacking one behind another. Its job was to set the battle in favour of its team.
Marshadow walked through them. Not around. There was a burst of shadows around it and the barriers just disappeared. Adam got a familiar feeling from it. Almost like his theft ability.
Sabrina ordered Mr. Mime to attack using Confusion. As it was preparing the move, a Shadow Punch hit it straight in the face, launching it into the wall on the other side of the gym.
The Mankey standing with Adam showed something like respect in its eyes after that punch.
For the first time, Sabrina moved. It was very small. Her hand, at her side, opened and then closed.
"Alakazam," she said.
And Alakazam was the real thing. It came out and the temperature of the room dropped, and it did not attack. It sat, cross-legged, spoons up, and it began to build.
[ Calm Mind. It is stacking. Every second it grows. ]
Adam knew this play. He'd used it. You build yourself into a fortress, then you walk over whatever's left. Alakazam stacked, and the pressure in the room rose like water, and something finally showed on Sabrina's face.
It was confidence.
Marshadow looked unimpressed.
It again dropped into its shadow and blasted out under Alakazam, draining all its boosts and punching it into the ground, shaking the whole gym.
The room was extremely quiet. You could only see the dust rising from the fallen pokemon. The little girl was not giggling anymore.
Sage. Analysis
[ Spectral Thief Move, very effective. ]
Adam looked at the grey thing standing in the wreckage of a gym, impressed by the display.
Sabrina was staring at him. Not at Marshadow. At him. Her face was doing something now, and it was fear.
"What are you," she said.
"A tourist." Adam held out his hand. "Badge, please."
She gave it to him.
"Same terms," Ren said, stepping up.
Sabrina looked at the two balls on her belt. Just two. And something moved behind her eyes that was almost mercy, or almost contempt; hard to tell, on that face.
"You have two Pokémon," she said. "I will use two."
"You'll use three."
"...Why."
"I don't need your pity," Ren said pleasantly, "and this makes it more of a challenge."
Adam leaned back against the wall and folded his arms thinking, not for the first time, that he had never in his life met anyone as stupid as her, or as good.
She sent the Pidgey out first, and the Pidgey did what the Pidgey always did, which was look down on everything on principle and show it by being an absolute menace.
The healed Kadabra came in fast. Pidgey was faster. It didn't matter as much as Ren wanted it to; psychic force doesn't need to catch you, it simply arrives, and the bird took a hit that folded it sideways into the floor, knocking it out. Nine seconds. Ren's jaw tightened, and she returned it, and said nothing.
"Butterfree."
The Butterfree drifted out over the ring like it had wandered in by accident. Sabrina looked at it with flat contempt.
She should have paid more attention.
"Sleep Powder," Ren said.
And here was the thing about Ren's dreamy, distractible, leaf-obsessed butterfly: its eyes. Great compound eyes that missed nothing, that made every scatter of powder it threw land where it was aimed, and Sleep Powder does not care how strong you are. It only cares whether it touches you. This Butterfree was also much faster than any Butterfree should be. That was its flying speciality. Combined with its insane observational ability, it was a great combo.
The Butterfree flew high and fast, spreading the powder around Kadabra. It tried to dodge, but it inhaled some of it anyway.
Kadabra sat down in the middle of the floor and went to sleep. Ren had the Butterfree hit it until Sabrina retrieved it.
Mr. Mime came next, and Mr. Mime was harder, because Mr. Mime got its screens up before the powder landed. Ren's bug attacks, the ones that should have shredded a psychic, came through the shimmer at half strength. Adam saw Ren make the thinking face.
"Light Screen," she said, to herself. Then: "Fine. Stop with the ranged attacks. Go and bite it."
Light Screen stops the special attacks. It does nothing at all about a bug the size of a dinner plate closing its jaws on you, and Ren had watched carefully enough to know the difference, which almost nobody does. The Butterfree went in up close and physical, under the barrier that wasn't built for it, and soon after Mr. Mime went down having nightmares about the crazy feral Butterfree.
Then Alakazam.
It was angry, and used the same strategy it had against Adam. Calm Mind. Twice. Three times. And this time it succeeded.
As the Butterfree used its bug moves it did damage, but it wasn't enough.
"It Recovers," Ren said, out loud. "It heals faster than she can chip. So I can't grind it." Her eyes never left the field. "One shot, then."
The Alakazam used Psychic. The Butterfree was hit, and it went down, all the way down. For a second Adam thought that was it.
It got up.
Barely. Wings crumpled on one side, drifting crooked, one clean hit from finished. Ren had every reason to recall it. She could have walked out and come back next week. She looked at the ruined little thing and said, very quietly:
"You've got this. Make it work."
The Butterfree threw its powder.
It should not have landed. Alakazam was three Calm Minds deep, faster than anything in the building, with all the time in the world to move. It moved.
Here is the important point. The Butterfree never threw the powder at where Alakazam was. It threw it at where Alakazam would be. The first throw had been a feint.
The strongest psychic in Saffron fell asleep standing up and toppled forward onto the gym floor.
Ren stood there breathing hard, with a broken butterfly wobbling in the air above her, and Sabrina put the badge into her hand without a word.
After the gym battles they found a bench. Ren sat with the Butterfree in her lap and fed it in silence. Its wings were bent. She straightened them with a care she would not normally have shown.
"It won," she said at last.
"Uhm, a great fighter, that one. That's the only thing that happened in there today that was actually impressive."
Ren looked at him sideways. "Your shadow walked through them."
"My shadow doesn't need me to do that." He nodded at the crumpled bug. "That one needed you. It'd be nothing without you. That's the difference, and it's not a small one. You trained it."
She didn't answer, but she didn't argue either, and the tips of her ears went a little red, which he pretended not to see.
Then she straightened up, and got out the map. Ren put her finger on the very edge of it, past Kanto, where the coast turned west into somewhere else.
"I need a team," she said. "A real one. I can't keep doing this with a bird and a butterfly while you walk around with a god in your shadow."
"He's not a god."
"Adam."
"...Whatever."
"West," Ren said. "There are mountains out there. I want something tougher. You mentioned some good choices there."
Adam sighed. "We're leaving a gym behind. Surge, south of here. The Electric Gym. We'd have to double back for it."
"So we double back later." She didn't look up from the map. "The badges aren't going anywhere. I need a team."
Hard to argue with that.
Adam looked at where her finger had landed. He'd been quietly planning to find a Larvitar in those mountains for a month, and he said nothing about it, because he wanted her to think it was her idea.
"West," he agreed.
And so they started their journey to the Johto region.
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