Other than her Pokémon partners, ten people and Pokémon visited Fe over the course of her week-long hospitalization. And one more almost did.

  Here is a selection of their stories.

  Night one: At 4:47 PM, on the 11th of August, Ranger Sergeant Janine Egao, with the assistance of a Ranger-Affiliated Independent Pokemon, brought Fione Alvida, henceforth referred to as ‘Ms. Alvida’ to Central Techne Hospital.

  At 4:49 PM Ms. Alvida was recorded as presenting symptoms of severe blood loss and possible syn-collapse.

  At 4:54 PM, Ms. Alvida entered surgery for deep lacerations, significant syn-poisoning, internal and external bruising, complete syn-exhaustion, and a class IV hemorrhage.

  At 5:03, a nurse sent a call to Ms. Alvida’s emergency contacts, one Ella Alvida-Joy and one Pern Alvida.

  At 5:07 PM, Ella Alvida-Joy arrived at the hospital.

  “Where is she?” Ella knew she must have looked a fright, but somehow, she couldn’t bring herself to care overmuch in this moment.

  “She’s in surgery Ella. They’re treating her right now. She’s going to be okay.”

  Ella recognized the placating tone. It was one she’d used at work almost every day of her life. Somehow, being on the other side of it, she found it wasn’t nearly as comforting as she’d always imagined it.

  “Please Sab. I’ve got to see her. Or, or, I could scrub in. I could help.” Ella knew she was begging, but what did pride and composure matter when her daughter might be dying.

  “Ella!” the other Joy’s voice was stern, and she punctuated the exclamation by grabbing Ella’s shoulders. “”They have her. I promise you. I made sure that Pamela is the lead surgeon. Only the best for the family.”

  Pamela. Pam. Ella’s third cousin and Sabine’s first. One of the few Joys in Techne who had gone into human care instead of Pokémon. An extremely talented doctor. Family.

  Ella felt herself sag against the other woman, her fellow Joy easily holding her up. “I just– I, you said she had a class IV hemorrhage Sab. Class IV!”

  “And she was teleported right from the incident site to the hospital, where she got due priority for being a ranger trainee, a Joy, and a child. Everything’s working Ella. Fe is going to be okay.”

  The other Joy led her to a familiar lounge. Ella recognized the comfortable benches, the warm lighting, the quiet television monitor, she’d just always been the one bringing people here before, never the one being brought. “Why don’t you take a seat. I told the girls to keep an eye out for Pern. I’ll send him on up as soon as he arrives.”

  If he’ll even step away from his work for this. Some dark, slithering part of her mind supplied. She shook her head. That wasn’t fair to Pern. He’d be here, as soon as he possibly could. That she’d arrived first would only make sense, considering her family had contacted her mere minutes after Fe had been brought to the hospital.

  Ella scanned the room for an open chair or bench, somewhere she could take a seat, when her eyes found a familiar form.

  She couldn’t see the woman’s face- the ranger sergeant currently had her head in her hands- but the bloodstained uniform and straight black hair were unmistakable.

  The tall Kantonian woman had claimed a chair by a table in one corner of the room, and was currently accompanied only by a blobby pink Clefairy, the visibly exhausted-looking Pokémon rubbing a comforting claw over the ranger sergeant’s shoulder.

  Two instincts warred in Ella, one demanding she Tauros forward and confront the sergeant about what had happened to her daughter, and the other compelling her to reach out a comforting hand of her own to the clearly-distraught woman.

  After a half-second of indecision, Ella ruthlessly quashed the latter impulse. She wasn’t here in this hospital today as a Joy. She was here as a mother.

  “Sergeant.” Ella could tell her tone was frosty, but she didn’t think it was so terrifying as to inspire the stiffening she saw in the other woman.

  Slowly, painfully, the ranger pulled her head up from her hands, revealing red eyes and deep-set wrinkles.

  The woman’s dark brown pupils met Ella’s own, and to the nurse’s confusion, she saw relief crystallize in the ranger sergeant’s gaze. “Nurse Joy,” the woman croaked, her smoke-addled voice even thicker and choked than usual.

  “That’s Mrs. Alvida-Joy, right now sergeant.” Ella replied primly. “What happened to my daughter?”

  Confusion marred the Kantonian woman’s face for a few moments, before understanding dawned. “Alvida. Of course. You are Fe’s mother. We have talked on the phone.”

  “And on those calls, you assured me that you had left your homeland to go to a place where things like this don’t happen!” Ella did her best to keep her voice level, but found herself almost shouting by the end of her tirade.

  To her credit, the ranger sergeant looked beyond chagrined. “I– I did. And I meant it. What happened to Fe– should not have.”

  “On that we agree.” Ella replied frostily, in spite of the way the sergeant’s Clefairy was bristling. “I know being a ranger isn’t fully safe, but why is my daughter, a junior ranger, being hospitalized with life-threatening injuries after only six-months under your guidance?”

  “The circumstances were– extenuating,” the sergeant replied after a few moments. “Fe– the doctors say she will recover. I am sorry Mrs. Alvida-Joy, but considering the events of this day, I can only be thankful that things were not worse.”

  “Worse?” Ella found herself off-balance. “What happened out there sergeant?”

  “YOU!” a voice sounded from the entrance to the room. A short woman was standing there, tears streaming down her face, snow and ice still coating her coat. Her expression was simultaneously grief-stricken and apoplectic. “Where is my son?” the woman asked, as she hurtled forwards toward Janine. “What happened to my Mark?”

  The dread that had receded when Janine’s eyes had met Ella’s returned and redoubled. “I apologize, Mrs. Alvida-Joy. We will need to talk more later. This is a conversation I must have first.”

  Ella wasn’t ready to step away, but a second look at the way Janine’s face was twisting as she prepared herself for this confrontation told the nurse that maybe, today, a different mother had precedence for the ranger sergeant’s attention.

  As Ella staggered to a seat on a far side of the room, the unearthly wail that rose up behind her did nothing to help her stop from imagining just how things could have been worse.

  -

  Night Two: At 6:11 AM, Ms. Alvida suffered some sort of fit, in spite of prior sedation. This event forced Doctor Merced to apply another three mg of propofol. Her syn readings fluctuated wildly, and she demonstrated enough strength that multiple nurses were required to hold her in place. Her upward syn-capacity measurements have been adjusted to reflect this capability.

  “Why isn’t she waking up?” Pern knew the question wasn’t helpful. Knew that no one would have a satisfactory answer for him. He just couldn’t help himself.

  “She’s recovering Mr. Alvida. And we have to keep her pretty far under to keep her from injuring herself further. Your daughter displays– surprisingly developed syn capabilities. Especially for someone with her particular disability.”

  “But she’s going to wake up? Right? She’ll be okay?”

  “Don’t worry Mr. Alvida. Your daughter is going to be just fine. She just needs rest,” the nurse reassured him, his voice patient and kind.

  Pern didn’t want to be an imposition. He knew that asking the same question four times in two hours wasn’t doing anyone any good.

  And yet he really, truly, could not help himself. The view of his daughter in the hospital bed, her frail form swaddled in bandages and off-white sheets, her sallow face surrounded by beeping machines. It kept… wavering. Flickering like a mirage. And in its place, his mind supplied another vision. Of a woman with similar, achingly similar features, laid out just like his daughter was. Slowly fading away in a bed just like this one, over weeks and months.

  Eventually, the vision grew too strong, and Pern had to tear his eyes away. Luckily, he had just what he needed to distract himself already on his person. Nowadays, he was never separated from it.

  Out came the secured laptop. In goes the charger. Out comes the wireless dedenne. In goes the password. March0315Fifteen. IT would tell him that using his daughter’s birthday as his password wasn’t secure, but it was far, far better than the idiots who stuck a post-it note to their PCs in Pern’s opinion, and this wasn’t a RealTech machine anyway so they could go screw.

  The device took a couple of minutes to warm up, a spinning company logo his only distraction from his daughter’s bed-ridden form.

  He keenly felt his wife’s absence, but Ella had been up for over twenty-four hours, and needed sleep. He did too, but he’d volunteered to take the first shift watching over their bedridden daughter.

  With a cheerful beep, the laptop finally finished loading its OS. The desktop formed, except everything other than the bar at the bottom was covered by a field of white, with a single, unblinking dot in the middle. “Stop that, Rubber,” Pern admonished his new partner, causing the mischievous eye to retract. The Porygon it was attached to pulled away from the screen and danced through the verdant landscape on his desktop background like it was a real place.

  “You’re still suppressing the trackers?” he asked the software-cum-Pokémon in a soft voice.

  The bird-like, pink, polygonal Pokémon flashed a green light on its ‘bill,’ an affirmation.

  “Excellent. Now, let’s keep going where we left off. We’ve got a lot of logs to audit.”

  Programming his own Porygon to help code had been a fun hobby. Now, Rubber was an indispensable resource in a war only he was privy too.

  Someone from inside RealTech had leaked the method for jailbreaking the BattleFieldGo. The device Pern and his team had put years of blood, sweat, and tears into. And now his baby was causing the same three fluids to run throughout all of Ferrum. He wasn’t blind to the results of his hard labor.

  And he was determined to find the one responsible. No matter what it took.

  -

  Night Three: At 7:38 PM, Ms. Alvida regained consciousness. She was able to spend three hours awake before falling asleep once again.

  “I get that she is currently asleep, but it is imperative that I speak with her as soon as possible. There are urgent questions about what happened to her that need to be answered.”

  “Well while I understand the urgency sergeant, the simple truth of the matter is that Ms. Alvida is exhausted. She needs rest, and we cannot in good conscience wake her up again today. You’ll have to visit her tomorrow.”

  Haruka took a deep, centering breath. The last few days had been trying, in a way she hadn’t experienced in years, but that was no excuse to lose her composure. This fine gentleman was just doing his due diligence. While it was unfortunate that in this moment, that was inconvenient for her needs, that didn’t give her any right to inconvenience him back.

  No matter how satisfying it would be.

  A few more meditative inhalations later, and she’d gotten the dark, swirling pit inside her enough under control to reply. “I understand. I will visit again tomorrow, then. Thank you.”

  The nurse nodded, face not unsympathetic, before turning and entering Fe’s hospital room once more, closing the door behind him.

  Haruka had heard a lot about confidence in the girl’s recovery, but if they were having a nurse on-hand in the room overnight, maybe the prognosis was worse than the hospital was willing to share.

  That wasn’t a pleasant thought, and it was one Janine tried to shake off as she made her way down to the lobby. She’d already lost one subordinate this week. The thought of losing another…

  A buzzing from her waste pulled her out of her dark imaginings. With a start, she yanked the pager off her waste and peered at the device. Words appeared on the device’s small screen, harshly visible under the hospital lobby’s fluorescent lights. ‘Emergency situation. All sergeants report to their outposts immediately. Grade 1 emergency.’

  The code had her sucking in a deep breath from between her teeth. It seemed like tonight, somehow, someone was having just as shitty a time as she was.

  -

  Night Four: At 12:43 PM, Ms. Alvida’s Pokémon partner, an unknown Water-type, demonstrated some sort of transformation, swelling to fill the entire hospital room. The event necessitated a security response, but Ms. Alvida was able to get her partner under control before security staff arrived at her room. Ms. Alvida re-exhausted her syn during this event, and may need additional monitoring. See further details below.

  I left my best friend’s hospital room feeling buoyed. I’d done my best to not let it show, but losing to Alex Perkins had left a sour taste in my mouth. Sure, he was laughably out of our league, and anyone who bothered to look up the match would see that we’d taken a whole round off of him in spite of an order of magnitude in rank difference, but in the end, losing was still losing.

  It still sucked.

  Of course, seeing Fe laid out with all of those injuries really put my disappointment into perspective. I’d lost an ultimately inconsequential match that didn’t even really have any chance of affecting my ability to qualify for this year’s promotion tournament.

  My best friend had spent the last three days fighting for her life, first in the field and then the hospital.

  I’d never tell Fe this, but it made me feel sort of small. Here I was battling for sport, crying over losses in a game.

  All the while my best friend was out there saving lives. And risking her own.

  But that was the wrong way to think about this. I hadn’t won my bet with that bastard yet. Just like my best friend, I too was fighting for my life, in my own way. Each battle wasn’t an end-all-be-all encounter, but lose too often, and my existence would no longer be my own.

  That was the condition of my independence, after all. As long as I kept advancing, as long as I reached a new league every year, my family would leave me alone.

  And I would do whatever it took to ensure that they never chained me again.

  -

  Night Five: At 3:19 PM, Ms. Alvida’s partners somehow caused a small fire in the courtyard. There were no witnesses to explain how the Fighting-types created the blaze, and Ms. Alvida’s father, who was supposed to be overseeing them, was apparently too distracted at the time to notice what was happening.

  Ms. Alvida’s other partner, the previously mentioned Water-type that has since been identified as a ‘Wishiwashi’ put out the fire, and apparently spent some time thereafter ‘scolding’ her fellows. The on-duty Chansey reports that her lecture was rather scalding.

  Iadise had never come to love the city. Not like his son had. Even as a boy, Pern had only ever had eyes for the distant skyline, and when they’d moved into Techne his only son had thrived.

  And yet, he didn’t hate it. Not like his father did. To the aging Plantsa, those gleaming spires of metal on the far off horizon were the origin of all woes.

  In the end, what Iadise felt for the city was mainly ambivalence. He and Renowa had tried living there, it wasn’t for them.

  Polona suited them far better.

  And yet here they were, back again. They hadn’t been in Techne for almost a decade now. The last time had been Willow’s funeral. Such a nice young girl. Gone far too soon.

  Little Fione was looking more and more like her every day. Seeing the girl laid out in a hospital bed brought up bad memories, even if his granddaughter was animated, chatting and laughing.

  Willow had been like that too, almost even up until the very end.

  “Is everything okay Bubu?” his granddaughter’s voice broke him out of his reverie.

  “Sorry dear, I just got a little bit distracted. It happens when you get to be my age,” he told her, rubbing the back of his head in faux-chagrin.

  “You’re not even sixty yet Bubu,” she let out a melodious laugh. “Dunu can use the age card, but you’re still too young for that.”

  “Your Dunu will insist he’s young until he’s a century old!” Iadise asserted, getting a fond snort from his wife. “But enough about us old folk. I’d rather hear how you’re doing. How’s this ‘ranger’ thing you’ve got going on?”

  “Well, things were going well,” the teenager snarked. “And I bet they’ll be going well again as soon as they let me out of this hospital bed.”

  “Well if you stop making things worse for yourself, maybe you'll recover faster.” Ella chimed in from one corner of the room, his son’s second wife looking up from where she was working on something with Fione’s small, grey Pokémon.

  Iadise had to suppress a twinge of distaste at the small pests. Multi-mons, and Normal-types at that, were hardly fitting partners in his opinion, but Fione clearly loved the little beasts, so he would swallow his gorge for her sake. “You should listen to your mother, Fione. Golems know, I always listened to Nurse Joy.”

  “No you did not,” his lovely wife refuted with a snort, batting his arm. “You and Mercket drove Magenta up the wall, back in the village. That poor woman had more gray hair than pink before she turned fifty.”

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  “Ok. Golems know I always should have listened to Nurse Joy,” Iadise corrected himself with good humor. “Would have saved us a lot of trouble.”

  “I get it, I get it.” the teenager complained, clearly sick of being nagged. “I’ll be more careful.”

  Iadise was quite certain that his granddaughter would not in fact be more careful, but that was all part of growing up.

  And growing up she was. It felt like just yesterday the girl in front of him was small enough to lift with one hand. Now she was a full-blown teenager.

  He had a teenage granddaughter. What a surreal thought. She was wearing earrings for Iron’s sake! Iadise fought the urge to shake his head. “So, what kind of well were things going before they weren’t? Do you have any fun stories to share with your Bubu and Nuna?”

  Fione hesitated, her eyes flickering as she dredged up a memory. “Ok, here’s a crazy thing that happened. It all started when someone reported a herd of Slowpoke blocking a commuter train.”

  -

  Night Six: 4:47 PM. Ms. Alvida shows remarkable signs of recovery, in spite of depleting her syn again two days ago. Her capacity and regeneration are both remarkably well-developed. No, that’s an understatement. She has the sort of syn capabilities often recorded in veteran soldiers and experienced rangers. Does it have something to do with her disability?

  His first impression of the girl was that she was small.

  “Who’re your friends, Donna?”

  “Oh trust me, these assholes are no friends of mine.”

  Tenowai had little to do with the raising of children back in the village, so when he saw one, he was always struck by how little they were. It was just… strange, imagining a time when these little people would become big ones. His partner agreed, He-who-has-conquered-his-mind’s-eye sending pulses of acknowledgement across their bond.

  “They’re, uh, sort of just standing there.”

  “Yeah they do that. Have been doing that every time they meet someone from the outpost.”

  His second impression was that she was surprisingly large. No, shockingly large. Her syn bursting out from her body as if her juvenile frame couldn’t contain it. Fractal threads tore out of the girl, forming an intricate cocoon of overlapping strands that connected to a ridiculous number of Pokémon scattered throughout the room. At least ten, though he and his partner counted more strings than that.

  “Um, Donna, I think that Medicham’s eyes are glowing. And his are too.”

  “Are you sure? I don’t see anything.”

  That a child who couldn’t synergize could shine so brightly, it was unusual, to say the least. But they weren’t here to evaluate the girl’s capabilities. They were looking for hints of corruption.

  “Hold on, I recognize that outfit. He’s a Plantsa Weaver, right? What does a weaver want with us?”

  “You can tell that just by looking at him?”

  And hints of corruption they found. But just the barest wisps of it, traveling through a small number of the strands. He traced them with his eyes, watching the motes circulate between the girl, and one of her partners, a small fish hovering about the ceiling, swimming along in the open air as if it were the ocean.

  “It’s a pretty distinctive outfit. Look, he’s got the synergy-stone brooch pinning his cloak and everything.”

  “Well, yeah, but weavers aren’t exactly common knowledge these days. Most city kids barely know anything about the Plantsa.”

  The small bits of shadow energy polluting the partnership’s pathways were running back and forth between the two, Pokémon and human, as if sequestered only in those particular strands, no hint of it within either of their cores. And even as he watched, the corruption reduced, straining down into nonexistence as it went between them, as if it were running through a filter.

  “My grandparents were Plantsa, but they left the villages when my dad was a kid. Bubu will go on and on about the villages if you let him.”

  “Huh, I had no idea. Plantsa and a Joy. That’s an odd combination.”

  He’d never seen anything like this before. Not that he’d had a lot of experience with shadow synergy stones in general. Still, usually, their malignant influence required many weavers and great effort to cleanse. To see the corruption fading on its own like this was incredible. Tenowai drew more on his connection with He-who-has-conquered-his-mind’s-eye, sharpening their gaze so they could peer closer into the girl and her Pokémon.

  “Ok, his eyes are definitely glowing.”

  “Huh, I think I see it now.”

  The strands surrounding her obscured their gaze, but with time and effort, they could peel them away, untangle the wires surrounding the girl’s core and look at what lay within unimpeded. But, as they tried to shift one of the strands ever so slightly, they felt a cold, uncompromising gaze fall upon them. Tenowai jerked, and He-who-has-conquered-his-mind’s-eye did the same, both of their eyes tracking up once again. The little fish was staring down at them, and for a moment, the entire ceiling behind her was dark blue, almost black. It looked like the depths of the ocean, and from within the deep, they could see millions of red eyes shining out at them.

  “Hey, rude,” the girl said.

  Unkind. Rumbled the leviathan.

  “Will you quit with the staring already?” requested the child.

  Cease your investigation. Demanded the deep.

  “Otherwise I’m calling hospital security,” she warned.

  Because if you do not, you will drown. It promised.

  “Apologies,” Tenowai sketched a faltering bow, offering the traditional Plantsa greeting and taking a moment to regain his composure as his face turned to the floor. When he looked up again, the vision was gone, replaced by a sedately floating fish and a sickly girl in a hospital bed.

  “I have failed to introduce myself. I am Weaver Tenowai, and this is my partner, Medicham. We are here to ask you some questions about your experiences that led to your hospitalization.”

  The girl looked a bit mollified, and she swept her arm across her side, mirroring the action of dropping a cloak. “My name is Fione, and you are welcome in this place,” she told him, in surprisingly fluent Kuuran.

  The green-haired ranger looked surprised. “You never said you spoke the Plantsa language.”

  “That’s all the Kuuran I know,” the girl admitted Mareepishly. “Well, that and, Regi’tomat horinick.”

  “Golems bless you as well,” Tenowai translated, “though now is the season of Genies, not Golems.”

  The girl ducked her head, looking a tad embarrassed. “I uh, guess that’s true. Sorry, like I said, I don’t speak much Kuuran.”

  “Nor should you. It is a dying language for a good reason. Far better to speak Galarian.” Tenowai knew some voices in the villages would disagree with him, but they’d be drowned out by a far wider majority.

  Both women seemed unsure of how to respond to that proclamation, which really Tenowai should have expected. Understanding it would require historical context that most in Ferrum were not privy to.

  “Apologies, but the conversation has gotten off-track.” Tenowai filled the awkward silence. “If we could reorient, I believe I told you that I had questions about your experiences?”

  “Right,” the girl nodded. “What did you want to know?”

  “It was reported to me that you encountered a Pokémon of unusual ferocity and power. Did you notice anything else strange about it?”

  “Plenty,” the girl’s voice grew somber. “They had,” she hesitated, as if unsure how much to say.

  She looked at the green-haired ranger, who simply nodded. “Tell him everything Fe. Asshole this guy may be, the rangers have worked with the Plantsa for a long time to keep northern and eastern Ferrum safe.”

  Fione nodded. Such a strange name. ‘Child of the sea.’ Not very auspicious, if you knew the legends, which presumably her parents would have. He felt his eyes drifting up to the lazily floating leviathan just a few feet above them.

  Then again, perhaps the name was appropriate after all.

  “The Pokémon I encountered was a Butterfree,”” Fione began, “and they had shards of a synergy stone embedded in their carapace. They were clutching one too, and all of the stones glowed with this awful orange light. There was also an almost palpable corona of shadows around them at all times, and it only got worse every time we got close to knocking them out.”

  That was pretty conclusive. An almost textbook example of a shadow Pokémon, though usually they embedded the malignant crystal in their skin whole, instead of separating it into shards.

  “And how did you survive your encounter with this Pokémon?” he asked the girl. The report he’d received only claimed that she’d defeated it. A rather outlandish supposition, though the fact that she was here to tell her story did lend some credence to the tale.

  “Every time Butterfree got too weak, the synergy stones embedded in them flared, restoring their power, so we got the biggest one, the one it’d been holding, away from it. The stone was– wrong. I could swear it was talking to me, asking me to shove it into my eye, but Mana kept me from doing so, and together we, um, purified the stone, I think?”

  The girl looked unsure, as well she should. What she was claiming was fantastical in the extreme. It took many minds supporting one another to resist the pull of a shadow synergy stone. Any single person and Pokémon attempting to do so would inevitably be subsumed. Still, if there was even a hint of truth to her story. If her feat could be replicated. It could change… everything.

  And the way things were going, something had to change. Before this last month, Tenowai had heard of four shadow synergy stones being created in his three decades of life. In the past two weeks, there’d been six separate instances of a shadow synergy stone appearing.

  The elders were pretty sure that they’d identified the culprit, and were lobbying to get the offending product off the market, but the sort of recall they were demanding would take time, and getting the corporations to do anything that would cost them money was like prying coins away from a Meowth.

  “Tell me exactly what you did to purify the stone,” he demanded.

  She seemed a bit taken aback by his demand, but she blinked her confusion away after a few seconds. “Um, well the stone was overwhelming me, but then Mana grabbed it as well, and we focused on the connection we shared, on all of the positives.”

  The little fish swam down, nestling in the girl’s hair, small little azure forms darting in and out of the brown locks as if they were coral on a reef.

  “It was hard, but as long as we focused on one another, we could ignore the stone well enough. We pushed all our positive emotions back and forth through it, and it connected us, even corrupted like it was. It carried our emotions back and forth through itself, and eventually, we overwhelmed it. After that, the stone cracked in half and changed color,” the explanation was halting, and unsure, but there were no hints of artifice in her words, no falsehoods, just flagging insecurity in what she was saying. “Look, I know this all sounds crazy, but I swear that’s what happened.”

  Tenowai must have been letting some of his doubt leak out onto his countenance, but could it be helped? The story was absurd by its very nature. Not because the process she described wouldn’t work, indeed circulating positive emotions through a shadow synergy stone was the primary method of cleansing one, but because she claimed that she had done it with only one other Pokémon for assistance.

  Generally, it took half a dozen weavers and their partners to cleanse a stone. Sure, they’d never tried cleansing one in pieces before, and certainly that would make a difference, but Tenowai had felt the insidious pull of shadow synergy stones before, and he couldn’t imagine the greatest of champions resisting that power alone, let alone this girl and her little fish. Something else was going on here.

  “Fe, do you mind if my partner here forms a psychic connection between us? We want to make sure there’s no lingering issues from your encounter with the corrupted synergy stone.”

  The girl’s eyes sharpened. “So this is a thing you’ve heard of before? Corrupted synergy stones? This is a thing that happens?”

  It was Tenowai’s turn to consider how much he should say. “The issue is– known,” he finally said. “But rare. Vanishingly so. And they can have lingering effects, so we’d like to make sure you are okay. We can check for things that a comprehensive medical exam might miss.”

  “Okay, no offense Fe, but this sounds like a whole load of mumbo jumbo,” the green-haired ranger, Donna, said.

  “I know it sounds crazy Donna– I really get it. It sounds unbelievable to me too, but– it happened. Things I can’t explain happened. Things that don’t make sense. If the Weaver can shed any light– I have to take that chance.”

  An awkward silence stretched between the two rangers, and after almost ten seconds of warring with himself, Tenowai finally broke it. “There is more to synergy stones than is commonly known. They are not simply batteries, nor are they convenient devices that exist just to facilitate synergizing. They hold the power to transmit our emotions, and they take some of that within themselves in turn.”

  Both women turned from one another to look at him, their attention rapt, and Tenowai found himself faltering a bit in his explanation. He’d never had to share these revelations with an outsider before, and doing so now felt wrong, but it was also true that the Plantsa and the rangers had an old partnership, and no one could argue that these two women were not embroiled enough in the situation to deserve context.

  It is normally no problem for the tears of the earth to hold our paltry feelings, He-who-has-conquered-his-mind’s-eye continued after Tenowai broke off, broadcasting his thoughts telepathically to everyone in the room. However, when torn from their cradles within the earth streams, they lose the ability to circulate what they take in. When they go into such a state, an overwhelming surge of negative emotion can disrupt the balance within the tear, causing it to develop into what the Plantsa call, a shadow synergy stone.

  Both women were silent for a few moments, ruminating on the revelation. Finally, Fione spoke. “So, say, if someone were using one of the new BattleFieldGo’s to synergize with their partner, and were–” she hesitated, and then took a deep breath, and continued, “killed, the resulting negative emotions could cause the synergy stone powering the device to become one of these, ‘shadow stones?’”

  Tenowai nodded, deep and slow. “That certainly sounds like something that could, in theory, cause such an event.”

  The girl reached a hand up, running it almost unconsciously along the flank of the fish nesting in her hair. Another reached out, scratching the carapaces of one of the small yellow spheres laying on the bed with her. “Ok. Ok. Let’s do it. This psychic thing. I’ve done it before and lived. And I’ve got some things I think I should show you.”

  “Fe,” the green-haired ranger started, hesitantly, before shaking her head. “Fine, if that’s your choice,” she turned to Tenowai, “but if you and your partner hurt her, I swear by the serpent itself-”

  “Donna!” Fione cut the other ranger off. “We’re okay, I promise. I’ll be okay. What’s going on with you today? I’d expect this from Janine, but you?”

  The green-haired woman looked like she swallowed a lemon. “It’s… we can talk– I’ll tell you after your thing. I’ll just… wait outside.”

  She stepped away, leaving Tenowai and his partner with Fione and hers.

  “Well that was ominous,” the girl muttered, before looking to him and his partner. “Well, are we doing this?”

  “Indeed. Give us just a moment, and we’ll get started.”

  -

  It was common knowledge in the Plantsa tribes that children should not be given the necessary information and material to temper their syn. Synergizing was fine, as were Ferrum Battles, because those sharpen the partner more than the trainer, and bore little risk.

  Conversely, Pokémon attacks, battling when not synergizing, and synergizing away from gaia spots were all to be avoided.

  The wisdom from the elders was clear. Strengthening your syn too early in life introduced severe risks, and could result in the warping and twisting of one’s development, and that of their partners.

  He’d heard thusly many times, but never had he seen such a clear example of just what the elders had been concerned about.

  Fione’s mind was… fractured. Broken, fundamentally, in ways he and his partner could barely comprehend. It was tied closely to her syn, which was similarly fractal, spiraling off of her almost like a bouquet of separate souls entirely, all only loosely connected to an inner maelstrom that defied description.

  Were she to pull all of these threads together, to focus her efforts and sharpen her syn to its most razor edge, she and her partners could likely accomplish feats normally reserved for veteran warriors and guardians.

  But what need would a child have of such power? In what world was deforming herself in such a way a worthwhile tradeoff for such capability?

  Still, perhaps he was judging her unfairly. After all, her strange warping clearly saved her life. He could see it now, as several versions of the girl busily went about presenting her memories to him and his partner. Any other human mind would have been consumed by the shadow synergy stone they’d encountered, as he’d expected, but not Fione. He watched as, in her memories, the corrupted parts of her psyche ablated away, sequestered and shattered by the healthy portions, and then reabsorbed once more.

  Maybe a powerful multi-minded psychic could replicate her capabilities, a Metagross or Reuniclus perhaps, but otherwise, Fione’s method for purifying a shadow synergy stone with minimal help was not something that was going to revolutionize their current methods.

  The splinters of the girl continued to display an unceasing kaleidoscope of perspectives, offering snapshots of what the girl had seen, heard, thought, and felt during her family’s brief, desperate battle. The presentation was as overwhelming as it was informative, even to a veteran psychic, and he felt his partner straining to maintain the connection. The girl’s mind was simply so… busy. Focusing on any one part of her memories had them losing track of the whole, and trying to perceive it all at once left them unsure of the details.

  Still, they got enough to understand just what it was she was trying to tell them.

  In the real world, mere minutes passed, but the mental strain felt like the effort of hours. They carefully disentangled their psyche from hers, and did their level best to keep their disquiet from their faces. “Thank you Fione, that was quite– instructional.”

  The girl looked a bit pallid, but she nodded firmly. “Of course, Weaver, and Medicham. I thought– it felt like something you needed to see.”

  “Indeed. Your observations will help me silence many doubtful voices amongst our people,” he confirmed. “I know reliving that wasn’t easy. Thank you for your cooperation.”

  “Of course. I just– It’d be nice if no one ever has to experience anything like that again.”

  Tenowai just nodded, even though he was quite certain many others would be suffering similarly in the coming days and months.

  “We shall excuse ourselves, so you can speak with your comrade."

  She nodded, and Tenowai and his partner stepped outside, nodding at the green-haired ranger as they left. The woman took a deep breath, her expression pensive, and then stepped past him into the room. “Okay Fe. I have– I have some bad news to share. It’s about Mark.”

  Tenowai couldn’t make out anything else as the woman shut the door behind her.

  -

  Night seven: Ms. Alvida has been morose all day. She apparently received news yesterday that left her disquieted, and her level of cooperativeness has dropped appreciably.

  However, her mood improved after she was visited by a pair of Pokémon.

  Wilson watched with a fond smile on his face as Fe used crutches to walk around the hospital’s courtyard, a yammering Slakoth in tow. The senior ranger had timed his visit with the normally-sleepy Normal-type’s active hours, and judging by the delighted grin on the girl’s face, he’d made a good decision.

  It was nice to be able to do something good for one of his juniors. To still be able to.

  When Wilson had arrived, the girl had obviously been morose. And no wonder why. Donna had broken the news to her yesterday.

  Luckily, the station’s most recently adopted rescues had done a lot to buoy her mood.

  “Vigoroth. Vigor, vigorpth.”

  “Jealousy is unbecoming,” he lectured the glowering Vigoroth with an easy grin. “She saved your life, you know? And your cub’s.”

  “Roth. Vivigoroth.”

  “She’s not the type to hold grudges, Vigoroth. Go apologize. I’m sure she’d love to get to know you more.”

  The Normal-type hesitated for a few moments, scratching her claws awkwardly in the powdery snow covering the yard, before she puffed out her chest and ambled over to where the girl was laughing as the juvenile Slakoth climbed all over her like a tree.

  She welcomed the white-furred Vigoroth with a gentle smile and a reassuring pat on the arm that had the normally ferocious Pokémon stammering out an awkward thank you/apology.

  Given the time and the chance, Fe would make a great ranger. Wilson was more sure of it than ever. His thoughts and hopes went out to his sergeant. He could only pray that Janine would make sure Fe retained that well-deserved opportunity.

  -

  Night Eight: Ms. Alvida is scheduled for release tomorrow. We recommend that she wait at least one additional week before doing any strenuous activity, and that she return to the hospital should any abnormalities arrive.

  Do you like your partner? He asked the rambunctious Pokémon playing in the yard.

  The six spheroids looking up at him, a variety of expressions on their faces.

  They all responded with a similar lack of guile, however.

  Enough.

  As much as I should.

  I respect her.

  I wish she were more careful.

  Sure.

  More than anything.

  The chorus of voices expressed a medley of opinions that somehow all swirled into one. Many minds of many thoughts that were somehow perfectly aligned in spite of their clear differences.

  They were a fascinating group of Pokémon, with a strange, mercurial aura.

  Generally, having more than one partner was a red flag. A warning sign he looked for in his targets. He’d thought that perhaps he had a likely offender when he’d heard about this hospitalized ranger, but his investigations had borne little fruit.

  She had a robust social life, a happy family, caring coworkers, and even Pokémon whose lives she’d apparently saved.

  Her partners liking her was the final nail in the coffin as far as he was concerned.

  A week of investigation down the drain, but that was okay, Measure once, and cut twice, after all. He couldn’t ever be wrong, which meant he had to put in the effort to be sure that he was always correct.

  Why do you ask? The second largest one asked, opening up a salvo of similar questions from the rest of the little Fighting-types.

  Just making sure, he replied as he began walking away. Take care of your partner. She seems like one of the good ones.

  There weren’t enough of those out there. But in the end, that was okay. It meant that he had many opportunities to deal with the bad ones.

  He fiddled with the faintly glowing orange stone in the pocket of his coat. It felt wrong to admit, but he was looking forward to it. After all, it’s what she would have wanted. If only she could see him now.