“You shot somebody.”

  The words that flew from Kenny’s mouth presumably started out clear and loud, but by the time they made it to her ears… Well, the engine, the wind, and the fact that Casca had one of said ears pressed to Hoshi’s back were each taking their own separate toll in terms of audibility, so they’d become rather destitute. But though his voice was closer to radio static than anything else as far as her conscious mind was concerned, her subconscious could still more-or-less tell what the ex-wrestler was saying – and still make out the tone, too.

  Kenny was calm. Was forcing himself to be calm, because anything else would be admitting weakness.

  And Hoshi was the same – more, even, because it was his demeanour that Kenny was using as emotional scaffolding. And then, of course, there was her. Casca’s reply came out equally calm, not because she was forcing it, but because she really had no idea what she was feeling at all. “Yeah!” It sounded loud to her, but going the other way the same theft of meaning must have been occurring – honestly, it was a miracle they could even talk at all at the speed they were moving. “Big mistake, I know!” Because holy shit, we are going so fast.

  The near-incoherent thought almost made her laugh – they were actually going a lot slower now that they were back on the streets – but the rest of her muddy emotions smothered it. She wasn’t… guilty, really? Or maybe she was? Blah. It was ambiguous, the exact nature of her headspace lost under layers of fluffy cotton. I just shot somebody repeated itself just often enough to break up any larger considerations, the intrusive sentence itself stubbornly unclear. And so as the three Rockets flew down the street, Casca was…

  Well, she wasn’t doing all the thinking she should be doing.

  “Man,” the bodybuilder continued to rumble out, almost in-tune with the machine he was piloting. “That’s… That’s heavy. Heavy shit.”

  Yeah. Heavy shit.

  Ninety-three, ninety-five, and… “Slow down, that should be the place on the right.”

  They’d gone more-or-less in a big circle, from Kenny’s house down to the apartment and then back up. And despite the actual distance they’d travelled being small, somehow that not-quite-a-circle had eaten up most of the afternoon – it was starting to edge into evening, and Hoshi felt like he was going to throw up again.

  And not just because his girlfriend had killed a man; that was fucked, yes, but the prospect of meeting with an executive made the picture of the future he was painting in his head seem bleak – maybe even as bleak as the more solid memories of the past hour. I don’t have the best track record with other Rockets – just getting the older grunts to give me the time of day was a hassle, and I’m not even gonna think about how Dabi treats me… The Doc was unempathetic to a worrying degree, obviously considering him more of a test subject than anything, Kiribo was semi-friendly but also a high-tier weirdo, the instructors might have deliberately offed his uncle…

  Yeah, a bad track record is honestly understating it. Pretty much the only people he got along with were his team, and one of them had been a fucking traitor. So… bracing for impact.

  The street wasn’t anything special, and as Hoshi examined the house itself, he definitely couldn’t see any reason to suspect it was a secret hideout – so that, at least, was a relief. The engine died as Kenny fiddled with the dashboard, but rather than slip off the woman clinging to his back did the opposite; Casca’s grip tightened.

  “We shouldn’t leave it in the street,” she said, voice steadier than Hoshi’s own had been a moment before. “Chances are someone’s made the connection between us and it. Go to the coast, bury it with Quake and Bubbles, then walk back?”

  “But wouldn’t that-” Kenny started, but he cut himself off with a dull snap as his teeth came together. “…Yeah. Makes sense.”

  The roar resumed, and Hoshi was left with his thoughts. Casca… Are you holding up as well as you look, or are you just pretending? Hah, I’m such a damn hypocrite… Luckily, they were still near the water – and more luckily, the sandy coastline was empty going both north and south.

  I guess people are craving a more traditional vacation than a day at the beach, since… Since the Harvest Festival was only a week away. Some might even be out of town early.. I…

  He swallowed heavily as the bike settled down a second time, feeling the chill in the air play over his skin. It felt frigid, the direct inverse of the previous month’s unnatural heat – and although it was probably just the contrast playing a trick on his brain, Hoshi swore he could see his breath just barely forming mist in the salty air. Stay calm. Breathe. It- it isn’t as bad as it feels right now. Tomorrow you’ll wake up, and it’ll be a little less, then a little less, then a little less – just gotta keep it together.

  I can’t believe I got ambushed three times in my own fucking home…

  “Here?” Kenny’s voice broke into his thoughts, and Hoshi grunted out an affirmation after a beat of silence.

  “Yeah, good enough. Probably on the bank; that’ll be less wet – hopefully we’ll be able to come back for it before the day’s out.”

  Yet again, there was a startling mundanity aiding the surreal nature of the scene; the Rocket Executive’s hideout looked normal, just a home-made house that matched its neighbours in that they didn’t really match each other at all. Each one was idiosyncratic, the product of someone who was familiar with construction but unaligned with any particular style or plan, and that freeform-edness bled into the design; the houses were following only a loose suggestion of a grid, not all of them exactly facing the street, and from personal experience Hoshi knew that the lack of uniformity extended underground.

  Whether any particular house had a basement was only possible to know if they advertised it, or from a special map that could be requested from city hall – but in a way even that was easy. Back in his father’s time..? Wiring it all – and plumbing it all – while making that map in the first place, it must’ve been a complete nightmare; the perfect environment to slip something extra into the foundations.

  Or maybe they had it done sometime in the last couple years, and I’m just making shit up.

  Whatever the case, Hoshi let the speculation die as he stepped up the stone walkway towards their destination. He had more important things to worry about. Danny. I need to help Danny, and get out of the city, and do both of those without getting caught…

  Because as easy as the fight with the one Jenny had been, fighting a squad of them would be an entirely different prospect.

  Sooner than he’d have liked, the front door blocked his path. A trio of knocks left his still-injured fist complaining, but the answer distracted him from the pain of scabbed-over skin and the short, shallow scratch. “Who’s there?” came a masculine voice, low and firm, from the other side – one that Hoshi recognised.

  Oh, thank Arcus, I was almost afraid we had some civilian’s place… but I guess I’d better do the code-phrase anyway, just in case. “Delivery; theatre supplies for Lady Remond, from Jay and Jay.”

  The door clicked, then opened a crack. “Already? Weren’t expecting anything for a week or two – I suppose the instructors have something going on, huh?”

  Hoshi looked at the squarish face of Black, the older grunt who’d been the leader of the group that had welcomed them during their initiation tournament. It was the first time Hoshi had seen him out of uniform, and he almost didn’t recognise the man – it was only his more memorable voice that was letting him make the connection. “I’m sure they do, but don’t ask me what it is. Can we come in?”

  A nod, and the door opened completely. The senior grunt and his two subordinates slipped inside without a word, dragging their massive hiker’s backpacks and suitcases with them as Black led them further into the house.

  And the surreality didn’t stop now that they’d made it in; the house was completely empty, with only token furniture. “So does anyone actually live here?” Hoshi asked as they crossed into a barebones living room, the too-clean carpet going most of the way to answering his question before Black even opened his mouth.

  “I think she rented it out for a bit way back? Not lately, though – unless you count us. Here, lemme get the thing…”

  He reached behind the boxy television, the only thing in the room besides a pair of plastic chairs, and fiddled with something low to the ground – and as he finished, a soft sound heralded a square of carpet raising up slightly from the floor.

  Casca let out a hum. “Trapdoor, huh? Classic.”

  “Yeah. Not as fancy as the shit at the academy, but we make due. C’mon…”

  Down they went, Hoshi taking the lead while Black shut the door behind them with a much louder clunk. The ‘basement’ was looking about the same as the rest of the house, so far; cream walls, painted rather than wallpapered, with slightly old-fashioned lights providing illumination. The concrete stairs’re different, though, he noted as they descended. Is it new? I can’t tell; concrete’s pretty much always been concrete whether it was put down today or a hundred years ago…

  Again, Hoshi let the idle questions go as he came out into a different room. Ah, here we go – this is lived in.

  It resembled a rec room, more than anything; the artificial stone floor was covered by a dark blue rug, on top of which sat a couple large tables with surrounding chairs. A small kitchen area took up the far wall, and a game console Hoshi was too ignorant to name was hooked up to an even larger television than the one up above. How’d they get that down here? Seems like a wasted effort; you could buy a few smaller ones for the same money, then more than one person could use them… Well, whatever.

  Far be it from him to critique someone else’s entertainment layout – and besides, he still had more important things to do.

  Like examining his fellow Rockets, who were spread out around the room. There were an uneven seven, mostly in casual clothes, though two wore the uniform and one was in a business-appropriate black dress. It was the latter who caught his eye; that must be the executive they were there to connect with.

  Actually… In a burst of recognition, Hoshi recalled that first day he’d spent as a Rocket; he’d met a lot more people than Black, and most of them had immediately fallen out the back of his head, forgotten. The woman in front of him had been one such person, except he’d only forgotten her name – the bone-white hair was too distinctive to disappear into a muddle of faces and names like the people he’d been introduced to with Ryan.

  “Junior Executive Tanya Remond?” he questioned, and the forty-something woman replied with a nod.

  “That I am. The Senior Executives sent you?”

  A nod of his own. “Hoshi Mutsu, Senior Grunt. These are Casca Kichi and Menard Kaneth, Rocket Grunts – how much of the plan do you know?”

  Tanya’s eyes narrowed, and for a moment he felt like he was about to be scolded for some slight – but she only gestured sharply towards the table. “Let’s discuss this while sitting. Honestly, I’m surprised to see you so soon; after Apollo was captured I assumed we’d be lying low for a good while. Make room!”

  A pair of presumably-grunts stood up to offer their chairs, and Hoshi did his best to contain his sour look. Right, she’s the haughty kind of higher-up… Well, whatever, I can handle a sharp tongue just fine. But as they sat, someone just had to open their big stupid acne-scarred mouth.

  “Hey,” Kenny muttered in tentative recognition, before raising his voice back to its normal, just-loud-enough-to-be-obnoxious volume. “Oh hey, Boss, it’s your rival! With the krabby!”

  His jaw clenched. “Yes, thank you, I recognised her.” I fucking hate dealing with people…

  “Yes- yes I know Father is busy, but I’d still like you to put him on. Moth- Mother, I understand that, but I’ve had a very stressful series of days, and-”

  This is really awkward. Crime family or not, it seemed that the Sampos weren’t anywhere near immune to the same interpersonal issues as anyone else – or from airing those issues out while strangers listened, as one occasionally did every now and then.

  “I- okay, okay, we’re getting off-topic- no, I’m dismissing you, but this is my career, Mother. I beg your pardon? No, I’m not going to quit just because of-”

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  Tor Yuriyama sighed as he watched the sun very slowly dip towards the horizon from his perch against the roof’s railings, trying and only mostly succeeding at tuning out Ryan’s phonecall with his mother. To either side of him lounged and stood, respectively, his best friend Mojo Concolour and his girlfriend Lilian Sukashi, the latter wincing in shared emotion while the former gazed at the sea, seemingly immune to the cringe-inducing conversation.

  I’ve always envied that about Mojo, Tor thought in a vain attempt to cover up Ryan’s increasingly agitated voice. The way he doesn’t let stuff stick to him. He’s like a golem, rolling around without picking up moss – and Lily…

  The cheerleader – ex-cheerleader now, he supposed – had a will like iron. It had been her that had gotten them into this, and while there was a tiny part of him that resented it, the rest of him knew that he’d gone to the meeting in that abandoned gas station fully on-board with what it was about. Free the League… Hah, I guess we’re trying it, huh?

  The situation was strange, almost dream-like; Tor had a full team of six on his magnetic belt, and a black shirt with a big red R folded carefully away in his backpack. The person he’d spent more time with than anyone else, even including his parents, and the girl he wanted to spend his future with… both of them were at his side. And they were trying to overthrow the government.

  “Okay, I’ve had it! If all you’re going to do is insult my benefactor, then you can put one of my aunties on the- I don’t care that he’s in prison! Grandpa Leon spent half his life in prison, and he was perfectly successful!”

  …Emphasis on trying, hah, hah, hah. In truth, the fact that his younger senior was currently having such a mundane-ish argument wasn’t what was putting a damper on his spirits. Nor did he think it was the low odds he’d put on the lot of them making it through this whole thing unscathed, or the fact that even if they didn’t end up in jail or hung, his parents would definitely kill him.

  No, Tor’s melancholy was even more normal than the blond’s phonecall, and perhaps even dumber. Man, he thought to himself as the sun crawled at a snail’s pace, very neatly illustrating the slow movement of time as Ryan’s voice continued to climb higher. My baseball career’s gonna take a real hit from this. That sucks.

  “Hey Sampo!” Mojo called over his shoulder. “You got that ride yet?”

  The frustration packed into the returning growl was probably exactly what the man had been aiming for, and Tor only managed to half-smother his giggle.

  It didn’t take long to get the facts straight – it seemed the small turn of good fortune was holding, because the executive didn’t react to Kenny’s idiocy with anything other than a raised brow.

  Very swiftly, it became apparent that there was something of an information gap between the two groups, one that needed to be spanned from both directions; it seemed that the instructors, in their infinite wisdom, had kept the exact details of the plan from even their fellow executives. Hoshi could see a sort of logic to it – even if one cell was caught, they wouldn’t blow the operation – but he had a feeling that they’d more than likely just disregarded their operatives’ ability to think independently, and the gain in operational security was a happy accident.

  And going the other way, Tanya was much more informed about the state of Rocket as a whole. “A small core of high-tier members managed to flee Goldenrod, and our holdings in Mahogany remain entirely intact – so we’ll have fallback options even should this… full-frontal assault on the most concentrated gathering of Indigo’s elite trainers somehow prove unviable.”

  It was obvious that the woman had a dim view of Jessie and James’s plan, much like Hoshi himself did – but of course he couldn’t say that, or it was entirely possible she’d be convinced to stay holed up.

  And Hoshi needed to move forward. Whether that was making good on Casca’s suggestion to just grab a boat and leave, or actually going ahead with the plan and journeying to Saffron, it didn’t matter – every possible solution depended on getting out of this basement, and even putting aside the practical reasons he still needed to do it.

  If he didn’t, he was sure he’d have some kind of attack.

  There were just too many jackasses crammed into too small a space, and despite most of them not acknowledging him at all, the senior grunt’s hindbrain was conspiring to turn every tiny glance into an attack. Stop it, he admonished himself for maybe the fifth time as he drew breath. You’re freaking out. Nobody’s going to attack you – and if they do, it’ll just be some macho jostling ‘cause you’re still a relative newbie. They’ll want a Pokémon battle, not a fistfight.

  “That’s good to hear,” the saner part of him said after only a short pause. “Those people from Goldenrod, do you suppose they’ll be able to act as reinforcements?” Nobody’s gonna get shot, or poisoned, or stabbed. Stop it.

  And yet despite the complete irrationality of his paranoia, his stupid brain failed to calm down.

  “That’s not impossible,” Tanya answered smoothly in her upper-class drawl, the sound somewhere between Bart’s ironic tones and Ryan’s complete sincerity. Either she was ignoring the sweat Hoshi could feel beading above his brow, or she’d simply not noticed it at all. “But I won’t be counting on it. My understanding is that the Chief Executive took heavy injuries, and the next strongest trainer among them…” For just a moment, something like a sneer formed out of swirling colour underneath her skin – but then it was gone, without even a blink. “Is extremely unreliable. A relative of Rocket, not a full member.”

  Figures. “Well, I suppose the cavalry coming in is too much to ask for. Tell me honestly, what are our chances of making it to Saffron? The instructors implied that the Doc and Professor Mokusen had something to help, but if we can’t get there it doesn’t matter.” Though I am pretty curious how they beat Will – Dabi’s machamp might be strong, but fighting an Elite’s team with a type disadvantage? There’s got to be some trick he pulled. Even if Hypno really does have a gengar, that’s still not a fair fight.

  Tanya’s lips parted in a subdued grimace. It was an expression that hit the contours of her face perfectly, and for a moment he was caught in the absurd imaging of what she must’ve looked like as a young girl, that same tooth-bearing frown burdened by much cuter proportions. “Again, it isn’t impossible. The Route Rangers will be on the lookout for us, as will the police, but if we could hide anywhere… the wilderness would be it.”

  “Wait, are you implying..?”

  “No, only stating a fact. The moment we leave this location, we will be hounded; going through Route Six the normal way would be suicide. If we want to make it, we’ll need to go off-route.” She paused to take a sip of tea, leaving Hoshi to stew for a moment. Fuck, is it really that bad? We made it through Cycling Road pretty- I mean yeah we got shot at and the ranger tore up the truck, but… The teacup came down to tap primly against its paired saucer, but the tiny sound still drilled into his brain. “I can see you understand why I am reluctant.”

  “Yeah…” Hoshi leaned back, rubbing at his temples as the damn headache he’d had since yesterday flared up. But… “If you’ve been cooped up down here, have you gotten access to the storage system?”

  “I have no need for that – but no, we have not.”

  Deep breath. “Okay. Okay, crazy plan, but wait ‘till the end to stop me. What if… we get into a Pokécentre? Me and Casca have clothes and makeup, we could do some kind of disguises – and there are definitely some good Pokémon left to be pulled out. Your men could get a few extras, at least.” As he continued to speak Hoshi’s restraint failed, and the restlessness pulling at his bones bid him to stand and start pacing. “It beats just sitting here, right? With most of Rocket taken care of, they’ll be free to concentrate their forces once the Nationals are over – or they might even decide to strip security early, catch us off-guard. Waiting this out isn’t a serious option… We need to attack, and that means we need to consolidate, and that means more Pokémon, more people, more force. The professors somehow beat the strongest psychic on maybe the entire planet, a woman who can read minds, and however they did that, I’ll feel a lot more secure if I’ve got it too.

  “So… It isn’t crazy, right? I know a man who can reset Pokéball registration; if we do that to what we’ve got now, then load up on six more each, that’s at least ninety monsters. We-”

  Tanya raised a hand in interruption, and to be honest Hoshi was surprised she’d let him go off as long as he had. “Controlling twelve Pokémon at once is impractical. Tell me, how many have you actually tried to command seriously in a battle?”

  “I… six?” Her eyes, black and without a hint of give, stared at him beneath pursed ashen brows. “Okay, if we’re being anal about the definition of commanding, then… three.”

  A stern, imperial nod. “Exactly. There is a reason that even active soldiers aren’t freed from the hard limit on team size; keeping track of just the full six is nearly impossible, and combat ability suffers when a monster is left to its own devices.”

  Hoshi attempted to form a rebuttal, but couldn’t help but recall the fight he’d just been in; the way his ursaring had all but quit the field without his attention, how his team had been knocked out almost entirely by a beedrill and wigglytuff in the dense murk of Champion’s sandstorm. If I’d stayed on my feet, given proper orders, how much of that could’ve been avoided? Casca might not have… His hand went to his belt, then further, and landed on the bulge in his pocket – the Jenny’s taser, which he’d completely forgotten in the chaos of the moment. I didn’t even manage myself correctly, let alone my team.

  “Okay, you’ve got a point. But what about the rest of my argument? What are you going to do when Clair’s attention isn’t being taken up by a media circus, when Kanto’s ninja are free to dig you out? Sitting in a basement isn’t a plan – if nothing else, you’ll run out of food at some point.”

  Again, the half-sneer as Tanya replied. “I notice you are using the word ‘you’ rather a lot – more than I would have predicted for someone in the same boat. I am your direct superior, Grunt Mutsu; if I say stay, you will stay.”

  For a moment, rage built – but it was too much. His head, filled with grief and terror and a concussion and probably some kind of steadily-growing anxiety disorder, simply refused to accept more, and so he was only half-mad as he whirled. Icy-calm, feeling like the blood in his heart had been replaced by dark black water, Hoshi slowly brought a hand down to slap lightly against the table.

  “No, I won’t be doing that. I might not be able to pull rank on you, but Jessie and James certainly can – and my orders come right from them. If you aren’t going to Saffron, then you’re ignoring a direct order… and if you don’t respect the chain of command, why should I?”

  Silence, equally cold, filled the room. Oh for- did I just do it again? Do I need to get my fingers fucking broken a second time to learn an Arc-damned lesson on not talking back to gangsters? But contrary to his expectation, some of the woman’s grunts actually looked… cowed? And while the junior executive herself was about as far from afraid as it was possible to be, neither did his outburst seem to anger her; Tanya Remond sipped her tea with a flat expression, and once again the quiet tap of porcelain against porcelain sounded out like gunpowder going off.

  “A logical argument. Unfortunately, you seem to be ignorant of one particular fact.”

  Then, the red flash he’d been expecting – it took all of Hoshi’s willpower to restrain the urge to get in a quick-and-dirty hit as the kingler, fully-grown and with claws that could encircle his waist, appeared. It snapped said claws with sharp, almost metallic sounds, the sheer bulk of its wide-stanced, armoured body taking up as much space as the table its trainer was still calmly sitting at.

  “My authority is not merely theoretical, Grunt,” Tanya continued. “There are many executives whose position was granted for financial contributions – but I am not among their number. I am a Rocket Admin who served under Giovanni, and my power is quite physical.”

  Lose. Hoshi, just let yourself lose, pushing more will just- “I have a magneton. Don’t try it.” Fuck you you stupid emotional idiot.

  Finally, the half-sneer bloomed into its full expression. “There are many people who think that a type advantage is all they need to see them through. Do you want to find out what happens to most of them?”

  Hoshi strained, strained, and for once managed to rein in his anger while he’d only half-ruined the situation. “I… sorry. I’ve been in a lot of hard fights recently, and my blood is up. Obviously I still respect Rocket, or I wouldn’t have come to see you.”

  “Then sit down, Grunt, and be silent a moment.”

  Again, a burst of anger – and again, he mastered himself before blowing up. Hoshi did as he was told, sitting down to stare at his untouched cup of tea, and simply… did nothing.

  And yet, some of the tension lingered as the executive finished her drink. The grunts – Tanya’s grunts – were still on-edge. It was almost like…

  A drop of cool, soothing baby blue rolled down the inside of his skull. Are they… afraid of me? That doesn’t make any sense. All I’ve done this week is continually fail; I almost got my team killed by Auntie Tsuyu, Meowth caught us planning to desert, I let my guard down and Casca had to fix it by fucking shooting that guy…

  Another drop, then another, cooling down the steam furnace of his head little by little. It doesn’t matter how many times you get hit, a discordant thought sounded out. What matters is how hard you hit back. I won that fight with Tsuyu, got away with confronting the instructors, and who the fuck cares that that random fuck’s dead? He was a League stooge – we’ll be getting rid of them all anyway once we fucking win.

  And yet, as his emotions stilled and Hoshi became more coherent, the question remained.

  But they don’t know any of that, the good or the bad. From their perspective, I’m just some Senior Grunt. And unfortunately for his confusion, it was a question he failed to puzzle out before Tanya spoke again.

  The executive set her cup down for the final time, and a grunt – one of the uniformed ones – cleared it away. “Insubordination aside,” she began, “You make a fair point. It would, indeed, by unfortunate to be caught out when the government gets its shit together.” The profanity made him blink; until then she hadn’t used any, and it fit poorly somehow on the woman’s tongue. “So relocating to Saffron is not a terrible idea – I simply lack confidence that we will be able to make the trip with the hornet’s nest stirred up.”

  She stood, and at the unspoken urging in her eyes Hoshi did the same. Tanya Remond did not cut an impressive figure in her professional-looking black dress; she wasn’t quite fine-boned, but neither did she have any visible muscle to speak of. And yet, when she gestured towards the kingler he felt like the motion had been large, almost like a giant had slapped the air in front of him.

  “I vaguely recall your loss to one of Provost’s sons. Show me that you have improved since your recruitment, and I’ll accede to this plan you’ve brought me.” The entire room had gone still again, the small signs of life that had reappeared as he’d sat quietly wiped away. Even Kenny and Casca were silent, the former looking away from some fighting game as the latter sat at the other table with the rest of the grunts.

  Even Black, who’d shown a more cavalier attitude to Jessie and James, was – wait a second.

  Hoshi’s brows scrunched in confusion, and from out the corner of his eye he saw Tanya’s do the same in annoyance as she caught his attention wandering. “Your two to my one,” she continued. “Do you hear me, Grunt?”

  “Black is here,” Hoshi sent out, more to himself than the executive, and there was a collective blink at the non-sequitur.

  “Uh,” the older man grunted. “Yeah. Hi?”

  I’m ninety-percent sure that… “Your actual name is Bowls, right? You aren’t supposed to be here – you’re meant to be in the Young District. So who are Kazubara and Mimi going after?”