There’s something about laundromats—maybe the way they hum with other people’s routines, or just the stale heat and drowned-out radio—but I never feel more like a ghost than when I’m standing under the flicker of their dying fluorescents. I’m halfway through the battered front door when I catch it: a new addition to the chaos, something I missed last night in the fog of survival.

  A corkboard. Community notices, layered deep as city smog. The thumbtacks are mostly plastic and most of the flyers are for Pokemon grooming, lost keys, or “serenity yoga with Marjorie,” but there’s a handful that catch the eye. One, in marker so thick it bleeds through, promises “CASH—INSTANT—HELP WANTED.” The address is local, some back alley with a sketch of a Trubbish and the words “NO TRAINER CARD, NO PROBLEM.” Another, in the curling script of a printer on its last legs, advertises “BATTLE CIRCUIT—TOP CASH. NO QUESTIONS.” The rest is a mess of phone numbers and promises that nobody means.

  I peel off the top flyer and run my thumb over the cheap ink. Trubbish cleaning. Street-level, no real trainers, just the city’s underbelly and an address. No badge, no paperwork, no questions. The back of my skull starts to ache—Beldum’s way of nudging me when it thinks I’m missing the obvious.

  Inside, the laundromat is just as empty as I had left it, just the low whine of the wall heater and the faint, ever-present reek of stewing detergent. My squad—if I’m calling it that—waits, three orbs pocket-silent at my side. I lock the door behind me, thumb the release, and let the world shrink back down to just us.

  Luna appears first, nose up, eyes already scanning for threats or snacks. She shakes out her fur and makes a beeline for the patch of sunlight that’s crept onto the scarred tile, then yelps when she realizes it’s gone cold and there’s nothing but the damp smell of old mops. She shoots me a look, all betrayal, then plops down anyway and glares at the universe.

  Muse takes the re-entry slow. He materializes on the counter, blinking at the fluorescent tubes overhead, then slides into the utility sink like it’s his birthright. He hums, soft and strange, voice echoing in the metal. The water’s already sludge, but it doesn’t seem to bother him. His lily pad bobs, catches a brown scum ring, and I decide not to think about what else lives in there.

  Beldum hovers, silent, for a long moment before settling above the coin-changer, magnets humming in the wires behind the wall. I feel the pulse of it before I hear the words: “Hungry.” Not a plea, not even a complaint—just a broadcast fact, the way Beldum does everything.

  I fish the napkin bundle from my coat and set it on the counter. The meteorite chunk is heavier than it looks, and when I unwrap it, Beldum’s eye glows brighter, like it’s seeing daylight for the first time. It drops onto the rock, wraps its claws around the edge, and starts to chew. Not nibble—obliterate.

  The grinding sound is nearly deafening, a cross between a garbage disposal and a swarm of Beedrill in a tin can. Bits of meteorite break off in perfect, geometrical bites. I watch, hypnotized, as the pokemon eats its way through four ounces of space rock in the same time it used to take to scan a room. I’ve only seen Beldum eat like this once before, and it ended with a geodude split open like a nut, the shell left in perfect halves.

  I slide the the wrapper aside and start on my own patchwork breakfast. I give Luna a dried Oran berry; she takes it with both paws, sniffs, then pops the whole thing in her mouth. It’s gone in two bites, her eyes going glassy with pleasure, and she glances up at me like maybe I’ll hand over a second. I do, and she doesn’t even pretend to pace herself.

  “Don’t eat too fast,” I say, and instantly feel stupid for saying it. I grab another and offer it to Muse, but he just blinks and turns away, more interested in angling himself to catch the sun through the laundromat window. Maybe he’s completely photosynthetic. Maybe he just doesn’t trust food that doesn’t come with pond scum.

  I hand a few more to Luna, then take the razor into the tiny staff bathroom. The door barely latches, and the light inside is a single bulb caked with so much lint it might as well be a nightlight. The cracked mirror doesn’t bother me; I haven’t seen myself clearly in weeks.

  I run the hot water, as hot as I can stand, and start in on the beard. The first swipe of the Machop razor snags so hard it nearly peels the skin off my jaw, but after that it gets easier. I work quick, scraping down to bare skin, pink and raw under layers of dirt and grime. Then I tilt my head, make a face, and start on my scalp. I’ve never cut my own hair before, but I get the sense it’s less about skill and more about commitment. The razor pulls, yanks, but eventually I get it all, watching dark clumps clog the drain in the flickering half-light.

  By the time I’m done, there’s nothing left but smooth, raw skin and a patchwork of tiny pink nicks. I look like someone who’s lost a bet, or maybe just decided to lose their whole identity in one go. I wipe the mirror, stare at the stranger inside for a minute, at the way the bones have started to show in my face, the way the eyes are older than the rest of me. Then I peel off the shirt, the undershirt, wipe everything down with the cleanest towel I can find. It’s the color of old teeth, but the heat from the tap is a revelation. I scrub at the grind of river muck, sewer gunk. The water runs brown, then grey, then pink with the blood from the razor nicks, and finally clear. The whole ordeal leaves me stinging, new-smelling, a little more human than before.

  When I step out of the bathroom, Luna freezes. For a second I think she’s parsing the haircut, but then she tilts her head and trots over, nose up, giving the air a full scan. She recognizes me, eventually, and bumps her head into my shin with a kind of relieved violence. I scratch her behind the ear, and she flops onto her back, exposing the pale fur where the Growlithe got her. The wound’s already closed, pink and puckered but healing. She waits, belly up, until I rub the scar, then thrashes her tail like she’s already over it.

  Beldum is working through the last of the meteorite, even neater than before, leaving only a powder of iron flecks behind. When I move past, it pivots in the air and flashes the thought: “Full. Satisfied.” I nod back, which is about as much as either of us needs. Muse is up to the rim in the utility sink, humming at a lower, almost lazy register now. The sun’s slant changed, so he’s half in shadow, but he doesn’t seem to mind. With everyone accounted for, I dump the rest of the Oran berries into a bowl and set it on the counter, then gather the squad for a sitrep. The laundromat smells less like death and more like wet dog and berries now; it’s almost homey.

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  “Alright,” I say, and their three faces snap toward me at once. “We need money. Fast. Any objections?”

  Luna licks her paw and glances at Beldum. Beldum locks its eye on me and gives the equivalent of a shrug. Muse just burbles, then spits a droplet of water at the nearest lint trap. Consensus.

  I pull the flyers from my pocket, set them side by side on the dryer. “Option one: Trubbish collection. Pays cash, no questions, no trainer card. Option two, battle circuit. Underground—again, cash, but we’ll probably get the shit kicked out of us.” I pause, looking from one teammate to the next. “Vote?”

  For a moment, nobody moves. I wait for the sarcasm, the squabbling, the kind of passive resistance you get from a half-wild team, but all I get is the quiet click of Muse’s lips and the sound of Beldum’s jaw grinding a final flake of meteorite. Luna cocks her head and points her nose at the flyer, as if to say, “That one.” Beldum pings a single word: “Efficient.” Muse just closes his eyes and lets his lily pad flatten, voting, I guess, to follow the herd. The Trubbish job wins by landslide.

  It’s a relief, honestly. If we’re going to survive, I need to know just how far these three will go for the promise of a half-decent meal, and an exterminator gig is the kind of low-risk, high-misery work that forges weird bonds. I give them a once-over, then tell them exactly that: “We do this together. You get to fight the way you want, but if I call a play, you listen.” Luna’s ears flick. Muse gurgles. Beldum doesn’t react, but I get the sense it’s already running scenario trees.

  The logic is simple. If you want to last in this city, you need three things: food, backup, and a cover story. I grab what supplies are left—three bread rolls, the dried berries, a stained bottle of water—and force them all in into the gym bag, then squish down the Plasma jacket so it sits at the bottom, a soft layer of plausible deniability. When it’s folded over like that, you almost can’t see the logo, just the hard fabric. I pull on the pants—still stiff, but dry—and keep the recycled hoodie over my head. If anyone’s looking too closely, they’ll see a burnout in thrift-store chic, not the villain of a news cycle.

  I call Luna back first. She resists, noses the air, then paws at my ankle once before the ball swallows her in a red blink. I feel a twist of guilt, but not enough to let her roam while I case an unknown gig. Muse is next: I drop him into the ball with a promise that the next water he sees won’t be from a tap. Beldum floats last, eye bright and nearly impatient, like it’s craving conflict or at least the math of a new job. I recall it, and the air in the laundromat goes flat.

  I slip out the back, keeping to the shadows, and walk the three blocks to the job address. The city’s up and running now: parents yelling at kids late to school, traffic doing its best to self-destruct, and the distant whine of news drones. I keep my head down, but every time a siren echoes, I do a quick mental count—cops, ambulance, or League? Not that it matters. If they find me, it’s over.

  The address leads to a side alley behind a shuttered pet store, where the only sign of life is a metal stairwell and two Trubbish going ham on a pile of torn-up pizza boxes. The stink hits me first, then the sight: a Trubbish pyramid, some half-crushed, some so torqued with hunger or chemicals that their plastic hides are tight as balloons. Two guys in low-rent coveralls are picking through the pile, grabbing the limp ones by the handles (why do Trubbish have handles?) and pitching them into plastic storage crates. Some of the Trubbish burst on impact, leaving streaks of black-green goop across the inside of the bin. The live ones don’t put up much of a fight—they just roll over, legs twitching, and whine a little in the back of their throats before going quiet.

  I hover at the edge, waiting for someone to notice. The shorter of the two workers—I clock a hundred-dollar haircut under the beanie, a nose that’s definitely been broken at least once—looks up and sizes me through about three layers of greasy suspicion. “You the new hire?” he says, voice so flat it might be a recording.

  “If you’re not here for work,” the taller one jumps in, “piss off. We don’t need another gawker calling the city on us.”

  I nod, say, “Yeah. I’m on the list,” and wait to see if that means anything. They don’t bother to check—just jerk a thumb at the side door of the pet store.

  Inside, the smell is worse: bleach and hot plastic, over a base note of pure decay. They’ve stripped out the shelves and crammed the floor with more bins, each one labelled in marker— “Bio,” “Alive,” “Fucked.” Most are stacked to the ceiling. In the back, someone’s set up a folding table as triage; there’s a half-empty case of energy drinks, a battered clipboard, and a plastic bucket half-full of pokéballs.

  The supervisor is a woman, maybe forty, with the kind of hands you only get by never wearing gloves. She’s sorting paperwork, pausing every few seconds to tamp her thumb against the corner like she’s checking her own pulse. She doesn’t look up when she talks. “You have a name?”

  I hesitate, then say, “N.A.,” and watch for a reaction. Nothing.

  “You got a license?” she asks. Her voice is not looking for a yes.

  “Lost it,” I say. “But I’ve got a team.”

  She finally looks up, eyes me the way you’d check a melon for soft spots. “You ever work Trubbish jobs?”

  I shrug, then let the silence hang.

  “Doesn’t matter,” she says. “It’s a hundred per head, two if it’s alive and undamaged. We’re clearing the factory on the east end, but we’re staging here ‘cause the city doesn’t like the optics. Your pay is cash, minus incidentals. You break something or get hurt, it’s on you. Got it?”

  I nod. “Yeah.”

  She slides a torn map across the table. “Entry’s here,” she says, tapping the paper with a nail thick as a Berry. The map is a disaster: lines drawn in red, blue, and something like dried blood, the entry point circled three times for emphasis. The rest is a maze—service corridors, a grid of production floors, a basement lined with question marks. The legend is hand-written, with arrows that point to things like “bulk storage = don’t go in” and “chiller = safe.” There’s an asterisk by the utility stairwell: “lots of ‘em here, watch your step.”

  I take it, nod, and wait. The supervisor just waves at the bucket of pokéballs. “You want a loaner, help yourself. We'll check them at the end. But they're all shelter dumps - the ones that failed to take to a trainer or got returned too many times. Most are too skittish or stubborn to battle properly.” She gives me a look that says, 'if you steal one, I’ll find you,' and goes back to her paperwork."

  The side door leads out to a chain-link tunnel between the pet store and the factory. It’s barely dawn, but the place is already kinetic: a line of vans idling with their tailgates open, trainers in every shade of scavenged gear, each hauling tubs or rolling trash bins. The air is thick, every breath a cocktail of bleach, ammonia, and sweet rot. I see three guys in full waders carrying a squirming bag—either a Trubbish or a body, hard to say. Nobody is talking, just a chorus of grunts and the snap of plastic.

  I hang back, watching for a rhythm. The more professional teams work in pairs: one to bag, one to tag. The solo acts move fast, eyes locked on the next payday. The entry is a loading dock with a busted overhead, the inside lit only by the headlamps and stray torches. The line moves, then it’s my turn.

  A guy in a city vest checks the map, jots my initials on a clipboard, and hands me a two-way radio. “Channel five,” he says. “Call if you need a haul. Takes two to carry a full crate, but if you call for help, cuts your pay by half.” He gives me a look like he’s seen a hundred of me and not one ever came back with a clean record. “You don’t call, you walk it yourself. Got it?”

  “Got it,” I say, and he’s already turned away, yelling at someone else who just dropped a bin down the stairs.

  I scope the interior. The place is a maze of dead machinery, conveyor belts frozen mid-cycle, and heaps of garbage that have long since merged with the floor. Somewhere nearby, a kid is shouting at a Pidgeotto that’s busy peeling Trubbish off an overhead vent. I see another guy—older, eyes like scraped bone—pushing a cart full of unconscious Trubbish, each trussed like a tiny trash mummy and stacked like cordwood. He doesn’t even look up as I pass.

  I slip into the far wing, where the light gets weird and the ceiling droops with water damage. Nobody else is in this section; either they cleared it out already, or they’re saving the worst for last. I thumb Beldum’s ball, let it out in a whisper of static. Its eye snaps on, scanning the dark like it’s mapping the whole building in one go.

  “Basement,” I say, and Beldum pulses a yes, already drifting toward the corrugated metal stairs at the end of the hall. The air gets degrees colder as we descend, and the stench sharpens from “old trash” to “chemical weapon.” “Well, here we go”.