Some habits die really hard. For Nessa, that was her normal routine.

  Get up in the morning, brush teeth, shower, pick out a set of clothes for whatever modeling shoot that Macro Cosmos had lined up for her today… still wrapped in a towel, she sat down at the desk in her Center room, opened her laptop to check her schedule and… nothing?

  Oh, right. Reality brought her brain to a screeching halt, and she put her face in her hands and sighed. Right, she wasn’t in Galar right now. Somehow, this was the second time in three days that she’d made the exact same mistake.

  ‘Hnngh…’ A loud snort came from behind Nessa. She glanced back to see Bea, who was splayed unceremoniously all over her bed, snoring loudly. Yesterday, they’d both gone back to the same route they’d gone to the other day with Kiran, but a little further away from the city, just to lessen the already low risk of running into admirers.

  They had a lot of intense sparring sessions, and that led to them being completely exhausted by the time they got back, so they just collapsed on their beds, while the Pokemon that were able to be let out in a building were sleeping soundly on the floor. Bea had stayed on the route to train longer than Nessa had, so naturally, Nessa got up earlier. Although ‘early’ might not mean much when it was now almost noon.

  Seeing her friend and other Pokemon lazing about reminded Nessa that she was in Hoenn to let loose, at least partly. So, instead of some sort of dress she’d wear to a shoot, she just threw on a hoodie and track pants instead, then she left to get breakfast – lunch? Eh, who cares – from the Center cafeteria.

  On the way there, Nessa had to resist the urge to plaster a smile on her face every time she passed by people. “They probably don’t know who you are, that’d just be creepy, idiot,” she scolded herself mentally. It really had been a while since she’d felt like her body and her interactions with others had really been… well, hers, hadn’t it?

  When she got to the cafeteria, it was pretty empty. Except for a certain Orrean trainer she was friends with. Kiran was hunched over what looked like a very-used laptop, looking like he was trying to understand something. Joan and Athena were sitting adjacent to him, munching on some food. Athena was on the table. Today, he was wearing black cargo pants, and a white T-shirt that showed off the tattoos and scars on his muscular arms.

  Yes, she paid attention to his arms. He was a good-looking guy, sue her! He gave off a rough sort of style that somehow didn’t look shabby, and Nessa thought that was kind of refreshing.

  She got a tray and got some food, then went to his table. “Morning, everyone,” she said.

  “Nessa, correct? It’s not morning anymore,” said Athena. Joan just nodded at Nessa as a greeting.

  “Ugh, yes, I know. I was training until late yesterday, I was exhausted,’ she replied. Then she noticed that Kiran hadn’t even noticed her. “Hey, Kiran!” she said louder. Joan elbowed him in the ribs as well, and he finally jerked his head towards her, with eyebrows raised.

  “Oh shit, I didn’t hear you,” Kiran said while exhaling.

  “I could see that,” Nessa smirked as she sat opposite Kiran at the table. “What are you looking at?”

  He turned the laptop so that it was facing her. “There’s a move that Joan and I were working on earlier this morning. I was looking up info on how to construct it, since we were having trouble,” he explained.

  Nessa looked at the screen, and she saw an article about… Dusk? “I’ve heard of this,” she mused. “Where Ghost-types come from, and where they get a lot of their powers. Allister mentioned something about it.”

  “Who?”

  “Oh, the Ghost-type Gym Leader in Galar. He’s really shy, so he never bothered to say much, but he has told me some things. What move are you trying to go for?” Nessa asked.

  “We’re trying to make a custom move. I’m calling it Ghost Terrain. The idea is to bring a section of Dusk or a replica of it to whatever arena I’m in,” Kiran explained, nonchalantly, somehow.

  Nessa’s eyes widened way quicker than she was used to. “Uh… what would that even look like?” Though even without exact knowledge, bringing the literal land of the dead to the human world sounded unnerving.

  “It’s supposed to give more options for Joan to move, outside of what was already on the field,” Kiran said, while Joan’s right leg started bouncing under the table. Maybe in excitement? “But the mental part is the main part of it. Dusk apparently contains a lot of… extreme emotions.”

  Nessa raised an eyebrow at that. “From where…?” she asked.

  “The souls that are there. Which makes sense, if you think about it. Souls of the dead aren’t going to be stable, not when their lives were cut short and their current form is incomplete, at best,” Kiran said. “Part of the move brings them over to our world, where they become so intense that they mess with the opponent’s head.”

  Okay, now Nessa was confused. “I don’t know much about ghosts, but… doesn’t that seem a bit far-fetched?” She’d never even heard of a Ghost-type user being able to pull that off, not from Allister or anyone else.

  Kiran sighed and pulled the laptop back to him. “Yeah, it’s definitely a work in progress right now, even if Joan is doing her best,” he said, while rubbing Joan’s head affectionately, which she clearly liked. “It’s not like we can use this move in the near future in a battle, let alone next week, but it seems like it would be such an effective tool to have, so I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.”

  Honestly, as creepy as Nessa found what essentially was summoning the dead, she couldn’t help but feel a bit disappointed too. The thought of being able to face an incredibly daunting opponent and win would always be something that would get her blood pumping, so it sucked that she wouldn’t get to face this Ghost Terrain any time soon.

  Kiran looked to Nessa’s sides and frowned slightly. “You didn’t bring any Pokemon with you?” he asked.

  Nessa shook her head. “They’re still sleeping. Bea too. We were training until late last night,” she explained. Then she smiled at Athena and reached over to scratch her under her chin. The Espeon mewled in delight at that. “I usually try to have them out whenever possible.”

  Nessa caught Kiran’s exhale at those words. “You glad you’re talking to someone who doesn’t trap their Pokemon in their balls for no reason, huh?” she smirked at him.

  “Observant, aren’t you,” he mumbled. “Well, yeah. It felt weird walking around the last few days and seeing people not letting their Pokemon out.”

  “Mm-hmm,” Nessa agreed. She had heard that Hoenn, of all regions, definitely had better laws than other regions regarding treatment of Pokemon, but sadly, even here, there were probably a lot of issues.

  Speaking of issues…

  “You hear about what happened three days ago? About the kid who died in that cave? Apparently there were some people planning an operation involving drugs of some sort,” Nessa said, right before digging into her breakfast. The several slices of focaccia bread were super crispy, but also extremely fluffy on the inside, and topped with cheese and chives. Delicious.

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  “I was there,” Kiran huffed.

  Nessa blinked. “What?”

  “He says he was there,” Athena said.

  Nessa rolled her eyes. “Thank you so much. I meant, why were you in a cave with a gang? And with kids?”

  Kiran brought his hand to his forehead while leaning on his hands and pushed his hair up. “Long story short, I was trying to keep them safe from whatever might’ve been in the cave,” he sighed. “They caught us by surprise, and I couldn’t protect everyone.”

  “Are you alright?” Nessa asked.

  “Yeah,” he answered immediately. When he saw Nessa’s slightly-raised eyebrows at that response, he frowned a bit. “Don’t give me that. He was far from the first person I’ve seen die.”

  Oh, right. Of course, most people would misinterpret that. “I’m not judging, relax,” she assured him. Now it was his turn to raise eyebrows in surprise. “Most people wouldn’t just up and say that to someone they’ve just met.”

  “Well, I’ve always been kinda blunt,” Kiran snorted.

  “That’s kind of refreshing,” Nessa laughed. Too many people she was used to dealing with relatively recently were fine with being so...fake.

  They sat in silence for a bit after that, all of them enjoying their food. Nessa started thinking of what she was going to do today. Training daily was already on her schedule until the tournament started, so maybe she should go looking for vitamins? For her Pokemon, of course. She only had enough to last until tomorrow, so she should probably go. After all, considering who her first round opponent was, she really didn’t want to have any chance of losing…

  “Miss Nessa, you’re frowning so heavily. You have the same air as Kiran does when he gets upset, but you’re much prettier,” Athena said, snapping her out of her thoughts.

  “Screw you Athena, I’m plenty pretty,” Kiran responded with a bit of irritation in his voice. Joan then snorted and looked to her right, away from Kiran. He looked at her in mock betrayal, then all three of them burst out laughing.

  Nessa tried, but mostly failed to contain her own laugh, putting her hand to her mouth. She hadn’t even realized she was frowning, but now she felt a bit better.

  “But seriously, are you alright?” Kiran asked, after they had all managed to recover from their laughter.

  “I was… thinking about my first round opponent,” Nessa decided to say. “Raihan.”

  Oh, by Zacian's sword, just saying his name made her annoyed. "He's a fellow Galarian Gym Leader, a Dragon-type specialist," Nessa explained. "He's also a complete scumbag. Always using his position to get women."

  Kiran grimaced slightly. "Ah. He's got nothing better to do?"

  "Somehow, no," she very nearly growled. "Galar could be using the amount of time and money he spends on that to do literally anything useful for the region, but he brings in the views like hotcakes with his reality show, so no one at the top cares what he does."

  There was a slight pause while Kiran processed that. He didn’t say anything after that pause either. Nessa could appreciate that. An ‘I’m sorry’ wouldn’t fix anything, and asking ‘are you okay’ would be stupid, since she obviously wasn’t – though she probably wouldn’t say that part out loud.

  She ran a hand through her hair and sighed. “Hey, I was thinking of going to buy some vitamins for my Pokemon at the local department store after this. You want to come?” she smiled.

  Joan, Athena, and Kiran blinked at her. “Vitamins? Are they supposed to be taking those?” Kiran asked, pointing at both of his Pokemon.

  Nessa frowned at him. “Yeah, you’re supposed to be… oh, right, they probably don’t have those in Orre,” she realized. “Just let me finish my food, and then we’ll go, yeah?”

  ----------

  “Wh-why is there so much?!”

  Nessa giggled a bit at Kiran’s reaction to the Lilycove Department Store, specifically to the third floor, the one with all the Pokemon vitamins. It was somewhat cute, how he looked like a kid who just came to a candy shop for the first time.

  The store wasn’t nearly as grand as some of the ones back in Galar, but it was still impressive. Floor upon floor of tools that Trainers could use to better their journeys, much more than you would find in your average Trainer store in a Pokemon Center. Here, there were vitamins that could be eaten, and over a long, continuous period of doing that, the Pokemon in question would have specific parts of themselves grow stronger.

  “Here,” Nessa motioned, to a wall of jars they were right next to. “Proteins increase the physical attack power of Pokemon, Iron increases their physical Defense, Carbos, their speed, Calcium, their special attack, Zinc, their resistance to type energy specifically, and HP Ups are for stamina.”

  Kiran’s eyes lit up specifically at Zinc’s function. “Hey Joan, this would be useful for you, right? If we’re going at the Water Gym Leader first.” he said to Joan, who was right beside him. Athena and all his other Pokemon were inside their balls now, since the store had a rule of only allowing one Pokemon out per Trainer.

  “Uh, they probably won’t have too much effect for this tournament, if at all. You see the effect over a longer period of time. You’ll probably start seeing something notable after around a month of taking them, Joan,” Nessa said.

  “And they’re real expensive…” Kiran mused. “Right, I’ll just buy a jar of Zinc to start anyway then.”

  “Good choice,” Nessa thought. A lot of Trainers, even some at higher levels, didn’t think about resisting type energy, even if their attacks made use of them. It was the mark of a smart Trainer to not think of defense in such a basic fashion, such as just training their Pokemon’s physical bodies, or relying entirely on type match ups.

  As for Nessa, she was going for HP Ups, since that was what she used most, and what she was currently almost out of. Being a Water-specialist, many of her Pokemon relied on hydrokinesis to be able to fight well on land, and that required lots of stamina. That included her Goldy, her Golduck, who was next to her right now. He had been awake when she went back to her room earlier to get her purse, and wanted to come with her.

  Nessa smiled a bit when she saw that Goldy was currently engaged in deep conversation with Joan about something. She had no clue what they were talking about, but she hoped that Goldy could make a new friend. Unfortunately, Nessa’s busy work schedule meant that he didn’t have too much of an opportunity for that.

  As they were about to pay for their vitamins at the cashier, Nessa noticed Kiran staring at a mural on the wall to their left. She looked at it and… she was taken aback.

  Three Pokemon were present in the image, and all of them seemed to be taller than the mountains in the background of the mural. One was a bipedal Pokemon with thick, red, segmented plates covering it, with gigantic white spikes running along the sides of their head, body, and tail. It also had four long claws extending from each hand. All around it, earth, rock, and dirt seemed to be pulsing outward from it.

  To the right was what Nessa assumed was a massive Water-type, with two big pectoral fins extending from either side. Its body was deep blue, with a white chin area, that had some spikes coming out from it. An enormous wave was rearing up behind it, a thunderstorm was erupting all around it. The red and blue Pokemon seemed to be about to clash, and they looked furious at each other.

  In the middle of the two, was a long, green, serpentine Pokemon, that Nessa thought looked like a curled missile. Basically non-existent wings, but it was flying somehow. Four green horns extended from its head at ninety-degree angles from each other. It had only two hands, no other limbs, and they weren’t particularly large compared to the limbs of the other two Pokemon, but it appeared to be roaring at the other two.

  And yes, she’d called them ‘it’. She usually never did that with Pokemon, but something about these ones… they just seemed like they embodied something so much more expansive than other Pokemon. Nessa remembered when she was a kid and her mother would read the tales of Zacian, Zamazenta, and Eternatus to her, and she felt similar to how she felt back then, looking at these Pokemon in front of her. Like they were concepts, entities that defined how everyone on Earth gets to live.

  The lady who was checking out their items caught their gaze, then looked between us and the painting a few times. “Ah, I see,” she said with a small laugh. “You two aren’t from Hoenn, are you?”

  Nessa and Kiran snapped their heads over to look at her. “How’d you know?” Kiran asked.

  “Nobody who’s from here would look so captured by those three,” she said, gesturing with her head to the mural. “The red one’s Groudon, blue one is Kyogre, green one is Rayquaza. About ten years ago, they almost destroyed this region when they woke up, so no one who lives here could just forget them.”

  Both Nessa’s and Kiran’s eyes widened quite a bit at that. Ten years ago?! This wasn’t a depiction of an ancient event?

  “Wait, I remember,” Kiran said, covering his mouth with his palm. “There were these huge tsunamis pushing against Orre ten years ago. I remember ‘cause we usually never get those there.”

  The lady behind the counter nodded solemnly. “Yep, that’d be them. We’re mostly recovered, but we’ll always remember how bad things got. Let’s hope it doesn’t happen again, yeah?” she said as she handed them their vitamins.

  As Nessa and Kiran were walking to the elevator that would take them back down to the first floor, Nessa’s thoughts went to the legendaries that she’d just heard about. Aside from the stories her parents had told her as a kid, she had experience hearing about legendaries. She was an high-ranking member of the Galar League, after all, and she knew they existed all around her. It’s just that she had never had to deal with any active ones, they were all dormant.

  “So that’s what Team Aqua was,” Kiran muttered under his breath as they stepped into the elevator.

  Nessa and Goldy turned to him with a frown. “Aqua? What’s that?”

  “Those kids from the other day at the cave mentioned them. They apparently summoned legendaries ten years ago, which had to have been one or more of those monsters from the mural.”

  Nessa and Goldy were suddenly a lot more alert. “Is there danger we have to worry about right now?” Goldy said in their minds, his eyes suddenly having a dark glint to them.

  Kiran started drumming his fingers against his leg anxiously. “Not from Aqua, but maybe from new people,” he said, then let out a frustrated exhale. “Damn it, I came here to get away from life-or-death shit,” he frowned.

  Nessa could kind of agree with that. It wasn’t just life-or-death things she was spacing herself from, but this Hoenn trip was supposed to be a vacation of sorts for her. Just then, however, she realized something. “Wait, I thought you didn’t care too much about the cave death,” she said.

  The elevator had now reached the first floor. “It’s not the kid I’m that worried about,” he dismissed, as they walked out of the elevator. “It’s just… I came here looking to live in some way instead of just getting by. And that lady at the counter just reminded me about the whole ‘legendaries summoning’ thing, and now something I’ve spent years looking forward to might be in trouble.”

  Okay, Nessa could really relate to that one. “Ugh, now I’m depressed,” she huffed dejectedly. “Honestly, even if I told you the other day the things I wanted to do here, I don’t want to feel like I’m…” she trailed off, not sure how to put her feelings into words.”

  “You feel like you’ll just be checking something off a list, since you’ve been under stress for so long that you’ve forgotten how to enjoy yourself,” Goldy finished.

  Nessa stared at him in surprise, as Kiran grunted in agreement. “Wow, you got me again,” Nessa said with a smirk.

  “Obviously,” Goldy huffed, crossing his arms. “You usually have trouble figuring this stuff out, remember?”

  “You don’t need to tell that to other people…” she muttered, as Kiran gave a small smirk.

  “He’s right,” Kiran said, looking off into the distance. “To be honest, whether it’s this tournament, or otherwise, I’m not even sure what I have to do to enjoy myself. Or maybe thinking of something I ‘have to’ do is defeating the point? I don’t know…”

  Nessa didn’t have an answer. As they exited the department store, and stepped into the glaring light of the mid-morning sun, she really wished she knew how to answer Kiran.

  Oh, well. Hopefully, this journey would give her clarity.