“So, a human chased you… and then ordered a Pokémon to hurt you?” Myst tried for the third time, watching the small Psychic-type carefully.

  Ralts raised its right hand as if to respond, only to let out a low moan of pain and instantly drop it back down.

  Myst grimaced regretfully.

  “Alright, new system,” Myst declared, straightening up. “You nod for yes, shake your head for no, and…” He trailed off, tapping his chin in thought. “For ‘I don’t understand,’ uh… spin around in a circle.”

  Ralts stared at him.

  Cynthia stared at him.

  Myst lifted his hands defensively. “What? I think it could work!”

  Cynthia felt her mouth quirk up before she quickly hid it behind a long-suffering sigh. “Or, and hear me out on this, Ralts just does nothing if she doesn’t understand the question.”

  Myst blinked. “I mean, yeah, that could work, but we’d be missing out on her adorable pirouettes.”

  “Ralts!” came the little Psychic-type’s sharp sound of disagreement.

  Myst just grinned at the small Pokémon.

  Failing to keep a straight face Cynthia hid her own smile… again.

  Like she’d ever let Myst know she found his idiotic stunts funny.

  Honestly though, it was kind of funny, watching someone struggle to communicate with a Pokémon. Not that it was unusual, every trainer went through this phase, where nothing made sense and you had no clue what a Pokémon was trying to convey. But eventually, it became instinctual. You just understood them, even though they never spoke a single word.

  Of course, they could have any of their Pokémon translate, but Cynthia figured she would tell him that when he asked for her help.

  So, you know, never.

  “So, let’s try again,” Myst said. “A human chased you.”

  Ralts hesitated for a moment, then nodded slowly.

  Cynthia felt her smile fade.

  “Multiple humans?”

  This time, Ralts didn’t hesitate. She nodded vigorously.

  Myst’s smile disappeared too.

  Another question wasn’t really needed. From the looks of her previous poisoning, she had been hit with Toxic. That meant a Pokémon had to have been involved. Then again, that was never really in doubt, considering she used to have a Flygon protecting her.

  But multiple humans chasing down a shiny Ralts…

  “Hunters.” Cynthia spat.

  Myst stared at Ralts for a long moment before cautiously asking, “And hunters are different from trainers, I’m guessing?”

  Cynthia fought the instinct to recoil. The question was so absurd, so obvious, that for a split second, she almost snapped at him. She opened her mouth, but no words came out.

  She shut it.

  Took a breath.

  Reminded herself that he just didn’t know.

  Even so…

  A shiver of disgust ran through her.

  “Yeah, okay. I’ll take that as a no,” Myst said slowly.

  Cynthia managed a nod.

  “Just—” She started, then stopped, exhaling sharply before trying again. “Just never ask that again, please. You sounded like one of those apologists who think what hunters do is no different from what a regular trainer does.”

  “Ehm…” Myst hesitated. “Do they lump you together as equally fine or… equally bad?”

  “The first one…” Cynthia said, then narrowed her eyes. “Why do you sound more worried about the second one?”

  Myst paused, opened his mouth, then closed it again. “Good question… I don’t actually know. And now that you say that, I feel like the first option should be worse here, too…”

  For a moment, they just stared at each other. Then Cynthia shook her head.

  “Whatever. Can we focus on the important part?” She glanced down at the spot where Ralts had been standing… or more accurately, had stood.

  What?

  “Ralts.”

  A quiet squeak came from behind Myst.

  Cynthia’s gaze snapped to him, and he floated an awkward smile under her glare.

  Honestly, why was Ralts so afraid of her? Sure, she could be a little intense, but she wasn’t mean! Myst was at least as mean as she was!

  More than that, Ralts was just so…

  So.

  Freaking.

  Cute!

  The fact that Myst was hogging her all to himself was unfair!

  She pouted slightly as she stared down at Myst’s legs, where the small Pokémon had decided to hide.

  Myst cleared his throat and spoke before she could. “Buuut yeah, you’re right, we should focus on the important part. So how about you release Roselia? We could try asking it if it knows what went down, considering Ralts here seems to have been knocked out for most of it.”

  Cynthia narrowed her eyes, immediately recognizing the attempted deflection. They still hadn’t asked Ralts nearly all the questions they could have…

  At the same time, she understood.

  Ralts wasn’t exactly in tip-top condition after all.

  Still… she glanced down at her side, where Roselia’s Poké Ball was properly minimized. There was a reason she hadn’t released it.

  While getting help from a Pokémon Center was the fastest way to get a Pokémon back to full strength, a long night’s rest worked just as well. That didn’t change even if Roselia stayed inside her Poké Ball, the Pokémon would still recover fully.

  So when she released it?

  It would be at full strength.

  And probably pissed.

  Her eyes flicked to Ralts, who was doing a poor job of hiding the way its right hand trembled.

  “Okay, but let’s be ready first,” Cynthia said. “Queenie!”

  She released Riolu from another Poké Ball in the same motion.

  Riolu materialized in a flash of red light, landing gracefully, while Queenie perked up from her spot, tail flicking in eager anticipation. She looked more than happy that something was finally happening.

  Myst motioned for Rei to come closer before crouching down to meet Ralts at eye level.

  “Ralts, can you help us calm down Roselia too? We just want to ask it a few questions.”

  Ralts nodded seriously, squaring its almost nonexistent shoulders and letting out a cry of fierce determination.

  So cute.

  Cynthia had to physically rip her gaze away from the tiny Pokémon before she got completely derailed. Instead, she grabbed Roselia’s Poké Ball and took a steadying breath.

  “Ready?”

  “I mean, obviously.” Myst replied.

  Through a force of will that was, in Cynthia’s humble opinion, unparalleled, she resisted rolling her eyes. Then she opened the Poké Ball.

  And several things happened at once.

  First—Roselia materialized in a red glow, caught sight of Ralts standing next to Myst, and immediately fired off a storm of Poison Stings.

  Second—Queenie’s claw smashed into Roselia’s bouquet-like arms, forcing the poisonous needles to scatter harmlessly into the ground.

  Third—Rei slammed into Roselia feet first, pinning it instantly with an almost unfair combination of legs, arms, and ears acting as locks.

  “Ro—” The Grass-Poison type began, sounding thoroughly outraged.

  But before it could even finish, Ralts spoke up.

  “Ralts!”

  Roselia froze, its furious glare faltering as it locked eyes with the small Pokémon. A low, guttural growl rumbled from Roselia’s throat, more frustration than speech.

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Ralts simply raised its right hand.

  “Ra-ralts.”

  For a moment, the two Pokémon simply stared at one another in silence, the tension hanging heavy between them. Then, with a reluctant glance up towards Rei, Roselia’s shoulders slumped. It sighed, lowering its bouquet-like hands in surrender.

  “Roseelia,” it muttered, as if it had said all it needed to.

  “Bunn-bunneary.” Rei said, turning her hand towards Myst.

  He smiled at his partners words, throwing a hidden thumbs up her way.

  “Sure, if Roselia promises to behave, then we can let him go.”

  Cynthia noted the pronoun. Male.

  Not that there was any doubt. Only a boy would be stupid enough to taunt the one chasing him while carrying life-saving aid.

  Rei released her hold and, with a couple of quick hops, landed beside Myst, snorting in disdain.

  Roselia rose gracefully, shaking the dirt from his grassy body before flicking his red scarf over his shoulder with practiced ease.

  Then, before anyone could react, he smiled, a slow, knowing expression, and dipped into an exaggerated bow, all charm and mock civility, as if humouring a particularly irritable noblewoman.

  Rei just stared.

  Undeterred, and perhaps unaware of his own limits, Roselia conjured a flower with a flourish and stepped toward her, offering it with a too-perfect smile.

  “Roselia.”

  Riolu growled in annoyance at the sight, but before he could do anything stupid, Rei had already picked up the flower and thrown it over her shoulder.

  Roselia blinked.

  Took a step back.

  His confident smile faltered as Rei’s ear turned a deep red.

  Quickly, he spun toward Ralts, looking for backup.

  Ralts just stared at him, unimpressed.

  “Ralts.”

  Cynthia didn’t need to speak Pokémon to understand that.

  In the end, it was Myst who stepped in, just before the room turned into a crime scene.

  “You can’t murder him yet Rei, we still need him to play twenty questions” he said, taking a hurried step in front of his partner, effectively blocking Rei’s line of sight to her soon-to-be victim.

  Rei snorted but made no further move, and, as the deep red colour on her ear faded, Roselia let out a quiet sigh of relief.

  That relief lasted exactly until the twentieth question, when Roselia finally realized they hadn’t meant literally twenty questions.

  ….

  “So they don’t have a trainer, or at least, they don’t feel like they do. No idea how they got here. Just woke up a couple of months ago with no real memories. Wandered around before finding each other after a few weeks. They knew each other from before, but don’t remember how. Flygon was their leader, but got…” Myst paused, grimacing. “Hurt in a confrontation with a Pokémon hunter and their team.”

  He finished, leaning against the rough cave wall.

  Cynthia pursed her lips, glancing toward the hole leading back into the main chamber. They had stepped out once the scent of Flygon’s decomposing body had finally started to hit them. Honestly, she still couldn’t quite wrap her head around the fact it was gone. The aura it had given off even dead….

  According to Ralts, Flygon had been strong. Strong enough to scare off the largest Vigoroth flock in the forest. Strong enough that the Slacking ruling that flock had been an easy fight.

  That might put it on the level of something like Mommy Lopunny, a Pokémon which felt like it could be on an Elite Four team.

  So whoever had taken it down?

  Not amateurs.

  But strangely, that wasn’t what bothered her most.

  Her gaze turned back to Myst, “Doesn’t their situation remind you of anything?”

  The moment the words left her mouth, she saw it.

  He shifted, posture tensing slightly.

  “You’re trying to say it’s similar to my situation right?” he asked quietly. “If Roselia understood what we meant when explaining months right… then they woke up right around the same time I did.”

  Cynthia nodded, watching him carefully. Myst had always been an odd case, but mostly because of his knowledge. People getting lost in the forest? Even losing their memories? It wasn’t common, but it did happen. In places like Kanto or Johto, where Pokémon like Hypno were more common, it was practically an annual event.

  But those people didn’t usually wake up with knowledge that seemed… out of this world.

  “They could’ve ended up here for the same reason you did,” Cynthia said softly, her words careful. “Maybe even from the same place.”

  Myst’s hands tightened further, his expression hardening. It was something they hadn’t really talked about, mostly because he kept avoiding the topic like a plague.

  And honestly? She got it.

  It had to be painful, knowing you had a past, maybe even a family, but not remembering any of it. But that didn’t change the fact that they needed to talk about it. Especially now.

  Maybe she could’ve let it slide if he were an isolated case. But with Flygon, Roselia, and Ralts seeming to share the same condition?

  If there was a Pokémon taking memories and dumping them in Eterna Forest, people needed to know.

  “I don’t know, okay?” Myst exhaled sharply. “I agree, their situation sounds similar, but they still remember knowing each other. I don’t.”

  “What about when you woke up, was there—” Cynthia tried.

  Myst cut her off. “Cynthia, you don’t get it. There is nothing. I woke up in a cave, spent weeks thinking this world was a dream, then panicked when I realized it was real.” His hands ran through his hair roughly, his eyes briefly squeezing shut. “It’s weird. Facts, skills, knowledge, I have that.” He let out a bitter laugh, a sound that didn’t seem to fit him at all. “But people? Memories of who I was?”

  His nails dug into his arms.

  “I don’t have anything that matters.”

  Cynthia swallowed, staring at him.

  “Please don’t look at me like that,” he muttered, his voice tight.

  She tried to look away, but somehow, she just couldn’t.

  In the end Myst was the one who looked away.

  Neither said anything for what felt like an hour, before Myst continuing in a low voice.

  “I just don’t see point in speculating, Cynthia. I don’t have any answers. No matter how much we go in circles, it’ll always be ‘I don’t know.’ If you want to figure out why this is happening, it’s not going to happen through me suddenly remembering something.”

  He tried for a smile.

  It didn’t reach his eyes.

  Cynthia felt her stomach sink at his expression. She forced a smile back, scrambling for something, anything, to keep the conversation going.

  But nothing came.

  In the end, she bit her lip, feeling like a complete idiot. She had known he didn’t like talking about it, but for some reason, she kept forgetting that it wasn’t that he didn’t want to talk about it, it was that he couldn’t.

  So the silence between them stretched uncomfortably, thick and awkward.

  Eventually Myst shifted against the cave wall and opened his mouth. Though his voice was just a little too stiff to be natural. “How did the hunter even find Ralts?”

  Cynthia paused, trying to pull herself together before answering slowly. “Probably someone saw it and bragged in town. That’s how these things usually happen.”

  At that, Myst blinked, looking almost confused. “What?”

  Cynthia furrowed her brows, “What do you mean, ‘what’? That’s just how these things go. People see a rare Pokémon, and then the hunters show up to try and capture it.”

  “No, I mean…” Myst trailed off for a moment, his tone slower, more deliberate. “Don’t you think that’s a little odd? Ralts don’t naturally live in Eterna Forest, and shiny Pokémon are rare. I’ve been here for months, and the only shiny I’ve seen Lopunny. If just one person came out of Eterna claiming they saw a shiny Ralts, I wouldn’t think there was a wild one just hanging around. I’d think they were crazy.”

  Cynthia paused. Her mouth opened, then closed again. Her eyes widened. “That—”

  She stopped herself, the gears clicking into place.

  “You think multiple people saw her?” She blinked at him, realization flooding in. “No, you’re right. Multiple people had to have seen her.”

  “One person saying something crazy? Normal. Five or ten? Someone would take an interest. I mean, it’s a shiny Ralts.” He paused, looking uncertain. “Of course, I don’t know how many people just wander into the forest, but…”

  Cynthia picked up where he left off, her mind racing. “No, you’re right. Most people just stick to the routes. One trainer spotting the Ralts deep in the forest? That could happen. But for a whole professional hunter party to gather? No way, it was just one or two. It means we probably aren’t far from the route, which means—”

  Myst finished for her, “We might not be far from help.”

  They stared at each other for a moment.

  Then, in sync, they rushed toward the larger chamber.

  …………

  Elena Joy wasn’t going to lie, being assigned to Eterna City?

  It sucked.

  Honestly, calling it a city was a stretch. Compared to her hometown, it was more of a glorified village. Then again, maybe that was just Sinnoh as a whole. For all the talk about integrating into the Pokémon League, the entire region felt downright rural compared to Johto.

  Even Jubilife, Sinnoh’s so-called biggest city, barely held a candle to Ecruteak, never mind Goldenrod.

  And to make things worse? Nothing ever happened here.

  When she’d signed up for the exchange program, she imagined adventure, new region, new people, exciting experiences. Instead, she was stuck behind the counter of a building that had to be at least twenty million years old. Everything here was just... worse. The food was bland, the weather was perpetually dreary, and the trainers?

  Utterly unimpressive.

  She let out a sigh and let her face fall onto the counter.

  The Gym?

  Sure, it was fun… the first time she watched a battle. After that? It didn’t take long to realize that Sinnoh’s League didn’t even come close to Johto’s. The Gym Leader was strong enough, sure, but the challengers?

  Honestly, if she saw one more person try to take down Benkara’s Tropius with Water Gun, she was going to lose it.

  She knew she was probably being unfair, Eterna’s Gym were most people’s first or second badge, while Goldenrod had a mandatory three-badge requirement.

  Didn’t change the fact that life sucked.

  Sometimes, she wished that a dashing guy would walk through the door, look at her, and whisk her away on an adventure. She’d heard stories of Joys who left the family profession, changed their names, and became trainers...

  But she wasn’t going to lie to herself. This was her dream, helping people, healing Pokémon.

  It was just that right now?

  There was nobody to help.

  The low chime of the Pokémon Center’s wooden door opening reached her ears, but she didn’t bother raising her head.

  She had at least ten seconds before the newcomer could actually see her, thanks to the ridiculous way the place was laid out.

  Whoever designed this building deserved to be shot.

  …Or maybe given a raise, Elena couldn’t never quite decide.

  Still, as the ten-second mark approached, she sighed and lifted her head, brushing her newly dyed platinum-blond hair, out of her eyes. Plastering on her best customer-service smile, she prepared for the usual routine.

  She heard them round the corner and spoke before they even came into view.

  “Hello, do yo—”

  Elena stared.

  Most trainers who arrived from Route 205 looked vaguely like they had struggled… maybe. Sure, Eterna Forest was huge and frankly terrifying, but the route itself?

  A cakewalk.

  It was, after all, one of the most heavily patrolled routes in the region, with Rangers stationed everywhere. That was part of what made this assignment so much more boring than she’d expected.

  After all, without a little danger… who was she supposed to heal?

  So most trainers arrived looking like they had gone camping.

  These two?

  Well, of the two the blond looked better.

  That wasn’t saying much.

  The girl looked like she’d been dragged backward through a thicket and then casually tossed into a ditch for good measure. Her clothes were streaked with dirt, her once-white shirt now sporting enough black spots to make a Ledian jealous. Twigs and leaves clung stubbornly to her wild, frizzy hair, which had turned into an untameable mess that even Elena cringed at the thought of fixing. It would’ve been bad enough if her hair only reached her shoulders, but it was mid-back. Honestly, at this point, she might have been better off cutting most of it off.

  The disarray of her appearance made the dark smudges under her eyes and the bruises on her arms look almost trivial by comparison.

  Still, under normal circumstances, the girl’s sorry state would still have been enough to fast-track her, and whatever Pokémon she had left, straight into the healing wing.

  But then there was the boy standing next to her.

  Elena felt her stomach drop as she scanned him up and down. Even hunched over, he was tall, probably around a hundred and ninety centimetres.

  That probably had just made things worse.

  Severe malnutrition.

  His ribs weren’t just visible, they were pronounced, each bone sticking out as if his body was too starved to even hold onto its own structure. His arms were too thin too, with veins that stood out sharply. He was clearly lacking in muscle mass, likely from prolonged undernutrition. The pale, ashen hue to his skin told her there was a lack of proper hydration and likely some electrolyte imbalance as well.

  His eyes, sunken, with dark bags beneath them, spoke of exhaustion, but also a lack of vitamins, possibly iron. The bruises scattered across his arms, she suspected, weren’t just from external trauma, they were probably a sign of weakened capillaries and poor circulation.

  She opened her mouth, but words didn’t come out. Glancing down at her arms, she realized she was shaking slightly.

  She had wanted something to happen, some excitement.

  But this?

  What a horrible day for the head nurse to be out of town.

  Too busy trying to figure out what the protocol for this was, she almost didn’t notice when the boy walked up to her, leaning easily over the counter like he wasn’t a hair’s breadth from an early grave, and looked her dead in the eye.

  “You know, you should be careful about working here. I’ve heard theories that the Joy clan are Pokémon-human hybrids, who knows what they might do to get someone like you into the family?” he joked.

  Elena flushed red.

  “Your entire family is a Pokémon hybrid!”

  The blond girl in the back facepalmed.

  The Bunneary on her right side facepalmed.

  The shiny Ralts on her left facepalmed.

  Elena paused for a second, cold dread forming in her stomach, realizing she just screamed at somebody who desperately needed help.

  She opened her mouth, about to apologize, when her brain registered what her eyes had just seen.

  “There actually was a shiny Ralts in Eterna?”

  The boy grinned.