[X] My Assistant

[Master Houndoom]

It was a much, much brighter day in Arthro town when the reunited group arrived. The trip home had gone late into the night, and there was another session of sleeping under the stars followed by a poorly received early morning to make it back to the pokécenter.

Amongst the humans, there wasn’t a whole lot of talking. Reilly was silent, his brow furrowed, as if he knew something had gone on, but just what it was eluded him. It had to be a strange feeling, and it was causing him to act strangely in the eyes of his companions: He didn’t complain or grumble under his breath. He just walked along, silently, contemplating.

Tuesday, too, was quiet, but the two older teens were far too used to that to have it be of any concern. However, she, too, was engaged in a strange activity. Every once in a while, she would stare at one or the others of the older two of the group; at one point, she had reached out and touched Jaima’s wrist, just above his pokégear. When he’d looked down to see what she had wanted, he caught her staring at where her hand touched his, then, pulling away, watching her fingers. Jaima had looked at Meiko with a little concern, but both had agreed; the two had been through something that was borderline traumatic, and didn’t need a worried big brother, or teenage jokes, or a hovering big sister type. So they walked, and waited, and made sure that mother the other two did was seen as scornful or wrong.

Unless they had actually done something scornful or wrong, but there were no incidences of this to speak of.

Finally, they made it to Arthro town. Jaima arranged for the rooms, four which, if needed could be downgraded to two, while Meiko took the two youths and all of the pokemon, including Jaima’s to see the nurse.

“OK,” Jaima said, holding up the keys. “We can do this two ways: We all get separate rooms, or we can split two rooms: boys and girls. Up to you two.”

Meiko smiled at him, if a little sadly, and Jaima winked at her in response. She blushed, but if Reilly or Tuesday saw it, neither mentioned it. Jaima was being quite accommodating. In fact, the only arrangement he wasn’t about to allow was Tuesday and Reilly in the same room. Not after the kiss he’d seen them swap the last time they had arrived in town.

And since he wasn’t going to let them do it, he and Meiko couldn’t, either.

Finally, the choice was made, and Reilly and Tuesday took the keys to the rooms they had chosen and went ahead to make their way to bed. Jaima and Meiko stayed in the small lobby.

“Worried?” Meiko’s face had a knowing smile on it, and it was Jaima’s turn to blush.

“A little… It’s obvious something happened…” He shook his head. “But if I try to pry it out of them, they’ll just shrink into themselves. Right?”

Meiko grinned. “I’m so glad you’re open to learning… it would take so much longer to train you up properly…”

Jaima smirked. “Speaking of training…”

“I’ll be good!” Meiko said, biting both lips and looking, at least partially, mock frightened.

Jaima looked toward the Nurse’ station, already darkened for the night, but Meiko reached down and took his hand. “They need rest too, Jaima. We’ll be OK. And if anything happens, Mercury can get out of her ball…”

* * * * *

Nightwish was out of her ball, lounging against the shelf, sighing. Usually, by now, she’d have the gist of her newest mark. By now, she’d be planning on how to get the most out of the trainer, then leave them with a post hypnotic suggestion that would have them breaking her poke ball thirty minutes after she’d taken their food, potions, and, a few times, money.

Not this time. This time, the trainer had gotten under her skin. This time the trainer had reminded her of Nightwish’s first, when she had simply ben called Gothi. When she had been…

Ugh. She had almost said “happy.” How terribly cheesy.

But she had been. Meiko reminded her of what Cyndy could have been, had…

Cwap, she thought as the tears came. Cyndy had gotten sick, and, though the gothita was almost too young to know what was going on, she knew her trainer wasn’t going o get better.

Cyndy had had cancer.

Then her uncle ‘took in’ Cyndy’s pokémon, and made the mistake of talking to his partner about how much gothitelle could get with certain individuals. The mental pictures were almost as bad as the words.

But Cyndy… before that horror, before she had run away for the first time, Cyndy had been a good, happy, kind trainer. And now, despite her hardships and fears and other issues, Meiko was a good, happy, kind trainer, with good friends…

Nightwish felt the tears leaking down her face. gweat. just great…

There was a pop, and two arms enfolded her from behind. Nightwish tensed, but then, slowly, relaxed. You’we wucky i don’t thwow you thwough a waww.

There was no reply, but the hug got tighter, and Nightwish sighed and relaxed. Thanks, Mewcuwy…

What are friends for?

I’m just now stawting to wemembew…

[Umbrae Calamitas]

Tuesday had wanted to share a room with Reilly.

It was something she wouldn't admit to the others, but when discussion of their sleeping arrangements had come up, her first thought had been that she and Reilly would room together. They had been sharing sleeping quarters for the past few years, after all.

Except they hadn't.

That was a false memory. Logically, she knew it was false, and she knew she couldn't base current or future interactions with people on memories that were fabricated, so sharing a room with Reilly would have been wrong. Not only would it have given all the wrong signals, since the two of them were hardly friends much less anything more, but Reilly seemed to have no memory of anything that had occurred during their false life. In fact, when he was shaken from the illusion, everything that the not-Fae, that the psychic pokemon had filled their minds with seemed to vanish from his. He couldn't recall what had happened, but he also wasn't stuck remembered such traumatizing events as the deaths of their friends.

Tuesday knew that Jaima and Meiko were well and alive and here. The memory of their deaths had been yet another fabrication, one well-done and visceral, cutting into her mind with a grief that had seemed all-too-real. And she supposed the grief was real, since she had mourned her friends, honestly believing them to be gone. So the memory of their death was a false one, although the memory of the grief was not.

It was very confusing. Everything was twisted up in her head, and while she could filter things out here and then, label this real and this fabricated, the process of extracting one from the other was mentally draining. It was also emotionally trying in some parts, disappointing and embarrassing in others, and an all-around mess.

It bothered her that she hadn't figured it out that everything was a lie. There were gaps in their lives. Great flashes of memories - high-profile points - in her life, like the attack that had killed Jaima, Meiko, and Darryn, were like extravagant pillars decorating a mausoleum. Where normally their would be equally extravagant stone walls with designs carved into them, however, there were only cardboard cut-outs of a life. She was left to assume what most of her life had been from the crayoned colorings on cardboard lies that she didn't realize, her entire focus stolen by those extravagant pillars of memory.

The memories were well-done and hard to shake. Some of them were so tightly wound up within her, she had a difficult time discerning which was fact and which fiction. During their trek back from the underground caverns that had been what the psychics warped into a kingdom, Tuesday had struggled with the fact that Jaima and Meiko were here, that they were alive.

The memory of their death was as clear to her as the memories of growing up with Brone and Anika, chess matches and quiet disagreements. The attack of the dragons was just a real as watching her uncle play chicken with gravity.

That one night that they had camped out on their way back to Arthro Town, Tuesday had lay in her tent, trying to figure out what was real - if Jaima and Meiko were alive or dead. At one point, it had occurred to her that their presence here was an illusion. That they really had died in the dragons' ambush and the Fae' - not-Fae's, the psychics' - trickery was making her believe that they were alive. She was so confused, and that confusion had persisted throughout the night, keeping her awake despite her exhaustion, until the sun had risen and she had quietly packed up her tent to continue their journey to Arthro Town.

She'd found her only solace in that she could test their presence. So she'd found herself reaching out, touching Jaima with fingertips that burned at the contact. If they were illusions, then their existence was so ingrained into her mind that she was being tricked into feeling flesh, as well. If that were the case, then what point was there in fighting it? If the facade was so well-done that they were real in her mind... she wouldn't fight it.

Because their deaths were real - not, wait, fake. Their deaths were a facade... or real.

The deaths were... up for debate. The grief, though. The grief had been very real.

Tuesday had found herself reaching out and touching them on occasion as they traveled. Jaima and Meiko hadn't said anything, but Tuesday hadn't missed the concerned looks tossed her way, or the ones shared between the two of them. If either of them realized that Tuesday's fingers eventually gravitated to their pulse-point, one of the sure-fire promises that they were alive.

Unless her mind was fabricating that, too, but Tuesday didn't want to think about that. She really didn't. So of course, she did. Constantly.

If she had to make a guess one way or another, though, Tuesday would guess that the trickery had been their deaths, and that they really were alive. Their pulse thrummed against her fingertips whenever she briefly touched her fingers to their wrist. She could see they breathed. She could feel them, and they were warm. And the not-Fae had been psychics, and Jaima, Meiko, and Darryn's deaths had hurt. The grief had hurt. Their return... still hurt, but it was a healing kind of hurt.

She just needed time. Time to set her mind to right, to determine... who she was. Because she was still confused. The memories were so wrapped up together, she having trouble determining not only which was real, but which was hers. Or which her she was... the researcher in training or the dragonslayer.

She knew she wasn't a dragonslayer, but... she had been. Was.

She was just so confused.

~*~

Reilly was confused.

Something had happened. That was pretty clear. Tuesday was acting... well. To be honest, he hadn't been around them enough to really know what was normal and what wasn't. He knew the runt was quiet and had some weird thing about water pokemon, so her being quiet wasn't all that much of a surprise. But there was something wrong, even with that. The girl that he had met before had been quiet, an introvert, even, but struggling toward independence in the same way that he was.

The way she kept reaching out and touching her friends, it wasn't like the runt at all.

And, of course, there was whatever had happened between them, with the psychic pokemon who lived underground (and how weird was that?!). Not to mention the fact that she had ki-

No, actually, that was another thing he didn't remember. Didn't remember at all.

But, besides the thing that he didn't remember, and them fighting a bunch of psychic pokemon that lived underground (still weird), something had happened. The way that Meiko (and that weird little gothic psychic pokemon) kept asking him if he remembered anything about what had happened, well... clearly, something had happened and he had missed it.

He'd planned on getting the full story from the runt during their camp-out on the way back to civilization, but the way that the girl had been acting, all frazzled and not paying attention unless she was grabbing somebody's hand out of the blue, he'd decided it wasn't the best time. Now, here they were back at the pokemon center, the runt looked no less ready for an interrogation, and they were deciding on their rooming situation.

Like it was a question. The girl was distraught! Even he could see that! There was no way that they would be taking separate rooms. The runt needed to be with Meiko for the night. Reilly didn't know why she kept reaching out and grabbing the others' hands, but clearly she needed to be somewhere where at least one of the others were close at hand. So there was no reason for her to... to just snatch a key out of Jaima's hand and go storming off down the hall...

Reilly stared after her for a moment, before grabbing one of the other keys out of Jaima's hands and racing after her. He'd been holding off on getting the whole story because it didn't seem like the right time, and maybe it still wasn't, but there was clearly something that was bothering the runt. If Reilly had to play fifty questions to get her to tell them what was up, well, then he would.

He turned the corner after Tuesday just in time to hear her door snap shut, and slowed to a stop just as the lock slid loudly into place.

For a moment, he stood in the middle of the hallway, rolling his tongue over his dry lips.

Clearly... she didn't want to talk to anyone.

~*~

Zorro had fallen asleep in his pokeball when the nurse was running them through the healing device. He didn't know how long it had been since the nurse had been done with them, but his pokeball was still. It took him a few seconds - he wasn't quite as good as the ratta at working the pokeball's mechanics from the inside-out - before he popped out into the darkened room.

There was a flash of color to his right, making him turn his head quickly. Meiko's newest pokemon, Nightwish, was on the clear other side of the room, arms wrapped around herself tightly and eyes huge. Zorro frowned in confusion.

"Nightwish... I thought you couldn't teleport," Mercury said in quiet confusion.

Zorro looked at Mercury and cocked his head to the side. "Is everything... all right, bonita bailarina?"

Mercury glanced at him, smiling softly. "Everything is fine, Zorro. Is there something I can help you with?"

He watched her for a moment before shaking his head. "No. I am going to be with mi hermana." He glanced back at Nightwish briefly before exiting the room.

It didn't take him a moment to find where Tuesday had gone. He could sense where she was, as though she were a beacon calling him, and he followed the siren call with ease. He made it to the door of her room, only to find it locked.

Zorro placed a hand against the door, thinking for a moment about knocking. But he remembered how tired Tuesday was, how little she had slept the night before, and how much she had been struggling to sort through the different truths her mind was telling her.

Zorro lowered his paws. Leaning against the wall, he slid down into a crouch, crossing his arms over the horn in his chest - yet another new development. He closed his eyes and relaxed in sleep.

And in sleep, he dreamed.