NERO

Saturday, March 31, 2018

Tentacools.

Like it made a difference: there were so many of them, floating on the surface in a gelatinous blue mat, that they seemed to take up the same amount of space as only a few of their evolved counterparts. I was about twenty meters underwater, and yet as I stared at them all, bobbing listlessly on the slight current, I felt my mouth go dry, and my body locked up. All the while, my heart played inside my chest like a war drum, drowning out any other sound. A thought came to me:

Jude. Where is Jude?

He was out there, of course, down along the side of the ship, directly beneath the Tentacools, swamped in their great, collective shadow. Sleepy as they were, they hadn't noticed him yet, but he had certainly noticed them, and treated them to a stare of fascinated horror  –  the same kind of stare you might give a corpse, or a car crash. I prayed that he would screech in surprise and run back towards me... But he didn't. Like me, he was frozen in place, bobbing in the current, just like the Tentacools.

One of the Tentacools woke up, blinking blearily. It spotted Jude floating down near the seabed and peered down at him.

That war drum in my chest beat louder, a resounding boom, -oom, -oom that I could feel in the roots of my teeth. Don't panic. Stillness... Yes, stillness, that's what I needed. The muscles in my tail were aching to bolt for Jude and snatch him away, but that wasn't possible: these things were like sedentary balls of antennae, and they reacted to the slightest push and pull of the current. Maybe not quickly, but underneath a forest of them, it was easy to get surrounded.

For a moment, I felt like I was surrounded, that it had happened before and was already happening again. It was just a second, a mere crack in my psyche through which déjà vu flowed in hard and strong, but my resolve withered all the same: I began to shake badly, and the heat seemed to leave my body in a tide, whereas a flood of flashbacks flowed in the opposite direction, pouring through that crack somewhere between my eyes. I felt something on my flesh and jolted, but nothing was there — the tentacle had been of my own imagining, a ghost from the past. The ocean was empty.

For now.

Jude. I struggled to focus, to even take a breath — my chest was on fire, and the water seemed to go over my gills wrong. Weird lights throbbed across my vision, and behind them — within them — I continued to  see other things that weren't there. I even heard them, heard me: Go over and get caught. Under, and we might survive.

Under. They wouldn't follow, would they?

No, not under. Under led to catastrophe. Don't go under. Over. Risk getting caught. It isn't worth it. It isn't—

"Nero?"

A shaky hand came down on my shoulder, and like a fishing hook, I was yanked back to the present. Cora — she was behind me, and she sounded scared, but the very real physical contact sent all the phantoms running to the corners, and I could see again.

"What's he doin'?" Neko asked from behind. He hovered at Cora's side, and the rest of the merkids arrayed behind him. "Is he daft? Them Tentacools be dangerous!"

Cora was watching me, her dark eyes gleaming in the underwater sunlight. She knew. "Aye," she agreed. "Let's get 'im 'afore he finds 'imself in a twist." She squeezed my shoulder. "Be back in a bit."

"No, I can..." But I couldn't — the phantoms were gone, but I was still shaking too badly, and by the time I started moving, Cora was already gone, swimming calmly over to where Jude floated thunderstruck beneath the Tentacool forest. I watched her, helpless, and suddenly began to feel sick — just like last time, just like last time, some of the Tentacools awakened at her passing — my passing — with their eyes following her with a dull curiosity. Their tentacles, held in tight knots and bunches beneath them, twitched, began to unfurl.

She reached Jude. I heard her speak, but not actual words. Jude didn't respond. Cora shifted, swimming before him, grabbing his shoulders. He let out a hair-raising noise, high and grieved, like a wounded animal. Gooseflesh raced up my back.

Cora, get him out of there!

Somehow, she got him moving, slowly turning him around and directing him back towards me. I almost felt relieved.

Then the Tentacool moved.

One of them was more awake than the rest, more interested than the rest: languidly, he floated down out of the floor of the forest, his tentacles deploying fully from underneath him. I was aghast.

"Cora!"

She jerked at my cry, and I pointed frantically at the Tentacool, who was reaching out for her and Jude like a child poking at a Bug-type Pokémon. Only there wasn't innocent flesh at the end of this probe, but a pain so invasive that one could wonder whether it was physical or mental. Cora was seconds away from finding out, and so was Jude — another tentacle was winding down towards him, fluttering like a long piece of black kelp on the lazy current.

I found myself moving, but not in the jet I hoped for — the shakes, they were still there, and instead I went at a fumbling crawl, as though I moved through oil rather than water. Part of me wondered if Jude's sting was taking effect, and I was dissolving towards sleep. Whatever it was, I knew that there was no way I could make it in time. Cora was going to get stung, and Jude... Sweet Arceus, what was going to happen to him, when that tentacle banded around his flesh once again, flesh already ruined by the horrifying embrace of several Tentacruel? Paralysis? Death?

Your gloves, Nero.

The instinct was immediate and pointed, and for once there was no hesitation — it was the only way I could save anyone from here. I yanked the one from my left hand, and then my right, and the ocean came alive around me, a giant pot of boiling salt water. It frothed in a frenzied wake behind me, around me, and the heat was immense, licking at my tail, singing the edges of my hair, my exposed skin, and there was a roar in my ears. Was it the water or my heart? I didn't know. I pointed a naked finger at Cora, who had pulled up short and was staring in horror at...me? Or something behind me: an enraged ocean, barely held back by my will alone. I pointed at her.

"Get down," I said — or whispered, because she didn't appear to hear me. The water punched past me in a searing, salty blast, chaotic and violent and indiscriminant. Panic struck through me as the roar in my ears went higher, sharpening into a keel as I felt that power...whatever it was, flooding out of my body, vicious and uncontrolled. Hands, Nero — keep it in the hands!

But it was far too late: the hot water whipped the rest of the ocean into a wicked spiral, one that stretched from the surface to the seafloor, transforming everything in between into a boiling cyclone. It tore apart the Tentacool forest, sucking every one of the gelatinous Pokémon inside, including the one that had been reaching for Cora and Jude...who had disappeared. Another strike of panic, and I kicked forward, scanning the sudden chaos for them. I spotted Jude's scarred tail: a torrent of silt rose in an explosive cloud from the seafloor, and he was caught up in it, being pushed down by Cora as she attempted to shield him. The cyclone's furious current ripped at her tail, her dress, and she kicked furiously, battling its uncompromising pull.

I went low, approaching them from the bed of the seafloor. The growing sand cloud swelled out towards me, and I swam directly into it, fording through the chaos as the cyclone hit a furious climax. Reaching in the debris, I found Jude's tail. Both his eyes were squeezed shut, and he had Cora's upper arm clutched in a death-grip. I reeled them both in, shoving Jude behind me, and trying to work Cora after him. Jude was coughing. Cora was drowning, gagging on sand and hot water. I wound her arm around my neck and grabbed Jude's hand, preparing to jet to the surface.

That's when my cyclone finally dissolved, and the shadows returned.

Normally, that wouldn't have stopped me. But as the whirling sea slowed, several bodies appeared in front of me, walling us off — Tentacool bodies, their eyes still dull and unbothered, as though they hadn't just been flung through a boiling underwater twisted.

And they hadn't I realized — rather, I might as well have not bothered with water-shaping, because with an icy chill, I realized that I had only made things worse for myself. They weren't dead, they weren't gone, and most weren't even injured — they continued to float above us in a disjointed mat of rubbery blue bodies, and the only difference was that now most of them were awake. And closer — the whirlpool had done nothing but stir them around, and turn them under, closer to the seafloor. The bastard that had been reaching for Cora and Jude was directly overhead now, looking slightly dizzy. Beneath him, his tentacles bunched in black knots, ready to deploy at a moment's notice.

And they did, when he finally found focus — they, a dozen of them this time, spread down towards Cora like a black net. My body moved automatically, swinging her around so that I was now between her and the feelers, but my mind stalled as lights came from that crack between my eyes again, more images: One around my tail, one around my forearm.

No! I lifted my hand, ready to boil the water once again, and instead I saw blood on the water, spewing from a stretch of flayed flesh as another me bucked and screamed. That other me fought for freedom as a agony worked its way through my body, from crown to fluke, enormous and serrated.

Like a self-fulfilling prophecy, that agony came a moment later, no longer a phantom from the past, but very, very real. I screamed — Nero screamed — as the tentacle touched my hand, brushed the flesh of my palm just beneath my pinky finger, eliciting something excruciating and cold, searing and hot, stabbing down through my skin and bones and moving in a hellish pathway up to my skull, where it hit the backs of my eyes. The heat at my fingertips dissolved, and the ocean went cold around me. I felt faint.

Around the din in my ears, I heard something. It sounded like Jude. He was crying.

Fight. Protect him!  I had last time. But now, I couldn't move — just a brush, a kiss on my hand, and I was paralyzed from the neck down, from pain and terror both. It was too much — I wanted to weep, run and hide like we had in that trench, for days, weeks, months, but I went nowhere, and those other tentacles grew ever nearer, reaching for my face, my tail, my neck.

In moments, I would look exactly like Jude. And maybe die. I wanted to close my eyes...but I couldn't even do that.

So I was nearly blinded when the red light appeared, turning the entire seabottom orange. The tentacles disappeared, and the one stuck to my hand tore free — another shock of agony rippled up my body, and for a moment I think I did actually pass out. When I blinked the darkness away, the Tentacool was gone. It took a moment to process that.

Gone? Yes — something floated in its place, curled in a fetal position. I blinked, trying to get my eyes working again, but even when they settled back into my skull, they appeared to be malfunctioning — it looked like Darwin floating up there, curled around a Pokéball, the blue and red one I'd seen with him earlier. The realization came from far away, and took another surreal moment to go down. When it did, I was faced with a shocking conclusion:

Did he just...catch the Tentacool?

No other explanation: he was there, it was not. But the others had not disappeared — my amazement turned to alarm when I saw the rest of the water-type Pokémon shifting behind them, their tentacles unfurling and slithering downward in one giant, tangled mass. Panic punched through my paralysis: I shouted a warning, and even managed to point a shaking hand behind him, but the damn fool didn't see — he was still cocooned around the Pokéball, oblivious to the danger. What the hell is he—

A tentacle reached him, and I opened my mouth to shout again, but it was too late: the black tongue tagged his calf, a breath of one flesh against another. Darwin jolted as though electrocuted: his limbs shot out, and the pupils of his eyes shrunk to agonized pinpricks. The Pokéball fell from his fingers, and his breathing tube slipped from his mouth — it was followed by a torrent of bubbles, and I almost thought I heard a scream, one that, as it rebounded to the depths of my ears, sounded eerily similar to Jude's.

Damn!

Somehow, I got to him. I reached up, still shaking, and my fingers closed around a flailing ankle — I yanked him down, out of reach of those groping feelers, and once he was close enough, fisted the back of his swim jacket.

And then, with a struggling mermaid and merboy in one arm and a pained human in the other, I beat my weak tailfin, and got us the hell out of there.

***

DARWIN

"Oh Arceus, Arceus, help, please, it hurts." The words tumbled maniacally out of my mouth, high and desperate. "God, it hurts!"

"Shut up," a sharp voice hissed — I thought it might've been Nero, but he sounded shaky. "It...barely touched you. You're fine, just breathe!"

I was breathing — wheezing, actually, and a f*cking lot of good it was doing me. Fire continued to rage through the back of my left calf, and I continued to kick, and that continued to send bolts of searing pain racing up one side of my body and down the other. "Arceus, Arceus, Arceus!" I cried over and over. I felt sand and grass between my fingers, but only vaguely — it felt like my body was short-circuiting, flailing mindlessly as my calf kindled over invisible flames.

Something was wrong with my eyes, too: I could see the sand, and the grass, and rocks and water, but the images were disjointed, and wouldn't fit together in a way that made sense.

"Stop flailing! Ju— Jude. Are you all right? Jude?" Nero's voice again, and it was followed by a pointed sting of pain. I screeched, and the tip of my foot connected with something solid. Nero swore, and for a moment it was silent again, save for my harsh breathing, my booming heartbeat, and the grind of my feet against the dirt.

Then: "My eyes hurt." The person belonging to this voice sounded like he had a throat made of sand, or chain-smoked for a living.

"Neko, help him clean his eyes out. Use the edge of his tunic."

"Aye," came another voice, scared and small. "B-but... What of him?"

"Cora." Nero sounded resigned. "You're better at bedside manner. Are you fine now?"

"Aye," said someone else. Beneath the breathy rasp, it was distinctly female. "And..." A ragged breath, then a cough. "Thee?"

"I'll live," Nero hissed. "Can you keep him alive? He looks close to stroking out."

"Are ye sure?" said that scared and small voice. "Should we not go 'afore he awakens?"

"Calm yourself," the girl said firmly. "He be a Seawatcher — did ye not see the shirt?"

"I never did lay eyes on him."

"He's new," Nero growled.

"You know him?" The girl sounded surprised.

Nero didn't respond, and the third voice sounded again, still anxious: "C-Cora, I don't think—"

"Neko, if ye cannot still yerself," the girl said, "go and find Dinah and the others. I suspicion they still be back by the reef, takin' shelter."

"I'll...go too..." the chain-smoker rasped.

"Not yet," Nero said. "There are still Tentacools close by."

"F-fine...now..."

"I don't care. Sit there and be quiet — I'll look at you in a minute. And if you try to stick me again, you won't like what happens."

In the next moment, I felt cool fingers brush against my leg, and I jerked — the fire in my calf had just begun to ebb, and now it flared up again, like a sudden bite from a Seviper. I squirmed, and the girl crooned softly.

"It's all right... I be a friend. Can ye tell me yer name?"

My right leg cocked up beneath me in great discomfort. Name? Was I still awake? I couldn't tell: the world felt jumbled and nonsensical, like in a dream. Still, I tried to respond, and I think I did, but the sounds I heard were hushed and garbled.

"Darwin," Nero supplied.

"Darwin, I be called Cora. Ye have been stung by a Tentacool, but I shall help thee. Do ye comprehend?"

Tentacool... I barely remembered for the pain, and I didn't exactly want to think about it. "Hurts," I groaned, and I think I made sense that time.

"Aye," Cora agreed. " 'Tis a temporary thing. Allow me a look." I felt her fingers again and stiffened, but tried to keep still. It helped that the pain was continuing to subside, save for the places Cora touched. Things were starting to come back into focus, too: as the girl inspected my wound, I was able to make sense of my surroundings, and saw that I was lying on a sandy outcropping directly over the water. Ocean swallowed everything up to the horizon, where the Hoenn mainland as a brown silhouette. Between here and there was the SS Cactus, a dark outline in the sunlit waters. Another blink, and I realized that the moving line of dots streaming from the shipwreck were people: lots of people, hurrying from the sunken boat like it was on fire. Why?

Was it because of the alarm? A Klaxon was droning in the distance, and it hurt my head. "What is that noise?" I groaned.

"For 'vacuation," Cora said. "Suspect many a folk got quite a surprise when Nero spun up his little...whirlpool."

"Cora," Nero said sharply.

I finally had the energy to move my aching head, and when I looked back, full-consciousness came crashing back like a hammer to the face. Mermaids! Plural: Nero and two others, swimming in the shallow water beneath me, propelled by colorful tails. Tails...not like Nero's — in fact, they were as different from one another as it was possible to be. While Nero's was scaled, colorful, and burst into an elaborate fluke, the young, hooded boy hovering treading water shakily beside him, getting his eyes rinsed out, had a tail like Quincy's, long and flexible and coiled in a crooked spiral beneath him. And Cora's... Hers was smooth as a Seel's, and sprouted into a cartilaginous white fan.

Currently, it swept rhythmically as she studied my calf, which, from here, looked red and swollen. Quickly I refocused on Nero before I could have too good a look. He was staring right back; he'd finished washing out the eyes of the hooded mermaid, and was clutching one hand in the other. Even half-awake I could see that his fingers were spasming: he was wounded too. In the same way? Maybe: line of blood was running down out of the mouth of his black glove, bleeding into the ocean. My throat jammed at the sight.

"Darwin," Cora said.

"Yes?" My jaw tightened: sounded like there was bad news. "How...bad is it?"

"There be remnants of tentacle here, still grippin' tight. They'll need to come out."

My amazement wavered under a sudden strong nausea. "Lyle," I groaned. "Grandpa Jon... Where are they? They can take me to a hospital..." Wait, did the Microisles even have a hospital? A terrifying thought occurred to me: what if I had to wait until I got back to the mainland to get treatment for this sting? I shuddered, earning myself a needle of pain. A thirty-minute trip, with this?

"Nay," Cora said, reading my mind. "Will not be needed. Did ye not hear? I can help thee."

I lowered myself back onto my elbows, but couldn't even do that without a wash of pain. "Really?"

"Aye! A moment." She disappeared into the water, and came back a moment later brandishing a soaked, hand-woven basket in her hands. She lifted the flap, and I squinted at what lay underneath. Was that...trash? It looked like it: a pile of household garbage, like bottles and straws, and old washcloths. One of these she extracted along with a pair of rusty tweezers.

"Yer lucky day," she said, winking at me. "Came across these scavengin'. They'll take care of those tentacles."

More like they would give me tetanus! "Um, thanks, but wouldn't it be better if an actual doctor...?"

A petulant look came over her face. "Bite yer tongue, boy! I be the second-best healer in all of Delphirius! All the Seawatchers know that!"

Delphirius? "But—"

"Hush yerself, and let me work. Nero! A favor."

The merman, came closer. "Yeah?" His face was whiter than usual, bracketed with stress.

"Here." Cora pointed behind her, to where the ocean sloshed and pooled within a ring of rocks. "Boil that for me, please."

A severe look overcame Nero's face, and I stiffened. It was the exact look he'd been wearing when he'd broken into the house, an intensity that I could only describe as thunderous.

"No," he said.

Cora's jaw set, and she stared at him, looking greatly displeased. "I wager now it'll be of more use," she said quietly.

Nero looked away, a cord in his neck tightening. Then, under the water, I saw him slowly peel the glove off of his good hand, and was highly confused. What is happening?

In the next moment, there was pain, so I didn't much care: I went back to hissing and screeching and kicking as Cora and her rusty tweezers took to my wound, peeling off what felt like layers of flesh. They certainly clung like they were: every piece that went away felt torn, as if attached by a thousand little hooks and nails. What god-awful mess they left behind I could only imagine.

"Done," Cora announced several excruciating minutes later; my ears were ringing, and I felt close to fainting again. "Just a bit more, Darwin, and ye will be good to go. Take a breath."

I did, and it was shocked out of me as Cora poured a torrent of steaming hot water across my open wound. I screamed: "Godf*ckingdammit!" My nails dug rifts in the sand as I tried to crawl away, but she held fast to my ankle with a shocking amount of strength.

"Twice more," she assured me. Both times it felt like I was being boiled like spaghetti, but at long last it was over, and I planked on the sand, trying to pull it together. While I wheezed, Cora tore one of the washcloths and banded it around my leg.

"Aye," she said, sounding pleased, "a passable job. Might be some irritation later on, though, so I would advise seekin' medical counsel on that."

"Okay," I groaned. Slowly, I sat up, trying only to use the muscles in my arms and back. Taking a breath, I peered down at my injury. With relief, I found that there was nothing really bad to look at, as she'd wrapped up the whole thing, and to my surprise it didn't hurt nearly as much anymore: it was like the hot water had burned off the remnants of whatever had caused that electrical pain. Tentacles. I shuddered.

"Thank you," I said awkwardly. "It feels a lot better now."

She clapped. "I'm that glad! And 'tis a pleasure to meet a new Seawatcher. They don't often bring in new blood. Will ye work at the Slateport Branch?"

"I...think so? I'm not sure. Grandpa says I still need to go through orientation—"

She cocked her head. "Grandpa?"

"Grandpa Jon — Jonathan Briney."

"Mr. Briney! I know him." She studied me with a sudden intense curiosity — I was starkly reminded of Helena Stern. "I did not know he had a grandson."

"Yeah..." I looked away — I wasn't used to such full-throated female attention. "Speaking of, I should probably get back to them..." I squinted out over the sunlit ocean — the Klaxon was still ringing over at the shipwreck, and from here, I could see a big crowd gathered on the beach of the Greater Microisle, probably waiting for news about what was going on. It didn't look like there was a way across the water from here to there — no piers or boardwalks or docks to suggest that there was a boat nearby. That's probably why we were on this tiny island or spit of sand or whatever it was — inaccessible to humans, and therefore an ideal place for a mermaid to operate on a human.

I glanced back at Cora, and then awkwardly over at Nero. "Uh..."

"Maybe your new friend can take you back over." Nero's uninjured hand came out of the water, brandishing my Great Ball.

For a moment I stared at the blue and red capsule, and felt a sudden feverish urge to laugh. Wow, how sad was it that I'd nearly forgotten about it, and what I'd come here to do? It was like the sting had shocked the memory out of my system. But now that I did remember, I shook my head in incredulity.

"Was that me?" I muttered. First the Sharpedo — Magdalene — and now this. Did I become another person when I caught Pokémon? It appeared to be the only explanation for two episodes of reckless stupidity in a row.

"Or someone who looked like you," Nero growled. "Why the hell were you even over there? I thought you wanted the Corphish."

Why indeed... I thought back. "I did, but..."

But then I'd suddenly seen merfolk. I couldn't remember how many, exactly, but I did recall seeing Cora's red dress, Nero's green...kilt, or whatever it was, and several other lithe bodies rushing through the water, and one had actually rising up from the bottom of the hill and swept by me, with Nero and then Cora and the others following by shortly after. I'd been about as awed as the first time I'd encountered Nero and, just like with Sharp — Magdalene, my curiosity had gotten the better of me: I'd followed them around the hull of the Cactus, only to encounter some kind of riptide that had dragged me kicking and screaming further along the boat's starboard side.

Worse yet, I'd found myself in the midst of a glut of Tentacool, along with the very mermaids I'd been following. And so I'd—

"Tried to save us," Nero said with disdain.

My mouth closed around the rest of my explanation. I didn't understand the accusing look in his eye. "What?"

"Maybe to clear your conscience for capturing Magdalene. Maybe praying to Arceus for absolution wasn't enough."

I set my teeth. "I didn't catch the Tentacool for absolution. I—" I stopped, feeling my face heat up, and looked down at my sandy swim trunks. The water sloshed as Nero glided through the surface, coming closer. His face was stormy.

"You what?" he demanded. "Go on: let's have it."

I found myself looking at Cora, who looked puzzled at our exchange. I wasn't exactly looking for her approval... Just trying to imagine how she would see this. I wouldn't blame me. Anyone would have in that situation. Nothing to be ashamed about.

Yet, I still felt highly embarrassed when I said, "I was just trying to survive, okay? The one I caught was a little too close, and I didn't even know that you guys were underneath at the time..."

Nero didn't look surprised, but the scorn in his eyes pained me. How the hell was it so easy for this mermaid I barely knew to make me feel so ashamed? "Well, that's more to form," he said.

Rage flashed through me: "Shut up. What do you know about me?"

He raised a dangerous brow. "How you've treated Mag tells me all I need to know. Tell me, do you treat all your Pokémon as a means to an end? Maybe to you, they're all a dime a dozen."

I was stunned at how much that hurt — fisting handfuls of sand, I said shakily, "I understand. The next time you find yourself surrounded by a horde of Tentacools, I'll make sure to leave you to take care of it. Just don't blame me when they blitz your ass."

It was Nero's turn to be enraged, but before either of us could say anything else, Cora said, "Boys, please. I care not for why it happened. Nero, it sounds that Darwin saved us. Can ye not spare him a word of thanks?"

"He'll have to work a lot harder than that if he wants my forgiveness," Nero hissed. "Right now, I'm not sure I'm interested in a clean slate." He tossed the Great Ball to me — hurled it, right into the center of my chest. I coughed, pained, and he pointed at me.

"Monday," he told me. "Monday. Else you'll find yourself back on the seafloor without an oxygen tank." He whipped around. "Jude. We're going."

The hooded boy with the chain-smoker voice stiffened visibly. "W...here...?"

"Relax, Delphirius," Nero snapped. "We aren't leaving without Mag, remember?"

"Leaving?" Cora exclaimed. "Wait, Nero! Will ye not help us take Darwin back to the—"

"He's got a brand new partner for that, remember?" Then Nero and the hooded boy dove and were gone. Cora stared after them in dismay, then turned back to me, her cheeks pink. With embarrassment...and extreme annoyance, it looked like.

"My apologies, I..." She shook her head. "Never seen him like that."

"It's okay." I blinked, something suddenly occurring to me. "Um... Is he your boyfriend?"

"Oh, nay. Truthfully..." She was suddenly sad. "Truthfully, I don't truly know if we be friends in the general sense. He be new to the area, see, and I haven't long known him... That aside, you can see he be a bit prickly."

"Oh." New to the area? I wondered about that — prickly or not, given Nero's association with the Seawatchers, I wouldn't have assumed that he was a fresh face around here. But I suppose it made sense, too—a merperson familiar with the Hoenn Region wouldn't have stumbled into the underwater Safari Zone, or taken so long to track me down.

"Neither here nor there," Cora muttered. "Darwin, let's—"

Suddenly, several heads rose out of the water, young ones: three boys, two girls. A girl with long, straight hair squeaked when she saw me, and dove. Cora rolled her eyes.

"Dinah, enough," she said. "He be a Seawatcher! Do ye not recognize the garb?"

"Darwin?" one of the boys at the front asked.

I straightened, eyes widening. "Yeah, why?"

The spiky-haired boy pointed behind him. "We ran into Mr. Briney the way back. He was askin' for ye."

***

It felt like an eon, but much later, I found myself in the bathroom of the house, sitting on the edge of the tub with my feet in a hot bath. I was supposed to be unwrapping my bandages, but I was a little slow on that. I was tired and sore, and looking at the bandages just reminded me of what a clusterf*ck this Saturday had turned into.

Hey, it's not all bad. You got the water-type: mission accomplished, right?

I sighed. Sure. I had a Tentacool now, and nobody had gotten killed, but Arceus was I exhausted for it.

Nero had said to use the Tentacool to get back to the Greater Microisle, but none of us had been interested in getting nearly stung again, so the mermaids had towed me across the way instead: I'd put one arm around Cora, one arm around the mermaid boy Neko, who'd also gotten support on his other side by a mermaid named Dinah, and off we'd gone, a very awkward float made of living people and mermaids.

We'd made good time, reaching a deserted side of the Greater Microisle with low cliffs and covered in dense woodland, but my stung calf had not appreciated the journey — by the time Neko managed to flag down Grandpa Jon and Lyle, and they hauled me out of the ocean, it was burning again, and spots of red were appearing on the bandage.

In fact, it had hurt all the way until we got home: the long ferry ride, the longer drive back home... I guess I should've counted myself lucky that we hadn't had to drop Lyle back off at the Seawatchers' Slateport base — he'd wanted to expedite my journey back home, so he'd wished me well and left with Mae and Pedro instead.

Now I was home, and I wanted to relax and make peace with this sh*tty day... But I couldn't, not quite yet. First, I had to try and mediate the sh*tstorm that had flared up when we'd walked in the door, and Mom had seen me limping.

For the first time, I kinda wished that she'd been at work — a good twelve hours, and maybe we could've put a positive spin on this thing. Instead, I looked like I'd been fighting Persians in the depths of the jungle, and she was pissed off. Even now, I could hear her shouting at Grandpa Jon as she tore up the kitchen, her feet hitting the floor like thunderclaps. I sent up a prayer as I heard her footsteps came my way.

Arceus, give me the strength, the patience, and the kindness to deal with this—

The bathroom door burst back open, and there was Mom, a furious goddess looking for a target to strike with lightning. She had towels, a med kit, and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide bundled under one arm, and she strode over to me, still yelling. At Grandpa Jon, not me — he was coming through the door behind her, looking weary and resigned. Bringing up the rear was a totally-bewildered Quincy — probably, the shouting had shocked him out of his fourth nap of the day.

"I told you, I know how to treat these things," Grandpa Jon was saying. "That's why we didn't go to a hospital. It's a Tentacool sting, not cardiac arrest. It would've been a waste—"

"Of your precious gold marks, I f*cking already knew that," Mom snapped. "Arceus forbid you part ways with any of your hundreds, even to help your goddamned grandson!" She shut off the hot water and stooped, tearing away Cora's bandages. Her face crumpled at what lay underneath, and so did I — my skin wasn't a...ruin, but the swelling peaks and valleys were certainly unpleasant to look at. Mom spat every curse word I knew of—and some I didn't.

"A Tentacool did this?" she demanded. I nodded weakly. "Why in hell were you anywhere near a Tentacool? What were you doing? I thought you were just catching a water-type Pokémon!"

Arceus. This was why I needed her at work — I'd been too busy being in pain to come up with a good story. "I-It's kind of a long story..."

"Your guide shouldn't have let you get close," she snarled as she splashed hot water onto the wound. Now it was my turn to swear.

"Mom, that hurts!"

"What, did you wander away from the class again, like you did in Slateport City?"

I looked helplessly at Grandpa Jon.

"It was an accident, Heather," he said. "Could have happened to anyone. He just got a bit too close, and—"

"Too many accidents happen around those damned Seawatchers," Mom hissed.

She splashed more water onto my leg, and so it took me a moment to realize that the silence exuding from Grandpa Jon was a thunderstruck one. Blearily, I glanced back at him, just in time to see his jaws settle back together in a grimace.

"Heather," he said, "did you just say Seawatchers?"

We both looked at him now. "What?" she demanded impatiently. "What's that look on your face?"

It was one of acute anxiety, something approaching horror — in the bald light of the bathroom, I could see sweat glistening on my grandfather's forehead. But before I could think to ask what was wrong, or what was happening, he looked away, and backed quickly out of the bathroom.

"Nothing," he muttered. "I'll...look for some painkillers for Darwin. Be back in a bit." He disappeared. I stared after him, so confounded that I was almost able to ignore the firestorm that erupted when Mom poured the peroxide down my leg.

"What was that?" I said eventually.

"What was what?" she grunted. The healing bath was over now, it looked like, and she was winding several layers of gauze over my Tentacool sting, a little too tightly for my tastes.

"That. Grandpa looked... Why?"

Her mouth twisted. Around and around the gauze went, until the roll was empty. As she tucked in the loose end, she said, "Guilt, probably."

"For what?"

Her brows scrunched, and that faraway look came across her face, the same one she'd worn yesterday, after I'd scolded her about using Grandpa's laptop without permission. Then her face cleared all of a sudden: "Before, Reggie, he..."

My entire body went on hyper-alert: Dad? "What? He what?" I waited, but she remained silent, looking eerily empty-headed, like she'd just been unplugged. "Mom. What about Dad?"

After a few seconds, she came back, and so did the scowl. "Do you think you can walk now?" she asked, standing up. "If not, practice, tonight. I'm not gonna be able to carry you around at school, you understand?"

My mouth remained open. Insights about my father were generally few and far between: like the bad blood between Grandpa and Mom, the subject was taboo. And now the door had opened briefly...and been shut in my face just as fast. It left me feeling furiously frustrated. What about Dad, Mom?

Would Grandpa Jon know?

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