DARWIN

Saturday, March 24, 2018

"Your grandpa, huh?" Thomas stopped at a light, looked over at me, and snickered. "Are you still hot, Snowman?"

He reached for the AC dial and cranked it up from three to four, but the flop sweat running down my face wasn't due to the heat (or at least, most of it wasn't). We're moving in with your grandfather until further notice. I remembered Mom's face as she'd said it — she'd looked like she'd been forced to sucker ten Warheads all at once. And that could only mean one thing: Grandpa Jon.

Ahead, the light turned green; Mom's car pulled away, leaving streaks on the pavement, and Thomas's truck snarled like a dragon-type Pokémon in its pursuit. He snapped his fingers in front of my face. "Earth to Darwin," he said. "What's wrong with your face? You're sitting right in front of the vents. Or is my driving that bad?"

Actually, Thomas's driving was very good — I'd expected for a healthy young man like him to be a speed demon, like Mom, but he was surprisingly restrained behind the wheel, probably because he wanted to avoid the eyes of the cops.

Unfortunately, that didn't make for a better ride — Thomas's dad's truck was...clean (in the same way that the back of a garbage truck is technically "clean" if you take out all the trash bags), but the amenities had been worn down to nearly nothing with time. The dash was faded and crusty with dust and dirt and Arceus-knew what else; the cassette — cassette — player was broken; the passenger glove box hung open thanks to a broken latch; and the seats' coverings were so thin as to be nearly threadbare — as we crossed a stretch of train tracks, I bounced so deep that my ass actually hit the frame.

I guess I shouldn't have expected much from a jalopy that had clocked more than 350,000 miles, but part of me still wished that I was in the smooth handling of Mom's used sedan. Unfortunately, she'd packed it up to the gills with stuff from the house, so that hadn't been possible.

Remembering her sour face again, I swallowed.

"I'm fine," I told Thomas, wiping at the sweat running down my face.

"Then what's your deal? Is it your grandpa? You went all stiff after you told me."

Why had I told him? I guess I needed someone to dump this mounting anxiety on. And since Thomas was asking, he could have it. "I just haven't seen him in..." I trailed off.

"In?" he prompted.

Another swallow, this one harder. "Ever," I admitted.

"Whoa." A grin sprang to his face. "So that's it. First time meeting the old man's old man. And you're just the type to piss your pants over that kind of thing."

Damn it. I hated that he was right. But it wasn't just that. Me and Mom were an...estranged part of the family, to put it bluntly. Ninety-nine point nine-nine-nine percent of my relatives, both sides, lived in the Sinnoh Region, and had for the last few centuries, according to Mom. Our root of the family tree had branched out when Grandpa Jon's service in the military had taken him abroad. Eventually he'd landed in Hoenn, and after he was discharged, he'd married, had a daughter, Mom. Then she'd married Dad and...

What?

I wasn't sure — still wasn't to this day. Mom didn't like talking about the Thing that had caused a sudden and huge rift to yawn wide between her and her father. It had something to do with Dad and his stomach cancer — that's all I knew. But to hear her tell it — and she'd only told it once, and had glowered at me whenever I'd so much as tiptoed in the direction of the subject ever again — it had been something bad, and it had been Grandpa Jon's fault, and so catastrophic to their relationship that she'd essentially disowned herself from him a short time later, striking out on her own with a frickin' baby in tow.

It wasn't until my mouth stopped moving that I realized I'd said all this to Thomas — the slimy heat and the shock from Mom's announcement must've been making me sleeptalk.

"Huh," he said. "Well I guess it's no wonder she looked like...that when she came out of the house."

"Yeah..." I myself had no idea of how to feel about any of this, except anxious. Essentially, we were going to live with a stranger. But not, because we were related by blood. But I'd never met him. But I knew a lot about him: that Mom had suffered a lot because of him, and that Dad, at least in part, had died because of something he did. Maybe. I didn't know. And that left me feeling awkward. When I met him, stood before him, sized him up for the first time... Was I supposed to be angry, because he'd done things I knew nothing about? Or did I give him the benefit of the doubt?

Give him a chance, obviously, I thought. He's your grandfather. Aren't you excited to meet him?

The back of my throat swam with nervous spit.

"So this is for real?" Thomas asked as he made a wide turn — I tensed as the huge, rusted snout of the truck nearly scraped the bumper of another car. "You've literally never met him before?"

"No."

"But you know what he looks like?"

"No."

He raised his split brow. "No pictures? No birthday phone calls? No Christmas cards?"

"No," I said. Mom had thrown out any pictures she used to have of Grandpa Jon, and she'd changed her number and our address more than once.

"Yikes." Thomas's face wrinkled into an ouch look, and then he punched my arm. "You gonna be all right, Snowman?"

Who the hell knew? This was so sudden, and it was happening too fast — I barely had any time to prepare. Suddenly, I didn't want to talk about it anymore. "Who knows," I said. I pointed out the front windshield. "Can you pick it up? She's leaving us behind."

She was — we were currently on a two-lane highway, and the speed limit was forty-five, but she was going at least sixty. Thomas laid down on the gas and we lurched forward — one of the bags in my lap tipped over, spilling out a pencil pouch, a water bottle...and the Great Ball, still in its box. Hastily, I stuffed it and the other things back in the bag, but it was too late — he'd seen. And by the look on his face, he was reading my intentions through my sheer possession of the Ball alone.

"Look at you," he said. "Takin' the initiative."

"Shut up," I hissed. "You saw nothing."

"Too late," he intoned. "For what I've seen can't be unseen. And what I see is the Snowman getting desperate... Don't know why, though. You caught the damn thing. Think you can't train it?"

I rubbed at my arm, the one that had been "bitten", but there was no bruise there now, or not much of one. "I think it would be easier for everyone if I got rid of her," I muttered.

"Aw, that's a shame." He shrugged. "I thought you could do it. You bury your head in those books enough. Ain't nothing in there about training Sharpedo?"

"It's not about books," I snapped. "It's about whether or not she wants to be trained."

"And does she?"

I shivered as I remembered the feel of her teeth against my skin again. "I think she wants to go back to the ocean," I said. "She's made that pretty damn clear."

Thomas grinned for some reason — at my cursing? Weirdo. "Maybe you should give it a while," he said. "We haven't even had our first Training Hall with the water-types yet, and in the meantime, you're tradin' coals for fire with that Great Ball, Snowman — they didn't kick you out for catchin' the Sharpedo, but they sure as hell will if you go out and illegally catch a water-type."

I tried not to be outraged. "You're the last one who should be giving me lectures about breaking the rules."

He sniffed. "Yeah, yeah. Just..." He shrugged again. "I dunno, give it a while. Even I'm not stupid enough to do that."

I looked out the window, watching sun-baked farmland flash by, trying not to be disturbed by his words. I clutched my bag, feeling the Great Ball shift inside. I know it was a mistake... But is this a mistake?

***

Halfway to Petalburg City, Thomas got to talking again. Apparently, he couldn't abide a somewhat-companionable silence for long — he was the type to need to fill empty space with dialogue.

So he started talking — complaining. Generally about trivial sh*t that were mere specks in his otherwise highly privileged life.

Like how he had to bunk with his little stepbrother, Cliff, because his stepmom was having relatives over. Like how his dad was threatening to postpone their vacation to Pacificlog until Thomas got his grades up. Like how his older stepsister, Brooke, wouldn't be home from college for at least another week, so he couldn't get his braids redone and was going to have to wear a bandanna, like me, to school to keep everyone from seeing his fuzzy head. Like how his stepmom had cut his weekly allowance because he hadn't cleaned the pool like he was supposed to on Tuesday.

Like how Marjorie Ellis had broken up with him on Thursday for "cheating" on her.

"Did you?" I asked.

He snorted. " 'Course not, fool," he said. "But try tellin' her that. Marj's head has a filter—she hears what she wants to hear, and nothing else."

I frowned. I remembered hearing something about this spat, but at the time my head had been filled with struggling to keep my place at RTHS, and I hadn't the luxury of thinking of anything else, let alone Thomas's f*cking relational problems. "Veronica Hughes," I said. "You...went on a date with her or something—"

"I walked her home," Thomas said with exasperation. "Goddamn, we were going the same way! It was hot, she got thirsty, so I bought her a soda. The end. Whoever told Marj didn't give her the whole story. Same with that chemistry sh*t."

" 'Chemistry sh*t'?"

"The molarity project," he groaned. "Ronnie was in my group, and on Monday, Jackson was absent. She told a couple of jokes, and I thought they were funny. So I laughed. People still laugh at jokes, don't they?"

I gave him a sidelong glance. " 'Ronnie'?"

"Everybody and their grandma calls her that! It doesn't mean anything."

I shifted the bags in my lap. "I heard something about a movie, too—"

"Group date. Ronnie was there. So were Paloma and Jamara."

I stared at him.

"And David and Riley," he added quickly.

"Did Veronica have a date?"

"No."

"Did you have a date?"

Holy sh*t. Was that guilt I saw in his eyes? "No."

"Where was—"

"She didn't want to go," he said, now looking a little resigned. "Movies aren't her thing."

Aren't her thing? I found that...odd. At least from the outside, Marjorie looked like the type of person to pack it in a big car with a bunch of friends and head out for a night on the town: she had wildly-cut hair, she had a fancy-ass phone, she colored her nails, she wore high-end makeup, and as far as I knew, she had an active social media account, maybe more than one. Then again, all of this was tempered by that sharp-eyed glare and a very frank way of speaking, so maybe I didn't know her as well as I thought, which wasn't well in the first place.

I continued to say nothing, but Thomas growled, "Shut up, Snowman. It's bullsh*t, all of it, and I still get milk thrown in my face like I'm the f*cking bad guy."

What thrown where? I had been just passively listening before, but now I was curious. I decided to let it go, though — Thomas had a look on his face like he was finally considering his life choices. About time.

He started up again a little while later though — this time about having to take Driver's Ed, even though he already, clearly, knew how to drive — just as we pulled off of the highway and slid into Petalburg City's downtown district. It was just like Rustboro's — rustic old buildings, traffic circles, bigger sidewalks, and artistic statues perched everywhere — except...smaller. It took us two minutes to pass through downtown, where usually you were stuck in between hole-in-the-wall bakeries, thrift shops, and court houses in Rustboro City for a good fifteen before you finally fought free.

Soon, the town green was far behind, and we pushed into a fine stretch of suburbia. I sat forward for a better look, and liked what I saw: big stretches of field and woodland, and rising from them big houses and clusters of trailers. I'd always admired the countryside more than I had the city — lots of space, and not so much white noise from traffic, people, planes and sh*t. Does he live out here? Grandpa Jon had been in the Navy, but there was no knowing how well off he was now.

We passed a supermarket, a farmer's market, a giant Flea Mall, and a large, manmade pond with a house perched at the top of the hill. Then, we passed a lake, a vast stretch of black water that I would have mistaken for the ocean if I hadn't seen the fuzzy treeline on the other side. Houses lined its inner perimeter, with piers stretching out onto the lapping waves. Thomas whistled as we passed by.

"That's me one day, Snowman," he said, pointing to one of the bigger mansions crouched on the bank. "Me, a house, a boat, and a fishin' rod."

You like to fish? I tried not to snort, but imagining Thomas with a big straw hat, sitting out on the water and patiently waiting for Magikarp to bite was just too funny.

We reached the other side of the lake, and Mom made an abrupt turn, taking us into a dense stretch of forest. Trees overshadowed the road here like a tunnel, and houses peeked out of the woodwork on one side, the sparkling water of the lake on the other. A left, then a right, and the lake disappeared from view. We went up a hill, then down, and made another turn.

Then, Mom's brake lights came on, and we slowed behind her. She stopped, waited for a car to pass by on the left, and then turned onto a dirt road that I never would have even noticed if it hadn't been for the mailbox perched at the shoulder. Or the Wingull sitting on top of it; it squawked at Mom's car as it tumbled by, and then cast us a suspicious look before taking to the air.

"Whoa," Thomas said; both hands flew to the wheel. "What the hell's with this offroading sh*t? Does Gramps live in a cabin?"

I didn't know, but I prayed that this guy without a driving permit could get us to the bottom of the slope without death or dismemberment.

We reached flatter ground fine, and as we followed Mom on the skinny road through the trees, a blinding light pierced through the woods again. Water, though not the lake. A stream? A big one, with sizeable girth — it flowed steadily through the trees a ways ahead, at a pace that wasn't rapid, but fast enough that I could tell it was being pressured by the size of the lake.

Sitting at the edge of the stream, on a hill above the water, was a giant house. Giant? That wasn't exactly the right word, because it wasn't great in height but in breadth. It was flat and long, like a ranch house, sprawling over the grassy hillside, a mish-mash of brick, siding, and long windows. A chimney rose from the middle, pumping out a tendril of smoke, and a series of pathways wound around and towards it in a spiraling web made out of different materials: one was a beaten dirt path. Another was made of solid cement. Yet another was a series of stepping stones, and a fourth a line of wooden planks buried in the ground.

This path stretched down the hill, at the bottom of which sat two cars, a giant, shiny silver truck, and a rusty old Bug that had once been red, but now looked a gummy kind of pink. Mom pulled in beside the Bug and parked, and Thomas followed suit.

"W-o-w," Thomas said as he got out, somehow stretching the word out into three syllables. "I'm likin' this, Snowman — Gramps has got dough!"

Did he, though: the property values around here had to be high to begin with, but this place? Right above the water? Holy sh*t. I glanced over at Mom, who was climbing out of the sedan, with Quincy pooling to the ground behind her, emerging from a crush of boxes and plastic bags. Suddenly I was excited. This was where we were going to be living now? Maybe this isn't so bad...

Mom didn't look so pleased: her mouth was tight as a taut rubber band as she swung the passenger door open, and began piling boxes onto the dirt. My legs ached, watching her work — this was a big-ass hill. How long was it going to take to haul all of this stuff up there?

"Help you with that, Ms. Blakesley?" Thomas asked.

"No thanks," she said, grumpy once again. "Do me a favor instead, both of you — ring the bell, tell him we're here, and tell him to get his ass down here to help us."

Excitement, gone — stomach-wrenching apprehension took its place. "Does he...know that we're here?"

"I warned him," Mom huffed as she dropped a box of what sounded like dishware onto the ground. "Go and soften him up — I'm not quite in the mood yet. If he doesn't answer..." She straightened, fishing her phone — which also flipped — out of her pocket. "Call him," she said, handing it to me. "It's under 'Dad'."

For a moment, I stood woodenly, so choked with anxiety that it took a moment for Thomas to get me moving up the hill. What the hell is this? "Warned"? "Warned"? What did that mean? She could've said "He's expecting us," but she'd said warned — the word implied that there was some kind of disagreement as to what was expected to happen. Like she'd told him that we were moving in with him, he'd said no, but she was moving in anyway. Flying hell.

I didn't see that I had much of a choice, though. We were here already, and we couldn't stay outside all day with boxes of stuff. Still, my mouth was bone dry when we reached the top of the hill and approached the porch.

"Porch" — again, wrong word. Though there was a stretch of wood holding chairs and a wrought-iron table wrapping around the house, it was level with the ground, save for a small gap that Thomas jumped over. His head nearly touched the ceiling, and so did mine — it was low, stone, shadowy, and fuzzy with old cobwebs.

Thomas whistled as he peered through the windows — they were all open, and I couldn't help but wonder how all of them were still intact, not broken by a wandering vagabond trying his luck in the neighborhood. "Very nice," he said. "Comfy — looks like a nice place to huddle in the dead of winter with your girlfriend."

True — in the shadowy interior, I could see an expansive living room of creamy walls and wood paneling. A depression against one wall served as a hearth, bearing a giant fireplace surrounded by long couches. One wall was covered in photographs. Another, fishing gear. And a third...guns. Two rifles, one sawed-off. Absently, I wondered how much Grandpa Jon used them.

I rang the doorbell, looked back inside, sweating bullets. The interior stayed shadowy, and there was no movement. Inside at least — three Wingulls appeared behind me, peering down from the roof and squawking angrily at us.

"The f*ck? Bug off." Thomas waved his hands, and they fled. "He comin' or not, Snowman?"

I tried the bell again, but there was no answer. "I...I guess I'll call him," I muttered. My hands shook a little as I flipped open Mom's phone, accessed the contacts, and scrolled through. There were only a few, and "Dad" was at the bottom.

"Today," Thomas said with a roll of his eyes. "It ain't gettin' any cooler out here."

If I hadn't been so shaky, I might've flipped him off. Instead, I took a breath, punch the number, and held the phone to my ear. It rang once, and someone picked up, so suddenly that I nearly had a heart attack.

"Heather." The voice on the other end was scratchy with age but...warm. Kind. And, weirdly, pleasantly surprised. "Hello, I... I was just about to call you. I wanted to talk to Darwin. Would that be all right?"

I swallowed, but the chunk of phlegm in the back of my throat refused to go down. "This is Darwin," I said throatily.

Silence, and astonishment. He stammered a moment: "You... What? Really?"

"Uh, yes. Hi, Grandpa."

He made a series of sounds, shocked, struggling. "I... Oh my. Well this... I'm sorry, son. I don't mean to sound... It's just, this is so sudden."

"Yeah, I know," I managed. "Sorry." I cleared my throat. "Mom wanted me to call you... We're here, and—"

"Here?" Grandpa Jon's voice sharpened. "What does that mean, son?"

I frowned. "It means we're right outside."

***

NERO

"Are you sure you don't remember anything else?" I demanded.

"Aye," Cora said, a little indignantly. "I told ye, Father only took me and Hattie so far. The lake, to take a gander at the humans. Then the pond, for the algae."

She had said that, it just hadn't registered. Many sounds hadn't — my blood had been storming through my flesh since the moment we'd set out from the Rhines's estuary, and had only gotten louder the further inland we'd gone. We were, at long last, taking sure, sizeable steps towards Magdalene, and I couldn't remember the last time I'd been this wired, excited nearly to the point of nausea.

Until we'd reached a hiccup. A big one.

We'd followed the smooth curves and harsher bends of the Rhines, swimming through shadowy water so shallow that we were forced to swim against the river bed in an attempt to stay out of sight, especially me with my vibrant tail. We'd appeared to be making good headway, until we'd passed through the bed of a giant lake, and Cora had told me that everything beyond was unfamiliar to her, once we'd reached the other side.

Now I was faced with an awful decision: Left or right? Just ahead, the dark water forked against a hard wedge of woodland; the left tributary glowed gold with intense sunlight, whereas the one to the right grew deeper, black almost, with shadows. I paced before the junction, my tail throwing up heavy silt and scaring of a couple of curious Whiscash and a floating Lotad.

"None of this looks familiar?" I asked Cora. She was sitting against the riverbank, which ran along our flanks like a short, rugged wall. She fiddled with some of her scavenge restlessly before she answered.

"Nay," she said.

"Did your father ever describe the lay of the water beyond here?"

"Only that it twisted and turned like a wily woman, and was like to get many a merman twisted up in his own tail."

Damn! With effort, I swallowed the urge to slam my fist into something — preferably that Feebas that kept peeking at us from around the bend with an irritatingly blank look on its face. "I guess I'll just have to choose a direction," I growled. The words left my jaw feeling heavy, because of the underlying risk: getting lost, as Cora's father had predicted, and wasting precious time, time in which that boy at Rustboro Trainer High School could abscond to Arceus-knew-where with Mag.

I considered the two channels again, my eyes lingering on the sunlit path. Is that one pointing north? I had no damn idea — we'd swum through so many bends already that I'd lost my sense of direction. Cautiously, I checked to make sure that there were no boats on the water before I kicked up and surfaced, peering around. Useless — trees and more trees, and a scattered view of the sky that just showed hot clouds and the silhouette of a passing flying-type. Dunking down, I growled, frustrated.

"This way," I said, pointing to the dark tunnel. With either choice, I was taking a risk — there was no point in dallying. If there was disappointment to be had, I would swallow it, speed-swim back, and head into the sun. I paused, turning back to Cora, who'd risen from her seat and looked a little uncomfortable.

"Uh, if you want, you can head back," I said. "I can continue on my own."

She shook her head, even as the uneasy look on her face told me she wanted to do just that. "It'll be fine," she said. "Long as we don't take too many turns, I can find my way back."

I wondered at the relief I felt as we went into the dark. But there was guilt there too — I felt that I should've sent her on home, having dragged her out against her will in the first place, but I was glad she wanted to come with me into this unfamiliar place all the same.

To our surprise, the dark Rhines tributary continued in a relatively straight line for a relatively long time — by the time it finally eased into a very obtuse curve, the shadows were beginning to recede, and we pushed into brighter waters. Cora rose for breath, and I surfaced with her to check our position — and to get some air. The salt-less water was beginning to get to me, twisting my stomach — I kept feeling like I was breathing in the taste of all the bodies that had passed through the water before us.

A short while later, the sunlight grew stronger, harder, and the tributary widened into a sizeable stream. As we slipped down a short slope and rounded another bend, something appeared in the water ahead: it was lethally red and made of metal. A boat! I swerved, driving myself against the bank, and beckoned Cora to do the same. She followed, wiggling up to my side, and we both stilled, striving to become part of the river.

Not that whoever was in the boat could see us — the water was too dark, and we were a bit too deep. But it was moving, and as we settled, with a flash of alarm I realized that it was coming towards us, propelled by a small motor; the sound of it droned through the water, dull, but strong enough to reverberate in my lateral lines and send any cruising water-types diving for cover.

"Keep still," I ordered. "We'll move once it passes."

Cora actually rolled her eyes at me — Obviously! — but obeyed and stayed silent. Slowly, the red bottom of the boat approached, and as it drew near, I noticed something odd: there were artificial lights attached to the bottom, glowing with a sterile bluish light. What the hell? I wondered at their purpose. To see the water-types? But what use was that if the lights were on the bottom of the boat?

Cora gasped, making me bristle. "Look!" she said loudly, over the drone of the engine.

I followed where she was pointing, and saw that she was indicating the bottom of the boat, but not the weird lights. There was something in between them: an image, I realized, of an eye surrounded by a giant cyclone of water. Another bizarre feature with no purpose.

Or so I thought: "That be the Seawatchers' crest," Cora explained. "Put it on the bottom of their boats so merfolk can see 'em and reach out to them if they need help."

I looked back over at the boat. It had stopped a ways ahead, and after the engine fell silent, I saw a fishing line drop into the water, baited with a chunk of meat. Several yards away, a Barboach emerged from a mass of algae and went forward to investigate.

"I thought Seawatchers worked at the Sea House," I said, frowning.

"They do," Cora agreed. "But some take work home. Be plenty of Seawatchers all across Hoenn who'd take a fin into their homes if they asked." She rose and beat her fin, swimming towards the boat. I lurched up.

"Cora!" I hissed.

"Be at ease," she assured me. "I know how this is done."

I watched, caught between wanting to drag her away and wanting to bolt for cover, as she reached the boat and shooed the Barboach away. Then she hooked her finger on the fishing line and pulled down three times hard.

For a moment, nothing happened, and I feared that she'd been mistaken. Then a hand entered the water, palm out, like it was asking for a high-five. Cora brushed her fingers across it, and it retreated. A moment later, the boat's engine started up, and the mermaid waved over at me.

"Come," she called. " 'Tis safe, trust me."

I lashed over like a whip, angry. "Why the hell did you—"

"We need help, do we not?" she asked. "I thought ye did not know the way."

Good point, but I wasn't sure if I was ready to reach out to another Seawatcher for help. What if he told me to sit on my tail for five days while he came up with a plan for us?

We followed the boat, which circled around and headed further down the stream, before slowing beneath a stretch of deep shadow and sidling up to the opposing bank. Cora rose and surfaced, and when I followed, I nearly dove again — not far away I could see a big house, sitting high and away from where we'd surfaced in the shade of a weeping willow. That could only mean that more humans were around, while me and Cora were vulnerable in our seaside forms. Dammit, Cora, what have you gotten us into?

"Mr. Briney!" she was saying brightly. "It's been so long! Are ye well?"

"I'm fine, dear Cora," a rusty voice said. "Especially now that a pretty young mermaid has brightened my day." Inside the boat sat a lump of an old man, his skin tanned and leathery, a bush of a white beard sprouting from his face like unkempt grass. He wore beige slacks, a faded old polo, and a wide-brimmed straw hat. He looked oddly familiar...

Apparently, so did I. "Who's this?" he asked kindly. He squinted. "Perhaps a friend I've met before? Can't quite place him..."

Cora raised an eyebrow at me, and it suddenly clicked. "Simeon," I said, "you were with Simeon that day he helped break me out of prison—"

"Ah, yes!" the old Seawatcher — Mr. Briney — said jovially. "I do remember now. Nero, wasn't it? Looks like my wits haven't yet deserted me." He chuckled. "I also recall you giving us the slip shortly after that. You should've seen the state you put poor Simeon in: he was aggravated the rest of the day, just waiting for pictures of you with a fluke to appear on the Internet somewhere."

Little did he know that they almost had, had it not been for that watchdog Wingull leading me to that fountain — and the Pokémon Center. "Sorry," I said. "I was..." How to explain all this, and quickly? "I was in a hurry, and I'm new to the area. I didn't really know what the Sea House was at the time."

Mr. Briney shrugged. "Well, I assume you do now, and that's what matters. Now." He leaned back, propping his cane up against the side of the boat, making it rock. "What can an old man do for you two youngsters? Have some urgent business, Cora?"

She extended a hand to me. "The business be his, Mr. Briney."

He lifted a brow at me and, a little uncomfortably, I told him of my need to reach Rustboro City to track down my companion Pokémon. I was a little unnerved by how easily the words came — being hunted by Titus had made me reluctant to tell my business to anyone, let alone a complete stranger, but desperation to get to Magdalene seemed to have loosened my lips. When I finished, Mr. Briney tugged at his beard.

"Well I confess that I'm not very learned on the waterways in this part of Hoenn, outside of the Rhines and the Rhemes, you understand. There're plenty of tiny channels and streams and brooks around here, and you're more likely to be lost than found. However..." He cocked his head. "If memory serves, I have a map around the house somewhere that shows the lay of the land and can get you somewhat in the vicinity of where you need to be."

I grit my teeth, but tried to stay calm — a map was better than nothing. "Can you get it?"

"If you're willing to stay a moment. My study's a bit of a mess."

I tried not to sound sour. "Whatever it takes."

Mr. Briney looked pleased. Slowly, creakily, he rose, surprisingly sure-footed even as the boat wobbled nervously beneath him. He rose a heavy step and was on the damp bank, wiping his hands on his pants.

"If you stay near the boat, I can bring it out to you," he said. "But before I go, Nero, one last question: Rustboro City is a big place. My map may get you there, but I fear it won't do much good once you're on the pavement. Is it somewhere inside the city you're trying to get to?"

"Yes," I said, not liking how he and Jude kept making this already-difficult task feel so much more troublesome. "The person who caught Magdalene goes to Rustboro Trainer High School."

His hand went back up to his beard again, and his eyes gleamed in the hard sunlight. "That so?" he said. More tugging, stroking, and he stared down at me intently, as intently as I'd stared at those two tributaries before I'd finally decided which one to pursue; the old man seemed to be making a similar decision, and for some reason that made me very nervous.

"What is it?" Cora asked.

"Hmm, just..." Mr. Briney turned now, gazing in the direction of the big house on the hill. "Ah, well," he said decisively, and then stooped suddenly on the bank, looking down at me from where I milled in the water. "Nero, I've a proposition."

"Does it involve me getting to Rustboro City any faster?" I asked pointedly.

He lifted a what-a-mouth brow. "It does, in fact. You see, I think I know someone who goes to Rustboro Trainer High... Last I checked anyhow. Or." He paused. "I know someone who knows someone who goes there."

"Okay," I said, my heart taking a lurch through my chest.

"Don't know if this person knows your person," Mr. Briney continued. "But it could be that I could get them on the phone, and they could get them on the phone, and a sort of meeting could be arranged. Maybe it could be done right here on this riverbank, with some smooth talking, and your Pokémon could be brought along. Would you be interested in that?"

My heart now leapt into a gallop. "I'd be interested in anything that sets Magdalene free."

He broke out into a grin — I could tell he liked me. "All right, then," he said, reaching into his back pocket and producing a phone. "I'll make the call then."

I experienced a bolt of utter astonishment. "Right now?"

"Right now," Mr. Briney said. He frowned. "Do you want me to wait?"

"No, just..." I glanced over at Cora, but she only smiled at me and squeezed my shoulder, excited at this sudden development. And it wasn't like I wasn't also excited, just... Part of me wondered if Mr. Briney's claim was legitimate. And why was he so eager to help me, anyway? He'd only met me twice, and the first time I'd left him and Simeon behind without so much as a thank you.

Was it me and my trust issues that were strange, or was it the Hoenn Region?

Mr. Briney began poking his phone, and just as he was lifting it to his ear, it rang, the sound loud, tinny, starkly artificial in the middle of the trees and still water. He peered at the screen and a strange look crossed his face: confusion, but also a delighted anticipation. He put the phone to his ear.

"Heather," he said pleasantly. "Hello, I... I was just about to call you. I wanted to talk to Darwin. Would that be all right?"

He fell silent, and then a drastic change swept over his face like a series of waves: shock, then disbelief, then amazement. "You... What? Really?" His voice broke, and I exchanged another look with Cora, this time puzzled. What exactly was happening? Whatever it was, I hoped it wasn't going to cause another potential setback.

Mr. Briney cleared his throat, rubbed his mouth, made to speak, but for some reason couldn't. Finally, he managed, "I... Oh my. Well this... I'm sorry, son. I don't mean to sound... It's just, this is so sudden." Then another change: a sharp intake of breath, and he swung around, giving the house on the hill a look that was part horror, part incredulity.

"Here?" he demanded "What does that mean, son?"

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