The officer looked bored. His eyelids drooped. Likely the only reason he wasn’t drumming his fingers on the desk was because of the professionalism drummed into him by his training. “I’ve told you all we can do, sir,” he said, voice oozing brittle patience and polite exhaustion. “The pokémon was trespassing on her property and lacked proper identification. No collar. Ostensibly, it was wild. She had the right to capture. And she's returned the pokémon to you, besides.” “That's not the problem here!” Liam said, standing up and planting his hands onto the desk, leaning forwards over it towards the thoroughly unimpressed officer. “Haven’t you seen what she did to Ria? She’s... unrecognizable! She’s not even the same [i]pokémon[/i] anymore. That’s got to be some form of abuse!” “She claims the vaporeon was found in that state after drinking large quantities of milk from her stores,” the officer said, only glancing at the case papers to confirm the fact after he’d already spoken. “If you want to press the issue, you are free to contact legal representation and take her to court. Now, is there anything else, sir?” Liam stayed there for a moment, staring at the officer’s even expression, an unwavering bulwark of the judiciary. Cold, hard—stolid, bureaucratic. “No,” Liam said after a long pause, turning and moving towards the door as he spoke. “That will be all.” --- [i]How privileged you are, to be passionately clinging to what you love; the forfeit of hope has not destroyed you.[/i] --- The legal system had been a complete joke. Liam had imagined that it would be an open and shut case. It was obvious enough what had happened, who had done it, and the horror of it all needed no explanation. To Liam, the only question was whether life imprisonment was a suitable punishment, or if the situation demanded something worse. To the law, however, the situation wasn’t nearly so clear-cut. Caroline—as Liam had learned was the farmer’s name—apparently had every legal right to do what she’d done. Property rights and something as simple as a lack of a collar meant she could snatch Ria up just as if she’d run into her in the wilderness. As for everything else she’d done, well, that was simply a matter of outright lying. After all, what evidence was there that Ria [i]hadn’t[/i] drunk herself into a transformative stupor? The vaporeon certainly couldn’t testify for herself. It was Caroline’s word against his, and it was clear who everyone believed, regardless of whatever appearance of neutrality they tried to project. She was a respected member of the community and a staple of the local economy. Liam was a nobody without the money to afford a lawyer. He was still rolling the situation over in his mind, poring over it again and again and getting angrier each time he came away without any sort of solution, when he pulled into his driveway. He was still doing it when he got out of his car and walked up to his front stoop. He stopped when he unlocked the door and walked into his living room. In its place emerged a sinking feeling in his stomach and a quickly suppressed pang of disgust. Sprawled out across the couch immediately facing the door was Ria, Liam’s vaporeon. Or sprawled up [i]against[/i] the couch, anyway. While before she had been small enough to curl up in one of its corners, nestled in the throw pillows there, now Ria was too large to even fit on the couch properly. She learned against the front of it while splayed out on the carpet, udders bulging out obscenely. Rolls and folds of fat, sweaty flesh spilled out around her. Ria looked up at the sound of Liam’s entrance, eyes meeting his. He almost felt a twinge of happiness at the recognition, before Ria capped off her greeting with a long, lingering moo. Liam’s throat felt tight, but he forced a smile regardless. Ria met it with a blank, vacant stare. “Hey, Ria,” Liam said, glancing over at her while he kicked off his shoes next to the door. “How are you today, girl?” Ria mooed again and then thumped her tail against the floor. He could hear things rattling on the shelves from the weight of it. That meant that Ria wanted to be milked. “Oh. Yeah. Right,” Liam said, smile dissipating in an instant. “I’ll go get the bucket.” --- Liam did get the bucket, and half an hour later, he was still carrying it. It was an eight gallon bucket made out of white plastic. Liam hated looking at it. He kept it stuffed in the back of a closet when he wasn’t using it. Right then, having been freshly used, it was filled up almost all the way to the brim. Liam had needed to put the lid on just to keep it from sloshing all over the floor as he dragged it to the bathroom. The weight made his arms hurt—arms already sore from the long, repetitive motions of milking. Liam pushed open the bathroom door with a shoulder and hoisted the bucket up onto the edge of the tub with a grunt. Then, he popped off the lid and tipped it over. A waterfall of milk began pouring out the mouth, obscuring the bottom of the tub beneath a thick tide of cream. Its heavy smell filled the air, the small size of the room and lack of ventilation making it far worse than it had been in the living room. It was stifling. Liam tried to ignore it. The drain gurgled as it swallowed it all down. It was the only mouth that ever got to taste Ria’s milk. Liam certainly never drank any; the thought alone was enough to turn his stomach or move him to tears, depending on his mood. The idea of selling it was equally repulsive. If he’d wanted to go into the milk business, he would’ve gotten a miltank to begin with. He didn’t want a cow that he could exploit for money. He wanted the vaporeon that would jump up on his leg and make that cute little yip whenever he got home. He wanted to stroke her head while he slept in his lap whenever they’d stay up late watching movies together. He wanted his friend back. Liam choked back tears as he poured the last of the milk down the drain. --- Liam wasn’t in the living room with Ria. He was in the bedroom. Displayed on the wall opposite his bed was a large, framed photo. It was of him and Ria at the beach together. He was holding her up off the ground, arms wrapped around her chest in a bear hug. Her lips were pursed as she squirted him in the cheek with a spray of water. He stared at it for a long while. It had been part of the background for a very long time, just a decoration that he’d hardly given a second thought. Now, it seemed to consume the entire room. There were other things, as well. The leash hanging near the door, attached to a harness—Ria never did abide by collars, what with her frill. It was impossible to keep the things on her, so Liam just hadn’t. And the pile of toys heaped in the corner of the room, now gathering dust. Liam had taken one of them, a little rubber slowpoke that squeaked when you squeezed it, out into the living room. It had been Ria's favourite toy, and with good reason, given it had been one of the few able to stand up to the gnawing and biting of her razor sharp fangs. Now, it laid in front of the couch next to her, unmoved from where Liam had put it. He wasn’t sure which spot he hated seeing it in more. It was equally neglected in both. It felt as if an integral part of his life had bee snatched from him, the importance of which was only becoming apparent in its absence. The presence of all these things only aggravated the sensation, but Liam wouldn’t dare get rid of them or even hide them, because he knew he would still get a chance to take Ria on a walk in that harness, play a game with her toys, and go to the beach with her on a hot summer day. By staring at that picture and thinking those thoughts, Liam could feel some small spark of hope surface amongst the dread. But the spell was broken by the sound of mooing and thumping from the living room. Liam got up, sprinted top the bathroom, and threw himself to his knees in front of the toilet as he started to dry heave, surrounded by the cloying scent of dairy radiating from the bathtub. --- [i]This is the light of autumn; it has turned on us. Surely it is a privilege to approach the end still believing in something.[/i] --- The doctor was a swarthy fellow with a dour face. Liam had been told he was a specialist in 'these kinds of things.' His name was apparently Dr. Jallow, going by the certificates on the walls of his office, though Liam only thought of him in terms of profession. He taking measurements of Ria, as he had been doing for the past twenty minutes. At first, it had been using instruments that Liam was familiar with. Anyone could recognize a stethoscope or a penlight. But seemingly displeased with the results they’d given him, he had turned to more and more obscure devices. It had gotten to the point where he’d laid Ria out on the examining table and plastered electrodes all over her body, which she allowed in her nonplussed, thoughtless manner. They were placed seemingly at random, all of them hooked up to a device that resembled a hand mirror, albeit much longer and set within casing that was all harsh angles and shiny metal, hinting at some great and unseen technological significance. The doctor passed it over various parts of Ria’s body. While the side facing Ria was reflective, the side facing him was transparent, and would occasionally flash with colour when passed over some key area, though it was impossible for Liam to identify what imparted such importance. As those colors started appearing with increasing frequency, the doctor’s jaw tightened in a grim set. “I’ve never seen a case quite like this before,” the doctor murmured. “What does that mean?” Liam snapped. “You don’t know how to help her?” “I didn’t say that,” the doctor replied, bearing Liam’s outburst with remarkable grace. “I’m familiar enough with the cause. I’ve simply never seen a case of aura contamination so severe outside of medical literature.” That calmed Liam’s ire somewhat. He let out a breath he’d unconsciously started to hold. “Then what’s the treatment? What can you do to fix her?” “That’s another issue,” the doctor said, stepping back to get a wider view of Ria while he stroked his chin in thought. “There are certainly treatments for auratic transphysiognomy, but they’re typically used for more minor cases than this. I’m unsure if it would have any effect on something this severe." “To say nothing of the cost,” he added, giving Liam a sidelong glance. “Your insurance wouldn’t cover it.” Liam felt a certain burning desperation clawing at his guts and strangling his chest, but his voice came out bold and fiery in spite of the fact. “But what about her mind? Even if you can’t fix her body, there’s gotta be something you can do to make her Ria again!” Liam took a step towards the doctor, and he held up his hands in a placating gesture, arresting Liam's approach. “That's outside of my area of expertise. However, I can refer you to an associate of mine, a psychiatrist—and psychic—by the name of Howard Schwartz. He would be better able to assist.” --- Ria had been laid out on the floor next to the couch the psychiatrist typically had his patients recline on, being that she wouldn't be able to fit on it without rolling off or snapping its legs. Kneeling behind her was the kadabra that Liam had learned was the psychiatrist’s own pokémon and business partner, doing the bulk of the actual practice while Schwartz acted as public face and manager. One of the kadabra's hands roamed over Ria’s head, plated fingers groping and kneading at her skull. The other held a spoon just above both of them, like some sort of talisman. A dull buzz, felt rather than heard, permeated the air as he worked, and Liam’s head throbbed with the beginnings of a headache. Ria didn’t seem to mind, though; she laid there under the kadabra, positively placid as he worked, caught in the thick of some sort of psychic torpor. Liam and Schwartz sat just to the side of the two, observing, with the psychiatrist sitting in a large and ornate looking wooden chair while Liam was relegated to a seat they'd had to drag out of the lobby to accommodate him. Schwartz watched Ria and the kadabra from behind a pair of horn-rimmed glasses. Liam, in turn, found himself watching Schwartz, scrutinizing the psychiatrist's face–but found his neutral expression impenetrable, betraying no secrets. Every so often, the kadabra would tilt his head towards Schwartz, and the psychiatrist would incline his head in turn, often nodding thoughtfully. Some sort of telepathic communication. It aggravated Liam; it felt as if he were being excluded from the discussion, when it was [i]his[/i] pokémon, and [i]he[/i] was the one paying to have them examined in the first place. Though not for long, in the end. After only fifteen minutes or so of whatever psychic probing it was the kadabra was doing, he removed his hand from Ria’s head and floated back up to his feet. Then, Schwartz turned to face Liam, lacing his fingers together in a steeple. “I’ll tell you upfront,” Schwartz said, “it doesn’t look good.” A touch more grace would’ve been appreciated. Schwartz was so blunt that Liam felt as if he’d been punched in the gut. But he went on regardless. “It’s hard to detect any trace of the former personality you’ve described. Whatever this vaporeon—” “Ria,” Liam murmured absently. “Whatever Ria has gone through, it’s caused her mind to be completely upended and reformed. Not uncommon in cases of direct assault on the aura. Usually not to such an extreme, but then, this is an extreme case.” Liam stood up from his chair, possessed suddenly of the mad fury borne of desperation. “I’ve had enough of people telling me just how bad things are! Believe me, I am [i]well[/i] aware. Can you help or not?” Schwartz raised both hands and motioned him down, either encouraging Liam to lower his voice or to sit back down. Liam quieted himself, but remained standing, fixing Schwartz with a burning stare. Schwartz carried on, not withering under the intensity of Liam's eyes. “There are techniques we could try, but frankly, I couldn’t in good faith recommend them. They’re expensive, time-consuming, and I couldn’t guarantee even the slightest improvement in her condition. Frankly, I’d be quicker to suggest we organize some work for yourself. Your pokémon may not be the same, but she can still be happy like this. Isn’t that enough? Liam’s throat tightened even as his brow reddened with rage. He had an answer for that, but if he tried to speak it, he wasn’t sure if his voice would crack from the effort or if he would find himself screaming the words. In lieu of either, he snatched his poké ball off of his belt and recalled Ria into it with a flash of red light before he turned and stormed out of the psychiatrist’s office. The hallway had seemed long when he'd first walked into the office, but with a lack of nerves and through a haze of anger, his exit was much quicker than his entrance had been. It only took a few seconds for him to reach the front door, though Liam had only taken a few steps down the stairs leading to the parking lot before he heard a voice call after him. “Wait!” It was a new voice, and it didn’t come from behind, beside, above or below; it was sourceless, soundless. Turning, Liam could see the kadabra floating after him in pursuit, and against his better judgment—perhaps because he was more furious at Schwartz than his lackey—he stopped, staring the pokémon down as he levitated towards Liam. The kadabra seemed to wilt under the same stare that Schwartz had borne so readily, but regardless, he continued his approach and came to a stop in front of Liam. “Listen, I can’t do anything to help, but I know someone who can.” The kadabra hesitated. “Well, know [i]of[/i] them. This isn’t an official referral. Up by Cobalt Canyon, there’s a xatu. There are sightings of him sometimes, standing on the edge and staring out at the horizon. In different spots, so I can’t say exactly where he’ll be.” The kadabra glanced back over his shoulder at the door to the office; it remained closed. Whatever nervousness he had shown under Liam’s gaze had doubled in the wake of his revelation, the pokémon looking as edgy as if he been murmuring treason. “I’m not even supposed to be telling you this, since he’s not an officially licensed practitioner, but... well, if anyone can help you, it’s him.” Liam continued to stare, though now with less of a harshness, digesting the information. Before he could think to offer any sort of thanks or interrogate the kadabra further, the door to the office cracked open, a familiar set of horn-rimmed glasses shining in the sunlight that made its way inside through the gap. The kadabra spun about in the air and made his way back, hurrying inside and swinging the door shut behind himself. Liam stood there for a moment longer. Then, he turned back, heading towards his car. --- [i]It is true that there is not enough beauty in the world. It is also true that I am not competent to restore it. Neither is there candor, and here I may be of some use.[/i] --- Liam put one foot in front of the other, as he’d been doing for the past three hours. The deep valley of the canyon stretched off to his right, in the direction of the sun hanging low in the sky. It was probably the farthest that Liam had hiked in—well, his whole life, he’d wager. After all, he’d never been one for hiking, nor had he gone through that wandering trainer phase as a child. He didn’t really like battling. Ria, his only pokémon, had been just a companion, nothing more. ‘Just.’ ‘Nothing more.’ As if having someone to enrich your life and spent time with was less valuable because you didn’t pit them against others in battle. He discarded that bitter line of thought and focused on walking. He didn’t know how long he’d be walking [i]for.[/i] It wasn’t as if the xatu was marked on the map, and there were no roads running along the rim of Cobalt Canyon, so there was no choice but to walk and walk and walk. Liam drained the last few drops of water from his bottle, crushing the fresh empty in his fist before shrugging his backpack off of one shoulder to grab another. He stuffed the old, crumpled bottle down to the bottom before pulling out a full one. As Liam cracked open the cap, he turned to watch the sun. It had just begun to set, huge and orange as it dipped below the horizon. He sat down on the dirt to watch it, clearing himself a space among the dust and pebbles. Its light set the sky aflame. The shadows trailed off long and purple into the distance. Then, Liam was aware he wasn’t alone. He turned his head to the left, and there, having been mere inches out of his field of vision, stood a figure only a few dozen metres away. Green feathers wrapped by white wings, a hooked beak, and two wide, eerie eyes staring out at the same horizon as him. There had been no sound, no explanation as to how he could’ve gotten there without Liam having seen him approach, but he was there regardless. Liam scrambled up off the dirt, leaving his bag and hastily capped water behind, and sprinted to close the distance between them. Even when Liam arrived panting at his side, the xatu did not even turn his head, but continued staring out at the setting sun. He did, however, speak, preempting whatever exhortation was forming on Liam’s lips. “‘Ashes, my burnt hut, but beautiful, the cherry blooming on the hill.’ Jallow heard that from a patient, or rather their owner, shortly before their death. Do you enjoy poetry? No, I have seen that you don’t.” Mike straightened himself, swallowed. “Xatu, I’ve—” “Come seeking my aid,” the xatu finished. “Why? The psychic technicians have told you what they can do.” “They told me to—” “Seek me out.” The xatu clacked his beak. “You have been told to come seeking a miracle. The one who sent you is more capable of this than I. I simply survey events and anticipate probable outcomes. What would you wish of me? I already know, of course, but we stand at a crossroads, and perhaps you've changed your mind.” Mike found rising in his breast the same familiar rage that he seemed to face at every turn. Every institution that he’d approached had thrown up their hands and claimed helplessness, and now, in his decision to turn to the mystical, he found only more of the same. “Why can’t anyone [i]do[/i] anything?” Mike shouted. “What are you doing out here, playing at being some sorta font of wisdom? You can’t do anything, either!” Rather than cutting him off, the xatu was silent a moment. If Mike thought he had given the old bird pause, that idea was dismissed when next he spoke. “I can give you some advice.” Mike spluttered with furious indignation. “I want [i]action[/i]! I don’t want any more—” “Advice? Have you received too much already? Well then, more won’t hurt. Understand there’s nothing you can do for who Ria was. All you can do is try to help who she is now—and her interests do not extend to justice or revenge. In that sense, perhaps she’s the wiser. At least her interests are her own and not disguised as other'.” “Wiser!” Mike spat, following the word with one sharp, barking laugh. “You don’t know anything about being wise. All you have is old platitudes, and you think that repeating them makes you some [i]enlightened being.[/i] You haven’t helped me at all!” The xatu didn’t move a muscle at his outburst, not even to look at him. “I know you think I haven’t. I fear you may even be correct; some things are beyond help. You will learn this through your mistakes—your greatest are yet to come.” “My only mistake has been in trying to get others to solve my problems,” Mike muttered. “I’m going to fix this, and I’m going to fix it [i]myself.[/i]” --- [i]You will not be spared, nor will what you love be spared.[/i] --- “Yeah, I’ve got the centiskorch with me,” said the man. Liam didn't remember his name, though he'd seen it earlier when they'd exchanged messages online. He was one of those bigger, country trainer types, dressed in red flannel with a thick Southern accent. The kind of trainer that tended to play a bit more loosely when it came to trading regulations. Which brought them to where they were, a booth in the back of some shabby chain restaurant. The man reached down to his belt, and when he pulled his hand back up from under the table, it was holding a poké ball. He set it down in front of himself. He didn’t let go of it, though. He kept his palm over top of it while giving Liam a scrutinizing look. “You been a trainer for long?” “Yes,” Liam said. “S’just that this one is ornery. Needs a trainer with a bit of experience to rein him in.” “I know.” “Got any experience dealing with fire types?” “Sure.” The man didn’t seem convinced. Liam reached into his pocket and retrieved a tight wad of bills, sliding it across the counter. The man took it and, still keeping the poké ball on his side of the table, started to thumb through the bills and count them up. They were large bills. There were many of them. It was all there. Mike had made sure of that, had drawn the money out that same morning. It dug deep into his savings, but it was cheaper than legal fees, or psychic therapy, or exotic medical procedures. “Well, that’s all in order, then,” the man said—though he still hesitated a moment before sliding the poké ball across the table towards Mike. Mike picked it up and stared at it in his hand. “How is it in battle?” The man scoffed. “Well, if you’re asking how [i]strong[/i] it is, the answer’s plenty. But good luck getting it to do one move on your say-so without training it for a month and a half. And that’s if yer lucky.” “That’s fine. It’ll do what I want it to.” “You seem, uh, real confident in yerself.” Mike didn’t answer, just stared at the ball in his hand. --- [i]The brightness of the day becomes the brightness of the night; the fire becomes the mirror.[/i] --- The moon laid hidden beneath a cloud. Only a scant handful of its light filtered down to the earth below, cloaking everything in a gloom even deeper than what was usual for the night. That was just as Mike would have it. his car had been parked by the side of the road about a hundred metres back, its headlights having been turned off about a mile before that. He was dressed in black. Long sweat pants, hoodie drawn up and over his head, gloves, shoes—all of it a deep black, making him a shadow among shadows. Though all the black fabric in the world would do nothing to muffle the sound of his approach. The gravel crunched under his feet. There was a slight sloshing and jostling from his backpack as he moved. Mike paid it no mind, the emptiness and silence surrounding him assuring him of his own stealth, even as he violated it. He kept up his approach down the driveway until he came to a gate at the end of it. Just ahead, he could see buildings, visible only by the way their roofs blotted out the light of the stars when he looked up at them. Liam planted one hand on the gate and hoisted himself up over it, letting out a grunt from the effort. As soon as he’d cleared it, he could hear a loud barking start up from deeper inside the property, followed by a light turning on in a window of one of the buildings ahead. Realising the element of stealth was gone, Mike fumbled about his waist, looking for the poké ball strapped to his belt, regretting having hidden it under the hoodie to hide its bright colours. He could already hear footsteps approaching and see the beam of a flashlight cutting through the dark, far faster than he’d expected. But he managed to get it out. Right before that flashlight touched down on him, Mike had gotten a hold of his poké ball and depressed the button on its front, unleashing a great burst of red light. When it cleared, in its place stood a towering beast that was all segmented limbs and bright red carapace, bursting with gouts of flame at either end. Mike had to squint to make out the appearance of the person ahead of him from the glare of the flashlight they were holding. It was a woman in a housecoat, toting a shotgun in one hand and a flashlight in the other. A stoutland bounded up next to her, taking up a defensive position at her heel. “Who the hell are you and what are you doin’ on my property?” she shouted and the voice made it clear it was Caroline—as if it could be anyone else. After all, it was her farm. “Get rid of the dog,” Mike said, and immediately, the centiskorch leapt to obey his order—so immediately that it was unclear as to whether the creature was following the order or preempting it. Nonetheless, it was carried out: quick as a flash, the centiskorch skittered off, charging forward with the speed of twenty-two legs and the weight of a battering ram. The stoutland tried to take on a defensive stance, either to dodge or brace for impact. Mike couldn’t tell which: the collision came too fact, and was decisive in its outcome. Seconds before impact, the centiskorch wreathed itself in a cloak of flame, such that when it made contact with the stoutland, it was set alight even as it was sent flying. It shot through the air as a burning streak, its coat having rapidly gone up in flame, until it slammed into the side of a nearby barn with a loud crack—of wood, and of bone. It fell to the grass, still and burning where it laid. “Terri!” Caroline shrieked, turning to where her pokémon laid, making a move to start towards it before thinking better of it and instead bringing her shotgun to bear against Mike. “You son of a [i]bitch.[/i] I’m go—” Whatever threat she was going to make was cut off by the centiskorch ramming its head into her side. While it hadn’t elected to set itself on fire for that particular attack, the four jets of flame springing from its face managed to scorch her housecoat regardless, though that was little compared to the cracking of ribs Mike heard from the force of the blow. Caroline’s finger squeezed down on the trigger from the shock, and there was a bright flash and a deafening [b]BANG[/b] as the shotgun fired. Mike threw himself to the ground as soon as he heard it, and found himself quickly joined there by the still-smoking shotgun; it had been thrown from her grip by the impact, and looking around, Mike could see a hole chewed into the ground where the shot had gone astray, surrounded by clumps of grass torn out of the dirt. Mike pushed himself up to his feet, his heart pounding in his throat. He could hear worried moos in the distance as the miltank woke from the commotion. He ignored them. “Good, now burn her too,” Mike said, staring down at Caroline clutching her chest on the gravel, groaning with pain. But the centiskorch didn’t obey his command. Rather, it positioned itself over top of Caroline and began grinding its body against her in a manner that Mike did not immediately understand. It was only when the flashlight, having slipped from her fingers in a similar manner to the shotgun, finally rolled to a stop so as to illuminate the centiskorch’s underside and the shiny flesh there between its rearmost legs that Mike realised what was happening. “Get your fffffucking pokémon off me!” Coraline shrieked, squirming under the weight of the centiskorch to little effect. Even at her healthiest, she wouldn’t have been able to break out from under it, and the broken ribs did her no favours. Her struggle only served to spur the centiskorch to even greater excitement, thrusting against the woman pinned under it with yet more fervour as it unsheathed itself. Mike watched with a certain sense of detached disgust. This had not been his plan, and he felt no satisfaction at watching it unfold, yet it felt like something that needed to be done. He stood by silently, behind both Caroline and the centiskorch on top of her, safely out of sight. Though not out of mind; Caroline continued to shout in a voice quaking with pain, fear, and anger at once. “What the hell d’you want, money?! Why did you, who—” Her words were cut off by a coughing fit as the centiskorch ground against her in such a way as to press down on her fractured rib cage, stealing the breath from her lungs. Blood flecked her lips and the ground in front of her, looking almost black in the dimness. Mike fumed with cold fury. She didn’t [i]know?[/i] What was the point in doing any of this if she didn’t even know who he was, why he was doing this? He stomped over to a position from which he could look down at Caroline’s face under the centiskorch’s great bulk, his own features coming into view by the light of the pokémon’s flames as he threw back his hood. “No amount of money could ever repay what you took from me,” Mike said. It was difficult to say if the look of horror on her face was from the recognition of who was standing before her, or from the centiskorch’s flesh—thick, burning with heat, drooling some sort of viscous slime—finally lodging itself just under her housecoat and spearing forward. She quickly learned that, in addition to all its other qualities, it was also [i]barbed.[/i] Caroline began to scream, an incoherent and lingering sound that went on and on, only to be interrupted by occasional babbling requests for mercy, pleas for the centiskorch to stop, offers of all manner of things that Mike didn’t care about—all equally devoid of meaning and invariably giving way to more dragging shrieks. The sight induced a certain nausea in Mike. He hated looking at the two of them. He turned away and shrugged his backpack off of his shoulders, unzipping it to retrieve the can of gasoline hidden inside. He ignored Caroline’s screams as he worked. He wasn’t sure if they changed in composition at all as she realised what he was doing, or if she’d even noticed what he was doing at all. When he had doused the outside of the barn nearest him to his liking, he found a stick nearby, lit it off the still burning coat of the stoutland, and tossed it towards the barn. Instantly, all the fuel he’d poured erupted in flames. --- [i]It does me no good; violence has changed me. My body has grown cold like the stripped fields; now there is only my mind, cautious and wary, with the sense it is being tested.[/i] --- Mike sat on a small knoll a good distance away from the chaos unfolding ahead. The farmhouse, barns, sheds, everything was now on fire and blazing brilliantly in the night, sending up great plumes of smoke that blotted out the stars. The roar of the flame was deafening. Mike would’ve never imagined a burning building to be so [i]loud.[/i] Even from as far away as he sat, the crackling of fire, and certainly the collapsing of buildings as their supports gave way, rang clear through the still night air. Ria laid on the grass next to him. He stroked his palm up and down her back in mechanical petting motions. Mike’s fingers were stiff and his hand shook as it moved. In spite of the blaze he’d set, the night was cold, and had only grown colder. Other sounds occasionally broke through the din of the inferno. The centiskorch’s keening cries, often accompanied by the sight of it darting amongst the flaming wreckage. The panicked moos of miltank—usually fading back into the cacophony, but occasionally cutting off sharply, so that their absence could be noted, felt. Whenever one of those moos would raise up, Ria would let out a moo of her own in unison, head canted up towards the sky. Mike’s petting went on automatically, unwavering in the face of her grief; it did nothing to soothe either of them. --- [i]Tell me this is the future, I won’t believe you. Tell me I’m living, I won’t believe you.[/i]