Two years ago, Red and Blue conquered the pokemon world.

  The two twelve-year-old trainers first got into the public eye for just being the new pokemon trainers sponsored by Professor Oak. Taking into account their young age, everyone believed that they would blossom into great trainers way down the line, just like all the other young trainers that came out of Oak’s laboratory.

  Shortly after the buzz died out, however, one of them appeared in the morning news when it was reported that one of Oak’s new trainers had stopped a remaining Team Rocket cell from extracting rare fossils from Mt. Moon—after just winning his first badge. It was strange, but whatever, it must’ve been a pretty weak cell. After that, though, a few fringe journalists decided to follow this rather quiet trainer’s journey, and soon they learned of his self-proclaimed rival after one of their 'friendly' matches.

  They reported on the adventures of these two new trainers from afar, just for fun at first. And for lack of their names at the time, they dubbed them for their clothes and pokemon: Trainer Red, for the boy who wore red and chose a Charmander, and Trainer Blue, for the boy who wore blue and chose a Squirtle.

  It was quickly evident the duo's exponential growth.

  These same journalists came out and screamed to everything and everyone that would listen that those two twelve-year-olds were destined to be two of the greatest trainers ever. Unfortunately for them, few would listen to small-time journalists who wrote for small-town newspapers.

  It didn’t help that the League was actively hiding the two boys' involvement against the reemergence of a second Team Rocket.

  Then came the Kanto Conference.

  Everyone, including Cape and me, lost their minds when two twelve-year-old rookies began to handily defeat trainers twice their age in half the time of the usual Conference matches–on both sides of the brackets of the tournament. It didn’t matter if those trainers were the favourites. It didn’t matter that those trainers had Championship potential. It didn’t even matter how many decades of experience the oldest one had. These two honest to Arceus kids simply tore through their opponents and their teams apart with technique, power, and knowledge that they shouldn’t be capable of accumulating in one year. With just their rivalry fuelling them, they reached the Kanto Conference Finals in one year, their rookie year.

  The Final of Two Rookies it was called, something never seen before in the two hundred years of the Conference’s existence.

  After the incredible match that crowned Red the Kanto Conference Champion, people started snooping around, and it was discovered that Blue was the grandson of Professor Oak and that Red was the son of one of his long-time assistants, and there was suspicion of nepotism. Then came the leaks about their involvement against a resurging Team Rocket led by the true leader all along, Giovanni, and they were called heroes. Those two versions of them still occasionally clashed in the public mind.

  None of that mattered when another year began again, and the conference circuits soon followed. There was a high expectation for the two kids who were now thirteen years old.

  Everyone thought that a new great rivalry had been formed, one that would take over the League for the next ten to twenty years, like Oak and Agatha, Terence and George, Giveon and Bianca. Instead, the two prodigies left, vanishing like ghost pokemon. They didn’t travel to conquer new regions, didn’t take on new challenges in the form of tournaments or matches, and didn’t even make an appearance anywhere.

  For the last two years, those two would be considered dead to the public if not for the fact that Blue was irregularly seen visiting his grandfather, and that reputable trainers reported seeing a Pikachu tearing through giant behemoths in Mt. Silver. There was only one known Pikachu in the entire world that could do that.

  So why the hell was Blue here!?

  “I asked a question,” Blue said with that infuriating sneer that became so associated with him.

  “Trainer Oak,” the Blackthorn leader said, and actually bowed. “My name’s Jonathan. The three of us were here visiting a friend when we turned around the corner and saw this Clefairy running away—”

  “It’s simple, really,” the teenage girl across the corridor said, waving a hand at the opposite group. “They are interfering with Joy clan's business. Are you going to interfere with our business too, Oak’s grandson? Side with the Blackthorns to stop us from retrieving our own pokemon?”

  “Tch, what a bore… What’s your name?”

  She puffed out her chest. “My name is—”

  “Whatever, I just remembered that I don’t care.” Blue lips twitched up as he checked his fingernails, and I could hear the teeth grinding coming from the Joy trainer. “You say that pokemon is yours, but can you prove it?”

  “Prove!?” She almost shouted. “That is a Clefairy. There’s only one clan in Indigo that can own her line!”

  “Clef,” Clefairy whispered pitifully and recoiled from the shout.

  “Just because your clan kicks a fuss when someone else has one doesn’t mean you own their line.” I almost scoffed out loud. While Blue was correct that there are no more clan-owned lines anymore, the chances of finding a Clefairy in the wild were as good as finding a Dratini. Practically speaking, the girl was right.

  Not that I liked seeing Clefairy like this.

  “Whatever,” she parroted Blue’s own words back in a mocking tone and raised a pokeball in the air like a badge. “We still have her pokeball.”

  Clefairy shrieked away, as if afraid the pokeball would take her. My hand clenched around the handle, and I almost pulled the door open and stepped out, if not for the fact that the pokeball burst into flames.

  The girl screamed, let go of the pokeball, and pulled back her unharmed hand. The now blackened and useless pokeball fell to the ground, and the fire quickly vanished.

  Blue’s insane.

  “You’re burned up an owned pokeball! Are you crazy!?” Now she was screaming, and I was wondering why Nurse Joy wasn’t just taking her out right now. Not even being a member of the same clan would let her get away with all this mess.

  “You talking to me?” Blue looked around as if to make sure. “I just saw a pokeball catching fire.” The Blackthorn group snickered, as if they would be okay if it happened to them.

  “What! Your dog clearly destroyed a trainer’s pokeball!”

  “Malfunctioning product. You should really look into where you get your pokeballs,” Blue said over Arcanine's snickering. He walked past the Blackthorn group to stand beside the fairy pokemon. “You want to go with them?”

  The wide-eyed fairy pokemon shook her head rapidly.

  “It’s decided then.” Blue nodded and glared at the Joy trainers. He lifted a hand and waved them away as if they were trash. “Piss off.”

  “You don’t know who you’re messing with, kid.”

  “Don’t call me a kid again, hag,” he said calmly, and ignoring her indignant shout, continued, “Fulminator here will use you as a chewing toy.”

  The teenager stared at Blue for a while, until finally she just scoffed. “Call your grandfather and let him know he’ll be very busy very soon.” With that said, she and her two stooges left.

  “That was a nice one, Oak.”

  “You too,” Blue said.

  “What?” They glanced at him with a frown.

  “Piss off.”

  The other two Blackthorns looked like they wanted to say something, but this Jonathan just raised his hand, and they shut up. “It’s alright. We've been amused enough.” He turned around in the other direction. “Let's go here, we’ll take the stairs.”

  His two friends were squeezing by the Arcanine when he looked back and nodded. “Good luck, Oak.”

  Blue, Arcanine, and Clefairy were now alone in the corridor.

  The fairy looked up at him with a smile; her whole being seemed to shine bright with happiness at the thought of being left alone by Joy. There was a minute of silence, and then Blue’s eyes snapped to mine. Clefairy followed his gaze, and an even bigger smile opened on her face, if that was possible.

  “Clefairy!” she said, bouncing towards the door.

  “Hi,” I said uncertainly, but fully opened the door.

  She dashed forward and hugged me around my waist, and I patted her on the back. She let go and walked past me, looking around the room. I was too confused about the hug to stop her.

  Blue nodded to his Arcanine and retrieved him. He walked right up to my room and shouldered past me, despite the size difference between us, with him being an entire head smaller and a toothpick in width. Walking past the bed, he sat down on the chairs on the other side of the room. He let out a huff as he sat down.

  Blue didn’t look like the brat from before. Now he just looked… exhausted. That seemed to fit properly when he leaned forward towards the ground and covered his face with his hands.

  Clefairy approached him and patted him on the back. “Cle..."

  “I’m alright.” Blue then straightened up and pulled up some kind of phone. There was a dull silence when the vice champion lost himself in writing something—probably an e-mail to Professor Oak.

  I finally closed the door and turned to the room just as Clefairy’s eyes landed on the nightstand, where the pokeballs were. The slightly chubby pink pokemon bounced there and stared at the spherical objects. She turned around to stare at me with puppy eyes.

  “You want to talk to them?” I smiled at her.

  She nodded, her three-fingered hands opening and closing in excitement.

  “I won’t release all of them,” I said, putting Mountain’s pokeball in its place while receiving a pout from the fairy. “How about Valley? My Minccino. I remember that she talked with you for a little while.”

  She nodded.

  I grabbed Valley’s pokeball—barely feeling any pain now—and released her. Red light splashed into my bed, and the small grey pokemon rubbed her eyes as she appeared on the foot of the bed. Her drowsiness was washed away by the image of the Clefairy in front of her.

  They exchanged pleasantries, I assumed, and Valley soon urged Clefairy to climb on the bed, which she did, and they continued to talk.

  Meanwhile, I walked around the bed and sat down a chair away from Blue. Sitting down on the other side of the bed seemed rude, and sitting down right at the chair to his side seemed too personal. A few minutes later, he seemed to finish his business. He scratched his head while looking at the floor.

  After a few minutes of silence, he looked up at me.

  “You don’t start many conversations, do you?”

  “... I suppose I don't." Now that I think about it.

  He sighed. “I came here just to talk to you, and ended up just bringing more problems.” I stayed silent. What could I even say here? “I guess it’s been a year since I’ve done anything like this, so maybe it was time anyway.” He glanced in my direction. “I could also say that, in a roundabout way, this is your fault as well.”

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  My eyes narrowed. “You couldn’t say that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it isn’t my fault, I didn’t have anything to do with this.” I gestured sneakily at Clefairy.

  Blue laughed. “Would you have left that poor Clefairy out there between the dork alliance and the dumb dumbs?”

  “I don’t know,” I lied, seeing as I almost had interfered if he hadn’t burned up that pokeball. I even surprised myself with that, though. “I’m not stupid enough to get between Blackthorns and Joys. I think I would’ve left it alone, but we’ll never know now.”

  “Liar,” he said immediately, and I winced. “Just a tip for the future, lying might work with civilians and common trainers, but don’t try it with elites and high-ups.”

  “Noted. Now what do you want– ”

  “But let’s go on as if you were speaking the truth; you wouldn’t have intervened." Blue cut in. “That’s alright. Not everyone can have the confidence I have, after all. Gramps used to say that I didn’t see the water before I jumped. I admit, it took some months to see that it was both a dig and a compliment.”

  “You really think that this will cause trouble for your grandfather?” I asked quietly.

  “Yeah, but it was the correct thing to do, so he won’t be too mad. Doing the right thing is what we’re good at, you know?”

  “We?” I raised an eyebrow.

  “We.” Blue grinned, raising his hand and waving it between us. “Oak’s trainers.”

  I blinked in surprise as I remembered the talk I had with Professor Oak at the Sprout Tower, about extending a hand to those in need. I hadn’t expected it to be something that Blue would have picked up from his grandfather. I also didn’t know exactly what to say to that, and he seemed to have picked it up. His grin faded away as he took in my expression.

  “That’s right there,” he said, pointing at my confused face, “is exactly why I came here, to explain some things to you.”

  “What things?”

  “Gramps thinks it’s good to give trainers at least a year before explaining some pretty important stuff to them. I’m not against that usually, but speaking from experience, when making waves as big as the ones I did, or as the one you’re doing right now… as little as they are compared to mine, it’s best to explain stuff before a bomb explodes in your face.”

  “Bomb?” I winced since, for some reason, I didn’t think he was exaggerating that much. He was the guy who raided a few Rocket bases after all.

  “Like the one I just grabbed from you, outside in the hallway.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He sighed. “You've made a great impression on the Clefairy over there.”

  I turned to look at the Clefairy, enthusiastically speaking with Valley. They were almost jumping up and down on the bed, probably speaking about battling. It’s the only thing that gets Valley this excited.

  “I don’t think I did much.”

  He shook his head. “Clefairy can know things, something about the way they interact with the world. When the four of you were helping them, she probably saw things she liked in you and your team, so much so that she even ran away from the Joy compound here in Olivine just to see you. She wants to come along in your journey, you know… and your Minccino is selling her on the idea right about now.”

  “Dammit, Valley.” I sighed.

  “Don’t damn her, stupid.” Blue snapped. “Clefairy are powerful and versatile pokemon, and that one is already well-trained. If you play your cards right, you’ll have another powerhouse on your team.”

  “Trained too? The Joy clan won’t like that," I groaned.

  “No, they won't,” he said. “Long ago, they might’ve even tried to publicly get her back, but the time when the clans dictated the law is long gone. In the modern world, new pillars of power have risen, and they can’t afford to take certain unsavory actions against new prospects in the region.”

  “Politics? Really?” I pointedly ignored the emphasis he put on publicly.

  “It’s good that you recognized where I'm going with this, but yes, politics. You didn’t think that being a pokemon trainer would exempt you from our equivalent of 'office' politics, right?"

  “I’m not naive enough for that, but I thought it wouldn’t come up this early.”

  “Making waves earlier tends to bring attention earlier, too. Now, I said my time was worth gold, right? Let's get on with the lesson already. First question, why do you think everything has politics in it?”

  “Not everything has politics.”

  Blue rolled his eyes. “Why do you think everything that matters has politics in it?”

  “Competing interests.”

  “That’s your answer?”

  “Yes.” Not like it matters anyway, he would correct me if it was wrong.

  “Wrong!” He shook his head disappointingly. “Let’s try another route. Why do you think pokemon training has politics?”

  “Because we have pokemon.” I blurted the first thing that came to mind.

  “Ding ding ding! Correct,” he said with a nod. “In case you're blind, pokemon are powerful creatures, with the strongest of them capable of leveling mountains. They are actual, material, touchable power, and those who have—and are the best trainers— are powerful by association. Pokemon training has politics because we have power, and competing interests just arise naturally from that fact.”

  “... I understand,” I said with wide eyes. I was genuinely impressed by the fourteen-year-old. His speech turned from arrogant brat to something like a professor at a university. Oak genes, probably.

  Blue's eyes narrowed, and then he spat out, “It’s a good thing you’re not completely ignorant.” He seemed to catch himself and then huffed. “... It’s not you.”

  “I know. It’s you, right?” Blue's head snapped back. “You probably began your journey when you were twelve, probably didn’t know anything about politics, unlike now, it seems. You've hinted before that your grandfather didn’t explain much to you and Red, and I think that caused problems in your journey.”

  “Close enough.”

  “Okay,” I took a deep breath. Now I knew that all of this was actually important. “What’s next?”

  “You have to know a couple of things to be better informed of what’s happening around you, specifically about this year. The first is that rarely do people choose where they end up. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “I’ll need some more context, I think."

  “Sure, I’ll give you context. The key concept here is the pillars of power, remember? Well, my grandfather makes a lot of things out of the goodness of his decrepit heart, but there are people who don’t understand the concept of kindness itself. People who can’t fathom the thought of helping someone if not for some benefit for themselves.”

  I nodded at that. I could remember people like that in Azalea, and I also remembered a pretty recent famous figure like that. “Like Giovanni.”

  “Exactly like him,” Blue grinned at that, probably remembering the time he helped bring the guy down. “But there are many others, especially in politics. These assholes like to lump us all together, Oak’s Bloc is what they call us behind closed doors. For them, everyone that Gramps helps, even with the slightest of touches, ends up pinned as someone under Samuel Oak’s influence"—he rolled his eyes—"be they trainers, professors, or even economic or military assets.”

  “I’m part of a political faction.” Oh, Arceus.

  “Exactly,” Blue said with a satisfied smirk. “Now, that doesn’t change much for you. You’re pretty much at the bottom of the bottom of our ‘faction’, hanging out with us by the barest of connections. There are downsides as well as perks. For example, you won’t rock any boats for us even if you did something crazy like I did just now, but the downside is that you would be the one to face the Joy clan alone unless we actively tried to help you, then it would be like us fully claiming you, and then you wouldn’t be bottom of the barrel anymore.”

  “Arceus, I feel a headache coming.”

  “Well, hold that thing in. I still have more things to tell ya, then you can sleep on that.”

  I messaged my temple. “Alright, go on.”

  “It’s about Brian.”

  “Again with this?” Fuck, another headache. “Your grandfather already spoke with me about it.”

  “Really?”

  I nodded.

  “So did he explain everything about it?”

  I remembered the vaguely worded email he sent. “... No.”

  Blue rolled his eyes. “Now you have the context, let’s move on to what's happening right now in the region. Do you know how the attack on the Joy clan and the kidnapping of many fairy-type pokemon relate to Brian at all? Or how the fact that your group helped the pokemon escape might have made you guys a target?”

  “No,” I groaned, something I seemed to be doing a lot throughout this conversation. “Speaking of, does the fact that I’m travelling with Dendra and the others mean that they’re under Professor Oak's faction too?”

  “Didn’t you hear me say just now that you’re at the bottom of the barrel? Those people are not completely unreasonable. At the very least, they understand that you don’t have that kind of authority within the group.”

  “This is official, then? This… whole thing about faction?”

  “We’re just late to the party. Gramps spent close to a decade trying to disallow the label, and then came to the conclusion that it was better for everyone if this actually existed and had actual coordinated power to fight back instead of the group only existing in the minds of his enemies and not having any power to fight back at all.”

  “Okay,” I said, and then digested everything he said right then. Huh. The more I think about this, the more sense it makes. A lot of sense, actually. I stared at him. “Great answer by the way.”

  “Yep, I know I’m great.”

  “Sorry for the diversion,” I said. “Brian?”

  “Right.” He took a deep breath. “It’s classified stuff, so brace yourself.”

  “Alright.” How bad could it be?

  “One of the least talked-about aspects of the Rocket War open to the public was the way the Team was actually organized.” What? “There was the leader, or who they thought was the leader, and under him the ones called executives or administrators, sixteen pokemon trainers of variable strength. Each of them had a division of about a hundred men. At the end of the war, almost all of them had been killed or jailed. There were three exceptions, one of them was Basil, the weak one you saw being captured at Grey Lake by Brian, the other was a man named Roger–”

  “Wait a minute. Wait a minute!” I shouted, finally finding my voice and attracting the attention of the two pokemon on the bed. “You shouldn’t be telling me this. You’re just a kid too. How do you even know this stuff?”

  “In the pokemon world, your age doesn’t matter, just how powerful you are.” Blue flashed a winning smile. “Back to the topic, Roger was in charge of a division that was based near the ocean, and when things started to go south for TK, he grabbed his whole division and crossed over to the other continent.”

  The conversation between Brian and Basil flashed through my mind. “Brian is after this guy.”

  “Exactly. Roger was his squad captain, and more importantly, his mentor and friend. When Roger finally betrayed the army… Let’s just say it wasn’t pretty. Brian lost many friends and comrades because of that.”

  “I see, and this Roger is back in Indigo?”

  “The Region and the League have caught some old members of the Lost Division, as they’re called by the top brass, crossing back over these last year, and there are hints that the rest of them are in Johto. They might’ve even picked up new members over the last eight years, and even recruited past ones, like Basil.”

  “Okay… So they attacked the Joy?”

  “Yes… They’re not just luring and capturing pokemon like Basil was doing anymore. They directly attacked the Joy and stole a lot of their pokemon. There were attacks at five Joy facilities, and from those five, only one group of pokemon was able to escape, the one you guys rescued.”

  “Which makes us a target for potential revenge,” I concluded, remembering the talk with those two trainers. Blue nodded. “Fuck. How did they do that?”

  I wasn’t expecting a response to that, but Blue spoke anyway, “The investigation is still ongoing, but they have at least already finished questioning Clefairy. It wouldn’t be only the Joy after her if they hadn’t.”

  I nodded, “I already have a suspicion why you told me all of that, but can you be straight with me and tell me why you told me all this stuff about Team Rocket, anyway?”

  “Sure.” He shrugged and then fully laid back on his chair. “If I’m about to do something stupid, I feel a lot better doing it when I know which side I should be on. I also prefer to have all the facts before I commit to anything. In many ways we’re different, Scott. I’m smarter, quicker, better looking, more stylish, of course–”

  “The point, please.”

  “We’re also similar. I’m here talking to you because you did something that I would've done, you’ve helped. Even though you didn’t know the circumstances behind the situation, you helped. The consequence of that is that you landed in the hospital after being ambushed by members of this Lost Division, correct?"

  “Correct.”

  “And this group is all over Johto. If you care enough, which I bet you do, you'll maybe end up fighting them again. Next time, I simply want you to understand what you’re getting into… and if you hear the name Roger, I want you to run.”

  “That's good advice, I guess,” I said after some time. “Thanks for coming over here to fill me in on all this stuff. I appreciate it. For the record, I agree that it’s good to be informed.”

  He scoffed at that and fully laid his head back on the chair to glare directly at the ceiling. There were five whole minutes of silence. I turned to watch Valley and Clefairy talking while waiting for him, since it looked like he wanted to talk some more.

  Finally, he turned to me with a crazed grin. “You want some more good advice, rookie?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was daydreaming for a bit, and I came up with something. Want to know what I would do in your position? If I were in the exact same situation as you? In the same exact place, actually.” His grin widened, and his eyes flicked towards Clefairy. “And if I had a lot of balls, of course.”

  “Look Blue—”

  “Call me Gary.”

  “Gary, then. I don’t mean to be rude, but isn’t it… kinda impolite to comment on the journey of another, or I don’t know, nepotism?”

  “Maybe… but I heard from Gramps that you want to win the conference, isn’t that right?

  “... Yes.”

  “So? You think clan kids aren’t receiving advice right from the moment they step out of their city. They can’t even wipe their asses without asking their precious elders if they should.” I snorted, and he took the sound as acceptance. “Alright, Scott. Let me speak for a few minutes, and then you decide what you want to do, capiche?”

  On one hand, there was this ugly feeling in my chest that was compelling me to tell him to shut up. It whispered that I hadn't spent years after my twelfth birthday planning my journey to just scrape it all because a prodigy decided he could plan better than me. But on the other hand… it wasn’t just another prodigy, it was Trainer Blue.

  I sighed.

  Whatever, it wouldn't be a full-on commitment to this plan.

  But I did already commit to becoming the best trainer in the world, didn't I? And if there was a chance this plan was as good as Gary seemed to think it was, then I could just cannibalize it.

  “Alright,” I said the word that made his eyes light up. “Pitch me your plan.”