It's hard to bury her.

For one thing, Fang's psychic powers refuse to trigger, so we'll have to move the body ourselves, physically, no matter what we decide to do.

For another, the trainer flees the scene. He's gone by the time Minerva runs around the corpse to give him a piece of her mind, and I'm half glad she wasn't able to. Whatever great wrong has been accomplished tonight, adding 'manslaughter' to it would make things worse.

Minerva is very, very lucky she wasn't born a Gyarados, or anything on that evolutionary line. She doesn't have that kind of self control.

There's a river nearby but we can't throw the corpse in, nor do we have the strength, so for a while we wait there in total shock.

Fang is completely past the point of rational thought at this time, as he's trying to dig her a grave with his paws. We'd be here well into the next century at the rate he's doing it, but he keeps going until his pads are numb. I feel my fingers go numb with his pain.

Even Minerva's trademark grin is gone, replaced by a morbid forwards glare.

Without a word, I withdraw them.

Ten raises one wing and his eyes glow a frightening purple. Trees curve up and out of the way, rent from the earth, and a massive mound of earth flies skywards. With his other wing, he rolls the body, sloshing water and blood around it, and deposits Pisces into the earth. She falls as if sleeping, entirely limp, but her eyes are still wide in fear. I want to go close them but I can't bring myself to touch her. To doing so seems to confirm her death.

Reginae, Ten, and I don't need words anymore, not after this. I can sense their every thought and the way it pulls at Ten's mulling over his new powers in shock, and Reginae's thinking about Red's warning from a few days back. Both of them have turned to the future not out of coldness or a lack of empathy, but rather necessity.

I withdraw them as well, which leaves me alone beneath the glare of Cerulean's lights. This city is closer to the ground than Saffron or Vermillion, with more of a suburban feel to it, but the streetlights are still enough to blot the stars. I look upwards again, feeling the silence of the early morning like an anesthetic. The world stretches into a blur of noise and color, sound and sensation, and the second my face touches cold fabric I pass out.

***

My years on the road have adjusted me to waking up in new places. There's no shock when I wake up in a aqua-colored hotel room. My mind thinks 'Wow, we're in a hotel? It must be a day that ends in 'y',' and leaves it at that.

The real anomaly, the thing that gets me first, is that I'm completely alone. There are no other sighing breaths or other bodies to warm the room, it's just me, alone and more than a little cold. This is in part because someone's left the window open, and the chill is awful. The drapes billow out on occasion, flailing only to come to rest again. Oddly, even though we're miles from the ocean, I can smell the sea. I don't know if it's the reek from Pisces's body and bloody brine or my mind acting up, but it's distinct and gone almost instantly.

I reach for my bag and find it slung across the floor, with the Pokedex and Pokegear sitting alongside it. I almost get out the fifth Poke Ball but the memories flood back as I find it lighter than usual. I know that this is in my own mind- catching a Pokemon doesn't make them any heavier- but I know this one's hers, and it feels it this morning. I tuck it back away.

The team is less than thrilled to see me.

"What now?" I ask them.

Reginae breaks the silence first: "We need to add a new team member. We're lucky we had a catch beforehand-"

"Lucky?" howls Fang. "Lucky?"

"I didn't mean it that way." Reginae snaps back. "I'm just trying to be practical so we can get back on the road."

"I don't care if it's practical. We can't replace Pisces already!" Fang growls.

"It's not like we have much of a choice." Reginae counters.

"Shut up! You wanted Pisces to die so Hycanith could join the team. You don't care about her at all! You all thought she was a big monster." Fang shouts, bristling with fury.

"W-what? I would never- Fang!"

"Both of you need to calm down." Minerva says. "This isn't helping. Pisces wouldn't have wanted... actually, no, screw it. Forget what Pisces would have wanted. I want you two to both close your whiny little yaps. You two are being petty."

Giving them the floor was a bad idea- I should've realized this from the start. "We're getting Hycanith," I say, getting to my feet. "We have a lot of training to do and only a few more months left to do it."

Even if we get nothing done today, we stood up. We walked outside. Every second we spend doing something is a victory snatched from the jaws of mourning, apathy, all of it. Self-care and choosing to be alright for the sake of those still living is an act of rebellion.
It still hurts to move, but we do it. Solemn Fang trails behind the group, still in shock, and Minerva holds the vanguard, as usual. I don't think anything could faze her. The team needs that brazen confidence now more than ever.

The Nurse Joy here has a pensive expression across her face and a bowl of office mints at her desk. She waves to me as I leave the Pokemon center with my new Poke Ball in hand. I decide I like her. No doubt I'll be seeing a lot of her, too, so having a good relationship with her is always a boon.

When I see my face in the blank screen of the Pokegear, though, I realize she might just pity me. I look like I haven't been out of bed in days and the dark circles below my eyes have grown thick as Pangoro markings.

Hycanith emerges from the Poke Ball and walks to sit between Reginae and Ten, claiming the oldest members of the team for her own in one swift movement. She rocks back and forth, eyes still on them, clutching her bone against her chest.

"Hello. Are you alright?"

She nods.

"You're not going to talk, are you?" I ask.

She shakes her head. It's not just a physical restriction- she doesn't speak in words over our new, thin connection either. I can feel her there, like warm sunshine, and I suppose we'll have to find someway around her condition.

Minerva eyes the Pokegear and frowns. "This isn't enough."

Level 16 shines back at us both, bold and obnoxious.

"We've been down to four functional members for a while and it's not working out. While we train Hycanith up, that's down to three... yet we have six 'Pokemon' on the team. Say what you want about 'moving on', Ashley, but you have emotional turmoil of your own and it's holding the team back." Minerva says with a pointed glare.

"Leave her out of this." Ten sweeps her aside with a wing. "If I could just get my powers under control in casual battle, I could be an asset. Regardless, I'll be back if we need me."

"Minerva's right." I decide. "Even if we can't use him in battle, we're going to need to start letting Ethan out more. He's not going to recover like this."

He doesn't want to be in there, that insistent voice in my head chimes in.

Minerva, mouth agape, composes herself into cocky grace. "N-naturally," she says.

"Sure," Fang says. He gets to his paws with his head hung, "Let's go."

"You want to ride on my back?" Reginae asks Hycanith.

"I give better rides. I'm faster." Minerva calls to the tiny Cubone, grinning. "Get over here, kid."

Hycanith hobbles back over Reginae and clutches his neck again, snuggling against him and making that same low, echoing noise from within her skull.
Reginae flashes Minerva a coy smile. "Better might be objective."

"Tsk."

Cerulean is brimming with trainers, who wait on the wings on every route, so it takes us a while to find a safe place to let Ethan out. When we do reach a place that seems isolated enough, hidden in a cluster of trees in the restricted area off the path, we go further. There's a field full of mushrooms and odd, bright powder up ahead. It's probably a Fairy-type ring, like those in neighboring Mount Moon. It's not dangerous during the day, though I hope that the native Pokemon won't mind our intrusion.

"You don't want to be here for this," I tell Hycanith grimly, and withdraws her. "Anyone else not ready yet? It'll take a while for Ethan to adjust, until then, it's not going to be pretty."

"Forget it. I don't care." Fang says. His red eyes narrow to slits. "Just send him out."

Sighing, I withdraw the Master Ball from my bag and hurl it into the center of the clearing. Bird Pokemon fly up from the trees, calling out in distress, as the king of birds rises from the Fairy-type ring. His physical form is better than before, or I might just be used to its glaring deformities, but either way I'm able to hold onto my lunch this time and my heart doesn't pick up as soon as I see him.

That changes as soon as he begins trying to speak.

It starts as a high, whining noise, like the cry of a regional rodent in its death throes, but that's coming from his physical throat. He can't even get his windpipes to work in the right way to produce anything resembling speech. If that wasn't horrible enough, he then goes back into the method he tried last time we talked-

Blinding, deafening static fills my mind and that of all of my Pokemon as he tries to talk to us.

"Oh Arceus oh Arceus..." groans Ten, trying to cover his head with his wings.

The whole team grimaces as the agony wracks them- well, almost all of us. Reginae is just moments away from fainting, but Fang's dark-typing must be adequate protection because he's hardly wincing. He looks up into Ethan's eyes, probing for familiarity, and whispers, "He's your friend."

Great. He's delirious too.

I tap into Celebi's power to open up all available parallel timelines while holding the golden web of connections, trying to keep my Pokemon steady and calm, but doing both proves to be a veritable nightmare. The web is so much more confusing when I'm dealing with all of us, across time and space, and when I feel a twinge of Pisces's familiar, overwhelming connection, I drop the whole thing like a flaming coal.

I don't have much time, so I work fast, reaching out to Ethan, whose message is a little more clear now.

Don't want to be alone. Out there? Are you out there? I can't talk. I can't talk.

"Ethan." Ethan, I say, my voice echoing on multiple layers of reality as well as in and outside of the mindscape.

You can hear me?

"Yes, but my team can't. I need you to speak how they're talking. One dimension." I say. "Like this." I focus on sending the words into his mind, and time and space compress back around us. I can't tap into Celebi for that long, and I fade back into one world, holding out hope he senses the distinct change in my presence, how all the versions of myself are no longer connected... the whole ordeal makes me dizzy from the concept alone, let alone the strength it takes to actually do it.

Okay. he says, and the voice comes out clear and all too familiar.

"You did it." I say, hope like a crazed Butterfree in my chest. "Are you... do you feel a little better?"

I'm scared. He tells me, pressing his head against my hand. My body hurts. I don't know what happened.

"A lot happened," I say, unsure how to convey things without making him to panic again. My mind doesn't want to exhaust the energy to form words- being this close to him, the very act of existing in his presence, takes tremendous energy, like the last few seconds of trying to pull Pisces out from the void of death. It's too soon. I can't do this- I'm tearing up again- "Please don't leave me." I whisper. "You're going to be safe. You're going to be okay."

Everything hurts. he continues, straining our connection as his voice rises in intensity.

"I know." I say. My body parts feel numb, using anything feels like walking on a leg that fell asleep hours ago. It doesn't feel real and everywhere it does touch reality is seething pain, pins and needles. "I know."

The remaining team flares out behind me, watching me from all sides.

Fang is crying.