SOLOMON

The meeting took place in broad daylight, on the top of a hill outside the slums of Lillycove. He stood stoically as he watched the small glinting of metal helmets in the distant sunlight of the palace on the bay that the Tiddalls called home. Today was the day when Elli's father would ransom his daughter back, and Solomon Forrest would free the men.

"They sure do take their time," said Teryn, restlessly. She stood on top of a Doduo, her face covered and her head hooded. "Every second wasted is a second we could be marching."

Solomon didn't respond. He knew the forces Jason was leading had joined with old man Randall Sand. Their destination: Mt. Pyre, to fight to establish the high ground when the storm that Solomon kept dreaming about would come. He tried not to think about the fact he had approved the measure in part because it would bring him into conflict with Lord Specter. Solomon focused on the task at hand. Hopeful that the waiting for Elli's father would put the acts of revenge and darkness far from being realized. He told himself that it wasn't his motive, but he turned back to the edge of the woods on the hill's edge, and the red eyes of Sceptile reflected the self-lie.

Elli was not calm, though she didn't seem scared. Solomon noted that she seemed more anxious than afraid, and if she was afraid, it was to protect her captors from her father's wrath. He smiled. She had nothing to be afraid of. Chief Tiddall could bring an army of people and Pokémon with him- it was still no match for the Hero of Nature.

"Elli!" cried a voice as the muffled feet of marching on soft grass began to be heard among the clanking of metal armor. "Elli can you hear me?"

"I'm here father!" Elli called back. "I'm safe."

Chief Tiddall had tired and complacent eyes that matched those of his Spirit Pokémon, a Ludicolo. Though it was the flash of pink in Tiddall's Pokémon's arms that let out the meeting's first excitement.

Elli ran when she saw her Luvdisc and embraced it in a hug. Solomon's heart filled with warmth. It was a feeling that would be forever lost to him, and he treasured viewing it: to reunite with one's family.

"Sir!" Teryn's voice pleaded concern, to stop the girl from escaping their control until the meeting was over. Solomon raised his hand to silence her. He stood calmly as the file of men lumbered up the hill and took their place. She saw the looks of hatred the soldiers fielded him, and then he saw the prisoners with bagged heads and ropes on their wrists.

When the procession finished, it was near fifty men, most of them armored, nearly surrounding him and Teryn. He smiled as he realized they were trying to intimidate him due to the way they spread to the right and left, inflating their numbers as a Masquerain spreads its wings. He could feel Teryn's rage behind him as the soldiers threw their own prisoners to the ground, near a dozen of them in all with such force as to ensure them that they were in charge. It makes no difference, Solomon thought, they will see soon enough that we don't play their game.

Elli's father looked Solomon up and down, studying him, as if he was trying to elucidate some long lost memory. The last time they had met was long ago, and Solomon knew the Chief of Lillycove had no memory of him.

"You must be one of the Draconids. I should have you executed right now," he called across the hilltop. Elli's eyes leaped to her father in panic. Just as she was about to speak, her father spoke again, as if pleading. "Tell me why I shouldn't."

Solomon felt his mouth turn into a grin. These men didn't frighten him, not for the simple fact that they had no idea of the power emanating from the jewel on the breastplate underneath his dark robes, but because Solomon knew that Chief Tiddall lacked the courage to do anything. His eyes met Elli's, telling her not to worry. "I think you know the answer to that."

The glimmering Chief in armor glanced at his daughter. "Of course. The exchange." He nodded at one of his soldiers. They began to remove the bags from their heads. They were soiled men with missing teeth, blotched skin, and beards flecked with grey. Others were lean boys with round bellies that had known nothing but hunger their entire lives.

"No," Solomon said.

"Sir!"

 He raised his hand to keep Teryn still.

"Call this what you may, Chief Tiddall, but this is no exchange."

"I beg your pardon?" Elli's father asked, obviously befuddled. The Ludicolo gave him a puzzled look.

"You heard me," Solomon began. "This is no exchange."

The prisoners that were to be returned to him gave each other panicked looks. One whispered to another, and was kicked into the dirt by one of their captors.

Solomon stepped forward with his hands up, signaling he meant no harm. "An exchange is what happens when two men produce something for the other, and they trade each for both of their benefits. What they produce is the product of their own creation, their own skill, and their own love to turn that skill into something that they value, even more than their skill, to improve their lives...

"But exchange is dead in this world. Look behind you at the city where you call yourself Chief. Look at the slums of the poor and the hungry who produce nothing. They have not been allowed to produce and exchange- you have seen to that, Chief. The evidence is the men you've brought to me in bondage. What are their crimes? Why do they deserve to live behind bars?"

Chief Tiddall looked at Solomon as if he was some strange Pokémon from the heavens above. "You know why. They've broken her majesty's laws. They are criminals! It can't be helped. They were the Empress's orders, but I wouldn't expect a terrorist to have any care for justice."

"On the contrary," Solomon retorted. "It is my regard for justice that leads me to feel disgust at the prospect of calling this an exchange. It is an insult to what exchange means. What were these crimes you claim they've committed?" He walked among the men. He had taken the whole of last night to learn who they were and what they had done to deserve the wrath of the Empress.

"These men," Solomon continued, "are not assassins or knives in the darkness. This man," he pointed at the oldest man in the line of the prisoners, "was once a grower of tomatoes. When he saw those around him starving, he used his skill to grow tomatoes. And this boy," he gestured to one of the younger captives, "grew up under the shadow of your Empress. His only joy in life was wood-working. When he met the tomato grower, they exchanged. His property for the other's.

"All these men knew each other through exchange of their skills and production, and you arrested them one by one. You, Chief Tiddall, and your men, rounded them up when the citizens of Lilycove didn't wait, as they usually did, with open arms for the scraps of food your soldiers threw to them, because each of these men was able to make their communities happier than you could. And it raised suspicions."

Tiddall interjected. "As I said, we caught word of criminal activity. Your blustering is evidence as to your ignorance in matters of-"

Solomon would have none of it. "The Empress didn't throw men into chains and drag them off into a dungeon, to not know if they would ever see their families again. Your men did, and they followed your orders, just as you follow the Empress. What binds them to you? Tradition? And what inspires your faithful devotion to the Empress? What exchange does she offer you? I know what she offers you- the same exchange you offered the men you've brought to me covered and gagged. That is no exchange. That is force.

"I know that there are men, foreign men from Odara and scum from Hoenn that run rampant who steal and murder. I know that they have existed for all time, and yet your soldiers struggle to apprehend them. True criminals, that is. They who use force and violence to take the lives and properties of the unsuspecting. But those aren't the men you've so efficiently rounded up. In the last seventeen years, the men who have been penalized are those that would exchange. And only those who produce, those who create, can exchange. This meeting is no exchange. It is justice.

"You have your daughter, she who matters to you as only family can. Against all my rage and jealousy for what you have, that which was taken from me, I have returned her to you because it is what's right. She was not my property, and neither are the prisoners you've thrown in the dirt for the crime of producing on their own for themselves, their friends, and their families. Since a person, a human, cannot be the property of another, he or she cannot be exchanged. This is no exchange because exchange doesn't exist in a world where criminals are the rulers. Criminals who do not produce, and therefore they don't exchange. They take through force or threat of death, as any petty thief or murderer would do."

"You're one to talk of murder," spat Chief Tiddall. His tone seemed scared, as if they didn't match his words. "Your assassin, Burningtree is the worst among everything you believe. Take a look in the mirror if you really expect me to heed the words of a child-killer."

Solomon smiled, but the words hurt him. He still cared deeply for Carson, but he knew Tiddall's words rang hollow, afraid to admit some unspoken truth. "Burningtree is not my man. He cooperates with my wishes as he so pleases... and other times he commits unspeakable acts of violence against my wishes. He is a free man, and he has been a criminal. Only a man who speaks of men as if they were property can speak as if they belong to someone else.

Solomon went on, "Every man either acts as he wants, or he is a slave. The men you say are mine work with me because I exchange with them. I offer them my protection, and my production, for the services they can render me. That is exchange. Those who follow blindly in the service of others, out of fear of punishment or the abandonment of their own reason and principles of justice are slaves, and thus, property. This is why you misunderstand that men can be exchanged. Why do your men serve you? Why do you serve the Empress? Why are the men that produce and exchange for others criminalized and arrested, while the men who commit violence on a grand scale are rewarded by some woman who throws you scraps?

"I'll tell you why: when the virtuous are treated as criminals, it is the criminals who are in charge. If you blindly submit to the criminals, you are their slave. You offer these men to me in what you call an exchange. You think that because they are at the mercy of your blade that they are your property and yours to give away? Why do you think this way, unless you admit that by blindly following the laws of someone you know to be wrong, someone who steals the production of others and calls it a tax, someone who murders her enemies and calls it justice, you are her property? To me, these prisoners, they are free men, and the slaves stand behind them in sunlit armor, who take orders from the slave-in-Chief. Is this the reason you call it an exchange? It's disgusting."

Solomon gestured to Teryn. "Let's go. I came to see justice. I came to see that girl set free." He looked at Elli and smiled, and he saw the terrified, but dignified glances of the prisoners on the hilltop. "All I've found is a collection of simpletons and criminals." He turned before Chief Tiddall could utter another word.

He began to walk down the hill. Away from Teryn and Tiddall's forces. Away from Elli. Away from the men who were counting on him for their very survival. He heard the soft padding of a Doduo and the silent girl behind him.

"Leave them," Solomon heard the voice of Elli's father say. The marching of soldiers walking down the hill towards Lilycove in the other direction faded into the distance. He stopped just before he entered the forest on the hill's edge. Looking deep into Sceptile's eyes, he saw the Pokémon smile.

The footsteps were the next thing he heard, and then the cheering, and then the smell as one of the former prisoners ran into him. He couldn't help but smiling. I got to him, he thought. Solomon looked into Teryn's eyes.

"You're a gambling old fool," she said as she rode Doduo into the trees."

Solomon put his hands up to calm the prisoners he had released. "As free men, you may return to your families... or you can calm yourselves and save your energy, as we have a long march ahead of us to Mt. Pyre."