I awoke in the morning, but I was still far from recovered. I’d overdrawn myself by draining and getting back to things in too short a period, so this was the price I had to pay.

Checking with Sakura and Celestia, I found that they had recovered their energy completely. The benefit of not going overboard. Mine was only at around half, and would likely take another day to fully recover.

Still, there was stuff to do, so I couldn’t laze about all day, especially when I was camping. I got up and started cleaning up my campsite. My friends greeted me, and were so kind as to say I only looked terrible instead of like shit. Very helpful…

We had a quick meal, and then moved out of the campground and onto the battlefield. I still only had the four ranked wins from the first waypoint, since I’d skipped the others along the route by detouring. That was going to change today.

Logging into the app and joining the waypoint’s matching system, I started having matches. To allow my partners to rest, I only did singles matches, one for each, then let them tell me when they were ready for another. There was no way I was going to force my companions into matches they didn’t want to fight.

By lunch we’d gone from four wins to fifteen. No losses. My ranking had gone up a good amount because we’d maintained all wins. After lunch we fought a few more battles, bringing the total to twenty wins… and one loss.

Losing was not the end of the world, but it was frustrating when on a winning streak. It was Sakura, my pink ralts that lost. She got a bad match up with a dark-type Alolan meowth. As most of her moves were psychic, and it was extremely resistant to those type of attacks, she ended up unable to win.

That hadn’t stopped her from doing her best though. Once she found that she couldn’t affect it directly in any meaningful way, she asked for advice.

Unlike trainers that force obedience on their pokémon, and yell out what attacks to use, I let mine decide how to fight unless I feel like I need to step in, or if they request assistance.

My advice, use the environment to attack. I didn’t have to say any more. I’d already taught her different ways to do so, but under the pressure of avoiding attacks, she didn’t have much time to think.

She used sandstorm.

Not really, but she used a telekinetic hand to swipe a bunch of dirt into the air in the meowth’s face, blinding it for a moment, then started pelting it with sticks and rocks.

It was a great effort, but too late to turn the tides, and she lost when the cat used agility to increase it’s speed, dodging the attacks and landed a knockout blow. I recalled her to her pokéball quickly, then released her next to me to give her some first aid before returning her to the ball to rest. She had some scrapes and bruises, but nothing too bad.

After congratulating my opponent, we’d called it a day.

And since we were done fighting for the day, it was time to head to the Xanadu Nursery. Celestia was tired, but insisted I ride her instead of walking. I was feeling better, but was still not fully recovered, so I acquiesced. I really needed to be careful not to overdo it again.

I didn’t bother saying goodbye to my friends, since we’d talked that morning. They intended to head to the city as well, so we’d made reservations for the same hotel. I’d still have my own room, since I didn’t want to have to make Celestia sit in her pokéball, even if she was in stasis while inside. The hotel we’d be staying at was specialized for trainers, so they had rooms with options for larger pokémon on the ground floor, so I’d gotten one of those. The others’ partners were smaller, so they could use normal rooms.

Celestia insisted she could stay in the stables, which they also had, but I wasn’t having it. We were partners, and we’d stay together if at all possible!

The waypoint was around two hours from the nursery, but that was on foot at a walking pace. Celestia’s usual trot cut that in half, so it was only around four when we finally reached the gates of the city. She could have gone faster, but she was tired from fighting. Since she could do so physically, and not just psychically like Sakura, she’d fought more battles.

We headed to the closest Pokémon Center after reaching the city. While I’d given Sakura some treatment, having her seen to by a healer would speed up her recovery. Yes, I could have done it myself, but since plenty of people, including one of my friends, I found out later, saw her get hurt, it was good to have a record of her receiving treatment. It was free after all, so why wouldn’t someone get their injured pokémon at least checked out. If I didn’t I’d look like someone who abuses or neglects their pokémon.

There was a line at the Center’s clinic, so I had to wait for a bit for my companions to be seen to, during which, I brought Sakura out of her ball. She’d have been in pain from the jolting on the ride here, which is why she hadn’t minded being balled up. She’d experienced that pain during training, so wanted to avoid it if possible.

Our turn came and we were checked over and given a touch of healing. All of us, not just my two pokémon. I’d been careless and taken a branch to the face on the ride and ended up with a scratch.

However, before we could leave, a police officer arrived to ask me to come down to the station. I asked why, while checking his public mind, but he knew nothing other than that my arrival had been flagged and I was needed at the station for something.

Since he seemed harmless, I complied, though I called mom to let her know something was up. She didn’t know anything, so got worried and made me promise to be careful and call her if there were any problems. I hadn’t told her about yesterday, since it fell under my vigilante activities which no one but I knew about.

Since the station was a little bit away, I had to ride in the police car. In the back, since only officers could sit up front due to the equipment. It’d be my second time in the back of a cop car, the first was on Earth when a tire went out on the freeway and my uncle and I got picked up to get us out of there. People aren’t supposed to walk alongside freeways, but it was in the dark ages before cell phones became common, so we’d had no choice.

Ah… the good old days before puberty made my life a living hell…

Since the town wasn’t too large it wasn’t long before we reached the station. I’d thought I’d be taken into one of the meeting rooms, but nope, after being passed off to a detective, I was taken to elsewhere.

Things quickly went wrong.

First, I was taken to a security checkpoint where they tried taking away my pokémon. When I refused, the detective insisted that I needed to hand them over. As I continued to refuse, he got loud and angry, so I turned and started walking away, pulling out my phone to call my mom.

He grabbed me.

I didn’t even use my powers, but used some martial arts to break his grip and kick him away from me.

He tried to arrest me, and I responded in kind, insisting that he be arrested as he had assaulted and injured me, without provocation or cause, or even telling me why I’d been asked here. His grip had turned my skin red and would leave a bruise… helped along by a touch of my powers to make it seem more severe than it had been.

During the standoff, I called my mother… and texted her a link to the stream of the wireless camera I’d been floating in the air. It was pretty small, about the size of a d6, so nobody had noticed it. I’d set it up during the ride, just in case something went wrong, as it had.

The detective was in league with the League, though he didn’t know that it was the bad guys, not the good ones. He was supposed to take me to an interrogation room and keep me there, no matter what. He didn’t know why, just had orders to do so.

I found the why from another guy. He’d been on the other side of the station, but had come over when the commotion began. He’d been ordered to provide the day’s code to the remote release sleeping gas system set up in interrogation. The system had been installed weeks ago ‘in order to test whether such a system was viable and useful.’

If he’d stayed on the other side of the station, I wouldn’t have known about the system and ended up in the room, I might have been caught. It was a good idea to keep people ignorant in order to catch someone who can read minds, but they didn’t do well enough this time.

The ruckus led to the police chief being called to resolve the issue.

“Explain.”

The detective jumped in before anyone else could say a word.

“Sir, this girl refused to cooperate with an investigation and kicked me. When I tried to arrest her, she resisted.”

Cold eyes turned to me, which I returned with a defiant look.

“What that pig didn’t say is that he was the one who assaulted me, grabbing my arm tight enough to do this,” I showed my arm, “to which I responded in self defense. I was not even informed why I was ASKED to come here, and refused to give away my pokémon. As he refused to accept this, I was going to leave, since I came here voluntarily and am not going to be verbally abused, which is when he grabbed me. Feel free to review the video footage and ask your officers.”

His face twitched when I called the detective a pig. The guy was fat, so the term fit. He was also an axxhole, so I felt the need to be a bit insulting, even though I knew I really shouldn’t have. I have nothing against the police. At least ones that aren’t idiots, bigots, corrupt, or undeserving of the badge in some way.

As my rant, because it became one, even if spoken at a moderate volume, continued, his face twisted in displeasure. He looked at the surrounding officers, then singled one out.

“Lieutenant McMillan?”

“Sir, I wasn’t there from the beginning, but I believe the girl is likely telling the truth. I don’t know why the other officers wouldn’t have helped the detective arrest someone who assaulted him. Also, I would like to know why the detective has the smell of alcohol on his breath during the day.”

The captain quickly found out the truth and the detective was suspended pending review, though sadly wasn’t arrested, despite my request for him to be. Well, I could still sue him for assault, since I had evidence, but I’m not sure whether it’d be worth it.

The captain apologized on behalf of the department, and assured me that the problem would be handled. Then he requested that I join him in a meeting room. I was tempted to refuse, but logic, my mother, and mind reading made me decide to agree.

My mother was still on the phone, having been listening in the entire time and speaking to me via headset. I didn’t speak to her, but texted replies when needed. When the captain showed up, she’d said that he was reported to be a good man, and that as long as I didn’t read anything off about him, I should try and cooperate, to a point.

The captain didn’t insist on me giving up my pokémon, which was the standard procedure, and led me to a room with a lot of documents, files, photos, and a couple people. The photos were from the building I’d raided, with a wall dedicated to mugshots of the people I’d knocked out.

I was invited to have a seat, then the meeting started. I was informed that they’d recently arrested a rather large group of people who’d been taken down by an unknown assailant. And that there had been a lot of information about me, leading them to question the prisoners about it among other things. He didn’t say what else.

As I’d been identified as their target, when I’d shown up in town, the police had wanted to speak to me. I was supposed to be treated as someone who was in peril, but well, stuff happened. I learned that part of the problem lay in orders from above, but he was unable to say so.

But he thought it, and I read him. He knew something was going on, and had suspicions, but as there was no evidence, as usual, he was limited to only dealing with the people who had been captured, not their bosses. He gave me a few pieces of information out loud, but the important stuff was all non-verbal.

Given the scale of the attack prepared for me, he suggested I go into hiding, which I agreed might be a good idea, but I refused to do so with the help of the government. After all, for all we knew, there might be a mole for some evil organization that’d spill my information, so it’d be better if I only worked with people I knew and trusted.

He understood that I understood the issue, and said he was sorry I felt that way and let me go.

It was night by the time I got out of the station, so I stopped off for some fast food, then went to the hotel, letting my friends know I when I arrived. They’d already eaten, so I ate alone while chatting with them, though a few of my fries ended up stolen. My room was too small for all of us, so I was in theirs, having left my pokémon in my room with their dinner.

However, we’d all had a tiring day, so we didn’t stay up too late, and before long I was down in my room, cuddling with my partners and dreaming of a better world.

Telerean

Sorry it’s been a few days since I wrote on this. Got distracted catching up on my graphic novel reading. Had to catch up after neglecting my read list.