The sky was cloudless, giving way to the sun’s delightful warmth. Abby had always loved the sun. It had always invigorated her with boundless energy that kept her running and climbing all day long through Cerulean’s endless, wonderful forest. And now, it gave her the strength to power through the mundane wait for the ferry. She stood on an empty branch of the bustling Fuchsian Docks with only Green, Karen and their pokémon for company. While Karen stood by her side during the wait, Green watched the pokémon spar on the end of the empty pier. The three-way clash raged between Green’s Hitmontop, Karen’s Weavile and her own Charmeleon. Although, it was more like a one-on-one fight with a Weavile egging both sides on.

Charmeleon came at Hitmontop with a set of purple-lightning claws, slashing and hissing. Hitmontop parried with arms covered in steel, swatting away the attacks. Dragon energy was not stopped by much, only steel and fairy. But even so, Abby imagined Charmeleon’s dragon claws shattering the steel coating, slicing through skin, muscle and bone, and the awful, horrible pain that came with such an injury. The three jagged scars on her calf throbbed as she cringed.

Green, as usual, was unfazed by the battle. She shouted a command and quick as a flash, Hitmontop cracked Charmeleon across the head with a sweeping kick from his leg, engulfed in orange flame. Hitmontop obeyed instantly. He didn’t question, he didn’t complain. And he won. Charmeleon fell to the deck of the pier like a sack of flour with his eyes rolled back into his head and a bloody, splintered jaw. Weavile cheered. Abby cringed, looked away and tossed her pokéball at him. Her three, jagged scars throbbed.

“Why can’t I just have a pokémon like Hitmontop? Things would be so much easier. We wouldn’t have to do all this shitty battling stuff. We could just focus on learning new techniques and exploring the beauty of dragon energy. Instead, my little Charmander turned into a monster and I’m forced to watch him rage and rampage. To watch him break himself over and over. And to top it all off, he only listens to me if I take part and brutalise him myself. What am I? Tiberius? …”

“Hey!”

Karen snapped her fingers in Abby’s face. “Your ears clogged or something? I said the boat’s coming.”

“Huh? What?”

Sure enough, a little ferry branded with the Indigo Plateau’s Insignia of a slashed pokéball was crawling across the flat, waveless sea.

“Oh. I guess this is it then,” Abby said.

“You sure I can’t convince you to stay?”

“Blaine’s a fire master. Charmeleon’s not a dark type.”

“Yeah, yeah, no use repeating yourself. I get it. Cinnabar; that makes sense. But why the hell’re you going to Seafoam?”

“Green reckons we can get some good training done there.”

Karen huffed. Charmeleon’s pokéball came flying back and Abby snatched it out of the air.

“Seafoam’s nothing but ice cubes and blizzards,” Karen said.

“It’s not exactly my idea of fun either but Green has her heart set on Seafoam before Cinnabar. And where she goes, I go.”

“The kid’s gonna be bummed when he finds out you left.”

“Will you explain it to him?”

“Yeah, I’ll try and catch him when the old bat finally gives him a break from seances or whatever Ghost trainers do.”

“Thanks.”

As bad as it made her feel, it was better to leave Jackson behind, Abby knew. He’d be an idiot to turn down training from a seasoned, elite trainer like Agatha when he had a Haunter on his team. But Abby knew how he felt, no matter how hard he tried to hide it. No doubt feelings like that, in a head as young as his would lead him to do something as stupid as to come with her.

“Hey!” Green shouted. With Hitmontop and Weavile at her sides, Green raced along the peer, pointing at the ocean. “I think that’s our ferry!”

Before either Abby or Karen could answer, a man’s voice boomed over the commotion of the bustling docks.

“Make way! Rangers coming through! Come on people, this is official Plateau business! Make way!”

A group of red-coat rangers marched down the wide, central pier that connected all the docks together. All of the rangers were carrying large crates branded with the Indigo Plateau’s insignia. They shouldered through the crowd; through tourists slick in sunscreen, trainers with badges and pokéballs on their belts, and sailors with arms corded by bulging muscle and faces hardened by sour glares. Only two people in the parade of rangers weren’t carrying any crates; the ranger leading the march and a woman with hair as red as blood that walked among them without a ranger’s jacket. She looked somewhat familiar but try as she might, Abby couldn’t put a name to her stern, angular features. The rangers’ march turned onto Abby’s empty branch. Abby’s chest tightened and her hand went to Dragonair’s pokéball. For a fleeting, crazy moment she thought they’d come to capture her and Green. But the rangers passed right by her. Their stoney stares didn’t so much as linger on her or Green. Only then, did Abby remember they were no longer fugitives.

However, the stern woman with blood-red hair did stare at them. Her gaze was hard but her face seemed puzzled. Not enough to stop her march, however. She continued to the end of the pier with the rest of the rangers and stood idle as they organised their crates into orderly piles.

“What’s Lorelei doing here?” Green asked.

“Is that who that is?” Suddenly, the stranger's face became familiar.

“Yeah,” Karen said. “The pencil pushers at the Plateau probably have her counting ice cubes at Seafoam or something. Anyway, I’ll take that as my cue to leave. Have fun freezing your asses off. You’re gonna if you stay dressed like that.” Karen returned Weavile to its pokéball.

Abby suddenly became very aware of her bare legs and shorts.

Green smiled at her and patted her enormous backpack. “Don’t worry, I’ve got winter gear in here.”

“Okay, good,” Abby said, relieved. Then she flung her arms around Karen. “Thanks for everything.”

Karen patted her back with stiff, slow pats. “Geez, cool it, kid.”

***

After another half an hour of waiting, the ferry finally arrived. It was a rinky-dink little thing of battered, rusted steel. It had two floors. A top exterior deck with rusting steel tables and chairs, and a bottom, interior floor that housed closet-sized, dingy quarters and a depressing, greasy cafeteria. The quarters were so small that Abby had to wait outside for Green to change before she could get into her own winter gear. By the time it was her turn, Abby could already feel the cold’s icy fingers creeping through the ferry’s steel walls to scrape at her skin.

Once dressed in three layers of coats, two layers of gloves and a pair of thick padded pants, Abby joined Green on the top deck. Her gear fended off the cold well but the moment she stepped onto the deck a gale of frozen wind blasted her in the face. Its icy claws nipped and pinched her cheeks, nose and lips with an awful stabbing chill. Abby tightened her hood and hid her face.

The sky was dark and wrathful. The ocean had transformed with the sky, from a calm, clear blue to a dark, murky grey. Waves crashed against the side of the ferry, rocking it side to side and spraying the steel deck with icy white foam. Abby stumbled across the shaking deck and watched the horizon. The giant twin peaks of Seafoam’s mountains scraped a blanket of swirling black clouds. Lightning flashed above Seafoam, casting its western mountain in light. The mountain gleamed a bright blue for half a heartbeat before plunging back into darkness. Thunder roared, shaking Abby to her core. A gale of frozen wind attacked her again, stronger this time. It penetrated her gear, sending a freezing ache through her muscles.

Abby eventually managed to join Green at a table. Both the table and chair were bolted to the deck. The moment Abby sat, the frozen steel stabbed at her even through all her layers. Abby gasped and cursed the chair.

Green smothered a laugh. “You really hate the cold, don’t you?”

“Nothing to like.”

“Well, once you get used to it, the cold is really invigorating. That chill makes you feel alive, you know?”

“No. I don’t.”

“You will. Trust me.”

“When’d you get so used to the cold? It can’t possibly get this cold in Pallet.”

“Oak brought me here once a year for a month to study the ecosystems of Kanto’s Ice Pokémon. The view is worth all the cold. Seafoam’s probably one of the most beautiful places in all of Kanto. It’s like a wonderland.”

“The cold makes my joints hurt…”

“Yeah, that never goes away. You’ll get used to it though.”

“Right…”

Abby closed her eyes and tried to dream of the sun and Cerulean’s forest. But that only invited thoughts of the manor, so she opened her eyes to wallow in the cold. Green frowned and eyed the black clouds swirling around Seafoam’s dark, towering peaks.

“It hardly ever storms. At this time of year especially,” Green said.

“More of our famous luck,” Abby said, bitterly.

Green pursed her lips. She opened her bag and got out her pokédex. After a moment of scrolling through it, she shook her head. “I thought so. This year is the beginning of Articuno’s cycle. It’s awake. These storms make no sense.”

Abby didn’t have a clue what Green was talking about. “So?”

“The legendary birds temper their elements. Articuno stops blizzards.”

“Maybe it’s pissed off.”

“I guess…” Green’s face soured as she stared at her pokédex. “Although, Red’s entry says it’s the most well-tempered of the three birds.”

Abby shuffled in her chair. She couldn’t help but think of her father whenever Red got brought up. “How’s Charmeleon?” Abby asked, hoping to change the subject. Thankfully, it worked.

Green shut her pokédex and got the portable healing machine out of her bag. She placed it on the table. Inside one of its six holsters was Charmeleon’s pokéball. Golden light swirled over the pokéball as the machine hummed gently.

“Sorry about knocking him out. I don’t know what got into Hitmontop,” Green said.

“It’s alright. Charmeleon probably just pissed him off,”

“I reckon he’ll be healed any minute now.”

“It’s best to give him a break after being knocked out. Being healed seems to piss him off even more. I’ll let him out once we’re at Seafoam.”

“He’s a strange pokémon,” Green said with a giggle.

“That’s one way to put it.”

“Oh, by the way, only the ground floor cavern is open to the public. So we’ll have to keep our training there. Just so you know.”

Suddenly, they were interrupted as the door to the lower floor opened. The wind caught it and slammed it against the steel wall with a crash. Lorelei stepped out, dressed in winter gear branded with the slashed pokéball of the Indigo Plateau. Her eyes, red like blood, glared at them from behind the angular frames of her glasses.

“So, it was you two after all,” Lorelei said. She approached their table. Waves crashed against the boat but Lorelei didn’t so much as stumble. “What’s your business with Seafoam? I doubt you're hoping to add ice types to your team.”

“Just a bit of training,” Green said. “We’ve both got pokémon who need some special focus. Ice types are an easy match-up for us.”

“Don’t underestimate ice types.” Lorelei eyed Abby. “How is that Charmander Lance gave you?”

“He’s a Charmeleon now,” Abby said. She thought she ought to feel proud of that. She didn’t.

“Good for you. And you, Green. I saw you finally overcame Janine. How does it feel to be a tier two intermediate trainer?”

Green shrugged. “The same as being a tier one, I suppose.”

Lorelei nodded. Her gaze snapped back to Abby and hardened considerably. “Have you heard from your father, Abby?”

Abby grit her teeth. “No.”

“So you’re not aware of his resignation?”

“I saw it in the news. Who forced him to step down? The Council or the Plateau?”

“Both. The champion will stand in as head ranger until the council votes on a new one.”

“It should stay that way. None of them will be any better than Griffith.”

Lorelei’s features seemed to soften. But just for a moment. They hardened again as she turned her gaze back to Green. “What about your brother? Have you heard from him?”

Green curled her lip. “What’s with all the questions?”

Lorelei narrowed her eyes at Green. She studied her face for a moment, then Abby’s. “I want you two to assist me in the caverns.”

“We can’t, we have training to do,” Green said.

“You’ll train with me as we make our way to the 4th floor.”

“The 4th floor? … You mean-”

“Yes, the den.”

“What’s on the fourth floor?” Abby asked.

Lorelei raised an eyebrow. “Articuno, of course.”

***

A mighty blizzard accosted Seafoam Island.

Snow whirred in a frenzied veil of pitch white. Gales of wind howled. The ground beyond the dock that harboured their rinky-dink ferry was an endless expanse of barren snow that very abruptly vanished into the pitch-white of the blizzard. Twink peaks loomed over the dock on either side. Rangers fought tooth and nail through the deep snow to take a single step towards the western mountain. Other rangers gathered on the docks, lining up crates into rows.

Cold beyond any cold Abby thought possible attacked her through her layers upon layers of winter gear. It made her stiff as stone, and ached every one of her joints but yet, Abby’s mind was elsewhere.

No matter how hard she and Green had tried, they couldn’t get Lorelei to tell them why they were going to see Articuno. Instead, each and every time, Lorelei gave them the same answer.

“I’m not at liberty to tell you.”

Which only made Abby’s curiosity all the more ravenous.

As they followed Lorelei down Seafoam’s tiny, frozen dock amongst a group of red-coated rangers, Charmeleon followed at a distance. The galling, frozen wind thrashed his tail flame about but not once did it falter. Quite the opposite, it flared defiantly. Charmeleon gnashed jaws full of flames at the wind, steaming the air into thick plumes of white.

Rangers dressed in white coats greeted the rangers dressed in red coats at the end of the docks, at the end of the rows of crates. The white coats released Magnezones, large metallic pokémon who hovered above the ground. They picked up crates from the rows. Webs of glowing, yellow lighting surrounded the crates. The Magnezones rose high into the stormy sky and the crates rose with them. Then, they became silver and yellow blurs as they shot through the blizzard towards the western mountain.

Abby and Green shouted to each other over the howling wind

“Maybe it’s some kind of weird test?!” Green suggested.

“For what though?!” Abby asked.

“Dunno!”

“Maybe she’s worried I’m upset about my dad being forced to resign! I mean, if I was Leah or John, I would! I’m sure the whole family is up in arms about it! Maybe this is a way to confirm I’m not a threat like them?!”

“I doubt it! Like, even if she is worried about that, what does showing you Articuno tell her about that?! And why bring me?!”

“That’s true!” Abby watched Lorelei for a moment. As Lorelei marched among the rangers, she looked around with a contemptuous glare. Everyone gave her a wide birth. “She mentioned your brother! Could this be about him?!”

“Yeah, probably! The way she asked about him is the way everyone asks about him! This could just be more special treatment!” Green gained a scowl. It was the stubborn, defiant look she always gave whenever someone compared her to Red. “If we were any other trainers she wouldn’t have looked at us twice!”

“Probably not!” Abby shrugged. “We’re still going, right?!”

A smirk flashed across Green’s lip, breaking her scowl. “Oh, definitely! This is way too cool to pass up!”

Abby laughed. “Definitely!”

Green’s smirk became sly. “Plus, we get to hang out with someone as hot as Lorelei!”

“You think Lorelei’s hot?!”

“You don’t?!”

“I don’t see it!”

Green shook her head. “No taste!”

They broke out into laughter. Among all the stress to come and after all the stress that had come, the rare moments of joy were liberating. Abby, childishly, wished it could last forever.

There was no joy to be had as they trudged through thigh-deep snow towards Seafoam’s western mountain, a looming giant which Lorelei had told them was made of pure ice. Abby wouldn’t have been able to tell from the ground. The mountain was a mere shadow through the pitch-white of the blizzard, the same as its eastern sister. The eastern mountain, Abby knew more of. It was a normal, stone mountain where the few inhabitants of Seafoam lived; mostly rangers and ice fishers. After Cinnabar’s eruption, it had been hollowed out to house Blaine’s gym but now that Cinnabar was open again, the space had been abandoned and infested with dark types and ghosts.

Each step through the snow was a struggle that left her bones aching and her lungs burning. It took the total strength of her body to lift her leg from the snow and put it in front of the other. The only one enjoying themselves was Charmeleon. He dashed atop the snow, light enough on his feet so as to not sink below. A good thing too, as the snow would have swallowed him up whole. He taunted the trio as they struggled, leering at them as he ran around them in circles. If he stayed still for too long, the snow would start to melt beneath his feet.

“Will it be warmer inside the caverns?!” Abby shouted above the wailing wind.

“Barely!” Lorelei shouted back. “There’s a base camp at the foot of the mountain, at the end of an ice valley! It’ll provide some protection from all this!”

“Can’t Charmeleon melt a path for us?!” Green shouted.

“You try asking him, see how far you get!” Abby said.

Charmeleon leered at Green.

“No!” Lorelei shouted. “If he melts the snow, we’ll be soaked in the meltwater! Put your heads down and march!”

Abby and Green did as they were told, grit their teeth and marched in silence. Overhead, Magnezones streaked through the storming sky, carrying their large crates suspended in electric nets. Curiously, none were making the trip back to the dock, only towards the mountain.

Eventually, after a lifetime of tireless trudging, they reached a valley of ice. Tall, stark-white cliffs towered over them. The blizzard could do little but howl above the valley, barred from assaulting them further by the giant walls of ice. Its endless, wrathful howl complained from a distance. The valley guided them towards Seafoam’s Western mountain, finally visible in the blizzard’s absence. It seemed like any mountain Abby had seen before; tall, snow-capped and rugged.

Green pointed with her layered glove at the mountain and whispered excitedly. “Look closely. You can see it glimmer.”

Abby squinted. At first, she still saw nothing but an ordinary, grey mountainside, but then, she made out a faint blue gleam as a ray of sun snuck past the defences of the swirling black clouds.

“It weeps when there're no storms,” Lorelei said. “And glistens like it was made of stars.” There was a strange fondness to Lorelei’s voice that Abby hadn’t been sure she was capable of. A delicate joy danced in her blood-red eyes.

“It’s weird, usually it only storms during the cold season. I’ve never seen one during the hot season,” Green said.

Lorelei’s face hardened and her eyes dulled. The rest of the trek was spent in awkward silence apart from Magnezones whizzing overhead and the blizzard complaining furiously from afar.

The ranger’s base camp was nestled at the end of the valley before the gaping entrance into the mountain’s cavern. Red tents huddled together in a clump surrounded by piles upon piles of crates. Magnezones landed among the crates. Ice crusted their steel bodies. They added their crates to the pile before shaking off their ice and turning to return to the docks, but rangers returned to them to red pokéballs branded with the Plateau’s insignia before they got the chance. The red coat rangers left the crates in their piles, unopened. Each crate was marked with one of five regions’ names; “Kanto,”, “Johto,”, “Hoenn,”, “Sinnoh,”, or, “Unova.” The red-coats looked about as miserable as Abby expected them to be. Seafoam was a punishment for most after all. They went about their duties lethargically with stoney faces.

Among the dreary rangers and huddled red tents stood a tall figure beside a Charizard veiled in steam. His winter gear was purple with golden fur around the hoods and cuffs and was branded with the Plateau insignia. Abby knew him right away. She’d seen his wild gaze and fire-orange hair hundreds of times in her book of dragons. Lance, Kanto-Johto’s dragon master and first elite, beamed at the group as they entered the camp and Abby’s heart skipped a beat, then quickly sunk as she remembered Charmeleon. I’m going to disappoint him…

“Lorelei!” Lance cheered. He approached the fourth elite with open arms. Charizard followed behind him, melting the snow in a circle around them with his mere presence. “There’s my favourite ice trainer!”

Lorelei dodged Lance’s hug. “What are you doing here?” She snapped.

“Please, do I need an excuse to visit my favourite ice trainer?”

“You need a reason to avoid work.”

Lance’s smile twitched and thinned. “Honestly, Lorelei, you need to learn to have a little fun every once in a while.”

“Fun is for children.”

“Typical ice trainer…”

“Go to Cinnabar.”

Lance looked past Lorelei at Abby and Green. His eyes passed them lazily, fell upon Charmeleon and flared with excitement. Charmeleon growled at him but Lance beamed wildly.

“What a delight!” Lance rushed to crouch before Charmeleon. Charmeleon gnashed his jaws at him and Lance barely managed to dodge back in time. “Such energy! Which one of you two-” Lance scowled at Green. He stood and narrowed his eyes. “What are you doing here, Isamu?”

“Going to see Articuno, apparently.”

Lance’s eyes widened and he was back before Lorelei in a flash. “Are you both boring and crazy? You can’t possibly be taking her-”

“I am,” Lorelei said.

“Even when her brother-”

“Yes.”

“For what possible-”

“It’s the champion’s decision if you recall. And I happen to agree with him. It was going to happen eventually.”

Lance clicked his tongue and scowled. “A cahoot of children,” he muttered.

The first and fourth members of the elite four locked hardened eyes in a standoff of scowls.

Gingerly, Abby butted in. “Um, I raised the Charmeleon. You gave him to me.”

“Hm?” Lance broke his scowl and looked at her. “And you are?”

“Uh… Abby Yomato.”

Lance cocked his head, looked to Charmeleon and then Abby again. He smiled thinly at her. “Ah, yes, the runaway ranger. Yes… I remember now. So you evolved that Charmander? Good for you.” He turned his thin smile on Charmeleon. Charmeleon bared fangs veiled in fire, turning the air to steam. “I’m sure you’ll do your best with him.”

The shame made Abby feel as if she would shrivel up on the spot, right there among the snow.

“Go to Cinnabar. Now,” Lorelei hissed.

“Oh, fine!” Lance dramatically swished his cape and climbed on Charizard’s back. “Enjoy your ice cubes.”

Charizard wing unfolded and flapped a single, powerful flap. A cloud of snow kicked up. Charizard shot into the air, raced up the side of the mountain and disappeared into the dark clouds. Among the storm, a flash of light-blue light flared and a roaring bang thundered. A blazing blur streaked across the stormy sky like a falling star. For a brief, lovely moment, a wave of heat washed over everything, fending off the biting cold.

“Idiot,” Lorelei muttered. She turned her icy, blood-red stare on Abby and Green. “Let me make a few things clear. The work being done inside the ice caverns is delicate, I won’t tolerate any gung-ho battling of wild pokémon. You’ll only train against pokémon who initiate fights with you. You’ll heal and revive any pokémon you defeat. And you’ll do your best to keep the damage of the caverns to a minimum. Understand?”

“Y-Yeah, understood,” Green said. She gave a bewildered nod.

“Why are we really here?” Abby asked. “You said the champion wants us to see Articuno. I heard you. Why?”

“Enough questions. If you two have any sense between you, you’ll figure it out yourselves.”

“But-”

“Ex-Excuse me!” A red coat ranger came running across the camp, waving her arms frantically. “You’re the fourth elite, right?! It’s the Dewgongs and Piloswines, they’re out of control!”

“So lasso them. Or are you incapable of even that?” Lorelei said.

“N-no, you don’t understand! It’s all of them, they’re at war!”

“War? You can’t possibly- Are you an idiot?! Don’t tell me you put them together!”

The ranger shrank back, her eyes darting back and forth frantically. “Za-Zane said-”

“Do you know nothing? Honestly! What do they even teach at the academy?! They’re natural enemies- oh forget it! Move!”

Lorelei stormed past the terrified ranger and unclipped the lone pokéball from her stainless steel pokéball belt. Abby shot Green a confused look, hoping to find an answer but Green seemed equally as bewildered.

“Char!” Charmeleon ran after Lorelei, grinning with jaws full of flames.

Abby and Green shrugged and ran after them towards the gaping mouth of Seafoam’s ice caverns.

***

Abby entered the caverns into a scene of utter chaos.

Among acres and acres of frozen fields, beneath tall ice shelves, on the frozen shores of icy lakes, a battle of tusks and horns raged. Herds of Dewgongs and Pilowswines warred. The thick-based, pointed horns on the heads of Dewgongs tangled among the sturdy tusks wielded from behind the thick fur of Piloswines. Trumpeting cries and barking roars echoed about the huge expanse of the ground-floor cavern. Blood steamed on the icy floor, matted the thick-brown fur of the Piloswines and stained the white blubber of the Dewgongs. Among the warring Dewgongs and Piloswines, their pre-evolved forms fought too. Seels flopped across the ice, slapping at Swinubs with their white, rubbery flippers. Swinubs moved in tight packs, like little battalions of fluffy, brown shrubs. They swarmed Seels and nipped at them with mouths unseen behind thick coats of fur.

Around the raging battle, the rest of the cavern’s pokémon watched on. Cloysters sheltered Shellders inside their massive shells clamped tight. Jynxes gathered up groups of crying Smoochums and hid them among their flowing, red gowns with their long, reaching arms. Delibirds ran about aimlessly on webbed yellow feet, squawking and flailing their red flippers. Lapras watched from the middle of the icy lakes, eyeing the wounded hungrily. Sneasels pelted the fighting pokémon with balls of crushed ice from atop looming shelves, further enraging them.

Rangers – red coats and white coats – ran about in a frenzied panic brandishing the device every ranger carried with them at all times, their lasso. Small handles with rubber grips that when flicked emitted a lasso made of golden light which was meant to calm rage-ridden pokémon. However, as the rangers attempted to bind the battling pokémon with their lassos, the pokémon would avoid their attempts. They threw the lassos off, dodged out of the way or were just simply faster than the rangers. Even when a ranger, usually a white-coat, got a lasso around a pokémon’s neck, it would buck and flail until two or three more rangers added their lassos to the effort. The Dewgongs, Seels, Piloswines and Swinubs outnumbered the rangers ten to one.

Charmeleon dashed across the ice towards the raging battle, flames billowing from his jaws.

“God dammit.” Abby returned Charmeleon before he did something stupid.

“Zane!” Lorelei shouted over the booming trumpets of Piloswines and barking shouts of Dewgongs. “Where the hell is Zane?!”

“I-I’ll go get him!” The scared ranger ran off towards the battle.

“MAMOOOO!” A thunderous roar shook the cavern.

Spurred on by a pack of Sneasels, A Mamoswine trundled across the cavern. Its giant legs, as thick as tree trunks, shattered the ground as it galloped across the cavern with rage burning in its eyes behind a mask of blue ice. It scraped its huge tusks, each the size of a person, against the ice, spraying crushed ice high into the air. Rangers scrambled from all directions and put themselves in front of the charging behemoth of shaggy, brown fur and assaulted him with lassos. Mamoswine swatted them away with a mere flick of his tusks. The rangers scrambled out of the Mamoswine’s path.

“Idiots,” Lorelei hissed. She tossed her pokéball into the air, releasing a Frosmoth, a dual ice-bug type pokémon from Galar. “Frosmoth, ice beam Mamoswine’s legs.”

The dual pupils of Frosmoth’s narrow eyes honed in on Mamoswine. His four, silk-thin ice wings buzzed and he shot across the cavern in the blink of an eye. He flew into Mamoswine’s path as Mamoswine reached the edge of the raging battle. Clear flames, that looked like they were made of glass, engulfed Frosmoth’s eyes. Two clear beams fired from his eyes and hit Mamoswine’s feet. Ice crystals erupted, welding Mamoswine’s shaggy hooves to the icy floor. Ranger swarmed Mamoswine as he struggled against his restraints and bound him with glowing, golden lassos. Mamoswine’s eyes dropped and he went still. With pick axes, rangers broke the ice and led Mamoswine away from the battle to the other side of the cavern.

Green watched it all transpire beside Abby with sad, bewildered eyes. “What’s happening? Why are there even Piloswines in here?”

Abby shrugged. Lorelei said nothing, marched towards the raging battle and pointed at the line where the Dewgongs and Piloswines met.

“Ice wall!” Lorelei shouted.

Frosmoth blasted ground where the battling herds met with clear beams. Ice crystals grew tall between the Dewgongs and Piloswines, separating them. Seels and Swinubs still squabbled on either side of the wall but both Lorelei and the rangers ignored them. Finally, as the chaos was brought to an abrupt stop, the rangers were able to get their lassos around the necks of Dewgongs and Piloswines and started separating the two groups. Frosmoth patrolled the wall of ice, repairing any attempt by the Dewgongs and Pilowswines at shattering the ice.

“Ma’am!” The scared ranger hurried across the ice, no longer looking so scared. Behind her, a large young man dressed in a white ranger’s coat followed. “Ma’am, this is Zane, head ranger of the Kanto’s Island Chain, Seafoam, Cinnabar and the Oranges.”

Zane loomed over the ranger’s shoulder and over Lorelei. A weeping gash ran down his cheek from his cheekbone to his sharp jaw. His stocky face showed no hint of pain. He offered a large, mitted hand to Lorelei. He was just as large as Abby had heard him described. She wondered if the stories about him were true.

“Thanks for your help, we-” Zane began.

“Idiot, what are you thinking housing Dewgongs and Piloswines together?” Lorelei said.

Zane retracted his hand and his infamous boyish rage showed itself clear as day on his face. “I know exactly what I’m doing. I separated them on opposite sides of the cavern. They crossed five acres to fight each other!”

“Oh please, they’ll cross two continents to fight each other, do you-”

“Watch yourself, trainer,” Zane spat with venom. “We both know this has nothing to do with species rivalry.” Zane’s eyes lingered on Green, then Abby.

Lorelei stepped towards him as her lips twisted into a scowl. “Don’t make excuses. This whole project is doomed from the start. You’re going to destroy this place.”

“Stay in your lane, trainer. We know what we’re doing. Each ecosystem has been replicated perfectly to house the out-of-region pokémon. You and I both know the real issue.”

“No, that only made an already existing problem worse, ranger,” Lorelei also spat that last word “This isn’t conservation. It’s tourism.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I do.”

“No, just because some board of trainers gave you a fancy title doesn’t mean you know a thing about facilitating the needs of ice pokémon. You fight them. I protect them.”

“And what a fine job you’re doing.”

Zane stood tall over Lorelei, his icy eyes boring into her with malice. “Go deal with your disaster and leave me to deal with mine.” His eyes went back to Abby and Green. “You two need Pokémon with you. Most of the wild pokémon are freshly released and are still getting accustomed to their new homes. They’re a bit touchy.”

Zane turned from them and marched across the ice back to the Dewgongs and Piloswines. The ranger girl gave them an apologetic smile before hurrying after him.

“What the hell is going on here?” Green asked. She crossed her arms. “Why are there Johto Pokémon here?”

“There aren’t usually?” Abby asked.

“No,” Lorelei said. Her voice was ice. “To accompany Cinnabar’s big reopening, the Plateau wants to completely reinvent the island chain’s image. This place started renovations last year to transform each floor of the caverns into the arctic ecosystems of different regions. The ground floor is Kanto-Johto. The first floor is Unova. The Second is Sinnoh. The third is Hoenn. The ice caves are boring, supposedly, so they decided to make it, ‘fun’.”

“That’s insane…” Green whispered sadly.

“Is it?” Abby asked. “More Pokémon means more species to catch and study inside Kanto right?”

“Pokémon aren’t attractions,” Lorelei said. “You don’t just implant an ecosystem into another one. Nature isn’t a toy.”

Green looked on the verge of tears for a brief moment. “They’re gonna destroy this place.” Her face hardened. “The champion can stop it right? He’s head ranger now.”

Lorelei dodged Green’s eyes.

“For all his good, Gold’s no conservationist. He’s a trainer. When it comes to issues like this, he listens to what the Plateau says.” Lorelei shook her head and waved her hand. “Look, don’t you two worry about this. It’s not something that concerns you. Get your pokémon out and make sure you have plenty of medicine. We head out in five.”

***

Hitmontop and Charmeleon bickered endlessly.

To stop the two pokémon from clawing and kicking each other, Abby and Green had to walk in front of and behind Lorelei in their single-file march through the caverns. Charmeleon had started it by launching a torrent of flames at Hitmontop, Abby supposed, but Hitmontop wasn’t helping by trying to kick him in the head. The constant effort of keeping Charmeleon away from Hitmontop was exhausting but even so, it couldn’t distract Abby from the beauty of the caverns.

It was like an ice palace right out of a fairy tale. Everything was made of heavenly, gleaming blue ice that refracted the delicate light of glowing stalactites. Acres upon acres of icy fields stretched across the cavern that was home to frozen lakes with frozen shores and towering shelves of pure white ice. Cloysters watched over beds of Shellders in the shallows of the frozen lakes. While they appeared as large as boulders, Cloysters were really no bigger than a basketball. Their round, squishy black bodies were guarded by enormous clam shells that could close them off from the outside world with a swift snap. Shellders, smaller, sleeker versions of Cloyster, could be seen lounging in the lip of Cloysters’ shells but only the smallest. The larger Shellders splashed in the shallows and the largest of them all swam near their Cloyster in the murky waters beyond the gleaming blue shallows. They all lapped the water with long, pink tongues that stuck out from their shells.

Lapras, large reptilian pokémon with long necks, flippers and hardy shell armour on their backs, stalked the beds of Shellder, eyeing them hungrily. Whenever a large Shellder would wander too far from their Cloyster into the deeper waters, a Larpas would dive beneath the icy water and attack the Shellder from below. In an instant, the Shellder would be gone, taken to the murky depths. Cloysters would let out a piercing shriek and every Shellder would race back to them and pack themselves into their Cloyster’s shell before their Cloyster disappeared beneath the water. The thought of swimming in the frozen lakes made Abby’s teeth hurt. Her scars throbbed as another Shellder was snatched beneath the depths to be torn apart and devoured.

“Shouldn’t we help them? We could,” Abby said.

“No,” Lorelei said, sharply.

“Wild pokémon eat each other, Abby. Just the way it is,” Green said.

“But they’re not wild. Not really. Isn’t this place more like a reserve than the wild?”

“It’s not our place to meddle with nature,” Lorelei said. “We facilitate its needs. We don’t command it.”

“I guess…” Abby muttered.

“Just try not to think about it,” Green said. “Watch the Smoochums, they’re cute.”

Smoochums were about the furthest thing from cute Abby could possibly imagine. Although, she didn’t tell Green that.

Short and vaguely human-looking, Smoochums came up barely past Abby’s knee, waddled about on two stumpy legs and were covered in pink, rubbery skin. Their heads were uncanny with a bob short blonde hair and all the features of a human face without any of the proper proportions. Their eyes were far too large for their face, as were their lips but not their nose. The nose – barely visible – was just two small holes in the small gap between their eyes and lips. They ran about the fields of ice in groups, using telekinesis to toss balls of crushed ice at each other. Inevitably, their ice fights would send one Smoochum running to their Jynx, crying. One Jynx watched over each group of Smoochums and they were even more unpleasant to look at. As tall as a human, they appeared as little more than purple blobs with long hair like golden straw and human faces and arms. Long red gowns were draped over their bodies, pooling on the ice around them. Smoochums would hide and play in the gowns, seemingly able to move through them with no obstruction. The Jynxes would always notice Abby’s stare and gaze back with their freakish, bulbous eyes, only looking away when Charmeleon growled at them. At least she could agree with him on one thing, Abby supposed.

As well as the Delibirds, it seemed.

The bipedal bird pokémon with red feathers and white plumage kept a fair distance from the roaming groups of Smoochums. And if any Smoochums decided to chase them, the Delibirds would waddle away clumsily, squawking and flailing their red flipper-like wings.

The walk across the ice was rather mundane and uneventful, as well as uncomfortable thanks to the pestering nip of the ever-present cold. There was a strange tension in the air, however. The wild pokémon from the dimwitted Delibirds to the stoic Cloysters, all watched Abby and the others with hard stares. Jynxes would gather their Smoochums up into their gowns if they passed them. Cloysters would gather up their Shellder into their shells. Lapras and Delibirds would glare and scowl silently, looking poised to attack but never doing so. It was only once the staircase carved from ice that led to the first floor was in sight, did that tension break.

The Mammoswine that had to be escorted across the cavern was again being harassed by a pack of Sneasles. The bipedal, feline pokémon covered in slick black fur and brandishing large twin sets of claws on each hand, pummelled the Mammoswine with balls of crushed ice. Rangers scrambled about trying to catch the Sneasels with golden lassos but the pack’s Weavile stopped all attempts. The larger evolved form of Sneasel, Weavile had three claws on each hand instead of two and wore a tall crown of slicked, red feathers. The feathers popped with black sparks as they slashed at rangers. It never joined in on pummelling the poor Mammoswine but did holler and cheer as it was whipped further and further up into a frenzy.

“Can we help with that?” Abby asked. “That’s not playing with nature, or whatever, right?”

“You heard Zane, we’re trainers. What do we know?” Lorelei said. “Let the, ‘experts,’ handle it.”

Green gummed her lips as she watched the pack of Sneasles, but she said nothing. As much as Abby could understand the feelings these two had towards the rangers, it still felt strangely insulting. Sure, Green had been on the run from them, but she could never properly understand the extent of evil within the rangers. It showed in how she directed their hate. The evil lay in the systems and structures that governed the rangers, not the individual red coats. Most of them were just dumb kids. But before Abby could find the proper words and courage to express that, a Sneasel locked eyes with Charmeleon and began racing across the ice.

“Abby, this is your fight,” Lorelei said. “Not mine or Green’s, don’t expect any help.”

“Right,” Abby said stiffly.

Charmeleon grinned and let flames lick at the corner of his jaws as he dashed across the ice to meet the Sneasel. When they met, they began to circle one another and growl. Charmeleon’s tail flame flared red and he gnashed flame-veiled jaws. Clear flames, like glass, engulfed Sneasel’s claws. Long, hooked ice blades grew from her claws, extending their already large reach. They seemed razor-sharp, sharp enough to rend flesh like butter. Abby’s scars throbbed.

Abruptly, Sneasel launched herself at Charmeleon with a wild, hacking slash aimed at his head. Charmeleon ducked, dodged and lunged at Sneasel with flaming jaws. Sneasel hopped out of the way, like a dancer, and came back with another hacking slash. Back and forth the two went in a flurried dance of attacks and dodges. Sneasel’s ice claws came so very close, mere inches away from carving Charmeleon’s face, from splitting his flesh and cracking his skull. Abby’s stomach was in knots. Bile burned the back of her throat.

“Abby!” Green shouted. “You need to give a command!”

“O-Oh, right.” Abby stepped forward. “Charmeleon, move back, flame thrower!”

Charmeleon didn’t so much as glance at her. He continued dodging and biting.

“I said, flame thrower!” Abby yelled, desperately this time.

Charmeleon ignored her.

“Dammit, Charmeleon. We got past this! You gotta listen to me!”

Charmeleon snapped his eyes to her. They burned with boundless fury. Sneasel’s ice claws split open the side of his face, dropping him to the floor with a spray of blood. He lay limp on the ice in a growing, steaming red pool. Hitmontop laughed hysterically.

“Snea-sel!” Sneasel taunted before running back to her pack.

Abby quickly returned Charmeleon to his pokéball with a frustrated groan. “What is wrong with him? … I thought we were past this…”

“I don’t know what you expect when you look as scared as you do,” Lorelei said.

Abby’s stomach dropped. “I look scared?”

“A little…” Green said.

“A lot. No pokémon will ever listen to you like that,” Lorelei said. Her sharp, angular face hardened. “What are you afraid of?”

“It doesn’t matter. Green, give me the healing machine.”

“O-Okay.” Green lingered on her with an awkward look; a knowing look. She got the healing machine from her bag and handed it to her. “He’ll heal quick, don’t worry.”

“Yeah,” Abby muttered as she jammed Charmeleon’s pokéball into the machine.

“Do either of you have a water type?” Lorelei asked.

“I do,” Abby said.

“Good, clean that blood up.”

***

Cleaning blood was just as tedious as Abby remembered it being. Blood was a lot like the cold; stubborn. The cold could only be fended off by a persistent warmth just as blood could only be cleaned with persistent scrubbing. Scrubbing ice, however, was proving to be useless. The blood’s warmth had melted a thin layer of the ice, mixing with the melt water to create a sludgy substance. Scrubbing did little more than spread it around.

Abby tossed her blood-soaked rag aside, stood and took a step back. “Seadra, blast it. Full power,” she ordered, again.

Seadra floated by her side in a bubble of glowing water. He eyed the sludgy, bloody pool and drew back his snout. Dark-blue light pulsed through his glowing bubble and a high-pressure jet fired from his snout into the ice. Crushed ice and bloody water sprayed everywhere, only making the mess worse as the bloody substance was further distilled.

“Sorry,” Green said as she rummaged through her bag, “I could have sworn we weren’t out of soap yet.”

“It’s okay.” Abby kneaded the bridge of her nose. “Seadra?”

“Sea?” Seadra gave her his full attention.

“Sorry to ask this but would you take the blood with you into your pokéball? It’ll just disperse among the virtual sea, right?”

“Sea.” Seadra nodded. His bubble glowed a dark blue. The bloody water glowed too then swirled into the air and joined the bubble, swirling around Seadra as a faint red mist.

He was such a good pokémon. When he’d evolved he’d matured instead of becoming a monster. All her pokémon had. How a Charmeleon could be more difficult to raise than a Gyarados, Abby didn’t think she’d ever understand.

“Thanks, Seadra. Take a rest.” Abby returned Seadra to his pokéball and, sure enough, his bloody bubble dematerialised along with him.

“You should get Dragonair out. You’ll need a pokémon while Charmeleon heals,” Green said as she shrugged into her backpack straps.

“Yeah, I will.” Abby returned Seadra’s pokéball to one of six leather pouches on her belt. She plucked Dragonair’s pokéball from the first pouch and released him.

With a flash of red light, Dragonair materialised on the ice. Immediately, the scales of his long and winding body flashed purple violently. Then, light-blue light flashed over his body and he shot off the icy ground into the air to hover before Abby.

“Air!” He complained.

“Oh, yeah the ice, sorry. Can you put up with the cold until Charmeleon heals?” Abby gestured to the healing machine as it sat humming and glowing gold by her feet.

Dragonair lifted his snout and hardened his glare. “Air,” he said with pride.

“Thanks.”

“Top!” Hitmontop ran to Dragonair, flipped over his hovering body and landed gracefully on one foot with a cocky grin.

Dragonair looked rather unimpressed.

“We should get going, I don’t think keeping Lorelei waiting is a good idea,” Green said.

She was right, Abby knew. It’d most likely been fifteen minutes since Lorelei had left them to climb the stairs to the first-floor cavern. Abby gave one last look at the icy floor. It was clear of blood. “Yeah, let’s go.”

The walk up the stairs was long, hard and tedious. They were carved into the ice, making each step as slippery as if it had been drenched in soap. By the time they reached the top, Abby was fighting her burning hot lungs for a breath. Green too. In all their travels, Abby had never seen Green lose her breath. Perhaps Green’s joints hurt just as much as hers did. Hitmontop bounded up the stairs after them, grinning madly and Dragonair floated lazily after him.

Frosmoth greeted them at the top of the stairs with a silent gaze from his slitted, double-pupiled eyes.

Beside him, Lorelei scowled. “Have you never cleaned blood before?”

“I have,” Abby snapped. She was too exhausted to hide her anger.

“Well, you mustn’t be very good at it then. Hurry up, we still have two floors to go.” Lorelei snapped on her heels and marched out into the cavern.

Wordlessly, Abby and Green followed with their pokémon in tow. The first-floor cavern was just as tall as the ground cavern but nowhere near as wide. Judging from the width, Abby assumed it was about the size of a small park but it was hard to tell through the towering forest of ice stalagmites. As thick as trees, they towered high in the air. Some even joined with stalactites to form thick ice pillars. Each one glowed with a twinkling, glassy light, similar to starlight but not quite. It was unlike anything Abby had ever seen or imagined.

Vanillites, small pokémon that resembled ice cream cones, floated around the stalagmite forest aimlessly. In place of cones, they had cups of hardy ice as clear as crystals. In place of ice cream, they were made of glowing, pure white snow. Two little stumpy arms waggled on either side of the ice cup and a face made of two large, dopey eyes and a mouth stared vacantly on their snow bodies; happy, but vacant all the same. They bumped into the stalagmites, giggling and waggling their arms. Their evolved form, Vanillish did much the same. Although they were about twice as big, their ice cups were ice cones and their snow bodies were twice as tall. Their laughs were deeper and booming but their eyes were just as vacant and just as happy. However, that jolly glee vanished when either form became tangled.

Chains of ice, akin to webs, were linked between the stalagmites. Vanillites and Vanillish would become tangled among the chains as they floated aimlessly. And the moment they started to cry and struggle, a Cryogonal would swoop down from behind a stalagmite and absorb them into their perfectly clear, hexagonal body in an instant. The ice pokémon, shaped like a snowflake and as big as a car tyre, chimed like a deep bell and grinned with a glowing mouth before bursting into clear flames and repairing their broken chains with beams of clear, ice energy.

Abby ignored her churning stomach and said nothing about the horror she just witnessed. She knew what the answer would be. It didn’t mean she had to like it though. Green and Lorelei seemed oblivious to the horror. As did Dragonair. Hitmontop noticed, but he seemed to be invigorated by it. He stared at the Cryogonals with daring leers. Eventually, a Cryogonal took notice of him and it swooped.

“Top!” Hitmontop shouted excitedly and engulfed his legs in orange flame.

In an instant, Green went from mindlessly walking to ready and alert as Cryogonal burst into clear flames.

“Back!” Green shouted.

Hitmontop leapt back. Cryogonal fired a clear beam at where he was standing. The ground erupted with ice crystals.

“High kick!”

Hitmontop leapt and launched a kick at Cryogonal. Cryogonal’s dodge was blinding. In a flash, it was out of the way and firing another clear beam. The beam hit Hitmontop in the chest, encasing his upper torso in glowing ice. He hit the ground hard, cracking the ice. Abby’s scarred calf throbbed. She dreaded the awful, freezing pain Hitmontop must have been in. Green, however, had a face of stone.

“Break the ice! Then rapid spin!”

“Top!”

Hitmontop’s chest burst into orange flame, shattering the ice. He flipped onto his head and became a blur as he span. A blazing ring of orange flame formed where his legs must have been as he began to spin circles around Cryogonal. Cryogonal’s glowing eyes darted back and forth, trying to follow Hitmontop.

“Triple kick!”

Suddenly, Hitmontop came at Cryogonal from behind, upside down and spinning. Three rapid kicks cracked Cryogonal across its back, shattering the ice with three explosions of orange energy. Half-shattered, Cryogonal spun out of control and crashed into the icy ground.

“Hitmon!” Hitmontop seemed to boast. He swaggered up to Dragonair and puffed out his chest with a grin.

Dragonair stared at him silently and expressionless.

“Nice work, buddy. Great kicking!” Green patted Hitmontop’s dome-shaped head.

Abby wasn’t one for jealousy but still, things would be so much easier if Charmeleon were more like Hitmontop.

“Heal it,” Lorelei pointed at the defeated Cryogonal. Her face was colder than Abby felt. “Quickly.”

“Right, sorry.” Green opened the medicine pouch on her belt and got out a spray-bottle potion and a green pellet.

A light spray from the potion was all it took to reform Crygonal’s hexagonal ice body. Green pushed the green pellet against Crygonal’s rigid and once-glowing mouth. The pellet was absorbed and Crygonal’s eyes and mouth flickered to life with a pale glow. It chimed a deep toll, seemingly aggressively, then flew off back into the stalagmite forest.

Abby couldn’t believe it, Lorelei was smiling.

Lorelei patted Green’s shoulder. “Always know your opponent's speed before attacking. Otherwise, good work.” Her eyes went to Abby and hardened. Their blood-red seemed to darken. “You kept your cool.” She squeezed Green’s shoulder before letting go.

Green grinned ear to ear. Then, she smirked with an all-too-familiar smirk. “Hope you can keep your cool when we meet in the Elite Four.”

Lorelei returned the smirk but said nothing before turning and continuing on through the stalagmite forest. Green’s eyes dropped below Lorelei’s waist as she walked away so Abby elbowed her in the ribs.

“I’m just looking, chill,” Green giggled.

Dragonair was watching them with glowing eyes and a smile. Then suddenly, a chime rang out from Green’s bag. She swung it off her shoulders and retrieved the healing machine. It was finished.

“Told you it wouldn’t take long, here.” Green handed Abby Charmeleon’s ball. It was warm but didn’t steam the air.

Abby returned Dragonair and released Charmeleon, against her better judgement. Sure enough, he materialised snarling and gnashing. Abby took a deep breath and thought back to her lessons with Karen.

“Hey!” Abby stood tall over him. “Cut the shit, now!”

Charmeleon growled at her and bared a set of flaming jaws. Steam billowed from his mouth.

“I mean it!” Abby showed him her fist.

Charmeleon put away his flaming fangs, took a step back and scowled at her.

“By my side.” Abby pointed to her boots.

Her heart skipped a beat as Charmeleon stood by her side. Although, she didn’t dare let it show.

“Follow.” Abby set off after Lorelei and Charmeleon walked at her heel; scowling, but following all the same.

***

It took quite a while until Abby spotted a Vanilluxe, but when she did, it was magnificent.

Two Vanillish collided gently above her head as she approached the edge of the stalagmite forest. Immediately, the two pokémon were engulfed in a flash of dazzling, white light like a crackling firework. When the light vanished, the two Vanillish had become one, double-coned Vanilluxe. Its twin faces stared at her, Green, Lorelei and their pokémon with innocent confusion.

“Niilllllll!” Its voice sang like wind-chimes in a summer breeze. An icy smog blasted from its icy cone and lingered, turning the air to snow.

Frosmoth stared at the Vanilluxe, expressionless. Hitmontop gave it a daring, challenging look but made no move to engage. Charmeleon snarled and took a step forward but a firm stomp on the ice from Abby’s boot kept him by her side. The twin faces of the Vanilluxe beamed at them, unfazed. It floated away, out of the forest and towards the vast stretch of icy lakes where other Vanilluxes danced above the water.

Beartics and their litters of Cubchoos paddled across the lakes, stalking the Vanilluxes. When one floated too close to the water, a Beartic would snatch it from the air with a swift strike from their powerful jaws and feasted on their soft, snowy bodies, tearing the snow from the cone with clawed paws. Their Cubchoos ate too, squabbling amongst themselves over the scraps of snow and ice. One Cubchoo that was far larger than the rest spotted Abby watching them. Then, it spotted Charmeleon and they snarled at each other. Abby’s chest tightened and she struggled against herself to keep her face cool and calm as Cubchoo began to paddle to the lake’s edge.

Lorelei touched Abby’s shoulder. “Don’t rush. Think thoroughly. Speak with confidence.”

Abby only nodded. A warm smile from Green calmed her racing heart for just a moment. Then, Cubchoo leapt from the water and her heart raced again, even faster.

Most Cubchoos were about as tall as a toddler but this one stood as tall as Charmeleon; half Abby’s height. It stood on two stocky legs with padded paws and brandished a set of claws amongst the soft white fur of its upper paws. A frozen droplet of snot – clear like ice and as long as its arms – hung from its snout. The droplet glowed fiercely with that strange light; a light Abby assumed to be ice energy. Clear flames engulfed Cubchoo’s clawed paws and grew ice claws that extended their reach by several inches. Abby glanced at Charmeleon’s arms. They were shorter than Cubchoo’s.

“Charmeleon!” Abby made her voice boom as much as it could from her constricted throat. “Keep your distance!”

For a moment, Charmeleon did not move. Then, he glanced at her, narrowed his eyes and nodded. Cubchoo lowered its head and charged across the ice towards Charmeleon. Abby watched its feet. Its stumpy, stocky legs made its run more of a hurried waddle.

“Hold! Channel fire energy!”

To Abby’s elated delight, Charmeleon widened his stance and red flames flared from his tail. His skin glowed red. Steam veiled him. Cubchoo drew near. It readied its ice claws, raising them to slash. Abby thought back to all her sparring with Jackson and the countless flamethrowers Charmeleon had spewed; the attack had a consistent limit to its range. The moment Cubchoo stepped into the range, Abby shouted.

“Flamethrower!”

Charmeleon’s tail flame flared and a torrent of glowing, red flames erupted from his mouth. Cubchoo cried out and hopped to the side. The flames caught its right arm, incinerating its white fur and scorching its flesh. Cubchoo screeched and stumbled but kept up its charge, eyes wild with rage. Abby watched Charmeleon’s eyes. They were closed as he spewed flames. So, she saw for him.

“Incoming! Dodge!”

Charmeleon opened his eyes and narrowly weaved around a slash of Cubchoo’s ice claws. Cubchoo staggered past as the attack missed.

“Fire Fang!”

Charmeleon lunged at the staggering Cubchoo and sunk his flaming jaws into its scorched shoulder. Flames raced down Cubchoo’s shoulder and neck. Charmeleon thrashed his head back and forth and tore off a chunk of Cubchoo’s shoulder. Wailing, Cubchoo fell to its knees. The frozen droplet of snot melted and lost its glow as the flames consumed him. Unprompted, Charmeleon let loose another torrent of flames at Cubchoo’s back, incinerating it down the bone.

“Enough!” Abby yelled, far more desperately than she intended. When Charmeleon didn’t listen, Abby returned him at once, unwilling to risk more disobedience. “Green! A potion!”

Green tossed Abby a spray bottle and Abby rushed the agonised Cubchoo. She sprayed it down as it continued wailing an awful, screeching cry. Her scars throbbed horribly. Bile stung the back of her throat. The blackened, rended muscle regrew and regained its form over exposed bone. Scorched skin turned pink and grew white and light-blue fur. Even so, Cubchoo fell to the ice like a puppet without strings. Green was at Abby’s side in a flash, kneeling before the pokémon. Abby opened its mouth and Green pushed a green pellet into the back of its throat, forcing its swallow reflex. Cubchoo’s eyes opened. It wailed, snot dribbled from its nose and it scrambled back to the icy lake.

Green grinned at her, proudly. Abby smiled, for her sake. She’d won but she didn’t feel like a winner. She felt like her uncle, Tiberius; a monster.

A roar echoed around the cavern, rumbling the floor and shaking lose several stalactites. The Cubchoo’s Beartic clambered out of the icy lake on all fours and eyed Abby with a festering, deathly glare. A mane of ice beneath Beartic’s set of powerful jaws glowed fiercely with ice energy.

“Cool!” Green cheered. “Come on, Abby, let’s take it on together!”

“Top!” Hitmontop ran forward to meet Beartic on the ice.

“Don’t.” Lorelei scolded them like children. “She’s beyond either of you.”

Abby stuck out her jaw. “We’ve faced worse.” She released Charmeleon.

Charmeleon materialised snarling and gnashing his flaming jaws. He took off across the ice, catching up to Hitmontop quickly. Lorelei crossed her arms and glared at them. Frosmoth hovered by her side, beating its wings silently.

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“What’s the plan?” Abby asked as she joined Green’s side.

“You guys distract her, we’ll hit her in the head.”

“Right.” Abby nodded. “Charmeleon, come at Beartic from the side!”

Charmeleon darted around the Beartic’s right with flames billowing from his jaws. Hitmontop scowled at Charmeleon and took off too, coming at Beartic from the left. Beartic watched both Pokémon with a cold, calm glare. She reared up onto her hind legs, standing as tall as two men. Clear flames engulfed her paws, sprouting ice claws.

“Hitmontop, no! Hold your ground!” Green yelled.

Shockingly, Hitmontop kept running. In fact, he engulfed his legs in orange flames and became a blur. In a flash, he was on Beartic’s left much too soon; Charmeleon wasn’t even close. He flashed Charmeleon a smirk before leaping at Beartic with a spinning, blazing kick aimed at her head. Beartic’s swat was almost lazy. It caught Hitmontop in the chest with a thunderous slam that sent him flying. He crashed into the ice, shattering it like glass. As Hitmontop lay in a crater of ice shards, groaning, Charmeleon arrived on Beartic’s right. Abby put aside Hitmontop’s failure. She could still distract Beartic while he recovered.

“Flamethrower!”

Charmeleon spread his legs and his tail flame flared red. A torrent of flame erupted from his mouth at Beartic’s face. She ducked around the flames and flexed her paw. Clear flames flared and she conjured an icicle. The thin, icy spear hovered beside her forearm, glowing. Abby checked Charmeleon’s eyes. They were closed again. Beartic flicked her wrist. Clear flames flared. The icicle was sent flying. Abby shouted. Charmeleon opened his eyes. There was no time to dodge. The scars on the back of Abby’s calf throbbed as she waited for Charmeleon to be impaled. However, Charmeleon, near instantly, let loose another torrent of flames. The flames met the icicle in the air and turned it to steam. But again, Charmeleon closed his eyes. Clear flames engulfed Beartic’s foot. Abby shouted. Charmeleon opened his eyes. Beartic stomped the ice. The ice beneath Charmeleon’s feet glowed. He went to leap away but the ice shot up like a springboard. He flew threw the air, flailing helplessly before crashing into the ice beside Hitmontop.

As the two pokémon lay beside each other, their eyes met and flared. At once, as if forgetting their numerous weeping cuts, both Pokémon were on their feet. They flew at each other. Charmeleon tried to bite with flaming jaws but Hitmontop, quick as a bullet, cracked him across the head with a spinning kick.

Abby and Green shouted at them; desperate, angry and confused.

“What the hell are you doing, Hitmontop?!”

“Charmeleon, stop! Now!”

But they didn’t stop. Hitmontop beat Charmeleon bloody with a flurry of blazing, orange strikes. Beartic watched the fight with a cocked head. Then, she let out a low, menacing chuckle. Clear flames engulfed her foot again and she stomped the ice. Abby and Green shouted. They were ignored. The ground beneath the bloody brawl glowed, then erupted into a springboard, launching both pokémon towards Beartic. She raised her paws. Clear flames engulfed them. Two icicles were conjured and fired. Twin ice spears met Hitmontop and Charmeleon in the air and pierced their chests. They crashed before Beartic’s feet, defeated. Speechless, Abby and Green could only stare. The severity of the injury suddenly became apparent to Abby and she returned Charmeleon in a flash, prompting Green to do the same.

“If you’re quite done.” Lorelei stepped past them both with Frosmoth at her side. “Frosmoth, Signal Beam.”

Frosmoth buzzed. Light-green flames engulfed his eyes. Beartic roared. Her ice mane burst into clear flames and an ominous glow of ice energy shone in the back of her throat. A high-pitched whine split the air, forcing Abby’s hands to her ears. A blast of bug energy – as thick as a telephone pole – erupted from Frosmoth’s eyes and punctured through Beartic’s chest like she was made of paper. The attack hit the far end of the cavern, blowing a huge chunk out of the icy wall. Beartic fell to her stomach, folding on herself, limp and defeated.

At once, Lorelei pulled out a potion and a green pellet from her belt. She sprayed down Beartic with a pink potion, rather than the standard purple. Instantly, it healed the grievous wound as if it had never even existed. Lorelei pushed the green pellet down Beartic’s throat and snapped on her heels to face Abby and Green with festering darkness in her eyes that made Abby tremble.

“Embarrassing. Sort yourselves out. You should be ashamed.” Lorelei pointed to Green’s belt; to her five badges. “Especially you.”

Beartic rose behind Lorelei, scowling and looming. She made eye contact with Frosmoth, the scowl faltered and she turned tail to scamper back to the icy lake.

Green lost her confused, bewildered look and replaced it with a hardened frown. “We had that! We still have seven pokémon between us!”

“Oh you had it did you? Do you call gawking like a pair of witless Delibirds having the situation under control?”

Abby stepped forward. “We could have beaten her! You-”

“Enough!” Lorelei stood tall. Her voice lowered to a hissing whisper. “I have half a mind to take you back to the damn ferry. Gold’s wishes be damned.”

That smothered the flames of Abby’s and Green’s defiance at once. They shot each other nervous glances and kept their mouth shut. Lorelei shook her head and kneaded her nose. The darkness faded from her harsh, angular face. She waved a hand at Frosmoth. “Fix the wall, Frosmoth.”

“Moth,” Frosmoth buzzed. He flew off to the destroyed wall and fired clear beams at it, repairing the missing chunk with ice crystals.

“You two…” Lorelei pointed to the ground; at the blood left behind by Charmeleon and Hitmontop. “Clean this up.” Lorelei snapped on her heels and made her way to the staircase to the second floor.

Abby and Green said nothing. Green pulled a rag from her bag while Abby released Seadra from his pokéball.

***

By the time they had finished cleaning, Abby and Green had found their smiles again.

“Reckon she’s still mad?” Abby asked as she returned Seadra.

Green giggled as she folded her rag. “Oh yeah, for sure. We’re in for another lecture once we climb the stairs.”

“Great… And you called her hot…”

“And she still is! Just not when she gets scary, that’s all.”

Abby shook her head.

Green laughed. “Come on! You seriously, don’t see it?”

“You’re too horny for you’re own good sometimes, I swear.”

“Oh?” Green cocked her head. “Is that meant to be a nice way of calling me a slut?”

“Yeah.”

They Both broke into smirks and bust out laughing. It was good to laugh. It’d been too long since they’d been able to talk like friends. Perhaps they could leave everything that had happened behind, Abby dared to hope.

“Welp, let’s go before she comes to get us.” Green hoisted on her backpack. “I’d let Dragonair back out. It’ll be a while until wounds like those heal, I reckon.” She gestured to the portable healing machine before picking it up off the ice.

Abby grumbled as she got out Dragonair’s pokéball. “Charmeleon’s gonna get it when he’s healed, I swear.”

“Hitmontop, too.” Green plucked a pokéball from her belt.

Abby released Dragonair and Green released Machoke. The pokémon greeted each other with excited grins, then butted heads. Orange and purple sparks spat. They roared with laughter and began to chat in their unknowable pokémon language. Abby and Green shared a grin before heading up the stairs.

After another arduous climb up never-ending slick stairs, their little group was confronted by Lorelei’s hard stare. Machoke and Dragonair stopped their chattering. Abby tensed. Green scowled. Lorelei regraded Machoke and Dragonair with the same hard eyes, then the healing machine in Green’s clutches.

“Switch your pokémon once Charmeleon is healed, Abby. A dragon won’t do you any good in here,” Lorelei said.

“Okay,” Abby said, trying to make her voice sound large through her constricted throat.

Lorelei nodded and without another word, led the way into the cavern. The cavern seemed to be about the same size as the first floor but in place of a stalagmite forest, there was just a forest. The trees were unlike any she’d ever seen before, however. Tall and thick, they had trunks of pale blue bark, like pillars of ice, and canopies of thin white leaves, like reaching snow fingers. A thin layer of ice covered the bark, sparkling with ice energy. And unlike the first-floor cavern, rangers were scattered about. Redcoats inspected the trees, taking notes on clipboards and pictures with pokédexes; each one had a tube of red pokéballs branded with the slashed pokéball of the Plateau attached to their hip.

“Frostbarks…” Green said. She sounded strangely disgusted. “The nerve.”

“What’s wrong with, uh, frostbarks?” Abby asked.

“This cavern used to be where Slowbros mated and raised newborns on vast ice flats.”

“They’ve been relocated to Johto, to Mahogany Town,” Lorelei said. Her voice was venom.

Abby gummed her lips as an awkward tension hung in the air. “Uh…” She searched for a question. “Where do frostbarks come from?”

“Sinnoh,” Lorelei said.

“Right…”

As the silence returned something that Abby did recognise graced them with their presence. A pack of Glaceons darted across the lonely trail through the forest. A veil of icy flurry swept through the air around the pack of ice-fox pokémon. Abby and the group paused to let them pass. The Glaceons gave them hard glares as they ran by. They were wonderful Pokémon, Abby had always thought so. Even her brute of an uncle, Tiberius, couldn’t beat the grace out of his Glaceon, no matter how hard he tried.

The further they ventured into the forest, the more packs of Glaceon they were treated to. However, Lorelei and Green didn’t seem even remotely as delighted as Abby was. In fact, they seemed pretty pissed off. And with each pack of Glaceon that crossed their path, their scowls seemed more and more severe until finally, Lorelei snapped.

“The hell’s the matter with them? God…”

“Ridiculous,” Green muttered.

“What’s wrong?” Abby asked.

Lorelei and Green looked back at her as if she were stupid.

“Glaceons are predators,” Lorelei spoke slowly, insultingly so. “For an ecosystem to function, there needs to be more prey than predators. Look around. Do you see any prey?”

Abby looked around. All she saw were blue trunks and white leaves. “No…”

“Glaceon’s hunt Snovers right?” Green said.

Lorelei nodded. Abby looked to the woods again, this time straining her eyes. A silhouette glimpsed her peripherals.

“Wait, I think I see something,” she said.

Green and Lorelei followed her gaze. As did Machoke and Dragonair. Machoke looked confused. Dragonair looked bored. His eyes glowed then he darted off into the icy woods.

“Dragonair?” Abby called out after him.

No response. After a tense moment, Dragonair returned with a strange pokémon Abby had never seen before. Vaguely humanoid, it floated a few feet off the ground. It lacked feet and its torso was hollow behind a veil resembling a white kimono. Two yellow eyes peered out from behind a mask of ice. Whatever it was, it definitely wasn’t a Snover.

“Can Glaceons eat that?” Abby asked.

“That’s a Frosslass,” Lorelei said as if that should answer Abby’s question.

“Ghost-types can’t take part in the ecosystem, Abby. They’re dead,” Green said.

Abby wrinkled her nose. “Then why is it here?”

“Good question…” Lorelei said. “Leave it be. Let’s keep moving.”

And so they did, leaving Frosslass behind. Or at least they tried. The ghost stalked them through the woods, keeping a long distance between them. At least it was quiet. Abby was thankful. The howling and screeching of Gastlies always made her skin crawl.

Dragonair was shivering; his scales seemed to crawl along his body. The twinkle in the icy bark of the frostbarks flared as he floated by them, causing his scales to shine dully. So when the healing machine chimed, Abby showed him mercy and switched him out for Charmeleon. Green did the same, Machoke for Hitmontop. Although she was far more reluctant about it. She and Machoke shared a wordless, lingering, sad gaze. Green touched her forehead to his collarbone before returning him and releasing Hitmontop.

Charmeleon and Hitmontop glared at each other with sharp stares full of daggers. Abby and Green put a stop to the glaring. Abby stepped in front of Charmeleon with a stomp, and Green snatched Hitmontop’s wrist to spin him around to face her. Green scolded him with a hushed, deathly whisper. Abby shouted.

“Are you stupid?! Who do you think your enemy is?!”

“Char!” Charmeleon bared his fangs at her.

“Try it.” Abby opened her arms. “Go on.”

Charmeleon growled but made no move to attack. He eyed her boots warily.

Abby put her finger in his face. “Pull that shit again and you can stay in your pokéball until I’m senile for all I care.”

Charmeleon glanced past her at Hitmontop. He snarled, then put away his fangs and snarled again; quieter that time. Abby gave Hitmontop a brief glance, wary about keeping her eyes away from Charmeleon for too long. He was staring at his feet, nodding his domed head with a shameful frown as Green lectured. When Abby looked back at Charmeleon he was looking at his feet too, although with a seething scowl.

Abby had a daring thought. Cautiously, she exchanged her hard gaze for warm eyes. “You’re allowed to not like him, that’s fine. But save that hate for your sparring. Not when you need to work together.”

“Char…” Charmeleon kicked meekly at the snow. It melted around his feet.

“Behave yourself, and I’ll organise a proper fight between you two. How’s that sound?”

For the first time since he was a waddling Charmander, Charmeleon looked at her with bright eyes. His tail wagged, swishing the flame on the end. “Char!” He exclaimed, grinning.

It took all of Abby’s strength to not squeal with delight. She cleared her throat, stood tall and nodded. “We have a deal then.”

“Char!” Charmeleon smirked and joined her side.

“Are you four done?” Lorelei asked, arms crossed.

“Yup!” Abby suddenly remembered herself. “I mean, yes.” She gave a stiff nod.

“Char!”

“Yeah, we’re done,” Green said, her voice low and dripping with menace.

“Top…” Hitmontop’s voice was little more than a whisper.

“Good. Let’s continue.”

Abby and Green followed Lorelei and Frosmoth, standing side by side. Charmeleon walked at Abby’s right and Hitmontop at Green’s left, separated by their trainers. Not once did they look at each other.

***

After several twists and turns, the salted path through the frostbark forest widened and the pale-blue trunks became less densely packed. Through the newly afforded gaps between the trees, a dark green light flashed. Then a rumble shook the ground and shouting filled the air. Abby, Green and Lorelei shot each alarmed glances before taking off down the path towards the commotion. Charmeleon and Hitmontop ran at their heels, eyes locked forward.

They followed the commotion to a vast clearing of knee-high, white grass. Crates of pokéballs were piled high in disorganised clumps around scattered groups of red tents. Ranger sprinted from the tents, lassos in hand, towards the centre of the clearing while Snover ran away from it. Small, bipedal pokémon made of half grass and half snow, the Snovers waddled as fast as their stumpy legs allowed. In the centre of the clearing, an Abomasnow raged. The giant evolved form of Snover, Abomasnow stood twice as tall as any ranger and looked as if weighed as much as ten people. It swatted at the rangers with its long ice arms covered in shaggy white fur and tipped with green plant-matter hands. As long as a man, and as thick as a frostbark, its arms threatened to pulverise the growing group of encroaching rangers. The rangers launched lasso after lasso at the Abomasnow but each golden loop was knocked aside with ease. Dark-green fire suddenly erupted from Abomasnow’s large, forward-facing eyes. Shouts and cries were taken up by the rangers as they scrambled away from the pokémon. Abomasnow stomped the ground and a ring of roots, sharpened to spikes, erupted from the ground around it. Thankfully, no rangers were skewered.

Abby and Green shot Lorelei desperate looks. They didn’t even need to ask.

“Yes, yes, fine.” Lorelei waved her hand dismissively. “Go help them.”

Abby grinned at Green. Green nodded. Together, they took off across the clearing of snow-white grass. Charmeleon and Hitmontop ran ahead of them, side by side but separate by a fair distance. Lorelei stalked after them.

When they arrived among the rangers they were met with confusion and suspicion. A towering white-coat ranger marched through the hoard of redcoats, with a weathered frown and eyes flanked by puffy, dark circles.

She loomed over Abby and sighed. “Yomato, what are you doing here?”

Abby couldn’t recall ever meeting the ranger before. Although, she’d met countless during the endless events hosted at Yomato manor so she supposed they must have met at some point. Regardless, Green answered for her.

“We’re here to fix your problem.” Green was smirking. Abby couldn’t tell if it was genuine or forced.

The tall white-coat glanced at Green, then her belt and its badges, then Hitmontop. She shrugged. “Be my guest.” She faced the crowding redcoats and gestured with a nod of her head.

The red coats parted. Abomasnow glared at them with wide, green eyes full of dark-green fire and nestled amongst a brow of shaggy white fur crusted by ice. Lorelei, silent as falling snow, came up behind Abby and Green. Every pair of rangers’ eyes were on her. She touched Abby’s shoulder with a delicacy Abby hadn’t imagined she was capable of.

“Look brave. Think smart. Take your time with him, both of you.” Lorelei’s face hardened and she looked around at the rangers. “What are you all gawking at? Get back, now!”

The redcoats scrambled away to their tents and crates, leaving a large open space around Abomasnow for the battle. The tall white coat and Lorelei shared a look, a strangely fond one before they too both left. Charmeleon and Hitmontop ran out a few feet in front of Green and Abby, glaring at Abomasnow from outside his ring of sharpened roots. Abomasnow didn’t make a move. Like a statue of ice and leaves, he watched unblinking.

“We should keep at a distance at first, right?” Abby asked Green.

“Yeah. No doubt he’ll end this quick with vines if we approach him,” Green said. “You watch for openings, I’ll have Hitmontop defend Charmeleon.”

“Think he’ll listen?”

“Yes.” Green’s voice became ice. “Hitmontop! Iron head! Guard Charmeleon!”

Silver flames engulfed Hitmontop’s dome head. Steel covered it. He scowled at Charmeleon but moved in front of him, just beyond the ring of roots, all the same, and bowed his head. His dome head acted like a shield, pointing towards Abomasnow. Charmeleon crouched behind the shield. Red flames licked the corner of his jaws.

“SNOOOOOW!” Abomasnow roared. Dark green flames engulfed his mighty arms. He thrust them forward and dark-green flames engulfed the ring of spiked roots.

Roots snapped from the ring and flew at Hitmontop and Charmeleon like a fusillade of missiles. The steel on Hitmontop’s head glowed and he braced. The empowered roots bombarded his head with flashes of dark-green light. They glanced off the steel, leaving behind only dents. Abby trusted the steel and watched Abomasnow closely. He didn’t move. Not one step. He may as well have been rooted to the ground.

“Should we attack?” Abby asked.

“Yeah.” Green gummed her lips. “Yeah.”

“Charmeleon, flamethrower!”

Charmeleon peeked out from behind Hitmontop’s head and let loose a torrent of flames from his mouth. Abomasnow stared down the flames as they rushed towards him. The torrent fell short, several feet from his face. It whipped and snapped in the air, like a flaming ribbon caught in a strong gale. Abomasnow aimed his hand at Charmeleon. Clear flames engulfed the hand, conjuring a long, sharp icicle.

“Hide!” Abby shouted.

Charmeleon ducked behind Hitmontop’s head as Abomasnow fired the icicle with a thrust of his arm. It glanced the lip of Hitmontop's head with a spray of crushed ice. It impaled the ground a foot deep. More empowered root-missiles bombarded Hitmontop’s head.

“We have to clear those roots,” Green said.

“Hitmontop can do it, right? The steel leg thing?”

“Yeah. Is Charmeleon good on his own?”

“Yeah, go. Quick.” Abby stepped forward. “Charmeleon! Run!”

“Hitmontop, spin! Iron blades!”

Hitmontop and Charmeleon broke apart, darting in opposite directions. Charmeleon lowered his head as he broke out into a sprint. Hitmontop leapt and flipped. His legs became steel and morphed into blades. He spun like a top towards the ring of roots with silver flames blazing as a ring above him. Abomasnow gave both pokémon two quick glances before widening his stance and squaring his shoulders. Four pods resembling pine cones, the size of boulders, glowed on his back. They split open and unleashed a hoard of glowing nettle needles the size of arrows. The hoard split into two and raced after either pokémon.

“Flamethrower!” Abby yelled.

“Clear the roots!” Green yelled.

While Charmeleon halted with a skid and a spray of snow, Hitmontop sped up. Charmeleon confronted the hoard pursuing him by unleashing a torrent of flames. He sacrificed length for width and formed a shield of flames. Again, he shut his eyes. The hoard of nettles began to incinerate themselves in the flames. Abomasnow waved his arm. The back of the hoard split off, dodging the flames. It rounded Charmeleon coming at him from the side.

“Your left!”

Charmeleon whipped his head to the left, incinerating the new hoard. But he left a few remaining in the old hoard. Twenty or so glowing needles peppered his side, sticking into his thigh, torso and neck like pins to a pin cushion. They stuck him shallow, but still drew considerable blood. Charmeleon roared. Black flames filled his mouth. Abomasnow turned to face him fully with heavy, awkward steps, turning his back on Hitmontop.

In all the commotion, Hitmontop had managed the clear half the roots like a lawnmower clearing an overgrown field. Abby and Green shared a look.

“Attack!” They yelled as one.

Charmeleon lurched forward, firing a ball of black flames from his mouth. Hitmontop leapt at Abomasnow from behind with whirling steel legs. Abomasnow unleashed a torrent of icy mist from beneath the thick fur covering his mouth, engulfing and snuffing out Charmeleon’s attack. Hitmontop sliced open the back of Abomasnow’s head with a flurry of spinning, bladed kicks as he sailed on by. The hoard of needles pursuing Hitmontop bombarded Abomasnow.

“SNOOOOW!” Abomasnow roared. He swiped at Hitmontop with a huge arm and missed. Blood matted his shaggy fur from head to neck.

Hitmontop landed beside Charmeleon on steel blades. They shared a look; a neutral look. The black flames dwindled in Charmeleon’s mouth. Hitmontop’s legs returned to normal. They nodded and faced Abomasnow united.

“SNOOOOW!” Abomasnow bellowed again. Clear flames erupted from his eyes. His chest began to swell.

“Flamethrower!” Abby yelled at once, recognising the attack to come.

Green’s eyes widened. “Get behind Charmeleon!”

Charmeleon stepped forward. Hitmontop dashed behind him. Abomasnow let loose a blast of frozen air from his mouth and Charmeleon let loose a torrent of flames. The attacks met in the air, clashing with an eruption of steam. The flames overwhelmed the frozen air, fanning out as a flaming shield that protected Charmeleon and Hitmontop from being frozen. Abomasnow’s swollen chest deflated slowly and Charmeleon’s tail flame gradually grew dimmer.

It was as Abby watched Hitmontop huddle behind Charmeleon, that a crazy idea came to her. “Crosstype him!” Abby yelled.

“What?!”

“Into fire! Use the flames! Quickly!”

Green’s bewilderment turned into a sly smirk. “Hitmontop, feel the energy of fire! Channel it through your heart and into your legs!”

At first, Hitmontop dashed from behind Charmeleon without question. But as he held out his hand to the flames, he paused and gave Charmeleon a wary look. Charmeleon’s eyes were closed.

“Open your eyes!” Abby shouted.

Charmeleon’s eyes opened, frantic and wild. But as they found Hitmontop’s, they softened. He nodded ever so slightly so as to not disturb the flow of his flames. Hitmontop’s gaze hardened. He nodded, then thrust his hand into the flames. Red light erupted from his eyes. Fire engulfed his legs. He pulled his hand away; it was incinerated but Hitmontop was grinning.

“Rapid spin! Create a funnel of flames!” Green yelled.

Hitmontop flipped, then spun around Abomasnow. Along the ice, he left a trail of flames that burned impossibly as a flaming ring. Red light flashed from Hitmontop and the ring of fire flared and erupted into a funnel, cutting off Abomasnow’s ice breath. Abomasnow raged inside his flaming prison. His arms swiped through the flames but caught alight. Bellowing, screeching screams echoed. Charmeleon didn’t need a command. He unleashed yet another flamethrower, engulfing the funnel. The screeches peaked, then cut off abruptly. Abomasnow’s incinerated body fell through the flaming wall of the funnel and crashed into the ice, wholly unrecognisable.

It took a moment for the victory to sink in, but soon they were cheering. Charmeleon and Hitmontop bumped heads and shouted, bellowing, laughing shouts at each other. Green entombed Abby with a crushing hug. The red coats whooped and hollered. The tall white coat tossed a healball at Abomasnow and it captured him with a flash of golden light.

“Someone get the damn nurse! We’ve got a critical emergency! Code black!”

Rangers scrambled about the tents madly shouting for the nurse. Charmeleon and Hitmontop broke apart, stiff and awkward.

Green let go of Abby, blushing. “Uh, great work. You didn’t look scared that time.”

“Th-Thanks.”

Abby imagined how the flames must have consumed Abomasnow, how they must have eaten away at his flesh with searing unbearable pain. The three scars on the back of her calf throbbed. Lorelei touched her shoulder, ending the thoughts.

“Will Abomasnow be okay?” Abby blurted.

“He’ll be fine after a few rounds of healing,” Lorelei said starkly. Her light touch clamped into a squeeze. “Great work, kid. Both of you. More of that in the future.”

Abby sighed and let go of her worries. Then, she felt strange. Her heart was racing, pounding in her ears. A swell formed in her chest, making her feel larger than life. Suddenly, she became aware of a smile on her face. And then she laughed, and the swell erupted into giddy elation.

“We did it!” She yelled at Green.

“Fuck yeah, we did!”

Abby grinned at Charmeleon and unbelievably, he grinned back. She crouched with open arms and he ran to her. They hugged and the flame of his tail licked her face; it didn’t burn her.

***

The climb to the third floor was short and sweet. There were only a few flights of salted, ice stairs making for easy climbing. They left behind the second floor and its rangers to their commotion after they had finished cleaning up the blood of the battle. Green and Lorelei had seemed eager to leave. Their expressions had soured as the ranger resumed releasing more Glaceons. Secretly, Abby had wanted to watch. Glaceons were so pretty and elegant, their diamond-blue eyes always gazed with an intriguing mystic, not too dissimilar from the gaze of a dragon. But she left with Green and Lorelei anyway, Charmeleon had seemed eager to leave and she couldn’t bring herself to say no to such genuine glee from him. For the first time in a long time, Charmeleon seemed excited to travel with her.

The third floor was tiny, relative to the rest. It wasn’t any bigger than a pokémon stadium, and not an impressive one at that. The layout was simple. Ice cliffs that reached halfway up the cavern walls surrounded one large, icy lake. A waterfall cascaded over the ice cliffs, becoming white foam as it crashed into the icy pool. A bridge spanned from one end of the cavern to the other connected an entrance and exit that were carved high into the sheer cavern walls on lips of ice.

As they crossed the bridge, Abby peered over the edge to watch the pokémon species of the Walrein line play. Spheals and their evolved stage, Sealos. Blue and blubbery, they swam in the water. Spheals bobbed on the surface, paddling with tiny flippers with great effort to little result. Rather than help them swim, their efforts seemed to only roll their round bodies through the water. The Sealos had no trouble swimming. Large flippers and strong tails helped them streak through the water as swiftly as a bullet through the air. Sealos also sat atop the cliffs, lounging, fighting, playing and comparing whiskers. Each Sealo sported a pair of long, white whiskers on their snouts, like a set of thick white bristles. It seemed who had the longest was an important matter to them. Spheals had no whiskers, but the largest of them all did sport white stubble. The Spheals with stubble were all gathered around the base of the waterfall, watching Sealo swim up it to the cliffs. They veiled themselves in dark-blue, glowing water as they climbed the waterfall. The Spheals tried to do the same but not one of them could make it more than a few feet before falling.

The Sealos weren’t alone on top of the cliffs. Snorunts huddled in vast packs. Hundreds of the small, triangular pokémon gathered along the edges of the cliffs, shivering as one beneath their thick, yellow, triangular coats. Their beady, pale blue eyes followed Abby as she walked above them on the bridge. Oddly, Abby couldn’t see any Glalie, their evolved form or any Walreins for that matter.

Green told Abby of how the cavern used to be, of how it was a treacherous course of rope bridges above icy rivers and across waterfalls. Her voice was sweet as she recalled memories of her and Professor Oak hunting for Squirtles in the shallows of rivers. Apparently, Blue’s famous Blastoise had been captured here as a Squirtle when Oak was the same age as them. That story stole the sweetness in Green’s voice. Hoping to steer away from bad memories, Abby quickly asked Lorelei why there weren’t any Walrein or Glalie.

Lorelei gave a short, sharp answer. “I don’t know.”

They got their answer at the end of the bridge when they came upon a group of white coat rangers in a small camp laid out on the flat lip carved into the ice before the cavern’s exit. They were gathered around the lip’s edge as a ranger with both white and black on her coat held a red pokéball. She popped it open and released a Walrein – Sealo’s evolved stage – into the water. Its massive, blubbery body crashed into the water, splashing spray high into the air. Sealos and Spheals hurried over to it, barking excitedly. The other white coats took notes while their leader grinned madly.

Abby’s blood curdled as she recognised the ranger to be Lucy, the ice lieutenant.

The lieutenant noticed as Abby and the others approached, and smiled. “Wasn’t that a real treat guys?”

Abby stood in front of Charmeleon. She didn’t trust the lieutenant’s tone or her empty smiles. The lieutenant laughed. Charmeleon stepped past Abby and growled at her.

That only made the lieutenant laugh more. “What a lively, little guy! Bet ya only just evolved, didn’t ya little feller?”

Charmeleon bared flaming fangs. The lieutenant’s eyes gleamed, like a kid's. It had to be a trick. A slap cracked Abby over the back of her head.

“Control him,” Lorelei snapped.

Abby was aghast.

“No, no, it’s fine!” The lieutenant laughed. Her rangers watched Charmeleon nervously, hands on their belt, on their lassos. “He’s harmless! Look at him!”

Fearing another slap, Abby stomped her foot. “Charmeleon, back to me.”

At once, Charmeleon returned to her heel. He stopped growling but didn’t lose his glare. Neither did Abby. Lorelei must have either gone crazy or wasn’t as smart as Abby had thought. The lieutenant crouched and lowered her eyes to Charmeleon’s level. They were red, Abby noticed, blood-red. Hair of the same colour hung from her hood and her face was sharp and angular. She giggled again as Charmeleon stuck out his jaw, before locking her eyes with Lorelei.

“So, what are you here for? Dad got you running errands?”

“Plateau business,” Lorelei said.

The lieutenant looked at Green, then nodded. “I see.” She glanced behind her, at the cavern’s exit to the fourth floor. “Excited to see Articuno, girls? She’s a real beaut!”

Green gave a slow nod before exchanging a wary glance with Abby. At least Green didn’t trust her, Abby thought.

The lieutenant raised an eyebrow at Green. “Aren’t you meant to be more lively than your brother? Where’s your voice?”

“Right here…” Green said.

“So she does speak!” The lieutenant laughed.

Hitmontop stepped in front of Green. The lieutenant looked ready to fawn over him too when Lorelei stepped in front of all of them.

“You all can talk later. Come. We’re here now,” Lorelei said.

Without waiting for a reply, Lorelei headed for the cavern’s exit. Green hurried after her, and Abby trailed behind, keeping her eyes on the lieutenant. She smiled at her. It was fake, it had to be. The thought festered in Abby’s head as she climbed the final set of icy stairs.

The final climb was the longest of them all and even with salted steps to make it more bearable, the climb up the near-endless spiral staircase left everyone huffing and puffing. At the top was a thick, steel door with a card scanner and number pad perched above its handle. Lorelei pulled a card from within her jacket, inserted it and punched a lengthy combination into the number pad. A buzzer sounded and a clunk of steel boomed from within the door. Lorelei twisted the handle and shouldered it open. A blast of cold, colder than even the cold of the raging blizzard, ran through Abby with probing claws of ice. She shivered terribly and pulled her hood tight as she followed Lorelei and Green inside.

The fourth and final floor of Seafoam’s western mountain was no bigger than a courtyard but reached up high above Abby’s head to a ceiling of open sky. The wind sang a howling wail as a haze of white snow billowed and a blanket of black clouds swirled. The cavern itself was largely barren, a mere floor of flat ice, all except for a single, short ice cliff as tall as three men. Perched atop the cliff was a huge nest of ice, made of long, thin icicles. Inside was a glowing sphere of ice as big as a house. It sat in the nest comfortably, pulsing gently. Inside the sphere, Abby could make out a giant, faint silhouette that loomed over her bigger than any pokémon she’d ever seen. A sort of primal fear gripped Abby, planting her in place just beyond the steel doorway. Lorelei slammed the door shut sending an echo bouncing around and up the cavern like thunder rolling over fields.

Green was horror-struck. “It can’t be…” she whispered. She scowled and looked at Lorelei accusingly. “This is a trick, right? Something for tourists to gawk at.”

Lorelei moved past her with smooth steps that glided and approached the ice sphere. Green stormed after her with Hitmontop at her side, leaving Abby alone with Charmeleon by the firmly shut steel door. Still, Abby could not bring herself to approach. The dark silhouette within the sphere commanded her devoted attention. The shadow of large, fanned wings was spread about beneath the pulsing ice, each wing as long as two tall men. One flap could turn a stormy sky blue, Abby imagined.

Green was shouting now. Her voice bounced around the cavern, above the raging storm. “Tell me! What is this thing!?”

“What it looks like,” Lorelei said, her voice flat.

“No.” Green shook her head and started pacing. “The cycle ended last year. It should be awake!”

“Yet, here it sleeps.”

“But that means that-”

“Moltres is awake.”

“But that’s impossible.”

“Not impossible, unnatural.”

Green stopped pacing, her face hardened, her eyes welled. “What did he do?” Her voice was little more than a whimpering whisper.

At the sight of Green’s tears, Abby was by her side in a flash. She took Green’s hand gingerly and Green squeezed with an iron grip.

Lorelei regarded Green with a sullen sadness. “What you think.”

Green sobbed once, a choked sob. She squeezed Abby’s hand again and then scowled a scowl unlike Abby had ever seen before. Her eyes became full of venom, and her usually soft, round features became stark and stiff. “That fucking idiot,” Green hissed. “Where is he?”

“We’re not sure.”

“How? He stole a giant, flaming bird! How can you possibly not know where he is?”

Lorelei dodged Green’s eyes to look back at the ice sphere. Silence lingered.

“So… that’s Articuno?” Abby probed, meekly.

“Yes. It’s hibernating,” Lorelei said.

“And that’s bad? …”

Lorelei sighed. “They really don’t teach you anything, do they? Bloody hell. The three birds, Articuno, Moltres and Zapdos are the guardians of Winter, Summer and Storms. They calm Kanto’s large pools of ice, fire and electric elemental energy. Only one can ever be awake at a time, to calm their element and allow the others to thrive. Every three years the cycle shifts, one awakens while the other two hibernate. Zapdos, then Moltres, then Articuno. They are an essential component of Kanto’s macro-seasonal cycle.”

Abby felt more confused than before she had asked.

“They aren’t normal Pokémon, Abby,” Green said. “They’re not pets, or companions, or partners, they’re a part of nature. The way that air is a part of the sky or water is a part of the ocean.”

“Okay…” Abby thought they were both being a little dramatic. “So why isn’t Articuno awake?”

“Red.”

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Next chapter, Green deals with the news about Red the only way she knows how.