Unbroken Disguise

N hissed in pain as yet another needle from Drapion’s Poison Sting was plucked from his skin. A small pile of them sat discarded in a tray while a nurse pulled them out one by one. Not a Nurse Joy, she found her hands full checking over all the Pokemon that had been rescued, but rather a nurse who specialized in treating humans.

“I’m glad that you were there to help, but I just feel so awful that you put yourselves through all of this to rescue my Gardevoir!” The Pokemon’s trainer lamented. He had finally learned that her name was Maria while the group was on their way to their current location.

The back rooms of the Jubilife City Pokemon Center found themselves much more crowded than they were designed to be. All of the Pokemon involved in the incident with Hunter J were inside a room he’d been informed was meant for “problem” Pokemon for reasons he’d not been informed of yet, but because it was so small all of the humans involved in the incident were in with the general population of injured Pokemon. N wasn’t very pleased with that fact, but it had been Nurse Joy who insisted on it and he trusted that she at least had a valid reason.

“If it wasn’t your Gardevoir it would have been another Pokemon. She took Pikachu and tried to take Mimikyu as well. You can’t blame yourself for the actions of a monster like her,” N responded. As against the concept of trainers as he was, he knew that the Pokemon being free wouldn’t have helped in this case. Someone like J… she seemed the type to burn down a forest full of Pokemon if it meant securing a high value one.

His hatred of her grew deeper as another needle was plucked out.

“I know it hurts, but at least you’re alive, eh?” The nurse tried to distract him as she pulled out another. “A Drapion and a Salamence are certainly capable of doing a lot more damage than this. You kids got off lucky.”

He certainly didn’t feel lucky. The removal of the needles was only the second step in his treatment. He’d been told to swallow some sort of foul concoction on the way over that he assumed was meant to counteract the Drapion’s venom, but that was it. He still needed to get all of the needles removed, of which they’d only finished half so far, and get his burns treated as well.

“Yeah, this is nothing! You’ll be as good as new in no time!” Ash chimed in with a smile, looking unreasonably happy as he suffered through the same fate. N wasn’t sure if the boy had been through so much that this paled in comparison, or if he just had an unreasonably impressive pain tolerance.

“Stop moving so much, if one of these needles snaps in two while I’m trying to remove it, it will only be even more of a pain to get out.” The nurse working on Ash chided.

“Ah, sorry…”

Maria sighed. “And on top of your injuries, they won’t let me see Gardevoir! Surely if she’s been freed from that… whatever it was, then it should be okay to take her home, right?”

“I’m sure they’re just checking to make sure that everything is alright, Maria.” Ash tried to reassure her.

And while that wasn’t an unreasonable assumption, N was suspicious as well.

The backup Officer Jenny had called for arrived at the scene shortly after the group aboard the ship had made their escape. Upon seeing the state that N and Ash were in, they’d all been escorted to Jubilife in the back of some police vehicles so that their wounds could be treated as soon as possible. While Hunter J and her henchmen had escaped, he assumed that some of the officers would be staying to investigate the wreckage, and perhaps look for where those Rockets had run off to.

In the shock of having survived the ordeal, N hadn’t noticed the trio slipping off into the forest, and apparently nobody else had either.

He wasn’t sure what to think of them. Before, he had known they were Rockets. That they’d tried to steal Pokemon right before his eyes. He had known that they were scum worth less than the dirt on his shoes.

But now… the humans had risked their lives to save Meowth. Only he and Ash had been craz- or, devoted enough to risk it in their own group. And then there was what Ash had said…

They know whose side to be on when it really counts.

What did that mean? Had Ash and the Rockets been in similar situations before? He’d have to ask about it at some point when there weren’t so many prying eyes and ears. And there were a lot of them at the moment. He couldn’t remember the last time he saw so many League officials swarming in one place.

There was the police force of course, who, though they liked to pretend otherwise, acted on behalf of the League. The Jenny family may have the strange genetics of the Joy family, but they didn’t have the same moral backbone. Joys operated worldwide, moving between regions as was necessary to better serve injured Pokemon. Jennys on the other hand… well, he didn’t have any definitive proof of it, but he very strongly suspected that their ties to their respective regions were stronger than those of blood. Perhaps those from outside the League were different, but in Unova at the very least they served at Alder’s command.

And here in Sinnoh?

Well, Cynthia’s presence made that quite clear.

The blonde Champion was currently overseeing the police interview of Dawn and Brock, getting their recounting of events while he and Ash were treated. Maria’s interview had been quite short, and he had his suspicions as to why that was.

“Fuck!” N jolted as another needle was removed.

“Stop your squirming! You’ve still got another 15 needles in you!”

While that hadn’t been the most pleasant experience, and he wasn’t happy that Ash had recklessly thrown himself headfirst into danger yet again, Pikachu was at least glad that their little run in with the Pokemon Hunter had ended on a relatively positive note. Nobody had died, and all of the Pokemon they were aware of being stolen, himself included, had been freed from J’s grasp.

He could do without the aftermath though.

Test after test after test was run on the Pokemon that were petrified by Hunter J’s little wrist gadget. Pikachu had been poked and prodded, had his electrical output measured, given just about every test he could think of and then some so that Nurse Joy could assure herself that there were no lasting effects of the petrification.

Which, while very much annoying in the moment, he could appreciate the thought of. He had been fighting that Drapion one moment and in Ash’s embrace the next from his point of view. Not the worst he’d been through, but not something that had been a fun time either. Now that he thought about it, they’d skipped over medical exams for a lot of the incidents they’d experienced. Pikachu wasn’t too worried about himself, but Ash…

“How many times do I have to tell you?!” Mimikyu interrupted his musings. “I don’t know all of the kanji necessary for this sort of thing, damn it! Making me write out all the hiragana is a pain in the ass!”

Nurse Joy of course didn’t understand a word that Mimikyu said.

“I really think we should do some more testing on you, it’s better to be safe than sorry!”

“No, woman! I am fine! Wa-ta-shi-wa-da-i-jo-u-bu!” He sounded out the words as wrote them, holding up his notebook for Nurse Joy to see. Pikachu wasn’t sure if the scribbles of “私は大丈夫！” actually meant anything, but Mimikyu seemed to be getting by with his human writing well enough. A lot better than Pikachu had ever managed, not that he’d tried. “I never thought I’d have to learn the word for fucking petrification! This shit is impossible!” Beneath the first line, he wrote something else, just as illegible to Pikachu. “No Petrification!” Mimikyu pointed at the word with his shadowy hands. “Do you understand? I wasn’t petrified!”

“I’m sorry Mimikyu, but I don’t know that word.” Nurse Joy apologized.

Despite the fact that he was hidden beneath his disguise, Mimikyu looked ready to strangle the poor woman.

Pikachu had only seen it for a brief moment himself, but Mimikyu had somehow gotten J’s device to freeze his disguise and only his disguise. Nurse Joy was understandably concerned about the mechanics of that, but there was only so much testing that could reasonably be done when leaving Mimikyu exposed could kill them all.

“You don’t actually care about doing more tests for me, you’re just trying to put off telling her about her Pokemon!” Mimikyu complained, writing the message out for Nurse Joy.

“I sense an imminent disaster outside of the room.” The Absol informed them for the fifth time since the start of the check up.

“You’re really not helping.” Pikachu deadpanned. “I’ve met Absol before, and none of them were like… this.” He vaguely gestured towards the Dark type.

“Perhaps he has a point…” The Kirlia nervously played with her skirt, worry clear in her voice.

“Relax.” The Gardevoir ran a hand through Kirlia’s hair in a soothing motion. “Maria will not care. If the options were a… slight change… or losing me forever, then I know that she would have chosen this outcome every time.”

“For you, perhaps, but I was in her care the entire time, and yet I suffer the same fate.” Kirlia’s eyes narrowed at Mimikyu, though the little fairy didn’t seem to notice, still arguing with Nurse Joy. But her eyes softened. “That is unfair of me. I wished to save you as well, and I knew that sharing with one of distortion involved risk.”

“What does that mean, exactly? I’ve never heard that term used before.” Pikachu inquired.

“A risk is a situation involving-”

“Not that!” Pikachu interrupted Absol’s explanation. He’d been told that the Pokemon belonged to a human, but it must have been a recent thing because he was struggling to comprehend how an Absol of all Pokemon was like this. The ones he’d met in the past had all been the sort of cool, sort of lame edgy types. “I do what I must for the inhabitants of this world at a cost to myself, because I am unworthy of- blah blah blah.” What was the word he’d heard an Alakazam use? Chuuni? Maybe his father was a Psyduck or something, that might explain it…

“I meant the whole one of distortion thing,” Pikachu corrected, looking to the now Psychic and Fairy types for an explanation.

Gardevoir frowned. “It is a rude term that I thought I’d taught Kirlia better than to use.” Her stern tone implied a punishment for the younger Pokemon at a later time.

“Okay, but what does it actually mean?” Pikachu prompted.

Gardevoir sighed. “It means…” She struggled for the words to continue, though Pikachu suspected it was more a matter of how to phrase it politely if it was such a rude term, “... that your friend has some relation to the King of Distortion.”

It was the first time that Pikachu had heard that name, but the way that she said it told him everything.

This “King of Distortion” was a Pokemon of great power, and not one that was liked in Sinnoh. Or at least, not by these Pokemon. Hoenn had seen much the same treatment of its Legends, though which were praised and which were scorned depended on who you asked. Pokemon in the region had been, understandably, very opinionated when the local legends were trying to flood the land or dry up the sea.

Given the fact that Mimikyu and Nurse Joy had just given the two Psychics a lesson on the ins and outs of their new Fairy typing, Pikachu thought it fairly obvious that this “King of Distortion” was some sort of Ghost type Legend. But what would this supposed “relation” be? He and Ash had their suspicions about his little doppelganger, but a relation to a Sinnoh Legend put a bit of a wrench in those ideas…

Unless maybe it was as simple as them both being Ghost types? Though their exact Domains varied, he could attest to the idea that Legends that shared a typing sometimes carried a similar… vibe? A similar feeling. If, like most people and Pokemon, you only ever ran into one at most in your life, he could understand that the similarity would cause confusion. Tell a Kanto native about flames you thought might incinerate your very soul and they would likely think of Moltres, but a Johto native would think of Ho-oh.

Whatever the case though, the fact that such an idea would even be suggested was worrying.

“Well just open the door and I’ll tell her then!” Mimikyu shouted.

Pikachu supposed his worries about this distortion could wait a little while longer.

When Cynthia had ordered all forces within the League to send an alert directly to her if those two had found themselves involved in something serious, she had not expected something like this, and definitely not so soon.

When she’d first gotten the call about them being involved with a Pokemon Hunter of all things, she’d been ready to introduce them to Spiritomb and show that little puppet what a real Ghost type tantrum was like.

But thankfully the reporting officer had cleared things up rather quickly. Still though, for them to be involved in attempted apprehension of criminals…

She gave them the courtesy of waiting until the nurses were through with them before she began her questioning. Using an office that the local Nurse Joy had so graciously offered up for them, she found herself face to face, or in Mimikyu’s case face to disguise, with the Fairy type of the hour, his human companion N, and one… Ash Ketchum? That name seemed familiar, she would have to look into it later. And the way that the boy and his Pikachu mirrored N and Mimikyu… it felt like there was something more to it, though she couldn’t put her finger on what.

“So you’re the Champion of the Sinnoh region?” Ash asked her before she could get a word out.

“I am, yes.” She answered.

“Can we have a battle?!”

Not the sort of reaction she would normally expect in this sort of situation, but she supposed the chance to battle a Champion was a big deal to most trainers. A hint of amusement ran through her as she watched the Pikachu’s cheek sacs give off small sparks.

“Perhaps another time. I’m afraid I’m going to be wrapped up dealing with this and a few other matters for quite some time. For now, though, I’m going to need you to recount the events of your run in with Hunter J for me.”

And so the boys talked. On and on, they told her a tale, with Mimikyu chiming in with his notebook occasionally, that painted a somewhat heroic picture of themselves. Normally she’d think it nothing more than self aggrandizement, but from what she’d heard from the others it didn’t sound too far from the truth. That said, there were gaps in the story. Question was, were those gaps intentional or not?

“I see. I have a few questions about your story. Firstly, the way you told it seemed to suggest that the Gardevoir in question used Teleport on the Absol. Do you see the problem with that?”

N blinked, apparently not having realized the flaw until that moment. So it either wasn’t an intentional lie, or he was quite a good actor. “Absols are Dark types…”

“So?” Ash turned to N. “What does that have to do with anything?”

Mimikyu began writing in his notebook while N continued. “Well, Teleport is a Psychic type move, isn’t it? Shouldn’t that not work on a Dark type?”

“I don’t understand why everyone is so caught up on type immunities. You can totally work past those!”

“Pika-pi!”

That was… well, it was certainly a statement. Whether it indicated that the boy was some sort of savant or a moron was something she wasn’t quite sure of yet. But her thoughts about the Ketchum boy were interrupted when Mimikyu held up his notebook, filled with scribbled out words and phrases from earlier in the conversation. “ミラクルアイ？”

“Miracle Eye?” Cynthia read aloud. “Gardevoir can’t learn Miracle Eye though.” She easily dismissed the idea.

More scribbling followed before Mimikyu showed a very shaky “卵わざ？”

“No, not even as an egg move. There are no Pokemon in the amorphous egg group that can even learn Miracle Eye to pass it on.”

“卵グループ…人？”

“I suppose there are Pokemon in the human-like egg group that can learn it, but why does that matter? The Ralts line isn’t in that egg group.”

“本当？”

“Yes, really-” Cynthia cut herself off with a sigh. She can’t be letting a Pokemon get her worked up like this. “I suppose I’ll have to ask what they know about Gardevoir’s heritage. But would someone like to explain to me why Nurse Joy is out there having to explain to Maria that two of her Pokemon suddenly have a new type?”

“It’s not like any of us know how we’re meant to control that,” N began. “We’ve been avoiding any Pokemon that we… or rather, that Mimikyu knows are susceptible to it, but that’s not exactly foolproof.”

“Well try harder.” Cynthia demanded. “The Shinx is out of the bag with Fairy types now, but just because we can’t completely stop it from spreading means that we want it to suddenly be everywhere overnight!”

“Well what was Mimikyu supposed to do!” Ash shouted. “He already said that he doesn’t know how to control it, and I don’t see you coming up with any ideas! Are you saying that Mimikyu should have just stayed back and let all those Pokemon get captured by Hunter J?!”

“That’s not what I-” Cynthia cut herself off and took a deep breath before continuing with a calmer tone. “That… is not what I meant. I can… understand why you felt the need to intervene, and I can… begrudgingly accept that Kirlia and Gardevoir being infected is better than them being sold off by someone who would interact with the likes of J.”

Nobody else in the room seemed to like the way she worded it, but she would take it if they stopped arguing the point. Even Pikachu scoffed and refused to look her in the eyes.

“J is a… known problem to the League, and we are doing what we can to stop her, but she has proven to be… more resourceful than the average criminal. So I will thank you for acting where the League has been unable to. We both agree that someone like her should not be able to roam free, doing as she pleases.”

That seemed to calm Ash and Pikachu down, though N was still frowning at her and Mimikyu was as unreadable as ever.

“However, I will strongly encourage you to not try something so reckless against someone so ruthless again. You did not have any Pokemon with you who could have handled a real fight against J’s Pokemon, and I think we all know how poorly that could have ended. I am not happy with how things went, but I prefer this to having Officer Jenny show me two body bags.”

Even N softened his gaze at those words, so she thought her point was made.

“I think we’re done here. I’ll be in contact with you if I come up with any more questions. You may leave.”

She watched the boys and their Pokemon walk out of the room, giving it a few moments before she addressed its hidden occupant.

“Well? Did you get anything useful? I know it’s a lot to ask, trying to get information without doing enough to alert them, but I’d rather have them willing to talk to me for the moment, even if that means not getting the full truth.”

“Unfortunately not.” An Alakazam stepped out of the shadows as it spoke into her mind. “The infected one has become too intertwined with its human for me to properly break the veil, and I would not risk my mind by probing too closely with one of its kind. And the other two…”

Cynthia raised a brow. It was unusual for a Psychic of Alakazam’s caliber to find himself lost for words.

“They are marked. I have not accessed the files myself so I cannot be certain without first consulting, but I believe it likely that we have just encountered the Chosen.”

Ah. So that’s why the name was familiar.