Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

I don’t get, thought the girl as she kicked her front door open, hauling two large trash bags behind her, why it’s so hard to give at least a 24-hour notice!!!

Today was supposed to be her day off. She’d been working overtime lately— called in on the one day off she was supposed to have before this. So today should have been all about decomposing and watching the contests that Hoenn held every weekend.

But nooooo. Of course, because her landlord was such an amazing person, she decided to email her at two in the morning with a friendly: “Hey! I’m coming by to check on the water heater!”

So, goodbye relaxation! Hello, gotta panic clean the pigsty so the day off doesn’t end with an eviction!

Whatever. She was almost done at this point. She dragged the bags to the curb where her trash can was, ready to find some way to shove all of it in with the other ones. She flipped open the top and— of course somebody wedged their trash in on top!!! Aghhh!!!!

And it was a recyclable, too. Not that she ever recycled, she thought, picking up the squareish, plasticky toy and placing it on the ground next to the can. The shape was familiar, but she couldn’t place it. Probably some new version of Elmo or something. Sucked that they made him orange. Man, all these new kid show redesigns sucked!

She slung one bag in the can, then the next one. Shoot. It was a little too full now. That would be a fine. She got up on her tippy toes and pressed her weight down on it, feeling it budge but not quite enough. If only she was taller. She put her foot on the pedal thingy that opened it, then tried to grip onto the side of the can with her other foot. Now, she could—-

The trash can made a comical creaking noise as it slowly toppled over, taking her with it. The overflowing trash bags spilled out and scattered garbage everywhere. Including the one where she’d been lazy and just thrown the cups in, liquid and all.

No one was around this early in the morning. So she felt comfortable enough to let out a wail of overdramatic agony.

“Do you need to go to the hospital?” Somebody asked. Oh no, one of her neighbors was awake.

She kept her bright red cheeks hidden by not turning around, using her arm to scoop trash back into the bags. “No. Well, maybe a mental hospital would be nice.”

“I think I could look up the directions, kzzzt.” Uh. Wait. That doesn’t sound very… Human…

She turned around, looking for the source. 

Nobody was there. And she would know! She was on the ground, so it wasn’t like there was some little kid around beneath her. What the heck?

She went back to her trash, wondering if she really did need that mental hospital.

“Sorry.”

She whipped around again. “Hello?” She really didn’t have the time to be dealing with any pranks. Maybe some kid planted a walkie here, too. It would explain the absence of person, the static behind the speech.

This time, however, she noticed that the toy? From earlier? It’d moved from lying facedown to sitting, and was currently staring straight at her. She could have sworn that earlier, it hadn’t had a face at all. Or arms, even. Where did those come from?

“Are you a Pokemon?” she had enough foresight to ask.

The thing or… Pokemon, who had previously held a :{ expression, brightened at her question. “No— Well, partially,” it replied. “I’m a Pokémon, but I’m alzzzo a pokedex! Bzzz!”

“Do you eat trash?” She guessed it was some trubbish cousin or something.

The Pokemon deflates. “No.”

“Okay.” She was finishing up now. She lifted the can back up, cringing at the residue the rotting soda had left all over her arms. Thankfully, her home has a hose attachment out front! She takes a moment to clean her arms. “Then why were you in my trash can? You can stay if you want, but the garbage truck is due soon.”

The Pokémon makes a small noise but doesn’t reply. Okay. She shuts off the hose.

“I’m gonna go inside. It was nice meeting you,” the girl says. It isn’t often you run into a Pokemon that can use telepathy. But there was a Hypno at the local grocery who could use it too… Though, there were some weird rumors about that one actually being a scammer in a costume. But no way would someone just sit hunched over like that all day for a just a couple of dollars. In the Alolan heat, no less!

She dusts her hands off on her shorts and begins the walk back to her porch, when suddenly it hits her.

“Waaaittttt a second,” she says, spinning on her heel until she’s facing the other direction again. “Are you lost?” She did know this toy— err, Pokémon! They’d been advertised here and there as a way to entice new trainers, or people like her who could care less about the trials, to try them. Something about parents not thinking it’s safe to have their kids traveling alone across the waters, or Team Skull activity getting bad. She couldn't remember the name off the top of her head, but she knew it was at least an electric type. “You’re a long way from the lab. You are from there, correct?”

The Pokemon looks hesitant. “Correct,” it buzzes softly.

“Then go back. The Professor probably needs you for research or something.”

“I…” the Pokémon starts. A whirring noise starts up somewhere behind its shell. “I don’t know the way.”

She winces at that, looking over her shoulder. She was down to just needing a good sweep and mop, and then hiding her unfolded clothes under her bed spread. She supposed she could… Take it home, then come back in time to meet her landlord.

The sun was starting to come up, so it wouldn’t be as dark by the time they reached the blocks she wasn’t familiar with. “I could take you real quick.” Was it a bit greedy that she was wondering if the Professor might give her some cash in return? Unless he was broke… Which was the sad case for a lot of teachers around here. Go away, greedy thought.

“Um.” The Pokémon wasn’t very talkative, was it?

She reaches down to lift it carefully, startling it. An emoji flashes on the screen for a brief moment— she can’t tell what it was— and checks her back pocket for her phone. “C’mon. It’s only an hour walk.”

The quick journey carries on in silence, neither party speaking as the world around them slowly begins to wake with birdsong and squeaks of Pichu. They’ve started moving downhill, and she knows the Professor’s place is near the beach. It takes her a moment, when they get there, to realize that the shack is actually what she’s looking for. And she only realizes it after circling it not once, but twice.

“This is his lab, right?” She questions the shy thing in her hands.

“Correct," it replies.

She climbs up the creaking steps, lowering the Pokémon down onto the nice cushioned chair next to the front door. She knocks. 

There’s no answer, so she raps on the door more firmly. Maybe he’s asleep?

Still no answer. It’s a little creepy for a stranger to do, but she jogs over to one of the windows and peers inside. “I don’t think he’s home.” Maybe he went out looking for it and hadn’t gotten back yet.

“I wish I could stay, but I’ve got to get back,” she tells the Pokémon. 

She didn’t think it could look any more miserable, but it somehow managed to. She feels sorry, but she knows it won’t be waiting alone on the porch forever. 

Is it cold? Maybe that’s the problem. She takes off her knitted poncho and drapes it over the orange Pokemon and tucks it in.

“Tell the professor to mail that back to me. Okay? Wait here until he gets back,” she tells the Pokémon.

It blinks at her. She can’t see its mouth under the makeshift blanket. She waves, and descends down the porch to make the journey home.

But not without a quick detour first. She’s starving.

For some ungodly reason, the line is nearly out the door. Who the heck wakes up at 5:30 in the morning for malasadas? Alolan people, apparently. She resists the urge to make a fool of herself and gets into line behind a trainer and his absolutely adorable Houndour. She reaches forward to scritch its little– it growls at her. Understood.

Next to it, its trainer, a young boy in a white polo and pink shorts is arguing with somebody into his phone. She’s not trying to eavesdrop. But he’s right in front of her.

“Mommy, please, I don’t have time for this,” he’s whispering angrily into his phone. “Just send the money. I need it for the next trial ASAP.” Someone replies inaudibly on the other end. “No! How many times do I have to tell you? I gave it away.” Another reply. His voice gets softer: “It was sick or something, I don’t know. Just send the money, alright?”

The girl’s scrolling through pictures on her phone, bored out of her mind. The person at the front of the line is paying for a lot of food by pulling out ones and counting each of them individually.

“No, I don’t need one. I found a Dexter model…” The boy turns to look behind him as her phone suddenly goes off, startling the girl.

She feels heat rise to her face. She forgot that she’d changed her landlord’s number to that bass-boosted audio a while back. She answers it, clearing her throat. “Hello?”

“Good morning!” chirps the elderly woman. “I just went by, good news! We won’t have to replace it just yet. But where were you? You left your front door unlocked. You don’t want to get robbed, do you, sweetie?”

She feels herself going pale as she tries to remember if she had left anything indecent out. “That’s good… No, no, I’m just down the street getting some food.”

“I’d love to join you,” says her landlord, “but I’ve got to get my morning walk in before Bingo later. Oh, and I let your Rotom in. I know you Hoenn folks like it cold, but its too nippy this morning to leave them out!”

She’s used to the older lady rambling to her, but for once, she zeroes in on what she’s saying. “My what?”

“Oh, dear.” She laughs, bright and warm, then coughs at the very end. “My mistake! Well, don’t worry. You can just let them out when you get back. They’re a sweet little thing! I didn’t know they made them with such detailed maps! Did you know there's a trail just a mile away with a quaint waterfall? Maybe I ought to buy the niblings one, now that they're getting old enough. They have worse directions than I do. Must be the Galar in them from their mother. Anyway, toodles!”

Before the older woman has even hung up, the girl steps out of line and rushes for the door. She doesn’t know much about the Pokemon native to this region– but any idiot would know that ghost-type Pokemon are lethal. 

If I die because some freaky doll stole my skin, she thinks, sprinting past a man with a leafblower before he can move it out of her way, hitting her with dust, or it takes my soul or... Wait, what if it steals money?! My mom's jewelry! No! The thought terrifies her more than unaliving. Harriet, I'm either gonna kill you, or die and then haunt you and all your little grandkids!!!

Chapter Text

It’s at the exact moment that she flings her front door open that she remembers one of the most important rules of being a human.

That is, to not go chasing after wild Pokemon without one of your own!

And it’s that realization that leads to her tripping over the rubber stopper at the bottom of her door, slamming face first onto the hardwood on the other side.

Awesome!!!

She takes a minute to let the pain radiating across her face lessen. Maybe ghost type Pokemon are kinder here than in Hoenn, and they’ll let her lay on the floor for a bit while she recovers.

Also, is that the tv? She doesn’t remember leaving it on.

“Are you–” Oh, no. No, no, no.

The girl lifts her head, but doesn’t take a swing like she’d planned. In fact, she doesn’t move her arm at all. Just stares at the orange Pokemon who she most definitely had dropped off at the lab earlier, while looking as though she was imitating a Sealeo on land.

That IQ test was lying. Maybe she really doesn’t have above average intelligence. “Are you serious?” she can’t keep the frustration out of her voice. “Please tell me you’re a Rotom, and that I don’t have two problems in my house right now.”

“I am… But, problem? Huh?” The Pokemon– Rotom, frowns at her.

“Yes! I thought I told you to go home.” She gets up onto her knees, then uses an arm table to help herself up fully. “I mean, I thought I took you home. What are you even doing here?”

“You forgot thizzz,” the Rotom floats off the ground, confirming that it is most definitely a ghost type. It moves over to her chair, brandishing both arms at her… Poncho.

“I told you to just have the professor mail it,” she says flatly. She had said that, right?

The Rotom stares at her. Then, it slowly drifts back down to the ground. “You zzzeem mad.” Another emoji pops onto its screen. This time, she can read the image before it disappears. Worry?

Urrghh. She’s more mad about tripping over the doorframe than anything. She probably did forgot to tell it to mail the clothing back to her. “Go home.”

It doesn’t say anything to that. So, she repeats herself: “Go on! Go home!”

“I don’t… Think…” She can hear the internal whirring of its fans again. “I don’t know the way. Zzzo.”

One eyebrow tilts upward at that. “Then how did you get back here?” she asks. “And my landlord met you. She mentioned you have a map.”

She catches the exclamation point that appears across its screen for half a second. “It’zzz. Broken.”

She stares at the Pokemon. Then puts one hand to her forehead, pulling out her phone with the other. “I’ll just call the Professor.” His number must be on Google.

She doesn’t expect the Pokemon to surge forward, snatching the phone out of her hands with its paddles. It flies up to the ceiling, holding it out of her reach.

“Stop it! Give that back now!” She tries to reach for it but the Pokemon is at least a foot above her. “I’m not playing with you. You need to go home.”

“No!” it exclaims, voice distorted from how loudly it erupts from its speaker. “I mean. Pleazzze don’t make me? Zzzt?”

She exhales slowly. “Why not?”

“I can’t zzzee him right now.” Their eyes shift away from the girl, guilty. “We got into a… Nazzzty fight.”

She remembers that she’s talking to a Pokemon. Feeling a bit bad for jumping to annoyance, she tries to approach the situation like she’s chatting with a toddler. “I’m sure that whatever happened, the Professor is more worried about where you are than… Whatever happened.”

“I’m not zo zzzure,” the Pokemon responds, clutching her phone to its chest.

She supposes she has no choice but to humor it. “What happened, then? I won’t judge.”

The Pokemon stares at her for a long moment. “Can’t I zzztay here for a while?”

“Give me my phone.”

Rotom holds it higher.

“I’m not calling the professor,” she adds, rolling her eyes.

Rotom finally relents. She holds out her hands and it drops the phone into them. “Thank you,” she says. She immediately unlocks it and looks up the Pokemon’s information in her web browser. She can hear the Pokemon drift closer to her, floating behind her over her shoulder, but it drifts away as she scrolls down the long article. Hey, she wasn’t lying about that not calling the Professor thing.

At least not right now, while Rotom is looking.

She’s disappointed when the article barely gives her any context into what she’s dealing with right now. Though, at the very least, the article clarifies that Rotom aren’t one of the many lethal ghost types. So there’s that.

“What are you going to do, then?” she asks the Pokemon.

“Can’t I zzztay here for a while? Pleazzze?” it asks her.

“Yeah, no.” No way. “I can’t afford Pokemon food right now. Or any of the other necessities you probably need.”

“But I don’t need food!” Rotom exclaims. “Just an… Electricity zzzource. Bzzz.”

“I can’t afford that, either,” she responds. Higher electric bill? No thank you.

The Rotom flaps its arms frantically. “Then, then I’ll wait for a thunderzzztorm, or, or! I can zzztay charged for a couple of dayzzz without any… Or…” Yet again, it drops down onto her wooden floor. “It wazzz a really bad fight,” it adds, pleadingly.

She raises her hands into the air. “I give up,” she relents, trying to not express the annoyance she feels as the orange Pokemon immediately cheers up. “You can stay. Now let me finish cleaning.” She shoves her phone back into her pocket, going for the broom and dust pan. Maybe if some time passes, she can reapproach this topic and get better results.

It’s an hour of deep cleaning later that she decides to call. She steps away from the room she’s finished mopping, careful not to alert the Pokemon picking up specks of dirt off the ground one by one.

She didn’t tell them to do that. But it was helping, at least.

She holes herself up in the bathroom and sits on the edge of the tub, googling the professor’s name. The number pulls up and she hits call, waiting for him to pick up.

It rings once, twice, three times– then swaps to the automated ‘out of service’ message.

Okay. Old number, maybe? She scans the results for another. Unfortunately, there aren’t any.

She tries the first one again. Same result.

Crap. Now what is she supposed to do?

Nothing, apparently. Because she’s not in the mood to walk all the way back to that beach again. What if the professor still isn’t there? Then she’d be wasting her time. And it would be a hassle to try and convince the Pokemon to follow her there. Maybe she could trick it? No, that would be a little mean. But, aghh, she doesn’t want it to stay here, either. That article had mentioned them occasionally chewing on cords, and the only ones she had available were all in use!

She sets water to boil on the stove and leans on the counter, scrolling through social media on her phone. Like always, her mom has flooded her feed with images of that one protagonist from the terrible detective series. There’s even shirtless photos of him from the one fanservice episode where they’re just playing volleyball. Her mom has her tagged in that one.

“You like,” (if she hadn’t heard the fans in its shell as it drew near, she definitely would have jumped) “Detective Laki?” Rotom asks.

“No,” she answers honestly. “It’s awful. But my mom loves those cheesy shows like it’s her lifeblood or something.”

“Bibibi…” She glances up to see Rotom covering its screen with both arms. “I was juzzzt tezzzting you! It’s awful!”

Huh. “Really? I was kidding. Laki is awesome.”

She almost laughs at the bewilderment the Pokemon expresses. “I– Well, I wazzz! Pi… I… Laki is…”

“Kidding again!” she says. “No, I really don’t like it. I can’t get into it at all.”

The Rotom is displaying that worried emoji again on its screen. There are some question marks there, too.

Now she feels bad. “I was just teasing you.” She wonders if Rotom like being petted. The article said not to, but it only mentioned a base form. This didn’t look like that. She lifts her hand to pat it, but the Pokemon pulls away. No pets. Got it. She goes back to her dinner.

The girl dumps rice into the pot and covers it, then heads off to her bedroom to start folding those clothes.
...The clothes that are already folded neatly on her bed.

“Rotom?” she calls out. It occurs to her that it might have a nickname, and she should ask at one point what it is.

“What’zzz wrong?” The Pokemon is at her side so quickly, she wonders if it had been sneaking up behind her again.

“Did that old lady fold my clothes? Please tell me she didn’t.” She picks up the folded pajama shirt that most definitely says “GIVE ME YOUR MILK” in bold-faced text.

“M-maybe,” the Pokemon buzzes. “Were they not… Zzzupposed to be folded?” She can see the face they’re making without turning around.

“Hmm.” Is all she says. That woman!

“Are you mad?” Rotom asks her.

“More like, horrified that she sees what I wear to bed.”

“I can fix it!” the Pokemon suggests. “Here, let me juzzzt–”

She brushes it away from her laundry with a gentle hand. “It’s alright.”

For some reason, Rotom only looks more distressed. Their hands have flown to their screen. “Sorry,” it says, leaving her side to do… Whatever it does when she’s not looking.

She really should get a hold of Professor Kukui, she thinks, putting her clothes into drawers. What a weird little Pokemon.

She tries again and again, but none of the calls go through. She’s separating rice onto two plates when she tries one last time, then gives up and focuses on cutting up meat that will fit in a mouth that isn’t anywhere near as big as hers is.

She approaches the couch from behind. The Rotom is watching the discovery channel, she thinks.

“Here,” she says. She doesn’t comment on the way the Pokemon startles, flicking the TV off with the remote that had been sitting at its side.

“I don’t need food,” it reminds her.

“You don’t have to eat it,” she states. “I’ve never actually cared for a Pokemon before. I have no idea what I’m doing.”

“Do you want me to eat it?” Rotom asks, tilting its head.

“Just do whatever you want.”

“But what do you want me to do?” It presses.

She gives him a strange look. “Eat it if you’re hungry. Or don’t.” She settles down on the couch, turning the TV back on. The Rotom seems to tense at that– and if it wasn’t so skittish, she might have teased it about watching something it shouldn’t.

She’s grinning at the idea when the Rotom says, softly. “Sorry.”

She frowns. There’s an idea that’s beginning to form in her mind, but she isn’t sure she likes it.

The next morning, she considers calling the professor again but… Doesn’t. Mainly because something that’s probably just paranoia had wormed its way into her head as she laid in bad last night.

She tries to test the waters by asking Rotom, after a good night’s sleep, what their fight had been about. But Rotom only dodges the question, growing more upset the longer she tries.

She gives up.

But surely… The professor wasn’t somebody who would mistreat Pokemon, right? Like, that wasn’t just something that happened around here and she was just too daft to realize it?

No, no. There was no way. Someone would notice. Or would they? It’s not like she’d ever been around him long enough to know.

But she can’t just keep the Pokemon around, waiting on her tail end for answers to come. She was going to have to work today, and she was nervous about what the Pokemon might do while she was gone.

Clean, probably. That’s all it had been doing since it’d gotten in. She’d barely cleaned her plate when it’d disappeared from the living room table, reappearing on her drying rack. (And she thought that had just been her scatterbrained self at fault.)

She gets home that night to her place still in tact. And, thankfully, all of her corded appliances seemed in order.

Even after having a day of mindless work and endless thoughts about going home, she still wasn’t sure what to do here.

Yet again, as soon as she swings the door open, the TV shuts off. She barely catches the Pokemon Center commercial that was playing.

Wait. There’s an idea. A Nurse Joy would certainly know what to do! “Rotom?”

“What’zzz wrong?” it asks, peeking over the back of the couch at her. Of course.

“Nothing. I just wanted to take you to get checked out, is all?”

“Checked out? Bzzz?” It’s alarm is clear. “Why? Did I do zzzomething wrong?”

Urghhhh. “No. Just come with me, yeah?”

The Pokemon doesn’t move.

Exasperated, she adds. “I promise I’m not taking you to the professor.”

The Pokemon relents after a few heartbeats, floating towards her cautiously.

The girl tries not to spend too much time staring at all the bits and pieces of the healing station up close, focusing instead on getting the lady with the pink hair’s attention while Rotom is away with one of the other employees. “Hey, can I talk to you for a second?”

“Of course, sweetie. What do you need?” This is definitely someone who would know what to do.

“I’m kind of having a situation here.” Mrs. Joy tilts her head, motioning for her to go on. “That’s not my Pokemon… It just kind of showed up at my house the other day, and now it won’t leave.”

“Not to worry. We have resources that can help with rehoming them, either with humans or back in the wild… Though… Hmm.” The lady taps her chin with a manicured finger. “Rotom Dex formes aren’t generally wild. It must have slipped away from its trainer and gotten lost.”

“That’s another thing I’m worried about,” the girl says. “I’ve never had a Pokemon before, but… Something just feels… Off? For lack of a better word?”

“How so?”

“Do Pokemon normally act so nervous? Is it just the species?”

“Rotom, from my knowledge, are either very mischievous or very helpful,” Nurse Joy replies. “I don’t believe that’s a behavior I’ve seen in one before. But they’re not exactly an Alolan species. Not yet, at least.”

“I don’t want to use the big A word,” the girls says, slowly. “But I’m starting to wonder.”

“Don’t worry,” Nurse Joy says. “Give me a moment. I’ll go take a look with my assistant.”

The girl waits at the counter, not entirely sure why she feels more anxious the longer she waits for one of the employees to return. A comfey floats close to her and nuzzles her cheek. Finally, a Pokemon that lets her pet it! She needs this right now.

Nurse Joy emerges. Her expression isn’t as dark as she’d expected. “There’s nothing wrong–” Relief threatens to sweep her off her feet, but then the nurse continues: “At least not physically. You’re right. It is acting strange. It seemed more concerned that you hadn’t left than what we were trying to ask it.”

“So..?” she presses.

“The best person to ask would be Professor Kukui. He would know who your Rotom belongs to, I know the dex form comes with serial numbers that are paired to their trainers.”

Wait. She hadn’t considered that. Did Rotom have a trainer, or was it Kukui they belonged to?

“I keep trying to get ahold of him, but he won’t answer,” the girl says.

“You’re using the #### number, correct?” Nurse Joy asks.

“No, it’s the… Give me a moment.” She checks. “No, I’ve been using this one.” She shows the screen of her phone to the nurse.

“Ah. My apologies. I thought they would have updated it by now. No, it’s this one.”

The girl takes the piece of paper from the nurse after she finishes writing on it. “Would it be okay if I stepped away for a second?”

“Not a problem,” Nurse Joy tells her. “But do you have a charger for their shell? I think we might have a spare one somewhere you could borrow. Let me go see.”

Awesome. That was all she had to say for Nurse Joy, who had probably just solved every single one of her problems in mere moments. She walks out of the building and finds a quiet alleyway, then calls.

“Alola! Who's this?”

“Professor?” She knows it’s him, but she wants to make sure.

“One of them. What’s up?”

“Hey, so, you don’t know me,” she starts, stunfisking for words, “but I think I’ve come across one of your Pokemon. Did you lose a Rotom?”

“Nnnnnooo? No. I’ve been out, and we generally don’t leave working Pokemon unattended for too long. Do you have the serial number?”

“No.” She flips the paper over, then finds it on the back. God bless that woman! “Wait, no! Here it is.” She reads it off to the professor.

“Huh.” There’s a long pause on the other end. “I think I remember. That Rotom belongs to one of the recent trial members. Where did you find them?”

“In my trash can.” It sounds a lot worse than it had when she’d first found them. She still didn’t understand what it had been doing in there. Did the article have some information she’d missed, maybe?

“In it? Are you sure?” She can hear the bewildered tone clear as day. “Not on it, maybe? Around it?”

“No. Inside with the lid closed.”

“Where are you at now? Do you still have them?” He pulls the phone away from his ear and she can hear him speaking to someone she can’t see, but she can’t make the words out.

“I’m on Melemele. I don’t live too far from your lab.”

“I’m not there. I’m in Kanto right now– Listen, would you mind holding onto them for a while? I need some time to get ahold of its trainer. Something might have happened. We sometimes get them returned, but they generally don’t turn up missing without a single phone call.”

Now there were even more possibilities. Could their trainer have been murdered? Was that something that happened in Alola?

But why had Rotom been so against going back to Kukui? “I tried to take them to your lab, but they came right back to my house. And now they won’t do anything but freak out when I mention you. They said you had a nasty fight.”

“I don’t remember anything like that.” She searches his tone for any mal intent, but only finds confusion. “I haven’t seen that Rotom in months.”

She doesn’t have anything to say to that. “So, I’ll hold onto them until..?”

“Until I get back, yeah,” Professor Kukui says. “Give me some time. I hope it isn’t too much trouble.”

“No, no!” Her electric bill might say otherwise… Food bill, too, since she’d taken to supplying them small portions of her own. “It’s okay. They seem to be fine in my house.”

Professor Kukui is kind enough to give her advice on their care, mentioning the charging situation just as Nurse Joy had. The call ends and, instead of relief, she feels more uneasy than ever.

What happened?

Chapter Text

Rotom is quiet when they head back home. So is she. She has a lot to think about.

Thankfully, the charger isn’t an issue. It’s Bluetooth— and here she’d been worried that she’d need to convince Rotom to leave their shell to use it. You just plugged the base into the wall, and all you had to do was set the shell (and in this case, Rotom, too) down on it for it to work.

She thinks that it must be uncomfortable to sleep sitting up, so she takes care to form a makeshift mattress out of some old clothes and add a pillow. She doesn’t have a spare blanket, but she still has the knitted poncho. It kinda counts.

She goes to work the next morning. Comes home to find her house cleaner (she wished she could get them to stop doing that, it wasn’t their job) and no calls. But there’s a text from Kukui that just says he’s trying to find relatives as, apparently, the trainer isn’t answering.

She tries not to think about the possibility of them being dead again and instead looks for Rotom. She finds them curled up on their charger, but they startle awake when the floorboards creak under one of her work shoes.

“Bbbbb…” Their paddles are as clasped together as they can be, floating above their bed and guilty for… Some reason. “Hi…”

“Did you want to come with me? I wanted to go for a walk before it gets too late.”

“Uhh. Zzzure!” They reply. She can’t decipher the emoji that flashes on their screen.

She’s exhausted, to be honest, but she had been hoping that maybe Rotom would open up to her in a different environment. She doesn’t want to force the Pokémon to tell her anything— but it would be very helpful if she could at least know whether or not the poor trainer was still around.

But she can’t seem to think of anything to talk about. She can hear a Rockruff barking somewhere up ahead. Or at least, she thinks that’s what it is.

It occurs to her that Rotom also functions as a Pokedex.

“Rotom,” she says, ignoring the way the Pokemon tenses, even while facing the other direction. “If you’re a pokedex, does that mean you know *all* the Pokemon?”

“Yezzz. And no. I only have the Alolan dex registered. Even then, itzzz not that much.”

It’s the most they’ve said in a while. “Oh, so you’re blank when you start? Like the regular ones?"

“Yes… We have to fill in the pages ourselvezzz.” They’ve turned to face her now. “Why? Did you need zzzomething?”

“I’m just curious.”

They’re making that :{ face.

She tries a different approach. “Do you like being a Pokedex forme? The article said there’s more kinds, but I’ve only seen you in this one.”

They float quietly above the girl. “Do you like Pokemon?”

“Hey,” she huffs. “Answer my question first.”

“Sorry,” is all they say at first.

They pause. “Itzzz… Boring.” She knows immediately that they’re doing that thing again. Where they’re watching her reaction as they answer, flipping the script if they even think she’s lost interest.

Crap. Hold on. She immediately launches into a different conversation, hoping maybe it will give her some progress. She doesn’t know. She’s drawing all the wrong straws right now. “I’ve never been into the whole trainer and Pokedex thing. Back home, you can either get into gyms or contests. And contests usually don’t require a dex.”

“Where are you from?”

The corners of her mouth lift at that. “Hoenn. It’s a lot less lively, but it’s where I grew up. I’m attached, boring or not.”

“But you’re in Alola?” They tilt, curious.

“It’s personal.” She says it so fast that she wishes she hadn’t. “I mean, some stuff just happened. I felt like it would be better if I left and started somewhere new.”

She knows it’s only a Pokémon, but she doesn’t feel comfortable giving all of the details.

“You watch the contests a lot. I notizzzed.”

“Do you know much about them?”

“Zzzort of.” She beams, motioning with a roll of her hands for them to continue. “Professor Kukui watches them, zzzometimes. For his research.”

“They’re pretty fun. I understand them a lot more than I do the battles. I mean, all the little stuff… Like IVs, Ubers, the strategies… I can’t keep up,” she says. “But in contests, it’s just about caring for your Pokemon. There’s the whole beauty aspect, sure, and the costumes— but it’s not as stressful. And the Pokémon don’t come out of it as hurt.”

“I don’t like battling, either. Itzzz not fun.”

She asks, “Are you saying that because you think that’s what I want to hear?” She can’t tell.

Wrong answer. Rotom deflates, looking guilty.

“You don’t have to lie to make me like you.” She turns away from them, hoping to take some pressure off. “Honest. I’d be a lot happier, actually, if you’d just open up.”

“Sorry,” Rotom says, off to the side.

She ignores it. “A lot of people think contests are stupid. They’re a waste of time, and there aren’t many schools or even scholarships for it… Plus, it’s a hard industry to get into. If you aren’t winning, you aren’t making money. And if you don’t have any money in the first place, you’re out of luck.”

“There are no contezzzts in Alola,” Rotom comments.

“I know.”

“And you want to enter them, yezzz? Or just watch?”

“It’s too late for me to get into all that.” For the first time, Rotom expresses an emotion that’s not some offshoot of that face they keep making. Indignance, perhaps? She waves them off, either way. “I’m okay with just watching them, I think.”

A comfortable silence settles between them, though she has a feeling Rotom wanted to say more, judging by the way they keep glancing over at her when they think she’s not looking. They don’t, however.

The sun is setting by the time they’ve hit a dead end, and they start the trek back.

She’s momentarily distracted by a Mareep that’s wandered onto the path, who she gladly gives double handed scritches to.

“Be careful,” Rotom warns her. “Mareep carry the zzztatic ability, and it will make getting back home a lot harder, if you contract paralysis from it. Kzzzt!”

She knew her hair was already rising just from touching the Pokémon, but she gave them more pets anyway. “Does anything you have in there say why they make such dangerous Pokemon so cute?”

“Maybe itzzz because of the food chain.”

The answer surprises her, and she laughs. “Oh, I get it. Weed out the dumb people.”

“No, no! I didn’t mean—“

“I’m joking,” the girl says. The Mareep pulls away to roll around on the ground, taking a dirt bath. “I know you don’t mean any harm.”

“But… Bibibibi… I zzzhouldn’t have said it,” Rotom says. “I’ll shut up.”

“No!” She turns around a bit too quickly, feeling the edges of her version blur. “Really, really, it’s okay! I’m glad you’re talking to me.”

“Really?”

“Really,” she says. The Mareep nearly bowls her over as it plays near her feet, kicking up dust. She can’t help but pet it again. So. Cute.

“Do you like me?” Rotom asks, circling her head.

“Of course I do,” she replies easily. “Do you like me?” She teases.

“Of course I do!” They exclaim.

“Well, I’m glad," she says. "Uh."

Now would be a good time to ask them about what happened. But what if it ends badly?

She has to know, she thinks. “Rotom, what happened with your last trainer?”

“Bi…”

She doesn’t like the way they seem moments away from bolting, so she amends, “If you don’t want to talk about it, you don’t have to!” She hopes they don’t take this as ‘never bring up the topic again’, because what if Kukui doesn’t find that trainer? And then she’d be lying to them in too many ways for it to not seem malicious. If it came to that, the police would definitely need to interview them.

“How did you know… I had a trainer?” They’ve pulled away from her now.

“I saw a trainer walking around with one of you at work and just guessed you might have had one.” She tries and fails to remember what the lying cues are. She hopes that either she’s not doing any of them, or Rotom just doesn’t know them either. “Did they get hurt? Is that why you’re not with them?”

Rotom stares at her. She wishes she could know what they’re thinking. “No,” they answer.

She’ll have to text Kukui later— she hopes he hasn’t started entering that girl or boy, or??? Whatever they might be, into the missing person systems yet.

Unless Rotom is lying to her. And the trainer is dead, and they’re just too scared to tell her that.

She reaches down to pet the Mareep one last time, but instead of at her feet, the Pokemon is peeking at her from a bush. It bounds out of it and away, into the woods.

And then, to make matters worse, she only realizes Rotom has gone once she’s turned around.

Nothing is out of place when she gets home. She doesn’t have to look far to find Rotom, noticing that they’ve burrowed into their bed again.

“You okay?” She asks, poking the lumpy blanket.

She can see one of their lights through a spot in the poncho where the knitting has come undone, but they don’t say anything. Maybe they want her to think they’re asleep?

“Okay.” It occurs to her, not for the first time, that she has no idea how to handle something like this. “Goodnight. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She walks away to look for her phone. She thought she’d brought it with them— but the lump in her pocket had actually been the remote. High intelligence at work, ladies and gentleman. Her phone is actually on the floor near the front door, and she very nearly steps on it before she sees it.

She sends a text off to Kukui: “I asked if their trainer had been hurt. They said no.”

She figures he’s sleeping, but he immediately fires back with another text. “Too many dead ends. They don’t use social media. Alerted the trial captains, hoping for some information soon. Keep your fingers crossed.”

Well, ‘they don’t’ is a hopeful sign. The professor doesn’t think they’re dead, at least.

The next morning she does the usual. Make breakfast, separate some for Rotom in case they decide they want to try it. She goes to turn on the tv— they seem more comfortable watching when they think she’s chosen the channel— but the remote doesn’t work.

She turns it over. The batteries must have run out or… no, eroded? Really? She’s gonna have to clean that out later. Or buy a new remote. She knew it was a terrible idea to be using those random batteries she’d found on the street.

She tries the power switch on the TV then. It… Also doesn’t work?

Wait. No, no. They didn’t. They wouldn’t have.

She turns the monitor around and finds the plug parts of the cable still inside the TV, but the length of it is sprawled across the floor, torn and split in four places. When she picks one section up, the only wire left inside is the yellow. So she can’t electrician tape it back together, either.

Don’t freak out. She had some Christmas money saved for her mom, and that should be enough to get a new one. And even if not, she can still watch on her phone. Though, that will eat up a lot of her data.

But that’s a good sign. Right? Rotom felt comfortable enough to be more like its species. She tries to replace her disappointment with that fact.

She comes home later with the new cable, doesn’t mention it to Rotom. At first. But she’s worried it might happen again, and then she won’t have anything to put on for Rotom while she’s gone.

They haven’t moved from their charger yet. “Rotom, just so you know—“ she can see them jolt under the blanket “— the TV cables are expensive. But if you like eating them, I could find some spare ones at one of the recycling plants. Okay?”

They don’t answer. Maybe some more time out would help? “Did you want to go for a walk again?”

“No.”

She frowns. “Okay.” She supposes she’ll go herself, just to chat with her mom a bit. It’s been a while.

The Mareep had been on the trail again. She’d spent an embarrassing amount of time playing tug of war with it, as it’d walked up to her carrying an enormous plush sausage. No wonder it’d been so friendly! It was tame.

She gets home and the TV is off. Weird. They usually didn’t mess with it if she puts it on.

She heads to the kitchen, a little hungry. The sink is full of soap. She frowns. She’s going to have to tell Rotom it’s not necessary for them to clean. Or maybe just mention that she can do it, too? She’s okay with it if it’s a fun activity for them, but not if they feel like they have to.

She feels around in there for the sink plug. But then she immediately rips her hand out, brushing something unfamiliar. Very… Sevipery, and she’s getting flashbacks about that one time the news had said that one had gotten into the sewers and was coming out through people’s kitchen sinks.

But there aren’t any snake pokemon in Alola. She thinks? She’ll have to ask Rotom.

Carefully, she uses a knife to pull up whatever is in there, bracing herself.

It’s!.. It’s… Her brand new TV cable is soaking in the sink.

They don’t understand, she reminds herself, though she’s crushed that she’s just lost a good 43 bucks just like that. Don’t be upset. They probably think they’re helping. Don’t be upset. It’s okay.

She doesn’t say anything to them as she passes, setting the ruined cable across the windowsill. Then, she changes her mind, transferring it to the trash. There's no chance sunlight will fix that.

She notices the blanket Rotom is hiding under shuffling again. She doesn’t scold them. Just decides to finish dinner, give them a portion, and then head to bed.

Maybe mom will have some money leftover after she pays rent.

It occurs to her the next day that Rotom has barely said more than two words to her in the last 24 hours. They haven’t moved from their charger, still. Or at least when she’s around, they refuse to. Surely it doesn’t take that much time to charge?

The couch cushions have been opened and the stuffing strewn about. She doesn’t comment on it. Just puts it all back and mentally notes that she should reread that care article again, and get them some teething toys or something. She doesn’t know.

Professor Kukui calls her as she’s almost through the front door, heading for work. She remembers Rotom and stays outside, cold breeze and all, sitting on the porch to answer.

“He— Alola, Professor!”

“Good news!” The fact that he’s even calling in the first place is telling already, but alright. “We found him. He said it’s a misunderstanding.”

“What?” She has no idea what that means.

“He meant to return the Rotom Dex, but it must have gotten lost on the way back to my lab. I gave him a good lecture. He was awfully sorry, in fact. Crying. Said he didn’t realize he was supposed to do it in person and didn’t know Rotom can’t be on their own like that.”

“Okay. But why did I find them in my trash can?”

“About that,” Kukui continues. “That’s what set him off. When I asked him about it, he seemed to think Rotom was hurt on their way home and freaked out.”

That… Kind of makes sense. The Alolan trials weren’t for everybody, and she imagined the kid must be pretty young. She couldn’t see a preteen doing this much damage. “Do you think Team Skull got to them?”

“Possibly,” Professor Kukui says. “But I don’t know for sure. You know— in Galar, they’ve got a lot of laws over Rotom and their usages.”

He stops. She doesn’t say anything, and he starts up again: “Maybe we oughta bring some of them over here.”

She hears the phone shuffling around against his ear, then Kukui asks: “I’ll be back in Alola in a couple of hours. Could you bring Rotom down sometime today?”

Oh. She’s relieved, but a little sad. Thats selfish, though. She knows she can’t care for them. She doesn’t have any Pokemon for a reason. It’s just too expensive, and they need more care than she can give if she’s at work all day. “I’ll try. Maybe I can get the day off.”

“If you can’t, it’s alright. Just bring them when you can.”

She nods, though Kukui can’t see it. “Of course! Thank you so much, Professor. You’ve been awesome.”

“It’s my job,” she can hear the smile in his voice. “But you’re welcome. Goodbye, be safe.”

“Bye,” she says, hanging up. It suddenly occurs to her that she’s forgotten her house keys again, and she doesn’t want another lecture from her landlord about safety. She slides her phone in her pocket and opens the front door, barely turning her head in time to see the glass plate that frisbees over her and shatters on the porch behind her.

It takes her way too long to process this. It takes her even longer to realize that Rotom, standing on top of the back of her couch, was the only one who could have thrown it.

“Why?” A lot of things run through her head. 'Whats wrong with you?' 'Don’t do that!' 'I could have gotten a concussion!' But ‘why’ is the only word she manages.

“You’re a liar!” She wonders how it doesn’t hurt them, the way its voice distorts as it erupts from their speakers. “You said you wouldn’t! You promised!”

“What?” She asks.

“ZZZtupid!” Rotom responds. “I know what you’ve been doing! You’ve been talking to the profezzzor the whole time, you’re a— pretending to be my friend— you’re a liar!”

“Professor Kukui isn’t going to hurt you.” She is not equipped to deal with this. Her anxiety is going overboard, mind still stuck on the fact she’d almost been sent to the hospital. “He’s—“

“Bi…Bibibi… You… Bi…” There’s a word that seems to be caught in their metaphorical throat, what are they trying to— “BITCH! I hate you!”

“That’s not okay,” she says, as they retreat to hide in their bed. She follows them. “I don’t talk to you like that, why would you say something so awful?”

The lumpy blanket doesn’t answer, using their paddle to pull the pillow over themselves to hide further.

“And the plate— you don’t do that! You could have killed me!” She knows it’s not a good idea to hover over them, but she doesn’t feel like she can just walk away from this one. The cables were an accident, but this?

“Then send me back to the Profezzor,” they snap, muffled. “Throw me away! Zzztupid. Just shut up. Nobody even likes you.”

“I’m not taking you back,” she says without thinking. She throws her hands up into the air. “Do whatever you want. I was just trying to help.”

It’s probably not the best idea to leave them, but she’s already out the door again and leaping over the glass shards. She makes it halfway down the street before she changes her mind. She can't go to work like this.

“They don’t want to see you,” she texts the Professor.

Chapter Text

She doesn’t know what to do, so she does what she normally does when she’s worked up. She paces up and down the street. She must look crazy, but she doesn’t care.

It only takes a minute or so for Professor Kukui to call her again. She… Really doesn’t want to risk being an emotional mess on the phone, so she lets it go to voicemail and opens her messages app instead. She stops pacing to text her mom that she’s having a bad day. That won’t help her current situation, but it does make her feel better to vent. Even if it’s as vague as it could possibly be.

While she waits for her mom to respond, Kukui’s own message appears in a chat bubble at the top of her phone: “What happened? Are you alright?”

This isn’t about her. “I’m fine,” she lies, typing with one finger. “But Rotom flipped out because I’ve been talking to you.”

“Did they say why?”

“No,” she sends back.

Her mom has started mass texting her images of things that she must think will cheer her up. She sends photos of cute Pokemon, of some Corphish blowing bubbles at the sea, of baby Pokemon and that one famous coordinator from Hoenn. The underdog who she'd looked up to simply because she had fought her way to the top from absolutely nothing. “It isn’t lunchtime. Don’t say that just yet. I love you!”

It’s immediately followed up by a massive, overly pixelated photo of a shirtless Detective Laki winking with both of his thumbs up. The caption is horrific: ‘Don’t worry, Baby. I’ll “solve” your problems!”

The girl busts out laughing, because she is absolutely certain her mom has no idea that it’s meant to be sexual. She knows by now that her mom will save anything and everything to her phone that has Laki on it. Anything.

While she fires off a thank you, Professor Kukui has replied: “Gotta get on the plane. I’ll call when I have service again. Is that cool?”

She tells him that it’s okay. Remembers that she should probably call her job, or… Her coworkers called in through text all the time. She could do that, couldn’t she?

It’s unprofessional as heck, but it’s only retail. And she doesn’t have to energy to come up with some excuse over a phone call for why her voice is so shaky.

Okay. Now, that that's over with, she can…

What *can* she do?

She stands there with her hand to her chin, trying to put herself into the shoes of Detective Laki. (Yes, her mom had forced her to watch the show a bit as a child.) So… Rotom’s trainer had meant to return them, but sent them off on their own to Kukui’s lab. In that span of time, something had happened to Rotom, and they’d ended up in her trash can. Kukui was helping; he seemed as confused as she was by their behavior, but at the same time– Rotom was extremely against seeing him.

If she were a movie protagonist, she would be doing something active. She’d be going back into her house, demanding answers from Rotom or… No, that would be the dumbest thing she could possibly do right now. Maybe investigate on her own? But how? She didn’t have any leads. And it wasn’t like the perpetrator was just going to be standing outside her house, ready to answer any and all of her questions.

Ugh. Ugh! She wasn’t even entirely sure why she was getting so involved in this. The easy answer would be to wait for Kukui to come back, then force them back into his care to deal with it. The Professor was a Pokemon expert, so it wouldn’t be far-fetched to believe he could handle it on his own.

Yet. The idea faded from her mind, dismissed by her own feelings at resorting to that. It felt wrong to think that way. Very wrong.

She doesn’t know what else to do, so she walks back to where she’d first discovered the orange Pokemon. Her trash can has already been emptied… Dang it! She was hoping to maybe find something in there.

She frowns, eyes drifting over to her neighbor’s light pink abode. They’ve already started putting up Christmas decorations, and it isn’t even Halloween yet. Her eyes are drawn to the giant Santa plastered on their door.

Wait a second!!!

She’s already sprinting up their walkway. A doorbell camera! They have a doorbell camera!

She pounds on the door, then suddenly remembers that she must still look so frazzled. She brushes her hair with her hands, wipes her eyes, and the door opens.

“Yes?” It’s their daughter. She doesn’t open the door more than she has to.

“Hey, sorry,” she says, “But I was wondering if I could look at your camera footage from the other day? I think there’s been a Pokemon going through my trash, but I need to know what it is before I put out some–” not traps, as her mind had immediately supplied “-deterrents.”

The teenager frowns, then half-shuts the door, her hand still visible on the edges of it. “Mom! Some girl wants to see our ring footage!”

Couldn’t she have worded it in a way that didn’t sound so odd?

Thankfully, the people of Alola usually don’t jump to negative conclusions. Not like herself. An older woman comes out to sit on the porch with the girl, showing her the video on her phone after she gives a time estimate for where to look.

She can hear birdsong in the background. So it has audio! Awesome!

Though, it’s pointed more at the street than anything. She can’t see her own house. “Does it move?” she asks.

“No, it’s a stationary camera,” the woman tells her. “Maybe it will cross the street when it’s done?”

There’s a long, drawn out wail of agony.

“Is that it?!” The woman is alarmed, places both hands on the porch like she intends to stand.

“That’s just me!” She’s quick to reassure her. “I just…” The real explanation is extremely embarrassing. “I saw the mess and was having a bad day. Could you rewind it? Maybe about 10 minutes or so?”

She does, placing her hands back in her lap. Nothing happens. Not even the sound of her trash can opening.

“Sorry, maybe rewind a little more?” She hopes she isn’t wasting her time.

They keep at it. To the woman’s credit, she doesn’t complain. Just sets it to a faster playback speed as they go back 20 minutes, then 30, then 40…

Nothing at all. There’s a Ribombee on screen for a moment, then a stray Houndour passing through, and then its just the empty street.

The woman is getting bored. She can tell. “Well, I guess I’ll have to just catch them,” she laments to her. “Thanks anyway.”

The woman stands. Her legs have gone stiff, and she stretches them. “I’ve got to get back. We’re doing trial paperwork!”

“Awesome!” The girl replies, hiding her disappointment for her own dilemma. “Good luck.”

The woman waves to her before the door shuts, and she decides to just go home for now.

Unsurprisingly, after she’s cleaned up the glass, she finds Rotom still hidden away in their bed.

“Why do you hate the Professor so much?” she asks them.

No answer. Of course.

“You know, I’m not Giovanni. Or Team Skull,” she adds, because Rotom probably has no idea who the former is. “If you don’t tell me what’s wrong, how can I help you?”

“Go away,” The Pokemon hisses at her, static and all.

She bites the inside of her cheek. Then gets an idea. She makes for her room, rummaging through her dresser until she finds what she’s looking for.

“Look, Rotom!” The Pokemon likely can’t see her under the knitted poncho, but she dangles it over them anyway. “It’s an old charger for you to chew on!”

The Pokemon doesn’t even stir. She lays it across the lumpy blanket anyway. “I’ll leave if you’re not comfortable with me seeing you using it.”

She does just that. She goes into the kitchen to get some more cleaning done, throwing out old spices and expired cabinet goodies.

It takes her a while to notice Rotom is there. The Pokemon is floating just beside her trash can. Her face lights up when she realizes it’s holding her charger! Finally, maybe now she can—

It makes direct eye contact with her and slams it into the trash with both of its arms. Half of it misses, whipping the wall instead. She can see that it took some of the paint on the wall with it.

Though it irks her, she doesn’t react. Just turns around and goes back to sorting, picking up an old jar of sage.

She doesn’t expect the jar to be snatched from her. Fearing a repeat, she turns around before the Pokemon gives her a concussion for real this time. But the Pokemon merely flies above the trash to drop the jar in with a heavy thump.

It would be scary if not for the childish, bright red angry emoji that has been displayed on their screen the entire time.

It’s like they’re a little kid, she realizes. She’s drawing connections to her youth, and immediately thinks that she should apologize to her mom for all the trouble. Her mom is a saint.

…And also a genius. She gets another idea. She forces a big smile for the Pokemon and says: “I love you.”

The Pokemon bristles. It displays a wide variation of flashing emotions on its screen, then abruptly leaves the room. To hide again, most likely.

It becomes more obvious to her, as the day trails on, that Rotom is going out of their way to get on her nerves. She opens a window to let fresh air in only to hear it shut as soon as her back is turned. Twice, she finds her damp clothes pulled out of the dryer, scattered across the floor. She has to watch one of the latest contests, holed up in her bathroom, and at one point Rotom reaches under and rips the rug out, tugging it through the tiny gap between the floor and the door.

It occurs to her that the TV cords might have been intentional.

Kukui still hasn’t called by the time noon rolls around. She’s cooking– she’s always cooking it feels like, she should buy more TV dinners or something– and it’s not unexpected at all that the Pokedex has come in to interfere with that, as well.

She prefers to cook things on low. The Pokemon floats over and turns the dial to high, then drops onto the counter next to the stove. Wordlessly, she turns it back down. The Pokemon surges up to fix it, holding their paddles protectively over the switch when she tries to remedy it yet again.

“Will you stop that?” she tries to tell them. “And you’re plastic, don’t float so close to the burners! You’ll melt!”

It seems to agree, but it merely floats onto the headboard of the stove to hold the dial in place from there instead.

She gives up and takes the pot she’s using off the burner, setting it on the counter. “What exactly is this going to accomplish? I already told you I wasn’t taking you to Kukui.”

It’s that silly, ‘I’m so mad’ emoji again. Rotom has pulled their arms away from the dial to hang at their sides, so she takes the opportunity to just shut the stove off.

“Should I ask the police to go talk to him?” The emoji disappears, replaced by Rotom’s alarmed expression. “What? You’re painting a pretty bad picture here.”

“No!” Rotom finally speaks. “The Professor is nice, zzt! He izzzn’t!.. He’s not…”

“Not what?” She puts her hands into her pockets, trying to look as non threatening as possible.

Unfortunately, Rotom doesn’t finish like she wants them to. “You don’t understand. You’re just zzztupid,” it snaps. “You think you know everything, but you don’t!” It points at her with its not-at-all sharp paddle.

It doesn’t have the effect that she thinks Rotom intends it to. “I never said I was smarter than you. I don’t think I’ve ever even called myself smart in, like, years.”

Can't you stop being a brat and just tell me what’s wrong? she thinks as they go quiet again. Sighing, she says: “Rotom. Please don’t make me ask again. Why don’t you want to see the Professor?”

The Pokemon pulls its arm back to its side, looking down at the stovetop instead of the girl.

She repeats the question.

“BECAUZZZE IT’S EMBARRASSING!” the Pokemon suddenly shouts, waving its arms frantically up and down and floating high off the stove’s headboard. The girl takes a step backward in surprise. “You don’t have to explain to him, why you’re being rejected a zzzecond time!”

She’s putting the pieces together in her head. “So instead of going back,” she says slowly, “you put yourself in my trash can?”

“No! ZZZhut up!” The angry emoticon is back. She can hear whirring behind their shell, too. “You don’t even… You’re just a! ZZZtupid, ugly, little!”

“So rude!” She doesn’t know how they could have scared her so much that morning. It’s almost funny, now, in a kind of sad way. “But that’s okay.” The corners of her mouth have lifted, she can’t help it. She’s thinking of her mom, how as a little girl she would hide under the coffee table and say bitter things all while her mom cooed at her. “I still love you.”

“AAGH!” Rotom growls. Yes, literally growls, and turns every single dial on the stove to ten and then flees from the room. Not for the first time, definitely not the last.

Her phone is ringing. Thank Arceus. It’s about time, Professor!

By the time she finishes retelling Professor Kukui all of what had occurred in the short span of time, she’s desperate for a drink of water. If only she’d thought to bring something outside with her.

“They make progress here and there,” she says, watching the sun disappear behind the treelines, “but I guess I made them hate me, because they’ve been bullying me nonstop!”

“They must like you– No, they have to like you,” Professor Kukui says. “If they were serious about what they were doing, they would just leave. They were wild before we tried the Dex form with them.”

“Maybe they think you’re their only other option,” she suggests.

“Hey, for the record,” Kukui cuts in. She imagines him bristling like a Litten might. “I’ve never had an issue with this happening. It’s not the Pokemon’s fault it didn’t work out,” Professor Kukui says. “Even the partner Pokemon get that treatment, sometimes. We just move on and find them another trainer. It’s not a big deal!”

“Did you find out anything else about what happened?” she asks, hopeful.

“No.” She feels her shoulders drop. “There was an old report from a few months ago about a Rotom Pokedex. Not that one— I think. There wasn’t much data on it. It just said a Pokemon had gone into one of the centers asking for a charger, but they were gone before the officers could arrive. It wasn’t substantial. The nurse had only been concerned because it was using the Pokedex form with a dead battery.”

“And?..” She’s lost, not at all familiar with Rotom care as the professor.

“If it says dead battery, then both the shell and the Rotom are low on energy,” Kukui clarifies. “Rotom power the machines they’re in— but you’re not supposed to have them in for long durations of time like the Pokedex intends them to do if you're not charging the shell. It’s safer to charge whatever device you’re using for them and to make sure your Rotom keeps their energy up, just in case. Really, they’re only supposed to be used as batteries in emergencies.” He pauses. “I think she might have just assumed they had been lost for a long time, not foul play, necessarily. There would have been a bigger investigation if it was suspected abuse.”

“That’s all?” She knew terrible people didn’t act out in the open, but it still disappoints her terribly that he has nothing to point her in the right direction.

“Well, one of the Kahuna’s spoke about their trainer. It was Olivia.”

The girl presses the phone closer to her ear, trying hard to hear every word clearly.

“Rotom was battling in its washer form that day. She said the battle was very odd, and the trainer lost way too easily for someone who had made it that far. Oh and Olivia does double battles, by the way. She said his Pokemon weren’t very friendly with each other.”

That was still… Absolutely… Nothing. “Like. Snapping at each other, unfriendly?”

“No… More like, uncomfortable?” Kukui laughs a little. “Olivia prides herself on being an empath, but sometimes I think she reads into things sometimes.”

“So what do I do now?” she asked. There was a pang of despair to her tone that she hadn’t meant to show.

“I was wondering,” Kukui starts. “Hypothetically, since Rotom seems to get along with you so well… Would you mind keeping them with you until we get this all sorted out?”

“I–”

“You got them to open up about why they didn’t want to come to me,” Kukui continues. “I’m worried that changing up the environment will make this take longer than it needs to. The faster we can get Rotom to open up, the sooner we can figure out what kind of care they need. And what we’re dealing with here. It could be another Team Skull problem on its way.”

“I guess it’s okay,” she relents. “Other than the plate thing, they’ve really only been annoying.”

“Great!” She guesses Kukui is beaming on the other end. “I’ll keep looking out for any information. In the meanwhile, just keep me updated on how they’re doing. And I sent money for that charger you took from the PMC. Hold onto it.”

“Um.” Well she can’t say no to that now, can she? She just hopes it wasn’t ridiculously overpriced.

“It’s alright, yeah? You can say no,” Professor Kukui quickly adds. “I know I’m asking a lot from you. If you don’t think you can handle them, I’ll try and get some other arrangements for them organized. Or– How much? I could spare some from my research funding if money is the problem.”

“No, no!” Absolutely not! “It’s fine. I’ll keep at it, they’ll tell me eventually.”

There's a bit more back-and-forth, and the call ends as they both realize there's nothing left to discuss.

She does her usual routine for the day. Rotom has stopped bothering her, but she isn’t sure she likes the alternative. hiding-in-their-bed thing any better.

She goes to sleep and has the worst dream. Her landlord is dragging her along to a waterfall she can’t stop prattling on about, and it takes forever to get there with the frequent breaks she needs. How a grown adult can end up in worse shape than an old lady, not even Arceus would know.

She has no idea what the lady is even saying when they get there, either. Her voice is drowned out by the sound of the water.

The girl wakes up and recoils, because who actually wants their IRL problems to slip into their dreams? Dreams were for… Flying, or whatever. And now she needs to use the bathroom. She sits up, rubbing at crust on her eyelids, and shuffles around on the bed until she’s able to press her feet to the wooden floor.

It’s… She wrenches her eyelids apart as her feet submerge in water. There’s a gigantic puddle— no, her entire room is flooded!

She sprints out of the bedroom, desperate for something to dry it with. She opens the bedroom door and more water rushes in. She can hear the water spraying from somewhere in the kitchen. She wants to save what she can, if anything on or close to the floor is even salvageable at this point, but she needs to find the broken pipe first. Why didn’t she check the news, she didn’t know it would freeze tonight!

She finds out that the source is actually just the kitchen sink faucet. Both handles are turned on. She shuts them off, and before she’s even considered that the Pokemon is to blame, she finds them sitting on her countertop, eyeing her with their arms crossed and a proud emoticon displayed across their screen.

It’s quiet and dark. The water pools above her ankles, freezing cold. Is that why she’s trembling?

Renters insurance won’t cover this. She knows it won’t. She doesn’t need to see what it looks like under all the water to even guess that.

“Why?” Why is that all she can ever say? Her face feels hot. She doesn’t want to cry, but it’s already happening. Rotom’s screen goes back to the usual image, their smug grin disappearing.

She doesn’t know who to be more angry with. Herself, Rotom? Whoever had driven them to her in the first place?

“Do you even realize what you’ve done?” Her voice is squeaky. She can barely understand herself. “You can’t fix this. I’m gonna be evicted, I’m gonna be homeless, I have no where to go!” She realizes the terrifying truth as she says it. Her mom is all the way back in Hoenn. The damages would be in the thousands. She’d never get out of debt. She’d lose her job, wouldn’t be able to buy a plane ticket home. She’d never get to… She chokes on a sob. “Why would you do this me-e-e?”

She can’t control herself. She buries her face and sobs, sinking down to the floor and not caring that the water seeps into her pajamas, chilling her to the bone. She just hugs her knees to her chest and cries and cries and cries.

Chapter Text

It feels like the world is ending. For three days, she can’t stop crying. She has a persistent headache. She can hardly eat.

There are apparently companies whose entire job involves fixing flood damage. They spend hours with equipment and fire types, and Mareep with thick wool coats. It would have been very interesting to learn that the Pokémon are used as sponges, if she hadn’t spent that time avoiding them and thinking the worst.

She’d had to tell her landlord what had happened. Somehow. She speaks in circles, barely able to get a full sentence out. The old lady had apparently thought she’d been in danger, because she’d shown up with a grizzly Blaziken that had gray hairs around its muzzle.

Her landlord is very polite. She talks the entire time she walks around the house, pointing out things in a definitely glass-half-full fashion. She’d wanted to replace the flooring in parts of the living room. The bedroom isn’t terrible, they can put furniture over where it warps in the corner. They’d caught it early enough to prevent mold. They can paint over the stains on the wall.

It’s a ruse. The girl can tell. As the water disappears, the full extent of the damage reveals itself.

It’s going to cost her so much. Much more than the girl can afford. Her heart aches for herself but even more with guilt for the old woman. And she’d silently trashed her for ages now. She didn’t deserve that. Why did she do that?

She has to call her renter’s insurance company next. Her landlord stays for that. Though she wants nothing more than to lay in the backyard and pretend she doesn’t exist for a while, she instead has to carefully answer loaded questions for over an hour. She knows they’re looking for a reason not to cover it. The call ends with a request for her to complete a survey. (Did they not seem bothered by the clear sniffling she’d been doing?) There’s no answer to her questions of if it’s covered or not.

Rotom is gone. They aren’t back at the house when the clean up crew is finished, when she feels that she’s spent too much time staying with her landlord’s son-in-law. They’d disappeared at some point. She doesn’t care. And then she does. And then she doesn’t. Her emotions are a rollercoaster right now. She swaps between angry and sad, angry and sad. Blaming herself. Then Rotom. Then herself. Then Kukui, each time he calls her and she lets it go to voicemail.

She can’t stop looking at everything that’s broken or wrong. It makes her upset all over again. She shouldn’t be pressing down on the floorboards and willing them to lie flat instead of bubbling up in all the wrong areas. She shouldn't be holding onto things that she thinks the sun might fix. It’s a vicious cycle.

She has to go back to work eventually. The insurance is sorted out. It’s not enough. Her landlord makes a deal with her— she will only have to pay a little extra each month, and she can stay while the renovations are being done. But she owes her thousands. It will take her years to pay it off. Any dreams of saving are gone.

She’s going through the motions at this point. There are definitely people who have it worse than her— she knows that’s what people are going to tell her. But damnit, she can’t just cheer herself up like that. It’s real to her, even if it is trivial. It feels like a nightmare!

A week passes. She feels like it’s about time to start throwing things away. She’s willing to keep the furniture. The TV had been saved by the entertainment stand, though it still isn’t usable yet. Aside from some of the furniture, everything else that had been close to or on the floor isn't worth it. She’s going back and forth from house to trash can, and somewhere around the fourth trip she notices movement off to the side of her dark porch.

No. She recognizes that shadow.

“Get out!” She isn’t sure where to run first. The easier option would be to chase them off, but she leaps over the steps to her porch and slams the front door closed. She steps in front of it and holds her arms out, so they can’t reach for the knob. “Get lost, for Arceus’ sake! Haven’t you caused enough trouble for me?!”

She purposefully rolls her eyes at their lack of a response. Typical. She does it again. They’re bobbing back and forth on their tiny feet, then they bring their arms to their chest. The nervous emoticon is there. The one she’d gotten used to seeing.

“Did you even go back to where you belong?” she asks. “I blocked him. So no, I’m not helping you go back because ‘you’ll get lost’. That’s on you now.”

They still aren’t answering her! They aren’t even looking her way. It makes her angrier.

“Why can’t you say sorry? Why did you do it?” Why is she ranting to a Pokémon? It doesn’t understand. “Why do you think I want anything to do with you, when you almost cost me everything?”

It’s night, so it’s quiet enough for her to hear the whirring of fans from inside the Pokémon’s body. She waits a long time for them to speak. Gives up.

“I didn’t have to help you,” she says, losing steam. “I didn’t have to— and I know it’s my fault for letting you in, but I didn’t make you do any of that. And I never mistreated you, or not intentionally, I mean.” She’s rambling. “So what did I do? Why do you think I deserved that?”

“…You could have azzzked your mom for help,” they say from behind their paddles.

She nearly explodes, rising from her slouched state. “The one who’s in Hoenn? All the way over the ocean? Rotom, I-I can’t swim! Plane tickets aren’t free! You can always go back to the Professor— I wouldn’t know if he’s really a nice guy, you wouldn’t tell me anything— but you have him. And what do I have?! Nothing!”

The Pokemon has gone silent again, so she adds: “No one!”

“I’m zzzorry.”

“You should be.” She knows they won’t answer, but she demands again: “What did I do that made you so… So…” The word ‘evil’ catches on her tongue.

“Nothing.”

She blinks. That wasn’t the answer she’d expected.

She chooses her next works slowly. “Then why do it? Why?”

“I don’t know.” Rotom is shivering. She doesn’t think they’re supposed to be able to get cold like that.

“Go home,” she tells them. And then she carefully squeezes through the door that she only wedges open slightly enough for her to fit through. Locks it when she’s on the other side.

She feels worse now. Even more sick.

She tries to distract herself, but she keeps finding an excuse to peek through the window. They haven’t left. Still haven’t left an hour later. She’s drawn out to the porch again— though she knows it’s stupid, well who cares, she is stupid— and scowls through her headache down at the Pokémon.

“Why did you come here?” She asks. Maybe she’s hoping they’ll say something that will cure this horrible feeling so that she can feel normal again. “In the first place, I mean. What happened? Can’t you at least tell me that?”

She waits patiently. She’ll stand here for an hour if she has to. If they’re going to sit around tormenting her further, then they owe it to her to answer.

“He got zzzick of me. We were supposed to meet someone at the school. They had a Pokémon. But he got sick of me,” Rotom is speaking fast, as if they’re scared something will stop them from talking. “So he threw me away and told me to wait for the men to take me.”

“Who?” She’s lost track of how many times she’s said the question in place of meaningful words. It’s almost a catchphrase at this point.

“Zzz…” They’re eyes dart around, they rock a little more on their feet, then: “My trainer.”

She frowns. “The little kid? You’re joking, right?” She'd run into that group of trialgoers at the grocery store once. Basically toddlers. One of them had a ladybug phone.

Rotom looks at her in the eyes for the first time all night. “Little?” Their volume is low.

“It’s— I mean…” She laughs a little. Nervously. “What?”

“Not little. Bzzt.” They tear their gaze away. “Fifteen.”

Rotom couldn’t remember when they’d met. It had to have been a few months ago, maybe a year, even. The time had passed so gruelingly. Whenever they checked their calendar, it felt like it was bugged. But the date was correct.

It hadn’t started out that way. It had been hopeful, once. Fun.

It was 7:30 am when they’d arrived. This new trialgoer’s mother had called prior, warned Kukui that they were coming on short notice. Kukui had to cancel his trip to a local conference to meet with them.

But that was his own fault, Kukui always said. It came with the job of being the region’s Professor. You had to be available whenever a new trainer began their journey.

And he never complained!

This one was late. Very late. He was a boy in his mid-teens, wearing stereotypical foreigner clothing— too snug for the weather— and with hair that looked unnaturally neat and overgelled. His mother looked about the same, but with makeup that seemed far too vibrant and childish for the expensive, old-fashioned outfit she wore.

She did most of the talking. Rotom had crept out at some point to listen. The boy— Ronald was his name— had gotten the sudden urge to become a trainer. Ronald fidgeted in his office chair as his mother prattled on about the hardships he’d faced, that he’d never been so passionate about anything until he’d heard about the Alola trial program.

“He’s been so lost lately,” his mother said. The boy shoved his hands into his slack pockets, frowning and biting the inside of his cheek. “I don’t want to leave him alone, but I can’t get away from work so short notice. I have to get back to Kalos. Is it really safe to leave him?”

Kukui waved her off, leaning back against a desk. “Late starters aren’t anything new. We had a whole group of them last year. The only problem is,” Kukui explained. “This year’s group left a while ago. The one furthest behind has finished with the Hala— and unless you’re the greatest trainer the universe has ever seen, you can’t quick attack your way through the trials to catch up,” he added, because Ronald’s mother had sat up like she expected that to happen.

“But he’s never been alone. I know he’s got to go off on his own sometime, but…” she squeezed her eyes shut, shaking her head. When they reopened, she finished: “What if he gets lost? Or something happens, or a boat sinks? Maybe you could— if it’s not too much trouble— find somebody else to go with him?”

Kukui shook his head. “No prospects right now. One’s interested, but they haven’t exactly submitted any applications yet. Though, I do have one thing that might put your mind at ease.” He's grinning now. Oh no.

Kukui found the Pokemon who had tried and failed to squeeze behind a dresser to avoid this conversation. So soon? But they still weren’t over the last failure…

To make matters worse, Kukui starts repeating that incident to them! Rotom covered their microphones with their hands, refusing to listen to Kukui explain how the girl they’d been traveling with had gotten tired of them. And then sent them back. That it must be fate or luck that they were here now, for someone who would need them more.

”I don’t want all these features!,” their last trainer had exclaimed the last time Rotom saw them. She hadn't even waited for them to leave earshot. “I just want a dex, and a map that actually opens when I want it to. I’m sorry, but I can’t stand another minute of it interrupting me during battle!”

Kukui had assured Rotom that it wasn’t their fault. Rotom wasn’t sure they believed that.

“A Rotom?” It was the first thing Ronald had said since his quiet, stiff introduction. Kukui had nearly broken his hand, so timid he was. He sat up in his chair. “But those are expensive! The wash form has been in championship teams for over a decade!”

Rotom wasn’t sure they liked battling, but the trainer’s enthusiasm led to them lifting off the ground to get a better look at them. Surely, someone who understood the utility of Rotom could be a friend. And now, thinking of what his mother had told to Kukui, Rotom thought that he could help this little guy in his journey.

And besides. If he was alone, there weren’t any other trainers around to whisper in his ear about turning Rotom’s volume down to mute.

“Rotom isn’t really a battler,” Kukui replied slowly, pulling at his collar.

“I can learn!” Rotom replied quickly to Kukui. It would probably be a good thing. To learn how. They crossed their arms across their screen to prove their point.

“I have another Pokemon,” Ronald said. He opened his pokeball to release it— a Houndour that surveyed its surroundings with several quick turns of its head. Its curiosity dampened into indifference and it sat down, resting its back against the legs of Ronald. "I won't be completely dependent on them."

“Right. Your Mom mentioned that. And good thing, too, the only other starter I had available was a Luvdisc. And that one’s aggressive.” Kukui stooped down to pet the dark type— the Houndour didn’t move, but it turned its head away, hinting for Kukui not to.

“How much would it cost to rent this… I’m sorry, what was the name of its form again? We don’t exactly see Rotom often,” his mother asked.

“They come with the program,” Kukui said.

Not always, Rotom thought. Kukui had told them that, once, he’d had to get several accumulated to working as a Pokedex in time for the next set of trainers. Rotom’s time here had been lonely, however. Kukui never explained why, so Rotom assumed there must be a shortage of them or something. They weren’t in the Alola Pokedex, so it made sense that they’d run out eventually of ones on the islands.

“You pay by filling out the dex. You have to fill the individual entries in yourself, then you get access to the full information afterwards of each Pokemon. It’s to curb the whole: I read this so now I think it’s true thing,” Kukui explained. “Your original content supports us Professors, so we don’t mind sparing the funds to organizing everything and getting you all set up.”

“So I'm getting a Rotom?” The boy piped up. He hadn’t taken his eyes off the dex at all. “Mom, do you think you could loan me some money for a used washer?”

Rotom smiled uneasily at him.

That clunky old form? Well, if Ronald— no, his new trainer insisted! Maybe Ronald knew something about the form that Rotom didn’t?

“Are you a battling expert?” Rotom asked while the other two chatted in the background.

“I want to be,” the boy said, scratching his Houndour behind the ears, “the very best.”

Rotom didn’t get the joke. But they were happy to listen as Ronald explained all that he knew, and even happier when they set off that very same day to complete their first trial!

It was a couple of weeks later. The second trial was next, and Ronald had already filled out a decent amount of his Pokedex.

Well, actually, Rotom had done all of the work. But he’d accompanied Rotom through the grasses and forests and waters, hoping to find some new Pokemon. It wasn't a big deal that he wasn't helping, anyway. Rotom had already collected all of these Pokemon with the last girl!

“What about that one?” Rotom asked, pointing to a Pikachu. “Their volts are extremely powerful! And the Alolan Raichu regional variant doublezzz as a psychic type!”

“Everyone has one.” Rotom wasn’t surprised. They were so picky! “And anyway, they’re not really viable anymore. There’s nothing you can do with them that somebody can’t predict.”

Though Ronald was a bit… Antisocial or shy was the better word, Rotom had to admit: he was very intelligent when it came to battle. It was the only reason Rotom had felt comfortable enough to try another form again. They trusted that he knew what he was doing.

“Then what do you want?” Rotom asked, question mark appearing on their screen. “If you could be a little specific, I could try pinpointing on the map what you need. If it’zzz on the current island.”

“Something strong,” the boy said, pushing aside a drooping tree branch that blocked the way. The grass was tall here. “Something like— This! Something like this!”

“Like what?” Rotom floated closer to get a better look, but there was no movement in the grass.

“This,” Ronald repeated. And then he reached down and lifted up an egg.

“Buhbi?!” So clever, Ronald was! “How did you zzzee that?”

“A Dratini,* the boy breathed, staring down at the egg in aww.

Close, but… No. “Actually, that’s an Azzz… Azzz…” Sometimes their translator got stuck on certain words. “An Azzzumarill! It's got the same colors!”

“No, it’s not.” Rotom blinked in surprise at how firmly the boy said it. “It’s a Dratini. I would know. I’ve always wanted one!”

“Well, my data has been wrong at least once,” Rotom relented. Though they were certain that they had been the one that was correct. “But… Bibibi, it’zzz not recommended to take Pokémon away from their parents as an egg, unless they’ve been abandoned.”

The boy turned his head this way and that. “No parents around.”

“They could be out looking for food,” Rotom suggested.

“People take eggs all the time,” Ronald said. Before Rotom could interrupt, he was already unzipping his backpack and carefully placing the egg inside. “Breeders do it. And I’ll take good care of him. He’ll be amazing once he gets to his third stage.”

“You zzzhouldn’t.” Rotom felt too nervous by the idea. What would the egg’s parents think? And if Rotom’s data said it was wrong, then shouldn’t that be what they follow?

“Hush,” Ronald said. He zipped the backup up, then slipped his arms through the straps. “This will be fine. Don’t you want to fill out your Pokedex? This will help.”

“Zzzz…” Was all Rotom said. They believed their trainer, however, so they didn’t try to argue any further.

Whenever they’d get to the Pokémon center, Ronald would leave them to use the public phone. Rotom didn’t always have to go back with the others— they only battled at trials, so they’d hang out in the lobby, watching Ronald from one of the couches. First, Ronald would call his mother. His mother was so nice! Rotom liked to look at the absurd paintings in the background. She was apparently an artist. And the good kind! The zany kind! Though Ronald didn't seem to appreciate them much, Rotom loved when she would show off what she was working on.

Then Ronald would put in a second number. The phone would ring and ring… But nobody would pick up. Rotom wasn’t sure who Ronald was calling. Rotom wasn’t sure why he kept trying, either. It never got beyond a busy tone.

Today, however, a face appeared on the screen. Ronald lit up, shocked. “D—“

“How many times do I have to tell you?” The angry shout erupted from the screen. “Don’t call me unless it’s an emergency!” And then it hung up, before Rotom could assign the human’s visage to their logbook.

Though the lobby was empty, and the nurses in the back, Rotom could feel their trainer’s embarrassment from where they sat.

Ronald said nothing of what happened. They were staying in a motel, so they’d gone back there to rest. Azurill sucked on a milk bottle, while Houndour ate their food in their quiet, ‘stay-away-from-me’ corner. Rotom wasn’t in need of a charge, so they floated close by to Ronald in case he needed help.

Ronald pulled a glass soda bottle from their grocery bag. Jarritos! Or… No, was that?

Rotom gasped. “You aren’t old enough to have that! Your frontal lobe hazzzn’t developed fully!”

“One won’t hurt.” Rotom tried to stop them by taking it away, but their trainer turned away from them. “Calm down. I know what I’m doing. I've done it before.”

“Bibibi…” It will make you sick, they wanted to warn them. But trainers didn’t like them to insert their opinion more than it was needed.

“How about you do something useful for me?” Ronald asked. “Do you know where we can find Growlithe? Or do I need to ship that overseas, too?”

Rotom wasn’t sure what had happened. They’d been on a winning streak. By the fourth trial, that all started to change. Suddenly, Houndour couldn’t carry them. Rotom’s inexperience became a problem. They needed Azurill— now Marill— to step in more often. And Growlithe had done well for a while, but struggled against the quick Pokémon they couldn’t stop coming across.

Suddenly, they were losing. And they were losing a lot.

“Embarrassing!” Ronald scolded all of them as soon as the door had shut. “I know you all can do better, and yet you lost to her? Two of you had the type advantage!”

Growlithe frowned. Marill turned away. Houndour bowed their head— likely thinking the same as Rotom.

They had tried so very, very hard to win. They’d given it everything they had.

“It’s like you’re all getting lazy,” Ronald said. He picked up a water bottle that clouded from what he’d slipped inside. “Lazy, lazy, lazy. And I thought you cared about me. Guess you’re just like everyone else, huh?”

Rotom couldn’t think of anything to say. They just felt ashamed. It was their own fault for not coming out to battle more often.
☆☆☆☆

“Houndour, come here. On the bed. Good boy,” Ronald stroked the dark Pokémon, who sat still. “I know it wasn’t your fault.” He pressed his face to Houndour’s, nuzzling their noses together.

Marill was young. Marill was also very jealous, and clingy. Rotom wasn’t surprised to find her trying to climb atop the bed.

Behind her, Growlithe’s eyes flashed with some hidden emotion.

“Marill!”

Ronald surged forward and shoved the Pokémon off. “No!” He yelled at her. He continued, even though the blue Pokémon began to tear up, “You deserve nothing. Bad Pokemon don’t get whatever they want. And you know what? Bad Pokemon don’t get to eat, either.”

“What?!” Rotom couldn’t help themselves.

”What?” That was a very unflattering use of Mimic. “You heard me. Maybe if you go without, you’ll start to realize how I feel for once.” Ronald leaned back, laying against the pillow and drinking from their water bottle. “But probably never. I know you don’t care. That’s why we lost. Because all you can think about is yourself.”

Bad days were supposed to be just that. Bad days. But they’d turned into weeks, then even a month.

Their trainer was sick. But Rotom couldn’t understand why.

It was around their sixth trial when Rotom started to put the pieces together. They’d had to catch up on Laki in secret to do it, but they were beginning to understand what was wrong.

Well… Maybe it was because they’d eavesdropped in on a conversation Ronald had with his mother. But they’d only gotten the courage to do it, because that was something Laki would probably do.

It was that man. The one they kept calling. He was bad.

But Ronald liked him. No, he was obsessed with him! Didn’t Ronald understand what was happening?

They could fix him. They had to. He was their trainer. Even if he was mean, even cruel at times… Rotom knew it was their responsibility to help.

They were telling all of this to Growlithe, who as always, seemed totally against it. “Growl!” Don’t! He’ll only get angry. And then he'll take it out on us. “Growlithe, lithe!” Just leave it alone. Focus on the next battle.

Rotom obviously wasn’t going to listen. Growlithe only acted that way because they were a chicken. Which was usually why they were paired with Houndoom in double battles, though Rotom had some suspicions that some of the accidents that occurred between them were more intentional on Houndoom’s part.

They marched (or floated) right down to the motel bathroom Ronald was hiding in, burst in, and demanded he listen.

“This hazzz to stop!” Rotom declared. “I know what’s wrong with you.”

A dark look crossed Ronald’s face. His cheeks were flushed. “What?”

“It’s okay. I know it’s not your fault,” Rotom said. “Your mother told you not to talk to him, but you did anyway. And you keep doing it. But you don’t see the effect it’zzz having on you! Bibibi!”

“What?” Ronald pressed again, leaning closer.

“Stop talking to your Dad!” Rotom exclaimed. “He’s bad, and he’s making you bad!”

Ronald leaned back on the edge of the bathtub, pinching his forehead with two fingers. “She told you?”

“Err, no! Zzttt! I was! Was!!! Wazzz…” It sounded a lot worse out loud. “Eavesdropping.”

“That’s not nice, Rotom. And what I do isn’t any of your business. Did you forget you’re a Pokémon all of a sudden?” He sniffed like he’d smelled something foul. “Or is this about something else? Are you feeling guilty because you cost us that battle with Olivia?”

Rotom stopped floating to touch the ground. They had to admit, they had been thinking of that and the close-call that their rematch was. But it wasn’t the point! “And that stuff you drink! It’s ruining you. You used to act nice, but whenever you uzzze it, you become mean!”

“And you act any better?” Ronald asked. “What about when you tried to get me in trouble, huh? Had the police at my door?”

“Zzz…” Rotom had been hoping they were past that.

“You see,” Ronald had closed his eyes, leaning against the wall. “That’s your problem. You only think about yourself. You never think of what effect you have on people. That’s why that first chick threw you away. Selfish.”

“She— Zzzhe didn’t, Professor Kukui said we weren’t compatible.”

“And he lied. People lie all the time. Get used to it,” Ronald said. “You know, I want to help you. I want to make things better for you, but you just go out of your way to make it all so difficult. I wanted to have a good day today. Here you are, ruining it."

Rotom wasn’t sure how they’d gotten so off topic. This was about their trainer, not them.

“You think I want to be mean? You think I have a choice?” Ronald asked them, his stare so icey that Rotom shivered, even under their shell. “It’s not my Dad who makes me do these things. It’s you. You are what stresses me out.”

Rotom could feel their real form twisting with unease, though they didn’t know why. “I’m zzzo confused. What do you mean?”

“I don’t wanna hurt any of you, but you force me to. Because you don’t listen,” Ronald said flatly. “I’d love to have a choice. But I don’t get one.”

“But… But!!!” Ronald didn’t understand, Rotom knew they didn’t. “You do have a choice! You always have a choice! You can be better. It’s not the end of the world if… If we lose sometimes. If we take breaks.”

“And what about you?”

Rotom blinked. It kept flipping back to them.

“You act like you know everything, but you don’t. Any Pokedex could do what you do. How about, hey, instead of ganging up on me, you look in the mirror for once? How about you… You know, the next time you want to open your mouth, you think, ‘gee, maybe I should just shut up!’”

“Th… That’s not…” Nice. It hurt a lot. They held their arms to their screen, hugging themselves. “You do have a choizzze. You don’t have to… To do bad things… Like making Azumarill evolve, when they don’t want to.”

“What?” Ronald laughed. “What are you even talking about? Are you crazy? Azumarill wanted to get stronger.”

Rotom wasn’t sure how they felt right now. But they knew that was a lie. “That’s not what happened at all! You chased them around with the zzztone, even though they asked you over and over not to!” Rotom could feel guilt welling up inside them. They had just watched, and now Azumarill did nothing except sit in a corner, her nose pressed to it.

“That never happened,” Ronald insisted. “You’re just sick. Sick in the head. Why don’t we talk about how you don’t even try when I do need you? Remember Olivia? Remember how, in the first round, you fainted?”

The visage of their mouth on their screen opened and closed, only untranslated noises coming from their speakers. Finally, they found their voice: “It wazzzn’t my fault!” They argued. “You didn’t let me charge! How am I supposed to battle perfectly when you don’t feed me? How does that make sense?! And you know I don’t like battling all the time,” they added. “But you make me! You zzzaid you wouldn’t.”

“Arceus, you’re such a crybaby,” Ronald said. “I skip breakfast, and you don’t see me having a meltdown and running crying to some dumb nurse over it.”

It wasn’t one meal, they thought. They couldn’t say it. They could feel the energy draining from them at prolonging this argument. It was dayzzz.

Ronald waits for them to speak, then says: “Thank you. Finally. You know, sometimes people just need to be told to shut up. Like you. That’s why the others don’t like you. That’s why Kukui and that girl gave you away.”

Stop it! “I’m zzzorry.”

“Then act like it,” Ronald snapped. “Get out of here, acting like you know anything about me. Just shut up. Nobody even likes you.”

Rotom tried for the door. It had shut behind them. With no other options and a difficult door handle, they had to force their way through the gap under. They made it through just in time for the first sob to escape them, and hid their face from the others, crawling under the bed and wishing they could turn off forever.

She knows what her landlord must have felt like when she’d called her about the water. Knows how the insurance agent felt, too.

She’s barely able to catch anything of what Rotom is telling her. They trip over their words, painting a sloppy image of what they’d been through. They backtrack. They move forward. They repeat and repeat, because they aren’t sure whether they’d told her this detail or that, or if they’d hallucinated it, or… Or…

“Rotom.” She can’t bare for them to keep going. “Stop. Stop!” She trying to organize her thoughts, and they’ve lost coherence the longer they’ve been talking.

She has to pace to think this over. She’s involved again. She doesn’t know how to feel about that.

And she's an idiot! The answer had been right in front of her, all along. And she'd been dancing around it like a ballerina in an alleyway where no one could see.

She should probably unblock Professor Kukui.

“Where is he now? Do you know?” She asks Rotom.

“Not really,” Rotom replies.

“If it wasn’t so late, I would call the police.” Or maybe she will anyway. Even if she knows they’ll tell her to wait for the morning.

She feels her hurt lessen. Rationality rises to the surface of her brain. They’re still a Pokemon.

She pulls out her phone. She starts trying her very best to write a clear paragraph for Kukui, but it’s impossible to put it into words that don’t stretch past the speech bubble on her phone.

“Don’t report him,” Rotom says after some time. The girl’s nose scrunches up at that. “I think it wazzz my fault. I made it worse by being there. He… He might be better now."

“Don’t say that,” she tells them.

“Buh…Bibi… But I am bad,” Rotom insists. “Buh… Because of what I did. Still doing. I think there’s zzzomething wrong, and that’s why he got worse so quickly. It keepzzz happening so there must be something wrong with me."

She’s not a therapist, but she tries anyway. “Sometimes people start drama every where they go and then act like they don’t know why it follows them. But this is different. I think you just got unlucky.” That’s underestimating it. “Very unlucky. It’s not your fault that you’ve met bad people.”

“Four people is too many,” Rotom says. “It’s not unlucky. It’s a problem. A big problem. Maybe, maybe the police zzzhould get rid of me instead.”

She tries to think of who they’re talking about. The answer comes to her quickly. The girl, Ronald, and... “Well, no. No, that’s not right. I don’t know about the other two, but Kukui doesn’t hate you. He’s been trying to help you this entire time.”

“You hate me. Three in a row,” they reply. "There's even a pattern!"

“I didn’t say that.” Surprisingly, she means it. “I don’t hate you. I’m mad at you, yeah, but I don’t think you’re a villain. You’re just…” She ponders it. “Hurt. You’re just hurt. I don’t blame you.”

She can hear them sniffle, but they don’t say anything in return.

“It’ll be okay. Here, look.” She opens the door for them. Her gut tells her not to, but she ignores it. “You can come in. It’s warmer in here. It’s okay. We’ll figure this out tomorrow.”

She has to keep urging them. When they finally step inside, they’re suddenly very interested in looking around them. She knows what they’re looking at.

“Don’t,” she warns them. They’re staring at the stains on the walls. “Just don’t look at it. It’s fine.”

“It’s bad.” Their voice trembles. “I’m so zzzorry.”

“It’s okay!” She insists, waving her hands at them. “It’s… Everything will work out. It will be okay. It's just stuff. Here, look.” She abandons texting Kukui to pull up another app. “Here, somebody made a long video about contest bloopers. Watch it with me. It will make me feel better? Okay?”

She knows she’s not going to get much sleep that night.

Chapter Text

After having some of the worst sleep of her life, the next step is obvious. She has to go to the police. She’s… Not entirely confident that anything will come out of it. But the situation keeps spiraling. Getting bigger than she can handle. She rushes to get herself into a presentable state.

It’s when she’s about to try convincing Rotom to follow her that she remembers something: her phone! She still has the professor blocked.

There are suddenly tons of messages coming through. Oh, no. What’s easier? Calling him. Calling him is easier.

“Hey,” she says when it stops ringing. She finishes before he can cut in: “Just so you know, I’m about to go to the police.”

Kukui says absolutely nothing at first. Huh. Did she somehow manage to stun him into silence?

“I would have preferred if you started with: ‘hey, Kukui! We’re alive!’” Woah, he actually sounds a little angry. That’s new.

“I’m sorry.” It hits her that she did blow him off for a hot minute there. “Look, a lot has happened. I don’t even know where to start, dude.”

“Tell it to me when you get to the station. The one closer to me, please,” Kukui says after clearing his throat, interrupting her.

Her eyes widen. “You’re already there?” Wait. Why is he already there?

“Just come here. And bring Rotom, alright?” Kukui responds.

So, things have escalated. Or have they? It takes a lot of coaxing to get Rotom to follow her, but after giving them her poncho to hide in and tucking them carefully into her backpack, she finally has the opportunity to half speed walk, half jog over.

The waiting room of the station is quiet and almost entirely empty aside from a janitor wearing air pods. Confused, she figures the next course of action is to explain to the officer at the front desk about why she’s there.

Suddenly, it turns into her sitting alone with a detective in the smallest room imaginable. Not even a little window for her to look out of. Just her and the officer, a table between them, and a camera in the corner. Something has definitely happened. Is the kid dead? He is only a teenager, maybe he’d gotten involved in Team Skull, or been manipulated into something terrible… Or maybe another one of his Pokemon had been killed, Rotom had mentioned there being others! The officer is frustratingly vague as she questions the girl, her heartrate skyrocketing as she tries to clear her name. She knows she’s done nothing wrong… But her mind convinces herself otherwise. That, and her trembling hands must seem suspicious to the officers. All those youtube videos she’d binged as a teenager proved that.

She tells the detective everything, from start to finish. She adds in a lot of stupid details. Maybe a lot more than just a ‘lot’ of stupid details. Eventually, however, the officer stands and tells her: “Alright. That’s it, thank you.”

She’s still in the dark. Unable to help herself, she leaps out of the plastic chair, nearly busting her leg on the rounded table, and says: “W-what? That’s it?”

“For now,” the officer tells her, opening the door. “We might call you back later if we have more questions.”

“Wait,” the girl says. “I know it’s probably classified, but… I didn’t think what that Rotom told me would be enough to do anything against that boy.” She clasps her hands together, straining to put her thoughts into something coherent. “Did something happen? Or–”

Something dawns on her. She’s never seen Rotom outside of that shell. What if… What if while they had been talking, the other employees had coaxed them out of it. What if they’d found…

“We don’t give out information to the public unless absolutely necessary,” the officer responds calmly. “All I can say is that we’re investigating a case of serious Pokemon neglect.”

She feels a sharp pang in her chest. She knows what that means. Not some silly mistake, or a kid misguidedly feeding their starter the wrong food. It’s intentional harm.

“Oh,” she says dumbly. Her mind is spinning and she lays a hand on the wall to steady herself, taking a deep breath.

The officer is quick to escort her out. Her eyes dart around the halls and rooms they pass through, but she doesn’t find the color she’s looking for. Not a sign of the professor, either. “What about Rotom?”

“They’ll be placed with an original owner or in a rehabilitation program, if needed.”

So Rotom will go back to Kukui. “They won’t like that.” She knows they can advocate for themselves, but she still feels compelled to warn them.

The officer stops, her boots squeaking on the polished floor as she turns to look at the girl. “I should have asked before. Did you capture them while they were with you?”

“Well, I– No.” It’s the truth.

She knows what’s coming before the officer even says it. “Then like I said, don’t worry about it. We’ll take care of the rest ourselves.”

She frowns. It’s for the best. I can’t handle them. She keeps telling herself that. She remembers her house, how unnerved she’d been to even let them back in… It’s tough. How can you worry about someone and be upset with them at the same time? “Can I say goodbye to them?”

“Oh.” The officer seems half-surprised, then smiles warmly. “Sure. Follow me.”

She’s taken to a door that has a window peeking into a bright room with checkered wallpaper. She sees Rotom, their back to her and still wrapped in her poncho, sitting on a table facing a male officer. The man catches her gaze and points behind Rotom, who turns to the girl.

She waves to the Pokemon. They blink at her, slowly. They don’t wave back.

What should she say? With how crazy everything has been, this might be the last time she sees them. “Good luck,” she mouths.

They look down at the white table and make that :{ face she’s all too familiar with. Guilt grips at her chest like a Seviper. She hopes they’ll be ok.

Outside, she takes a deep breath. Then, she messages Kukui in hopes of figuring out where the heck he even is. He comes out of the station himself a minute or so later. “That was quick,” he says. “I didn’t know you were even here.” He’s not angry, thankfully. Maybe she had misunderstood his tone earlier?

“Hey.” Genuinely, what does she start with?

She stunfisks for words. “Rotom told me about his trainer.”

“So you know, then?” Just above Kukui’s glasses, a worry line appears.

“Well, I don’t know. I think I do. But I didn’t think it would be enough to have… I mean you were already here. So something happened. Didn’t it?”

Professor Kukui makes a strange noise. “Uh…”

“Oh, and by the way,” and she is saying that way too cheerily, “they flooded my house.”

Kukui had drawn up his hands to adjust his glasses. In his surprise, they slip from his hands and he fumbleds to catch them. “What?”

“Tell me your news first!” she insists. “What happened? Why were you already here?”

“I… Look, kid,” The Professor tries and fails to start twice. “It’s… They keep these things under wraps, especially if it involves somebody younger than 18.”

She frowns. “Is he at least alright?”

Kukui puts his sunglasses back on his face. “Don’t make me repeat myself. I feel like I’ve done enough of that for today, maybe even for the rest of my life.”

She can’t think of anything else to say, so she goes quiet. If only she could see Rotom’s memories like… Like a tv show or something. So she could understand more about what was going on. Kids don’t just change into monsters overnight. There has to be mistreatment, neglect, maybe illness. She knows what it was like to be that age.

She’s surprised, after a moment, when she realizes that she doesn’t even feel outright angry at the kid. Angry for what he’d done, yes. But she doesn’t want to see him put away. He’s only 15.

“I know you’re worried,” Kukui continues after a soft exhale. “But there’s nothing you can do. Know this– Rotom is alright, and you’ve done an amazing job helping with all of this. Truly. I can’t thank you enough for being as patient as you have been.”

She can’t help herself. “Are his other Pokemon okay?”

The silence and shift in expression exposes Kukui before he even repeats to her: “...I can’t tell you.”

“Oh.” She feels tears prick in your eyes. For a Pokemon she doesn’t even know. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay. It’s cool. Let’s just move past that for right now.” To his credit, Kukui doesn’t comment when she wipes at her eyes. “Do you have somewhere to live? Was it a little damage, or..?”

“Yeah, uh. That’s kind of why I was ignoring you,” she lies. “My landlord and I were taking care of all of that. They’ve started repairs and I can still live at my place, so… I’m fine. Don’t worry, I’m not in need or anything.” There, of course, was still the debt hanging over her. Kukui didn’t need to know that part. It wasn’t his problem to deal with.

“I remember Rotom being a handful, but never that destructive,” Kukui responds.

She tells him all about it. Some of it she’s sure he’s heard before– but she lists all the ways Rotom had tried to get at her, then the flooding and the days that followed. By the time she finishes, her mouth is desperate for a glass of water!

Yet she feels relieved. The only other person she’d been able to vent to about this had been her mom, but ranting to somebody over the phone was a lot less cathartic.

“I guess we won’t be seeing each other much after this,” the bit of relief she feels fades as the girl realizes it.

“Not necessarily,” Kukui says, smiling gently. “You have my number if you ever need anything. Pokemon related, preferably. Though… I am partial to some Laki debate.”

Ew. Everybody was getting infected by that show. She forces a laugh. “I’ll probably only call about that first one. Sorry, but no thanks.” She clasps her hands together. “Uh, so, I don’t have that charger the nurse gave me, but I left Rotom with a blanket poncho thingy they really seem to like. You don’t have to bring it back to me or anything.”

“Sure.”

A pause. Kukui lifts one of his hands, as if preparing to say goodbye now that their conversation was over. The girl, however, interrupts: “What are you going to do for them? I was thinking maybe therapy. Do they do that for Pokemon? They– no offense– sucked at communicating with me. I think they’re afraid to say what they mean most of the time, to be honest.”

“That’s a good idea, yeah. Rotom is lucky that they can talk… Won’t have to look far for that goal.”

Another pause. She scrambles for another question, or something she might need to tell him.

“Alright, I’m gonna go back inside. You have a good week, okay?” Kukui finally says.

She nods. Stiff. “Yeah, you too.”

She looks down at her phone as he walks away, pretending to stare at the apps on her home screen. She lingers around for a beat too long.

The empty streets on the walk back home only add to small, sad feeling in her chest. So. It’s over. Officially.

Days pass. She tries to keep her mind off of it– she’s not used to the empty house yet– but not even watching old reruns from one of the best contest weekends of all time helps her. She flicks the Youtube app off when a man adorned in sequins flicks his hand, a Rotom emerging as his ace Pokemon.

She sighs, holding her phone above her face. She presses the green and white chat bubble icon.

“How is Rotom?” she texts Kukui, against her better judgement.

A minute or so later, Kukui texts her a picture.

It’s them! They’re wrapped in her knitted poncho, glaring at the camera.

“Back home. Not doing too badly in the physical department.”

Another photo follows. It’s… Vital signs? Or something? She can’t discern the results. She’s far from a doctor. She doesn’t even know how many Pokemon types there are. 12?

She definitely understands the words ‘deficient’ and ‘malnournished’. How is that possible? Rotom doesn’t need to eat… Electricity is everywhere.

She scrolls back up. They’re fine physically. What about the other side? The mental parts?

Kukui texts her again. They’re mad at me because the pills taste bad.

“Tell them I said hi,” she responds.

She knows Kukui is probably very busy, so she doesn’t bother him after that. She’s honestly pretty busy herself. There are contractors over all the time now, and her landlord stops by twice as often to check the progress of the repairs.

The old woman has offered replacement furniture at least three times now. She rejects it. She already feels guilty enough just for what had happened.

It’s around dinner when she gets another message. It’s Kukui of course. The only other people she texts are her boss, her mom and her landlord. Truly, a phone has never been so overworked. “They want to know if you have an email.”

“Who?”

“Rotom. Can I give it to them?”

She thinks about it. She doesn’t see why not. They can’t do much damage back at the lab, and she’s curious about them, anyway. “Yeah. Here you go.”

Maybe they just want to tell her more about what happened? She wouldn’t be opposed to that. As long as it’s legal.

She starts getting emails the next day. The first one is titled “No Subject”. The contents are only the word “Hell”, so she immediately assumes it’s spam. The username is a bunch of letters she’s seen plenty of times before in her auto-generated block list.

But then another email comes through, with a title this time. “It Bit Me.” It’s a picture of a front facing Luvdisc in a tube.

Oh. She feels stupid. Of course it’s Rotom. “Bite it back,” she replies.

“No teeth in this form 🙁”

She doesn’t reply, because her food is getting cold and she really wants to wolf it down now. She’s sitting on one of those thick boxes fruit is shipped in. It’s her favorite makeshift chair type, right next to trash can flipped upside down that stabs into your buttcheeks.

Her phone has received another email. Rotom apparently hates using the title feature. “When Are you going to come get. Blanket 🙂”

“My shirt? I wasn’t planning on it. It’s yours.”

The next email they send has an attachment. She opens it to find a video that seems to have been filmed lower than an adjacent coffee table in the frame. The camera pans up at the exact time a figure– wait, that’s Kukui– trips over a bent rug and falls to the floor. He howls and there’s high-pitched, staticy giggling in the background.

Also, the video is in slow-mo.

“Okay But When are you coming,” reads the text beneath it.

She’s a bit too focused on the video. It’s not funny enough to laugh, but she cracks a smile. “Does the Professor know you have that?”

“No, its blackmail 🙂” They follow it up with an amazing rendition of the last video– with effects that resemble a YouTube Poop made by someone who just drank 5 coffees. It rewinds and replays, speeds up and slows down– it’s even bass-boosted.

She laughs so hard that she snorts obnoxiously. Thank Arceus no one was around to hear that.

To Rotom: “You don’t have blackmail on me, do you?” Then, to Kukui: “They just straight up showed me blackmail of you falling???”

Kukui is faster. “Yeah I told them to delete that ages ago.” A few seconds later: “They send it to my gf all the time SMH.”

“No,” Rotom says. “You are my friend 😀” Ok, well, that’s a relief!

She needs to get ready for work tomorrow, as reluctant as she is to admit that. Okay, time to catch up on all the stuff she’d been procrastinating. Which is every adulthood chore she was supposed to do throughout the week. Fun!

In that time, however, Rotom seems to have replied to her again. No subject. “Are you mad 🙁”
Oh!!! Okay! She’d forgotten their skittish nature. Of course they had been expecting her response. “No, I’m just not very talkative all the time.” Sometimes. Is there a word for someone who has, like, limited extrovertedness? “You can keep talking to me if you want. I am reading them even if I don’t reply.”

“Okay! 🙂” They were definitely sitting next to whatever they were using to email her with. Or… Was that a dex function? Probably not. Pokedexes were made for one thing: Pokedexing. Duh.

Rotom emails her periodically throughout the next day, then the following, then the one after that. Most of them are generic, with just them describing something funny that happened or photographs of some indoor place— must be the Professor’s lab. On top of that, they’ve started even sending her emails where the only contents are “Good morning” and “Goodnight.” She isn’t sure how to feel about that one.

She can’t reply to all of them but she makes sure to send them at least one response before she goes to sleep. Even when she’s at work she finds herself sneaking off to the bathroom to see what they’re up to, their weird emails becoming something she looks forward to. Every once in a while she sends them a photo. She never seeked out Pokemon before, but the thought of humoring Rotom has her gaze traveling further than just the random tame Pokemon she bumps into. They seem happy enough to tell her everything they know.

Her proudest achievement there was finding a Happini. Rotom had been particularly impressed. Apparently they were super rare?

“CATCH IT it Likes you 😡😡😀😀” they’d sent her within less than a millisecond.

“With what balls?”

“It like you Because you are Happi.”

If only emails were voice messages instead. She’d never use it herself, but it would make understanding them a lot easier over text! “Really? I was actually feeling very evil and dangerous today.”

“No I Mean

It is like you
Because you are Happiness 🙂” Rotom sends back.

Anyway, eventually Rotom even reveals that they’ve made up their own Pokedex entry list for her! Apparently, she’s only discovered 20 Pokemon out of… What the heck, does Alola really have that many?!

She’s still scrolling through the chart Rotom has sent her (why is it multiple pages…) of all the Alolan Pokemon when they change the topic. “Have you ever gone to Therapy?”

“No. Why do you ask?”

“The Professor asked me If I. Wanted go. To it. But it sounds like a Nurse. I Don’t like them. 🙁 And if its a Nurse then that means I have. To go eventually, right?”

“I think it would be good for you,” she replies. “They listen to your problems and then think of ways to help you through them. They’re smart with things like that.”

“Okay. But It still makes me nervous. Will you come?”

She hesitates. Types out no, then changes it: “Maybe. But I am busy right now.”

“Oh, okay. I will wait until you Aren’t then. 🙂 What is your favorite region Pokemon? Did you finish?”

That’s not great to hear. Thankfully, Kukui is the one handling that issue. And he’s the expert! “Pichu is cute.”

“Boring,” they reply in a single email. “Everybody Likes Pikachu.”

“Fine.” They’re so picky! “I guess I like this pink one with the ribbons too. I didn’t know Eevee had so many evolutions! I thought there were only two.”

“Lots! Eight,” Rotom sends back. “That one is special. It is a happiness evolution but it. Evolves other ways too. It can tell what its trainer is feeling with its ribbons! But its. Sad, because it get so close that when trainer leave it. It can die from sad. Ness. And broken heart. 🙁”

…What?!
She wishes they were joking, but it doesn’t sound like it at all. The information they provide after that seems factually accurate, and she’s certain they’re reading from their own Pokedex.

It hits her how little she actually knows about Pokemon. She’d heard plenty of stories about Pokemon and trainers being partners for life, but it had always seemed more akin to… Losing a girlfriend or a friend or something, when they were separated. That the Pokemon could always move on and would eventually forget.

How many species carried that trait? All of them?

“Hello?” Rotom asks them in the title of their email, no subject inside.

“Sorry, I’m reading what you wrote. It’s interesting.” She’s thankful they can’t see her face. She feels a sharp cold coursing through her, the same one she gets when she accidentally leaves her keys inside and there’s no spare to save her. Well, no, actually, that comparison is more tame than what she’s feeling. This is sharper.

…She’s probably thinking too deeply into it. If it was the same for Rotom, they would have passed away in the days after Ronald had left them.

A couple of weeks go by and she’s almost forgotten that conversation. Today, Rotom has sent her 14 emails. Normally she’d be overwhelmed with this kind of attention. She doesn’t even like her mom texting that much– but she checks her email app with curiosity rather than annoyance, like its a soap opera she’s catching up on. It’s something for her to look forward to when she needs a distraction from her Chungus life. (She has no idea what that means other than the fact she’s heard about 4 kids say it.)

Another email comes through as she’s trying to read the last one Rotom had sent. “PRofessor Said There Is a new person doing the trials 😀😀😀 is it you?”

Oh! Her neighbor’s kid! Awesome! That must mean she’d passed whatever paperwork tests they’d been talking about before. Or was that just filing paperwork and, like, no testing absolutely whatsoever? Nevermind. That was a dumb thought. “No, not me.”

“Why not”

The corners of her mouth turn upward. She’s thinking of them making the same pouty face as that picture Kukui had sent. “I don’t want to be a trainer. I’m too old.”

“Why Not 😡”

“Also I need money to pay for my house and stuff and all that jazz.”

“No you don’t.”

Oh, Arceus. “I still don’t wanna be a trainer though. It’s my neighbor’s kid I think.”

“Are you coming when they come to get their first Pokemon. They have To Talk To Professor. You should come with them and you can see me 🙂”

She hesitates to reply.

That was the third time they’ve asked her to visit them. Maybe more. It was coming up an awful lot.

Is this… Okay? She suddenly begins to wonder if maybe she is taking this too far.

She decides to ask Kukui. She starts it with something simple. “Hey. Rotom has been emailing me a lot. Is that normal for them?”

She doesn’t want to leave Rotom hanging. Instead of answering his question, she sends him a photo of her own shadow. “What type of Pokemon is this?”

“Wow you have Marshadow”

She has no idea what that means.

Kukui has replied. “Kind of. They email me once or twice if I’m out of the house.”

She sends him a screenshot of her inbox.

“Uh.” Kukui is still typing. “Wow. Do you want me to tell them to stop?”

“No?” She replies. “I mean idk. Is it healthy? They seem attached almost.”

“They really like you,” is what she doesn’t expect Kukui’s next message to say. “They talk about you all the time.”

Oh, no. That doesn’t sound good.

They’re supposed to get rehabilitation and move on, like the officer had said.

Had she made them think otherwise? She’d only done it to be nice. They’d asked her for her email!

She tries to not show her fear in her reply. “When do they start therapy?”

There’s a pause on Kukui’s end. “Maybe in a few weeks. I want to make sure they’ve adjusted to living here first. Little guy doesn’t like the idea of it yet,” Kukui says. “Sometimes I can’t get them to even go outside for longer than a few minutes. Dunno how they’d react to being in a room alone with somebody they don’t know for that long.”

She doesn’t have a reply in mind, pressing her hand to her mouth and thinking. Her phone goes off yet again.

“I was wondering,” says Kukui.

She waits for him to finish typing his next message.

“You can say no. But they have no owner now. Besides me. Did you want to keep them?” Kukui asks. “I thought you would have run off after the kitchen sink incident. I’m still sorry about that btw.”

“You didn’t do that.” Its easier to reply to that than it is the question that has her second-guessing herself. “I don’t know. No. I thought about it and I don’t have any Pokemon or anything, and it’s not like I go anywhere so they’d get bored since they’re meant to document Pokemon.” Actually, she’d thought about this more than she wanted to admit.

“I don’t think they care about that,” says Kukui. “But with what’s happened I understand. I’m not mad B). Just being clear. They’re okay with me.” He adds: “I was gonna make a Clear Smog joke but I remembered you have no idea what that is LOL.”

She’s already typed out another long message, and she ends up sending it just to convince Kukui. (Or maybe herself? She wants to convince herself too. There’s a stupid voice telling her ‘oh what if you’re saying the wrong thing’? Shut up, stupid voice that sounds like her if she was a man!) “Also I know they probably need expensive food and therapy costs a lot, and I can’t afford that. I’m not home all day to watch them. Also I don’t know anything about like taking care of Pokemon especially not abused ones and I think I kind of caused that whole incident because I was pressuring them to tell me stuff aand they were acting out and it was SO obvious they were gonna like do all that but i like ignored it???” As she rereads what she has sent she cringes at how improper her typing ended up being.

Even worse, Kukui humiliatingly only replies to her message with a thumbs up.

It weighs on her mind that night. Could she please get a break from all these stressful happenings? Please?

Perhaps it would be a good idea to start toning down her interactions with them. She doesn’t want them to cling to her– not when there’s another trainer down the road for them.

Or maybe they’ll go back to being wild. Or just live with Professor Kukui.

Another concerning email comes through that very night. She’s been having issues sleeping, so she finds herself scrolling through her phone in the early hours more often than not.

“Will you help me?” Rotom has titled it. “I can’t Sleep.”

“Have you tried counting Mareep?” she tells them, knowing that trick rarely works on herself.

“No. I am nervous,” they tell her. “I had a bad dream. I had to go back to Him. I saw you but. When I asked for help you wouldn’t help me. And it was very long. I couldn’t leave because he put me in the. Cage and Houndour was there and nobody would help me even though I yelled a lot.”

“That’s awful,” she replies. They’ve never mentioned a cage before. “Don’t worry. The police are dealing with him. No one will hurt you at the lab.”

“Not true. Do you still have phone? There is video chat. Will you. Sleep with me?”

That’s not helpful to them. She hates how rude she sounds, but it’s true! “Why don’t you ask the Professor? He’s very smart. You can trust him with anything.”

“No. 🙁🙁🙁 He gave me away. If I make him mad he will do it again. He doesn’t. Like me. 🙁”

“That’s not true! He tells me every day that he wants you to get better.”

“So he can get Rid of me. 🙁 Will you please call?”

Oh, Arceus. “I can’t. I really think you should talk to the Professor.”

“Do you hate me too?” is all Rotom asks her.

No, no! They’re getting the wrong idea. All she wants is for them to find some independence. She thinks of a lie. “Of course not! My video chat app is broken.”

It takes longer for a reply from them to come through. Worried, she sends them another email. “Don’t worry. I will keep my notifications on and I will hear if you email me, okay?” Maybe that will soothe them. “Write Help in the title and I’ll come right away.”

Her shoulders slump with relief when they say: “Thank you. 🙂 I’ll try to sleep now.”
Of course, she barely gets any rest after that interaction. She spends the next hour staring at her ceiling and wondering what in the world is happening. The more she tries to push them into standing on their own feet, the more they seem to cling to her. Is it her fault? Is she leading them on?

She doesn’t want to hurt them. They’ve been through too much.

She pushes herself to ignore their messages the next day. They’ll get bored and move on. She just has to ease them into it.

After that, she was supposed to have a day off. But she wakes up at 3 in the morning to a frantic text asking her to come in for an early shift.

She thinks of at least 3 ways to say no. She picks up her phone and stares at it, gathering all of her confidence together to type. Um.

Okay, she can’t say no. She’s already on thin ice with her boss for all those call-ins she’d done earlier this month. Or at least she thinks she is. She’s never asked. Maybe the 4 hours she has left to sleep will be filled with dreams of her on vacation somewhere.

Haha, yeah right. Of course she just dreams that she’s at one of her older jobs.

At least the walk there is nice and cool for once. She wishes she was one of the blue Hoppips she always sees floating around in the sky at this time of day. I mean, other than the fact that she’s seen them tossed around like clothes in a washing machine in bad weather. That part doesn’t seem very fun. The no responsibilities thing is what she wishes she could have.

Well, that would change if the blue Hoppips ended up caught. What’s it like for a wild Pokemon to be caught, anyway? Do they get angry? She should ask Rotom at some point.

Well, maybe not. She opens up her phone and grimaces at the new message icon.

She’s bad at this whole ignoring them thing if it’s only been a day and already they’re on her mind again. Work. Work will distract her.

She’s in the middle of vigorously scrubbing floor grout (why) when one of her coworkers taps on her shoulder, startling her so bad she nearly falls into the three compartment sink.

“There’s somebody up front asking for you,” her coworker tells her, fixing their apron.

“What? Oh, thanks.” Oh, no. The last time this had happened, she’d had someone accuse her of stealing. And before that, it was some weirdo who thought her smiling and being polite meant she wanted his number.

Her hands shake in anticipation as she walks through the back hallway, so she slips them into her pants pockets and braces herself, pushing open the swinging door that separates the front from the back.

What she sees nearly makes her trip over her own feet. “Uh. Hiiii?” she says, dragging it out in her confusion. “What are you doing here?”

Floating right in front of the counter is a Rotom Dex. Who is she even kidding. She knows its not a Rotom, it’s the same one that’s been part of her life for almost two months now. But again. What the heck are they doing here?

Instead of answering her question, Rotom flaps their paddles and exclaims far too loudly for her liking: “Yippee! You’re okay!”

She blinks. She knows her coworkers must be staring, so she steps out into the lobby and motions for them to follow her further away, into the playground seating area. “Of course I’m okay. Why wouldn’t I be?”

They stop at an empty booth. Rotom lands on the table and turns around to face her. “You didn’t answer me all day! That’zzz very unusual!”

“Yeah. Well. Uh.” She doesn’t want to say why outright. “I’ve just been busy.”

There’s a tension that only she seems to feel, clasping her hands together. Would it be best to act aloof? She didn’t expect this at all!

“You’ve been working too hard!” Rotom scolds her. She wishes they would keep their voice down as they waggle their paw at her. Some customers are looking their way. “You need to take a vacation.”

She forces a smile because she knows she would be frowning otherwise. “Can’t really do that.” Her gaze drifts over to a poster advertising a burger that no sane human would ever want.

“Bibi… Is zzzomething wrong?”

She realizes that the Pokemon’s expression has shifted. Crap. Scratch that. Too aloof. “No, no! Nothing’s wrong, Rotom. It’s okay. I’m just tired, like I said.”

“I think you’re lying, zzzt,” Rotom says. “Becauzzze when you’re happy, you smile with your eyes, too.”

“N-not always. Really, I’m not mad at you.” Arceus. That actually kind of scared her. How were they able to read her so well?

“It’s okay. I’m zzzorry for making you angry.”

“Not mad,” she repeats, insisting. “Not mad! I do have to get back to work, though. I already had a break earlier.”

“Then if you’re not mad, can we hang out?” The Pokemon looks up at her hopefully. “When you’re done. The Profezzzor is going to make a lot of food, the onezzz you like. And he said you can come over.”

She opens her mouth and then snaps it shut. “I don’t know.”

“Then, then… Can we go to your house? When you’re done?”

She’s starting to understand what Rotom meant. She can see unease in their own eyes, despite their tiny smile. “Maybe another day? I’m busy, like I said.”

“Does that mean never?” Rotom asks quietly. She wishes, of all things, that she was not at work having this conversation. “You’re acting zzzo different.”

“Rotom.” She sighs. “Just go home, please? You can’t be here right now.”

Rotom takes a step back, blinking at her. She doesn’t see the emoji that flashes on their screen.

“Be safe, okay? I’m gonna go back to work.”

Rotom doesn’t move, so she rips herself away and starts to walk towards the back.

This feels cruel. It feels evil.

I can’t take care of a Pokemon. Especially not one like that. Even if I wanted to– I have to drive them away.

The next day she tries to continue ignoring their emails. Emphasis on tries. Her phone insists on showing her previews of what they’ve sent as she does some light reading. In spite of what had happened yesterday, they seem to be acting as if nothing had happened.

So she knows she might have to take it a step further. She really, really doesn’t want to. She knows it’s going to break their heart. Ruminates over it over and over as she spends her time washing dishes that the lovely morning crew left them with all the yummy burnt egg bits.

She starts typing on her way home, overlooking the additional emails Rotom has sent while she was busy.

“Rotom,

I’m not angry with you.”

She stares at her screen for a long time. Nothing she types in after that feels right.

She tries anyway: “Are you planning on living with Kukui forever?” Arceus, that’s way too vague. They won’t understan–

Oh. They’ve already replied to her.

She has to physically stop walking, because their response only tightens the feeling in her chest. “Why. Are You going to ask me to come live with you?! 🙂”

“No, I was never planning on that.”

It takes them longer than usual to answer. “What Do You Mean.? I’m confused.”

“You shouldn’t rely on me so much,” she writes. “I won’t be around forever.”

“I don’t understand. Are you dying?”

She takes a deep breath. But before she can finish her response, another one has come through from Rotom.

“If i cant live with you then can i come visit since you can’t come visit me. I will do Anything. Please. You are my friend. Even if you are sick.”

She feels terrible. She’s not trying to ignore them, but she picks up the pace. It would be a lot easier to think if she was sitting down at home and not in the middle of speedwalking there!

Rotom has beaten her to a response yet again. “Is it because of what I did? I’m Sorry I will get money for you. I will buy you a new house.

I’m Sorry for Other things I did too. I didn’t mean it. I promise!”

She doesn’t have a choice but to sit on her porch and type furiously. “I said I wasn’t angry at you. I just don’t want to hurt you by sticking around when I know it won’t be forever. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to lead you on. I think you are assuming things that I don’t mean.”

She has a moment to step inside and take off her bag. Her phone chimes.

“But That’s What You Did. i don’t understand

I thought you were leaving but then you came back. Why Come Back at all

Why even talk to me and say you like me if you don’t. Why say you’re my friend if you’re not

I think you’re Evil. I’m not sorry anymore you deserved it. Don’t Speak To Me EVER again”

She’s still reading the first email when they send another simply titled: “i didnt mean it. Im sorry.”

She really doesn’t know what to say. She feels so stupid and humiliated, heat rising to her cheeks and a headache forming. Even worse, she wonders if this has made things so much worse for the already betrayed ‘mon. Should she have just stopped all of this back at the police station?

But how would that have helped? She’d still be abandoning him, just a lot sooner! But she needed to abandon him either way– she’s not equipped to deal with stuff like this! She keeps telling herself that. It’s true. That’s why she keeps repeating it.

She’s certain Kukui is dealing with a meltdown.

If she’s honest, she’s been exhausted. For a while now. It’s been nothing but work and home for her, non-stop, and even with the extra shifts she’s been picking up the numbers in her bank account barely move.

She had to close today. Tomorrow, she has to work the morning shift.

Is this how the rest of her life is going to go? Is she just gonna be stuck working minimum wage jobs forever?

At least before I could pretend I had a future. Sweat beads on her forehead and under her nose. There’s so much floor left to mop. She stinks.

Sure, her landlord isn’t pounding on her door every night, demanding the next payment. But she doesn’t care that she’s not doing it. The guilt has always been overwhelming whenever she thinks about it. Because that woman has a life, too. And kids. And grandkids.

The first few months she’d arrived in Alola, she’d been lost. The first landlord she’d dealt with had lied. The rent had spiked only 5 months after she’d moved in.

She hadn’t known what to do. At work, it’d snuck up on her. She’d spotted a woman and child and realized how lonely she felt so far away from home.

In front of a bunch of people, she’d stopped taking orders because suddenly, she couldn’t seem to stop crying.

Of course, her boss had sent her home. They’d never called her back. That part wasn’t important. What was, was the lady who’d followed her outside. She’d given her a hug.

It meant everything to her.

Which was crazy. Because for all intents and purposes, it didn’t matter to the old woman at all. The girl was just a tenant. Not even a friend.

That was how they’d met. Her landlord was, honest-to-Arceus, an angel. She’d given up her own spare house, just so she could stay at a lower rate. And what had she done? Taken advantage of it. Caused thousands in freaking water damage!!

But it wasn’t even my fault! She’s so distracted that when she goes to pour the mop bucket in the sink, some of the dark water splashes back at her and hits her in the face. It was them.

I should have blocked them, she thinks, dragging a basket of aprons to the washer.

I should have told them to give me their stupid shell and pawned it, she thinks as she shuts off the lights throughout the building.

I should have… She was moments away from locking the front door when her own reflection stops her.

She looks grim. The dark circles under her eyes are much larger than she remembers.

She tries a smile.

‘When you’re happy, you smile with your eyes, too.’

Did Rotom know it was the same for them? That when they were scared, they would stop levitating? That sometimes, when they couldn’t meet her eyes, they would glance at the door?

Her frustration fades, leaving her feeling drained as she finally exits the building.

She wants to hate them.

And yet she can’t stand to see them unhappy. Can’t stand that she made them unhappy. Even if they did do all of that, her mind can’t stay focused on it. The image always changes. It warps into what she knows Rotom best for.

Standing below her, their limbs tight to their chest, blue eyes on their feet. Scared. Confused.

‘Because You are happiness. 🙂’

…If she lets them back in she’s only going to screw it up.

When everything fails apart and she has no other option, she always finds herself looking to her mom for comfort. It’s late at night when she calls her, catching her up on what’s happened.

“Honey,” her mom says, in that knowing tone that makes the girl stiffen, like she’s about to hear something she doesn’t want to. “I think you’re confused.”

“Mom, no I–”

“Shh!” her mom says quickly. “Listen to me. I know you. You’ve always been this way.”

“What way?”

“Why, you run away from problems like you’re… Laki running to catch that thief in last week’s episode! Oh, that was a good one, you know. You really should have seen it.”

Oh, Arceus. Why the Laki mention?

Her mother continues. “I know you mean well. You don’t like to hurt other people’s feelings. Even as a little girl you were so afraid to bother me… You can say the opposite of what you think, all you want. Eventually, how you really feel will come out. It always does, doesn’t it?”

When she doesn’t reply, her mother adds: “Think. What do you want? Are you being truthful to yourself?”

“I just… Ugh, mom.” She can already feel tears in her eyes and she hasn’t even said anything! “I want… I liked it when they were here. And when we were getting along. I’ve never gotten along with any Pokemon before, or even wanted one but I don’t know. It was different? But then all that stuff happened, with them throwing the plate and-and the water. I’m still so angry at them for that. I’ve never told them, of course! Well, I did, but then I pretended everything was fine because it would break their heart, I know it wasn’t their fault but…”

She sniffles. “I don’t know why I care so much. I don’t want them to be sad or feel hurt or lonely. But I can’t deal with stuff like that! I don’t know how, I don’t have the money. I’d be just as bad if I promised them a life that was better and then I ended up… I don’t know, homeless or maybe I make their life even worse than it already is. And like my landlord is even gonna want them back at my place, since I haven’t even paid off the freaking debt I owe her!”

Her mom is silent for at least a minute. She doesn’t even bring up the debt part, which the girl realizes she had tried very hard to hide from her. “So, did you like talking to them?”

“Yes,” she admits.

“And… If you could work through all of these problems, what would you do?”

“I don’t know… Take them in, probably. But that’s not realistic, mom!”

“Is it?” her mother presses. “Have you tried?”

She doesn’t speak.

“Do you remember when you were 15?” her mom asks.

She feels her mouth dry, her eyes widening. “What? How could I not, what does that have to do with…”

“You have to face it,” mom adds. “I think you know what you want– but you’re letting fear control you. Just like back then.”

She nods, even though her mother couldn’t possibly see it.

“Think about it. Talk to that Professor Kooky. You don’t get that kind of position from using Chat GPT or whatever we call those cheating programs nowadays.”

“It’s Kukui,” she corrects.

“Kukui, Chat GPT… What’s the difference?” her mother replies.

She snorts, wiping the tears from her eyes. “Mom, the Professor’s name is Kukui.”

“Stop crying and stop overthinking it. Put your big girl pants on and instead of waiting for something to happen, do it. Alright?” Her mother hums. “It will save you the fluids in the long run.”