Chapter 19

Chispa waited in silence on the other side of the sitrus bush. She stretched out her front paws and lowered her head and shoulders to the ground as she surveyed her prey, who was helplessly unaware of where she had vanished to. The lowering of her front end was countered by the raising of her hindquarters and tail, both of which wiggled with eager determination. On the other side of the bush, her foe moved his head in all directions trying to ascertain her location. The unknowing enemy turned towards the bush, and Chispa’s anticipatory twitching stopped immediately; she became as still as a tree while he glanced around her direction. The prey, seemingly convinced that the bush was no threat, turned away from it and continued his scouring the area. It was then that Chispa darted out, sank her teeth into the hapless Monferno’s tail, and disappeared back behind the safety of her shrub before he could even turn to react to his pain. Monferno yelped and turned angrily but saw nothing assailing his tail. He inspected the bush again, but still he saw no sign of the tiny Shinx. The monkey pokemon snorted in annoyance and turned away to continue looking for her.

Sam scratched the side of his pestersome beard. “God in heaven,” he muttered aloud. “She found someone more gullible than she is.”

Chispa and Monferno had been wrestling all day, and Sam’s Shinx finally seemed to have gained the upper-hand by using her wits against Barry’s ape. Sam had started to think from their experiences together since he caught her that if Chispa was ever forced to rely on strategy and cunning, she was doomed. But perhaps he had overestimated Monferno.

The rest of their friends had scattered about the lake at daybreak; Bree was assailing the towering trees around them looking for nectar–Sam knew she was still above him by the occasional falling of leaves that signified she must have found herself offended by a particular branch–while Vlam, Torterra, and Empoleon went off to enjoy the beachside of Lake Valor. It was no surprise that Empoleon and Torterra would enjoy the water–Empoleon was, of course, a water-type, and Torterra would simply enjoy lapping up lakewater to nourish the vegetation on its back–but Sam figured Vlam went with them simply to not be around the comparatively more combative Bree, Chispa, and Monferno.

Sam’s scratching at his beard grew more furious; he could not imagine why anyone who ever choose to grow such a nuisance if they were not forced to. Since finding out days before that his cell phone’s battery had long-since died without a fresh charge, he’d contemplated breaking the device into pieces to see if he could make anything sharp enough to shave with, but for the moment he merely settled on frustrated scratching.

It had been, by Sam’s estimate (and time-telling grew more difficult the more days that passed), about two weeks since he’d found Barry in Canalave. Getting nearly all the way across the continent of Sinnoh was quite a hassle when Sam had deemed all modes of public transportation too risky, so travel went quite slowly. At one point, they stowed themselves away between the railroad cars that transported coal through Mount Coronet to the eastern cities from Oreburgh; Barry had been quite convinced they needed to cut holes in their clothes and sing railroad songs, but Sam was happy to discover Barry actually had no idea what a “railroad song” might be. And thus ended their possible tenure as hobos.

After abandoning the train car in Pastoria City, it was less than a full day’s hike to the lake. Unfortunately, as was the case with Lake Verity, finding the lake did not immediately equate to finding any of the legends. Sam, Barry, and their friends spent day and night at the lake, but they saw little more than the Magikarp within it swimming peacefully and some squirrel-like electric types Sam recognized as Pachirisu. Magikarp were all-too common back home in Johto, but the snow-white Pachirisu with their cyan stripes down their tails was something he’d never seen in person. Cute though they were, they were not what he was there for.

More leaves fell from the tree above him, and when Sam looked up to see if Bree needed any help, he noticed the sun was off to the west. Barry had been gone half the day since he decided to investigate as much of the lake’s southern shore as he could before night fell, and now night was falling. They were still, as far as Sam knew, a kidnapper and a missing person; any number of people could have come across Barry, recognized him, and called in the authorities. For all Sam knew, Barry was in custody at that very moment…

“Damn this lake is huge, buddy. I have no idea how far I made it today, but it wasn’t to the other side, that’s for sure.”

Thank god, Sam thought upon hearing Barry’s voice as the latter appeared through the trees. It was, Sam thought, probably the first time he’d had such a thought regarding Barry. 

”Maybe we should move camp and go a little ‘round the lake each day?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Sam waved at him. “I’m sure if the legends are even here, they’ll always be on whatever end of the lake we aren’t.”

“Optimism!”

“It’s realism.”

“I know, I was being sarcastic.”

Sam looked out across the lake. He saw a few miniscule ripples form from what must have been tiny bugs landing on the surface, but aside from that, it was peaceful. No sign of anything unusual at all. 

“Why don’t you hate me?”

Sam wasn’t sure why he had asked the question, but it was one that had been bothering him for days. He had, perhaps, previously been afraid that asking it would remind Barry that he should not want anything to do with Sam since the events in Snowpoint. In that moment, though, with the waning sun and the calm of Lake Valor, the question came more easily.

“What do you mean?”

Sam felt his chest sink; he was hoping he would not have to go into the details. “I pretty much out-and-out attacked you in Snowpoint. And then I left you with a psychopath who would go on to lock you in a basement. So what are you still doing with me?”

“Well, I–”

“Don’t make a joke about how you’ve kidnapped me as part of some eco-terrorism plot and can’t let me go.”

Barry made a whine of complaint, but then fell silent for a moment. “You saved me from the Phoenix Corp. So that evens stuff out, right?”

“Not the part where I tackled you through a door and defeated and stole your friends.”

“Well, I was in the basement a long time…”

“Why?”

Barry sighed. “You really want the serious adult conversation here, huh? Damn. What the hell, man? You were mad, and you lost it. We’ve all been there. I’m not going to bust your chops over it forever, okay? You seem pretty sorry about it.”

Sam nodded; he was sorry. He opened his mouth to affirm it, but Barry continued on.

“I mean, I was kind of a jerk, too. I would have done the same thing. I lied to you, man. Straight up. I knew what Rowan had done with the legends, but I ran you around a bit to mess with you and never told you what I knew. Jerk move.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Sam, dude, you are trying to save your brother’s life. But I didn’t know that. When I met you, you were just some idiot who came here trying to steal our legendary pokemon. I didn’t know nothing about you, so I screwed around with you. And then, yeah, prof and I used you to help out with something that we needed looked at and made you put Tommy on the back burner. And the whole time you did it because you thought it’d eventually save your brother anyway. And we, like, actively kept you from the thing that could save him. Hate you? I don’t know why you still don’t hate me.” 

Sam nodded slowly; he had been so wrapped up in his own guilt that he had not even considered that Barry felt any remorse over the ordeal. “What changed your mind about me?”

“It was,” Barry said, tapping his lower lip, “when you kept going on about Tommy to me while we were on the boat to Lake Acuity. I just thought, ‘wow, this guy really cares about his brother’. But what was I supposed to do? You already thought what Rowan wanted you to. Was I supposed to be all ‘oh, I forgot to tell you that we’ve totally been lying to you’? Nah,” he shook his head, “I was just trying to find the right time to, like, accidentally put you on the right track after that. Get you to the trio in a way that didn’t show I always knew where they were.”

Barry turned toward the lake, away from Sam, and his voice slowed down more than Sam had ever heard it do so before. “You were doing it for your brother, and you know what? If there was a pokemon out there that could bring my parents back, I’d tell Professor Rowan to go eat his whole philosophy, and I’d do whatever it took to get them back.” Barry lifted his head upwards. “Rowan’s still right, but you know what? Screw him. I’d do it.”

“I still shouldn’t have taken your friends.”

“That was pretty sucky. I thought you were going all supervillain on me there, really.”

Sam shrugged. “It just seemed perfectly rational at the time. I beat you in battle, so I was taking them away as penance for your lying to me. I was really out of it in the moment.”

“That’s what I get for letting you win.”

Sam could not contain that chuckle that built within him. “Let me win? I think you’ll remember I beat you fair and square. Search your feelings; you know it to be true.”

“Yeah, like when I saved Chispa’s butt at the expense of Monferno’s, right?”

“That’s ‘cause Chispa’s cute. That’s, like, ninety percent of her offense so far.”

Barry tilted his head into a half-nod. “Whatever, I totally jobbed myself out to make you feel better.”

“Anytime you want a rematch, we can see about that.”

The thudding sound of Torterra’s footsteps alerted the two of them that their friends had returned from the lake. Vlam was stepping sideways away from Barry’s pokemon, and the three were eyeing each other uncertainly.

“No no no,” Sam said calmly. “Not now or anything. Don’t worry, no one’s fighting. Just maybe,” he turned towards Barry and grinned with just one side of his mouth, “someday.”

“You know it.”

Apparently reassured, and not looking forward to any more altercations between their trainers, Vlam, Empoleon, and Torterra proceeded the rest of the way up the path to the clearing in the woods. Vlam, as she was often happy to do, found the sunniest spot left before night came and settled into it; Empoleon and Torterra approached Barry with pleading in their eyes for whatever berries they could get out of him for dinner. With those three being back and ready for dinner, Sam separated Chispa from Monferno and called for Bree to come out of the tree. She emerged from the leaves with a branch seemingly stuck under her right wing, but as she flew down to the group, she shook it loose right over Monferno’s head, plopping down onto him. Sam soured his face at her, but she did not seem affected as she landed, buzzing whimsically, on his shoulder. Barry had not seemed to catch what she did, or if he had, he was choosing to ignore it. 

Dinner had been a scarce treat for them by that night. Barry and Sam were relegated to finding little hole-in-the-wall gas stations and convenience stores with minimal clientele to get what they could without being recognized, but they’d quickly ran out of cash after the first few days out of Canalave. Sam had decided that using either debit or credit cards was out of the question; it was too much to risk that there might be a trace out for any of them. That left them with two options: scavenging wildlife and shoplifting. Neither Sam nor Barry found either option particularly attractive, but they convinced themselves they would find a way to pay back any items they took on their way. After their friends gathered around for mealtime, Sam opened his backpack–itself an item he’d snatched from a department store in Eterna City–to see what they still had available besides the row of sitrus bushes that Chispa had previously used as cover. Sam pushed aside the baggies of berries they had picked, a handful of cans of food for their pokemon, and a half dozen packages of snack cakes but found little else. 

“I’m pretty sure men and pokemon survived for centuries before the invention of shopping, but we really stink at it,” Sam mused over the limited supplies.

“Do you think they stole from gas stations, too?”

“I think they were a lot less squeamish about catching and eating rabbits and squirrels.”

“But they’re so cute,” Barry whined, his voice rising at the less syllable.

“I know. Doesn’t matter, anyway; I wouldn’t know what to do with one if I caught it.”

Sam pulled out the snack cakes and internally made a promise never to eat sugar again if he could just make it through to his next proper meal without getting diabetes. Barry, as usual, snapped up the chocolate cakes and left the fruit-filled ones for Sam. “The nice thing about this beard is that if I get hungry later, I can search it for leftovers,” Sam noted as he removed the wrapper.

“Oh, can I, too?”

“Get your own.”

Sam was definitely jealous of Barry there; despite having spent at least as much time unwashed as Sam had, Barry was as fresh-faced as a grade school kid. 

They finished their meal in relative quiet–at one point Chispa yelped when Monferno’s overly-excited tale smacked into her, and Butterfree dropped between them to give the monkey a piece of her mind, but there were no other disturbances–and by the time they were done, the sun was completely gone. Sam and Barry cleared off their patches of ground, recalled their friends into their pokeballs, and decided to call it a night.

Barry–giving credence to the idea that human energy was a finite resource–was snoring within moments of hitting the ground. Sam lay on his back and stared at the trees and stars above him and wished it had been so easy for himself; he had usually been tired by that point in the evening, but sleep seemed a distant companion. His discomfort had surprisingly little to do with the uneven patch of ground he found himself on; it fell more from the conversation he’d had with Barry. Apparently before they even made it to Snowpoint City, Barry had not only saved Sam’s life in the ocean, but he’d been wracked with guilt over the lies regarding Sinnoh’s legends. It made his own sin at the ski resort even worse in Sam’s mind. He shook his head in disgust at the memory of attacking Barry and leaving him in the care, as it were, of Henrique Alonzo. Even with possibly all of Sinnoh looking for him and calling him a terrorist, Barry was with Sam, trying to help Tommy. These scales were not in balance; not even a little bit.

In the distance, the sound of thunder interrupted Sam’s thoughts. Great, his mind spat, now it’s going to rain on us. As his eyes focused back on the stars, he realized there was not a cloud to be seen above them. Sam closed his eyes and listened as intently as he could; the sound rang out again, and this time, Sam visualized fireworks. Could it have been a Sinnohan holiday that Barry had not mentioned? Sam opened his eyes again and pushed himself up to his feet. He wandered several feet away from camp to where the treeline was low, and while he still occasionally, heard the sound, there were no eruptions of color and light to go with it. 

“Barry,” Sam called to his partner, but did not rouse him. He sighed and rolled his head as he walked over and kicked Barry lightly in the arm. “Wake up, Barry.”

Barry moaned and woke up, immediately asking Sam why he’d woken him.

“Did you hear that?”

Barry sat upright and began listening at Sam’s question. There was another shot of far-off sound, and Barry nodded. “Yeah, what is that?”

“I was hoping you’d know. Is it a holiday or something?”

“No, why?”

Sam shook his head. “I thought maybe it was fireworks. But, I don’t know, I don’t see any. So maybe it’s something else? I thought you’d know.”

“I don’t. Well what sounds like fireworks but isn’t fireworks?”

The riddle-like words opened a vault in Sam’s mind, and a previously hidden possibility sprang forth. His eyes widened as the answer moved to his lips.

“Explosions.”