Candy

From Everland to Reborn ~ Episode 86 At some point, we had to exit to a rooftop, and take some colorful floating stairs. “These are also the work of an Everish artisan. They are under the spell to remain in place, so don’t worry about them suddenly falling or anything,” he said cheerily, as always, unbothered the difficult situation I was in. “Do be careful not to lose your balance, though. I would offer you a hand, but… well, let me just say that would not be quite a Helping Hand.” I didn’t understand his meaning, but I only shrugged. I didn’t like him enough to hold his hand anyway. Instead of him, Pikachu jumped off my shoulder and offered me his hand. We began going up the stairs slowly, because the altitude was quite discomforting. When I thought I lost balance, Pikachu would pull me back, and when he lost balance, which wasn’t nearly as often due to how small he was, I pulled on him. At a midpoint, though, I stopped in my tracks because I was called by a familiar, but exceedingly unwelcome, voice. “Vanilla! Up here,” shouted Taka. “Taka? What are you doing here? You should’ve stayed in Train Town,” I shouted back. “I know, I didn’t move from there. I literally went to nap and woke up here,” he said, with hasty breathing. “And Lin-” His voice cracked when he mentioned her, and the rest of the conversation was all said while sniffling on his part. “I’m sorry, Vanilla. I really am sorry,” he said. “I didn’t want her to… I didn’t want this. Please believe me.” “I know that,” I shouted. “But she’s here, and I’ll have to deal with her now.” “I’ll… I’ll find a way down so I can join you.” “Don’t do that. If you can, find a way out of this place,” I said, then I turned to Silver. “Can you get to where he is and guide him out of here?” “Sure thing,” he said. “Or at least, we can try. He entered this space using unknown means, so I’m not quite certain that I’ll have the capacity to get him out. Will you be alright on your own?” “I’ll figure it out. Now, go.” He bowed once, ran down the stairs, entered the castle through the door we exited through, and impossibly soon appeared next to Taka. “Shall we get going, my good sir?” Taka appeared as bewildered as I was that this man had teleported to where he was, but didn’t complain and followed his lead. When I saw that they were both out of my sight, I continued walking with Pikachu. We moved slower than I’d wish, but at least we didn’t fall off the staircase, which was the only thing that could happen to make our situation worse. We were once again halted, when the lady of the house finally showed up. “How in the world did you enter this place?” Titania asked. “And you had to drag these other vermin in too.” She was standing on a piece of Earth that had also been enchanted to float, apparently. However, that piece wasn’t reachable via my staircase. It was only reachable by another, thinner set of stairs that crossed the one I was on at a slightly higher plane. Titania used them to stand right above me. “We’ll need to get rid of them.” “Taka isn’t our enemy,” I said. “Remember how you were insistent that he made a choice? Well, he chose our side. We only have to take care of Lin.” “I will know whether he’s on our side or not, depending on how he acts today. For all I know, he could have called her here, or might get in the way to protect his superior.” I didn’t say anything back. It was pointless to argue at a time like this, when we didn’t know when Lin might reach and slice Taka’s throat. Besides, Titania was right on this. She will know he is on our side anyway, since he won’t get in our way. “I’ll finish that green haired b*tch who’s wandering around my house as if it were hers,” she said. “Vanilla, do you trust me?” “Do I trust you? What kind of question is that?” I laughed. “Have you done anything to deserve my trust?” “Right. I should’ve seen that one coming. But we don’t have time, so just take these regardless.” Titania let something drop from where she stood, and I failed to catch it but Pikachu did on my behalf. He extended his arm so that I could take a better look at whatever she wanted me to hold on to. “The sapphire bracelets?” I said, but by then Titania was already running towards higher ground. I placed the bracelets in my bag, and carried on climbing the unnecessarily long stairs. When we finally reached ground again, we saw that there was an opening that connected this pastel fantasy land to a dark, lava-infested cave. There wasn’t any other way to go, though, so we walked right in. Silver was waiting for us inside. “What on earth are you doing here? Didn’t I tell you to guide Taka to safety?” I said, with no effort to hide my irritation. “That is the interesting part. I thought I was doing just as you said,” he said. “I was guiding him to the exit, but suddenly I looked behind me and he was gone. I have no idea what kind of magic worked on him, despite my- if I say so myself- broad expertise when it comes to magical studies.” “Perhaps it wasn’t a work of magic, of the type that exists in Everland. But that is terrible news, regardless.” That meant that Taka could be anywhere now, and the location he happened to be in, could very well be the same as the one Lin was in. “Sorry about that, m’lady. But let me be your guide from now on,” he said. “That is, until we encounter Tania… It’s complicated.” Perhaps they fought? I thought vaguely but continued my way. Our path was full of lava pools that glowed and helped light up the otherwise dark cave. It wasn’t a straight way, however, so I couldn’t run too quickly in case I might not be able to turn in time. “Do you wonder why we have a Dragon’s Den in our residence?” Silver asked. I had no time to chit chat, so I kept silent. “My generation didn’t get to see it, but our great grandparents used to own a pet dragon. See that? There’s a large statue built in the dragon’s likeness over there.” The statue entered our field of vision soon enough. The dragon had a slender face but quite a large body, and a tail that was almost half the size of the whole beast. Somehow, I felt some familiarity with its tail’s shape, but I couldn’t be sure. My mind was too confused to think deeply about it. When we passed near it, however, it moved toward us and screeched. I was so startled that I fell backwards, only narrowly missing a pool of lava. I thought the statue would keep attacking, much like the statues we’d encountered in Solaris’ secret cave, but once it was done, startling me out of my senses, it returned to the base it had been standing on. “What the f*ck was that?” I screamed. I looked at Silver, who grinned in response. “Are you alright, m’lady?” he asked, and extended a hand to me, which I waved away. “Did you know that thing would move?” I asked, pushing me off the ground. “Of course. You see, that statue was also enchanted so that my great gran-” “You literally just attempted to murder me,” I said. “I almost fell into that pool of lava, all because of you.” “I assure you I had not the slightest intention to do any such thing, but I thought it would improve your foul mood if I pranked you thus. Forgive me, m’lady. I really thought you would appreciate the hilarity.” I couldn’t believe what had just happened, but there was no scenario in which Silver’s conduct could be forgiven. Improve my foul mood by pranking? Please. There was no way that cheap excuse could be taken at face value, and that only left one other possibility: that he had never been my ally to begin with. I took my fighting stance, and before Silver could ask another nonchalant question, I swung my fist from under his chin across his face. Yet, I missed… by a tenth of an inch? Actually, I couldn’t have missed a target so large and unmoving, but I didn’t hit anything so I had to conclude that I missed. Silver appeared to comprehend something in my puzzlement and looked serious for once. Yet, instead of elaborating on the subject, he pointed behind me and said: “Is it time to be fighting me? Look.” I turned around and saw that a person was standing there. They were wearing armor that covered all their body, including their face. “So she gave you the sapphire bracelets voluntarily,” she said, with a voice that confirmed the armored person to be Lin. “Why don’t you do the same for me?” “Tell me one good reason I should give them to you.” Lin was silent. “I thought so.” “Do you really think you can stand up to me? Even after what happened to your precious champion?” Lin asked. Ame’s limp body, followed by Wolfie’s bloodied body, flashed in the back of my mind. I took a deep breath. “The fight in Reborn… It’s also my fight now,” I said. “If I perish here, that only means I wasn’t fated to be a savior.” I adopted a fighting stance. “Bring it on,” I shouted and grabbed a pokeball. Yet, I didn’t end up fighting Lin. Before I even comprehended what happened next, it had happened. Titania fell on top of Lin and made her crumble to the ground. “Die!” she shouted as she flung her Aegislash’s blade down to Lin’s back. The blade penetrated the armor and, I assumed, her flesh. 1 second passed… then 10. Blood started staining the ground underneath the steel armor. “Ha… hahaha!” Titania laughed like a maniac, and my attention shifted from the pile of armor to her. “So that’s all it took. Someone should’ve done that a long time ago.” Titania pulled her sword. The blade’s cusp was crimson and glistened when light reflected on it. Given that the body no longer had a blade blocking the blood loss, the pool of blood underneath it rapidly increased in diameter. I had to look away. Even though Lin’s dismissal was a blessing to all of us, I couldn’t see a puddle of blood forming without getting paralyzed by unpleasant memories. “Our world is in disarray because of you,” I heard Titania say, and a metallic clamor followed it. “Wait, what?” I looked at the limp body again, since her reaction required my attention. And what I saw… I couldn’t believe it. “How can this be?” I said and kneeled on the ground. Titania had kicked the helmet off of the armored body, but the head that was revealed was not Lin’s. It was… Taka’s… “If you keep swinging that thing around like that, sooner or later someone’s going to get hurt,” I heard Lin’s voice from behind me. “Yeah, you!” said Titania, and she passed me and charged towards Lin. I didn’t see what happened, but things didn’t sound like they were going well. Though I would’ve wanted to crawl to where Taka was, to check if there was any small possibility he might still be saved, but I judged I wouldn’t get a chance to do that as long as Titania and Lin were having a one-on-one. So I decided to stand up and deal with my foe. By the time I paid full attention to them, Lin was holding Titania above a pool of lava, while Titania desperately but unsuccessfully struggled to get her hands off her. Yet, I didn’t see Titania surviving a dive in lava if Lin really let her go. “Is this what you really want? Should I let go?” Lin asked her. I briefly considered how ethical it would be if I pushed both of them into the lava. Yet, I reconsidered. I had a feeling that Lin would not die even then, and as much as I disliked Titania, she was still useful as Team Meteor’s enemy. I wouldn’t have been able to push them both, after all, though, because as soon as I took one step towards them, Lin threatened to let go of Titania if I moved. I couldn’t do much but watch, hope the best of luck to Titania, and wait for a chance to counter-attack. The chance did arrive, but not for me. Titania was finally able to get a hold on Lin, so that she wouldn’t move, and then called her Aegislash, who was resting near them. The loyal sword pierced through yet another body, and then Lin wobbled and gasped for air before falling to the ground. I quickly rushed to give Titania a hand, and I watched as she pulled the sword from the body. “For the sake of everything good in this world,” she said. “Just f*cking die already!” She swung the sword down again, making another cut in the body. I looked at Lin’s face. Her eyes were wide open, wider than those of the dead people I’d ever witnessed. Perhaps we were finally able to one-up her. Titania withdrew her sword again and walked over to where Taka still lay. “He shouldn’t have gotten in the way, but… it’s her fault it ended up like this in the first place,” she said and bit her lips. “I feel like shit.” Then, she walked away to another exit to this cave. I didn’t follow her, at least not right away. I kneeled next to Taka’s body. “This is the result of your choice,” I said at him. Pikachu jumped off of my shoulder and pushed Taka’s body back and forth twice. Taka’s head jerked, which jumpscared me, and then coughed blood. I had already thought him to be dead. “Vanilla,” he said, but his eyes wouldn’t focus on me. “Hang in there,” I said, but I didn’t have a way to save him. I glanced around me, but not even Silver was in our vicinity for me to ask him for help. Where did he even go? “This is fine,” he said. “No, it’s not. This can’t be the end.” “It is,” Taka coughed more blood. “Don’t say anymore,” I said, then shouted: “Silver! Titania!” “Listen. I… I was actually dead already,” he coughed here again. “But this past week… I lived. If I’d known I’d truly die because of tha-” He had a fit of coughing and his breathing became rougher. “I chose right.” He soon after took one last look at me. Then, while his eyes were still fixed on me, his expression went blank. I pushed his eyelids down. “Do you... really think so?” I walked to the cave’s exit, and found a large open space surrounded by pillars, even though there was no ceiling for them to support. I wouldn’t have cared about the lack of ceiling, were it not for the snow and occasional bits of hail that fell upon us. Titania was standing with her arms crossed, looking as grim as I’d ever seen her. “That woman is dead, but I don’t feel good about it,” she said. “And that boy… why was he in that armor? It must’ve been something she did.” I said nothing in response. I wasn’t sure I could hide my irrational resentment towards Titania, which her irresponsible use of violence had ignited in me. Yet, that she felt an equal resentment towards herself was evident to me, so I convinced myself to be satisfied with that for now. “But you’re here for the gym battle, aren’t you? Are we doing that now?” “Yes.” Honestly, trying to concentrate after what had happened proved harder than expected. I made some careless mistakes during battle, which if I had been completely on my senses, I probably wouldn’t have. Yet, the same could be said about Titania. Her pokemon were strong attackers, but she didn’t support them with healing at crucial moments, which ended up costing her the gym badge. “This is not a happy ending, but such things never existed to begin with,” she said, as she returned her Aegislash to its pokeball. “What a boring performance.” I turned around in disbelief. “Why… How are you alive?” Titania said, lunging forward toward us. “You should not be alive right now!” Lin took a moment to move her lips from side to side until her face was wrinkled into what I assumed was a, visibly forced, smile. “Do you understand now? Steel will not make me bleed, and your armor is nothing more than tinfoil to the brimstone breath of the New World.” “If steel will not make you bleed, it’s only a question of finding a different way to,” I said. “It will be a spectacle, to see you try and fail countless times, until you lose the will to keep going,” she said. “But that is not important. What is important is that Vanilla leave this place with those Sapphire Bracelets.” “Why would you need Vanilla to keep them?” Titania asked, then gasped and slid away from me. “Are you two working together?” “Aren’t we?” I stepped towards Lin, but halted. Instead, I made a steep curve and walked towards Titania. Then, I shoved the bracelets at her chest. “If you’re that gullible, better not entrust them to me.” I looked back at Lin, whose face was still contorted. “You are always rebelling, like a child does when they believe they can force their wants on their parents,” she said. “That is a common thought among the weak like you, Vanilla. However, in practice, it is never effective against someone that could crush you like the insect you are, whenever it suited their fancy.” “Let me see if your words speak the truth.” I would’ve ran to Lin and engaged her in a physical fight, had Titania not grabbed me and stopped me with all her might. “Are you stupid? Don’t you see she’s just provoking you? Snap out of it,” she said. “You’re weak, not only physically, but mentally too, it appears,” Lin said. “I will not waste another minute with you, but I will only remind you: if you stand in my way, I will not hesitate to kill your friends.” Lin turned around and was about to go back into the cave, but before she did, she left us with these parting words: “Though, perhaps you would prefer that, Titania.” “Prefer that? Don’t be stupid,” Titania said once Lin was gone from our sight. “Nobody wants blood on their hands.” She took a pause here, and I imagined she was perhaps reflecting on her recent kill. “I must go back to Amaria. I will keep protecting her, as long as I live. And you,” she said, looking at me. “You’ll keep the bracelets.” “Why? Didn’t you hear Lin? Don’t play into what she wants.” “Yes, but you won the Gym battle. You are the stronger trainer. I will trust that you’ll keep them safe from Lin’s reach. Besides, she now believes I have the bracelets. Perhaps we can make use of that in the future.” I took the bracelets, though I wasn’t convinced that, at this point, any sort of attempt to one-up Lin would be fruitful. As long as we couldn’t decipher the source of her superhuman powers, we could not surpass her. “Leave the boy’s corpse to me. I will give him a proper burial in this enchanted land. He will be safe here, though I doubt he’d need to be safe anymore,” Titania said. “If you plan to continue your Gym challenge, we’ll cross paths quite soon. Amaria is the next Gym leader, and you know where to find her.” “I will tell Julia that you’ll return to Fiore mansion on your own accord.” Titania appeared surprised to hear Julia’s name mentioned. “Did she come to the desert with you? I did hear two voices, but when I went to pick you up, neither of you were in sight.” “Yeah, that’s because your brother let us in.” This seemingly innocent comment confused Titania for some reason. “My… brother? Hardy isn’t here at the moment. He rarely ever is. If you’re looking for him, I’m not the one you should be asking.” I shook my head. “I meant your elder brother.” “I don’t think you know what you’re talking about,” she replied. “Perhaps your mind is actually weak, and you’ve been so deeply affected by that boy’s death that you can no longer differentiate between fact and fantasy.” “Why are you acting so defensive? I simply explained how Julia and I bypassed the protective spell,” I said, unwilling to hide my displeasure. Titania took a pause to think what to say. “My elder brother, Silver, is no more. There. Have that help you organize your memory,” she said. “I’m heading out. Use the rabbithole located at the end of this field to exit this place.” She pointed to what, from this distance, looked like a bunch of rocks, and then disappeared into the cave. I ran over to the bunch of rocks, which, as I got closer, I realized were just adorning the edges of the rabbithole. Once I was close enough to it, though, I noticed there was someone stuck inside of it. “Is Tania gone?” Silver asked. “Yeah,” I said. I had more to say to him, after he left me alone midway, but Titania’s enigmatic words had discouraged me from talking to him more than what was really necessary. On being told that his sister was out of sight, Silver crawled out of the rabbithole. “I beg your forgiveness, m’lady. In the end, I could not be of much use to you. I am deeply sorry for your friend’s passing.” I shook my head. I didn’t need the condolences of this stranger. “Titania seemed very off-put by the idea that you let Julia and I into this place,” I said. “What do you say to that?” “It is complicated, as I told you before. She and I were close a long time ago. It is not surprising if she still resents me for abandoning her.” “Abandoning her?” “It is a long story, most of which I, unfortunately, cannot tell you due to the nature of my existence,” he said. “Forgive me, again, if I have not explained myself well, but suffice to say that the Andersen family’s story, where it pertains to myself, does not have a happy ending.” If Titania’s words had been difficult to decipher, his were worse. I gave up on understanding. Whatever the deal was with these siblings, it was not my priority to know every bit of it. “I’m going,” I said, taking a peek at the rabbithole, which I could not see the end of at all. “It has been a pleasure meeting you and Julia,” Silver said and bowed. “I wish you the best of luck.” I didn’t look back at him and jumped straight into the rabbithole. The feeling of falling into the unknown felt… somewhat nostalgic. In the blink of an eye, I was standing in a dim space. There was a slide door, and light was creeping in from their crevices. I pulled them open, and found a familiar sight just outside. I was, somehow, already in Train Town. “Vanini!” exclaimed Julia when she saw me walking towards them, from the direction they least expected me to come from. “How did it go?” Archer asked. I didn’t answer right away. What I would have to tell them wasn’t something I could easily explain in a couple of words. Well I guess that means we can leave the desert. But without Tacos :( VANILLA RATES: REBORN CHARACTERS QUICK LINK TO NEXT EPISODE

I think you can format it as you like, but I personally try to make it easier for peepos to read my stuff by: Having the first post list/link all the chapters in spoilers so that they can click on the next one if they don't want to scroll through 15 pages lol Have a "link to the next chapter" thing at the bottom of each chapter so that if peeps comment a lot, other peeps can still quickly skip those to go to the next chapter without scrolling. Having different colors for the dialogue. This isn't so much for easiness to read, but because colors = fun! That's what comes to mind on the top of my head :p happy writing~

Glad you like it lol and although Vanini is a creation of mine, she's very different from what I am irl so it's sometimes hard to predict all her moves and behavior completely accurately All I can do is write her as I "dream" her to be acting, which tends to be 90% in character fortunately. Glad I could translate the creepy atmosphere I feel from Tania's gym into writing. Like in the original game, you get challenged by knight statues, one of which is Lin, kinda like a jump-scare. Then you find yourself in a room that loops until you find a way out, which is something you'd see in horror movies and stuff. I didn't really know I was writing a horror until you pointed it out, though. This will be revealed when "how she bypassed the magical barrier" is revealed, but it's not much that she lost memory but rather, because she woke from "sleep", she thought what happened irl was what happened in a dream. lolol this was not really intentional horror stuff. I was trying to portray a room that's super in-your-face luxurious, and wine red feels regal. I'm not an interior designer at all, so this is the best I can do The reason Julia isn't surprised is that he guided her to the guest room (no introductions were made then, but she would've guessed he was a person who works in the castle or something). But there is a reason no one has hinted at his existence. I listed random stuff including astrology and quantum mechanics to illustrate that Silver/Tania/Hardy's dad was someone with wide range of interests. There's an awful lot of books in Tania's castle, so I gave him that setting so it fits with that lol Not an important point, but I do make an effort to pay attention to small details like that lol She actually used to punch people in the beginning-ish for random stuff because she was in an ill mood (it had been a day or so since Aladdin betrayed her, Wolfie died protecting her, and she lost her whole Defiance group). She's now much less aggressive as a character, so I didn't think she'd punch someone she didn't exactly know was friend or foe. She did snap at the potential that he might've changed her clothes, though lol Silver is uhhh a spectator of sorts, so for the most part, he only watches. There's some hints in the episode as to why that is, but as you realized, there's something weird about him for sure :p I don't really know how Lin works, but so far she's been able to do stuff that would be nearly impossible for a normal, living human to do (even knowing that Taka had changed alliances and was in the desert with protagonist, or making Taka teleport to Tania's gym are already impossible imo), so I also let her surpass the protective spell. How did she do it? Probably the same way that she does things lmaooo

I meant elder bro And also despite the similar name, not Silver from Gold/Silver games. Head canon that might or might not make it to the story is that he was a steel type E4 member but stepped down a whale back. Then El joined E4. Lol you know your edgelord xD

Welcome uwu <3 Their ancestor is from Everland but not Tania's generation. They've been living in Reborn for over 200 years, maybe even in the times when the ruins under Reborn City were out in the open, in my head-canon. I just wanted a reason for them to be so tied to fairytales in a fairytale run lol and why they live in a castle with green pasture in the middle of the desert xD It'd be impossible to build without magic, I'd say. Someone did uwu Lmaooo I knew you'd like the quantum mechanics part. Tania's dad was a studious old boye Yep Tania doesn't have a brother in canon. While I dreamt about these few episodes a whale back, I thought of many things that could happen, but the scenario I liked best was Tania having an elder bro... for reasons that will be revealed next episode :3 In the real route, statues attack you while you go through the castle, and one of them gets behind you and prolly hits you from the back (it's Lin), which transports you to a room (I used the map for Silver's room). But I feel Vanini wouldn't be the type to have her back open to attacks of the sorts so I scrapped that. In canon, Lin actually makes a dramatic(?) entrance. I didn't change that bit. Most of the dialogue for her I took straight from the game :p

From Everland to Reborn ~ Episode 85 It so happens that the original content was too long to cram the Gym battle in. But I wanted to give logical(?) context for Titania's Gym being so grand (when I visited it in-game, I was like "how did the League organizers get so much money to create a castle in the middle of the desert??") and also a bit more characterization to Tania (it's not apparent in this episode, but it should become clear why I say that in the next). Upon telling Europa and Stethoscope about our discovery, they each rejoiced in their own ways: Europa hugged every one of us and high-fived Al, while Stethoscope went so far as to smile at me. They decided to host an impromptu party, which due to being impromptu, didn’t have even half the amount of food Brenda’s farewell party had. Yet, at least one of our crew was excited to have another party to talk through the night, so the other three tried to look animated even though we would’ve most definitely preferred to go to sleep early. The next morning was practically a repetition of the morning after Brenda’s party, with the small difference being that I was actually eager to head out to Titania’s Gym and was impatient for Julia to wake up. In order to keep my cool while Archer used nonviolent methods to wake her up, I approached Europa, Al and Bill to ask them whether they knew of the Gym’s whereabouts. I told them that the map wasn’t very specific on its exact location. “Ah! Miss Tania. We have actually seen her a few times,” Bill said. “She’s brought us food and water. Such a kind hearted young lady.” I was astonished to hear a real, breathing human being held such an impression of Titania, but said nothing of it. “She always appears from our South Eastern entrance, but we have never seen her Gym, or residence itself,” he added. “We tried to pay her a visit once, didn’t we, Al?” Europa said, and Al nodded. “But it was impossible to clear whatever weird magic spell she’s got goin’ protecting her place.” “A magic spell?” I asked, rather intrigued. So far in my journey, I had never seen any real magic in the Reborn region. The things that looked to be under a magic spell, like the forest located south of Spinel Town or the sleeping spell in Agate City, were always invariably tied to Team Meteor’s PULSEs’ doing. I wondered if this might also be the case for Titania’s Gym, and if so, I wanted to find out the ‘why’. “Yeah. There’s this illusion of grassland that looks like a humongous oasis that extends in all directions. No matter how far you run, you never get any farther from where you started. It’s all weird stuff, I tell ya.” “So how am I supposed to battle her, if I can’t reach her Gym? How come she’s spreading the word that her Gym is open, if no one can reach it?” “Well, it’s not like there’s an abundance of challengers,” Taka said from behind me, and joined our little group. “With the region being under instability and the Gym Leaders being absent from their Gyms, either being too busy fighting Team Meteor or been MIA entirely, you might actually be the only person who’s been this close to completing the League Challenge, Vanilla.” “So she’s handing out advertisements for her Gym just for the sake of it?” “I don’t know, but it certainly looks like it.” Great. This was already looking like it’d be a promising start. Given that Taka and Archer had nothing to do with actually meeting Titania, they opted to stay in the Train Town. That meant from here on out, it’d just be me and Pikachu, with the constant commentary sponsored by Julia. “It’s like a girls night out, if it were actually night. Is there a thing called girls day out?” she said. “I don’t know.” “Well, I’m making it a thing. We can invite Tania to join us too,” she said, but then retracted herself. “I guess when we meet Tania, the girls day out will be over. If she’s coming back with us, Archie and Tacos will be there so it wouldn’t really be a girls day out anymore. Maybe when that happens, we can call it an everyone’s day out.” When we exited the trains from the South Eastern exit as Bill had instructed, we soon found the illusion that they were referring to. The grassland did stretch in all directions, but it wasn’t all grass. There were flowers and trees also, which reminded me of the gardens my mother used to keep at home. There was one more, especially curious thing about this illusion, which I only realized once I had been walking in it for some time. “This faint aura… This is light magic,” I whispered. Julia didn’t hear me, and I wasn’t sure I said it loud enough for Pikachu to hear from my shoulder. I wasn’t trained in magic, but was at least able to feel the auras of light and dark magic. Everyone in Everland could, if they had lived there long enough. It was inevitable to run into light magic, since it was frequently used by mages and witches. Dark magic, though, was harder to run into, unless you went into the enchanted forest located South of Red Riding Hood Forest. The dark magic in there was so great that you could feel it even from the edges of it, which is why I was mildly familiar with it. However, that didn’t tell me anything about how any such light magic- from the looks of it, a protective spell that creates the illusion of a grassland- had come to exist in this part of the Reborn region. Ironically, even though I had easily discerned that the magic spell didn’t originate in any PULSE, I still had the need to find out the ‘why’ behind it. “Wow, we’ve been walking for some time, and yet, look,” Julia pointed at the train car we’d exited from. “The train car is still right behind us. It’s almost like it’s following us or something.” Europa had indeed mentioned that they weren’t able to get any farther from where they started. “What if we walk backwards?” Julia suggested. It didn’t seem like a bad idea, so we did. We turned 180 degrees and took some steps backward, but saw that the train car didn’t get away from us. “Aha! I knew it,” she shouted triumphantly. “The train car is following us.” I took a few more steps backward, and noticed that Julia also didn’t move away from me. The only thing moving appeared to be the ground beneath my feet. “No, Julia. I think we’re just not moving at all, as if we were on a treadmill.” She also tried walking, and then running, away from me, and gasped when she reached the same conclusion. “Then, what should we do?” Julia asked. I really had no idea. Given my family background, I couldn’t even see the runes woven into this space, and even if I could, I didn’t have any means of undoing the spell. I wondered for a moment how Titania could manage to clear the path to reach her own Gym, but I figured that these types of spells could exclude specific sets of people from triggering their effects. Since we had bothered to come at all, Julia suggested that we shouted Titania’s name, in case she might hear us and come out to guide us. It was probably going to be useless, but it beat going back to Train Town without having exhausted the possibilities. If it didn’t work out, at least there was the faint possibility that Titania would visit Train Town, like Bill said she occasionally did, and we could have our match there. “Tania! It’s me, Julia! Please come out here!” Julia shouted. “Titania, for god’s sake! I’ve come for a Gym battle,” I shouted. “Stop hiding in your Gym!” “Squeaaak,” Pikachu shouted too. We waited in silence after that. Thirty seconds passed… then a minute… “Huh, nothing?” Right as Julia uttered those words, I saw someone appear behind Julia. It wasn’t Titania. I didn’t get much time to see him in detail, for as soon as he placed a finger on his lips, signaling me to keep quiet, a void opened beneath my and Julia’s feet and we experienced the sensation of falling. It was perhaps an illusion, like everything seemed to be in this strange space, but before I could figure that out, my conscience slipped away. When I woke up again, Pikachu was staring at my face intently. I felt drained, though I couldn’t explain why. “Pikachu… do you know what happened? I seem not to remember how I got here,” I said. My head was resting on a very soft pillow with a golden cover, and my body was covered in a blanket and bed sheets. The bed had four posts and a canopy, from which a velvety curtain drooped to close off most of the light from the room. I woke my upper body up, still feeling drowsy and lightheaded. The bed sheets slid off of me, and to my astonishment, I found out that I wasn’t wearing my bubblegum dress! Instead, I was wearing a set of white silk pajamas that were a tad bit too large for me. To make up for the excess, whoever put me in these tied the excess fabric with a hair tie just underneath my belly button. I tried standing up from the bed, though Pikachu tried to get me to lie back down. Perhaps he could tell that I was still feeling unwell, but I had to find the whereabouts of my bubblegum dress. The room was now fully visible to me. The walls were covered in wine red wallpaper and most of the furniture was golden, though their dull shine made it evident that they were antique. Given that I couldn’t be persuaded to lie down, Pikachu hopped to the vanity set and squeaked at me. I wobbled my way there and sat down on the chair. The mirror appeared to be taken care of, but even then, the edges were turning black. There was no dust on the vanity, other than underneath the photo frame that Pikachu lifted to show me. The picture was faded but I could see two people and one pokemon in it. The one pokemon I recognized before I did any of the two people because I had seen it before: it was an Aegislash. The two people were one red-haired short girl and a silver-haired young man. The young man, interestingly, looked strikingly similar to someone I vaguely remembered seeing in a dream. The little girl, though not obvious at first due to her uncharacteristically wide smile, I concluded was Titania when she was a child. “I wonder if this is a relative of hers,” I told Pikachu. “They certainly have similar red hair, but I don’t recall her or Hardy ever mentioning an elder brother.” I put the photo frame back on the table and decided to take a closer look at the room. I opened the closet. There were garments, all of a man’s and wrapped in thin plastic to maybe avoid accumulating dust. My bubblegum dress wasn’t in there, however. The room’s door was locked, as I expected it would be. Whoever brought me here, I supposed, wouldn’t want me leaving to who-knows-where. I guessed I still had the option to crawl down the window, but I didn’t think it would be necessary. I didn’t think the person who brought me here harbored ill intentions towards me, since, if that were the case, I’d probably already be dead or injured or whatever. In fact, I was waiting for them to show up, so that I could understand what their intentions were in bringing me to wherever this place was. “I also need to ask them about Julia,” I said to myself. “The last thing I remember, I was on my way to Titania’s Gym with her.” I continued my search of the room. On either side of the bed were small nightstands, and next to those were bookshelves that reached the ceiling. They were all filled with books, but from a quick glance, they weren’t lined up by author name or title name. Most of the books were either fairytales or textbooks about other regions’ history. There even was a copy of the Book of Influx and several other Everish history books, which really was surprising to me. In one of the two bookshelves, there was exactly one space, from which a book had been taken out. It was obvious which book it was, for there was also only one resting on the nightstand nearby. “From Everland to Reborn,” I read the title. “That sounds oddly relevant.” I opened the book, but it was so thick that I accidentally flipped the whole of it to the last page. The princess was flown out of the crumbling castle, which had been, to her, a symbol of oppression for years. However, when her feet touched ground, she was once again face-to-face with the aftermath of her actions. Her knees trembled and she crumbled down to the barren earth. “How can this be...” were the words that escaped her mouth. … That was all. I thought it odd that whatever the story was, it had ended so abruptly, but that really was all that was written on the last page of the book. Before I could flip it to read it from the beginning, though, a voice started me from behind and made me close the book by reflex. “You, too, feel curious about that book?” I turned to see who was standing behind me. I couldn’t hide my surprise in seeing that it was the man from my dream, the one also in the photograph. “Who are you?” I asked. He took a step back and bowed. “My name is Silver Andersen. You may know Tania, my little sister,” he said. Well, there it was. Though I hadn’t heard of those siblings having an elder brother, I figured it wasn’t surprising they hadn’t told me about him. I wasn’t particularly close to either of them. “Why have you brought me here? What even is this place?” “I brought you here because I figured you wanted to come here. This is our residence, or, better put, the building that houses Tania’s Gym.” I looked around me one more time. “And this is my room,” he added. I instantly colored, when I came to the realization that I was standing in a man’s bedroom wearing a set of nightwear. That took only a second, though. The next, I was holding a stance so that I could punch him if he dared get too close. “Pardon me, but what are you doing?” he asked, furrowing his brow. “I’ll mash your pretty face if you take a step closer. What do you want?” I said, but then, thinking of more pertinent questions, added, “Where’s my bubblegum dress? Did you change my garments?” Even if he didn’t get close, depending on the answer to the last question, I was ready to dislocate all his joints. “Do not fret, m’lady. Your bubblegum dress will be here soon,” he said, smiling as though he was totally unaware of my hostility. “And I did not change your garments. That would not be very gallant of me, would it?” “Then who?” “Please wait. She is headed here as we speak.” We waited for about five minutes, but I didn’t soften my stance for a second. I was giving him the benefit of the doubt, but I was also making up my mind on how long to wait before I latched onto his jaw. Eventually, though, I was spared the necessity to decide on that front, because the door that was closed from the outside opened, and a robotic rabbit entered the room. The rabbit, upon seeing that all of our gazes were focused on her, hid her face from our view with the bubblegum dress she was holding. Then, she dropped the dress on the carpeted floor, as she made a snapping sound and her upper body withdrew into the lower body. The result was that she had shaped herself as a pokeball in a matter of seconds. “Magearna is a little shy, you see,” Silver said and approached the large pokeball. He knocked on it and whispered to her to coax her to open up again. It took some trying, but the pokeball made a snapping sound and released into the rabbit shape again. She was still shaken, but she grabbed the dress and dusted it off. She looked at it, then at me, and her ears bent down. “S-s-s… O-o-o… R-r-r-r… E-e-e” The robot made sounds but I didn’t know what she meant by them. “Magearna is sorry for dropping your dress when she was startled,” Silver said. “She had washed it earlier, but now it’s a little dusty.” “There’s no need to worry about some silly dust. It’s been through snow, sand and even toxic waste.” Magearna’s ears pointed upright again and she smiled. She approached me while making whirring sounds and gave me the dress. “Magearna also changed your garments. She takes care of the cleaning of this room, and insisted on washing your dress while you were unconscious.” The dress, indeed, was impeccably clean, and the dust wasn’t even noticeable. Even the stones on it had been polished, and sparkled like they hadn’t done for as long as I’d been in Reborn. I thanked Magearna for taking the trouble. “That dress. You called it a bubblegum dress,” said Silver. “Is it not the traditional dress worn by the Hansel and Gretel line of nobles in Everland?” I was startled at his being so well-informed, but I figured I shouldn’t be really. His room housed an impressive library of books, which included not just one but five Everish books. “You may be surprised at my knowledge of traditional dresses worn by the nobility of a foreign region, but it really shouldn’t come as any surprise. After all, the Andersen Family actually migrated from Everland to Reborn only a little over a century ago, and I have studied all I could about Everland that my father’s collection of books contained.” This was some news, which I didn’t know how to react to. Did he want me to be happy to find a fellow ‘countryman’ in the Reborn region? However, that gave me little surprise or pleasure, given that I had been meeting fellow countrymen almost from the beginning of my journey, and I would have much rather not met 75% of them. “The truth is that your shouting did reach Tania, and she would have picked both you and your companion up, had I not picked you up first,” he said. “Your cheery companion woke up and is waiting for you in our guest room. Magearna and I will guide you there once our conversation is done.” “Our conversation? What do you plan to talk about?” “I picked you up, because I recognized your dress. I was curious to know what an Everish person could be doing in Reborn.” “What, do you not get enough tourists? Why would it be so odd that I was visiting the Reborn region?” “I have reason to be curious about anyone who travels... from Everland to Reborn. Especially, if that person is a young woman,” Silver said and looked at the book on the nightstand. I looked at it too and read its title again. “That book, and a dozen more, were written about 200 years ago, by a mystical man who insisted that he could dream of events that would happen in the future, and, accordingly, recorded his dreams as best as he could,” he said. “He was a close friend of my ancestor. As years passed, his memory turned more and more unreliable, so much so that he forgot he had a family of his own. As such, upon his death, he left all the books to the one person he could still remember: his friend, my ancestor. At the time, it was rumored that he had been sacrificing his past memories to create future ones, but it’s now impossible to tell whether that really was the case.” I didn’t, for one second, believe that story. Not even the strongest mages could see so much of the future as to write thick books about it, due to how unstable the future is by nature. Silver must’ve taken the hint from my expression, for he added that he also knew that the books the mystical man wrote couldn’t be taken word for word as absolute truth. “For, even if the things he dreamt about were accurate, he didn’t dream in a chronological order, and he could not always remember them clearly enough to record them upon waking up. That is very apparent in all of his books, but it’s particularly bad in this one, since it was the last one he started writing. Sometimes I wonder if he could even tell whose story he was dreaming, for I feel like the point of view sometimes shifted abruptly, and then I was at a loss on who’s actions and thoughts I was reading.” “Sounds like a mess,” I commented. “It is,” he laughed. “But it still is an interesting and most valuable read.” He bobbed his head to the side to signal Magearna to grab the book for him. He instructed her to open it to the first page, while I wondered why he didn’t just open the book himself. “In the end, she was persuaded to be reasonable. The baby was to be had. The baby was born a healthy girl, with features that resembled her father,” he read. “Little did she know what heavy burden rested on her tiny shoulders. However, responsibility does tend to increase in proportion with rank and power, and as the Princess of Everland, her burden had to be just what one must comprehend.” I listened to him read some more of the story about this Princess of Everland, but I soon had to cut him off. “Why are you reading that to me? I don’t have time to be idly listening to a fairytale,” I said. “I came to battle Titania, and, as you said, Julia is waiting for me.” “I wanted to know if you felt that any of what I read was familiar to you. Anything you may have heard your parents mention to you? Was your mother persuaded to give birth to you? Do you have features that resemble your father?” With every question, Silver took a step towards me, while I struggled to move backward because I was already standing by the nightstand. “No, I have never heard of any such thing from my parents,” I said. “In fact, I don’t really resemble either of my parents.” “The father proposed that the princess should have a companion, a friend, with whom the baby could grow up with. For this purpose, he volunteered his niece, thereby also accomplishing to quench his sister’s sorrow,” he read some more. “Are you close with your cousin? What do you think he means by ‘quench his sister’s sorrow’?” I was indeed close to my cousin, but I felt that his interrogation would never end if I admitted it, so I denied his questions again. This was effective. Silver backed off and sighed. “Why do you insist that I should have anything to do with that book?” I said. “I’m not the Princess of Everland. I’m a descendant of the Hansel and Gretel line and have no familial ties to the Queen.” “Right… I got ahead of myself. Forgive me.” He signaled Magearna to close the book and she placed it back on the nightstand. “I have always wanted to confirm whether the man was a real seer or just delirious. I also wanted, if possible, to know how each of the fairytales ended, for he died before he could finish dreaming most of them, including this one. However, it is a hard endeavor because there is no telling when these stories are supposed to take place. For all I know, they might take place a century or two from now.” “That’s too bad for you, but you should employ your time on more worthwhile things,” I said. “Who cares if a man that lived a couple centuries ago was sane or not? Just assume he was insane and move on.” Silver laughed. “My nature is to take things seriously and to be a terrible quitter,” he said. “I guess I will have to keep waiting, since-” Before he could finish his sentence, however, we felt the ground beneath our feet tremble. It wasn’t a big shake, of the kind that would’ve swept us off our feet, but the vibrations did make the furniture creak. “What was that? An earthquake?” I asked when the shaking had calmed down. “Yes, but no,” he replied. “It seems you are not the only visitors today. Come, follow me. Let’s reunite you with your friend, and hopefully find out who is our uninvited guest.” I asked them to give me a couple of minutes to change out of the nightwear and into my bubblegum dress. Afterwards, I followed Silver and Magearna down hallways and staircases, until they stopped in front of a door. Magearna opened it for us, and we found Julia eating popcorn and watching TV. “Vanini!” she screamed when she saw me and instantly left her spot on the couch to jump on me. “I was so worried. I’m glad you’re safe.” “Yeah, likewise,” I said, trying to pull her away from me as though she was gum stuck on my shoe. “This tall handsome guy told me you’d fallen unconscious and was still recovering,” she said. “Sounds about right,” Silver said. He had, apparently, been totally out of Julia’s sight even though he had entered the room right behind me. “Oh, hi. I didn’t see you there,” Julia said, looking uncharacteristically embarrassed. “Do not worry, that happens quite often,” he said. “My name is Silver Andersen. Pleasure to make your acquaintance.” “Oh please,” Julia giggled. “The pleasure is all mine.” I thought it odd that Julia, who I had understood was quite close to Titania, had also never met her elder brother. However, I wasn’t curious enough to ask them about it out loud. Yet, Silver only smiled when I looked at him questioningly. “Now, if you are done eating popcorn, may we show you around the house?” “Yes of course! It’s my first time being in Tania’s house… and Gym. It’s so big! I would never have guessed Tania lived like a princess.” Julia eagerly followed behind Silver, while Magearna and I followed them a few steps behind them. I thought the hallways were endless, and the rooms countless. Silver didn’t show us all of the rooms, but picked some and told us about the general history of them. I was impatient to get back on track- to find Titania and battle her- but Julia seemed not to care about time at all. Silver’s father’s room was the most unique out of the bunch, I thought, for it was basically a library, and had almost no furniture in it. Silver explained that his father was an insomniac, so he preferred to sleep in the library so that whenever he woke and couldn’t go back to sleep, he could read some more and theorize about all sorts of things, including but not limited to: astrology, biology, quantum mechanics, classic literature, politics, and regional or world history. “Where is he now?” asked Julia, despite Silver talking about him in past tense. “He was much more senior than our mother when he married. You can guess the rest,” he replied. We passed some more rooms, all of which were empty. Silver did not let us in one of them, because he said that their mother was inside but wasn’t fond of visitors. When the hallway finally came to an end in a small space apparently reserved for social activity, we unexpectedly ran into the ‘uninvited guest’ from the earthquake earlier. Yet, out of all people that I was prepared for, I never expected it to be this person. “Welcome, Vanilla,” Lin said. “What? How did you even get here?” I said, without really expecting an answer. “You were quite generous to show that boy here,” she said. “I thank you for that, since he, in turn, showed me.” “Yeah, he did say you had a radar or something. Sounds like he wasn’t wrong,” I said. “But you shouldn’t have been able to pass through the protective spell that guards this castle.” “Indeed. I’m really amiss as to how that could have happened,” Silver said. “Vanini, who’s this?” asked Julia, who had never before been in the presence of the true leader of Team Meteor. “Taka’s enemy,” I replied. “His enemy?” Lin snorted. “Have you considered the alternative? That you are his enemy?” “Taka’s not our enemy,” Julia shouted back. “He’s Vanilla’s and my friend, and we won’t allow you to do him any harm!” “I think that’s your cue to shut up. I’m not going to hear a word you say,” I said to Lin. She narrowed her eyes and took a step back. “Very well. If that’s your final answer... Let’s get started,” she said, turning her back to us. She then exited from the doors behind her, and I could at last breathe again. Though I tried to act tough and unmoved, the reality was the reverse. I remembered finding Ame’s decapitated body in what we once believed to be the Devon building. I shivered. “This is bad news, Julia. She’s not going to have mercy with Taka, I’m sure of it.” “Should we maybe return to Train Town to warn him? He might be better off going back into the city and hiding there.” “That might be best,” I said, taking a step in the direction we came from, but then stopping. I ground my teeth, because part of me didn’t want to say it, but the other part won over and I told Julia what we should do instead. “But let’s do this. You go back to Train Town and warn him. I’ll continue this path and will fight Lin if I have to, at least to borrow some time. If I find Titania, I’ll tell her house has been infiltrated. Maybe she’ll help me fight Lin.” “Alright, I’ll come back when-” “No,” I cut her off. “No, Julia. You remain in Train Town, or you can even head back to the city with Taka and Archer. I’ll bring Titania to you, if you must talk to her directly, but don’t come back.” Julia looked at me as though she was meeting me for the first time. “Vanini… Are you worried about me? About us?” I looked away from her, but she jumped on me and hugged me, with so much momentum that she almost swept Pikachu off my shoulder. “You’re the cutest!” she shouted in my ear. “Don’t worry. I’ll take good care of Archer and Taka. Be safe, alright?” “Alright.” “Very well,” said Silver, finally finding a moment to speak. “Let Magearna escort you, Miss Julia, to the exit. I shall be your guide for the rest of your visit, Miss Vanilla.” He offered me his arm, as though he thought I’d take it. Julia waved at us and went down the hallway, while we entered the doors to the right and continued our way to Titania. We walked in relative silence, though Silver occasionally tried to get me to converse with him more than a couple of words at a time. “Do you notice similarities between the castles in Everland and this one?” he asked. “Yes.” “Good, because it was built with the same technology and tools,” he said. “When my great-grandparents left Everland, their friends volunteered to help them construct a lovely home. The spell outside, which gives visitors the illusion of a never-ending garden, too, was the work of one mage.” “I see.” “That mage was old and sickly, so he voluntarily used up all his life force to make that spell. That is why it is so hard to crack that code.” “Not like one could crack something one can’t even see.” “Your magical blood has thinned over generations?” “The Hansel and Gretel bloodline has had no wizards or witches in it, as far as I know.” “Oh, right, yes of course. How could I have forgotten that!” After some more time walking thus, we felt another jolt of earthquake. “Oh? Another one?” he said. “I cannot believe it. Are we under siege or something?” “Another uninvited guest?” “Yeah. That something this odd could happen once, well I can maybe understand, but twice? That is unnerving.” The first person was confirmed to be Lin, but I couldn’t imagine who the second could be. Someone like Lin? It couldn’t be any of the normal humans in Team Meteor, could it? VANILLA RATES: REBORN CHARACTERS QUICK LINK TO NEXT EPISODE

it's basically the Japanese equivalent of exposition-rising action-climax-resolution but the climax is just a "twist" in the Japanese version :p

Aaa tyty tbh I’m very satisfied with the Tourmaline saga. A lot of fun events, a lovely cast and pretty much a short story of its own that attempts a kishoutenketsu from Archer’s perspective (see more here). I think I like it more than the Ametrine arc, even though that was a local maximum in Shelly’s character arc, and even for Vanini it was quite dramathicc.

Nope it's a me, Candy :3 but it would've been nice to get me a lopunny uwu Baumina is u?

Henlowo welcome to the forums! I haven’t seen you on discord prolly cause I go there so rarely (I’m a rare Candy lol) Psychic types are neat. I attempted a mono psychic run in Reborn and had quite a lot of fun with that typing :)

I think I have a bagon I can trade you :) PM me when you can trade :)

You can try sending a request again:) the thing just glitches sometimes

Actually I have a Lvl 34 Diggersby. I can trade now if you can :) My ID is Candy, and I'll be waiting for request. You can send me a random mon, doesn't have to be anything great :p

Idk if you know but there are trainers in the Grand Hall you can battle to level up a tad bit faster :) Otherwise I hope someone can help you with your request since I don't use dark types much and don't remember having one at a high level

*sad vanini noises* Glad you found it brilliant because it was a last minute ass-pull xD I thought dogs couldn't smell through water, but then I googled and found out they can (for example, dogs that smell dead people that have sunk in a lake or something). So I thought about how to make this still work cause if Vanini and Taka get caught it's bye-bye Tania's Gym. 'twas one of those times I had to go for plot-driven rather than character-driven stuff Vanilla agrees Julia approves Glad you liked it! Cause I was berry subtly leading up to it in the whole Tourmaline saga. I think I managed not to crash the landing Julia approves xD In her backstory I hinted that she wasn't in love with Aladdin (she received a love letter from him but didn't care) and only dated him cause he'd be useful (Vanini had a crush on him in their school days). Besides I guess she thinks Aladdin backstabbed her first which her ego wouldn't allow lol I might post a side chapter about Aladdin being taken hostage by Team Meteor some time in the future, which will feature Aya who's seen zero action for a longass time in-game and in-story. I was waiting for this episode where Vanilla becomes aware of what happened to Aladdin to be posted before I wrote that one. I tend to assume everyone has as bad a memory as I do lol

The reason why I wrote Jasmin’s back story was because she’d make a sudden appearance here and I didn’t want y’all to be like, Who?? But then I hiatus’d for 2 months+ so it had zero effect anyway There was going to be Pokémon battles for the tourney but Online Play wouldn’t cooperate and then I thought I could make it more exciting and explosive by writing which is what I did xD The next episode I’m adding a bit of extra non-canon bit to Tania, which I’m pretty excited to write. But that means we might be saying some goodbyes...

From Everland to Reborn ~ Episode 84 Remember the last time when I broke an episode into two parts because I felt it was too long for 1 episode? Yeah, me neither. This is super long and took me even longer to write because the last 1/3 of it was hard to write for some reason. But it was necessary. Because here we close one more character arc. I'm on a roll uwu And we finally finish Tourmaline Travels Vanilla Edition. If all goes according to keikaku, next episode will be VS Tania Also, the real reason I'm posting this today is that I was feeling especially lucky today: As we had planned, we returned to the “train town” to catch a break before we headed back out to the west. Stethoscope was out talking with Europa and Al when we arrived. We told them that we had been unsuccessful in finding water in the eastern cave, but Europa told us not to be let down by that. I assumed she was saying that so we wouldn’t scrap the plan to visit the cave on the west. Or maybe I was just irritated and thinking badly of people more than usual because of the amount of walking in the heat I had to do. It turned out that we had to delay our next exploration by one full day because of a sandstorm. I wasn’t happy about wasting another day, since I was already itching to battle Titania and leave the desert for- hopefully- ever. Julia caught on my irritation and came up with an idea that was rather sound, surprisingly. “How about we all have a battling tournament today?” she suddenly asked. Until then, we were just lying or sitting on our train car seats doing next to nothing. I stood up from my seat without saying a word, but speaking with my action. “A tournament? Amidst a sandstorm?” Archer said. “The point of us postponing the exploration is so we can avoid getting hit on the face by gusts and sand.” “Well, I’d rather get hit than sit on my butt all day.” “I’d be up for it,” said Taka, also standing up. “Aha! It’s 3 vs 1, majority wins! Let’s go, Archie,” Julia pulled on Archer’s arm, and though he looked far from pleased, allowed himself to be pulled outside. Taka and I followed them. My hair flew everywhere when we were out. Such were the gusts that we’d have to battle in. The first matches were Julia vs Taka and Archer vs me. Pinning a water type trainer against an electric type Gym leader didn’t appear fair, so that is how those match ups were decided. It was cool with me, for I didn’t mind crushing his team for a warm up. He walked over to the other side of the field and sent out his first pokemon. I did the same. “It’s on,” I said, and spit the sand that flew in when I opened my mouth. Although Archer’s team wasn’t weak persay, I could tell his pokemon weren’t used to battling much. They still tried their best for their trainer, but they couldn’t match many of my pokemon in speed or power. Even though the rain, which was summoned by Pelipper’s Drizzle, gave them advantage to boost attacks, it wasn’t exploited well. Admittedly, the rain itself was more of a sprinkle of water than actual rain, so perhaps it wasn’t all that exploitable in the first place. The pokemon seemed helpless when there was no type advantage, perhaps because they were used battling Team Magma’s fire type pokemon. And that was perhaps where Archer slacked the most, since he judged it wasn’t necessary to battle more trainers with teams that contained other typings. “You aren’t called the hope of Reborn for nothing,” Archer said when he was defeated. “I must admit your pokemon are trained with utmost care.” Next on the list was to beat Julia, who defeated Taka with her flashy and exploding pokemon. Fortunately, I had the opportunity to watch her match and plan accordingly. However, that was the same for her too, as she had watched my match with Archer. I had battled alongside her in Fiore Mansion, but this was the first time since I battled her in the first Gym that I was rematching her. “I can’t believe it’s been so long since I battled you. Remember when you were baby, Vanini?” she said as she shook her pom-poms to cheer for herself, probably. “But I won’t go easy on you. Let’s start booming everyone and everything!” Julia’s pokemon, though also coordinated by a single typing like Archer’s, were more varied in their strengths. Some were quick jolts of electricity, while others were tanky and tormented my team with status conditions. If I was not careful, she would’ve sent all of my pokemon to ghost town with Explosions. I’m sure she was planning on it, because every time she had the chance to, she did, and when she was prevented from it, she jumped up and down and screamed “Vanini, why’d you do that!” or “No! My boomies!”. I slightly regretted that this tournament hadn’t been held while Brenda was here. I was sure she’d have enjoyed getting showered by the sand for a change, and here the showers were non-stop given the sandstorm and Julia’s explosions. In the end, we were both on our last pokemon, and… I knew what she would do, but I had no way of avoiding it this time. “Kaaaaaaa” Her Electrode shone as brightly as the sun, briefly blinding everyone present. “Boom!” Her shout was muffled by the noise of the explosion, and we were almost blown away by the hot wind. We felt, rather than saw, what had happened. My pokemon fainted a split second faster than her Electrode, crowning Julia as the winner of this mini-tournament. I called my pokemon back and Julia did the same after hugging her Electrode, despite its being too large to wrap her arms around. “Good game, Vanini! That was fantagreatastic!” she ran over to where I was standing. “It’s been so long since I had such an exciting battle!” I held out my hand to shake hers, but she ignored that and jumped onto me. “That was quite literally an explosive battle,” Taka said. “Yeah, although now I want to take a bath,” Archer said. “The first battle splashed me with water, and the second’s explosions showered me with sand. I feel sticky as though I’d been to the beach.” “Tough luck. Clean water is the one thing we don’t have,” I said. “But perhaps you could go diving in the muddy ponds that Brenda mentioned.” Archer looked at me like he was unimpressed, but Julia responded before he could say anything. “No need for that! Tomorrow we’ll find clean water and everyone will be able to take as many baths as they want.” Tomorrow came, and we set out west. “If we don’t find a water source in this cave, we’re giving up, alright?” I said, mostly to Taka. “I can’t spend my whole life going from cave to cave, digging holes and sinking into them, for a water source I’m 99% certain doesn’t exist in this desert.” “Notice how you said 99% and not 100%? That means you do believe there’s a chance,” teased Julia. “Yeah, that’s fine. I’m rather surprised you’ve kept up with it for this long. I thought you’d give up when we didn’t find water in the other cave.” “I don’t back up on my promises, as long as I can keep them.” We walked in the sand for I don’t know how long, but however long it felt, it felt shorter than when we went to the cave in the east. I wasn’t sure whether it was because this new cave was closer to the train town, because we were getting used to the heat, or perhaps because my blisters were pretty much gone by this point, and so I didn’t have to be in pain every time I moved. We entered the cave, but were disappointed even before exploring it. “It’s a dead-end!” I couldn’t help but shout. Everyone else, who weren’t used to me shouting, looked my way, which made me slightly embarrassed. We scanned the surface of the big wall on the farthest end of the cave, hoping that perhaps we could dislodge some rocks to reveal a hidden tunnel which would allow us to continue the exploration. It was, unsurprisingly, a futile attempt. “It’s hard to see anything with this dim light, but I don’t think there’s anything else to this dead-end,” Archer said. “It’s too bad. Maybe I’ll take a plunge into the muddy water after all, like Vanilla suggested yesterday.” The latter part of his speech made Taka chuckle. Julia, though, was still desperately looking for something on the wall, as though she hadn’t heard a word Archer said. “Julia, it’s no use,” Archer said, pulling her sleeve. “There’s other walls too. Maybe those have a hidden switch in them and it’ll open up a whole dungeon,” she said. “Come on, this isn’t a video game. Why would there be hidden switches in a natural cave like this?” Julia suddenly stopped moving, but then slowly leaned on Archer’s shoulder, perhaps meaning to whisper something. Yet when she spoke, she did in a very audible volume. “That’s what they want you to think,” she said. Archer lost balance after being shouted on the ear, but he caught himself in time not to crumble on the floor. “Who is ‘they’?” he asked, but received no reply. Anyway, in order to satiate Julia’s incapability to simply give up, we spent a little more time searching walls for possible hidden switches. “Maybe if I send Electrode out and boom this wall-” “The cave’s going to collapse on us. Please don’t,” Archer replied quickly. On the opposite wall, Taka and I began quietly searching its ragged surface. “This is dumb,” I said to Taka. “Well, I think if we do this, we can confidently tell Europa and the others that we searched thoroughly. It’s not all bad.” We spent a few more minutes like this- wasting time- in silence, when suddenly Taka stopped moving and wondered aloud: “Vanilla? I think I’ve noticed something odd.” I walked over to where he was, and checked the portion of the wall he was staring at. “Whatever it is, I don’t think it’s a hidden switch.” Taka laughed. “No. I don’t mean on the wall. I meant something odd in general,” he said. “The cave is dimly lit. We haven’t had to use Julia’s electric type pokemon or Archer’s Lanturn to lighten up the space this time.” We looked at each other. We were indeed in the dark, but it wasn’t pitch black. I could see Taka’s face lifting up, for example, and I followed his example. The ceiling was quite high up, maybe about 10 meters from where we stood, but we could clearly see that there were a couple of small holes, through which enough light was pouring in so as to not make us fumble in a void. What did that mean for us? “That means there’s another exit to this cave, even if it’s so high up we’ll have trouble reaching.” “Another exit to this cave? Where? Where?” Julia heard Taka and came rushing over. However, she knitted her eyebrows when she saw the wall in front of us. “False alarm? I don’t see any switches or exits there.” I pushed Julia’s chin upward, so that she would see what we had seen. “Oh! Those tiny holes up there? Well, what’re we waiting for? Let’s go, let’s go! Archie!” she said and ran to bring Archer to our wall. Meanwhile, I looked up to the ceiling again. That was quite some distance, and, while I was confident about my endurance and strength, I wasn’t as sure that I could climb a wall this perpendicular to the ground. We also didn’t have any rock-climbing equipment at our disposition (author: not yet, at least), for we hadn’t precisely come to the desert to climb rocky cave walls. “I think I have an idea that might be a little more realistic than to have all of us climb with our bare hands,” Taka said. He sent out his Alolan Exeggutor. The tall pokemon’s head didn’t quite reach the ceiling, but it did come quite close. Its leafy head shook and sometimes hid the little light we had. “Exeggutor can bow his head down and then stand back up right. We should do that one by one, so that our weight is tolerable to him. How does that sound?” Taka asked. “Brilliant!” Julia replied on my behalf, though Archer didn’t seem all that happy about the idea of being swung upward by a palm tree. However, given our situation, it was pretty much that or nothing. Taka went up first, for he knew his pokemon best and had the best chance to get to the top. He would have to stay on top of Exeggutor’s head for a while, though, because the small holes were, of course, too small for an adult human to crawl through. We had to wait while Taka and his pokemon assiduously worked to enlarge them. I thought I was impatient, but Julia beat me on that front. “Maybe if I climbed up and sent out Electrode-” “You’ll blast the top of the cave, yes, but it’ll rain down on us,” Archer cut her off. “Please don’t.” Eventually, Taka climbed the remaining portion of the cave and exited it. His voice, upon seeing what was on the other side of that ceiling, was the most animated I’d ever heard come out of him. “Everyone, there’s vegetation up here. We might actually find water here!” Vegetation? Why should that be an indication of a tangible water source? Even when we were treading through the desert, we saw shrubs here and there and the occasional palm tree... which may have just been Exeggutors in disguise. But there were shrubs, and that didn’t mean anything in the desert, so why would it now? I soon answered my own question, when the palm tree pokemon carried me on its head. The top of the cave was grassy, but they were not ordinary shrubs that grew in the desert: they were much more leafy. Moreover, that was not the only kind of vegetation in this part, for there were also trees of the species that I hadn’t seen growing in the sand. “See?” Taka said, smiling triumphantly. Julia came third, and I gave her a hand to help her climb up the remaining stretch. As soon as she saw how green the outside was, she started jumping, cheering and rolling on the ground. “The grass is so nostalgic,” she said. “Even though we really haven’t been in the desert for that long,” Taka said. “I agree with the feeling.” The last one to come up was Archer, who, on being swung upwards, screamed so loudly that it echoed. Perhaps he wasn’t fond of heights, and if that was the case, he should have said something. We would have definitely gone exploring without him, after all. When he was crawling through the hole, I could see he was quite shaken by the ride. It was to the extent that he almost slipped when crawling through the hole, and would’ve either smashed into Exeggutor’s head or, worse, fallen all the ten-some meters down. Fortunately for him, I grabbed both of his arms and pulled him through. “Yay, Archie, you made it,” Julia cheered, but the guy wasn’t all that happy to have made it, it seemed. He glared at me, which I thought was awfully rude under this circumstance. “What’s that look for? Fine. Next time I’ll let you slip and slide down,” I said, throwing my hands in the air. “No, that’s not- I didn’t mean- My bad,” he despaired, and upon clearing his throat, said this: “Thank you, for helping me up.” I was taken aback by his expression of gratitude, as were Taka and Julia. I could feel their gazes burning my back, or perhaps that was nothing but the sunheat. Yet, they were silent, probably eagerly awaiting my reply. “Ew.” On hearing my reply, Julia audibly sighed. “Vanini! Why must you ruin the mood like that!” she said, but I was already walking away at a fast pace. We explored the place a little, took a short rest and explored again. While the vegetation, and, as we later on found, the non-desert-native pokemon that inhabited the place, were promising signs of finding water, we still couldn’t find the actual thing... out in the open, that is. We found a hill adjacent to the plane we were on, and it turned out to be another cave. This one was pitch black inside, but as soon as we entered it, we knew we had found what we were looking for. “That sound… I’m not hallucinating, right?” Julia asked. “No, I hear it too. There’s no mistaking that sound,” Archer replied. “A waterfall?” Taka said. Julia and Archer sent their pokemon to create some light. The glistening, flowing water reflected it in its very familiar wavy manner. “We really found it,” I whispered, but before I even finished that short sentence, Julia and Archer jumped into the water. They didn’t even take a second to take off their clothes. “What are you doing? You’re going to soil the water,” I scolded them. “I’ll be damned if I have to drink from that.” “Vanini, don’t you see we have a waterfall? AKA an endless supply of fresh water! It shouldn’t matter if we bathe in it a bit.” “I can’t describe how great it feels to finally be sand-free,” Archer said. “You two also join us,” Julia said, her silhouette waving at Taka and me. “No thanks,” I said. “I came to find the water source, and that’s done. Let’s go back to report it.” “Come now, Vanilla. I’m sure a little refreshing splash of water won’t hurt,” Taka said. “Maybe just wash your hands and face? You don’t have to go all the way in.” He walked a few steps toward the little pool of water, and looked back at me. The light from Archer’s Lanturn shone on his face, and I felt all the forces of peer pressure working on me. “Fine, fine! I’ll just splash my face and that’s it.” I walked with large strides to the pool, squatted in front of it and started to wash my hands while Taka slowly entered it and exclaimed about its cold temperature. Suddenly, Julia appeared from underneath my hands and pulled me into the water. I honestly thought that was the end of me… for real this time. I didn’t know how to swim, and the pool was too deep for me to ground my feet on. I splashed to keep my head above water, but not for long. In one such swing of my arms, I hit someone else’s arm. “Calm down, Vanilla,” I heard Archer shout as I hit his arms several times. “The pondside is literally behind you” What rescued me from drowning was Pikachu- who perhaps should now be called the fisher of sinking people- who held me up and out of the water from the safety of dry land. He then lowered me back into the water but made sure I could hold the rocky surface first. I coughed some and took a little time to calm my breathing. “What the f*ck, Julia!” I shouted when I could at last. “You nearly drowned me.” “I’m so sorry Vanini, please forgive me. I didn’t think you’d freak out in the water.” The only thing I could see of Julia’s face was the reflected light from its dampness, but her voice sounded remorseful. “This is the third time since I came to Tourmaline Desert that I thought I was a goner, and we have barely been here a week,” I sighed. “I’ll never do it again, I promise.” I took a few more breaths. The water’s temperature seemed to drop during the silence that enveloped us until I spoke to crack the ice. “I’m not fond of swimming. There are no mermen in my family,” I said. “Everland isn’t precisely known for lakes and rivers. It’s not surprising that you wouldn’t know how to swim,” Archer said. “I didn’t say I don’t know how to swim,” I snapped back, more due to a reflex than anything, really, and it cost me dearly. Of course, Archer would follow up thus: “Well, do you?” “No,” I said, gritting my teeth. I thought he would laugh or at least make fun of me for this mishap, but for whatever reason, he just shifted the focus of the conversation away from me. “I’m not proficient at swimming either, but it’s not that hard to keep oneself afloat. I just use my feet and legs to push water down, or sometimes to the sides when I want to move a bit.” “Come to think of it, this might be the first time I’ve bathed in something larger than a bathtub,” said Taka. “Until recently, Reborn’s Azurine Lake was contaminated so it was impossible to swim in there. And before it was contaminated, my father didn’t really bring me there because there was no reason to.” “What? So you haven’t swam, not even in a swimming pool, Tacos?” Julia asked. “Unfortunately.” “That’s a big bummer, and yet again your dad sounds like a weirdo, sorry. I mean who doesn’t go swimming with their child?” she said, quickly regaining her spirits. “I went swimming all the time, meanwhile. My friend, Amy, she’s always been this water-crazy girl. She liked everything about water. Like the taste of water (I know, right?), water type pokemon, painting with watercolors, and of course, swimming. She had a swimming pool at her house so Rini, Tania and I usually went to swim there after school in the summer months… and I said ‘had’ because Tania kinda broke the pool… oh, you were there with me, right Vanini?” “Yes.” “Yeah! So, as I was saying, Tania practically kaboom-ed the pool because her Excadrill went Earthquake! And a lot of the water came rushing into their living room… but I guess you could say that she made yet another pool, because their living room became a second pool. Double the fun!” “The ones that got a mini-tsunami must not have appreciated it as much, I think,” Taka said. I saw his face turn towards me for a second there, probably because I knew what he was referring to. Julia knew too, but she was unaware that Taka did through his father. We spent what I imagined was about an hour in the pond. Since we figured some of our non-electric pokemon would also enjoy a bath, or at least a break out of their pokeballs, we sent all of them out. Pikachu wasn’t fond of water, it seemed, as were Julia’s electric type pokemon (though their dislike was most likely a consideration towards us, so that they may not electrocute anyone) and still others from mine and Taka’s team that had type disadvantage to water. Those opted to either talk or play in the darkness of the cave or to exit it completely and run around in the small park outside, sometimes with the wild pokemon that showed any interest in the strangers that were trespassing their territory. Julia, Archer and Taka splashed each other with water while I opted to sit on the edge of the pond so that my dress could dry off. The drying process was sometimes delayed by Julia, who occasionally left the pond and jumped into it from the elevated ground next to the cascade, making a large splash upon contact with the water. She called it “Aquaboom*” and nothing I said could discourage her from repeating it at least a dozen times during our stay. When we were finally ready to leave- though I was the only one of our group that was dry- our pokemon came back into the cave running and making all sorts of alarmed noises. Pikachu pulled on my dress and I followed him to the exit of the cave. Peeking at the outside, I quickly understood what the cause of their commotion was. There was a helicopter dropping some people off. If the helicopter’s large decal of the letter “M” wasn’t sufficient to inform us that it was Team Meteor, the greyscale uniforms of the grunts did. Yet, that was not all. Just as I planned on fighting the grunts, yet another person exited the helicopter. This person wasn’t wearing the Team Meteor uniform. In fact, her appearance was so much more recognizable than when I saw her last, that one look at her from this distance was enough to make me pull away from the cave’s entrance. “Jasmin is here,” I told Pikachu. “But what? Does this mean that she’s joined Team Meteor?” The other three approached me and I grabbed Julia by her hair, lest she go outside and be found by the grunts that were clearly scanning the place. “Ouchie, Vanini. Why are you pulling on my hair?” she complained. “Shhh. Team Meteor is outside.” This, of course, had the most impact on Taka. “Oh no. She’s found me already. I’m done for,” he cried. “She hasn’t found you yet. And she won’t find you, if we quickly think of a plan,” I said. Team Meteor perhaps had come all the way here looking for Taka. That wasn’t a farfetched supposition. Yet, Jasmin being part of that search group made me suspect that he wasn’t the only one being looked for, and, if I was right, I was painfully unprepared for it. I hadn’t yet found a way to win a man-to-man fight against her, given her weird magical ribbon on her head, and I wasn’t as optimistic as to believe that Pikachu faking her out would also do the job this time. Hence, coming up with a plan to leave this place without being noticed was as important to me as it was for Taka. “There’s one addition to Team Meteor,” I informed them, and allowed them to take a peek outside. “The girl in the red top and white pants. That’s Jasmin Agrabah. Long story short, she’s looking for me to force me to return to Everland. Her hairband is actually a magical ribbon that she can manipulate to her liking. I want to avoid her if I can help it, and Taka wants to avoid Team Meteor from finding him as well. So let us think of how we can achieve that.” To be honest, even before we started thinking at all, I didn’t feel confident about devising any such plan. We were in a cave which only exits were the one we were standing by, and the two practically underwater ones that I assumed must exist so that a river could flow. I didn’t think we could use either of the underwater exits, because I couldn’t ascertain for how long we would have to hold our breaths in order to get out, even if our pokemon could dive with us. Yet, not thinking about a plan just because our escape seemed hopeless was most likely not a good idea either. “Ma’am, there’s an opening here,” said a grunt just outside. “I believe I hear a cascade from within too.” I took a peek outside, and saw that Jasmin was now headed this way. Unfortunately, that meant time was already up. We couldn’t even get the chance to think of a plan in the end. “Never mind. I guess we can only wait for the inevitable.” I slid my hips down to the ground. [Insert picture I forgot to make of Julia, Archer and Jasmin so y'all can see why Julia commented on Jasmin's hair] “Julia, follow my lead,” Archer said out of nowhere, and with equal spontaneity left the cave with Julia. I barely had time to lift my face up and see them leave, but when I sprang up to run after them, Taka stopped me. “It’s too late. We’ve got to trust Archer on this one,” he said, and I bit my lips with frustration. “Don’t move!” I heard a grunt shout at the two. I dared not peek anymore, for I was sure they were close enough to see me if I did. I supposed Archer and Julia stopped in their tracks, since no one else repeated the order. “My my, there are people in this deserted place. I guess she wasn’t sending us on a fool’s errand after all,” I heard Jasmin say. “You two. State your names.” “I’m Archer Woods and this is-” “Julia Wilde, captain of cheer and all things bubbly and bright! Also, gym leader of Peridot Ward. Nice to meet you! I hope you don’t mind me complimenting your great taste in hairstyles. I think we could be good friends.” “We’re here in Tourmaline Desert to enjoy our honeymoon,” Archer said. “Wha- oh… yeah! We’re husband and wife,” she said, and I heard some exaggerated, unnaturally loud kissing noises which made me sick. “So forget what I said. I’m Julia Woods. Hehe, it’ll take me a while to get used to my new last name.” I face-palmed at how they were messing up so early into this, but Jasmin apparently didn’t mind playing their game. She must’ve seen through their lie, but chose to ignore it. “Archer Woods… huh? I recall that last name, and seeing those bushy eyebrows, I now know from where,” she said. “Weren’t you part of the Everland Police a couple of years ago? I remember seeing you in one intriguing trial.” “Yes, I was,” replied Archer. “And you are Miss Jasmin Agrabah, one of Chief Agrabah’s daughters.” “I am. Very well. What a coincidence that we’ve met here. So you chose to come to Reborn City out of all places. I mean, sure, it’s an affordable city to live in, but it must’ve been quite the downgrade after spending all your life in Everland.” “Hey! Reborn City is now very pretty, okay? We’ve made it so very pretty, even after all the destruction that ahem Team Meteor ahem caused. That makes it more valuable than the natural beauty of your Everland,” Julia said. “I can agree somewhat with that. Nothing compares to what has many a time been called paradise or utopia, but Reborn City has improved exponentially since my arrival here about half a year ago. We must give credit where it’s due.” I heard Julia growl at this, but she said no more. It was Archer’s turn to speak. “I’m surprised to see you so well accompanied,” he said, most likely referring to the Team Meteor grunts. “Ah, them? I’m only joining forces with them for now, because we could strike a most advantageous deal,” she said. “We’re searching for two fugitives together. One of which you might remember the name of.” “Who are you searching for?” “Vanilla Leiderhosen,” she said without missing a beat. “She was finally found out to be the leader of the Defiance, just like you had found her to be. We raided her base and found fingerprints and notes, and we have more than one direct witness that will testify in court as soon as she’s back. My job has been to search for her and forcefully bring her to Everland for a proper trial, but, as you can imagine, it’s too much work for a single person to be going around the entirety of the Reborn region looking for her. It’s even worse, though, because the one person I relegated half the work to turned out to be a betrayer too. That’s my luck, I guess. Anyway I finally resorted to striking a deal with Team Meteor, who has a better understanding of where she currently is.” “Why do you tell me this? Isn’t it confidential information, especially since you seem to have come to Reborn undercover?” “There’s practically no need for me to be undercover anymore, given that this region is in the middle of a civil war of sorts, and I have allied myself with the side that is dominating. I told you all this because you were once a loyal member of the Everland Police, and I’m sure you’d be happy to know that your bravery in court, which cost you your job and residence, was not in vain.” I wondered what kind of deal Jasmin could’ve struck with Team Meteor. She must’ve given or promised something in return for intel on my location. The only thing that I could’ve thought Team Meteor to want in return was the 4 jewels, but Ruby was with Heather and Amethyst was with Radomus, leaving me with none currently. Yet, I needed not think about it for long, because Jasmin answered part of my question: “I said I was looking for two fugitives. The other person I’m looking for is Taka Alcantara. Part of my deal with Team Meteor is to find him and return him to his father. Do you not happen to have seen Vanilla or him around these parts?” I held my breath. I couldn’t wait to hear a flat denial to come out of Archer’s mouth, but also I couldn’t refute that this was the perfect opportunity for him to take revenge on me. If worse came to worst, I would take advantage of the darkness of this cave and fight Jasmin. Perhaps I would have to drown her in the pond, but I wondered whether I would succeed in the attempt or she’d drown me instead. “No, we haven’t seen them, right?” Julia answered on Archer's behalf. “No, we haven’t.” “Really? That’s odd. I thought that woman was earnest when she told me they were in this part of the desert,” Jasmin said. “Such a shame that I’ve come all the way here for nothing.” “It’s really too bad! I wish we had good news to give you,” Julia said. “It is what it is, then.” There was a pause here, and for a brief optimistic moment, I thought that maybe Jasmin would leave now. I was wrong, of course: she was only thinking of what tactic to use. “The other part of my deal with Team Meteor was to somehow discourage Vanilla from fighting them. It appears that she’s grown too strong and already spoiled many of their plans,” she said. “To that effect, I gave them her ex-lover. I don’t know how much bargaining power he’ll have, but I figured they could find that out by themselves.” It was apparent that the tactic she chose was to directly lure me out by triggering me. Yet, what she didn’t know was that it would be an unsuccessful attempt. “They’ll eventually know that he doesn’t hold any such bargaining power,” I muttered. “I don’t care about him at all.” “In any case, I also wanted to get rid of him so it all worked out,” Jasmin said, sounding too jolly. “Vanini’s ex-lover?” Julia exclaimed. “Uh, I mean, why did you want to get rid of him?” “He was the traitor that wasted my time. I had no use for him anymore.” The conversation, I thought, would end there. Jasmin had already told them about her motives for coming here, the deal she struck with Team Meteor, and in return, Archer and Julia had told her that they hadn’t seen either of us. What else could there be to talk about? “Mr. Woods?” said Jasmin after a moment of deliberation. “Yes?” “Wouldn’t you give me a hand in looking for Vanilla? If you find her for me, I guarantee you'll be given your Everland citizenship back. I’m sure you miss your friends and family, and your comfortable home.” “Taka,” I whispered when Jasmin finished talking and Archer hesitated to give a reply. “I’ll show myself now and lure them into this darkness.” “No, don’t do that,” he said, desperately fumbling around my dress until he found my arm and clenched it. “If they find us, there’s no way we can escape.” “They came on a helicopter. There can’t be more than 10 people in total. I didn’t see that many when I checked,” I said. “I’m sure we can take them on. I can count on you and Julia to fight the grunts, and I’ll be Jasmin’s opponent.” Taka’s grip would not soften for a moment. “Calm down, Vanilla. At least wait for Archer’s answer.” Archer’s answer did come, eventually. “I do miss my family and friends back there,” he said. “If I ever find Vanilla and the other fugitive, I’ll be sure to take them to you.” There was a pause following his statement. I was thrown out of my rhythm so much that I wasn’t even sure what I felt was actually relief. Taka, however, did feel it, for he released my arm. I was not the only one caught off guard too. Jasmin didn’t speak for a time, which was long enough to make me wonder why Julia wasn’t saying anything either. When she broke her silence at last, she laughed. “I thank you for your diligence,” she said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, we have to search this place fully, and that means we need access to that cave behind you.” My heart jumped. I wondered what Archer would say to save our skins this time. “We just came from there, and we didn’t see anybody. There’s only a little cascade of water that has accumulated into a small pond.” “You must be telling the truth about that. Otherwise I couldn’t explain why you’re so soaked in the middle of the desert,” she said. “However, you couldn’t call me a proper police officer if I took a person’s word for it and didn’t do the searching myself, could you?” “But I’m a fellow officer. You can trust me,” Archer said with despair. “I was with him too. We saw nobody,” Julia concurred. “You were a police officer, Mr. Woods. Now, let a current one do her job.” We knew when Jasmin entered with her pack of grunts, because the cave lit up substantially. I didn’t know whether it was her pokemon, but a large canine pokemon followed her, probably attempting to sniffle out our smell. We couldn’t hear anything she, Archer, Julia or the grunts said, however, because our hearing was completely drowned out by the sound of water. Our vision, too, was limited and mostly blurred out, so all we could do was watch their shadows moving from one corner of the cave to another. When Taka saw that Jasmin would likely come into the cave regardless of what Archer and Julia said, he grabbed my hand and ran to the pond. I resisted, since I could tell that his plan was to dive in there and hide from our pursuers, but I didn’t like the idea of diving without a pokemon to support me. He didn’t give me time to send out anyone, however, and pulled me so strongly that I practically fell into the water yet again. He guided me- because I would’ve otherwise drowned- to the other side of the small cascade. Behind the falling water was just enough space for our heads to poke out, and we remained there with as much of our heads under water as possible. Jasmin and her grunts searched the cave for at least half an hour, but at last, she gave up and ordered her grunts to retreat. When the lights went out again, we waited a little longer to be safe, and then exited the body of water. “Taka! Vanini! She’s gone, so you can come out,” Julia was shouting when we were far enough from the cascade to hear a thing. “We’re here,” Taka said. “Oh! I’m glad to hear your voice, Tacos! I was beginning to think you hid yourselves in the water and drowned.” “That’d defeat the purpose of hiding,” I said. “To be honest, I thought you two would be goners when she entered the cave,” Archer said. “And you definitely would’ve been, had she not chosen an unsuitable companion for the search.” “What do you mean?” “She brought an Arcanine. It’s standard for police officers here to have Growlithes, so I’m a little knowledgeable on them. They’re exceptional for finding things in dry climates, but it can’t sniffle through water. Miss Jasmin probably didn’t expect to find water in the desert, though, so her choice was just unfortunate. Or rather, fortunate for us.” Before his explanation, I had assumed that Taka had chosen a very appropriate hiding place, since I thought the water would help quench our smell. But what’s done is done. With all the constant bad luck that follows me around, I had forgotten I could get lucky sometimes. “Well, I’m glad that's over with. I’m tired from one thing after another,” I said, lifting Pikachu to my wet shoulder. “Yeah. I’d like to take a nap now. That conversation with Jasmin sure exhausted my nerves,” Archer said. “Let’s return to Train Town.” I followed Archer out of the cave and was blinded by the sunlight. Yet, I believed I had to speak up right then and there, or else I might never get the chance to. “Wait Archer,” I said, still unable to see him. “What is it?” “Why did you do that?” “Do what?” “She could’ve lifted your exile order. You could’ve gone back home,” I said. “Yet you denied knowing where we were. Why would you do that?” “I told you before. Reborn is now my home, so Miss Jasmin’s proposal didn’t have the power she thought it had on me.” By then my eyes had recovered enough to see him. His expression didn’t betray dishonesty, but I was still in disbelief. “Did you do that to make me indebted to you? I won’t think of repaying my debt, just so you know.” I thought this would anger him, but he kept his serene composure. “No. Not at all, in fact. If anything, I felt I was repaying a debt by trying to protect you and Taka from Miss Jasmin.” “A debt? What debt?” “I’m still not done repaying it,” he said. “What debt?” I asked again. “The debt I have for being an ass to you for this long,” he said. This, of course, was unexpected to me. He had been acting strange- unusually friendly- these past few days, but this was just way too weird for me to withstand. Since I wouldn’t speak, he asked me a question to fill the silence. “Vanilla. What do you do for fun? Do you have any hobbies?” This was a strange, entirely unconnected question, which added to my growing suspicion that Archer was losing his mind. “Would you care to answer my question?” “I do training, I guess.” “What sort of training?” “Exercising. One can never do too much of that, if one is to be prepared to fight anyone. Ever since I’ve come to this region, though, I’ve scarcely had time to train my own body, and I’ve lost fights that I could’ve otherwise won. The time has instead been spent fighting Team Meteor or training my pokemon team.” “I see,” he said. “But don’t you think that's odd?” “What part of it is odd?” “That you call that a hobby.” “I don’t call that a hobby. I just said I do training.” “What about the arts- drawing, writing, perhaps? Playing games? What about gardening or shopping?” he said, and upon suddenly approaching me, asked. “What about anything that doesn’t relate to fighting or the Defiance?” I took a step back, for I’d rather take my distance from a man whose mental state I couldn’t vouch for. “There’s no time for idle things such as those,” was my reply. I didn’t think I had said anything extraordinary, but that sentence alone silenced Archer. He looked severely distraught for whatever reason, as though he had just witnessed his mother being killed. At last, though, his composure returned, and he spoke again. “Sorry. That was so predictable, so you, that it was somehow surprising,” he said, shaking his head. “Fine. I’ll tell you what feelings have haunted me these past days. I think that my actions today will then be self-explanatory.” Archer cleared his throat and started pacing. “Ever since I found out that you were one of the leaders of an organization that had stolen our weapons, killed our co-workers, and destabilized the economy of the Underworld, I painted you as my enemy. This was encouraged further when you cheated me in court and when I was exiled for accusing you of treason without foundation. You were the enemy I was justified in hating.” “This story again? Don’t you get tired of repeating it like a broken record?” Archer raised a hand. He was not done speaking, it seemed. “When you beat up my Aqua gang friends, when you stole all our bikes, when you punched my jaw, I confirmed that you were my enemy. I tried to keep blindly hating you, by demeaning the good things you did, and exalting your shortcomings. But…” Here he took an unnaturally long pause, and I took the opportunity to search where Julia and Taka had gone to. It may sound incredible, but I would’ve actually appreciated Julia to cut into our conversation with one of her random ramblings. Yet, it appeared that they hadn’t even exited the cave. “But what?” I asked, because the silence and his staring were uncomfortable. He sighed. “But these past few days, camping with you, talking, playing, and going on explorations together… I can no longer be blind. Even if I could downplay your involvement in the employment workshop or in saving this region back when you were nothing but an extrapolation of Vanilla Eterna, the Defiance Leader in my mind, the reality is, I can’t do that anymore. Not now that I got to know who you are as a person.” “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m still the same person I was when I was Leader.” “Perhaps you are, but I had misjudged you,” he said. “I met you almost a year ago, in Lapis Ward. That means you have spent a year or even more in this region, fighting the terrorists and bringing this region back to prosperity. “Yet, during that time, you also never forgot about the Defiance. You still want to go back to Everland to accomplish what you were prevented to do. At first I thought of this as yet another reason to fuel my hate, for even now, I’m still an officer at heart. However, I now think differently; it’s more like you’re suffering from a curse.” “Suffering from a curse?” I laughed through my nose. “You’re definitely losing your sanity, if you think that my wanting to rebel against Everland’s Status Quo is some act of magic.” “I said it’s like a curse, not a real curse. Listen, Vanilla. You’re young. You have so many things you could be doing, instead of breaking the law, causing social instability or killing people. Yet, all you think about is how to solve Reborn’s problems or how you can get stronger to fight in Everland. Judging whether to keep your hair long on the basis of giving you an advantage in fighting, or not having a single proper hobby… if it isn’t a curse, a curse of being brainwashed by the people in the Underworld, then what is it?” Now he was touching a subject that I wasn’t just going to listen quietly in. “I haven’t been brainwashed,” I shouted. “You wouldn’t know anything about the Defiance, or what I thought or didn’t. Don’t talk as if you knew it all.” “Sorry, perhaps I have chosen the wrong words, but I will still think how I think. Vanilla, you’re the type of person who tries to do the ‘right thing’ regardless of your personal feelings. Otherwise, I couldn’t explain why you saved me from the sinkhole or the garchomp statues two days ago, and from slipping down the cave earlier today, despite hating me. They definitely found a perfect candidate to exploit: they only needed to convince you that their side was ‘right’.” “Objectively speaking, the oppressors are always in the wrong, so they didn’t have to convince me of anything. If anything, the one being brainwashed is you, who still thinks the Everland Police has any justification for insisting on oppressing the Underworld.” This had the effect I had intended. Archer looked stunned for a moment and fell silent. I looked behind me, toward the cave, wondering if the reason why Julia and Taka still hadn’t exited the cave was because they were listening in to our conversation, without being seen by either of us. “You are right,” Archer said, bringing my focus back to him. “I don’t know which side is right, if there’s a right side at all. I’m not an expert in politics, but only one who used to be a police officer, though I’d always thought I was an above-average thinker. Yet, there’s a limit to what I can conclude through just thinking, and how society should operate is way out of my scope.” He took a deep breath and smiled. “But one thing I know for sure is that, from the very beginning, I was wrong in deciding that you were my enemy.” I opened my mouth to say something, but he talked over me. “Perhaps I owe you an apology, since you wanted me to keep hating you. I’m sorry. But I can’t keep hating you as if you were my nemesis, when I now see you as a victim of your own self-righteousness and naivety.” Now I could speak. “Here I was hoping you’d have something worthwhile to conclude,” I said. “Are you trying to offend me? Self-righteousness and naivety? You might think you’re an above-average thinker, which, frankly, I doubt is the case, but you certainly are below-average in your word choice.” Archer laughed at this, but said that he had chosen his words carefully. He then stretched out a hand, and he probably intended for me to shake it. “I hope you and I can start fresh. Just because we were enemies at one point, it doesn’t follow that we need to keep being enemies for life. From my part, at least, that won’t be the case.” I looked down at his hand, but scowled. “Well, I’m not obliged to change my mind just because you changed yours. I don’t shake hands with my enemies.” “Ahh, Vanini! Why must you ruin the mood like that?” Julia exclaimed, finally leaving her post inside the cave. Taka followed her outside too, and commented a few words that implied they really had been listening in to our conversation from just behind the cave’s entrance. And though I had to listen Julia endlessly complain about my behavior towards Archer, who, according to her, was trying to become friends with me, I was relieved that we could finally return to train town, tell them the good news about the water, and be off to do what I had originally come to Tourmaline Desert to do: battle Titania. *Aquaboom is the best Julia slang I’ve ever come up with and I felt like a genius when I did. VANILLA RATES: REBORN CHARACTERS QUICK LINK TO NEXT EPISODE

Hi! I speak Spanish too and want to thank y'all for your hard work! That's a lot of content to translate! Really, have a candy on me, fam

That hypothetical dude tried to look cool by choosing some prime number that wasn't mainstream and totally eff'd it up

Sounds hot Wonder if Gabby's bro will have a cameo. Maybe he's had, and I'm just late to the party I guess I'll see for myself 20 light years later when I actually get to that chapter lmao Forgive me for some super old stuff being dug out by me reading at snail's pace.

Za fuckin' wot, mate? Pray be patient with me because I'm reading... slowly but steadily. My goal is to catch up by the time you finish the story but here I might be irrationally optimistic I wish my reading wasn't teenager level fam

I can give them to you, if you don't mind that they're both Lv 1. My trading ID is Candy, PM me when you're able to go online (it might take a few tries)

Thx for your comments :p but just clarifying that Solaris' part was Ame's work that I just added what I thought Taka would feel towards. Crazy how long I've been writing this lol I'm not known for keeping motivation and/or focus for long

1) What your fave candy? 2) Why did you choose hexagon as your shape? 3) Which of the five senses do you like most? 4) Do you art, and if so what kind? 5) Do you speak multiple languages or just one?

I thought the only blastoise would be mega in Vanini's team because I'd forgotten medicham can mega-evolve lol Lowkey one of the two reasons I needed to include Sugiline Cave in the story xP It's more a product of my lame sense of humor :blobsweat: Archer is ripped cause he's practically a marine But most importantly, u gon tell me this: is more fun than this: But even more importantly than most importantly, is this a Jojo reference? It's prolly an item you use to meditate but she ain't no monk I think she would've done them in but she got distracted by their lovely costumes xD I think she gave Aster enough punishment, not so much Eclipse