Chapter Forty-Two: Pressing On

It felt a as though his legs were suffocating. And they were, in a way; beneath the water, his body's constant fire was starved of oxygen and extinguished. What parts of him remained dry blazed all the higher to compensate, turning him into a fireball with a pair of reaching arms. His tail, tip held carefully out of the water, was a roaring flare. Igneous worked his way out towards the center of the river, clinging to trunk of the fallen tree that had stopped Tobias's progress downriver.

The magmar peered into the water, trying to see through the haze of his own flames and the steam they threw up. At the far end of the trunk he found the boy, coat tangled in the old tree's roots, thin streamer of blood being teased from his head by the rushing current. Igneous took a deep breath, steeling himself and tightening his grasp around the tree trunk with his left arm, then plunged his right underwater, reaching for Tobias.

A gout of steam and bubbles obscured his view of the boy as his arm hit the water, but Igneous felt around until his hand met something soft and drifting. He grabbed hold of it, tugging firmly and without much of a plan. Something gave after a few vigorous yanks, and the comatose guide was freed. Igneous hauled him to the surface, none too gentle as the touch of the hated water compelled him to work quickly. He held Tobias at arm's length and did his best to keep the boy's head above water as he shimmied backward along the log, but it was growing ever harder to concentrate with wet cold working its way in towards his bones.

Igneous hoped the boy wasn't dead. He couldn't imagine how he would be, as it had been only minutes since he'd vanished underwater, but humans were such terribly fragile creatures. There was no point worrying about that now—what mattered was to keep the boy away from his unfettered flames, hold him only at arm's length, so that he wasn't rescued from drowning only to go up like a torch.

At last Igneous was close enough to the bank to haul the boy around and toss him most of the way onto dry land. The magmar was growing weak, even the furious roar of his fire starting to die back, but he was strong enough to hurl even a waterlogged human that short distance. The boy was light, anyway—something seemed to be wasting away about him. Igneous was glad to be rid of the burden.

For his part, the magmar would have a bit more trouble getting out of the water. His legs and lower body, so long submerged, refused to hold his weight. Igneous crawled up onto the shore, burning a long trail through the snow and trying not to stray too near Tobias. Once he'd gotten a comfortable distance away from the water, the magmar reached out with a careful claw and hooked the boy's coat again, then pulled him the rest of the way out of the river. Tobias was coughing and choking up water; still alive then, but clearly unconscious, whether from the blow to his head or near-drowning. He soon stopped gagging and fell into a steady shiver beneath his soaked garments.

For his part, Igneous lay where he was and watched bright orange lines trace their way through the dull red color that had overtaken his drowned legs. Superheated blood flushed out that deadened by the water; in a few minutes, his lower body would be ablaze again and the fire across his body would even out. A magmar could survive being submerged for a little while, but would eventually die as the waste products ordinarily burned out of their blood at the surface of their skin built up to toxic levels.

Igneous lay where he was for a moment, contemplating Tobias's unconscious form and the crumpled body of the pokémon who had cast him into the river to die. Igneous did not share Accemenla's dislike of the human. It was true that he hated to battle and did so only out of a sense of duty, the recognition that he should be doing something to earn the food and care his trainer gave him. But what the magmar hated was doing harm, and it was not as though the wild life was peaceful.

Wild pokémon fought—for mates, for territory and the resources it afforded, for whatever they could claim through strength. The battles Tobias had asked him to fight were, if not fewer, fought with the knowledge that none would end up killed or permanently injured and that swift healing usually followed for both himself and the opponent. At the end of the day, there was little harm in the sport for those who played it fairly and cared well for their pokémon. And thanks to the dreamless rest of suspension in a pokéball, Igneous found that he never had to sleep.

Usually, the magmar could tune his metabolism to some extent and control the heat of his fire. When he slept, however, all control was lost—and in the throes of a particularly violent dream, or if startled awake, there might be a great rush of fire, a sudden leap of flame—and who knew what might be lost in the blaze? In the wild, there was a need to succumb to slumber, much though Igneous might try to stave it off. But with the rest his pokéball provided, and no hope of damaging anything while he slumbered inside it, Igneous found he no longer needed to surrender control of his fire.

He sat for some time by the edge of the river, massaging feeling back into his legs and listening to the rush of the water, the hungry noise of some patient beast just waiting to swallow him up if he dared venture in again. There was no particular reason to stay. Igneous was indifferent to his trainer, distantly grateful for food and companionship, the release from sleep, but despising the violence to which he was bent. As for the boy himself, there was little Igneous could say about him; he was sad, but Igneous was not made for giving comfort—every touch burned. All the same, there was no particular reason to leave, especially not here, where he would be alone, the only one of his kind. So he would stay.

The magmar got up, taking a few slow steps to test his legs. They were warm and blazing with flames again, though still unpleasantly stiff and tingly as he set off through the snow. Some ways back he'd found the boy's bag lying near the water's edge, the tarsix's trail starting not far from it. It would do little good to rescue the boy then leave him without food or map or any of his other supplies. The magmar found the pack and dragged it back to where he'd left the comatose guide, heedless of the track it left through the snow. He knew of nothing in these wilds that would want to trifle with him, at least norhing that wouldn't be able to follow him even if he could pass invisibly above the snow like a ghost.

It was time to be off. Igneous considered for some time how he could carry both the pack and the boy, then finally laid the bag on the boy's chest and prepared to take the both of them up in his arms. It was hard to dim his flames so soon after they'd been raging at their highest, but the magmar did his best, cooling his body as much as he could before he slid his arms under Tobias and hoisted him and the bag up. Igneous could feel the boy shivering beneath his coat.

The magmar spared one last look for Accemenla, left discarded in the snow. So you think you know me, little screech-cat? The magmar thought sadly, shifting Tobias's weight to a more comfortable position. You have much to learn before you can hope to understand who I am.

Perhaps Igneous didn't care much for his trainer one way or another. That didn't mean he wouldn't defend the boy, wouldn't fight for him if asked. It wasn't a question of liking, or of honor, or even of compassion. To Igneous, it wasn't a question at all. If someone was in need, you helped them. If someone was drowning, you did what you could to save them. It was simply what one did, despite—or perhaps because of—what pain it might cause you.

There were some born with the power to do no harm, though they chose to harm anyway. Igneous was not one of these. Even now, he knew, the heat radiating off his body was slowly boiling away the water in Tobias's coat, which let off a horrid wet-dog smell. Eventually it would eat through the garment entirely and the shirt beneath; by the time they reached a place to stop, the boy's back would almost certainly be blistered and painful. But he would be alive. When your very touch could kill, you had to make do with what you could.

Igneous began to walk, following the river for a time, not thinking about much as day wore on into evening. Eventually the tarsix would awaken, though she would probably wait a while before pursuing them again. She needed time to nurse her wounds as well, after all. Igneous's deep footprints stretched out behind him, an easy path for her to follow. The magmar carried on, ignoring the ache in his arms as the sun began to sink. As the sickly-dim moon rose, he would still be awake, watching over Tobias while he slept and the night flowed on around them. It was what one did.

Tobias awoke weak and aching, with a head that felt heavy on a neck too spindly to support it. Something had died in his mouth while he was asleep—possibly his tongue, which felt swollen and immobile—and his back was throbbing for some reason. He wondered why he couldn't have a moment like the ones movie characters in Johto always seemed to have while recovering from an ordeal; not even for a moment did he think he might have died and gone to heaven.

It was sometime during the night, or at least dark, and Tobias's need to know what was going on warred with a powerful desire to close his eyes and drift off again. That he was having trouble moving was only encouraging him to give up and slide back into darkness.

Igneous was nearby, a smudge of light and heat in the corner of Tobias's eye. The magmar must have noticed his weak twitching, for the smear of fire moved closer, the heat intensified. Tobias eventually managed to turn his head enough to look up at the magmar.

"Whathh happen'd?" he slurred, once he'd managed to coax sound out of his parched, constricted throat.

Igneous looked down at him, then grumbled out an elaborate explanation, most of which Tobias didn't catch. The boy was just surprised he'd gotten any response at all; he couldn't remember the last time he'd heard the magmar utter more than a couple of syllables in a row. Most of what he managed to pick up was what he already knew, if hazily. He'd faced Accemenla and been knocked into the river. After that was where it started to get strange.

"You saved me?" Tobias croaked.

Igneous shrugged. "Magmar."

Tobias wasn't entirely sure how to feel about that. Under ordinary circumstances he would probably be elated, or at least shocked. For the moment, with a head stuffed full of cotton fluff and all the eloquence of a drunk, he couldn't manage more than a "Thanks" as he slid further into confusion.

Igneous shrugged and turned away. His footsteps didn't hiss as he stepped out of Tobias's field of vision; he must have been in this area for some time, such that he'd melted all the snow already. Tobias didn't even try to make sense of that. There was something else he desperately needed to ask before he gave up and slept. "Igneous!" he called, turning the name into little more than a loud rasp as he tried to raise his voice. The magmar did stop, though, and wait. "Do you know what happened to Jinx and Chevron? Did they show up?"

"Mar." A definite negative. Tobias slumped back to the ground? He couldn't figure it out now. Despite the panic that was starting to rise in him, he was simply too tired and too ill to puzzle anything out. Jinx and Chevron ought to have returned by now, but he could do nothing at all to help them in this state. Tobias might have thought that, anyway, if he weren't so exhausted; as it was, he slid back into unconsciousness with only the smallest twinge of guilt.

His sleep was thick and dreamless, his exhausted and aching body dragging his mind down from flights of fancy. Once or twice Tobias thought he half-woke, roused by some strange cry from the forest, light filtering through the trees or, at one point, the confused impression of a large animal snuffling at his face. These cloudy moments of semiconsciousness evaporated quickly when he awoke in earnest the next time, squinting into a cheerful late-morning sun.

There was something warm and heavy lying atop Tobias's chest. He tipped his pounding head down, squinting at it with watering eyes. It was something brown and white mottled with red... Tobias's sluggish brain at last recognized Chevron, the linoone's two front paws and wedge-shaped head resting on his chest. Though all Tobias's aches and pains were starting to make themselves known again, he had to smile at the sight.

The smile didn't last long. The red on Chevron's muzzle resolved itself into blood, and as Tobias looked down at the rest of the linoone's body, huddled next to his, he found that it was covered with wounds. Some looked like claw marks, long rakes scoring the linoone's sides, while there were what appeared to be bites amidst the thicker fur around his neck.

As Tobias began to shift, trying to sit up without disturbing Chevron, the linoone nevertheless opened his eyes to slits, letting out a small whine that made Tobias stop moving immediately. "Hey, buddy," Tobias said, trying to smile and keep the anger out of his voice. Had Accemenla done this to Chevron? This kind of physical damage hardly seemed her style, but one way or another it was probably her fault. She claimed to have "dealt" with Jinx and Chevron when she confronted him, and even if all she had done was put Chevron to sleep, that still would have left him vulnerable to any opportunistic predators roaming the foothills.

"Did Accemenla attack you, huh?" Tobias asked. He reached out to scratch the linoone's head, then thought better of it upon considering the chunks of fur that had been torn out in that area. He instead settled for working his fingers through the fur behind the linoone's ears, where it looked as though he wouldn't be aggravating any of Chevron's injuries.

Chevron didn't answer his question, just looking up at Tobias with mournful blue eyes. These flicked to the side as something dark descended from a nearby tree, kicking up a flurry of snow as it landed. Jinx turned indignant red eyes on Tobias, croaking in an accusatory manner.

"Oh, jealous, are we?" Tobias said, reaching out for the murkrow with his free hand. Jinx scooted away from his fingers, beak in the air and attitude scornful. Tobias only grinned and made a quick grab for the murkrow, dragging him back into easy reach and bundling him up under his arm. "Come here, you stupid bird."

Jinx made indignant noises but struggled only halfheartedly. As Tobias started to stroke his feathers, the murkrow settled down and tried to hide his pleasure beneath a veil of disdain. Unlike Chevron, Jinx seemed entirely unharmed, though of course Acemenla's psychic attacks would have been no good against him—unless she had thought to drop a tree limb on him, that was.

Tobias glanced towards the largest source of warmth in the area, stronger even than the winter sun. Igneous was watching the three of them from a seat next to the fire—a fire the magmar himself must have built, Tobias realized with some surprise. He stopped petting Chevron and beckoned the magmar to come over, but Igneous remained where he was and after a few seconds turned away.

Tobias let out a sigh—a small one, so as not to jostle Chevron. Well, perhaps it was for the best. It's not like Igneous could get all that close to them anyway, what with the whole "skin on fire" thing. For a second Tobias had the strange vision of himself tickling the magmar under the chin the way he might Jinx or Chevron and was forced to choke back desperate giggles. Okay, so the magmar's "look, but don't touch" aura was stronger than just the unfriendly nature of his flames.

Relieved as he was to find his friends all in one piece, albeit only just in Chevron's case, Tobias had been able to temporarily forget his own injuries, but pain was starting to creep back into his consciousness. He hurt all over, but his head was worst off of all. It felt heavy and off-balance, and every time he moved it pain blossomed across the back of his skull. Tobias left off scratching Chevron in order to engage in a careful inspection of the throbbing area; his fingers found it horribly swollen and sticky, his hair matted with congealed blood.

Tobias shooed Jinx away and carefully removed Chevron from his chest so he could lever himself up off the earth. He had to go slowly and felt dizzy all the while. His back felt terribly cold and oddly itchy; it was a wonder he'd been able to sleep at all, Tobias thought—a deathly chill seeped up from the ground underneath him and seemed to have numbed that entire side of his body. It felt as though the cold air was striking his skin directly, like his coat wasn't even there. As he twisted around to look, Tobias was treated both to a prickling of pain from his back and to the sight of tattered, blackened edges of clothing.

The back of his coat had been burned away, the shirt beneath it likewise. What he could see of his back was red and blistered. He felt around the injured area, wincing as he went. His skin was scaly and stiff, and it felt as though it was starting to flake in places, as though he had some kind of bad sunburn. Tobias looked again at where Igneous was sitting by the fire. This had to be the magmar's doing, but Tobias couldn't for the life of him figure out what it meant.

His chest, too, pained him, burning whenever he moved much. He rolled up his shirt in order to inspect the damage and found only a large welt about a handspan in diameter. Tobias stared down at the mark for a while before what it was finally came to him. Accemenla's psybeam had hit him there, the one that had toppled him into the water. Apparently he wasn't totally immune to her psychic attacks, although considering that they had snapped tree limbs without much difficulty, he was probably lucky that an allergic reaction was all he'd suffered.

If he did a more thorough inventory of his wounds, he'd probably find several other weals where psybeams had clipped him. For now, though, he was satisfied that he knew the worst of what he'd suffered, and none of his injuries required immediate attention. He was free to crawl over to his pack—had Igneous carried that here too? —and dig around in it for some food. He was famished, and surely the pokémon would want to eat as well.

Tobias pulled out a few cans of tuna and opened them up, passing one to Igneous and setting two more in front of Jinx and Chevron. Despite his throbbing head, he tried to think while he chewed the clammy fish from his own can.

Accemenla had managed to follow him somehow, and apparently she was intent on killing him. Tobias understood that she didn't like him much—he had to admit that her opinion might not be totally unjustified, at that—but she'd never shown any inclination to want to cause him direct harm before. That struck him as odd and more than a little disturbing. His team as a whole could defeat her easily enough, but if she snuck around and took them out one by one as she had earlier, it was clear she would have the upper hand.

What was more important, though, was how she had managed to follow him. He'd been jumping around, after all, using faint attack to travel miles at a time. If she was following on foot, she shouldn't have been able to keep up, unless perhaps she kept after him all day and night and traveled much faster than he did while walking.

She hadn't known teleport when he'd last seen her—then again, she hadn't known hypnosis, either. That at least could have kept up with his faint attack. It would have done her no good, though, unless she'd seen this area before; she couldn't teleport without knowing where she was headed. Could tarsix even learn teleport?

Tobias sighed and set his can of tuna down, then started wrestling his secondhand guidebook out of his pack. That at least was something he could look up. Even if Accemenla knew teleport, it didn't solve the puzzle entirely, though. Tobias thought that faint attack didn't leave behind any indication of where he had gone, so how would she even keep on his trail?

As he flipped through pages, Tobias grimaced. Maybe there were other people helping her somehow. She'd said that someone had sent her, or that's what he thought she'd said, anyhow. If that was the case, though, they had left the task of taking him down to her. He supposed he ought to be grateful.

Tobias found tarsix's entry in the guidebook at last and scanned down the list of known techniques. No, no teleport there, though perhaps Accemenla had managed to learn it somehow anyway. These old books weren't nearly as reliable as Johto's pokédexes when it came to minutiae about a pokémon's attacks. Idly he skimmed the rest of the information the book had about tarsix. It was nothing he didn't know already: solitary, hunted at night, preferred to confound prey with illusions rather than attack directly, would fight with claws and teeth when cornered.

Funny, it doesn't mention anything about sadism or vanity in here, Tobias thought wryly as he flipped to the guidebook's map and stared at it. He would have plenty of time to worry about how Accemenla was getting around later. For now, he needed to figure out where he was going to go next. The tarsix had shown that she was plenty skilled at finding him, so she'd be on his case again soon.

At the moment he was pretty much out in the middle of nowhere. There might be some little villages around here—actually, that was more likely than not—but the cartographer hadn't even bothered to mark them if so. He could send Jinx off to look for some, but he didn't feel like there was any reason to visit one at this point. His options were more or less to continue north to Snowpoint or to return to the Dark Temple.

He would be relatively safe in the Dark Temple, at least for a little while, but he would be in danger of crossing paths with Accemenla. If she really could teleport, then the mountains would prove no obstacle to her, but otherwise putting them between him and her would afford him a considerable amount of protection.

Tobias let the guidebook flop open to its central pages, then set it in front of the fire in some vain hope of drying it out a bit. He absently started pulling other damp items out of his pack and arranging them in the grassy area that Igneous had cleared so that they might benefit from the sunlight and the fire's warmth. Of course, there was no real point in going on to Snowpoint simply for the joy of travel. He would be forced to flee it again soon enough, and if something did attack him there, he wouldn't have a temple full of guides there to help him out.

There was no reason to go unless he was thinking of how close Snowpoint was to one of the World's Teeth. If he was considering one last desperate stab at the people tormenting him, then it was where he needed to go. He might not have a chance to sneak away from the Dark Temple again for quite some time, now that he knew he'd attracted at least Accemenla's attention.

Tobias eventually disgorged most of the contents of his pack. The pokémon had finished their food, and though the sun was still high in the sky, Tobias felt terribly tired. His head throbbed and his whole body ached. Serious thought was going to have to wait for later, he told himself firmly. Unrolling his bedding and changing into a shirt that was more than seventy percent intact, if rather damp, he settled down to sleep.

Chevron, left out of his chime in the interest of healing, curled up by his guide as usual. Even Jinx, resigned to the fact that Tobias was going to be boring and sleep for at least a few hours, tucked head under wing and settled into a light doze. Igneous was left awake to watch over the rest of the group, alone as usual as he quietly tended to the fire.

By the same time the next day, all that remained of the campsite for a rather ragged tarsix to find was the remains of the fire and a crop circle of clear grass burned in the middle of the snowy landscape.

Tobias still wasn't feeling entirely well three days later as he tromped over what felt like the millionth hill in the last seventy-two hours. The huge faint attack jump it had taken to cross the mountains had left him too weak and aching to travel further the first day after leaving camp, and he hadn't yet recovered either from that or from his injuries.

Journeying through the crisp, empty landscape no longer held a pleasant aura of freedom about it. The bare trees had become agents of paranoia, the stillness seeming prelude to an ambush. Chevron no longer played in the snow, instead riding injured in his chime, and even Jinx didn't stray as far as he ordinarily would.

Nevertheless, Tobias managed to forget some of his grievances as reaching the hilltop at last offered him a glimpse of the city in the distance. Smoke curled from far-off chimneys, staining the cloudy sky a deeper grey, and Tobias fancied he could just make out the great tower that was the Ice Temple, a proud spire looking down on all the smaller buildings clustered at its base.

It took him most of the rest of the day to reach Snowpoint; he didn't dare use faint attack so close to civilization, no matter how few people were about. He'd long since recalled Igneous to his pokéball, too, and the cold made the walk seem even longer. That his coat now had a gaping hole in the back, albeit one covered by his pack, didn't help. The snow was thicker here, though at this time of year the ocean surrounding the long peninsula on which Snopoint sat acted to warm the air. Tobias wandered the streets in search of the Pokémon Center, pushing through an ever-thickening fog of pain and weariness.

When at last he staggered into the large, warm building, he was thinking a little less clearly than he should. He turned over both Chevron and Jinx to the nurse in attendance, who chatted away perkily despite the fact that Tobias both looked and felt a wreck. "We don't ordinarily get many guides up here in the winter months," she said by way of conversation as she hunted for a room key. "Are you here for the Temple?"

Tobias nodded, the most energy-efficient response he could think of, and grimaced as a twinge of pain zapped through his skull. "Well, I hope you plan to take some time to recover from your trip. I guess boats don't agree with you."

"Didn't come on a boat," Tobias said without thinking, reaching out to take the key the nurse had slid onto the counter. She didn't withdraw her hand as his fingers touched it, and as he looked into her face out of surprise he found her giving him a suddenly much more attentive look.

"You didn't come on a boat? But you didn't fly here, certainly? Or come overland? At this time of year?"

Tobias looked at her dumbly, trying to marshal his sluggish thoughts to produce an excuse both clever and far from suspicious. But when he appeared to be struggling for words, the nurse simply shook her head and released the key. "Well, that explains why you look so terrible. I guess you're tougher than you look." But she watched him keenly as he made his way over to the wing of the center that housed its guest rooms, a look of intense reflection on her face.

Tobias was glad to reach the privacy of his room, where he could throw his pack down on the bed and let Igneous out to start warming up the small, stark little place. He was glad he wasn't really staying here for the whole winter—he could only imagine how cooped up he would start to feel after a few weeks in this tiny abode.

He probably wouldn't be able to evade suspicion for that long, either. He'd barely gotten in the door and already the nurse was wondering what he was up to. Tobias groaned and buried his face in the bedspread; Igneous glanced over at him from where he was building a fire in the grate. At least he could look forward to this all being over soon. Once the Shield went down, he'd be free to go as far away from here as he wished, off to somewhere where no one would have any clue who he was or think twice about his chumming around with Jinx. And hopefully the psychics of Waytar would be much too busy dealing with the intrusion of the outside world to worry about tracking him down.

That was a lot to hope for, Tobias had to admit, but it was all he had. And even if his life didn't take a sudden turn for the better after he brought down the Shield, well, he would still be a hero, wouldn't he? After all that talk about how he was a curse on everyone around him, he'd show them that he still had the choice to do good. Well, not everybody would be happy, but Tobias was confident he was in the right. The only way for Waytar to survive whatever was coming was to become involved in it.

There wasn't much time. Accemenla would catch up with him sooner rather than later—he was surprised she hadn't shown up even before he left for Snowpoint. Igneous hadn't said what had happened to her, but if she was still alive, she would be after him, he was sure. She seemed to have worked her dislike of him up into quite the vendetta.

By now Igneous had his fire started and was sitting quietly in front of it, gazing into the flames. Tobias yawned and shoved his pack onto the floor before burrowing under the covers. Tomorrow he'd make his final preparations, and the day after that, well... the day after that, he would be free. After all this time, he could finally look forward to living without being hunted.

Though he was tired, it took Tobias a long time to fall asleep. Wending through his head were visions of triumph and glory, each more impossible than the last. As he slid into slumber, visions of his family welcoming him back with open arms slid into a confused jumble of the family growlithe growing to three times their normal size and racing off after Raikou, who had been munching on the cabbages, and Accemenla grinning and presenting him with a golden necklace—for Jinx, she said, to remember her by.

Two days later, Tobias was loitering in an alley, having an argument with Jinx.

"Oh, scared, are we? Think the big bad apothecary's going to get us? Well, I don't blame you—he is pretty scary. I know I wouldn't want to tangle with him."

The murkrow stuck his beak in the air and edged as far away from Tobias's head as he could, until he was in danger of falling off the boy's shoulder. He was not going to be manipulated that way.

"Come on, I bet you can't get that stuff for me," Tobias said, prodding Jinx in the chest. The murkrow flared his wings and gave him a reproachful look. "It'd be really hard, I'll bet. Only a very, very clever pokémon would be able to do it."

Jinx burbled something noncommittal and refused to look Tobias in the face. The boy mock-sighed and shook his head. "Well, that's okay, I understand. I guess maybe I could get Chevron to do it. Yeah, I'll bet he could manage. Maybe he could dig up under..."

Jinx let out an indignant screech and gave Tobias a sidelong look of outrage. As though that oaf of a linoone could do anything right! Especially when it came to something that required as much subtlety as rescuing items from humans!

In fact, Chevron had only been released back to Tobias today. Even with the expert medical attention given to him at the Pokémon Center, he had been slow to mend. The first morning, when Tobias had gone to the counter to pick him up, the nurse had told him that Jinx was fine—in high spirits and a bit of a nuisance, actually—but that they would need extra time to work on Chevron.

"Don't worry, though," she said with a kind smile. "I know how rough it must be to hear that about your starter, but he'll be fine. He just needs a bit of extra care before he'll be ready to fight again."

Tobias was relieved the nurse had conveniently decided that Chevron must be his starter but felt rather guilty as he put on a show of being distraught over his linoone's condition. It wasn't like he didn't care about Chevron's health, but he had to wonder whether he would feel it much more acutely if it were Jinx convalescing in the center.

At a time like this, though, he had to wonder whether he wouldn't be feeling relief instead. "No? You don't think Chevron could handle it? Well then I'm stumped," Tobias said breezily. "Wherever might there be some daring, courageous, loyal pokémon who might be able to help me out?"

Jinx cackled and stretched out a wing to preen. Exasperation forced a change in Tobias's strategy. "Oh, come on, Jinx. It's not like you don't do this all the time. Help me out, okay? I'll let you play around with the pretty shiny chime if you do?"

Jinx gave Tobias a calculating look as he dragged a long flight feather through his beak. The new silver chime that swung from Tobias's belt was highly polished, enough so that the murkrow could see a warped version of his reflection in it. He'd managed to liberate it from the boy several times already, but Tobias always took it away again as soon as he noticed.

Jinx shrugged his wings and scuttled back and forth along Tobias's shoulder, hemming and hawing to himself as the boy wheedled. At last he stopped fidgeting and, with an air of great condescension, crowed an affirmative.

"You'll do it?" Tobias asked, unable to disguise the relief in his voice. Jinx burbled and looked smug. "Thank you, Jinx, you're the best." The murkrow was only beginning to enjoy this preeminently correct statement when the boy went plowing on, rummaging in his pockets and pulling out a small brown pouch.

"Okay, remember what I want you to look for, here. Some of the powdery stuff they sell in the little brown bottles, like I showed you, and the roots and the little star-shaped leaf things, right? And some of that liquid you can drink, too, if you have time. And drop this in there somewhere for me, okay?" He passed the pouch up into Jinx's beak, and the murkrow gave him a suspicious look as it clinked when he shook it. The boy wasn't honestly expecting him to willingly give up the bright little bits of metal humans loved to trade, was he?

Apparently he was. "Whenever you're ready," Tobias said encouragingly, then just stood looking at him with a big, stupid smile on his face. "Remember what I told you about being quiet," he added. "Oh, and-"

Jinx went, before the boy could embarrass himself any further by trying to give a murkrow advice on thievery. Honestly, the cheek!

Once the murkrow had disappeared in a brief fizz of dark energy, Tobias edged a bit closer to the mouth of the alley, leaning out from the wall so that he could look in through the shop's one large, plate-glass window. It must be reasonably prosperous, Tobias thought, to be able to afford such an extravagance, and the array of drawers behind the counter, each containing some medicine or other, was certainly impressive.

Nothing appeared to be happening at the moment. The apothecary was behind the long counter, mixing something up in a large ceramic bowl. If Jinx was really going to get what Tobias wanted, he should have appeared in the shop's back room.

Tobias wasn't comfortable with the thought of stealing the medicine he needed, not only because it was wrong but because it felt as though doing so justified people's fears about darklings, but he had no choice. He'd returned to Waytar with no local currency, and that was still his situation when he arrived in Snowpoint—it was lucky that Pokémon Centers offered free room and board.

It had taken him a whole day of straight battling to earn enough money to buy the single silver chime that now swung from his belt, and it would cost him even more to purchase all the medical supplies he wanted. His only option for making more was battling trainers, and there weren't exactly many about this time of year, unless he wanted to brave the Temple.

So here he was, skulking in an alley and, he hoped, out of sight, waiting for Jinx to return with medicine for him and the rest of Tobias's pokémon. He'd given the murkrow the remainder of his money to leave behind. It was the best he had in terms of payment and some small balm for his unhappy conscience.

Movement inside the shop. The apothecary stopped what he was working on and turned to look to the door that led into the back of the shop. Tobias sucked in a breath and drummed his fingers anxiously against the side of his leg. Surely Jinx would be able to evade capture; he wouldn't make enough noise to attract attention, would he? But the apothecary had put down his pestle and was hurrying into the back room, leaving Tobias to wait anxiously, expecting his murkrow to reappear any moment.

Jinx did come into view, but not as Tobias had expected. A small cloud of dark energy appeared over the counter, and the murkrow fluttered through, already carrying several vials clutched in his claws. He hadn't found everything he'd been looking for in the back, though, as he busily started opening the small drawers that lined the back wall of the shop.

Tobias clenched his hands, holding his breath. The apothecary would be back any second, and it didn't look as though Jinx was being terribly quiet about his business. What was he up to? Only what Tobias had asked of him, the boy realized with sinking disappointment.

Apparently whatever distraction Jinx had caused in the back was a very absorbing, and probably expensive, one—the apothecary did not reemerge before the murkrow had extracted a couple of small packets from one drawer and fished an untidy bundle of leaves from another. Jinx gave the shop one final satisfied look before vanishing into another faint attack.

This time the murkrow reappeared in the air next to Tobias, dumping the medicine he'd gathered to the slush at the boy's feet. Tobias sighed, whether from relief or exasperation he couldn't say, and bent to gather the items up while Jinx clung to his shoulder, muttering smugly about his achievement. Too easy!

Tobias stuffed the medicine into his pocket and hurried down the alley towards the street opposite the apothecary's, not having the heart to look back. Jinx had come back without his money, so hopefully he'd left it in the store; Tobias tried not to think about how much Jinx's shenanigans might have increased his debt to the man as he distractedly gave in to the murkrow's harsh demands and unhooked the silver chime from his belt, passing it up to the bird.

Jinx took the ring on the top of the chime in his beak and tilted his head crazily, trying to admire it properly despite his position on Tobias's shoulder. The boy himself did his best to remain calm as he merged back into the scant traffic on the streets of Snowpoint, heading for the coast. He had his plan, he had medicine in case things went wrong, and he had a chime. Now all he needed was a pokémon to fill it.

He reached up to stroke Jinx, who was cheerfully shaking his head to make the chime clank, faintly tugging at the essence of all the pokémon who could hear. "Hey, Jinx," he said. "That wasn't too hard, was it, getting the stuff from that shopkeeper? How would you like a real challenge?"

Jinx didn't reply, chewing contentedly on the ring at the top of the chime¸ but he was listening. Tobias smiled and tickled the murkrow's glossy feathers. "How would you like to play a little game?"