Chapter 10: All Fun and Games

Chapter 10: All Fun and Games

The Waregle’s trap room was definitely not designed to fit this many people in it. Mathew could feel the overcrowding the moment David opened the door for him, Joey, Jermy, ORB, and Demurke. Not only was there the six of them to filter in, but there were already four strangers taking up the space.

“Beverly, I sense visitors,” a woman with a forced gravelly voice spoke. Her green hair stuck out against the white dress of her body. It bore a striking resemblance to a pokémon Mathew knew called gardevoir…maybe it was its pre-evolution?

“Really? Well I’ll be!” Up came a species that, in contrast, Mathew needed no introduction for. The beaver-like bidoof sped towards him and Joey at breakneck pace. With buck teeth that thick, Mathew worried that she’d make a dent in the floor if she tripped. “It’s a croc! And a…reptile guy!” she looked to David expectantly.

David stepped aside and held out a wing. “These are Mathew and Joey! Please, give them a warm welcome.”

“You’re Mathew?!” A rabbit with fur resembling a red and black sweater darted towards the totodile. “Oh my gosh, I’m a super huge f—”

“Uh.” Joey pointed a finger towards the cubone.

“Oh.” He leapt towards Mathew, grabbing his hand and shaking it with enough ferocity to strain his arm. “Call me Randy! I’m a super huge fan! At least, I think I am!”

Panic spiked through Mathew, remembering the last time he’d learned that somebody was a fan. “Uh, thanks,” he said mildly, trying not to let anything show. “What do you mean, ‘think’, though?”

“I can explain.”

Mathew was surprised by the source of the bubbling voice. In the corner of the room was a small mech of sorts filled with water. Rubbery, humanoid hands and feet gave it mobility, wobbling with the slosh of the fluid contained within. Behind the glass of the mech’s core was a lone red fish — a magikarp. As the machine hobbled closer, he noticed a blue type stone embedded into the container. That must’ve been how the fish controlled the arms and legs.

“We were discussing this when we heard you were participating,” she told him. The mech stood still as she spoke, devoid of body language. “We don’t remember everything about you, but Randy and I know your videos well enough.”

Mathew had never felt more lucky. They definitely had no idea what had happened, if that was all they knew. “Awesome!” he exclaimed. “It’s crazy how many people I’ve run into that recognize me. I haven’t felt this famous in years…”

“You know about Mathew?” Joey turned to David. “Just who the heck are these guys?”

David’s answer was simple. “Former humans, just like you. Today, they’re your competition.”

Now it all made sense. The way David was going to make him and Joey look palatable was to put them in direct comparison with these other recruits. The crowd was here to watch them compete!

“So that means you guys are recruits in other locations?” Mathew asked. He was confirming more for Joey’s sake than himself.

“Yeah!” the bidoof, Beverly, said, shimmying next to the gardevoir look-alike. “My bud Kell and I have been toilin’ away over in Kötfabrik, while Randy and Megan’ve been livin’ in…where did ya say it was again?”

“Cosaline,” the rabbit, Randy, said.

Mathew scoffed to himself. Where the hell were you two when we made that cover story?

Joey took a sweeping look at the four fellow recruits. “So y’all don’t remember anything, just like us, but…you know about Mathew?”

“Not all of us,” Kell, the gardevoir-like — kirlia? — said. “You’re an enigma to Beverly and me. But clearly, he means something to those two.”

Joey went silent for a moment. His maw clenched tightly. “…Gotcha.”

Ugh. As if Mathew needed another reason to feel remorseful over what he’s kept from Joey, now these two random strangers were here to rub it in. Was there really no way for him to give Joey his answers without peeling the bandage?

He puffed and put that aside for now. What mattered was this competition here and now. He had to beat these four recruits in whatever challenge David was putting in front of them. Beverly, Kell, Randy, and… Huh. Why was that magikarp, Megan, looking at Joey so intensely?

“Alright, sounds like we’re about ready!” David exclaimed. “You’ll hear about how all this is going to work once I’m out there. I’ll be serving as your announcer!”

Jermy scoffed as he hopped into one of the chairs in front of the monitors. “Of course you’re playing announcer…”

“You guys ain’t a part of this?” Joey asked Jermy and Demurke.

“Well, it’s not that we aren’t a part of it!” Jermy sounded a little defensive. “It’s just that, you know, during the event—”

“Jermy and Demurke’s job was only to help David prepare the Waregle and attract a crowd,” ORB explained on his behalf. “While you’re out there, they’ll make sure nobody sneaks into this room and messes with the traps.”

Demurke took the other chair. “H-Hey, don’t worry! You won’t…really n-need our support out there. There’s p-plenty of people here to—!” The moment she turned towards the monitors, she gasped. Before Mathew could react, she pressed a button, and one of the monitors cut to a different angle of the Waregle. Through the monitor, Mathew could see an uncountable number of pokémon walking and talking around the pool, their noise piercing through the thin walls of the trap room. “Th-there’s a whole crowd,” she explained mildly.

“Man, I’m getting all fired up now!” Randy exclaimed. “Can’t we just get this started already?!”

“Hey, you said it!” David pushed open the door and was out in a flash. Less than a minute later, he was standing atop one of the highest platforms, clutching a wireless microphone in his hand.

“Good morning, Waregle!” David’s voice boomed through the whole complex, powered by speakers Mathew couldn’t see. His greeting was enough to get the crowd cheering for him from below. Half of the recruits watched the commotion through the cameras, while the other half peered past the open door. “Welcome to the Building Bonanza Game, hosted by Emmons Labs! I, David Emmons, will be your announcer for the duration of this event.”

“Really? That’s the name he’s going with?” Megan remarked.

David stood where no criticism could reach him. “In the game to come, each of our three pairs of employees-to-be will be challenged to demonstrate all of the skills that make us so great!” He leapt down to a different platform where a cardboard box had been planted. “Each box like this holds one of several essential tools. This one has chalk!” He jumped to another one. “This one has type stones!” Then another, and another. “Basic materials! Mundane objects! Building tools! Rudimentary construction equipment! All to be used for creating the most efficient, effective, and creative weapon they can think of!”

Mathew grinned excitedly. This game was right up his alley. He could build a weapon just as interesting as the others he’d seen, no problem!

“The time limit is one hour, and the event will be contained to the obstacle courses above the pool. Recruits are free to grab, hoard, and trade boxes however they like, but if any fall in, the recruit responsible will be removed from the game. Directly harming other recruits is banned until thirty minutes remain, after which they’re free to use their own weapon and try breaking the others. Who wins? It comes down to who you all think made the best one!”

The audience roared in excitement.

Joey nudged Mathew’s shoulder. “I’m not sure about this…”

“Are you kidding?” The eager Mathew patted him on the back, trying to reassure him. “We’ve got this in the bag.”

“Aw, I wouldn’t be so sure, hun,” Beverly remarked. “I might not look like it, but I’m a bit of an engineer myself. With me as brains and Kell as brawn, we’re unstoppable!”

“When did I become the brawns here?” Kell questioned.

“It doesn’t matter which one of you is brains and which of you is brawn,” Mathew said. “We’ll still beave your asses at this.”

Beverly groaned. “Ugh, that reeks! Surely ya got something better than that!”

Mathew just gave a mad chuckle. A bad pun should be the least of her worries.

“And now, without further adieu, please give a warm welcome to our three recruit teams!”

At David’s exclamation, the six of them burst through the trap room door and took a lap around the Waregle pool. Most of the crowd eagerly parted the way for them like the Red Sea, and those who didn’t were swatted away by Megan’s mech. Randy left an arm out for high-fives.

As they moved, Mathew couldn’t help himself. His run turned into a little jig, and he began to scat a little jingle — the one that got himself on the map years ago. The crowd ate it right up.

It took them all a moment to find the starting places David intended. Mathew and Joey really had to climb to reach theirs, and the Kötfabrik recruits got so lost that David had to carry them there in his talons. The recruits ended up situated high up at three of the four corners of the pool, with the boxes dotting low-hanging platforms towards the center.

From here, Mathew could finally see just what those boxes were hiding. The two of them got a great corner — the boxes holding type stones, chalk, and household objects were closest to them. It’d be easy to throw together a weapon just from those…but Mathew could do better. He needed to do better.

Unfortunately, the boxes holding the materials and tools he’d need to build something from scratch were near the other engineers, Beverly and Kell, instead. If he wanted to go above and beyond, he’d have to fight.

Mathew glanced at his teammate. “Are you ready, Joey?”

The crocodile fidgeted with his cowboy hat. “I’m about as ready as a wrecked car.”

Not very ready then. “Hey, don’t worry,” he encouraged again. “We can do this.”

Suddenly, Joey’s head snapped away from him. “That’s not what I’m bothered by.”

“Okay, let’s get this show on the road!” David called. They were out of time to talk. “Start moving on go. Three… Two… One… Go!”

Mathew leapt through the obstacle course faster than he could think. His days of Waregle training had prepared him to shimmy along narrow paths, weave around spinning bars, and leap between course routes with little hesitation. It wasn’t without flaw — his foot nearly slipped out from under him as he stepped through a puddle — but compared to when he first arrived, he was flying. Joey was just behind, keeping in-step with his own mastery.

The cubone nearly toppled over the type stone box while trying to skid to a stop. As fast as he could, he dug a deep purple gem out and made a break for the next box. In a minute’s time, he’d handed Joey both the stone and the chalk they’d need. Perfect. Now, all he had to do was get to…

…Where did the tools box go? The platform it stood on was now devoid of cardboard. In fact, all of the boxes were gone, even the type stone box they’d passed earlier. Did somebody—?

He gasped at the sound of cardboard sliding in front of him. The chalk box…it was moving on its own! Water droplets were pushed away as it was dragged into the air, then through the air, soaring over obstacles…all the way towards Kell’s hand.

“That’s the last one.” She put down the chalk box on the wide, square platform she and Beverly stood upon. There was a pink glow coming from her hands as she did so. That must’ve been it — Kell moved the boxes to herself with psychokinesis!

Beverly chuckled, sending a raspberry in Mathew’s direction. “Ya might be a brainiac, but ya can’t make a weapon out of thin air!”

Mathew clutched his club tightly. One minute in and he was already being inconvenienced in the worst way possible. He tried to bite his irritation down — he had to keep looking good for the crowd. “Oh yeah? We’ll see who’s laughing when I whip up an invisible sword!”

“Ain’t that a psychic ability? I thought those weren’t allowed!” Joey cried.

“It’s fighting recruits that’s banned!” The decideueye rose up next to Mathew and Joey as he continued narrating for the crowd. “Looks like Beverly and Kell have made themselves a head-start! As long as they don’t bash anyone with them, they can move those boxes all they want!”

One of the recruits really didn’t take it that well — but it wasn’t them. Mathew watched as the fiery rabbit crashed onto Beverly and Kell’s platform, leaving scorch marks at the point of impact. The platform swayed from his landing, the steel chains holding it up jangling loudly. Kell responded by raising all six boxes airborne, far higher than he could jump. She pursed her lips, seeming strained by the act.

“Rrrgh, come on, give them back!” Randy spat. “This isn’t fair at all!”

“No.” Kell couldn’t have delivered it more bluntly.

Randy ranted and raved, seeming primed for attack, but after some time, he somehow had the restraint to storm off.

“On Randy’s behalf, I’m proposing a temporary truce between us.”

Mathew yelped as he whipped around. Standing on a platform above and behind them was Megan, mech standing tall. “How the hell’d you get here so fast?” he asked.

“I knew that this would happen when David explained the rules,” she explained as she quietly wiggled about inside the mech. “Getting us to ally against that kirlia was probably intended from the start.”

“But what could the four of us even do?” Joey asked. “Even if we all got in their faces at once, Kell can mind-bend that stuff faster than a rabbit on a rampage!”

Randy yelled, trying to run laps around the engineer and the psychic.

“We’d have to separate Kell from the boxes.” Mathew began pacing around, idly knocking his club against his mask as he tried to probe his brain for answers. “But fighting is banned. Is there another way?”

He recounted each of the rules, hunting for a loophole.

“As long as they don’t bash anyone with them, they can move those boxes all they want!”

“Recruits are free to grab, hoard, and trade boxes however they like…”

“but if any fall in, the recruit responsible will be removed from the game.”

Removed from the game… With the active involvement of her psychokinesis, the fate of the boxes is squarely in Kell’s hands. If she dropped the boxes into the pool below, she’d be eliminated…but David never mentioned a penalty if a recruit fell into the pool. If Kell was forced to choose between herself falling and the boxes falling, she would be forced to choose herself, right?

Mathew looked again to Beverly and Kell’s platform of choice. He witnessed it shift around a little at each of the bidoof’s steps, and that’s when the answer struck him. Those two had chosen the wrong place to set up camp.

He turned to Joey and Megan, feeling confident. “I have an idea.”

---

“Man, all this water’s makin’ it hard to sketch…” The bidoof set the chalk aside and tried pushing the droplets off of the platform. It just served to make her claws wet.

“Here.” Kell pushed one of the boxes past Beverly, using it as a makeshift mop.

Mathew’s eyes flicked between the two of them and his allies, quietly hopping, crawling, and bubbling their way into position. By now, Megan had passed the plan onto Randy, meaning they could put this into motion.

“Hey, mic’s off right now.” David landed next to Mathew, speaking to him in a whisper. “What’s the scheme here?”

Mathew figured a question of his own would be enough. “What’s the cost for breaking things in the Waregle?”

This seemed only to confuse him. “None, I think? We have a cleaning staff.”

“Perfect.” Mathew stood up tall and took a deep breath. “Hey Beverly! Kell!” The moment they looked at him, he made his move. He wound up, rearing back far more than necessary, flashed a grin at the audience below…and then chucked his bone club with all of his might. It hurtled through the air until it smacked — not at the recruits, but one of the chains holding up the platform.

Beverly cried out as the platform wobbled and shook. “Whaddaya think you’re doing?!”

Mathew caught the club as it boomeranged back towards him. “Who doesn’t like a little — ngh — rulebreaking?” He grunted as he tossed it again, adding a bit of showboating into each motion. Mathew wanted all eyes on him, including theirs.

Mathew carefully watched the two panic between throws. He noticed Beverly scramble to toss their scraps onto a platform right next to them. “Catch it, catch it, catch it!” she ordered her friend.

On the fourth throw, the club was held in place just short of the chain. It trembled in midair, stuck between its bond to Mathew and Kell’s psychic power. From here, the cubone could see some confidence break out onto her face. There was a remarkable dent in one of the links now, but Mathew was short a weapon to break it w—

Chomp.

That was the sound Joey made as he crashed into the chain, right at its weak point, and bit down hard. He wrangled with it, clutching the chain to keep from falling.

Mathew gasped. How did he get up there? He had told Joey to go straight for the base of the chain, so they could strike in two places instead of one.

He could hear Joey chewing through the link with his powerful jaws. It was working. “What do we do?!” Beverly cried.

Kell released her hold on the club, then turned to raise all of the boxes into the air. “We have to move these,” she said hurriedly. She moved them all to a smaller platform nearby, barely large enough to fit them all. “They’re trying to—!”

Beverly and Kell screamed as the chain gave out. The platform buckled and turned, forcing them to slide off. A second later, two splashes echoed through the Waregle.

Joey panted and kicked, holding on to the broken chain for dear life. “Um, guys? I…” Before he could finish that sentence, Megan’s mech reached out from a next-door platform and set him down. “Thanks.” He spat towards the pool. “Metal tastes grosser than gunk in a garbage can…”

“Incredible!” David hovered above them, peering down at the disgruntled recruits surfacing from their dive. “The other teams forced Kell and Beverly to give up the boxes to keep from getting eliminated, all without laying a finger on either of them. Who else could think of a plan like that than Mr. Walker himself?! And it only took little kick from Randy to put it into motion!”

A little kick? As Mathew gave a dramatic bow to placate the cheering pokémon, he pieced together what happened. The extra help was an improvised trick from that rabbit, wasn’t it? It must’ve been a serious kick to get Joey so high up. Where did he get that kind of power from…?

Oh! He was the pre-evolution of that soccer rabbit, cinderace! A raboot, it was called. That made sense.

Once he finished showing off, he rushed off to join the others. By the time he got there, Randy and Megan were already clawing through three of the boxes, hunting down chalk, a type stone, and a household item. “Take what you want and go,” Megan demanded.

“Right.” Rather than deliberate, Mathew simply picked one up, then pressed Joey to grab another. With caution, they parted ways with the other group.

They headed for the edge of the pool. Learning from Beverly and Kell, the two settled on a space not held up by chains: a spacious, surprisingly stable diving board suspended over the pool by poles sprouting from the ground.

Mathew sat down with their spoils. The two of them had grabbed the ones holding the most important resources: the raw materials and the tools. Along with the chalk and type stone, they had all they needed to make a weapon from scratch.

“Let’s see here…” Mathew peered into the tools box. He was impressed by the actual variety of tools here. Screwdrivers, hammers, what looked like a blowtorch…

A nail gun…

He held it up to the ceiling light. Crimson glinted off the bent ends of each nail. “Is this it?” he asked.

Mathew couldn’t bear to look at it. Not after what it’d been used for. “Yes, sir.”

“Mathew?! Hey!” Joey exclaimed.

He was pulled back to reality just short of scuttling backwards off the diving board. “Sorry. Can you check this out instead?”

Joey seemed perturbed, but slowly complied, rummaging through the box. “There’s some pencils and paper here for sketching, a hammer, and… uh…” he pulled out a small tube and a matching piece of spring. “What the heck is this?”

Mathew squinted at the two…and then it clicked. “Oh! It’s a tiny barrel. That’s part of what you’d need to build a makeshift gun.”

Joey leaned back at that, looking leerily at the piece in his hand. “A gun? For pokémon?”

Mathew was just short of writing it off himself. But when he looked at the purple type stone resting next to him…an idea started to form. He sat down. “Joey, hand me the pen and paper.”

---

By the time David announced that fifty minutes remained, Mathew had completed his sketch. It took a little guesswork to figure out that the purple type stone they had was actually the poison type, but once it did, everything clicked into place. What he had drawn was a tiny pistol, fit for pokémon their size. Much like how David’s bugle horn shot out magical leaves when blown into, the gun would fire clouds of poison only when the trigger was pulled. All it’d take was a couple minutes of welding and they’d be set.

“So? What do you think?” Mathew asked as he presented the weapon to Joey, sitting next to him.

Joey was…unusually despondent. He said nothing as he stared at the drawing with a frown on his maw.

“…Joey?”

“Oh, um, right,” Joey stammered, still seeming discontent. “It’s…I dunno. I don’t like it.”

Mathew’s confidence wavered. That moodiness was back again. “Okay, but is there anything actually wrong with it?”

“It ain’t the weapon! It’s…” He averted his gaze, seeming almost embarrassed to say it. “I don’t like the thought of seeing you with a gun. Is there really nothing better?”

Of all things to be bothered by… “Joey, please,” Mathew said, exasperated. “We don’t have the time to come up with another one! It’s not like it fires real bullets.”

“That ain’t the point!” Joey grumbled. “David showed us we could make any weapon we wanted, and I thought that was bad enough. So why is the first thing you jump to…?”

Mathew peered over the side of the board. Several of the pokémon were looking up at them, eager to see the product of their creative minds. Could they hear them? Panicked, he leaned up close to the totodile, craning his muzzle up towards where his ears should be. “You don’t have to work on it,” he shrilly whispered, “but we are not doing this right now.”

Joey just huffed, springing to his feet. “No, it’s fine,” he mumbled, jumping into the box once more. “I’ll be your tool guy. What are you gonna need?”

Mathew sighed before trying to dismiss the whole thing. They wouldn’t be able to succeed if things got heated. The last thing either of them needed was to blow up on each other in front of a crowd, or in front of…

He squinted. All the way on the other end of the pool, that mech-suited magikarp was still staring at him.

---

Fifteen minutes passed by like a leaf drifting through Fascamile’s fierce storm. Now that every team had what they needed, they were all fiercely focused on crafting their weapons. Mathew had his attention split three ways — he needed to study both his own craft and that of the other teams.

Mathew realized the moment he grabbed the blowtorch that he’d chosen the most ambitious project of the three. Randy and Megan were already done, having settled on a simple mix of tool and type stone. Meanwhile, Beverly and Kell had settled on using woodwork to assemble their weapon. The bidoof’s buck teeth made wood its canvas like a potter’s clay. Woodchips spilled into the air as she shaped it, falling into the pool they’d escape from minutes before.

Lucky. Why couldn’t he have known any fire moves?

Mathew turned the blowtorch off and leaned back, overwhelmed by its heat. The fire was far stronger than any blowtorch he could buy on Earth, no doubt thanks to a type stone, but his unfamiliarity with the tool combined with the humidity of the Waregle made it an unwieldy process in exchange for the speed. He’d gotten it done, but it wasn’t pretty. Metal bubbled at the seams between pieces, and it was a little bent out-of-shape. David seemed plenty satisfied though — the decidueye had been singing his praises to the crowd the whole time he made it.

With a sigh, he dropped the gun into one of the boxes. The two of them had emptied it out and filled it with a mix of pool water and Joey’s Water Gun, in hopes the extra potency would beat the elemental heat. Unfortunately, that meant only Joey could reach in without feeling pain. “Alright, that’s about it,” he told him. “Let it cool a minute and we’re done here.”

“Got it.” Joey’s tone was a little blunt. He was still grumpy, but not unhelpful, and Mathew was thankful for that.

He got to his feet, taking a stretch and checking the others’ progress. Beverly and Kell were right on their heels, seeming about done themselves. Wood, rope, and wire wrapped around Beverly and a spear holstered at her side with a makeshift sheath. Three blocks of wood extended from the side, serving some purpose Mathew couldn’t grasp. The sharp end dripped with water no matter how much the bidoof shook.

Meanwhile, Randy and Megan…uh…huh. While Mathew wasn’t looking, the two of them had disappeared from their crafting space. Where had they disappeared to?

“And that’s thirty minutes! Recruits, you can now directly attack—”

Oh shit.

Before the words had even finished coming out of David’s mouth, a raboot had jumped from a platform hung above, dropping on them feet-first.

Mathew cried out to Joey. They had to take the gun and move! But his words fell on deaf ears. Joey was sitting there, staring at the cooled gun in his hands while the world passed him by. What was he doing?!

Too late. Randy slammed down on the massive board with enough force to pull it down with him. He yelped as the board flung them all upwards. Mathew winced as he fell down rear-first, almost crushing his tail. Joey landed on his chest, the gun clattering as it bounded away from his arm.

Following Randy down from above was his weapon of choice. As he planted himself on the wobbling board, the raboot caught a bright blue basketball. When he dribbled it, the water that was puddled on the board crystalized. The ice spread a little from the point of impact, a few inches short of the water-filled box.

He aimed a pass at the exposed gun.

Mathew lunged to block it. The weapon was too small and too shabby to take abuse like that. He bit on his tongue trying to resist the urge to scream. The moment it collided with his right arm, all of the droplets running along it turned cold, their sharp ends digging at his scales and leaving stinging cuts. Randy caught the rebound, already primed for another pass.

Short on options, Mathew rose and reached for the best counter he had. With his left hand, he clutched the side of the box, swung it over his side, and dumped the mixed water on the fire-type. Randy winced, blocking his face with his free paw, but it wasn’t enough to stop him. The icy ball struck his left arm — then his left leg, then his right. Suddenly he was trapped in place, arms so scratched up that he worried calling his club would cause him even more pain.

Mathew peered behind himself. Joey was now watching them with wide eyes, hugging the gun to his chest. “Run!” he commanded, using his muzzle to gesture to a large pole holding up the board at the edge of the pool.

Joey looked to it and understood quickly. “I’ll move snappier than a rattlesnake snacking on a m…!” His comparison was drowned out by the sound of him sliding down the pole like a firefighter.

Phew. That should buy him some time to thaw out, or muster the strength to grab his club so he can start bashing at the ice like an antarctic warrior. He was exhausted, but he was still kicking. So long as he fought smarter instead of harder…

…Why wasn’t Randy chasing after Joey? He was just standing there, giving Mathew a cocky but genuine grin. Busting the gun should be his goal, shouldn’t it?

“Hey, you like you magic tricks, right?” Randy asked as he walked around the squirming Mathew, arm wrapped around his ball. “Lemme show you a cool trick of my own!”

Smack!

A fire-charged kick slammed into the cubone with supernatural strength. A mixture of pain and amazement panged through his pounding head as he was launched upward. Ice flew off of him as he went higher, and higher, and—

He stopped. Just short of crashing into the ceiling, two large hands had reached out and grabbed him.

That damn magikarp. Here she was, mech and all, standing at the top of an intricate box-maze of nets and stairs ripped straight out of a fast-food joint’s play-place. A waterslide rushed behind her, boring into the wall.

Mathew gave a weak laugh. “N-Nice catch…”

“Randy and I practice this kind of thing.” The mech stepped away from the edge, harshly dropping Mathew against a guard-rail next to the slide.

He winced. “If it’s the gun you’re looking for, you got the wrong guy… Joey has it.”

“You think we’re after your weapon?” The fish shimmied around in her mech, her scoff forming as bubbles rising from her mouth. “Why waste time breaking your weapon when I can negotiate your surrender?”

The cubone thought to peer to his side. David was too focused on Randy’s chase after Joey to come up here. Nobody would be able to hear them from up here. “I really have no idea why you’ve been eyeing me all day, but no way in hell am I giving this up.”

Megan ignored him. “I don’t know you because of your persona or whatever you did on Earth. That’s where Randy recognizes you from, but I was just playing along.” She squinted, giving the most judgmental look a magikarp can muster. “Your friend’s been bothered by our familiarity with you, and while you were building that weapon, you didn’t answer his question… He doesn’t know about the rumors, does he?”

The rumors?

The rumors. Oh god.

With a new burst of motivation, Mathew grabbed the rail and hoisted himself up. “You really don’t know what you’re talking about,” he snapped. He was genuine — he had found articles and blogs trying to piece together what he’d been doing since vanishing from the web. Those writers couldn’t fathom the full reality.

“With a reaction like that, at least I know there’s some truth to it.”

Damn it. Was his frustration that obvious?

Megan intensified, pointing a finger towards the slide. “Take this slide back down, break your weapon, and throw the rest of the game. Otherwise…I’ll tell him everything I know.”

He could feel his own eye twitch. The need to tell Joey the whole truth brought him enough anguish. The thought of a random stranger repeating the words of tabloids and rumor mills she couldn’t even remember reading to Joey brought him disgust.

How dare she. How dare she.

He lurched forward, catching Megan by surprise, as he drove a claw against the glass protecting her face. “You do that, and I’ll drag you to the driest desert I can find and make you sunbathe.”

“You don’t scare me,” Megan said. “You could just tell Joey the truth yourself and take away my leverage. But the fact that you won’t says a lot about what you really think.” Her gaze could bore holes through him. “You’re pitiful. And you’d rather stay pitiful for the rest of your life.”

For the rest of his life?

No. As if he hadn’t tried to claw his way out before.

He’d tried.

He’d been trying.

“I am trying!” he cried. “Mark, I am trying with everything I have to make things better for the both of us!”

“Then why do you keep yelling?”

This was the second time today he’d been brought to that moment. Joey did it as well, when they were arguing.

The day he lost him, too.

Mathew didn’t even remember calling his club to him. It simply rose into his hand from wherever it was down below, in time for him to swing. He bashed against the glass guarding the magikarp again and again, forcing her back as he approached.

She had no right to bring him back to that moment.

Megan gave a bubbling grunt as she tried fruitlessly to block the club. “That’s not going to work!” she called. Despite this, she took a step back with each blow. “This mech was designed to withstand pokémon moves. You can’t—!”

She was cut off by Mathew hugging her mech, pushing it like a football player. His feet nearly slipped on the wet floor, but he kept his grip. He would not stop.

He kept going until she toppled back, and the two fell over the unguarded edge.

The audience’s cheers turned to surprised gasps as they tumbled. Mathew clung to the mech, staying on top as they hurdled through the center of a hoop.

CRACK.

The force of landing onto the low-hanging platform combined with Mathew using it to break his fall was enough. With one more swing, the glass caved and shattered.

“Wait! Stop! Stop!” Megan tried to retreat into it, bite him, and slap him off, but there was no stopping him. He pulled her out of the mech with both hands, holding her up as if he pulled a fish from an Earthen river.

Megan’s eyes were wide, pupils dotted. She was gasping for air.

Now he scared her.

Mathew threw Megan away, hurtling her into the pool below. Without a mech, that would be where she stayed.

“Megan!” the raboot cried. Without a second thought, he abandoned his chase and dived in after her. The trash took itself out.

Joey climbed towards him, asking him something. He couldn’t hear it over the ring of his ears.

He puffed air as if he were a dragon with smoke billowing out of its nostrils. “Who’s next?” he graveled, putting a foot atop the empty machine. He looked left, right…there she was.

Beverly marched up to them, geared up in her weapon, looking confident. “Boy, that fish girl must’ve really ticked ya off, hun.”

Mathew jumped from his platform to hers, reaching with his club. She tilted her body, blocking his club with her watery blade and then driving it forward. The cut it left in his arm stung as strongly as the ice, but he numbed himself to it quickly. He could still fight.

He swung again, and again. Every time he was answered with another slash or a bite from the bidoof’s buck-teeth.

“Mathew?! Mathew!” Joey’s voice cut through the muffle of the reinvigorated crowd. He begged Mathew to stop.

He couldn’t. He had a life to win for them.

Even the totodile’s intervention couldn’t stop either of them. When he leapt in, Beverly turned and swung at him. Suddenly, the blade sparked, and Joey was blasted backwards by an electric surge.

“Nice catch, Kell!” Beverly’s weapon shifted, wires floating around into new positions, and the weapon gained its watery aura again. Some kind of imbued type controller, powered by psychokinesis… “Ya might be a smart cookie, Mathew, but you know what we have?” She went straight for the chest. “Each other’s trust!”

He gasped. His legs buckled at the jab, and he was pushed backwards…right off the edge.

The world slowed. Thoughts rushed through his mind with blinding speed.

He’d failed. Even if Joey protected the gun from the other three, he’d still have failed. He lost sight of pleasing SEAS and caved to his unbridled emotion. The results resembled nothing of a man of science. Those strong first impressions would vanish beneath the shadow of his rage.

The people crowding the sides of the pool were still roaring with excitement. They didn’t know the difference. They sat through half an hour of anticipation to see three minutes of fighting. It must’ve made for a good show.

But there was something else. Two figures stood still right at the pool’s edge, watching him as he fell. Mathew was upside-down, and worse, too exhausted to really open his eyes — he couldn’t make out who they were, or what species they belonged to. But he did remember their perturbed eyes.

They must’ve known he lost, too.

Splash.