In Print

Chapter Three

In Print

Roark read the headline twice.

Then he looked at the photograph.

Then back at the headline.

Then at the photograph again.

“Okay,” he said aloud. “That’s pretty good.”

The Oreburgh Gym was not open yet, which meant Roark had the rare luxury of sitting in his office with his boots on the desk and nobody asking him to evaluate a battle strategy, inspect a safety report, approve a maintenance request, or explain why bringing an Onix into the lobby was not an acceptable substitute for waiting outside.

His breakfast sat beside him, mostly untouched. Coffee, toast, and something wrapped in foil that he had bought on the way in and forgotten about until now.

The article had arrived in a group message from one of the mine supervisors.

No explanation.

Just a link and:

This seems like your kind of idiot.

Roark had clicked mostly because he wanted to know what that meant.

Now he did.

The Jubilife Daily article opened with a photograph of Sinnoh’s newly appointed regional Professor standing beside a laboratory window while a Chatot bit his ear.

Professor Gray Linden looked furious.

The Chatot looked like it had achieved enlightenment.

Roark zoomed in.

“Yeah. Definitely your Pokémon.”

He took a drink of coffee and started reading.

The first section was exactly what he expected from a profile about a new regional Professor. Background. Appointment. Rowan. Laboratory. Funding. Some remarks about being younger than most people expected for the position.

Roark skimmed.

Then he hit forty million Pokédollars.

He stopped.

Scrolled back.

Read it again.

“Forty?”

Apparently Linden had requested forty million for a fossil restoration wing.

The League had given him five.

Roark's feet hit the floor.

He forgot about breakfast.

The article quoted Linden calling the current facilities “an insult with microscopes.”

Roark laughed hard enough that he had to put his coffee down.

“Dad would hate this guy.”

That made him grin.

Which probably meant Roark was going to like him.

He kept reading.

The more Linden talked about fossil restoration, the more Roark's amusement faded into genuine interest.

He wasn't just complaining about laboratory equipment.

He was talking about what happened afterward.

That got Roark.

Most people outside the field were fascinated by the moment of revival.

They should be.

It was incredible.

A fossil that had spent millions of years locked in stone became living tissue again. Bones became muscle. Empty sockets became eyes. Something extinct took a breath.

Roark still remembered Cranidos opening his eyes for the first time.

He remembered thinking that this was it. This was the miracle.

Then Cranidos had headbutted a wall.

Then another wall.

Then Roark.

The miracle had required a surprising amount of furniture replacement.

That part rarely made the documentaries.

Linden talked about behavioral adjustment, habitat reconstruction, nutrition, long-term health, and whether a revived species even belonged in the environment it was entering.

Roark leaned toward the screen.

“Okay. Yeah.”

He reached for his coffee and missed by several inches because he wasn't looking.

He corrected.

Linden's argument was simple enough: if you were going to bring something back from extinction, you owed it more than the five minutes required to celebrate afterward.

Roark liked that.

A lot.

He read the entire section again.

Then he searched for the forty-million proposal.

No link.

“Cowards.”

He wanted to see the breakdown.

Forty million sounded ridiculous.

Which meant there was probably something interesting in it.

Roark made a mental note to see if the proposal was public.

Then immediately stopped and frowned.

“No, that's weird.”

He took another sip.

“I'm not looking up a stranger's funding application.”

A pause.

“I might.”

Cranidos's Poké Ball sat on the shelf beside the desk.

Roark glanced toward it.

“What?”

The ball did not respond.

“Don't judge me.”

Still nothing.

“Exactly.”

He kept reading.

The article shifted into Linden's background.

Archaeology.

Fieldwork.

Lost settlements.

Hoenn fossil restoration.

Johto.

Then competitive battling.

Roark stopped so abruptly his thumb slipped against the screen.

“Whoa, what?”

He read the line again.

Silver Conference champion.

Not participant.

Champion.

Then three Elite Four members.

Will.

Bruno.

Agatha.

Lost to Karen.

Roark sat back.

“Okay. Where the hell did that come from?”

He knew the name Gray Linden from academia.

Not personally.

He had seen it before.

A paper on ancient settlement construction, he thought. Maybe something about burial structures.

Never once had Roark connected that name to the teenager who had torn through Johto's League years ago.

He vaguely remembered that tournament.

He would have been younger.

Much younger.

His father had watched more League broadcasts than he did, especially back then.

Roark scrolled down.

Linden's explanation for losing to Karen was painfully simple.

His team was tired.

He rushed.

Karen didn't.

Roark smiled.

“Yep.”

That sounded like somebody who had actually lost enough battles to stop making excuses about them.

He respected that.

Roark knew trainers who could explain a defeat for twenty minutes without ever reaching the words I made a mistake.

Those people were exhausting.

The part about leaving competition behind made even more sense.

Linden liked battling.

He just didn't want to build his entire life around winning tournaments.

Roark understood that perfectly.

People tended to assume Gym Leaders were professional battlers in the same sense League tournament competitors were.

They weren't.

Or at least Roark wasn't.

His job wasn't to win every match.

His job was to test people.

Which was much harder sometimes.

Anybody could flatten an inexperienced trainer with an overleveled Pokémon and feel powerful.

Figuring out how hard to push somebody without breaking them was an actual skill.

Roark wondered what Linden battled like now.

There was a line later about preferring Rock, Steel, and Ground Pokémon.

Roark's eyebrows rose.

“Now you're just pandering.”

He scrolled faster.

Bastiodon.

There.

That fit.

A trainer with a Bastiodon as an old partner was either extremely patient or clinically incapable of ending a battle quickly.

Probably both.

Then came the starter section.

Roark slowed again.

A ten-year-old had shown up expecting a Chimchar.

Linden had sent him home with an Aron.

Roark grinned.

“Oh, that's fantastic.”

The article carefully explained the reasoning.

The boy had clicked with the Aron.

The Aron had clicked with the boy.

Linden had watched them rather than simply handing over one of the traditional three.

Roark liked that too.

Maybe more than he should.

Rock-types got a bad reputation as starter Pokémon.

Too heavy.

Too slow.

Too stubborn.

Too difficult.

All nonsense, depending on the species and trainer.

An Aron was hardly effortless, but neither was a Chimchar if you didn't know what you were doing.

Fire was apparently considered beginner-friendly because it was cute.

Roark had seen enough scorched eyebrows to dispute that.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

He found himself nodding.

Then he hit the part about ten-year-olds.

That wiped the smile away.

Linden thought the standard starting age was insane.

Roark leaned back in his chair.

“...Yeah, okay.”

He read that section slower.

There was something irritating about seeing a cultural assumption written down plainly enough that it stopped feeling normal.

Ten.

Roark had started young.

Nearly everyone he knew had.

He had been fine.

Mostly.

There had been one incident involving a cave outside Eterna that he had never fully explained to his father.

And another involving a wild Skuntank.

And technically one involving hypothermia, but that sounded worse than it had been.

Probably.

Roark rubbed his jaw.

Maybe Linden had a point.

Not that Roark intended to tell Byron.

Absolutely not.

His father would turn it into a six-hour retrospective on every dangerous thing Roark had ever done.

He scrolled.

Then came the Magikarp.

Roark stopped.

Thirty-one.

He checked the number again.

Thirty-one Magikarp.

Six Gyarados.

Two unaccounted-for arrivals.

One hostile Magikarp.

Roark stared.

He read the quote about the pond “generating” them.

Then the explanation that the Professor was probably joking.

Roark read that sentence too.

“Probably?”

He started laughing again.

By the time he finished the article, his breakfast was cold.

He didn't care.

The final photograph was the same one from the top.

Chatot biting Linden's ear.

Roark looked at it for a few seconds.

Then said, “Yeah. All right.”

He opened another tab.

Typed:

Gray Linden archaeology

A page of results appeared.

Roark clicked the first paper.

Then stopped.

Looked at the maintenance reports on his desk.

Looked back at the paper.

Maintenance reports.

Ancient settlement architecture.

Maintenance reports.

Ancient settlement architecture.

He sighed.

“I hate responsibility.”

He picked up the first report.

Then minimized it after thirty seconds and reopened Linden's paper.

Just for a minute.

Probably.

Byron read the article on paper.

This was apparently a character flaw now.

Roark had explained, repeatedly, that the exact same newspaper existed digitally.

Byron had explained, repeatedly, that he knew.

That usually ended the conversation.

The Saturday edition of the Jubilife Daily sat folded beside his breakfast at the Canalave Gym. Byron had already read the first few pages by the time he reached the profile of the new regional Professor.

He recognized the name.

Gray Linden.

He had received the League notice earlier in the week, along with the usual administrative summary and enough attached documentation to make him lose interest almost immediately.

New Professor.

Young.

Field researcher.

Archaeologist.

Strong trainer.

Fine.

If the man could keep Sinnoh's starter program functioning and avoid creating a regional incident, Byron had no objections.

Then he saw the photograph.

Byron stared at it over the top of his coffee.

The Chatot had the Professor by the ear.

Linden looked furious.

Byron took a drink.

“Off to a strong start.”

He began reading.

The fossil section was unsurprising.

Not because it was boring.

Because it was exactly the kind of thing Roark would become insufferable about.

Forty million Pokédollars for a restoration facility.

Byron snorted.

“Of course.”

He could already hear his son.

But Dad, do you understand what you could do with a fully integrated revival habitat?

Yes.

Byron understood.

He also understood that forty million was forty million.

Those two facts could coexist.

He turned the page.

The battling history made him stop.

Silver Conference.

Byron's eyes narrowed.

He knew that tournament.

Not well enough to remember every participant, but well enough to remember some of the names that came afterward.

Then the Elite Four record.

Will.

Bruno.

Agatha.

Karen.

Byron lowered the newspaper slightly.

“Huh.”

That was more serious than the League summary had made it sound.

There was a world of difference between “former competitive trainer” and “won a regional conference and then beat three members of the Elite Four.”

Byron went back and reread the section.

He liked Linden's answer about Karen.

No drama.

No excuses.

Tired team. Rushed decision-making. Lost.

Good.

Byron had spent too many years listening to challengers explain why a loss wasn't really a loss.

The battlefield was uneven.

Their Pokémon was having an off day.

Their opponent got lucky.

The sun was in their eyes.

The referee breathed incorrectly.

Anything except the possibility that somebody else had simply done better.

Linden seemed free of that particular disease.

Then Byron found the Bastiodon.

He smiled despite himself.

There it was.

Twenty-two years together.

First Pokémon.

Still active, though less than before.

“Old wall, huh?”

That told Byron more than most of the article.

You could learn a great deal about a trainer from the Pokémon they kept after they stopped needing them competitively.

Anyone could love a star battler at its peak.

That was easy.

The older partner told you more.

The one that slowed down.

The one that couldn't fight like it used to.

The one that still had a place beside you anyway.

Byron looked at the paragraph for a while longer than he meant to.

Then he turned the page.

The starter-age section hit him almost immediately.

He frowned.

Ten was not too young.

That was his first thought.

Automatic.

Immediate.

Ten was normal.

Children in Sinnoh grew up around Pokémon. They learned responsibility. The League maintained roads and Centers. Families prepared them.

Linden was overreacting.

Simple.

Byron kept reading.

The Professor had called the mother of a boy who arrived alone to receive his first Pokémon.

Byron shook his head.

“That’s a bit much.”

He read on.

The boy had been prepared.

Equipment.

Contacts.

Travel money.

Training.

Parental permission.

Linden still thought the culture itself was ridiculous, but he hadn't punished the boy for participating in it.

Byron stopped shaking his head.

That was more reasonable.

Annoyingly reasonable.

Then the article included the line about ten-year-olds forgetting jackets.

Byron stared at the sentence.

A memory surfaced uninvited.

Roark at ten.

Small enough that the backpack looked too big on him.

Helmet clipped to the outside even though Byron had told him repeatedly to wear it in caves.

Trying very hard not to look nervous.

Byron had walked him to the station.

Not farther.

Roark had insisted.

He could handle it.

He was a trainer now.

Byron remembered standing on the platform after the train left.

He had stayed there much longer than necessary.

He had told himself this was normal.

His father had done the same with him.

Everyone did.

That was what children did.

Byron folded the edge of the paper between two fingers.

“Ten is a little young.”

He said it quietly.

Then immediately looked around the empty room as if someone might have heard.

No one had.

Good.

Roark never needed to know.

Absolutely never.

Byron returned to the article.

The Aron placement interested him more than he expected.

Not because Aron was unusual to Byron.

Quite the opposite.

He knew the species well.

Good temperament, if stubborn.

Hardy.

Affectionate in their own way.

Terrible around exposed metal.

A child could do far worse.

What he liked was that Linden hadn't treated the Pokémon as inventory.

The Professor watched.

Waited.

Let the decision happen.

That was good.

The League liked systems.

Systems were useful.

But people sometimes forgot why those systems existed.

Then came a quote from Linden about Professors needing to handle dangerous field conditions.

Byron grunted approvingly.

Finally.

Scientists.

He respected them.

Mostly.

But miners had a saying about researchers.

If a man arrived underground with three notebooks and clean boots, keep a rescue team nearby.

Byron had pulled academics out of bad situations before.

A geologist cornered by a territorial Graveler.

A graduate student who decided an unstable wall was “probably fine.”

An entire survey team that ignored a warning about nesting Golbat because their equipment said the tunnel should be empty.

Intelligence was no defense against arrogance.

Sometimes it made things worse.

Linden apparently believed a Professor should be able to protect themselves, their staff, and the Pokémon around them.

With that battle record, he could probably back it up.

Good.

Byron turned another page.

Then he reached the Psychic-type section.

He read it.

Paused.

Read it again.

A Gyarados could crush him.

That was straightforward.

Mind control was not.

Byron slowly lowered the paper.

“Huh.”

He had never thought of it that way.

He did now.

He didn't like that.

The Magikarp section came next.

That restored order.

Thirty-one Magikarp.

Six Gyarados.

Byron stared.

“What are you doing?”

There was no answer.

The newspaper remained silent.

“Why do you have six?”

Apparently because they had evolved and Linden wasn't going to throw them out.

Byron rubbed his forehead.

“That is not how ranch management works.”

Although, technically, it was.

If you had the space.

And the reinforced pond.

And enough food.

And—

Byron stopped himself.

“No.”

He was not defending this.

He finished the article and folded the paper.

Then unfolded it.

Went back to the picture of Bastiodon mentioned in the sidebar.

There wasn't much.

Just a note about Linden's oldest partner.

Twenty-two years.

Byron sat back.

Regional Professor at thirty-two.

Former tournament champion.

Research archaeologist.

Questionable relationship with Magikarp.

Strong opinions about children on the road.

Blunt enough to publicly question one of Sinnoh's oldest traditions within his first week.

Byron wasn't sure whether the League had made an excellent appointment or a terrible one.

Possibly both.

That was usually more interesting anyway.

He finished his coffee.

Then picked up his phone.

Roark's name appeared near the top of his contacts.

Byron stared at it.

He considered calling.

Then imagined the conversation.

Have you read the article about the new Professor?

The fossil guy? Yeah.

He may have a point about starting trainers at ten.

Byron physically recoiled.

Absolutely not.

He put the phone down.

Some truths did not need to be shared.

Especially with sons.

Cynthia had already read Gray Linden before she ever saw his face.

That made the article annoying.

Not bad.

Annoying.

Because the man in the article did not quite match the man she had built in her head.

Cynthia had imagined someone older.

Not elderly.

But older.

Mid-forties, perhaps.

Severe.

Probably quiet.

The sort of researcher who spent six months arguing over one translation and considered that an excellent year.

Instead, the photograph at the top of the Jubilife Daily showed a thirty-two-year-old man with a short beard being bitten by a Chatot.

Cynthia stared at it.

Then smiled.

“Well, I had that wrong.”

She was alone in one of her rooms at the League residence, shoes abandoned near the door, a cup of tea cooling beside her, three open books occupying more of the table than necessary.

She had saved the article earlier that afternoon.

Not because Linden was the new regional Professor.

That was mildly interesting.

Because she knew the name.

Gray Linden had published four formal academic papers.

Cynthia had read three.

One she had disagreed with enough to annotate aggressively.

Another had sent her down a two-week research hole into pre-League ritual architecture.

The third had been excellent.

Annoyingly excellent.

She opened the article.

The journalist began with Linden's first week in office.

Cynthia skimmed the biographical material.

The League appointment itself did not tell her much.

Institutions liked credentials.

Gray had credentials.

Fine.

The forty-million restoration proposal was more entertaining.

Cynthia laughed softly at “an insult with microscopes.”

That sounded much more like the author of the blog.

She knew about the blog too.

Most academics who maintained public blogs treated them like extensions of their professional work.

Careful tone.

Careful wording.

Careful presentation.

Gray's was mostly essays about archaeology, fossils, bad historical interpretations, Pokémon behavior, and whichever accepted theory had irritated him recently.

One post began with:

I am going to say this politely once.

It had not remained polite.

Cynthia liked that one.

She kept reading.

The interview moved into restoration ethics.

Interesting, but familiar territory.

Then into his appointment.

Then his battle history.

That surprised her.

She knew he had been a trainer.

His academic biography mentioned League experience, mostly because extensive field researchers tended to include practical training credentials.

She had not known he had won the Silver Conference.

Or made it through three Elite Four members.

Cynthia sat back slightly.

“Well.”

She looked at the photograph again.

Chatot remained attached to his ear.

“Apparently you're full of surprises.”

The competitive record changed some things.

Not her opinion of his research.

That would be ridiculous.

But it changed how she imagined him in the field.

A researcher who could battle at that level did not need escorts in most environments.

He could take risks other academics couldn't.

That could be useful.

Or extremely dangerous if he knew it.

She suspected the latter.

Then she reached the section she had been expecting.

Uncertainty.

The headline quote.

Experts should know when they didn't know things.

Cynthia smiled faintly.

There you are.

That was the Gray Linden she recognized.

His papers were full of uncertainty.

Not indecision.

There was a difference.

Bad scholars used uncertainty to avoid committing to anything.

Gray used it like a knife.

This claim is supported.

This one isn't.

This interpretation is possible.

That one requires assumptions the evidence does not justify.

And here, unfortunately for everyone who wants an answer, we simply don't know.

Cynthia respected that immensely.

She also found it infuriating when she wanted him to commit to something she could properly argue against.

She reached toward one of the books on the table.

An old collection of translated Celestic oral traditions.

Half the margins were hers.

Another quarter had belonged to the previous owner.

Two generations of people arguing with dead translators.

Wonderful.

Cynthia looked back at the article.

Celia Marr had asked whether Linden liked proving people wrong.

He said no.

That made Cynthia pause.

Not because she doubted him.

Because she believed him.

There was a specific kind of researcher who enjoyed correction too much.

They stopped looking for truth and started looking for victims.

Gray's writing had never felt like that.

Aggressive, occasionally.

Sarcastic, certainly.

But the target was usually the assumption, not the person.

Usually.

His blog was less charitable.

Cynthia remembered one paragraph about a reconstruction of an ancient Hisuian sanctuary.

The proposed eastern wall cannot support its own roof. Unless ancient humans had developed a previously undocumented cultural tradition of being crushed to death during worship, the reconstruction is wrong.

She had laughed.

Then checked the architectural plans.

He was right.

Mostly.

Cynthia scrolled.

The interview reached his mother.

Journalist.

That was new.

Don't assume you know the full story.

Cynthia repeated it quietly.

“Good advice.”

Especially for mythology.

People wanted ancient myths to behave like records.

They weren't.

A myth could preserve an event.

Or metaphor.

Or ritual.

Or propaganda.

Or six different stories fused together until nobody remembered they had once been separate.

Sinnoh's creation traditions were especially dangerous.

Too old.

Too important.

Too many people needed them to mean something specific.

Dialga represented time.

Palkia space.

The lake guardians gave humanity knowledge, emotion, willpower.

Arceus shaped the world.

Giratina was banished.

Simple.

Clean.

Probably wrong in at least twelve different ways.

Cynthia had spent years learning to live with that.

Gray appeared to have done the same.

She kept reading.

Then came the starter section.

She smiled at the Aron.

That sounded like him too, somehow.

Not because she knew him.

Because it followed the same logic as his research.

Don't assume the obvious answer is the correct one.

Look.

Wait.

Then decide.

She wondered if he realized how consistently he applied that principle to everything.

Probably.

Possibly not.

The Magikarp section arrived.

Cynthia blinked.

Read it.

Stopped.

Read it again.

Thirty-one.

Six Gyarados.

One allegedly malicious Magikarp.

Two unexplained additions.

She put her tea down.

“Thirty-one?”

That was the first time she had spoken loudly enough to hear herself in the room.

The article claimed Linden did not know where the newest two had come from.

Cynthia stared at the paragraph.

Then said, very seriously, “You bought them.”

She continued.

Linden insisted he had not.

“You absolutely bought them.”

The reporter had apparently asked the same question.

Good.

Linden's explanation remained spontaneous pond generation.

Cynthia covered her mouth.

She tried not to laugh.

Failed.

It took a minute.

When she recovered, she wiped at one eye and continued reading.

Then she reached Giratina.

Not directly.

The article itself only mentioned mythology in broad terms, but it linked to a sidebar listing some of Linden's public writing.

One title caught her eye.

She knew it.

She had read it before.

BANISHMENT DOES NOT MEAN EVIL: A SHORT COMPLAINT ABOUT GIRATINA

“Short,” Cynthia murmured.

The post was nearly four thousand words.

She opened it anyway.

She remembered the argument.

Gray's position wasn't that Giratina was good.

He wasn't stupid enough to claim that.

His argument was that the historical evidence did not support reducing the oldest traditions to Giratina was evil and therefore expelled.

Translation changed.

Religious framing changed.

Symbols accumulated meaning over centuries.

Words translated as banished might also imply separated, removed, confined, or placed apart, depending on which source was being used.

And the oldest surviving stories did not necessarily agree with later temple traditions.

Cynthia had disagreed with several details.

The larger point was difficult to dispute.

They didn't know.

That phrase again.

Cynthia returned to the profile.

Near the end, Celia asked why Gray had taken the job.

His answer was simple.

They gave him somewhere to do the work properly.

Cynthia stopped there longer than anywhere else.

She understood that answer too well.

People imagined ambition in very specific ways.

Champion.

Professor.

Director.

Head researcher.

Titles.

Prestige.

Status.

Sometimes ambition was just wanting access to the locked room where somebody had stored the tablets you needed.

Sometimes it was wanting enough funding to date a layer correctly instead of approximating.

Sometimes it was wanting the freedom to follow an inconvenient question all the way to the end.

Cynthia looked around her room.

Books everywhere.

Translations.

Maps.

League documents she was supposed to read before Monday.

One half-unwrapped pastry she had forgotten about.

Maybe that was why she remembered Linden's papers.

He seemed to want answers more than recognition.

That was rare.

Not unique.

But rare.

She reached the bottom of the profile.

The final image was larger than the first.

Gray had one hand halfway raised toward Chatot, clearly a second away from grabbing him.

Chatot looked delighted.

Cynthia studied the image.

“You look exhausting.”

She smiled as she said it.

Then she reopened his paper on late pre-League settlement orientation.

Her annotations were still there.

Page one, clean.

Page two, several notes.

Page three contained:

Possible, but assumes northern ridge was visible at time of construction. Geological support?

Page five:

Weak.

Page seven:

No.

Cynthia smiled.

She had opinions.

She reached the section where Gray argued that the third ceremonial structure had likely been aligned toward a now-eroded mountain formation rather than the sunrise.

She disagreed.

Still.

His evidence was better than she remembered.

Annoying.

She read another page.

Then another.

At one point she muttered, “No, you're combining two phases.”

She made a note.

Five minutes later:

“Unless…”

She flipped to another source.

Then another.

The newspaper article sat forgotten beside her.

Twenty minutes passed.

Cynthia found an older geological survey.

She scanned a map.

Stopped.

Her eyes narrowed.

“Oh, you bastard.”

Gray might actually have a point.

Not enough to prove it.

But enough to make her old objection weaker.

Cynthia leaned back and crossed her arms.

She disliked when this happened.

Also loved it.

She looked at the article again.

At the ridiculous photograph.

At the headline.

Sinnoh’s new Professor was very comfortable saying he didn't know.

Fine.

So was she.

Cynthia picked up her stylus and added a new annotation beside the paragraph she had previously marked No.

Possible. Need better geological dating.

She stared at the words.

Then added:

Still think he's wrong.

Better.

She closed the paper.

Not the article.

That she bookmarked.

Gray Linden would be worth watching.

Not because he was the new regional Professor.

Not because he had won a tournament sixteen years ago.

Not even because they happened to study many of the same myths.

Because Cynthia already disagreed with him.

That was much more promising.