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Henrietta was towel drying her hair when Avan began to talk. She looked over toward him. What was he saying? What was everyone saying? She hadn't been paying attention. A long winded speech about his innocence? But, had anyone accused him?

Avan didn't look like the type of guy to attack people at random, but his Pokemon? At least Kali was a vicious brat.

Melty, meanwhile, eyed Avan. [He seems to understand your drawings. Or perhaps he realized the jig is up.] Melty looked over toward D-Vee.

The Skyarrow Bridge that connected the Pinwheel Forest and Castelia City was truly one of Unova’s marvels. As someone who appreciated the fine workings behind architecture, N was taking the sights in as he walked along it’s length. In a manner akin to N, of course. He was looking down below through the grid of iron bars at the lower level of the bridge where all the vehicles were permitted, counting each of the squares made out of the crisscrossing bars.

“C’mon, let’s race again. One more time, Hexum? This bridge is soooo long.”

N looked up an saw a man with two pokemon standing next to a black convertible with jovial rap music blasting from the speakers a short ways ahead. If vehicles weren’t allowed on this level, what was his doing here? Nevertheless, N continued to walk.

“No, we’ve raced so many times already,” a blindfolded Lucario protested in perfect English. “The outcome is always the same.”

N could now make out more features of the man. He was dressed in casual business attire, with spiky black hair that jutted out at all angles and a long ponytail in the back. “Wow, you are so boring,” the man answered in disappointment. He turned to a grumpy looking Teddiursa next to him. “Kiedis, wanna-“
[No.]
“I didn’t even ask-“
[No.]
“Why are you such a b***h?”
[Why won’t you just sit still and do your job?]

The man, growing frustrated, leaned down to be closer to the bear’s level. “Because this job sucks. No one’s been on this bridge for two hours, it’s boring.”
Kiedis folded his arms, staring right back defiantly at his trainer. [No one said this would be the time of your life.]
“But we’re right outside of Castelia! Hip hop capital of the wooooorld!” the man groaned. “It should be!”

Suddenly, the Lucario known as Hexum stood up straight. The aura sensing flaps on the back of his head rose up. “Someone is here.”
The man, without looking back to see N closing in, nodded. “I know, he’s close. Kiedis, get the siren.”
The Teddiursa grinned evily. [Now we’re talking.]

Before N could make it past the eccentric trio, the Teddiursa ran in front of him, holding a police cruiser light and active siren. The loud noise went off all around him as the bear circled him many times while holding the flashing lights above his head, confusing the green haired trainer. “Um-“

“Cease and persist, citizen!” the man called out, jumping in front of N. Now he was wearing a plaid deerstalker hat and was holding up a magnifying glass up to his eye. In his other hand was a corncob pipe. “You shall not pass! At least, not yet!”

N was understandably at a loss for words. “Don’t you mean cease and-“

“Who do you think you are, correcting my sentences?” The man began to circle around N in the opposite direction of Kiedis, looking him over through the magnifying glass. The green haired trainer now noticed that this man had an odd case of heterochromia: one purple eye, one grey eye. “Now we’ve got some questions for ya, bub. Time to spill the beans.”

“I’m so sorry about this,” the Lucario told N, standing calmly at the side of it all. “Jump is an Interpol Agent, and this is a roadblock set up by Interpol. We’re going to have to ask you a few questions.”

Interpol? This can’t be good.

“Yeah, like what’s this?” the man called Jump questioned, holding up N’s Menger Sponge puzzle. The green haired trainer only now saw that it wasn’t on his belt anymore. How did the man get that without him noticing? “Hmm, it looks like it could be a bomb...”

“That’s a math puzzle,” N corrected, keeping his cool despite being a little anxious. For some reason, he didn’t think this cop would find out who he was. The procedure was a little…outlandish.

Jump looked up from trying to pry open the puzzle with his teeth. “Math? A-HA! So you're some sort of math based terrorist, eh? The culprit confesses at last! Kiedis, get me my flashlight so I can shine it in his face for dramatic purposes!”

The Teddiursa went to the car. “How does math make him a culprit?” Hexum asked.

Jump rolled his eyes and pulled Hexum aside to talk to him privately. N did his best to overhear.

“…you’re really steppin’ on my toes, dude.”
“I just don’t see where the evidence is.”
“Hexum, I’m using reverse psychology. If I tell him he’s the culprit, he’ll own up to it and tell us something that we need to know.”
“…I don’t think that’s how reverse psychology works-”
“Damnit Hexum, who’s the cop here? Me or you?”
“Okay, what if he doesn’t actually know anything? Then you won’t get any info out of him.”
“['Hey guys, I bet I can hit that rock from here-ohgoddamnit, I thought I was holding a bottle'] the Teddiursa quoted, drawling like a drunk in imitation.
Jump facepalmed. “Then why did you even bother looking?”
[I had hope that you doing that was just a dream, because no one could possibly be that stupid.]

Jump squatted down to be nearly eye level with the unflinching Kiedis as the two stared each other down. "...I will tie you down and force you to watch me eat honey out of a jar in front of you."
Kiedis gasped, then angrily pointed at Jump. [You wouldn't!]
"Try me!"

N peered over at the group, catching onto the immature argument. While he had expected the officer to let him pass and get distracted by his own ineptitude, he hadn’t expected the conversation to turn out the way it did. For one thing, the Interpol Agent was actually responding to what the pokemon had to say.

“Um, excuse me…can you understand what that pokemon is saying?”

The three stopped talking amongst themselves and looked back at N like they forgot he was there. “Uh, yeah. What’s it to you?”

His answer was so casual, and yet it meant so much to N. In a rare occasion, the green haired trainer’s face lit up with excitement as he took a step forward. “Because I can understand them too!”

Jump looked back to Hexum and Kiedis with wide eyes, and then to N. The Interpol Agent then grinned, chuckling to himself. “Well now things just got interesting. You hungry? Cause I was about to have some lunch.”

~~~~

Empty sandwich wrappers collected in the backseat of the car, and a new song was paying now. Leaning against the convertible, Jump took another sip of his soda.

“Anyway, with all of this suspicious Team Plasma activity in Nacrene and Striaton, my boss wanted me to see if I could choke them off here. So I’ve been questioning people for a day now.” He sighed bitterly. “It totally sucks, no one knows a thing. And if they do, they’re not letting me know.”

N nodded from his position standing next to Jump. “Do you have any other ideas?”

“If I leave my post here then I might accidentally let Plasma loose in the city. But I’m startin’ to think that leaving and looking for them might be a better call.”

Interpol is actively after Plasma? I need to keep him here a little longer.

Jump tossed his cup into the trashbin on the side of the bridge. “So you can understand pokemon too, huh? That’s rare stuff. Do you just have the gift of the gab or something?”

N shrugged. “I’ve just been around pokemon for so long that it came to me naturally, I guess. What about you?”
“If I said formerly psychic ninja stuff in a nutshell, you wouldn’t believe me. So I’m gonna go ahead and say I saw a how-to online,” Jump said with a casual handwave.

What an odd man. “If you can hear their voices, then how do you feel about pokemon training? Do you think that it’s humane?”

Jump rose an eyebrow. “Humane?” He looked over to Hexum. “Oy Hexum, what does humane mean?”

Hexum, who was watching for more travelers with Kiedis, looking back and shrugged. “It’s like being good, and sympathetic and understanding. Seriously? You don’t know-“

“Huh. Then my answer is it depends on the pokemon and the trainer,” Jump told N, ignoring Hexum’s berating comments. “Bad people are anti-humane, right? So then they shouldn’t have pokemon. It’s all about the good guys doing the training.”

The green haired trainer took in Jump’s simple worldview, but shook his head. “The capturing of pokemon, though. It’s almost like slavery. Surely you must hear their voices, surely you know what I’m talking about.”

Now it was Jump’s turn to shake his head. “Dude, maybe you just know a lot of mopey pokemon. Usually when I hear pokemon talking, they don’t seem to mind pokeballs. Well, Kiedis likes to be out of his just in case there’s honey around, but still. Besides, if they didn’t like it, couldn’t a lot of them just shoot lasers and stuff to escape?”

“That isn’t how freedom works!” N clenched his fists. Now the Interpol agent just sounded like a naïve child. “No one should have to fight to be free. Everyone should have an equal chance, that’s how it’s supposed to be balanced.”

Jump took a second to let N cool down. Then he kept going. “But you agree with me that pokemon have the power to fight back most of the time, right?”
“I suppose.”
“Okay, let’s say you wanted to go catch a pokemon. If that pokemon decides to battle you, it already decided not to run away. So it’s making a choice to risk being captured.” He pointed at N. “That’s freedom. Getting to decide your fate is freedom, dude. See, I think that when a pokemon fights back, it makes the choice to see whether or not the trainer is worthy of having that pokemon as a partner. And if the capture goes off smoothly, then that trainer passed the test. That pokemon made it’s choice to become that trainer’s friend.”

N looked away, off of the bridge out at the ocean. “…and what of the pokemon that are captured by bad trainers?”

There was a short pause, filled with the sound of the ocean breeze as Jump thought of what to say. “That’s just the way it goes. There are good and bad guys in the world. But just because there are bad guys doesn’t mean that pokemon training is bad. What kind of world you’re gonna live in depends on what kinda guy you wanna be.” He leaned against the guardrail on the side of the bridge. “You said you hear pokemon being sad. Don’t you ever hear any pokemon that are happy?”

“…I do, sometimes…”

Jump grinned. “You gotta hang out with a better crowd, dude. Sounds like you just aren’t having any fun.” He jabbed back at Castelia City behind his shoulder. “In this place, people from all over the world come together. If you go there, I bet you’ll find something you’re looking for. And if don’t, then it’s up to you to make it happen yourself.”

N turned to look at Jump, meeting his mismatched eyes. “Are you saying that I can pass now?”

“I guess so. You can definitely pass, man.” Jump pointed to Castelia, smirking at the younger trainer. “You’ve got a gift. I suggest you treat it less like a curse.”

Slowly, N began to smile. He couldn’t help himself. The odds were so low, but somehow N had stumbled upon someone else who could understand pokemon the way he could. It was only luckier after that when he found out that this person was a very sympathetic person. He was quirky, and not the brightest, but somehow he was making sense to the ever-misinterpreted N.

He also happened to be an agent for Interpol, a worldwide organization dedicated to upholding the law and justice while having the power to back it up.

He also happened to be someone who looked like they could be easily manipulated.

“I’m glad to have met you here,” N told Jump sincerely as he walked away, waving at the officer. Jump gave him a thumbs up, and then turned back to the roadblock as N continued on to Castelia City. The Interpol Agent put his sunglasses on and watched the bridge.

And watched. And watched. And watched.

He couldn’t take it anymore. Using his xtransceiver, he made a call.

RINGRINGRING!
“…do you know what time it is over here?” answered a tired sounding man.
“This is soooooo boring!” Jump whined, lying down on the hood of his convertible.
“4 AM. It’s before sunrise here, you know.”
“Why can’t local cops just do this, Tackey?”
“Because we don’t know the strength level of Team Plasma, and I don’t care to take chances. That’s why we sent you.”
Jump frowned. “I’m not finding anything, though. Can I just take a break? For an hour, or a day or five?”
“Yeah, sure. Go nuts.”
“Wow, really?”
“No,” Tackey told him in a monotonous deadpan. “Why do you think you can get away with these things, Jump? It’s like you’re twelve years old.”
“C’mon man, I thought we were buds!”
“No, I’m your boss. There’s a difference.”
“Ugh, you’re such-“
“Were you about to say I’m ‘such a b***h’? You’re a b***h,” grumbled the Interpol Commander in sleepy annoyance. “If it’s really that bad, file a report to Castelia’s forces to send their precinct your way. Then you might get out of roadblock duty.”
A precinct under his control? “You serious?”
“Yes. Never call me at this time again. Ever. Goodbye.”
“Alright Tackey, I won’t disappoint-“
CLICK!

The other end hung up. “Guys, I think I can get us out of here! I need to make some calls!”

And so Jump would begin his plan to get out of being on roadblock patrol. Until then, anyone who traveled on Skyarrow Bridge had to be subject to the Interpol Officer’s screening.

D-Vee sat back, looking deflated. After all that hard work.

"H-hey," Eunmi started laughing. The moment Sal said to abandon the drawings, Eunmi took it in her own hands to edit them. With a stick, suddenly, Darumi had a mustache and there were a ton of trees around him on fire.

[What the ******** are you doing?!] D-Vee said, wavering his hands in the air to get her to stop. She didn't have to go and ruin the drawings because they were obsolete. She obviously didn't care whether or not Avan was guilty. She'd lost interest by now, since ultimately, the important thing was Henrietta was safe and Darumi was returned.

"We should go train," she said, standing up. "Let them figure out what's going on. In the meantime, you should practice Mach Punch for a while so we can get you up to par with Sal's pokemon.

"I suggest we punch a tree or a rock or something..."

[I... fine.] D-Vee grumbled, giving his ruined drawings a sat stare.

Luka looked from Avan to the now ruined drawings to Salieri and back to Avan. That was the missing link. He was wondering what the arrow to Avan had meant and now he understood. The guy had a Munna. Still, he completely agreed with Salieri in her march over to Darumi. The Darumaka had clearly been unsure of what the Litwick had been spouting and that did suggest that the Litwick was clearly lying.

Still, although he knew that Henrietta was petrified of Avan, or at least some of his Pokémon, he had no Pokémon that could have caused that head trauma nor would he have been stupid enough to stick around for however long it was after knocking her out.

He listened to Salieri's question and smiled. Straight to the point. Excellent.

Petilil sat out at the breakfast table, trying to avoid eye contact with Wayne's dad, who seemed to be doing the same to anything that wasn't the ceiling, a bored look affixed to his face. Wayne's mom, Elizabeth, munched on toast and looked to be the only one of the three who was wide awake.

"Eat more leaves, Wayne," she said after swallowing. Petilil looked down at her trainer - or rather his head - and cast a worried glance. Wayne had his forearms folded on the breakfast table, his forehead balanced on top and his face hidden in the resulting shadow. He stared at the ground, murmuring but not making much sense.

The bulb pokémon braced herself and Elizabeth plucked a pair of leaves from the top of her head; the snapped-off stalks quickly grew back into large, lush leaves. It stung a little but wasn't too bad.

"Leaves. Water," the woman instructed with an air of experience, holding up a glass of water in one hand and the Petilil leaves pinched between the fingers of the other.

Wayne finally shifted, looking up with a face filled with blood. His eyes looked sunken in; dark and squinty; he winced when he accidentally caught sight of the overhead light in their hotel restaurant and took hold of the leaves, stuffing them into his mouth before washing them down with water.

He looked like he'd just sucked a particularly bitter lemon and dropped his head back onto his arms into the less harsh shadows. Elizabeth rolled her eyes.

"Y'know you can learn from this," she said, "That bin was full; how much did you have to drink?"
"Shut up..." Wayne groaned. He had no idea. All he knew was that his brain felt like it was trying to worm its way out of a crack in his skull; met with failure, it'd occasionally resort to protesting. Violently.

"Don't talk to her that way," Zack said finally, getting out of his seat and blocking out enough light for Wayne to risk staring up at him. Then, hands seated firmly in his pockets, he walked out of the restaurant and out into the city.
Elizabeth watched Zack leave then turned back to Wayne, putting on a smile, "Come on, the fresh air'll help."

---

"Why's it so bright...?" Wayne complained, walking slowly and hunched.
"It's overcast," said Elizabeth bluntly. Wayne only flinched and clamped a hand over his temple.
"Not so loud! Ugh... My head hurts so bad..." he said pitifully. Petilil scurried behind him, staring up at his back.

[That al-kee-hol didn't seem so bad at first...] she whispered to herself, remembering the previous night. How could something that made people so happy make them end up like this? It didn't make any sense...

"How are you going to win your gym match in this state?" Elizabeth asked with a frown, "Honestly Wayne, you never think things through."
"Look who's talkin'," Wayne said back, his voice somewhere between a grumble and a growl, "like you really knew what you were letting yourself in for when you took me in."

Elizabeth stopped walking, a startled look on her face. Wayne stopped too, still stooped over and wincing. The woman held a slightly hurt frown and Wayne shot back a more irritated one of his own.

"Wayne, that's..." Elizabeth trailed off. Maybe he had a point. Zack and she, they didn't really get to know Wayne until long after deciding to take care of him. Maybe, at the time, it was the adoption equivalent of an impulse buy. "Say you're sorry. Say it right now, Wayne!"
"Shut UP!" Wayne yelled, teeth grinding as he fought through the splitting pain behind his eyes, his brain rattling around, "Stop acting like you're my real mom!"

Elizabeth had nothing to say to that. Literally, she was speechless, just her mouth hanging open slightly as Wayne cooled down. He seemed to realize it, she knew and he knew, almost as if sharing a telepathic link, that he'd said something he didn't mean. Something hard to take back. Something real.

"I'm outta here," he said, not looking at her and swiftly walking away. Elizabeth followed him but only with her eyes, her feet rooted to the spot; if she moved then time would flow, and getting back to normal seemed impossible.

Petilil cautiously chased after her master, giving Elizabeth one fleeting look before putting on a burst of speed.

"Wayne..." Elizabeth said as he left her sight, absorbed into the apathetic crowd of strangers, and time began to flow. Tears brimmed and Elizabeth blinked herself rid of them, looking around suddenly. "Zack? Zack!"

But he was gone too. She was left alone in the middle of a city she hardly knew, wiping her eyes just to see, and a great feeling of emptiness displacing what was once content.

D-Vee looked nervously at Wukong, and looked up at Eunmi.

[I don't have to slam into a tree, do I?] he whimpered.

"Hey, if we're all against Team Plasma, maybe we oughta stick together," Eunmi said, barely paying attention.

"Obviously Henrietta is a trouble magnet, so she either needs help... or she can help us find out more about Plasma," Eunmi said, turning with a smirk.

"We can call ourselves Team V - Victory~" she said, holding up two fingers.

[Stop that,] D-Vee said, face palming.

* * * * *

Artemis left the warehouse quite unimpressed. While the small exhibition did have some interesting pieces - as well as a 'famed' Burgh piece - Artemis didn't really enjoy the sort of abstract art that was present in the gallery.

"I suppose I should just go home," she mumbled, shoulders slumped a bit. The gallery had been most uninspiring - how was she going to finish - and fix - that painting now?

She looked up at the sky, wondering why such strange art existed. She heard Burgh had installed gelatin walls in his Gym - something about performance art. Ridiculous. She didn't appear to look where she was going and suddenly bumped into someone. Quite firm on her feet, she didn't fall, but simply jerked to the side a bit. She looked up to apologize, but her mouth hung open slightly.

"H-hey," Artemis said, recognizing Elizabeth immediately. "Sorry? I called. Earlier. Wait."

She peered at Elizabeth, noting the facial expression she wore.

"Are you okay?"