By 10 o’clock, another three trainers had shown up at the beach. All of them young adults and looking like exactly the sort of people that the job had been advertised for. A young woman, who like Robert, wore glasses, had three pokéballs on display hanging snugly on the belt around her waist.

  One of those would come in handy, Luvia thought. It looked more comfortable than having the ball pressing and poking within your pocket. Though since it was only Mida’s right now, it wasn’t too annoying.

  Sat around one of the large tables with the other teens, Luvia watched the newcomers fill out their forms, feeling slightly out of place despite having Glacia’s personal backing. The Elite 4 member had kicked back in her chair, still hooded-up incognito, idly chatting with a colleague about how the weather compared in different parts of the region.

  The way she spoke gave Luvia the impression that the woman had not spent long in Hoenn. Her accent, too, had a slight foreign hint to it. It was the way she cut her words to perfect shape – pronounced them as they were meant to be pronounced, no shortcuts.

  Luvia was holding Mida in her lap so she wouldn’t feel so awkward, taking full advantage of the little one’s ability to draw the eye. She still found it hard to believe that she had been accepted for the job. She couldn’t help feel like a fraud when she thought about the amount of money she’d get paid if she actually completed it.

  Would she be able to stick her hand out like she had with that racerboy, Kevin, those days ago? She doubted it.

  Think like Neela, she told herself. Her money-grubbing sister was exactly the spirit animal she needed right now.

  I am Neela.

  “Where is my money…” she whispered to herself.

  When another half hour passed and no more trainers showed up, the survey supervisors (Robert, Glacia, and the other two men Luvia didn’t know the names of) decided it was time to explain the job in detail.

  Luvia kept glancing occasionally at Mida, who was playing by the shore with Glacia’s Spheal.

  Robert called all the trainers over to the table with the maps and hauled a small suitcase-sized box on top of it. Eyes were peeled as he unlatched a pair of clips and lifted the lid open.

  “This is what you’ll be using out there,” he noted, wiggling in the air a device that looked strange. It was a foot long, and looked like a stage microphone but with antennas poking up from it.

  “It’s called an Echofield Scanner, m’kay?”

  He went on to describe the buttons you had to press to get it working, and a quick big-picture explanation of what the ‘ecological survey’ entailed.

  Robert seemed like the kind of person who neither knew nor cared to speak in simple-stupid. Glacia hadn’t been wrong when she told him to learn some tact.

  There was some scientific jargon being thrown around which went over Luvia’s head, but she caught the gist of it:

  Each trainer would be given a scanner which they’d need to operate at a specific spot on the island long enough for the device to capture the required readings.

  Something about “seismic pinging,” and “seabed sweeping,” and “sub-surface mapping” was mentioned. Essentially, the League was updating their maps of the region – primarily what lay beneath the surface. Hoenn’s underground.

  Luvia noticed Glacia’s heavy-lidded gaze sweeping across them, almost as if she were expecting a reaction of some kind.

  “We’ll do this in parts,” Robert went on, directing everyone’s attention to the map splayed on the table. “We’ve split the island into four sectors; north, east, south, west.” He pointed at the demarcated regions of the map for clarity. “And we’ll tackle each sector in bite-size chunks throughout the day until we’re done. It will take us most of the day to map out each sector, and we do have to finish this by the 16th, so we have exactly one day per sector.

  “We’ll start with the north, since we’re already here. Any questions?”

  One of the young adult trainers cleared his throat and the eyes fell on him.

  He was cross-armed, giving the map a sidelong look. “What role do flying-types have here? This is sounding very ground based.”

  Every eye turned to Robert, who acknowledged the question with a tip of the head.

  “There’ll be plenty for the few of you with flying-types to do at the end of each day, trust me.” He pushed up the bridge of his glasses with the kind of smile that told Luvia he was not exaggerating.

  He then lifted a small, single-ear wireless headset and wagged it once in the air. “We’ll be synchronizing with each other over radio using these, so please don’t take them off once you split from any one of us,” he said, gesturing at the other three survey supervisors.

  “Something else you ought to know…” His glasses flashed as he put the headset down and picked the scanner up again, raising it to eye level. “Is that the waves emitted by this particular device has have been known to unsettle wild pokémon.”

  Luvia’s gut began tightening. Nobody else seemed to bat an eye.

  “So there is a small chance you might get… greeted, whilst we perform the scans.” He gave Luvia a terse glance as he finished the sentence, and Luvia did her best to look as impassive as possible.

  He still thinks I shouldn’t be here.

  She stole a look at Glacia, her support, but the woman was turned away, hands clasped behind her back and taking an idle gander at the ocean.

  When all was said that needed saying, they split the group of trainers into pairs, each under one of the survey supervisors so that there were four teams of three.

  “Divvied up perfectly, didn’t it, Rob?” said Glacia as her colleagues rolled up the maps.

  Robert gave her a shrug, bringing the rest of scanners out of the box. “Wouldn’t have if the other applicants had shown up.”

  “But they didn’t,” Glacia snapped with a self-satisfied smile.

  She gestured at Luvia. “With me.”

  Luvia moved immediately, feeling the pressing stare of eyes from the other teens who were aware of Glacia’s identity.

  Glacia tapped her lips pensively. “And who else? …” Her eyes settled on the boy who had volunteered to battle test Luvia on her behalf. “You?”

  His mouth parted, and after it sunk in, he fist-pumped emphatically. “Yesss!!!”

  The three young adult trainers were left wondering what the big deal was about, but no one volunteered them the scoop. Not while Glacia was there.

  Of the entire team of trainers, barring the supervisors, not a single one had come with one trained in “dowsing.”

  Four had come with surfable pokémon, and three with ridable flying-types. The boy with Luvia and Glacia had come with his Pelipper, while two of the young adults had come with a Pidgeot and an Altaria.

  After some slight preparations, everyone was set to go. Each team, save for Glacia's, walked off in opposite directions. The only pokémon outside their balls were Mida and Spheal, still splashing around the shore.

  This morning, Glacia’s unit would take the coast, so they had no walking to do. Instead, the Elite 4 member took both Luvia and the boy, who introduced himself as Nolan, to the shoreline where the two water-types were playing.

  “Have you ever surfed on a pokémon before?” she asked Luvia with a look over the shoulder.

  “Never!” Luvia replied, quickening her steps and feeling giddy with excitement.

  “Never? How have you never?” Nolan asked, breaking into a little jog to catch up with them.

  “Never really needed to before,” she answered. “People here don’t really catch or train pokémon… Is it weird?”

  Nolan pondered it for a moment. “Really weird!”

  Glacia chuckled, then spoke without turning. “You hardly strike me as that passive, my dear – what did you same your name was?”

  Luvia told her again.

  “Luvia…” Glacia mused.

  “Miss Glacia, what pokémon have you got on you?” Nolan glanced sideways at Luvia with a cheeky smirk, but Glacia’s attention was taken. She cupped her hands and sang along the shore to her Spheal. “Oh Feeeliaaa!”

  The Spheal was still dorkily slapping and splashing around with Mida, but on hearing Glacia’s call, it froze, slapped its little fins deeper into the tide, and disappeared from view. Mida hopped after it and disappeared beneath the water too.

  She sings to hers too! It instantly struck a chord with Luvia. Mida liked it when she’d sing to her. Sometimes, the little one would even join in with a totally out of key and elongated Meehd of her own. It always took Luvia out of the moment and always cracked her up. Mida was many things, but never a singer. Never.

  Almost too fast, the Spheal emerged from the water right before them with a happy “Sweeel!” and Mida popped out right after.

  “Felia, you are so good.” Glacia pointed a pokéball and recalled the Spheal without much preamble, then she nodded at Luvia. “Will you put her in? Only for a while.”

  Luvia frowned for a second but did as she suggested, giving Mida a gentle pat before recalling her. She wanted to ask why but something about Glacia’s tone didn’t seem too inviting.

  Nolan looked on attentively with both hands around the straps of his backpack.

  Glacia took a couple of sidelong looks around the beach before unzipping her rain jacket and pulling down her hoodie. As Luvia expected, locks of blonde hair unfurled out. The woman sighed and shook her hair free in the nimbus breeze.

  Without the hood, Glacia was much comelier. She looked slightly younger though still mature and well in her thirties, with a wide forehead and a paler blonde hue to her hair around the temples and roots. Her most masculine feature was her jaw, strong and angled like an L, though coupled together with everything else, especially her heavy-lidded blue eyes, she looked like a woman who painters would queue up for a life study.

  At her waist and under the fold of her rain jacket, Luvia saw a trainer’s belt equipped with another three balls. She promptly shrank Spheal’s pokéball and added it back to her belt, then pulled the one right next it.

  “Don’t tell me that’s your Walrein!” said Nolan, shaking his hand in disbelief. “Please don’t!”

  A wide smile formed on Glacia’s lips.

  “It is.”

  Nothing could prepare you for your first face-to-face with a fully evolved pokémon of this caliber.

  A giant.

  Sharp ivory tusks the size of a forearm and a mane of silver-white, thick, wiry hair, Glacia’s Walrein towered above them.

  It was like a pickup truck! The back of Luvia’s neck prickled in its presence. She could hear it drawing breath. The air rushed in and out of its nostrils with the sound akin to the widest pipe of a pan flute. But the most uncanny thing about it were its eyes. The intelligence behind them. It looked at her with its amber, yellow eyes and pupils that studied her over, judging her.

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  Glacia walked to its side, a full head and half shorter, and gently patted the thick rubbery skin on its throat.

  This was what a Spheal eventually evolved into.

  “His name is Dormund,” said Glacia with a slow look back at Luvia. “Come closer, my dear, you won’t get anything done from there.”

  Luvia hesitated only for a moment. When she was close enough to touch him, Glacia plucked her hand by the wrist and pressed it against Walrein’s skin. It was cool – more so than Mida’s – and incredibly tough. She spotted faint, long streaks across some parts of it. Faded scars.

  Up this close, she could smell a familiar, old and natural scent coming from him. It made her think of the boulders in a river, slippery and moss laden, that had to bear the perpetual beating of the currents.

  Dormund, she thought. What a pokémon.

  “Can I get on too?” Nolan begged. “Please!”

  Glacia motioned him over. “Sure.”

  Dormund didn’t move much as Luvia carefully stepped onto his back. Her feet pressed down on his skin, where the blubber was even thicker and hard as muscle. There was plenty of room for them both. Luvia kept herself standing, gingerly clasping her fingers around two handfuls of Walrein’s mane, hoping the pokémon wouldn’t mind.

  Standing on his back like this, she could peer over the top of his head and catch the view of the sea.

  Nolan moved onto the space behind her but with nothing to hold, he sat himself down and placed both hands flat on the thick skin.

  If Dormund at all felt any strain from having both of them on his back, he definitely didn’t show it. In fact, Luvia got the impression that the pokémon barely felt them back there.

  “It’s very simple,” Glacia said. “You need only keep your balance as he shifts into the water. Once he’s in, it’ll come easy.”

  “Okay,” Luvia nodded absently, more focused on the placement of her feet and grasping a deeper hold of Dormund’s mane.

  “Nobody’s going to believe this!” Nolan gushed and Luvia smiled, sharing his excitement.

  “Nobody will believe it because nobody will hear about it,” said Glacia, pursing her lips in a slight reprimanding look. “At least not until I’ve taken my leave – Ohoho!”

  Nolan was flustered. He nodded and shook his head at the same time. “Right! I won’t tell anyone!”

  Glacia took some steps back. “Dormund, try not to get them wet.”

  A deep growling sound rumbled within Dormund’s head. He exhaled sharply through his snout and started moving.

  “Ah!” Luvia yanked at his mane to keep her balance. She pulled herself closer in, almost hugging the pokémon’s nape as he dragged his way into the sea.

  “Maybe try sitting down,” Nolan suggested, but Luvia shook her head.

  “No, it’s fine.” It had just taken her by surprise. As the wet sand sunk under Dormund’s crushing weight, the shore seemed to give way and the pokémon slid the rest of the way into the water.

  Luvia let out a quiet grunt as the sea water lapped up high against Dormund’s sides. Nolan had to pull his feet up to keep his shoes from getting soaked. Thinking that maybe she should have worn her crocs instead, Luvia quickly realized how buoyant Dormund was. After the entry, the pokémon had spread wide his fins and fan-shaped tail and floated with the majority of its body above the surface.

  “That’s more like it!” Nolan said, letting his feet back down over Walrein’s sides. Well, his legs, even outstretched, could scarcely be said to wrap around the pokémon’s back.

  Dormund stroked its fins gently, taking the pair of them further away from the shore.

  “Do you know how crazy this is?” Nolan said after a minute. Luvia saw the way his hand was reverentially resting upon the pokémon’s back. “We’re on the back of Glacia’s Walrein.”

  “I know,” she agreed, though to her, Glacia had been no one in particular before today.

  “This guy here has faced champions!”

  Luvia’s eyes swept along Walrein’s blue skin. She looked at the numerous fading lines strewn across its body, almost too faint to see, and she imagined the kind of battles a pokémon like this had seen. So far, the closest she and Mida had come to legit danger had been back with the pair of lombre over a month ago. She hadn’t been as reckless since. The memory was so visceral, and something she had been proud of in the aftermath, but being on Walrein’s back now, she knew that she was still a child in the kiddy pool as far as pokémon encounters went.

  She slowly sat, facing Nolan, and gently rubbed the skin of Dormund’s arching shoulder. The giant moved slow and steady in the water. She could barely feel the tide.

  “Do you think we could get him to use a move?” asked Nolan, also rubbing Dormund’s side in slow circles.

  Luvia’s eyes lit up, but she scoffed. The idea was interesting. Glacia’s Spheal had wowed her with Aqua Ring and that amazingly pretty Aurora Beam, so what would Dormund be capable of?

  But no. Glacia hadn’t said anything about using moves. “I don’t think we should do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “…”

  Luvia had no good answer besides not wanting to offend Glacia. “He’s not ours,” she said simply.

  Nolan reached even further down the side, scooped a handful of water and chucked it back into the sea. “Yeah, obviously, but she’s literally lent him to you. Don’t you think it’s a good idea to see what he can do… you know, before we all split up?”

  The expression on his face had zero humor. She wasn’t sure what his intentions were, but the suggestion seemed to come from a place of pure curiosity.

  “What if a wild pokémon attacks you while you’re scanning?” His eyebrows were perked up.

  Luvia tried not to picture it. “I have Mida – I have my mudkip. She’ll be with us too.”

  Nolan nodded along, making a face to hold down a grin.

  “What?” Luvia hissed. “What’s so funny?”

  “Nothing!” he replied, lifting his hands. “It’s just… I don’t think Mudkip will do much against the wild pokémon out here – no offence.”

  Luvia glared at him. He had no clue. No clue that she and Mida had already been gallivanting through the island’s neighborhoods for a month! – beating all sorts of wild pokémon!

  “H-hey, all I’m saying is there’s no ground out here, for starters,” he explained. “So Mud-Slap is out of the question… Then what other moves has she got? Growl, Water Gun… Tackle? ... Anything else?”

  Oh. He means specifically out here in the water.

  His reasoning doused her small flicker of indignation. He had a point. She looked away, back to the shore where Glacia was pacing with a hand up by her ear. She seemed to have put on her headset and was talking on it.

  “You try it then,” she said quietly.

  Nolan stared at her for a moment, tapped Dormund’s side gently and got to his knees, slowly crawling himself next to Luvia. Luvia edged away, wrapping her arm around the backside of the walrein’s thickly furred head, and eyed the boy with a tinge of uncertainty as he pulled himself up by grabbing a handful of mane.

  Dormund let out a loud exhale through his snout but didn’t growl or grunt or give any indication that the pair of them were being a nuisance.

  Nolan stood up and gazed at the sea ahead of them for a moment, then looked at Luvia. “He knows Ice Beam – should we try that one?”

  “How do you know?” Luvia answered.

  Nolan let out a breath through his nose as he steadied himself. “How don’t you know? It’s crazy you’ve never seen Glacia battle. She’s been on TV for the last two years. She’s one of the Elite 4, remember?”

  “I know that,” Luvia retorted. She knew that. They’d already made that abundantly clear. She wasn’t an idiot or an amnesiac.

  “So… Ice Beam?” Nolan looked quite uncertain himself.

  Ice Beam was a powerful move. The first thing that came to mind was a certain movie she had seen, where the ranger protagonist needed to climb up to a village were wild pokémon had gone on a rampage, and without a pokémon to carry him, he brought out a pilloswine that used the move to freeze over an entire waterfall… which he proceeded to climb barehanded.

  She knew it wasn’t that powerful, but it was up there as one of the strongest pokémon attack moves. Mida learning something like that would be a dream come true.

  She shrugged and gave Nolan the smallest nod. If something happened, it was his fault!

  “Okay…” He leaned in closer to the side of Dormund’s head and gave him a reassuring pat on the neck, as they had seen Glacia do.

  “Dormund, use Ice Beam!”

  Luvia’s heart leapt. Nolan might have only been a little older than her, but she felt the confidence in his tone. He had given the command so naturally.

  Dormund blew out sharply through its snout.

  …

  Luvia giggled. “I think he said no.”

  Nolan leaned in again. “Please? Just one? I’ve seen you on TV a bunch of times – Show us what it’s like in person! I’m sure Glacia won’t mind.”

  …

  Dormund blew out again, but this time, a frosty puff came out with it.

  …

  Luvia laughed. “That’s what it’s like!”

  Nolan laughed too. “You try it then, maybe he only listens to girls.”

  Luvia looked at him with a skeptically raised eyebrow, but when he nodded, insisting, her eyes trailed to the back of Dormund’s massive head, and she leaned in as Nolan had done, not because he told her to, but because she was curious herself.

  “Show us an Ice Beam, Dormund,” she said softly.

  Dormund let a deep rumbling growl sound within its massive neck, causing both teens to glance at each other in alarm. Then the giant water-type snorted another puff of frosty breath, this time causing tiny tinkling sounds as the breath froze the air.

  And that was it.

  …

  Luvia satisfied herself with that. “I’m not asking again,” she said before Nolan even had a chance to open his mouth.

  “No, me neither!”

  Dormund let out a long, deep hum, and Luvia was sure that he was pleased.

  Both teens had gotten the message: You do not ask Dormund to jump hoops for you.

  They rode atop Dormund’s back for ten minutes, heading farther off the coast than Luvia had ever gone before. It was thrilling and terrifying. Trainers were seriously brave for crossing seas like this!

  Nolan didn’t look nearly so worried as she felt. He told her that he frequently rode on his Pelipper on both sea and sky, so the only novel thing about this for him was the fact that it was an elite pokémon known region-wide. This was something he could boast about for the rest of his life.

  So far from the shore, Luvia had to keep a firm hug on Dormund’s maned neck, and she closed her eyes a few times and remembered that bizarre dream she’d had before all of this.

  The ocean lit from within. The pokémon swimmers coexisting together. No land visible – just ocean. Just peace and harmony and family.

  It was comforting, and she wished the real ocean looked like that. Would have been much nicer than the dark, gloomy depths surrounding them now.

  A minute more, and the sound of a faraway whistle reached their ears. Glacia was calling.

  Dormund turned slowly and gave a single strong stroke of his fins.

  “Ay!” Luvia shrieked, latching onto Dormund’s mane.

  Nolan gasped and did the same. “Wow!”

  A small curtain of seawater was left in Dormund’s wake as he surfed toward the shore with breezy speeds.

  “Now we’re talking!” Nolan whooped. “I think he’s using a move!”

  Luvia held on with both hands, taking in the fact that the pokémon wasn’t even beating his tail or flippers to move at such speeds. It was as if the sea had come alive beneath him, pushing him hastily toward the shore. She knew this move.

  “Surf!” she squealed, stray strands of hair whipping at her face.

  “Surf!” Nolan yelled beside her.

  A low growl rumbled within Dormund, and this time, he decided to humor the children. He reared up once, almost lifting its entire upper half off the water, let out a loud, billowing snort, and heaved back downward at the sea.

  A swell rose behind them, and Dormund splayed open his fan-shaped tail to catch the top of it, tilting them forward steeply.

  The teens held on tightly, completely unaware of what was happening. They thought that small thing was Surf?

  With a strong downward push of his tail, Dormund crushed the swell and created a wave that raised and carried them gliding over the sea level. They laughed. It was like riding the wind back to the beach.

  “I trust you got the gist of it?” Glacia said, back on the shore.

  “Yes!” Luvia answered, still feeling giddy from the ride. And she thought the Mida-raft was fast!

  Totally unfair comparison, but it did put things into perspective.

  “Alright, well put on your headsets and let’s start spreading out. We are about to take our first reading.”

  Nolan and Luvia did so, and Glacia notified the others over comms.

  “We’re getting to positions now. Give us two minutes.”

  Robert’s voice came loud and clear across the line. “Good, we’re almost set over here too. Time for a roll call, people.”

  Robert called everyone’s name from a list, butchering more than one as he did so.

  “…And Luu--via? Does Luvia read?”

  The girl pressed the button on her headphone. “Yes.”

  It was a conference call. Activating your microphone broadcasted your voice to the entire survey team. The scanners, for some reason, worked best when synchronized manually, and that would be impossible to do without team-wide communication.

  Once the roll call was over, Glacia instructed Nolan to ride his Pelipper eastward, some good quarter of a mile out, and took out her other pokémon once the eager boy was up and away in the air.

  “You’ll take center, Luvia, sorry to be boring. The boy and I can fly, so we’re to take the flanks and respond to any urgencies from our colleagues… should they come up.”

  The girl blinked at her. “You have a flying-type too?”

  Glacia glanced away slowly. “Not quite, though it’s my opinion that she takes to the air far more classily than a wing-beater.”

  She plucked a different pokéball from her waist and let out a pokémon shaped like a great, big head, with two sharp, cone-like horns jutting at outward angles from its skull. Luvia felt the air chill the very moment it was released.

  Eyes even paler than Glacia’s, and a permanently open mouth full of glistening, white, gap-less tiles for teeth. Its entire body was encased in an icy exoskeleton that let off a faint but continuous haze of frosty vapor.

  It had several pattern-like gaps in its exoskeleton, the most prominent being the diamond-shaped one on the center of its forehead. It was black as coal beneath its icy exterior.

  “That’s a Frost Devil!” Luvia gasped. That’s what they called them on the island. There were stories of someone coming to the island long ago, even before Nana’s time, bringing these pokémon with them, setting up freezing caves underground, and that at night, every new moon, a Frost Devil would take a child from the island, and make it its own. These changeling children never got used to the cold, so they always shivered and their teeth always chattered.

  Of course, Luvia knew that wasn’t its actual name, but they were so rare to her that she had not yet learnt it.

  Glacia frowned at her with a terribly puzzled smile. “A Frost Devil…” she tasted the words. “She’s called Kara, my dear, and she’s a Glalie…”

  Kara leered at Luvia, floating a full two yards off the ground and the girl reeled away from that gaze.

  “Ohoho! Oh no, I think you might have offended her.”

  “I’m sorry!” Luvia said immediately. “That’s what they call them here – I didn’t mean…”

  “It’s fine, girl, settle down,” said Glacia, peeling a hairband from her wrist and tying her hair back in a knot. “Kara, we need to fly. Make the seat, my lovely.”

  The Glalie made a strange sound, as if gargling a set of keys, and its eyes took on a pale glow. The air above it crystalized quickly. Within a few seconds, it had created a circular slab of solid ice that it balanced perfectly on the tips of its horns. It floated lower to the ground.

  “Dormund, take care of Luvia,” Glacia said snappily, climbing atop the slab of ice with the ease of a dancer. “And Luvia, my dear, get on his back and head straight out, just like you did before, yes?”

  “Yes.” Luvia adjusted the headset on her head, felt for Mida’s ball in her pocket, and picked up her backpack with the scanner stuffed in there too.

  “Alright, tally-ho!” Kara rose back in the air noiselessly with Glacia sat cross-legged on the slab of ice. The pair of them flew away along the coast, westward.

  Luvia turned to the massive Walrein and smiled. “I like you!”

  After seeing Kara, she was infinitely happier that Glacia had lent her Dormund instead. She climbed onto his back, and the two set out to sea.

  A few minutes later, Glacia’s voice sounded over comms.

  “Luvia, Nolan, are you in position?”

  They were.

  The other supervisors followed suit with the cross-checking until they made sure that everyone was on the same page.

  “Alright people,” Robert announced, “First scan is a-go.”

  A.N:

  For reference, this is how to picture Dormund the Walrein's size (not the tiny pokedex numbers). Also, you might remember in a previous chapter that mentioned that the older a pokemon, the bigger they grew (usually).

  Walrein size reference: