“You must be one with the flame. Feel it within you, burning, boiling, raging, seeking to escape. Can you feel it?”

“Umm, umm… I think so?” I had my eyes closed as I padded along, ears twitching to keep me moving with the rest of the group. I idly swished my tail, trying to get a good grip on this ‘inner flame’ that Mew told me I should tap into and was having mixed success. I was familiar with the energy ball of ‘Infinity Energy’ inside me by now, but with Mew’s help I was delving deeper into it.

We’d regrouped after Lucky and I had ended our contest — I’d won, of course, but he agreed to disagree — and the five of us met back up with Sissy and Chompy for a grand party total of seven. We’d then gone on a tour of Mew’s island with the ancestral pokemon as he attempted to teach us some new moves. He had been trying to explain about powers, how they worked, and then suggested I… branch out?

For his part of it, Mew was… encouraging? Mentoring? I wasn’t sure if he was actually doing anything or if he was just there for the ride, but he seemed to be enjoying himself. He’d said I should try to listen to what he’s saying and use it to feel, not think. The light blue floating ball of chaos had a sweet voice, he was easy to listen to and it had a hypnotic, soothing quality, even his giggling was like little tinkling bells. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d been using Hypnotise or something similar, not that it would have been any less effective if told.

“Oh, I’m sure you do! Feel your claws! Your scaly tail! You’re not an eevee, you’re a ryuvui! You evolved with a Prismatic Scale—”

“Would that work?” whispered Guy loudly, half-emerging from my shadow, his eyes glowing bright red in the semi-darkness, for once his trademarked grin turned upside down into a frown of concentration.

“How am I supposed to know? You were a magikarp, it might work on you at least?” Tully hissed in reply, fluttering indignantly to a tree, startled from his perch on Lucky.

“—The burning embers of your rage!” Mew was continuing. “Somebody stole your last pokepuff and left you with nothing but crumbs and now they. Must. Pay!”

I was doing it! The thought of having my personal pokepuff devoured by a no-good ne’er-do-well was riling me up something fierce. The ball of energy within my core boiled and bubbled, seething red with the heat of pure, distilled rage and anger.

“That’s it! There’s the heat! Bring it! Yell it! Shout it! Let them know how—”

“GGGRRAARRRRRRRRR!” I belched an uncomfortably deep-rooted spewing-forth of magma, feeling the liquid rock-based slurry emerge from my gullet like so much flaming morning regret. It was at once both incredibly unpleasant, and utterly empowering.

“Palkia’s pointy pe—!” Tully squawked, seeing as he’d been sitting in the tree I’d just torched. He flung himself into the air as his berry bush bench-seat went up in smoke, much to Sissy’s amusement.

“Oh well done!” Mew giggled as he clapped, rescuing my feathered compatriot from near certain doom as he floated past, upside down. “You got it now? You’re an eevee, so you’re a normal type; you’re full of normal-type energy, only that’s not quite true. Normal is more… un-typed? And even that’s not true! It does mean, though, that the Infinity Energy inside you is easier to shape and change.”

“And Infinity Energy is… ? It’s the energy we use for our special moves, right?” Lucky asked, head tilted as he listened intently.

“Infinity Energy is the power of the universe itself, gifted to us pokemon by the creator,” said Chompy, distantly.

I wiped my muzzle with a paw, flinging away molten magma before I realised that I should probably have burned said paw, not even speaking of my muzzle. “Blurgh, did you have to teach me the one that had me puking up fire?”

Mew giggled again, still floating upside down in his bubble. “No, but it’s one of the easier ones. Dragon moves like that are more… emotion-based. You can probably blame Grandad for that when he made all this. At least I think he did it.”

“Who else would have?”

“Eh, well it might have been one of us Mews, we’re not really clear on which came first and Celebi isn’t telling. See, I can be basically any pokemon I want to be—” his form flashed into light, and he reformed as a light green bulbasaur and landing with a thump, “—and use any move, so one of us could really have been the original like these humans thought we were for a long time, and then… did whatever Grandad did to make it all, or maybe just one of us became Grandad… I say Grandad because I don’t have enough time for the ‘greats’ and my Mom and Dad were Mews, so…”

Mew floated down towards Lucky, who was on all fours softly trying to growl to himself. “hey! Do you wanna try next?”

“Yeah, I think Arceus came first,” mumbled Tully, “if Mew came first, he’d have got distracted.”

“Hmm, you’re a water pokemon, which makes fire a difficult one… but I think I can help. You wanna try?”

“Oh yeah, do me! Do me!” said Lucky, turning and leering at Tully, who fluffed up.

“Please never say that again!”

“Aww, why not?” I asked. “I wanna see Mew do Lucky!” I pouted.

“Nobody tell her,” Tully grumbled, as Sissy opened her muzzle to say something. She shut it again, smirking.

“Alright, imagine you’re a Feebas, right? Swimming around, alone, in your pond… but you spot something beautiful! It’s a scale! You take it for your own, place it in with your other scales, and it makes you feel beautiful! Powerful! Show me, Lucky, show me how beautiful you feel!”

Awkwardly at first, but gaining confidence, Lucky frolicked in the clearing, jumping from hind claw to hind claw, spurting water from his muzzle as he did so.

“That’s it! And now, you feel it! You’re changing! You’re changing into a Milotic! And you swim right out onto shore to meet your new trainer and—!”

“Hoo… I’m floating!”

Mew sat back, smirking an accomplished smirk, as Lucky slid around a few feet off the ground on his belly, wriggling like the eel-pokemon he was pretending to be. “Well, you gotta be able to fight with your trainer, right? And if Geodude can do it, Milotic can, and if those two can do it, why can’t you?”

“How are you… this isn’t normal, is it?” Tully fluffed his feathers up indignantly. “How are you teaching us moves we can’t normally do?”

Mew grinned wide, flicking his tail and wriggling his ears. “I told you! I can do all the moves that all pokemon can do, and a few they can’t. That includes the move ‘teach other pokemon to do things they want to do’.”

“That’s not a move!” Tully complained.

“It is now. So ner.” Mew stuck his tongue out.

“He’s got a point, I mean…” Sissy shrugged, pointing to the still-slithering Lucky and the smoking remains of the berry bush tree.

“Hey,” I asked, “were you at Mewtwo’s birthday party? I saw a mew there, but I don’t think she was you. There was also Mewtwo too.”

“Mewtwotwo? Haven’t met that one, are they a clone too?”

“Nah, not Mewtwotwo, just Mew and MewTwo, too. Though I think Amber counts as Mewtwotwo? Maybe?”

“That’s what I said!”

“Give me strength,” grumbled Tully.

“What about Mewtwotwotwo?”

“The one on Cero?”

“There’s a Mewtwo on Cero?”

“There’s a Mew, too—”

There was a sudden burst of flame skywards as Tully gave an empowered scream of rage, even his feathers catching fire. For a long moment afterwards, nobody moved or spoke.

“Oh, he’s good,” said Mew, nodding his head wisely, breaking the silence. “Able to take my lessons to heart like that? Activate his Inner Moltres? It’s what I was talking about! We pokemon, we like to think we’re all set on a certain path, right? I don’t evolve, Chompy and Sissy won’t either, but Tully, you’ve changed once already and will once more. Guy, you changed more than you should on your own. I can tell my extended family were involved, but that’s not all, is it?”

“What do you mean?” I asked, tilting my head in confusion.

“Well, I showed you!” Mew giggled, flashing into light and reforming as the shiny eevee, then flashed and became a vulpix… only this one was a light purple. “Most Vulpix around here are Fire, right? But this one isn’t! I’m now an Alolan Vulpix, so I’m ice. Fire and Ice seem about as far away as possible, don’t they? But here we are.” He flashed into light again, becoming a yellow and gold variant.

“So, uhhh… huh.” I furrowed my cute little brow.

“Yeah. You’ve been told — by your trainers, by other pokemon — that you’re… you, right? That you are what you are? But you don’t have to be, from the simplest step of not evolving if you don’t want to, to… learning tricks you thought couldn’t. It’s much harder to do things your own way, but you can.”

Mew flashed back into his normal light blue kitten-like form, giggling, as he floated ahead of us once more. “Come on! Race you to the shore!”

It wasn’t until his bubble popped, and he dropped into the long grass to rise as a fully-sized, smoke-maned Rapidash, that we realised he was serious.

The party had spread out on the escarpment and around the beach, making themselves as comfortable as possible. For all the talk was serious, the vibe was relaxed. The sun was hot, the breeze warm, the sound of the waves on the beach were soothing. Peeko was thoroughly enjoying herself sporting in the surf as she dived and twirled with other wingulls in the air and bobbing about atop the briny deep.

“Thanks to Sly here, he ain’t no bludger, we know Zyrna’s up to something big. And you two sprogs are in it up to yer necks. If I had the choice, I’dve pulled you two out and sent you packing long ago, but Sly’s convinced me you two are as capable as you are stubborn, so here’s how it’s going down.

“You two are deputies. Consider yourselves — I already do — press-ganged into the Rangers, with all rights and duties that entails. We’ll skip the capture stylers and other gear for now, since you two won’t have time to learn to use them and don’t need them anyway. You’re Trainers, but you work for us. This gives you some extra perks. First of which, guaranteed spots for overflows to your team and priority on transport, healing and restoration, and the ability — should you require it, and by Arceus you’ll catch it if you abuse that — to carry and utilise more than the legal amount of six for a normal League Trainer. Any questions so far?”

Ed and Becca looked at each other, then slowly shook their heads.

“Not yet,” Ed said, “I think I just want to hear the rest. You said rights and duties though?”

“Aye, first of all you’ll be bound by oath not to reveal anything of the inner workings of the Rangers that you learn to outsiders. It’s not that we’re secretive so much as we’ve got enemies. Rangering is an old profession, longer even than Training, some say, though I think likely as not we all grew from the same tree.”

“I can live with that,” said Becca, nodding slowly. “As long as it’s nothing… you know.” She wiggled her hand about erratically.

“There’s a handbook,” Ollie said, fishing a small, leather-bound, dog-eared book from one pocket. “I’ll get you both a copy. Not that we get stuck into it unless we have to, and then everyone is going to have a bad time. Second, you’ll be expected to help out with Wild pokemon issues. The Jennies and such’ll listen to you if you need ‘em to, but again; mess up, it’s your neck. Third, bootcamp. For our irregulars like you, with your own pokemon, we like to make sure you can hold yer own in a scrap. That means we train you, and ye get pitted against tougher teams where it matters. The kind where the participation badge is what most folks get for winning. I’ll expect you two to start picking up the real deal where you can, the type that don’t expire at the end of the season, you get me?”

Ed’s mouth fell open. There were two types of badges you could get from Gym battles; the first type was showing enough of a mastery at your current badge level that you passed the test to prove your worthiness as a Trainer to compete in the end-of-season League Tournament. The second was when you challenged the Gym Leader’s real team. The team they used to get their positions as League recognized Gym Leaders. The type that were good for life.

“We’re supposed to go up against gym leaders’ personal teams?” Ed spluttered. Becca looked white. “I can’t do that! I can’t… I’m not that good!”

“Oh,” said Ollie. He leaned back and took his hat off his head to put it over his face. “That’s alright then, you can just go home.”

“...N-no, wait, I didn’t—”

“I mean, if you’re not good enough to be a trainer, I guess that makes it easier on us.”

“But…”

“Or…” Ollie sat up, took his hat off his face, “or do you think I’m wrong? And you do have what it takes?” He fixed first one and then the other of the two trainers with a harsh stare. Ed’s face turned red as he realised he’d been baited. He grit his teeth, scowling. “Listen, kids; most trainers, they do the circuit, they collect a few badges, the wash out. Some of ‘em grow into professors, others chefs, some gardners, teachers… still more go back to their hometown and do nothing with their lives. But a rare few, they go all the way. They get all eight badges and enter the tournament. Only one per can win, and even less of those get to challenge the Elite Four of their regions and become champions. You two may not become champions, that really will be up to you, but by the time we’re done with you, you’ll throw down with their like and they’ll remember the match. So, what’s it gonna be? You quittin’? I’m serious.”

Ed looked down, and away, breathing hard through his nose. He screwed his face up as he stared holes into the ground. When he looked up, there was determination in his eyes. “I can’t promise to get those elite badges, but I will try. I can’t go home with whatever Zyrna’s doing hanging over me.”

“Me too,” said Becca. “We fought our way out of New Mauville, we’ve fought off Zyrna twice. We dealt with Giovanni… well, okay, we survived Giovanni.” Ollie chuckled heartily at that. “Not that you could make us — legally at least — but I’m not gonna go home with my tail between my legs. Not again. I may only be twelve, but I’m a pokemon trainer. If you can help me be a better trainer, help me make my pokemon stronger, I want that. I’ll fight for it. I’ll bleed for it.”

“Fair dinkum, Sheila, I’ll take you two sprogs’ words that ya ain’t no gallah’s. Truth is I don’t expect you two to win against all yer local gym leaders’ personal teams, but I do expect you to put the work in that you can give it a proper go, you hear me?”

“Y-yes sir!” said Ed and Becca both, after another meaningful glance from Ollie.

“Told you, Pops, they’re in for the long stretch,” said Sly, giving another of his trademarked cheeky grins. Ollie rolled his eyes, then nodded, slowly.

“Alright. So, let’s share what we know about Zyrna so we’re all on the same page. Whatever else you know you find relevant, you let me know. If it comes to you later, you can tell the lad.” Ollie jerked his thumb at Sly, who grinned wider.