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“They said dragon trainers are rare. Seems to me they just fall from the sky.”

“Please just drive Old Man.” Jane grips the door handle bar while eyeing the speedometer in front of me climb past 90/144.

“Hey, how did that haunted hotel video do?” Checking in the rearview mirror on Watts. Her frantic expression stalls with a grimace, fingers pausing over her screen.

“Fantastic, unfortunately. Gabby says thanks again for the clips from the control room.” She takes a deep breath, “Last time Zinnia was seen in public was weeks ago at the school in Rustburo.”

Citro calls from the back, “I need another cloth!”

Naomi quickly sets down her tablet and pulls more gauze from the first aid kid, passing it back over the seat.

The road starts to descend from the cloud wrapped spires into the dense jungle canyons. Mist drifts in waves so thick I have to slow down. Occasional breaks reveal small farms. Dozens of people and their pokemon tend terraced fields and ponds. A passing glance is enough to spot a massive Araquanid patrolling over a team of Surskit tending rice paddies.

This region is starting to feel like the most Asian place to ever Asia.

Naomi catches my curiosity, “For years, everyone referred to the largest of these farming communities as Fallarbor. Then the real hidden village became not so hidden once Ourboro took over. Soon this highway project began.”

Jane adds on, “My Aunt says there are villages hidden like that all across the world. It’s dangerous to explore the wilderness blindly, so it’s up to the villagers whether to reveal themselves to the public.”

“I assume the new village has a real name then? Since it sounds like Fallarbor is more of a general location or province I guess.”

“Arceus Shit, fuck!” Shouts the woman in the back.

“That can’t be the name.”

“You don’t have to jam that shit into the cut kid!”

“Sorry!”

Naomi leans over the back of her seat, “Master Zinnia! What happened?”

“None of your damn… Oh, you… that’s not bad actually.” she hisses in pain while nudging Citro away, “Okay kid I can hold it myself, thank you.”

There's more of a command in that tone than actual gratitude.

Rude, “Don’t worry Citro, I’ve heard all human McGuffins are pains in the ass.”

“The fuck is that supposed to mean?!”

She even squawks like I’d imagine a cranky lizard would.

“Lady, you literally fell from the sky on top of us, bleeding out.”

Jane mumbles, “It wasn’t that bad.”

Zinnia didn’t hear her, “It was that bitch with the Doublade! Spouting some crazy shit about dragon hunting!”

Naomi perks up, “I saw a post about that in Lavaridge, some masked trainer near Fortree going way overboard against anyone she battles with a Dragon Type!”

Wild, “Any actual descriptions?”

Zinnia sits up, holding her side while leaning on the back seat, “Blonde, lots of green in her outfit, some kind of Galar or Kalos accent. I’m pretty sure she had a Zoroark too.”

Jane smacks my leg and I hit her back, “Wow, how mysterious.” giving the older teen a warning look before glancing up in the rear view mirror at our injured plot hook, “What were you doing out here anyway? Any dangerous dragons we should be worried about?”

“A couple things really,” she scans the team and stops on Naomi, “Eh, I was chasing a thief and following up on a lead against everyone’s least favorite gym leader. I figured if I ran into whoever was causing trouble for my clan, I could show some fangs.”

She stops to check her cut with a sigh, “Didn’t expect she was the kind of crazy who skips straight to claws out.”

Citro climbs over the back seat to buckle up, “It’s not too strange for trainers on the islands to battle alongside their pokemon like the old ways. I didn’t think I’d hear about it here.”

The woman rolls her eye, “Seriously…,” she starts looking over her ball belt and spotting her bag on the floor, reaches in and grabs a phone, “I should have made it to the village three hours ago.”

Ya, about that, “So what’s the plan, Ma’am?”

Chucking her phone back at her pack and tussling her hair in frustration, “I can’t be seen in town… I also shouldn’t be walking around, Pokemon can smell blood like this.”

Just ask my bat.

Naomi shows her tablet, “We’ll be staying at the inn attached to the Pokemon Center. Kurt’s ghost pokemon can borrow some medical supplies while you camp out in our room tonight.”

“That works for me,” turning my way, “does your ghost know how to run a healing machine for my pokemon?”

That’s just asking for More trouble.

Which Watt’s heads off, “I assume you're worried about any center staff tipping off the gym leader as soon as your Trainer ID pops up on the healing monitors?” at Zinnia’s nod, “We can cycle them through the transfer machine without raising any alarm. The global link is secured by the league, it takes a stack of paperwork to check the records.”

“Okay,” she bites her fingernail, “This might work.” Looking back to me, “You’ll have to meet my contact though. Anything he shows you, get it all on video.”

Naomi practically jumps in her seat, “We will!”

“NO.”

“NO.”

Zinnia growls, “I’m not going to stand there, with my hair getting fried by static, explaining to Wattson Senior what happened to his little princess.”

I have to carefully mind the twisting road while we descend further past the canopy layer of the jungle, “Same here, although if you are missing in this scenario then so am I probably.”

Watts builds her case, “Am I safer alongside my bodyguard or alone in a town run by a suspected criminal?”

The dragon master starts to lift her belt of pokeballs but gets cut off, “Your pokemon are injured, and the moment one of them roars you may as well raise a flag to where you’re hiding. Then with how much blood you’ve lost I doubt you’ll be in any shape to play Dragon Master Zinnia from the kids cartoons.”

While the former champ scowls past her long black hair, I have something to say, “Everyone and their aunty knows you’re in Fallarbor. Nothing is going to happen to you if you stay in town.”

Jane snaps her fingers, “You jinxed it, now we have to come with you.” at my unimpressed stare she barrels on, “Come on Kurt, we’re tired of being left behind, just to see you limping back to a waiting hospital stretcher.”

“I’ll concede that I know, that must suck…,” letting out a slow breath. There's a whole, sloppy mess of pros and cons here.

This pokemon world is more dangerous than the one I grew up watching on Saturday mornings. On the other hand, it still centers on the theme of adventure.

In the mirror I catch the tanned dragon master wincing and accepting another fresh gauze from Citro. That eases my conscience a bit.

“I’ll buy that hanging around Miss Flesh Wound back there is just as risky, by her own words, as coming with me.”

Zinnia’s red eye snaps to me with a narrowed intensity, “You’re being awfully cavalier,”

“And you’re bleeding on my seats.”

Her face recoils, I imagine she doesn't get cut off as much in a year as she has in the last few minutes. The car is quiet as we travel through the overgrown understory, the road never reaching the jungle floor.

The woman takes a breath but then jerks in alarm as it must have hurt something in her lacerated side, “Agh! Fine! The boy stays to help me though. I need my team in top shape before dragon shit hits the fan. I’ll also heal faster if I’m not moving about.”

Citro’s frustration is obvious, but I feel like we’ve pushed plenty far and she does need someone to help her. He turns to pout out the window only to freeze, “What’s that?!”

As the tree’s begin to open up more, we spot a massive pokemon resting in a grotto with a few beams of sunlight peeking through the canopy. The tortoise is just as big as our ride, a cherry blossom bonsai growing from the shell back.

Naomi scrambles out of her seat to snap a picture before we round another bend, “That’s a Sakura Torterra! Quick Kurt, turn…” she spots the blood on the back seat, “We’ll come back sometime.”

As she climbs back into her seat I ask, “I take it those are rare?”

Citro sighs, “As a Shiny Shaymin, well, maybe not that rare.”

Zinnia snorts, “Not every ancient, whatever, pokemon comes from a lab. You know there’s a canyon in Kanto that still has wild Aerodactyl?”

More waterfalls cascade from the tops of spires perpetually trapped in rain clouds. At some point the ground disappears beneath a maze of water. Too broken up by rocks to call a lake or pond, and no direction of flow to be seen.

“What is the place called? Is it a swamp?”

“It’s a lake…I think,” Zinnia supplies with a grimace of pain, “No name worth remembering, each of the villages out here call it something completely different. Each one is probably trying to inflate the grandeur of their legend past their neighbors’.”

Naomi snorts, “The Primal Waters of Hoenn.”

A thought, “Where is your village? The Draconids right? We battled a team from there back around Rustburo.”

She replies with a smirk, “I haven’t answered that question after decades of interviews. May dragons devour any fool that does.”

A sign slips by saying we’re only a mile out.

“Does this road end in Fallarbor?”

“Aoba,” Zinnia corrects, “The actual name is Aoba, and yes.”

“What does that mean?

“Green leaves or something, I’m not a sage.”

Hold on, “It’s the Hidden Village of Green Leaves?”

“Something like that, ya.” She points ahead, “See for yourself.”

Driving through a mist cloud like a parting veil, an open water way is revealed. It’s surrounded on all sides by buildings that look as traditionally Asian as it gets. Rising above the buildings, mist cascades over jungle cloaked cliffs.

Sloped roofs of clay tiles, pagodas I think, dark wood piers, lantern lit bridges, small boats from which villagers cast nets or fish with poles, all framing what looks like a Japanese castle set before a waterfall.

Neither Naomi or Jane have ever actually been here.

Zinnia points to the castle, “That’s Fallarbor Gym.” pointing just to our right, at the only building that obviously has electricity, “There’s the Pokecenter.”

The road hugs the pier to a small parking lot in front of the center where it just ends. Thankfully I can see the entrance to an underground parking area. Zinnia won’t need to attempt sneaking out of the car in our luggage I guess.

Sporting a more modern look, the center seems to serve as a buffer to an outsider's first encounter with the village. Dark woods and metal in straight lines and the occasional curve melds an industrial vibe with the traditional ascetic.

Of Course the underground parking is the same as anywhere in anyworld… unless it was in space. I’d imagine space would be different, but is it underground parking if there is no ground?

“Kurt, look.” Jane points at the other side of the lobby, someone slightly shielded from view by a planter box.

It’s the Ronin team, Sean, Bruno and Hanna. They had another teammate back during the mosh, that girl’s journey ended in Petalburg Woods. Sean was the one that talked too much, to his girlfriend Hanna’s dismay.

“Go check in with Naomi, I’ll be with you in a minute.” Jane just nods and catches up to Watts at the reception desk.

Taking a casual seat on a couch just opposite the planter the kids are talking behind, I listen in over the sound of the water feature on one wall of the lobby.

Hanna is scolding the two boys quietly, “This was all your faults to begin with! I didn’t ask to get dragged along!”

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