The Skeleton Thief [YA Pokémon Fanfic]

Part 8 - Bonemerang [FINAL PART]

I am left alone in my cell at the Pewter City Police Station for over an hour.

No Petrina.

No Tucker.

No Cubes.

Alone.

It's enough time for total despair to sink in as I ruminate, over and over, on how the most successful moment of my life immediately turned to abject, humiliating failure.

A failure I will never recover from.

*

We were accosted in the centre of the Pewter City Gym's arena by two policemen and an angry protestor.

'What possible beef could you have with Ace Langdon?' Petrina, the Pewter Gym Leader, demanded, with an irritated flick of her blue ponytail, incensed to have a commotion like this erupt on her battlefield.

The protestor in the Che Guevara T-shirt sneered and ran a hand through his straggly beard, and his reply made my blood run cold.

'Well, that's just it,' he said, pointing an accusatory finger at me. 'He isn't Ace Langdon.' He jerked his thumb to his chest. 'I am.'

There was one moment, maybe a few blissful seconds, where this sounded so outlandish that nobody believed him. Tucker snort-laughed in his face; Petrina shook her head; even the two policemen who'd brought the dude over to us looked sceptical, like he was just high and making shit up.

I was stunned – so sure Kenji would've been the one to expose me, if anyone – that I just had no comeback whatsoever. I couldn't even formulate a denial.

And my stunned silence spoke volumes.

'Ace,' Tucker said, squeezing my shoulder. 'Say something. This guy's lying, right?'

I stared at my feet. I could feel my face burning, tears welling up. I couldn't bear to look Tucker in the eyes. Not after our night together last night. Not after everything.

Tucker's hand released my shoulder and didn't return.

'Ace?' Petrina probed. 'Is he telling the truth?'

'If he's not gonna to talk, I will,' the Che Guevara dude said. 'I'll sing like a fucken Swellow. I gave up Pokémon training for good a few weeks ago. After I competed at the Johto League tournament, I went backpacking on Mount Silver and met some people there from the Pokémon Liberation Front who told me what really happens in the Pokémon Industrial Complex system. It's fucking capitalist bullshit, man. Torture. Abuse. We all have blood on our hands for being complicit in a system that –'

'Get your hand off it,' Tucker snapped. 'You're a loon.'

'One day you'll agree with us,' the real Ace Langdon continued. 'Our aims are simple: we want all Pokémon ownership banned, all Pokémon forcibly separated from their human oppressors, all prize monies forcibly donated to the Pokémon Liberation Front, who will fairly and equally disburse –'

'Enough preaching your political bullshit,' Petrina said crisply. 'Prove that you're really Ace Langdon or get out.'

I still couldn't look up. The only face I could see was Cubes', staring up at me from his position between mine and Tucker's feet. He looked devastated on my behalf. He tapped his Bone Club rhythmically against my sneaker, as if trying to do his best to comfort me.

'I sailed to Kanto to officially join the Front and be part of their activism efforts here,' Ace went on. 'I arrived via the Seafoam Islands and joined the Front and the other new pledges for a bonfire initiation near Fairfax Mountain. We released all of our Pokémon into the wild, to reconnect them with their primal nature, free of human oppression, and then had to destroy our Pokédexes in the bonfire, since they symbolise our involvement in the heinous –'