Broken Souls

Oh Boy Do I Ever Love Boats

Ten once had a long, prestigious history of crashing, but I only realize how much I now depend on his not slamming into the earth like a flaming owl cannonball when we manage to do so. The sands of Olivine are usually soft, but the grit is all over my face now and the abrasive stuff gets all over my hair and clothes, like a thousand tiny claws digging into my skin. My avian friend looks no better off, seeing as he's on his face not too far away, hooting with disappointment into sand.

As I approach, he gets up, looking at me with earnest confusion in his eyes. "Take it easy," I tell him, "None of those fancy acrobatics earlier were necessary. I thought you had 'wing pain'!"

"I do, and bloody hell do they hurt now." Ten protests, "I wasn't trying to go fast at all. If anything, I was easing up, and-"

"You don't have to show off." I shake myself off. My left arm stings a bit, though I don't know if that's from his wing pain or because that was the arm that hit the sand first.

Ten clicks his beak and mumbles something beneath his breath, like I can't tell exactly what he's thinking. He looks up at me, eyes wide, and asks, "So, what now?"

We walk into the shabby building at the end of the docks together. Ten is awkward as ever on land, and the clip clip of his talons on the wood as he waddles along makes me snort, which in turn makes him more indignant.

"I'm injured," he announces.

I pull out the Pokedex and produce the statistics, which say otherwise. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen his health this high before. "Since when were you in the two hundreds?"

"Since never." Ten squints. "Is that a glitch?"

"No idea." I shrug, pushing open the door, which whines with age. The inside of the ferry registration smells like fish and chum. Worms for bait sit on one counter loaded with fishing supplies, while a disgruntled woman in glasses sits behind another with a laptop and more papers than you could shake Ten's recently absent stick at. Sailors sit at benches around the room, half-shouting about their latest trials at sea.

I approach the woman and hold out my ticket.

She looks up with her lip curled. "S. S. Aqua finished boarding fifteen minutes ago. They'll be leaving right now, I'd wager."

"Well, Ten, you know what we have to do."

"What?" Ten asks, stressing his fake British accent more than ever. I just laugh and give the woman a thumbs up, then run past the door to her right and out onto the pier. Sure enough, the boat's engine is starting now, but the massive thing hasn't gained any kind of momentum yet. Even putting cruising speed ahead of Ten's flight abilities, we should still have time to jump for it. "Oh no."

"Oh yes." I say. "Come on. We don't have that much time."

Ten's signature enthusiasm rushes back and he opens his wings, flapping into a take off and grabbing me with his talons just past the armpits, so that I'm suspended in a position twice if not thrice as bad as Morty's accursed Drifbloom put me in.

Luckily, it doesn't last long, because just seconds later Ten and I are falling across the deck in the second worst landing of the day. Several confused trainers turn, aghast, and one even helps me up. A man in uniform walks over. "Madam, did you just hijack our boat? If you don't have a ticket, I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to-"

I hold up my ticket and he falls silent, backing slowly away.

"Ha." I say, "Man, we're so on top of things. Should I get the team out?"

"Does this count as a contained area? If so, I dunno if Pisces will fit."

I send out the rest of the team, seeing as he has a point. Reginae, Minerva, and Fang all appear in a semicircle around us, all looking far more alert than they did in the hotel.