The Viterals

Chapter 25: Kirish's Kingdom

They lay in beds, all of them—Yumin, Zakana, Farore, Bambi, and Makua. They weren't in a fully functioning Pokémon Center but it was better than all the other ones they visited in the past month. This one could actually heal Pokémon. It was off the grid and so far, The Viterals hadn't been able to touch it.

Kirish sat at Yumin's hospital bed and whispered things to him. Other girls, the ones who had rode on the orange dragons, the Charizard, stood by, with medicines and ointments, visiting the bedsides every so often. Zakana had been stripped of his belongings—his bag, his Pokeballs, the papers that he had sworn to protect with his life.

Zakana turned to find pain course through him. The throbbing in the shoulder where the ice beam hit him was the strongest, but it was nothing compared to what it had been. Bambi stared straight up, her eyes meeting the shallow ceiling in the hut-like Center where they all now lay. Had they been damaged so? The fires, the floods, the fauna—what had it done to them?

Wiped them out, that's what. It had wiped the floor with them and left their Pokémon breathless and fainted.

Kirish and Yumin's tones rose next to him.

"I don't know where my mom is," Kirish said.

"What about Uncle Durin?" Yumin asked.

"Perhaps in the same place you saw him last."

Zakana had questions . . . so many questions about the Rockets and the Viterals and when it would all end. He wanted less Pokémon, not more and now he seemed to possess three, if he didn't include the Eevee resting in one of his Pokeballs. Slowpoke and Happiny were fine and utterly harmless but he wanted rid of the fox. He couldn't bear the illusions again. They were too invasive.

Nearby, Bambi reminded Zakana that the fox had saved their lives. The fox and Kirish and her squad of teenage girls. They looked similar as they stood nearby, their hair long, in ponytails or buns sitting atop their heads. They wore loose clothing. The one that Zakana had met over a month ago moved to his bed.

"Is there anything you need, Zakana?"

Cecilia was her name and in that moment, with her jade-green eyes, she reminded him, in the pictures he had seen, of a younger version of his mom. Where was Audria now? Where were Bambi and Yumin's parents?

"Where is my mom?"

Cecilia smiled. "I better let Kirish take that one."

So she did. A few days later, once all the wounds had been mostly healed and everyone had their rest, the group of them, Zakana and his crew and Kirish and hers, met outside Kirish's house and lay in the lawn.

"The Wailmer Wars rage," was Kirish's first announcement.

Zakana looked around and saw the destruction. He saw the boats that had tried to dock in the distance, how they had failed and been torn apart by Kirish's defenses. Her own hair was caught somewhere in the crossfires. Pieces of it were gone, chopped like it had been set on a cutting board and sharp, swift knife strokes were brought down. The hair fell where it wanted and was mostly short. Kirish had managed to clean it up but it would be a long time before it was long again.

"The Viterals attacked," Kirish continued. "It would seem with a full force." She looked at her underlings, the three young women, and they all seemed to share a moment of understanding. They had seen things.

"So many Wailmer," Cecilia said.

"Why? What is it that the Viterals want?"

Only the breeze made a sound. It was the question everyone had been waiting for, and other than Kirish and her girls, Farore sat up a little straighter and leaned in. Where her hair was long, golden and beautiful, Kirish was chopped and burnt. The two of them, Kirish and her Kingdom of the Orange Islands and Farore as Bug Gym Leader and ultimate protector of Celadon and its surrounding regions, squared off with each other, not as enemies, though perhaps in a different time they might have been, but as friends both protecting and fighting for the same causes, for the same people. Zakana saw the way they respected each other.