"Report, Diamonda."

The voice had the cold, threatening timber of an unsheathing sword.

The gardevoir sunk into a deep bow. My lady, she keeps mind shielded. I fear I taught her too well—at this distance, I am unable to penetrate through.

"And her companions?"

The torchic is an open book and the psyling is too immature to notice intrusions. But they lack insight, my lady. She tells them nothing that is not already obvious. Nothing of her intentions. The human who sticks to her like a wurmple is similarly clueless.

"A pity. You must fix your mind on her day and night, Diamonda. Even the most well-trained are liable to slip, in moments of fear or anger."

The young mistress is prone to none of these emotions, my lady.

Diamonda caught the brief flash of pride that warmed her lady's voice when she answered. "I know. Even so, do not relax your vigilance."

My lady . . . The gardevoir hesitated, unease apparent in its tone for the first time. There is something else. A shadow-shell, what you humans call shedinja. It follows her now. Its presence is distorting, like a void through which nothing survives passage.

"An intentional maneuver?"

I do not know. But if you sent me to retrieve her, I am sure I could—

"No." The word was accompanied by the mental sense of a steel gate clanging shut. "And I will not tell you again. I wish to understand this—this temper tantrum—before I quash it. Otherwise, it may happen again. We deal with problems once, Diamonda. Only once."

~0~

The Lily of Death woke.

Out of habit, she held her eyes closed, letting her chest rise and fall without modulation. The mantra ran through her mind. My name is Lily. I am on a pokemon journey. My life is what I make it.

Princess was nestled against her side, like an ember of hot coal. The mini Diamonda was slumped at the base of the bed, dozing soundly. Lily worked herself out from the covers without waking either of them. It wasn't hard. Lily doubted the torchic would have woken even if Lily shook her. She had underestimated the toll psychic training would take on the small pokemon.

It was 5:03 am and the window peered out onto a darkness indistinguishable from night. Lily dressed quickly and applied make-up. Once her stretches were complete, she set about sharpening her knives. The ritual was calming. Lily could feel her thoughts focus as she worked.

Too easy.

It shouldn't have been so easy to get this far. When she'd left, Lily had been prepared to face the Violet or the Orchid. She'd even prepared an emergency means if Diamonda came. But the grunts sent after her so far had been on an almost insulting caliber. Clearly, Ma wasn't even bothering to try.

Why, though? Tacit acceptance? Permission implied by lack of constraint? It was a nice thought, so Lily distrusted it.

Or she could be plotting something.

Knowing Ma, it was probably the plotting.

A loud snore rose from the bed. The torchic rolled over into the space Lily had vacated, let out a confused snort, and slipped seamlessly back into sleep.

Lily watched the small fire-chick, feeling oddly snug. As if there was a warm jacket wrapped around her chest, the kind that trapped heat close to the skin.

5:28am. Time to train. But she didn't want to wake the torchic.

Lily had never been allowed to sleep late a day in her life. Even when she'd run a high fever, Diamonda had still led her stumbling down to the gym for morning exercises.

"This won't kill you," Ma liked to say. "Other things will."

But Lily was in charge here, not Ma. If she wanted the torchic to stay sleeping, all she had to do was . . . not wake her up.

She sat still for a moment, marveling at it. I'm not going to wake her up!

The cafeteria was deserted when she arrived. There was no hot food set out yet, just some cereals and packaged breads. Lily rummaged around in the cabinet beneath the counter, until she found an unopened container of cereal. She took a seat in the back corner and ate the flakes slowly, surprised by the sweet taste. Too sweet, really. Not vitamin efficient. But . . . not wholly unpleasant, either.

The shedinja was watching her. It had been waiting in the hallway when she left her room and, though sight was not the correct word, Lily knew when she was being observed.

It wasn't a threat, so she ignored it.

Casey was harder to ignore. And louder. The girl staggered in, clearly half-asleep, toasting and buttering two slices of bread before she noticed Lily.

"Oh!" she said, her mouth demonstrating the sound, falling open wide. Her teeth were white and slightly crooked. "You're up too!"

It was as if she was stuck in a state of pleasant surprise. Lily watched carefully as Casey took a seat at her table and began to eat, the toast crunching noisily in her mouth. Her bangs flopped messily over her forehead.

"It likes you," the girl said after she'd polished off her first slice of toast. "The shedinja."

"I suppose so," Lily answered noncommittally.

Casey frowned. "I've never trained a ghost pokemon before. I know people always say that they're different, but how different really didn't sink in until now. I don't know what it wants from me. When it's hungry. If it's sad. Why it keeps leaving its pokeball to wander. I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing."

"You aren't wearing your pokeballs today," Lily observed, when the silence began to stretch.

"Uh, no!" Casey sounded surprised. "I'm giving my pokemon a break from training this morning, since ninjask just evolved. I thought I'd take a walk and get some snaps in. It rained last night and everything always looks so bright and happy after that, you know. Uh, you could come along, if you wanted?" Her voice went high with uncertainty.

A morning off from training? How bizarre. Lily could see why most trainers didn't amount to anything, if this was how seriously they took it.

Still, leaving the pokemon center would give her a chance to test her theory. It was a little risky, perhaps, but a risk worth taking.

Lily nodded.

"Oh-oh really? That's great!"

Lily watched with amusement as Casey all but shoved the second slice of toast into her mouth and stood. The light was transitioning from gray to gold as they stepped outside. Casey had been right about the rain. The soil was wet enough that their shoes left deep imprints in the earth. Difficult conditions not to leave a trace in. Not that she had to worry about that, this morning.

As they entered the route, Casey drew in a breath. "It's so green," she said happily. "So many different greens."

Lily wondered what she was going on about. Green was—green. A color, and not a particularly important one. Though it was true that the bright yellow-green of the clover was not the same as the deep greens of the segmented tree leaves, Lily didn't see the point of noting the gradation.

They walked down the leafy route in silence, feet sinking into the damp soil, until they reached a small pond. A surskit was skating by, utilizing the surface tension of the water to stay aloft. Casey crouched down, raising her camera. Lily watched as she fiddled with a series of nobs. Her gaze drifted leftwards, where a plant spiraled up from the soil, its leaves cupped like cyclones. Bright clusters of yellow buds grew inside.

Lily fingered one leaf. Maybe it was the way the water sleeked the surface, but the green seemed to have a quality of depth. She stared at it, eyes narrowed in concentration.

When she looked up, a beautifly was hovering inches from her nose. Lily met its gaze calmly, letting her breath still. The beating of the beautifly's wings was slow and regular. Had it been preparing a spore attack, the wing-speed would have been faster.

The bug's antenna extended slowly, until the quavering instrument was almost touching Lily's nose. Probably attempting to determine if Lily was a threat to her nectar-collection. Best to simply keep still and endure it.

Click!

Lily spun at the sound, a knife sliding down into her hand.

"Sorry!" yelped Casey. She couldn't see the knife, but she could see the expression on Lily's face. "The moment was so perfect, I couldn't help it!"

As Lily opened her mouth to answer, the opal ring on her finger blazed red. Without another word to Casey, she took off at a sprint down the muddy path.

~0~

"Not again," the torchic had moaned when the window shattered and a net dropped down on them.

What do you mean, again? Tsifor hissed as they swung back and forth in the net. The motion was making her stomach sick. Does this happen to you often?

"Define often," the torchic muttered. "Look, just don't mess around with fighting back, okay? My human will come and get us."

The strange thing was, the torchic didn't mean the words as a comforting lie. She oozed confidence mixed with mild annoyance, without a trace of anxiety.

Tsifor couldn't say the same for herself. She didn't like the shape of these humans' minds. They curved inward, darkly, and reeked of fear and greed like wild garlic.

"Now we wait," declared a human that Tsifor decided to consider the leader, when they had entered a small cabin. He had the build of a fighting pokemon and hair cut close to his scalp. His large fingers drummed aggressively against the table.

The two other humans exchanged glances, a physical manifestation of the shared tremor of doubt passing between them.

"Boss," said one, a smaller female with bright blue hair, "are you sure about this? I mean, this is the Lily we're messing with now."

The boss snorted. "All high and mighty, wasn't she? Well, she's on the outs now. Down in the madame's bad books. We're gonna dance up the ranks for pulling this one off."

"Right," said the blue-haired human slowly, which was a bit strange, thought Tsifor, since in her head she was saying, wrong. "But I'm a bit confused. If she wanted the Lily brought in, there's other teams. The Lily's a little above our pay-grade, isn't she, Boss?"

"Dunderhead. That's the whole point. That's what's gonna make this so impressive when we pull it off. Now, come one, keep it professional. Doors and windows booby-trapped?"

"Yes, Sir."

"Gas masks ready?"

"Yes, Sir."

"Now, the moment she comes close, we release the sleep bomb and stick on the masks."

"Yes, Sir."

Funny, thought Tsifor, looking upwards. None of them had said a word about the broad ventilation shaft placed squarely in the ceiling. The one that appeared to be wiggling slightly.

"Maybe we should put on the masks now," piped up the blue-haired human. "Rumor says she's pretty fast."

"Hold your ponyta—" began the boss.

He didn't get the chance to complete the thought. A pellet shot from the ventilation shaft and hit him squarely on the jaw. At the impact, his body stiffened and crumpled to the ground. When Tsifor turned, the other two humans had already fallen.

There was a long silence. Then a loud boom made the walls of the cabin sway. A moment later, the front door swung open. The blank-human strolled in, her pony tail swishing gently.

"Hey guys," she chirped, looking them over. "Doing okay?"

"Fine, thanks!" piped up Kali. Her mind was warm and smiling.

The blank-human looked impassively down at the slumped bodies. "Hey, Mini-Dia. Which one was the least stupid?"

After thinking for a moment, Tsifor pointed towards the blue-haired female.

"Right."

Tsifor shuddered as two minds, slow and sticky, but nonetheless pulsing with life, flipped abruptly into darkness. It was too much.

She swayed backwards and fell into a faint.

~0~

Lily stood on one hand, keeping her breathing slow. Mini-Dia was sleeping on the bed. Her collapse hadn't been caused by poison, or anything similarly insidious. Simple psychic shock.

And an oversight on her part. Lily wasn't used to people that went around leaving their minds open for anything to come in.

Without a tremor, she switched hands. With the movement, she switched problems, from the psyling's collapse to the information she'd extracted from the least stupid grunt.

No Violet. No Orchid. And no Diamonda. She had been labeled yellow priority, capture at earliest convenience. It didn't make sense and Lily didn't like that. What you didn't understand was what killed you.

When the nervous knock came, Lily looked reflexively over to the mini-Dia, passed out on the bed.

"Lily?" The nervous voice came accompanied by another nervous knock.

With a sigh, Lily jerked open the door.

"I'm really sorry about taking that picture," Casey babbled the moment they locked eyes. "I guess I really disturbed you. I hope you're not too mad."

"I'm not mad," Lily said calmly. "I happened to remember an obligation."

"Right," said Casey, biting her lip. "That's good. Well, I was wondering—I thought you might like a copy. It turned out really well. You're beauti—I mean, it's a beautiful picture, I think." She held out a sheet of paper, standard print size.

After a moment, Lily took it. She shut the door and resumed her exercise.

You're beautiful, the babbling girl had meant to say. How amusing.

Lily checked her face in the mirror, but it was just the same as always—sharp cheekbones, angular eyes set equidistant from her arched nose. All the features were framed by glossy hair, professionally tinted blond. Her face had symmetry, which was not the same as beauty. Symmetry was an essential property of machines, necessary for the fulfillment of their purpose. And there was no denying her face was a useful one, good for smiles that opened doors.

She picked up the picture. The image was a close-up, her face and the beautifly's questing antenna squeezed together into the frame. Some interplay of light and distance had blurred out the features behind them into a haze of green. The shadows fell strangely on her in this image, softening every line of her face. Her mouth was ever so slightly opened and her eyes were angled upwards, almost wistfully, as if searching for something beyond the picture's frame.

Was this how she looked to the other girl?

Beautiful. Perhaps.

But if there was any beauty in that image, it wasn't hers. Casey was the one who had made it.

Lily set down the picture and folded herself into bed. By dint of long practice, her sleep was entirely dreamless.