aiko's otter den

for a squall and an outside starry sky - Cerulean Cave supposedly has a monster in it, a powerful pokemon said to level buildings. That is not what Khun finds there, or is it? LGP/LGE AU

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3. Like a Phoenix

Morning started with breakfast and all the team’s pokemon dragging Bam to the floor to eat. Letting eighteen pokemon out to eat in one room, plus four humans, is an exercise in well, nothing boring.

Bam seems fascinated by the variety of pokemon. Hatz’s zangoose grooms Bam’s hair after a quick bite of food. Magby and toxel are snoring against his side.

Khun would find it adorable if he had time to think about those things. He’s just furiously texting the professor because for a man who is drunk on instant everything half of the time, he has a tendency to sleep late.

“He’ll be ready in a few hours.” Khun jams an imi-bacon sandwich into his mouth. Alola sours you on any meat that isn’t fish at a very young age and Hatz never afforded meat until now. Isu eats it with caution nowadays. He also barely could have afforded meat until becoming a trainer. Bam doesn’t seem to notice the difference.

“You hunted for pokemon?” Isu asks, watching Bam quietly eat an egg sandwich.

“Mm! Sometimes. Pokemon hunted pokemon too.” Bam shakes his head. “It’s natural I think. The person who visited me… she didn’t like that. Most people don’t, she said, but I couldn’t, uhm… use a vending machine or anything. I just had to figure it out. Lots of underwater plants.”

Isu sounds admiring. “Could you pick them out from a book?”

“Sure!”

They finish eating and Hatz turns to put his pokemon away. “Honedge,” he warns, seeing the sword floating ominously towards Bam. “No feeding. I gave you pokebeans. Live with it.”

Honedge doesn’t answer in words but floats sulkily back to his trainer. Hatz returns him for measure.

“Apologies,” Hatz says roughly. “He doesn’t get to eat life force, and he knows that. He’s being unruly as of late. It is likely time to evolve him.”

Bam smiles it off. “It’s okay. Haunter does the same thing.”

Unsettling, but true.

Khun still files it away for later.

---

Pallet Town remains a harmless, quaint little place. Khun remembers his arrival here to seeing kids running outdoors with their pokemon. Casually, not to violence, or self-defense, or with dodging Team Skull kids, harassment. Alola is a very relaxed region, the women of the Khun family are not. He doesn’t know how his mother got all three of them out on their own without violence, but considering her mailing address no longer says Ula’ula Island, he can guess.

He should call his sister when all of this is over.

Bam is leaned against his back on Corona. He’s looking around as they descend. “When you get your license, you can take a journey through Kanto, if you want to.”

Bam hums in question. “With a pokemon. Like you?”

“All of us, but yeah.” Bam really needs to stop staring at him like a baby growlithe. It’s incredibly distracting. “Or we can take you to the station and get you to Johto. My sister works with the professor over there and the day care. She’ll have her license eventually and if you like baby pokemon like they like you, it’s a profession.”

“What do you do?” Bam asks as Corona touches down on the ground.

“Me?” Khun grins, crooked and free. “I’m the champion.”

“You’re not even allowed to run challenges,” Hatz calls from where he’s next to Isu on top of a metagross. It’s the only fully grown pokemon Isu has and honestly, he’s a menace. “Don’t act like you champion anything, earrings.”

“Beat me in a challenge, hara-kiri,” Khun shoots back without venom. He turns back to Bam with a smile. “Don’t mind him, he’s just mad I beat him after the Elite Four.”

Bam nods as Hatz makes a sound like a wounded pokemon. Hatz then mimes drawing a pokeball. Isu returns metagross with a sigh, ignoring both of them.

“But he’s not wrong,” Khun adds, stepping towards the sliding doors. “I don’t really have a job right now because I’m under sixteen. Even then I’ll just take challenges. No politics for me until I’m eighteen anyway.”

“Oh.” Bam nods, but his expression shows he doesn’t understand. Khun doesn’t blame him. It’s politics and living in a cave would absolutely ruin that for anyone. A part of him hopes Bam doesn’t have to worry about it.

Inside, Hansung Yu sits at his computer, composing a message to… someone. Who knew who that would be? One intern, a redhead whose name Khun never remembered, glances up at them. Her eyes rest on Bam. Bam meets her gaze politely but with a confused frown on his face. She nods at them and clears her throat. An amused smile flicks across her face as Hansung turns from his computer. He rests his eyes on all of them one at a time. Again, they stay on Bam a little too long, but Khun doesn’t dare look away from the coffee-addict. He’s always found chinks in Khun’s armor. It’s better to see it happen.

“Is this our new trainer?” he says with his usual calm poise and general assholery.

“My name is Bam,” Bam says softly before Khun can answer. Khun risks glancing over. His teeth look grit and his eyes strangely angry. He half expects them to glow purple. “It’s very nice to meet you, sir.”

Hansung hums in acknowledgement, looking him up and down. Khun can’t really see what he’s looking for. Dressed in one of Isu’s oversized tracksuits and little else, he looks more like the youngsters Khun had roasted by accident, beaten by butterfree and a well-placed nidorino double kick.

“Care to do a fingerprint test for me, Bam?” Hansung says this casually, and it’s nothing new. Every trainer has to do that because it’s infinitely more annoying paperwork wise if he’s not in a system. Which he… which Bam wouldn’t be.

This fucking asshole.

Bam, however, has no awareness of this. He steps forward with a nod. “What do I do?”

Hansung gets up from his chair and gestures. “Put your index finger on this machine here, yes, like that, and keep it there until it beeps.”

Five minutes later, and a lot of Isu and Hatz fiddling with their progressed pokedex involved, Hansung lets out a sound of interest. “Well, Mister Bam, your records are coming up in error. That means in order to get a pokemon, you will need to have someone sign off on it for you. Someone in high status, preferably, just proving you can legally have a pokemon.”

Bam blinks, twice. “I… have always been around pokemon.” His voice wavers a little, looking for an answer that he can’t possibly have.

“Naturally.” Hansung lays the sympathy on thick. “But that doesn’t mean you can train them, can you?”

Bam swallows. He rolls in his new shoes, fidgeting with his fingers.

Khun steps forward. Hansung’s eyes are on him and they’re knowing something Khun can’t possibly be bothered with. “I’ll sponsor him.”

Bam freezes, looking down at his hands.

“Why champion,” Hansung says. “You’re underage. I’m not sure that’s wise. The Elite may have something to say about it.”

“There’s no need to worry about that,” Khun drawls, matching Hansung’s tone as best as he can. “I have plenty of people who can do so by proxy. I’m sure they’ll make an exception.”

“By all means,” Hansung says with a smile. “Call them, champion.”

“W-Wait!” Bam is looking between them. “Can, Can I use your phone?”

---

Ten minutes pass and Ha Yuri, formerly Ha Yuri Jahad of all people, picks up the video call.

She brightens at the sight of Bam and chatters at him about everything from being happy he’s out of the cave (why didn’t she take him out, Khun thinks sourly) to of course, he’s becoming a god damn trainer, why wouldn’t he, he’s fought a gyarados barehanded (what?) to ‘you need to come to Unova sometime, it’s a riot’ before staring down Hansung and sending the paperwork before his eyes.

Hansung had actually looked unsettled. Khun will take it.

Fifteen minutes after that, that redheaded intern comes out with a pokeball and places it in Bam’s hand. Bam stares at it for a long minute. Long enough, Khun is wondering if Bam knows how to use it, before he clicks it open. A flash of light reveals an eevee. Said eevee bounces from the floor into Bam’s hands, affectionate as only a bred eevee can be. Wild ones are terrifying.

Khun watches Bam’s face, waits for the moment when he softens, falling in love with the very first pokemon that’s ever chosen him and he’s chosen them.

It happens in a rush, a feeling of soft dewy eyes and a purple gleam. In that moment, Khun swears that the eevee’s eyes glow back.

Arceus, he hopes not.

For some reason, after that, Hansung ushers them out.

“You should take him to Viridian,” he says with one of those smiles that means he’ll be drowning in coffee for the rest of the day and not to disturb him. “Or perhaps Saffron. They might do him some good.”

Khun gives Isu a glance. Isu nods.

“Maybe tomorrow for Saffron,” he allows. “Goodbye professor.”

“Thank you!” Bam hurries to say, still clutching at his eevee.

The man says nothing and Bam continues to wear an expression like someone walked over his grave.

---

He knows that man.

He knows him in a hoodie and shorts, but Bam knows that man. He knows him in yellow with impassive eyes.

Bam remembers long, thin fingers tapping his tank. He remembers the stare, pitiless and sure, in his place. And that Bam was below it.

How could that person be an expert, a welcomed member of the community for supporting pokemon?

He remembers his brother, his friend, banging on the tank from the inside and failing. The strongest pokemon in the world, failing and failing to be free.

And that man had just watched.

Bam tucks his head into the neck of his tracksuit. Eevee — Mirai, a word from Johto he had loved — stirs but falls silent again shortly after.

“Bam?” Khun looks at him over the clothes rack. “Which one?”

Bam starts and pulls himself away from Hansung Yu’s image, mentally screaming, and back to this situation. This friend, this reality. “I…” Bam worries his lip. ‘Which is more affordable?’ He’s grateful that Rachel taught him some things about humans. Even if she hadn’t saved him physically, she had saved him in other ways.”

Khun’s expression shifts, twisting again with a strange sort of discomfort. Like what Bam is saying is strange. “Don’t worry about the price, Bam,” he says. “We’re using my dad’s credit card. He won’t notice or care. The whole family does it. Don’t worry.”

Bam wants to disagree, but it hasn’t worked with Khun so far, so he goes along with it.

Hatz and Isu are not here and Bam is relieved. Their pokemon talk a lot. They seem at least somewhat aware that he can understand them as well, and talk a lot about “setting their humans up for mating”, as if it was some grand goal and not something pokemon simply did and left when they were done. Packs were packs and mating was mating no matter what you were, he supposes.

Still, none of Khun’s pokemon talk about that except Larka and Altair, Altair grumbling about her human’s head being too inflated for its own good and Larka, who worries about the team.

They’re nice and quiet at least.

“Well… all right.” Bam relents. “Then this one.” He points to the darker colors, because he’s always liked purple and black hurts less.

Khun grins and darts away. Somehow, Bam gets the feeling this is more for Khun than himself. He sits down on a bench to wait. It’s not like he minds. He’s spent most of his time waiting.

“Pika!”

Bam looks down. A pikachu with a heart-shaped tail stares up at him.

“Bam,” she says. “When did Rachel let you out?”

Bam’s eyes widen. Rachel’s pikachu. Was Rachel here? “He resists the urge to pick up the pikachu and pats his lap instead.

She hops into it. “You smell nice,’ she tells him.” I keep telling her to bring you nice human smells but she ignores me. Did she let you out? She should have brought me along.”

“Erm… she didn’t.” Bam makes a face. “Um, the champion found me.”

“Oh.” Pikachu shrugs her little shoulders. “Well, that’s okay then. It’s not like you invited them there.”

He rather thinks Mi-mi actually did but doesn’t say so. “Is she nearby?”

“Yeah.” Pikachu shrugs. “But she’s mad right now. You should stay here. She and the champion human don’t get along well. It’s better if they don’t see each other.”

Bam wonders why. He knows Rachel went on a journey, but she struggled to get any badges. She was good with pokemon catching though, she said. Maybe as a champion Khun-ssi was better? “I won’t tell,” he promises.

Pikachu chaas in approval and Bam scratches her behind the ears. “Great. I’ll let her know you’re okay. Or, try to. You know how these humans are. Have fun being a trainer, Bam!”

And pikachu is gone and Bam is…

Bam feels a bit heavy inside. He can’t pin as to why.

“Bam?” Khun is back, with a full cart. How did he get all of that in a few minutes? “Come on, let’s pay. Did you get underwear?”

Bam gets up from his seat, wiping yellow hairs from his pants. “Yes, I’m fine!”

This time, on his way out, he feels a pair of eyes watching him. He turns his head to see Rachel, her mouth closed in a tight line.

Bam’s stomach roils with fear. If Khun notices, he says nothing.

He hopes he doesn’t.

They sit at a table, eating lunch, and Khun showing Bam how everything works, pokedex and sleeping materials and toiletries and all. Bam listens intently, trying to ignore the nausea in his throat and the way his skin is crawling.

Then, like the burns of the healing liquid and the bangs on tank walls, Mewtwo screams through his brain.

“WHERE ARE YOU?”

Bam jumps and nearly falls out of his chair. Khun drops his food as Bam curls up under the booth, pain lacing through his skull to his skin, to his toes.

“Bam?!”

Debris falls over his skin, stone clatters, blood burns and he hears Rachel say, as if through glass —

“He left you, mewtwo.” She’s not smiling. He can see her standing in Cerulean Cave, where she had been in the mall only an hour before. “He left you and me and mew for some human.”

“LIES. YOU’RE A HUMAN. YOU ALL LIE. YOU ALWAYS LIE.”

“I saw it myself. We can get him back.”

Mewtwo screams again and Bam fights through pain and sorrow and hurt and loneliness and replies through the spinning room that everything is fine. He is fine. He doesn’t have to be scared.

But the room spins so fast and he shuts his eyes and it’s not the cold tanks but the cold tile bites and he just wants it to stop.

It stops, but when Bam opens his eyes, the Cerulean Cave has collapsed. Rachel is missing.

“Bam,” Khun says with relief. “How are you feeling?”

“It hurts,” he croaks. He doesn’t know where he is.

“I bet. You almost took a fall. What happened?”

Bam hesitates through cotton. If Khun is a champion, maybe it’ll be okay. “Mewtwo…” he rasps.

Khun’s entire expression closes off. “How do you know about Mewtwo?”

Bam winces and says, “He’s my brother.”

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