It was a burden, having such great psychic potential, but with training one could achieve greatness and Samantha the Psychic Pokemon trainer was busy honing her craft this afternoon, as was her usual routine.

  The room was small, containing only a cushion for her to sit on while her Pokemon remained standing as was his preference. The room was devoid of other distractions, with silenced walls and floors. All there was was her and her partner, reaching into the future, searching for truths that had yet to pass into the behind with the greatest gift of all. The third eye.

  Samantha knew her corporeal eyes would be looking into the Xatu’s own as they worked together, but her eyes were not focused on that, not at anything in the present tense. Her gaze was starting in the past and then looking to the future. It was an exercise in broadening her ability to wield her great power.

  The first step was finished with ease. Samantha had long ago mastered pushing past the quagmire of uncertainty that always met her when she opened her senses. Now she was immersed in the real work of a truthseeker.

  This was the peak of psychic potential, the ability to reach through the cosmos like a hand through water. But it wasn’t just a hand. It was a hand with eyes that could see through the waters of the temporal realm and allow the hand to grasp the threads of fate, to parse them, separate them and both criticise the past and decide the future.

  The flows of the currents of time were great and vast as always, but with her experience she was easily able to power through the uncertainty of what might be to seek the certainty of what had been.

  There had been potential Gym challengers arriving at Mossdeep in the last twenty four hours.

  The first was a boy, around thirteen years old and wearing a cowboy hat for some reason. He had registered at the Pokemon Centre and had plans to head straight to the Gym and challenge at the fourth badge level.

  Samantha already knew this. Fritz and his Girafarig had defeated the boy and his two Pokemon easily before they saw a chance to ask about an opportunity to battle the currently absent prodigies. His skills had been good for his level, but he had not been prepared to match himself against the strongest psychics in the region.

  Tomorrow he was going to head out into the ocean on his Wailmer, hoping to find new Pokemon to catch to battle the Gym with. Samantha wished him the best of luck.

  The second visitor was already familiar with Mossdeep. She had planned to challenge the Gym but had already changed her mind. Instead she was heading on her way to Sootopolis and had already booked a flight to the other island. Samantha saw no reason to inquire further.

  The second trainer was a red-haired woman who had slept the night in the Pokemon Centre and then in the morning swam north towards frozen Shoal Cave that promised nothing but a chilling doom for the unprepared.

  Chilling like ice cream, something you ate for dessert. Samantha really should’ve had that banana earlier so she didn’t think about food now. Isabel Crabtree was going to have toast tomorrow morning, but she would only have half a slice because baby Kyle wou-

  Samantha pushed past the dross, forcing herself to ignore her own annoyance at the mental lapse. focusing back on the three new arrivals.

  The woman was currently going to be too slow to reach Shoal Cave while the tide was safe. She would plan to camp out outside during the night and enter tomorrow. But foolishly the trainer would find herself caught by the tide, trapped and requiring assistance before she caught her death on nearby rocks.

  Frustratingly in Samantha’s opinion, but fortunately for the swimmer, the future was not set in stone. Or at least, she had never honed her psychic talent to definitively prove such. Nobody ever had. Potential outcomes for the woman who would find herself in danger soon shot past as Samantha probed the woman’s future further.

  But then Samantha’s worries were abated.

  Regardless of the exact sequence of events no further assistance would be required for it would be found from a nearby saviour.

  He was a stunningly handsome silver fox with long hair dressed in the traditional style. He was an older man, his grey chest hair peeking out from his traditional robes as he quickly undressed and dived into the frigid waters. Samantha focused on the moment before he dived into the ocean after the woman and Samantha saw he was well muscled and toned from years of physical training.

  After saving the trainer who would be unhurt, or at least only have a few scratches for her troubles. The man would take her to his small hut on one of the small islands that dotted around the Hoenn ocean, he was some sort of hermit it seemed. Seeing she was shivering in the cold of the night air, he would wrap an arm around her and after a short conversation the woman would take the opportunity to lean forwards an-

  She felt a brush of irritation from her Pokemon and Samantha quickly diverted the gaze of her third eye from exactly what the older man and the swimmer woman would likely wind up doing together this very evening.

  Samantha pushed back a sense of apology to her partner. She really didn’t mean to get distracted. Ever since it’d started many years ago, that whole puberty thing had only ever caused problems. Samantha truly wished such feelings would go away and not bother her but such was the unfortunate result of the human condition.

  Not for the first time she wished she had been born a Xatu. Her partner remained ever so stoic and in control of himself. It was truly admirable.

  But this was no time for dallying. Samantha shuffled in place on her cushion, trying to recentre herself and she took a deep breath, preparing to start again.

  She was distracted, that was all. So Samantha pushed past her frustration at failing the first exercise. It was pointless to try and look at the same events twice over, at least if you were training. But fortunately there were other exercises she could do too.

  Instead of looking at those who had already arrived, Samantha instead looked to those who would arrive in the coming twenty four hours.

  As she began, Samantha knew already she would be encountering a certain kind of hurdle.

  Either deliberately or simply through their presence, other psychics could often make things more difficult to see the future if they were caught up in those events you were looking for.

  In this case Tate and Liza would be returning soon too from their trip to the Fortree Gym and so as Samantha searched for soon to be arrivals their psychic presence caught her in its wake, making it harder to search for any others who fit within the category of what she was searching for.

  But Samantha wouldn’t let that stop her. She focused, concentrating and driving forward past the blockage presented by the twins to find anyone else who would be soon arriving to the island.

  A trio of scientists would arrive tomorrow. Something to do with that horrible, noisy rocket they were building. Some fishermen would be returning to the shore after a week away. Annoying, she knew that would be happening already. Samantha pushed further.

  Then something interesting suddenly appeared to her senses, but for a moment. It was like a shadow blocking the sunlight, passing over you for just a second before the light returned. It seemed to come in the wake of Tate and Liza, only noticeable for how odd it was.

  “Strange,” Samantha said in the real world, frowning and catching her Pokemon’s attention.

  She’d never experienced something like that before. Maybe Kathleen? The fortune teller was inclined to searching for the future much like Samantha was, but she was more steeped in the occult side of things than true psychic mastery. For that reason Kathleen struck Samantha’s senses slightly differently than some other people she knew.

  Determined to find out what this strange thing she had sensed was, Samantha dove back into her meditative state, searching for the shadow.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  With years of experience behind her, Samantha found it.

  It was a shadow, lit by lavender light. A long coat fluttering behind them. There was a shadow hiding behind their shoulder, two spiky horns coming out from its head.

  A pair of wide eyes were suddenly looking at her, looking at her!

  A great big hand reached out towards her and in her sudden panic, Samantha frantically pulled back out of her meditation, closing her third eye before whatever that was had had the chance to catch her.

  Xatu was there, looking at her stoically, but she could feel the concern coming off him. He probed her mind and Samantha immediately allowed him access to her memories. It was clear that after a few seconds neither of them had ever experienced anything like this before.

  “Something is coming,” Samantha stated the obvious. Her meditation had been focused on searching for things coming to Mossdeep within the next day. It might already be about to arrive.

  She got up quickly. Whoever that person was, they were strange and potentially dangerous too. Well, she hoped it was a person, because otherwise she’d potentially discovered a new, terrifying species of Pokemon.

  She withdrew Xatu and then headed off in search of help.

  ***

  They’d been sent out on regular patrols around their base regularly since they’d come to Hoenn. Yasu and Takashi had decided to use the opportunity to practice their ninja skills. Stealing from travellers was something they’d done a couple of times as part of their training back in Orre so they were pretty used to it.

  Usually what happened was that they’d use the special poison to knock out and erase their mark’s short term memories. Then they’d have a few minutes to go through their stuff, take whatever looked particularly valuable or interesting and wouldn’t be missed and whoever they’d robbed would wake up an hour or so later confused, but none the wiser.

  Even if they noticed what’d been taken, whoever they’d robben wouldn’t really be able to prove anything or have any idea about what’d happened and it wasn’t like they really hurt anyone. It was the perfect crime, like their dad had talked about once or twice.

  It’d always been fine. Well, except that lady with the spooky hat they’d gone for in Route 123. When her shadow started moving despite her being unconscious, reaching for theirs, the two boys had very smartly chosen to run away.

  Then last night everything went very wrong.

  Before they normally used an aerosol spray to get someone with the poison, but it could be injected too. With the storm going on they’d agreed to do that instead. The plan had been to get themselves into a position where they could get both the guy and his Pokemon and it’d almost worked. But then Takashi had seen the Pokemon looking at him funny, like it’d figured out it was all a trick and he’d overreacted.

  Yasu pursed his lips. The guy they’d gone after had been startlingly quick. Otherwise Takashi probably might’ve hurt him pretty badly. The Pokemon had been faster than they’d anticipated too. For a second Yasu had thought his brother might’ve been seriously hurt by that pink attack from the Gardevoir.

  After that, they had tried to run. It’d been a miracle they’d escaped that crazy trainer and his Gardevoir. Literally everything that could’ve gone wrong had gone wrong and it was probably only because of the storm and the environment with all the tall grass that they’d been able to escape after another lucky turn of events with the Fortree Gym Leader showing up and helping provide a distraction.

  Yasu reached up to his head again, where a small chunk of his normally spiky hair was now missing. If that Dazzling Gleam had been just a tiny bit lower, or he’d been just a tiny bit taller, then…

  He shuddered. Coming so close to death like that was sobering in the extreme.

  He glanced at his brother. Takashi was a bit shorter than him. He’d not lost any hair but he still had something to be feeling nervous about and he looked around warily for their grandmother.

  Takashi thought they were going to be in trouble, and Yasu agreed with him. He’d seen the condition of his brother’s Nindachi after having to parry those homing stars. There was no way they’d be able to hide that from their grandma and she was going to be so cross because there was no way she’d be able to get it replaced easily right now.

  It turned out they had something more to worry about though. Their grandmother was waiting for them as they came in through the doorway.

  That was not something that had happened before and Yasu was immediately on edge.

  She was slender, which was only accentuated by her being dressed in her dark purple shinobi shozoku and the wrappings around her waist, forearms and calves, which was all he’d ever seen her wear. Her grey hair was tied into a bun, a pair of stilettos holding it in place. Her exposed face was all that revealed her age.

  “You’re back,” Violet Iga said. She stepped forward and Yasu had to resist the urge to step backwards as her gaze focused on him. Then it went to Takashi.

  “H-hello Sensei,” Yasu said formally, smartly deciding to refer to her as her title right now, rather than calling her grandmother as they would be allowed to normally. He immediately went into a respectful kneeling position. Takashi followed suit a moment later.

  Yasu unconsciously swallowed, hearing the sound loud in his ears as the old woman remained standing perfectly still, not moving a muscle.

  “How did your patrol go?” their grandmother asked, like she didn’t already know. “Were there any problems?”

  She knew. She had to know what had happened somehow.

  The silence as the two ninjas in training stood there in position was just as damning as anything else they could have said.

  “I was surprised to hear an hour ago from my contacts in the government. They have received messages saying that ninjas have been reported on Route 119.”

  Yasu flinched. He’d known she would find out, but not so soon.

  At this rate they were going to be punished for a long time.

  Why had he thought they’d not get in trouble for doing this? It seemed so stupid in hindsight.

  There was another pregnant silence as their teacher looked over them.

  “Show me what you brought back,” she said, gesturing at the stolen bag on Takashi’s back.

  He untied it and offered it to the woman and their grandmother looked through it, pulling out some compact storage equipment, including the tent Yasu had seen before.

  She kept a hold of the bag, looking back at them and she sighed.

  “Your blades,” she demanded of them both.

  Yasu unsheathed his sword. The metal having been properly oiled and his own training made the motion almost silent. He held it up flat against his palms.

  Takashi then unsheathed his own sword.

  A scraping metal sounding out as opposed to the smooth normally silent sound of one of them withdrawing their weapon. Its condition was immediately apparent just from that.

  Several dents lined the side of the weapon, leaving it uneven and jagged at the blade’s edge. There were scratches along it too. The weapon that could handle many of their Ninjask’s Fury Cutters with ease had taken a beating that Yasu didn’t know how to repair and didn’t know if it was even possible to repair.

  Both of them stayed there kneeling, holding their blades for inspection. These were weapons they had been given as part of their training. Given to them by their grandmother.

  Violet Iga inspected the damaged weapon silently for several seconds before slowly reaching out and taking it.

  “Without this sword, you would have been crippled at the barest minimum,” she stated with absolute certainty. “So consider this a lesson.”

  As quick as a flash Takashi fell down, their grandmother having struck him on the head with the pommel of the weapon.

  “The police have been informed of the presence of ninjas in Hoenn, effectively revealing us before I was ready to declare our existence. The League may now see us as enemies, rather than potential allies to be cultivated.”

  Oh, was Yasu’s thought as Takashi returned to his previous position.

  “We thought you knew,” he burst out, but immediately realised that that wasn’t the sort of thing he should’ve been saying right now. His grandmother’s eyes pierced him like a pair of senbon.

  He had never seen his grandmother this coldly angry before, Yasu thought silently. They’d really messed up big time.

  “Lao, Lung!” The woman barked.

  Immediately the other two siblings appeared, falling onto the ground from above where they had been watching in the shadows. They were a year older and younger than Yasu and Takashi respectively but in many ways were nearly identical to their middle siblings with the same red hair and similar faces. There was no questioning that they were all brothers.

  “Both of you head west to the ashen path. Find any suitable locations such as this one for us to form a new hidden base. We shall follow you both in the coming days.”

  “Yes sensei!” The two other kids said before darting away.

  Yasu and Takashi remained kneeling before their grandmother and sensei. She exhaled softly.

  “Just what am I going to do with you both?”