I threw myself into my bed. For a few minutes all I could do was scream into my pillow, burying my recriminations instead of facing them. It couldn't last. My voice grew hoarse, and my howls gave way to wracking sobs that left my pillow soaked in tears, spit, and mucus. There was ugly crying, and then there was whatever I was doing right this moment.

  I’d been improving, before today. I hadn’t cried in weeks. Hadn’t locked myself in my room or consumed myself in self-pity. I’d been getting better.

  And today I’d thrown it all away. All of that progress, just– gone. It felt like it was the day, no, the hour after I’d first heard the news. Incompatible. Synergy Sickness. Incapable. Defective. They’d called me into the principal’s office to tell me the news. Called my parents in and told them ahead of time so they’d be there to help cushion the blow. It hadn’t helped. Hadn’t protected me from the distorted unreality of my circumstances. Me, one in a million.

  The technology had been stabilizing for years. Decades of improvements had driven the percentage of incompatible people lower and lower. There hadn’t been a case in years. And now, me. Another person with a condition thought aged out. Nothing to do but curse genetics.

  Even though my parents could both synergize just fine. Maybe the technology would improve again, in a few years. Too late for me to break into the circuit. I would never be a Battle Trainer.

  I had been hollow, after they told me, and on the ride home. My parents had retained a taxi so I didn’t have to walk. It took an hour for reality to set in. Long enough for me to stumble through our apartment, into my room. Long enough to see the paraphernalia, the years of collectibles, the accumulation of worthless garbage filling my room. Long enough for me to process the truth.

  And then I had exploded.

  It felt like that all over again. I’d been deluding myself. There was no future. Nothing worth pursuing. Everything I could do, everything my life could be, was only a pale shade compared to what might have been.

  I didn’t want to be alone, but my knights weren’t with me. Even at my lowest, I couldn’t put myself over my partners, so they were convalescing at a Pokémon Center for the first time, and I wouldn’t be able to pick them up until the morning. I had to face the blank future all on my own.

  I wiped my face and my eyes. I felt… drained. Emptied out. Blearily, I stumbled from my bed to the washroom. I ran the faucet until the water was too hot to touch, and then soaked a towel in the scorching liquid. Gently at first, and then with increasing urgency I scrubbed at my face, clearing the evidence of my distress away. After a minute of tearing at my skin, the only evidence left that I’d been bawling were my puffy eyes.

  I spent a few moments inspecting the girl in the mirror. In many ways, she looked just like I remembered. The same brown eyes, the same dark skin, the same hazel pixie cut, now a bit too long. But something was missing. I didn’t remember her face looking so beaten down.

  Once, her eyes had a spark in them. Ambition. Now they just looked weary. Empty. I didn’t want to look, but I also couldn’t tear my face away from the mirror. My hands found their way to the light switch and hastily flicked it off, plunging me into darkness. It was broken only by a thin strip of sunlight that filtered through the window in the living room and crept through the crack under the bathroom door.

  I’m not sure how long I stood there, in the shadows, but it was long enough that the front door opened and my mom called "I'm home!” from the entryway. I wallowed for a few more moments, until I heard her call again, “Sweetie, I brought dinner!”

  There were a few moments where I wracked my mind, desperate to come up with any excuse to delay emerging. Nothing struck me, so I was forced to push open the bathroom door and walk to the kitchen. Mom was there, emptying a paper bag onto the kitchen table. The smiling scientist on the label identified the meal as Dr. Marrow’s Lab-Grown Wings. It was a popular fast-food brand, and in-spite of myself, I could feel the smell wafting off the meal elicit a growl from my stomach.

  “Sounds like someone’s hungry,” Mom said with a laugh. “C’mon, let’s eat. Dad’s going to be a while.”

  Dinner was mostly quiet, though not for lack of trying. Mom caught onto my mood pretty quickly, though, and mostly left me to eat in peace.

  I wasn’t sure if I appreciated that, or resented that she didn’t try harder to cheer me up. I was still trying to work out my feelings as we cleaned up, but I wasn’t really able to come to any conclusions. I drifted away. Returning to my room while my Mom settled onto the couch with a stack of mail, using a pair of scissors to tear it open and sort the junk from the useful stuff.

  I was laying face-down on my bed, trying mostly in vain to figure out how I was going to face my knights tomorrow, when I heard knocking on my door. Mom opened it without waiting for me to ask her in, an invasion I would have been more up-in-arms about if I had the energy. I didn’t even have time to muster up the proper indignation before she threw a red envelope onto the foot of the bed, interrupting my brewing complaint. “For you sweetie,” she told me, “looks like it’s from the ranger station.”

  The door shut again, leaving me alone with the crimson stationary. Wearily, I rotated in my bed, splaying out my feet where my head should be and reaching an arm for the mail. Sure enough, the glossy, red surface of the envelope was emblazoned with the ranger emblem, a blue circle with the center taken out and two spines erupting on either side. Bemused, I turned the object over and over in my hands, looking for further evidence of its purpose. It was addressed to me, and the return was a PO box somewhere in the city.

  Left with no other recourse, I tore open the letter, spilling its glossy contents onto the bed. To my utter confusion, the envelope contained what appeared to be a pair of coupons, one for half off six Poké Balls and another for a buy-one-get-one-free deal on my next three potion purchases. While one part of my brain fruitlessly mulled over the distinction between those two offers, the rest of me was inspecting the remainder of the envelope’s contents.

  It looked like the crimson stationary also contained, of all things, a set of temporary tattoos of the aforementioned ranger emblem, along with a sticker sheet, with various ranger-related slogans, logos, and Pokémon decorating it. The final piece of the ensemble was a letter printed on surprisingly nice parchment paper. The thick stationary was almost like card-stock, and had the ranger emblem embossed on the front.

  When I unfolded it, I found it covered in typewritten script, the telltale smudges and imperfection differentiating it from a printed form letter. Now thoroughly confused, I read through the message.

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  Dear Ms. Fione Alvida,

  I hope this missive finds you well. It has recently come to my attention that you have all but single-handedly been solving Techne City's Wiglett epidemic. I hope that this letter and the other enclosed contents serve as some measure of my appreciation for your efforts.

  My subordinates tell me that you are consistently respectful, diligent, and that you share a close bond with your partner, all impressive reflections on your character as a person and as a trainer.

  While I understand that you are currently filled with boundless prospects for your future endeavors, I hope that you will take a moment to consider a path you may not have before. The Ferrum Ranger Service is always in need of talented young trainers who are willing to work to protect our cities and the wonderful nature surrounding them. Our commitment-free junior program offers a competitive alternative to the standard Battle Break, with a 200,000 Poké Gold stipend per month, discounts at most official Ferrum League Vendors, and opportunities for advancement after secondary school.

  Junior rangers are expected to work twenty hours a week, shadowing full rangers and operating independently as mandated. On the job training is standard with additional curriculum available for the real go-getters. Additionally, access to ranger training facilities and resources are provided as part of signing on.

  I know that you are in a time of momentous decisions, and I hope that you will give due consideration to the FRS when you are considering your future. If you do find yourself interested, call us at the below number to schedule an interview with the Techne City Ranger Service.

  Thank you for your attention,

  Captain Oreck Scotts

  Ferrum Ranger Service

  The letter concluded with a phone number with a Techne City area-code. I read the whole thing over once. And then again, trying to figure out just what to make of its contents. It was a thank-you letter, bundled together with– a job offer? Taken altogether, the personalized message, the ranger-themed bric-à-brac, the bizarre coupons, the conclusion seemed inescapable. I was being head-hunted! The twelve-year old version of some company exec trying to poach me away from another organization.

  The notion was confusing at first, but the more I thought about it, the more sense it made. How many candidates for their junior program could the rangers really find? Kids on their Battle Break, but who didn’t want to compete in the junior circuit. Kids who had a partner and proven experience battling and capturing wild Pokémon, but no affiliation with a dojo, gym, or competitive league. Frankly, it made so much sense that I was a bit ashamed I hadn’t thought of it myself.

  But did I want to be a ranger? It certainly hadn’t been on my radar before. It wasn’t really the same as being a Battle Trainer. In fact, the only similarity I could think of was that they both dealt with Pokémon. It was an option though. A reason for my knights and I to train, to get stronger, and a way to spend my Battle Break productively. In some ways, it felt like a ray of light shone into a dark room. Just the lifeline I’d been waiting for, pining for.

  In others, it felt like giving up. Like acknowledging that I’d never achieve my real goal, and all I could do was settle for the first thing that fell into my lap. My thoughts turned to my knights, currently in recovery from a mistake of my making. What was the best for them? I knew they liked battling, enjoyed testing themselves against other Pokémon, but could I confidently say that it was their favorite thing? What made them happiest?

  Memories came to me, of my knights working with unmatched determination to complete any task given, but equally coming up with ways to test me whenever they were unsupervised. They thrived when they had a goal, or an assignment. Something to work towards, or overcome. It’d only taken me a couple of weeks to realize that break days were when my knights would invariably get into mischief.

  I wasn’t positive they’d all equally take to the rigors of being a ranger’s Pokémon, but then again, could I confidently say that I knew what those duties even involved? Everyone knew that rangers patrolled the roads between cities, keeping them clear and unbothered by wild Pokémon. I also remembered hearing once in class that they represented the interests of wild Pokémon populations when necessary.

  What else did they do, though? I found myself unsure, at a bit of a loss, so I turned to the FerreNet. It took a few minutes for the sluggish, blocky PC tucked into the one corner of the living room to boot up, but a dreadful whirring and a series of electronic beeps told me that the device was powering on. Eventually, the thing fully came awake, and the monitor flickered to life, showing me a generic, landscape image of Techne city. I started up a browser, and navigated to PoryPedia, typing my query into the provided bar. “What do rangers do?” seemed like a good way to get started. We were pretty close to peak hours, right now, as everyone got home, so my question would take some time to answer. The Porygon in the Neos Data Archive could only process requests so quickly, and while they were bringing new ones online all the time, the rate of new Porygon weren’t keeping up with the proliferation of personal computers.

  I left the search engine running while I layed down on the couch. I found myself staring up at the ceiling, content to brood, and it took a quarter of an hour before I got a cheerful, affirmative chirp from the PC’s tinny speakers. The noise roused me from my fugue, and I got off the couch to check the results of my search request. Sure enough, the faithful Porygon had dug up a couple dozen articles and a few links for my perusal. I glanced through them, noting that the Ferrum Ranger Service had an official website, before settling on an article to start my investigation.

  I perused the various offerings for around a few hours, before my exhaustion and the late hour started catching up with me. I stifled a yawn, and shut down the PC, content for now with my research. As I prepared for bed, I organized what I’d learned. Apparently, the Ferrum Ranger Service was founded in 867, seventy-eight years ago, as a part of a still-ongoing treaty with Fiore. The other nation sent a cadre of rangers to Ferrum with a mandate to train successive generations in the practice.

  There was a schism in the organization forty years ago, mirrored by a similar cultural battle in wider Ferrum, when Poké Balls started gaining traction in the region. Progressive elements were willing to adopt the new technology, while conservatives and traditionalists decried them as cruel and inhumane. The matter was settled when Ferrum’s largest trading partners mandated the use of Poké Balls, forcing the region to comply.

  There were some interesting articles about how the practices of rangers from Fiore found unexpected support from the Plantsa tribes, and I filed that tidbit away as a good thing to ask my Grandparents about when we visited them for Golem’s Banquet.

  Nowadays, the Ferrum Ranger Service worked to protect humans and Pokémon from one another, which made sense, but I was surprised by the sheer breadth of the duties that this entailed. As I had thought, patrolling the unsettled areas between settlements was listed among their responsibility, but so was rehabilitating Pokémon that wanted to return to the wild, apprehending poachers and hunters, capturing rampaging wild Pokémon, regulating Ferrum’s ecosystem, and investigating disturbances out away from the cities and off the roads.

  It certainly didn’t seem boring, if nothing else. I wasn’t sure if it was something I could yet envision becoming a career, but the same could be said of everything except becoming a Battle Trainer, so that was hardly a mark against the option. In the end, the simple fact of the matter was that I needed to do something. I couldn’t spend the next three years languishing, nor expect it of my knights.

  As I slipped into my bed, I decided to broach it to them as an option in the morning, when I picked them up from the Pokémon Center. I also resolved to give them an apology, for putting them in danger unnecessarily.

  On a different night, having a path in front of me would have made it easier than usual to fall asleep, but the lack of low breaths and tiny feet shuffling about my room made the familiar space feel stifling. It was amazing how off-putting it was, to go to bed without my knights after months of having them at my side. Rest was fitful, and slow to arrive.