Pokemon: Criminal Life

Chapter 228: 228-The Oceanic Museum

Sieg recalled Krokorok, held the ball up, and ran the scanner.

The Pokédex processed for a moment and returned its entry.

Krokorok. Desert Crocodile Pokémon. Evolved form of Sandile. Groups of several gather together. The membrane covering its eyes protects it from sandstorm damage.

Type: Ground / Dark. Gender: Male. Level: 30. Height: 1.3 m. Weight: 45 kg. Ability: Overconfident. Assessment: Outstanding aptitude, exceptional physical conditioning, superior energy control.

Moves: Sand Attack, Leer, Swagger, Bite, Rage, Torment, Sand Tomb, Pursuit, Crunch, Dig, Mud Slap, Embargo, Scary Face, Sandstorm, Hone Claws, Stone Edge, Endure, Stomping Tantrum, Rock Blast, Hidden Power Dragon. Egg moves: Mean Look, Focus Energy, Fire Fang, Thunder Fang.

The height and weight figures were both well above the species average, which he had expected. The conditioning work had compounded over months, and evolution had a way of amplifying whatever a Pokémon had built rather than resetting it. What he had not fully anticipated was the Sandstorm entry in the move list. Weather moves were notoriously difficult to develop, demanding a level of energy control that most Pokémon at this stage had not yet reached. The Earth Stone serum Sieg had administered earlier in the year had apparently done exactly what it was supposed to do: the foundation it laid for energy management had carried directly into the evolution, and the result was a newly evolved Krokorok that had arrived at the move as a natural consequence of the transition rather than something it would need to work toward.

He released Krokorok and regarded it for a moment.

"Don't train today," he said. "Your body just changed fundamentally. Give it time to catch up with that."

Krokorok stood in the morning light and tested the new stance, which was visibly not yet something it had committed to muscle memory. The shift from four points of contact to two reorganized everything about how weight was distributed and how momentum transferred, and Krokorok was discovering this in real time with the expression of something that was too proud to look uncertain but was not yet fully certain.

It was not a unique situation. Snivy went from bipedal movement to no limbs at all when it evolved into Serperior, which put temporary awkwardness in a different category entirely. Krokorok's adjustment was modest by comparison, and it would resolve on its own schedule. Sieg was content to let it.

He folded the Pokédex, packed camp, and started back toward Slateport.

The road in was a League-maintained track with checkpoint posts at intervals, staffed by officers who ran brief identity checks on the trainers coming and going from the forest and surrounding terrain. Sieg moved through each one without incident. The other trainers on the road gave him the kind of attention that registered and then looked away, the specific social response to someone whose team read at a level that made interaction feel like a calculation worth avoiding.

He did not mind.

Back at the Pokémon Center, he took a shower, changed, and sent the travel clothes down to the room service laundry. His time was worth more than the cost of having it done. He lay on the bed and looked at the ceiling, and thought about the two days in the forest.

Zero Absol sightings. One Whiscash captured. One Braviary engagement that had produced injuries he could have done without. One Krokorok evolution was ahead of schedule in some respects and slightly behind in others. Net result: acceptable, not what he had gone out there for.

He had already spent enough mental energy being irritated at the intelligence trader. The leads had been real in the sense that the locations were plausible. They had not been real in the sense that actually finding Absol required more than plausible locations and two days of systematic searching. That was a reasonable lesson to draw, and he was done drawing it.

He opened the Briney file.

He had read it enough times that going through it again was more indexing than learning. The profile was thorough. The man's daily patterns, his businesses, his history, his public activities. The multiple prior Rocket operatives who had failed this assignment had presumably read comparable material and still come back empty. Which meant the difficulty was not informational. It was in the approach.

His eye stopped at the last entry, the same place it had stopped every other time.

Briney has posted a public bounty on the League platform, seeking skilled trainers experienced in open-water navigation for an expedition to a designated site.

He sat up.

The entry point was not the Marine Museum's public face, was not Briney's professional reputation, was not any of the routes that three experienced operatives had apparently attempted and abandoned. It was this. A man who had spent his life at sea, posting a public call for trainers with sea credentials, would expect the people who responded to that call to be exactly what they claimed to be. Sieg had two Elite-rank Water-types and a third in Honchkrow that had demonstrated its aerial capability in conditions that mattered. He had logged real open-water combat hours on the voyage to Slateport. He was not fabricating a background. He was presenting a genuine one.

He did not sit on the decision. He went downstairs, found the mission terminal in the Pokémon Center lobby, and accepted the posting.

The confirmation came back within a minute.

Please present yourself at the Marine Museum office at nine o'clock tomorrow morning.

The inscription above the entrance read: The ocean is the source of all life on earth.

Sieg read it on the way through the doors and noted it with the mild detachment of someone who found the sentiment accurate but did not need it confirmed by stonework.

The Oceanic Museum of Slateport was a serious institution. The ground floor alone contained enough material to occupy an attentive visitor for most of a day: water and sediment samples from dozens of distinct ocean environments, scale models of research and historical vessels, educational panels covering everything from plate tectonics to deep-water ecology. The kind of place that took its subject matter with the weight it deserved.

Sieg had an appointment on the second floor. He found the reception desk, produced the acceptance confirmation on his Pokédex, and was taken up.

The office was functional rather than decorative. A working desk with papers on it, shelving along two walls with folders and reference texts, and a window that faced toward the harbor. The man standing to greet him was somewhere in his fifties, dark-complexioned, brown-haired, wearing a jacket that fit correctly over the build of someone who had spent decades working outdoors rather than behind glass. The expression on his face was the one that people develop when they have made a professional practice of assessing things quickly and not being wrong about it.

The assessment he ran on Sieg when he came through the door shifted from open to reserved in the space of about two seconds.

"You're here for the posting." Not a question. The tone of someone confirming a fact they were not certain they liked yet.

"That's right." Sieg kept his posture easy, his voice level. "My name is Sieg. I'm an Elite-rank trainer. Water specialist primarily." He placed his Pokédex on the desk and let the trainer record speak for itself.

Briney looked at the record for longer than a brief glance required. His expression did not fully resolve in either direction.

"How old are you?"

"Seventeen."

The pause that followed was the kind that had a specific shape to it. Sieg had encountered it before and knew what it was: a person recalibrating what they expected against what the record was telling them, and not finding the two easy to reconcile.

"The posting asked for experience with open water," Briney said. "Combat experience, specifically. Not tournament results."

"I know what it asked for." Sieg met his eyes without hurry. "I was aboard the Chansey three days ago when it came under attack from a wild group in mid-transit. Gyarados, Sub-Elite Four level. I have two Water-types in my primary roster who were active participants in that engagement. If you want specifics, I can provide them. The incident was covered in the Slateport press if you want an independent source."

Briney was quiet for a moment.

Then he sat down, and his manner changed just enough to indicate that the threshold had been reached.

"The reason I put out this posting," he said, "is that I intend to reach a particular location in open water, and the ocean between here and there is not straightforward. I need trainers who can handle what we might encounter. Not trainers who think they can handle it."

He looked at Sieg across the desk with the directness of someone who had spent a long time in environments where imprecision had physical consequences.

"Tell me about your team."