Dawn was beginning to grow frustrated.

Their game of ‘who would win in a battle’ had started out in good fun, but things had gone downhill the instant Barry resorted to Palmer. The only opponent he’d given half a second’s thought had been Cynthia, and even then, he’d concluded that the Tower Tycoon would be the victor. While he afforded each of his father’s Pokemon consideration, Dawn couldn’t help but notice that Heatran came up an annoying amount.

Admittedly, she had resorted to dirty tactics. She’d pulled her Arc Phone out, under the guise of checking [trainer]’s registered team, and searched ‘legendary pokemon counter trainers’.

“Sure,” She said, thinking fast and skimming the article, “But your dad doesn’t have to rely on Heatran or anything, right?” She scrambled, honing in on a list of banned pokemon, “Like, Unova’s battle facility doesn’t even allow legendaries. That wouldn’t be a problem for him, would it?”

“What?” He scoffed, “The Subway Bosses? They’re s’posed to be nasty, but there’s no way. He’d smoke ‘em even without Heatran!”

“Okay, but it says here Boss Emmet uses a couple of electric types. That’d be a real problem for Milotic and Dragonite.”

“One of ‘em’s a bug. Anything it can throw at Dragonite, Dragonite could take, and then sweep it. And I mean. Rhyperior.”

“Oh-hoho,” / “Well how about a Durant? Apparently they’re steel-bug– […]”

[they get distracted, after they get back around to Poketalk, Barry picks up the phone]

[…]

“It’d be cool to challenge Boss Emmet someday, though.” He said, absently scrolling down the article on her behalf. “He still couldn’t beat my dad, but he and his bro were real tough.”

“Did they retire or something?”

Barry blew out a gusty sigh, “Nah. It sucks, but Boss Ingo went missing, like, years ago. Never did find him, so multi battles are off the table for good.” “Apparently Boss Emmet really upped the ante after he took single matches on, though, so it could still be worth it.”

Belatedly, he processed the look on Dawn’s face.

“What?”

“Give me that,” She said, grabbing for her phone.

He wrinkled his nose, but handed it over, “I mean, it’s your phone anyway. I think.”

Dawn wasn’t listening; she scanned the page again, and there it was. In her haste to counter Heatran, she’d blown right past it: ‘Bosses Ingo and Emmet, the facility heads of Nimbasa City’s Battle Subway.’ Flicking her fingers down, she zoomed back to the top, verifying how old the article was, and then back down, looking for something– anything– else. When it turned to italics and tried to lead her to half a dozen related articles, she dismissed it entirely and went back to her search tab.

The first image result hurt.

That was the pose. That was the pose. It was mirrored by a smiling man in white, and there was a pokemon. A fire type.

She set the phone down, hard, and braced one hand against the table, the other creeping up to her face.

“You, uh… you good?” Asked Barry, tone suggesting he was well aware of the answer.

“I know where the missing Subway Boss is.” She said through her fingers, voice pitching into a hysterical whine, “And I left him there.”