“Well, we know what the problem is.” Auntie Bell (or in this context Nurse Joy) told me.

  The five of us- her, me, and Maushold- were in one of the center’s treatment rooms, in front of a hospital monitor.

  Various lines flowed across the screen, stacked closely atop one another in an ongoing stream of data from which I could pluck little information.

  Nurse Joy gestured rather unhelpfully at one of the indicators, tracing its path along the screen. “Their RE is practically off the chart,” she explained, while pointing at another line that I realized was supposed to represent some sort of baseline.

  “Are, Eee?” I asked, sounding out the unfamiliar term.

  “Reproductive Energy,” Nurse Joy explained. “It's the power Pokémon harness to create eggs. Normally, we measure it so we can check for fertility levels, but I’ve never seen readings this high, not even compared to other Maushold scans we’ve taken.”

  “So, what are we supposed to do?” I asked her.

  Nurse Joy turned to face me, her expression drawn. “I’m– not sure, really,” she admitted. “We don’t treat a lot of Maushold, and I’ve never seen a Pokémon building up too much RE before. Let me reach out to some family, and get back to you, okay?”

  “How long will that take?” I asked, looking down at my clearly discomforted partner. “It’s steadily been getting worse this whole week.”

  “Just a couple of hours,” the nurse reassured me, “at most. Probably shorter. Can you hang around the center for that long?”

  “Yeah, no problem.”

  -

  A calm wind blew through the Pokémon Center’s courtyard, ruffling my hair and the fur of my newest partners.

  The four of us were sitting on a bench, idly watching other people and their partners walk by.

  “So it turns out something is wrong,” I gently accused Maushold, causing the three of them to stiffen. “Why didn’t you talk to me about this earlier?”

  I wasn’t fully able to keep the hurt out of my tone. Making sure my partners were healthy and safe was an important responsibility of mine. Probably my most important responsibility. I wasn’t going to be happy with anyone who got in the way of that. Not even, as in this case, said partners themselves.

  “Did you think I wouldn’t take you seriously?” I asked them, turning to look fully at the trio. “Or that I’d be upset that something was wrong?”

  Maushold remained stubbornly silent in the face of my displeasure, staring fixedly in front of themselves, away from me.

  I was– actually sort of mad. “Do you really think so little of me? I told you, we’re family now, didn’t I?”

  That got a reaction. A twitch, so small, I almost didn’t notice it, at the word family.

  “Unless– you guys don’t think so,” the anger partially drained from me, clammy uncertainty rushing in to fill its place. “I guess it’s only been a few weeks. Maybe I was getting ahead of myself.”

  I looked down at the ground in front of us, and awkward minutes passed. I started to say something a couple of times, but found myself trailing off, unable to find the right words.

  Eventually, a Chansey came and found us, letting us know that we had an answer to our problem.

  -

  “So I reached out to a relative in Paldea,” Nurse Joy (Auntie Bell still) didn’t mince words, “and she offered to help us understand what’s going on.”

  We were seated in a back room once again, this time with one of the Pokémon center’s video-call devices. Every center always had at least one of the things in the waiting room, I guess so you could reach out to someone in case of an emergency, but I’d never actually seen someone using one before.

  Maybe that had something to do with the grainy video quality and patchy connection, both partially obscuring the familiar, pink-haired head pressed close to the screen. “Hello, can you hear me?” The voice coming through the device was crackly and synthetic, yet achingly familiar. Even if this foreign nurse Joy spoke her Galarian with a rather pronounced accent.

  “We can hear you, Maria. Can you hear me?”

  “Sort of Bellinda. Hold on, let me just— how about now?”

  “We can still hear you. We can– wait, no I think we lost you. Hold on.”

  And so on.

  Eventually, however, the devices (or maybe the connection between them) stabilized enough that we could have a conversation.

  “Yep, family-of-three, just like I thought,” Maria Joy nodded, as she looked at my newest partners through the screen. “That’s usually how it is, in these cases.”

  “What’s going on, Nurse Joy? Auntie Bell said that they have too much RE build up?”

  “Hey, I’m still on duty, Missy.” Auntie Bell said at the same time as Maria exclaimed, “Oh, you’re family.”

  “Sorry, Nurse Joy,” I reflexively apologized to Auntie Bell, before turning to address Maria. “Technically, yes. I don’t suppose you know Ella? She’s my mom.”

  Maria shook her head. “I haven’t had the pleasure, but it’s always nice to assist family. To answer your earlier question though, Bellinda has the right of it. They’ve built up too much reproductive energy, and now it’s taxing them to hold it all in.“

  The part of me keeping a watch on my partners noted how the minute twitching I’d noticed earlier was continuing, seemingly triggered any time any of us said ‘family.’ Part of me set to work digging into trying to figure out what was up with that while the bulk of my attention remained on the conversation at hand. “Why is this happening? Is there something wrong?.”

  “Not exactly,” Maria hedged. “This is actually very common among family-of-three Maushold. You see, a family-of-four is a very stable formation, and RE buildup is pretty rare. Families-of-three, unfortunately, are much less inherently stable, and their bodies will often generate excess RE in an attempt to correct the imbalance. It’s a form of homeostasis.

  “Homeostasis?” I sounded out the unfamiliar word.

  “The process by which organisms regulate their internal environment, in spite of changes to their external environment,” The foreign Joy rattled off. “Things like sweating to cool yourself off, or your heart rate increasing to get more oxygen to the rest of your body.”

  “So this is a normal process then? Will it go away eventually?”

  I got another so-so gesture in response. “It could. It all depends. Sometimes, in these cases, the energy eventually drains on its own. Other times, it coalesces into a proto-Maus that usually breaks apart before it can form fully. Sometimes, it produces a full-on new part of the family, so that a family-of-three becomes a family-of-four. And sometimes, the energy keeps building until it’s uncontrollable, and it begins erupting out of the Maushold at random and violent intervals.”

  I blinked a few times, nonplussed. “That’s, uh, quite the range of outcomes. Is there something we can do to deal with this? Or at least make the negative possibilities less likely?”

  “I was just getting to that,” Maria held up a finger. “Option one is to try to induce the creation of a proto-maus, generally by replicating wild nesting behaviors in a more controlled environment. Unfortunately, that usually means getting help from at least two other Maushold or Tandemaus, if not more.”

  “That’s probably not going to be an option,” Auntie Bell opined from beside me. “Like I was telling you Maria, there aren’t very many trained Tandemaus in the city, and wild populations are generally quite far away.”

  “Well that probably precludes option two, which is mostly the same, except it involves adopting another Maus or generating one. Option two is pretty unfavorable anyway, since the odds of success aren’t very high.”

  “Is there an option three?” I asked, fighting the urge to drum my fingers.

  “There is, but it can be expensive, or time consuming,” the woman replied, obviously suppressing a grimace. “Sometimes, it’s both. And that might be especially true for you out in Ferrum.”

  “It might still be worth a try,” I reasoned. “It’s not like knowing about it can hurt us.”

  She seemed to think for a few moments, before shrugging. “Fair enough. The third option is to train your Maushold to expend their RE through moves.”

  I blinked a couple of times. “They can do that? That sounds like it should be the first option.”

  “You’d think so, but it’s not quite that simple,” the nurse shook her head. “You see, most Maushold only naturally learn to use RE to fuel their most powerful move, an attack called Population Bomb. I’ve only ever heard of elite-level trained ones using the move, the very best of the best.”

  I looked down at my newest partners. My mind flashed momentarily to Drake’s dragons, to the scintillating orange comets they’d unleashed from their maws. Attacks fit to level mountaintops.

  We’d get there. Someday. I had to tell myself that. But I could also acknowledge that we were a ways away yet, and we needed a far more immediate solution.

  “You said ‘naturally learn.’ Can they be taught to use other moves that use RE?” I asked the foreign Joy.

  “An insightful question,” the pink-haired woman acknowledged. “Certain moves can be fueled through the use of RE, instead of TE, but teaching the conversion between the two is the time-consuming variant. The expensive variant is to use a device called a Technical Machine to have them learn Substitute, since that move naturally uses Reproductive Energy for its effects.” She sighed. “Unfortunately, TMs are still pretty rare outside of a few regions. We barely get any here in Paldea right now. I’m sure it's the same in Ferrum, right?”

  “I’ve never heard of them before.” Auntie Bell acknowledged, shaking her head, “so I don’t think it’s going to be an option in this case, unless we import one.”

  “Like I said, they’re expensive,” Maria complained, “especially if you’re paying an import tax on them. That's why I didn’t want to say anything. It felt cruel to dangle an impossible option in front of you.”

  Some part of me was following the conversation, but the bulk of my attention was trawling through my memory, trying to recall the labels on a set of discs inside a cylindrical case. “Actually, I think you might have given us something actionable,” I reassured the foreign Joy as I distinctly recalled, nestled near the back of the box, a trio of pale devices, labeled with the text, SBTE.

  I stood up from the seat planted in front of the video device. “Thanks Nurse Joy, I’ve got to go check something! I really appreciate your help on this.”

  Now it was Maria’s turn to be nonplussed. “Of course dear. Happy I was able to assist,” she said, confusion writ on her face.

  I made for the door, calling over my shoulder, “Thank you too Auntie Bell, I’ll come back if this doesn’t work!”

  “That’s Nurse Joy while I’m on duty!” I heard faintly as the door leading to the waiting room shut behind me.

  -

  “I was right!” I couldn’t contain my excitement as I pried the silvery disc free of its case. Sure enough, the text SBTE was printed on it in small letters, along with a code, TM50.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  SBTE could mean something else, but a quick net search on my jailbroken Macross Gear found Silph Co.’s TM catalog, listing their third series of machines. Sure enough, TM50 was listed as Substitute.

  Suspicions confirmed, I navigated to the end of the virtual page, which offered quick instructions on the use of the device I was currently holding.

  Apparently, they were used via Poké Ball. You just had to open the device, put the disc inside, and then shut it. After a few moments, you would recall your partner, and the instruction imprinted on the TM would teach them the move. Which only left one part to this equation.

  The partner in question. “Okay, so here’s how it works,” I ran through the procedure with them, reading verbatim from the company’s website. “Apparently, the TM will repeatedly demonstrate the energy profile necessary to use the move, allowing you to gain at least a rudimentary understanding of how to use it. Does that make sense?”

  I got three shakes of the head, which was honestly fair.

  “Yeah, I don’t really get it either. But Drake gave us three of these things, so if it doesn’t work the first time, we can try again. Sounds good?”

  The three of them looked at each, clearly communicating with their eyes and body language, before one of the bigger ones turned to me. They held up their hand, and rubbed their digits over one another in a gesture that I quickly recognized.

  “Money?” I asked. A quick head shake. “Payment?” Another negative. “Expensive?” That one got a nod.

  “You guys don’t need to worry about that. It’s not like I paid for these,” I reassured them, even while some part of me wondered where the heck they’d even learned that gesture to begin with. “Better to use them than just leave them to collect dust, right?”

  Slowly, gradually, I got nods of acknowledgement from the trio.

  “Great, now just give me a second to plug this in.”

  Turns out, utilizing the TM was pretty intuitive. For me at least. I could only hope that the same would be true for my partners, as they got recalled to their ball.

  According to the website, actually using the device could take anywhere from five minutes to an hour, so I spent some time cataloging the rest of the TMs, writing their full names on pieces of tape and pasting them to the inside of the case.

  All told, Drake had gifted me twelve TMs. I pointedly didn’t think about the cost of the array, and I especially didn’t work to convert the foreign currency the Silph catalog featured to Ferrum Poké Gold.

  Like I told Maushold, we already had them. Nothing good now was going to come from worrying about the price.

  As it turns out, he’d gifted me three copies of both Substitute and Protect, the most of any of the single-use machines, and fully accounting for half of what he’d sent. Along with them were three moves I didn’t know off the top of my head, those being Knock Off, Round, and Earth Power. The last three devices were for moves I did recognize, and all three had me raising my eyebrows. Ice Beam, Earthquake, and Stone Edge.

  The intent behind them was mostly obvious, after I’d looked up the three attacks I didn’t recognize. They were supposed to give us coverage for our weaknesses. Stone Edge and Knock Off would let my knights deal with Flying-types and Psychic-types respectively, and Ice Beam and Earthquake would help Mana fight against Grass-types and Electric-types.

  Earth Power was probably a hedge in case Mana couldn’t learn Earthquake (which seemed like a pretty safe bet to me), and Round was a move that increased in power when used right after another, sort of like Maushold’s Echoed Voice, but it would ramp up faster. If my knights could learn it, they might be able to take advantage of the move’s properties without requiring another Pokémon to use it first.

  The only problem was, there was no guarantee my partners would be compatible with the moves in question. And messing it up was costly, since the device would still get expended.

  In the end though, there was no point in hoarding them. I’d try to use them all, once I thought my partners were ready for them.

  And until then, I’d have to keep them safe.

  Going through the TMs made me feel guilty about the rest of the mostly-untouched packages sequestered in our hall closet. And it brought to mind the deadline I’d set for myself.

  I’d requested that Rhea the Dragapult return in a month to pick up my response to Drake, if I had one.

  So far, I hadn’t touched pen to paper about it. I hadn’t opened up the devices he’d sent, either. Both the local Pokégear and the Devon PokéNav sat fresh in their boxes.

  I didn’t have a good reason for the delay, I just– hadn’t needed them yet.

  At least the vitamins were getting put to good use.

  I still had a week left anyway. I’d worry about it later.

  -

  Maushold took almost a full hour in their ball to learn the new move, but when they were released, they were able to project a rudimentary Substitute.

  The trio of constructs didn’t move, and it couldn’t stand up to any kind of hit, but all three of them seemed noticeably more relaxed after using the move, like some sort of pressure had been released.

  Unfortunately, they tensed up all over again when I told them that we needed to talk.

  I released my knights and Mana for the conversation, but sent all of the former except Tristan to go drill outside, to make sure that Maushold didn’t feel like there were a bunch of us ganging up on them.

  The six of us sat around the kitchen table. Well, Mana floated in her portable bowl, but the idea was the same. “First of all, I’m glad that things worked out. You guys are feeling better now, right?”

  It took a bit, but eventually, Maushold nodded, acknowledging my words.

  “Good. That’s the most important thing,” I emphasized. “More than any of what I’m about to say, I’m glad you guys are okay.” I let the silence after my proclamation drag out for a few seconds, before sucking in a deep breath. “That being said, why wouldn’t you talk to me about what was wrong?”

  Perhaps unsurprisingly, Masuhold remained silent. Worse, they refused to meet my eyes, staring all in the same direction, awkwardly away from Mana, Tristan, and I.

  “I’m not mad,” I lied. “I just– I thought that we were starting to get closer with each other, and now I’m not sure anymore.”

  More disquieted silence.

  “Just– do you have anything? Anything to say? We can’t understand each other if you won’t talk to me! Please!” Towards the end, my words started coming out in a rush, and to my utter mortification, my voice cracked on the word ‘please,’ making it come out in a hoarse squeak that had me wincing afterwards.

  And yet still, silence from my newest partner.

  This time, the one to break the quiet wasn’t me.

  “Falinks. Falin links Fa!” Tristan all but shouted. Where I was trying to keep the anger out of my tone, Tristan felt no such compunction, practically growling his words out. My littlest knight was, somehow, uncharacteristically, mad. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever actually seen him this upset before, and while it was sort of gratifying that he was so upset for my sake, it wasn’t the energy I wanted for this conversation.

  Maybe he had the right idea though, because that, finally, got a reaction out of Maushold.

  Their scathing retort interrupted my attempt to get Tristan to simmer down, my words drowned out by a trio of squeaking voices.

  Where Tristan’s intentions were pretty clear to me, he’d asked rather heatedly that Maushold respect my requests for communication, I couldn’t quite grasp the exact meaning of my newest partner’s words. Still, body language and tone gave me some insight, and they were clearly not happy with my littlest knight’s rebuke.

  Tristan shot back immediately, which only got another disdainful set of squeaks from Maushold.

  I’m not sure what they said next, but whatever it was, it made Tristan bristle, his shields clattering with repressed emotion.

  “Hey!” I shouted, instinctively coming to the little Falinks’ defense. I’m not sure exactly what you said, but that was uncalled for!”

  Now it was Maushold’s turn to bristle, all three of them huddling together and baring their massive incisors. One of the bigger ones chirped something that sounded scathing, and I got the edges of their intent. ‘See, you are against us.’

  I held up a steadying hand, even as I felt irritation and frustration roiling in my gut. “I’m not trying to come down in his favor, I just want to make sure we’re having a civil conversation,” I didn’t shout.

  Maushold replied with something that very much carried the feeling of, “Nuh uh,” but somehow in even less words, which got another angry chirrup from Tristan.

  “Look, I just want to talk about this, okay!” I said, my voice maybe just a little bit too loud, just to make sure that I could be heard over everyone else.

  Another half-comprehensible refutation came from Maushold, then squeaking just a bit louder now, and then another angry cry from Tristan, his own volume increasing.

  Obviously, I had to say my part louder as well, and I may have been approaching a shout at this point. “Why can’t you believe in us? What have we done that you won’t talk to us? Won’t explain what’s wrong?!”

  I saw Maushold flinch back, and didn’t hear Tristan backing me up. With a start, I realized I was standing, my hands clenched into fists. My chair had clattered to the ground behind me, and I could hear another Pokémon making cries of annoyance from the upstairs apartment, disturbed by my shouts.

  A slow, painful silence crept over us, broken after a half-minute by gentle, hiccuping sobs.

  We all turned to the source of the noise, only to see Mana, fat globules of bioluminescent fluid, dripping from her eyes. “Washi, washi!” The anguish in her squeaking cry made the rush of shame already filling me ten times worse.

  Somehow, her distraught expression seemed to have an almost physical weight, the pressure of it draining the frustration and anger out of me.

  I turned around, and righted my chair, before sitting back down in it heavily. I rubbed my eyes with the palm of my hands, and when I spoke next, my voice was hoarse. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have yelled like that. I didn’t mean to scare anyone.”

  Mana’s hiccuping sobs petered off, and Maushold didn’t scamper away, so I hadn’t completely botched everything beyond recovery, thank Arceus.

  “I just– I want to make sure you’re safe, and healthy, and when something was so obviously wrong, and I didn’t know what to do to fix it, it really freaked me out,” I tried to explain. “But that’s not an excuse for losing my cool. I’m sorry you guys.”

  After a few moments, Tristan spoke as well, offering his own quiet apology.

  After another half-minute of silence, Maushold mumbled something that sounded like an acceptance, and I felt a knot of tension unwind in me. There’d been a step taken back today, but not irreparably.

  The littlest one scurried over to Mana, saying something quietly to her, before the three of them regrouped, and asked if they could be alone for a bit.

  I didn’t want to let them go, but pushing too hard is what had gotten us here, so I nodded. “Of course, take all the time you need.”

  The trio scampered off, leaving Tristan, Mana, and I at the table.

  Tristan made a frustrated noise in the back of his throat, before telling me that he was going to go join his brothers. He hopped off the tabletop, tromping over to the front door. I heard the heavy thud as he jumped up to reach the handle, unlatching the door and then shutting it quietly behind him.

  Now, there were just the two of us. Mana floated over to me, and spoke in quiet tones, explaining what the littlest Maus had told her at the end.

  After some back and forth, she got me to understand that the words she’d been asked to convey were something along the lines of, ‘It’s not you, it’s us.’

  -

  I had to puzzle over that, all the rest of the day, some part of me working to put the pieces together into something that made sense. They’d been acting odd for a while now, really ever since they’d started obviously feeling unwell.

  They were so reluctant to admit that something was wrong, I’d been practically forced to bring them to the Pokémon Center. Add on to that their odd reactions to the word ‘family,’ and their concern with the price of the TM I’d given to them.

  The pieces were there, I knew it. I just needed to put it together.

  The opportunity finally came when I was tossing and turning in bed.

  Unable to fall asleep, my disquieted mind caught something at the edges of my perception, soft voices coming from the living room, undercut by the faintest hint of static.

  Carefully, as quietly as I could, I left my room, slipping through the half-open door into the hallway. Flickering lights confirmed my suspicions that the tv was on, and I crept down the corridor, peering out of the hallway into the dimly-lit room beyond.

  My eyes scanned the room, and I could make out, just barely, a trio of fuzzy shapes sitting on the coffee table in front of the television set, all pulled together in a huddle, watching the program flashing across the screen.

  Some sort of late-night drama, unless I missed my guess. The sort of sordid tale of betrayal and family tension that made me feel something uncomfortable in my stomach. Stories that said all step-mothers have to hate their husband’s children, and all partners secretly resent their trainers and their relationships.

  I almost stamped into the room, to ask why they were watching this crap, but fortunately flashing memories of Mana’s tearful mein stopped me from causing another disaster. Instead, I crept back to my room, given another piece of the puzzle.

  Why, of all things to watch at three AM, had my newest partners chosen that sort of show?

  Presumably, because something about it resonated with them.

  As I slipped back into bed, I felt like a complete idiot.

  ‘It wasn’t us, it was them.’

  It wasn’t that we were untrustworthy, it was that Maushold wasn’t feeling ready to trust. Not after they’d been so recently betrayed by their former family. Sent, barely more than two weeks ago, on a doomed mission. Tricked into acting as a distraction so the main group could free another set of mauses and escape together.

  The group of Tandemaus and Maushold they’d known and trusted all their life, expending them as a resource. I felt like an absolute heel.

  Of course they weren’t ready to throw their trust in just yet. Of course they were worried about being seen as weak, or a liability, or expensive.

  Of course stories of betrayal and family strife appealed to them.

  The only question left was, what should I do with my newfound understanding?

  Confront them? No, that sounded like a disaster in the making.

  Reassure them? So many empty words, compared to the weight of their prior experience.

  In the end, I realized the only real option was to prove my intentions with my actions. Maybe Maushold wasn't ready to trust us yet, but that was okay. Someday, perhaps, they will. And until then, we would just have to show that we were worth that investiture.

  Tomorrow, I’d offer my newest partners another apology, and perhaps, everything could start again from there.