The teacher — same one from the trust ritual — adjusted his glasses and said, “I’d apologize for how dry this is, but frankly, dry means you’re still alive.”
A few groans echoed from the second row.
He ignored them and tapped the cover. “This is the Foundational License Handbook. It outlines what you can and cannot legally do as a handler, and what protections Pokémon have — from you, from each other, and sometimes, from themselves.”
A raised hand — someone from the year below.
“Is this for trainers or Rangers?”
“Both,” the teacher said. “Also for farmhands, postal carriers, healers, scouts, and certified breeders. If you work with Pokémon, even semi-domestic ones, this is your lifeline. And theirs.”
He turned and chalked a few words onto the board in wide strokes:
“Consent. Containment. Communication.”
“These are the three principles every handler license is built on.”
Ayra leaned back slightly. She knew the basics. Everyone did. But this was the first time it felt real — like it wasn’t just theory.
The teacher opened the binder and flipped past the first few sections.
“I won’t recite the whole thing. You’ll get access to the digital and printed versions later today. What I will tell you is this: most of the time, these rules feel obvious... right up until they don’t.”
A soft shuffle of notebooks.
“For example,” he continued, “you can’t handle a Gardevoir without a Class-3 license and emotional screening. Same with Slugma. Not because it’s hard to train them — but because the risk when something goes wrong is off the chart.”
A few heads turned.
Ayra heard Kaela mutter, “So we’re scared of lava and mind readers now?”
The teacher raised a brow. “We’re respectful of consequences. Big difference.”
He scanned the room. “Who here already knows what Pokémon they want to partner with?”
Hands went up — hesitant, some eager. Kaela’s shot up first.
Ayra didn’t raise hers. She hadn’t decided if that was a hope or a secret.
The teacher nodded slowly. “Then think about this — not if you can handle them. Think about what they’ll need you to prove first.”
He closed the binder.
“We’ll cover tiers, banned species, and trainer penalties in your reading. But for now, remember this: licensing isn’t just law. It’s a language. And the first word in it is permission.”
He dismissed them early.
The hallway buzzed with low conversation as the class filtered out, papers in hand and heads full of license codes they hadn’t asked for. Most gathered around the water pump near the shade wall, where a small bench ringed a broadleaf tree. Ayra sat beside Tomas, elbows on her knees, while Kaela leaned against the post with her arms crossed.
“Class-3 for a Gardevoir?” Kaela scoffed. “What are they afraid of — that it’ll teleport me into a wall if I make it sad?”
Tomas arched an eyebrow. “That already happened.”
Kaela blinked.
“Three years ago,” Tomas went on. “In Lavaridge. Ranger cadet misread a Gardevoir’s posture during a relocation attempt. It panicked. Bounced him into a cliff wall. Cracked four ribs. Pokémon vanished. Wasn’t even registered to him — belonged to his cousin.”
“Not the Gardevoir’s fault,” Ayra said quietly.
“No,” Tomas agreed. “But the trainer still wound up in traction.”
Another student joined them — Nal, a year older, one of the fastest runners in the school’s field courses.
“I heard about the Fallarbor disaster,” he said. “The Slugma evolution.”
Kaela made a face. “That was ages ago.”
“Doesn’t mean it stopped mattering,” Nal said. “No one knew how unstable they were back then. Some handler was trying to contain one for study — it evolved unexpectedly, turned into a Magcargo right in the middle of town.”
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“I thought that was just a training accident.”
“It wasn’t,” Tomas said. “It vented heat into a closed alley and flash-melted the stone. People closest to the blast — gone. Nothing left but bone ash. Others a block away got third-degree burns.”
“Didn’t some Pokémon die too?” asked someone from behind the bench.
“Yeah,” Nal said quietly. “Two that were out with their handlers. Couldn’t outrun the heat radius.”
“Fallarbor’s entire west quarter had to be rebuilt,” Tomas added. “There’s still stone that glows faint in the right weather. They banned Magcargo outright after that. Slugma’s on the highest handler tier — needs thermal clearance just to be transported.”
Kaela didn’t argue. Even she knew that one wasn’t just a scare story.
The conversation shifted again. Someone brought up the Cerulean incident — a Gyarados panic during transit that took down five boats and hospitalized over a dozen. Others recalled the Froslass shelter freeze in Sinnoh’s north ranges, where kids triggered an evolution too early and sealed themselves inside their own tent until help came.
Kaela scoffed again, softer now. “Still feels like they’re punishing everyone for the edge cases.”
“Edge cases still leave bodies,” Tomas said. “That’s the point.”
Ayra watched the shadow of the broadleaf shift with the sun. She thought of Nere — Eran’s Grovyle. How she waited for rhythm, not command.
Permission isn’t fear. It’s understanding.
It’s knowing when not to ask.
She didn’t speak, but she stayed long after the others moved on.
Sometimes trust wasn’t a lesson.
It was the pause you left when the noise stopped.
By the time the class reassembled inside, the room felt different.
Quieter. Warmer with the afternoon sun, but less distracted. A few students still exchanged side whispers, but most eyes followed the teacher as he re-entered with a much thinner folder in hand — not the handbook this time, but a small stack of printed sheets.
“You’ve heard some of the big ones,” he said without preamble. “Fallarbor. Cerulean. Kalos docks. You’ll read more in the handbook if you’re curious. The point isn’t fear. It’s responsibility.”
He placed the stack on his desk and didn’t distribute them yet.
“We issue licenses to protect people, yes. But also to protect Pokémon. To keep them from being asked things they shouldn’t have to do. From being treated like extensions of our intent.”
Ayra straightened in her seat. A quiet ripple passed through the back row.
The teacher tapped the desk lightly.
“Many of you will earn licenses in the next year or two. Some of you won’t. A few of you may never use what’s in that binder. But all of you need to understand this: A license is not a reward. It’s a contract.”
He paused. Let the words settle.
“A contract that says: ‘I know this living being beside me is not a weapon. It’s not a tool. And if it chooses to walk with me, I accept the weight of what that means.’”
No one interrupted.
The silence wasn’t tense — just full. Like everyone had momentarily remembered how far fire could reach. How loud a scream might echo on an empty trail.
Ayra didn’t feel afraid. She felt... aware.
Not all strength is the kind you carry.
Some of it is what you refuse to put down.
The bell rang late. No one moved right away.
When she left the room, Ayra slipped one of the extra reading sheets into her satchel without saying a word.
Ayra was halfway across the square, a few steps from the Coop’s shade wall, when the tension hit her chest before her ears caught up.
A sharp rustle. The low, strained screech of a Lotad pushed to its limit. Then a barking snarl that unmistakably belonged to a Zigzagoon — followed by the telltale thud of overturned baskets.
She moved with the others toward the edge of the commotion, where a growing crowd had already started to ring the alley behind Harven’s shop. Two figures circled each other among scattered berry crates — a large Lotad with its shell flared wide and its feet digging into the soil, and a Zigzagoon low to the ground, hackles raised, eyes wild with defensive panic.
They weren’t new to town. Ayra recognized both — a roaming Lotad that foraged near the outer irrigation ditches, and the Zigzagoon that sometimes nested under the Maren’s clinic decking. Semi-wild. Mostly tolerated. Usually harmless.
But something had pushed them too close. And neither was backing down.
The crowd murmured. One child started to step forward — then froze.
A voice cut through the air: sharp, calm, authoritative.
“Hold your ground. Do not intervene.”
Ayra turned. Three uniformed Rangers moved into view from the far corner. One younger, quick-striding, already prepping a restraint band. One older — Ayra recognized her immediately: Irel.
She hadn’t seen her in months.
Still carried herself like every step mattered.
Still didn’t raise her voice unless she meant to be followed.
“Standard zone protocol,” Irel said, eyes on the Lotad. “Cut angles, contain sightlines. Wait for disengage point.”
The third Ranger, slightly behind the others, gave a silent signal — fingers to shoulder, flick outward.
Ayra saw the younger one respond in rhythm, moving slowly to the side. The crowd instinctively backed up a step.
The Zigzagoon lunged. The Lotad hissed and spat a watery burst — a Mist defense, but poorly aimed. It caught the younger Ranger on the arm, but she didn’t flinch.
“Tag left,” Irel said, short and low.
The second Ranger moved, raised a compact field device, and triggered a tone — soft but sharp. The Zigzagoon hesitated, its momentum broken by the sound.
The Lotad flinched. The first Ranger moved in, hand open and low, and clipped a marker near its leg. A brief pulse — identification, not capture. It startled the Pokémon just enough to snap them out of their standoff.
Zigzagoon broke contact and darted under a low fence. Lotad spun once in place, disoriented, then padded heavily into the tall grass beside the shop.
“Both marked for observation,” Irel said. “Report filed by evening.”
The crowd began to disperse.
Ayra stayed where she was, eyes tracking the Rangers as they regrouped. The youngest one — she now recognized him — was Eran’s friend. He made a quick circle of the area, checking for bystanders, then nodded back at Irel.
She hadn’t spoken to him in weeks.
Irel didn’t speak to anyone in the crowd. Just made a final scan of the alley, exchanged a short set of hand signals with her team, and moved on.
Ayra’s heart slowed back to normal.
She hadn't realized how hard it was beating.
The rest of the afternoon passed like a held breath.
Licenses. Danger. Trust.
Words that sounded heavy in a binder felt sharper now.
She didn’t want to hold that kind of control just to feel powerful.
But she did want to understand it — how to hold it without tipping the scale.