Sherlock is outside, sitting by the shore of the lake. He glances back at her and waves.

It's dark, so she doesn't see him right away, but the combination of motion and the firelight from Fireflower's mane and tail render his sillhouette visible. "Hi, whichever-one-of-you-I-haven't-yet-learned-to-distinguish," she says cheerfully. "Gonna go for a gallop around the lakeshore, see what there is to see, you want to hop on Watson and join us?"

"Happily," he calls back. A moment later, he's climbing onto the Zebstrika's back.

"Since you had him in your pocket instead of having to go in and borrow him I'm betting you're Sherlock," says Bella, nudging Fireflower into a trot.

"You are correct," says Sherlock, following.

"Are there more obvious tells or should I just ask-and-guess till I know you well enough or I leave and it's moot?"

"We also dress and speak differently."

"You do have a bit of an - is it an Unova accent? How'd you pick that up?"

"I spend a lot of time with the house computer."

"The house computer speaks with one."

"Ooh, it talks. Neat. What does it talk about? Is that better than a text display for some things?"

Their Pokémon's hooves are making a fair amount of noise against the lakeshore. She repeats herself, speaking up a bit.

"Yes," he says finally. "For some things, it is better than a text display."

"Cool," says Bella. "I like computers, but I travel too much to bother having one of my own even in my dad's house, I just have the Pokétch and my Pokémon Center PC accounts."

"I honestly don't know what I'd do without the tower's computer."

"What do you do with it? I believe you mentioned reading books and hunting wild 'mon and playing the violin, I don't see how the computer factors in."

"...It's difficult to explain."

"I haven't got anything else particularly intellectually stimulating to do while we circuit the lake, and it's a big lake," Ace points out, eyes scanning their surroundings for odd lights or uncharacteristic motion in the grass or the water.

"I suppose not."

"But we can talk about something else, if you want, do you follow tournaments or anything standard-small-talk-y like that?"

"Among the things the computer does is offer us regular reports on such goings-on. So yes."

Bella turns out to have many and nuanced opinions on tournaments. She personally knows her guild's entrant to this year's Golden Apricorn Games, and doesn't like him very much, although she admits that he's the sort of person to have a shot at winning and give half the prize money to the guild after, so it's all right.

Sherlock does not have such insight into the personalities of the entrants, but he listens raptly to Bella's analysis.

"Yes, I like them," says Sherlock, scratching behind Watson's ears.

"I'm usually not up this early. Not such a morning person."

"I am not always up this early, but when I am, I appreciate it."

"I wish I didn't need to sleep. I probably still would sometimes, but not daily."

"Why?"

"Why would I rather not have to sleep or why would I sometimes do it anyway?"

"Both."

"I don't like needing to do things - especially things that have no useful products, which sleep wouldn't if it weren't required for me to be properly awake the rest of the time. I'd do it anyway because I like dreams, and because sometimes there's nothing interesting going on and the next interesting thing will happen some time in the future and I could sleep through those occasions."

"Your logic is sound."

"It usually is!"

Sherlock grins.

And there's the tower again. "Nothing," sighs Bella. She slides off Fireflower's back, pats her neck, and returns her. "I'm going to check out the lake itself, d'you want to join me for that too or have you got other stuff planned?"

"I can think of no better way to occupy my morning," he says cheerfully.

"What've you got that swims? It'd be a bit cramped for us to both sit on Zag." She sits down and pulls off her boots, because Zag's not even big enough for her to keep her feet dry.

Sherlock leaves his shoes on the shoreline and hops aboard Irene, who undulates after the other pair.

Bella leads in a wide spiraling pattern, from the outer edge of the lake to the center. "Which of your Pokémon was your first? I can't see importing a Kanto traditional starter for one twin and not the other, but maybe you traded yours or were already attached to something by the time you started?"

"I started with Ditto."

"Childhood friend? Zag used to be my mom's, she caught him when I was eight, but he liked me better and she gave him to me." Bella scratches behind the pokey fur on Zag's cheeks and gets a contented "linlinlin" in reply.

"You could say that, yes."

"Strategizing must be really tricky with a Ditto. Your opponent knows everything you can do and vice versa, the only question is which one's tougher underneath. And luck."

"I like the challenge."

"Yours can hold shape, I guess, some of them lose it as soon as what they're copying is out of sight, that gave you an advantage when Juu was down for the count and I sent Branch," says Bella. And then, smugly, "Just not an insurmountable one."

"Mycroft's very good," he says cheerfully. "I dream of teaching him to remember things he has previously copied."

"That would also be an interesting research project. Any avenues of investigation?"

"Nothing has yet sprung to mind."

"How smart is Mycroft? 'Mon vary a lot - I don't just mean the legendaries some of whom are supposed to be able to talk, I mean even just from one - one Bidoof to another, some of 'em are dumb as rocks and can barely learn to interpret commands about which attack to use and some of 'em are very bright. Zag's my smartest."

"I have been blessed with unusually astute Pokemon," he says, patting Irene's neck. She arches it smugly.

"All of 'em? Lucky. Branch isn't even bright enough to react when I talk about how smart he isn't in front of him. The rest are somewhere in the middle."

"You is the low end of the scale for me, and it's still smarter than most of the Porygon."

"How did it come by that name, anyway? Did you name it when you were three or something?"

"Tony did, actually. Dummy is the first Porygon successfully created; he's been naming them similarly ever since. Half the flock rhymes with Bob."

"Rhymes with - oh dear. I suppose it is rather a lot of all one species to have to come up with names for," giggles Bella.

"In my humble opinion," says Sherlock, "that is no excuse for naming an innocent Pokemon 'Flob'."

This sends her into paroxysms of giggles. Zag thinks it's funny too.

He grins.

"Do the feral ones even answer to their nicknames?"

"The Bob contingent is chancy, but some of the rest of them do."

"Interesting. My mom used to try to tame wild 'mon with nothing but food and cooing and it didn't really work even insofar as getting them not to attack her if she got too close; I certainly wouldn't have expected any of them to answer to a name. I guess the Porygon are different from random Starly or whatever."

"They've known him all their lives. Enough exposure to Tony can make even answering to 'Flob' seem logical."

"For certain values of 'logical', anyway."

"I see you have not yet had enough exposure to Tony."

"Apparently not. I hope he's not going to start calling me anything that rhymes with Bob."

"You never know. I don't believe we have a 'Blob' yet."

"I will not answer to 'Blob'. It's not happening."

"As you say, then."

They carry on exploring the lake. By the time they're done, Bella's perfunctory breakfast is history; she turns Zag around from the lake center and heads back for the tower. "Nothing. Why is Uxie supposedly here? What made people say that? Even if it's completely mythical that it and Mesprit and Azelf live at the lakes and someone made it up because there's three lakes and three lake guardians, all the sources agree on Uxie being at this one, which I wouldn't expect if it were someone's fabrication. I guess I'll have to check the lake bottom after all. I wonder who'll come with me, if I can even find anyone who's up for it and has the right move in their party."

"Irene could learn it if she evolved," he mentions.

"Is she likely to do it soon, do you think? Would you make the move swap? You met me yesterday, if you weren't already planning on it it'd be a big deal."

"I was thinking of changing her lineup when she does, which should be any minute now, and it's among my candidates."

"Huh. Could have a rematch," suggests Bella, getting off her Linoone at the shore and opening her backpack to find some lunch. "I can lead with something not-Zag, although there is of course no question of letting you win, cooperative rolling over to boost somebody else's 'mon is just mean to one's own."

"I would love a rematch."

"One-to-one? Since it's all about Irene?" Bella asks. She produces a packet of soup mix, which a combination of Zag's helpful and carefully-aimed Surf and Fireflower's toasty tail render soupily edible inside of a few minutes. "I can toss Juu or Dusk or Branch and it'll be a fair fight typewise." Well, half Branch's attacks won't hardly dent Irene, but the other half will.

"That sounds lovely."

Bella drinks her soup pretty quick, returns Fireflower whence she came, and produces Dusk's Pokéball. "Now, or do you want lunch too?"

"Air," chirps Irene, flicking her tail. Sherlock laughs.

Irene slithers in front of Sherlock and bobs her head up and down. "Dragonair," she says firmly.

"Yes indeed," says Sherlock, scratching Irene behind her headwings.

"Do you already have an HM for Dive lying around?" asks Bella.

"Oh, of course we do."

"How is that an of course? I have to use the guild ones, those things are expensive," laughs Bella.

"One parent invented Porygon and the other made groundbreaking advancements in the field of Move Machines. We have plenty of money to go around and we're swimming in perfectly functional prototypes."

"...Sweet," comments Bella. "I'd hit you up for access, but the guild does have a full set of the HMs and I got the last TM I decided I needed a few months ago."

He grins. "It's very convenient, yes."

"My parents are kind of dull. My father is a cop and my mother teaches kindergarten and when school lets out for a break she tears around all over the country pretending to be a full-time trainer. She's not a very good trainer, but she's enthusiastic and her 'mon love her."

"Well, that's adorable," says Sherlock.

"She does have a bit of the adorable about her, yes. Charlie - my dad - has standard-issue cop 'mon, doesn't catch or recreationally battle. He's not that into it, doesn't name 'em or anything, but the standard-issues are all about the job anyway so that works."

"What are the standard-issue cop 'mon?"

"There's a few species that adapt well to the work. Charlie in particular has a Noctowl and a Machoke, pretty regionally popular evolutionary trees - I think down south Growlithe are a big deal for police."

"Oddly enough, I'd heard of the Growlithe, but not the others."

"I guess you haven't tangled with cops much," laughs Bella.

"Were you previously getting the impression that I had?" he laughs.

"Not a bit. How'd you know about the Growlithe, do you watch those terrible Kanto procedural shows?"

"I have seen one," he says. "I gave up fairly early, but the Growlithe did make an impression."

"They're by far the most charismatic characters. Charlie doesn't watch them, but Renée likes those shows now and again and I can't see the appeal at all."

"I am in your camp on this one."

"I watch tournaments, it's more fun when you can see them instead of just hearing the play-by-play, but otherwise I'm not much of a TV person at all," says Bella. "You've got a nice library, I found it yesterday evening. Helped myself to a copy of The Whispering Trees."

"We have a very nice library," he agrees. "Whispering Trees isn't bad. Have you read it before?"

"I read about two chapters of it once, and then something distracted me, and then I forgot about it. I managed to finish the whole thing last night."

"Congratulations. I hope it was enjoyable."

"Quite. I like old books. Even the weird genre fiction with no Pokémon anywhere. It's like authors a few thousand years ago resented them or something."

"Or something."

"You have a different idea?"

"Some of the imaginary creatures from those old books are... oddly consistent."

"Some of the fictional Pokémon that appear in modern fantasy crop up in a lot of different authors' works, too," Bella points out. "If there's a way to evolve an Eevee into a Spectreon, no one's discovered it yet, but that doesn't stop every hack novelist from giving their special snowflake a way to do it."

"Never mind, then."

"I'm not saying I don't wanna hear your theory, I'm saying whatever your theory is probably isn't the only explanation."

He shrugs uncomfortably.

Aw. She didn't mean to make him uncomfortable.

Well, here they are regardless.

"Sorry," she says after a silence.

"It's fine," he says. "I am frequently reminded that I am oversensitive."

Would he appreciate shoulder-pats? Bella may have one or two or three going spare.

"I do want to hear the theory, if you don't mind telling me," she says, tilting her head. "I can keep all my objections quiet if you like."

"Not right now, I think."

"Okay." Pause. "When I was little I thought that Pachirisu evolved into Emolga and no one could convince me different," she offers.

"I thought this," she goes on, "because I'd read a book about a Pachirisu that wanted very much to fly, and made friends with a variety of flying Pokémon but ultimately didn't stick with any of them because of this or that, and ultimately learned to be content with what it was, and I thought that was a dreadful ending and it really ought to be able to fly one day if that's what it wanted to do."

"If only it had found Tony," he says, "he would have built it a jetpack."

"See, there you go," says Bella. "That would've been a much better ending - instead of 'be the thing you got assigned to be in the cold hard lottery of life and don't go around wanting things you aren't natively able to do' it'd be something like 'a bad friend might give you a ride, a good friend will give you the power to fly by yourself'. Much better."

"I agree completely."

She grins at him. "I'm hoping that when I find an immortal Pokémon it agrees with us too. A bad immortal Pokémon wants to keep all the eternity to itself, a good immortal Pokémon wants immortal friends."

"Best of luck."

"I wonder why they're so secretive. If I were immortal I imagine I'd publicize it and write a book about how I did it so everyone else could be too. Maybe I'd be less complacent about it if someone could stuff me into a Pokéball without a by-your-leave. Maybe the immortal ones aren't as well-suited to the lifestyle."

"Maybe they're terribly selfish. Maybe they can't share it and they're tired of people asking. Maybe they're afraid someone will capture them and hurt them."

"Maybe they can share it but only a few times and they don't want to be reckless about who gets it. Maybe they don't like being immortal. Maybe they aren't, maybe the species I'm looking for are some combination of mythical and not-unique-just-rare and died-a-hundred-years-ago."

"I hope that one day you find out."

"Me too. Especially if the answer isn't any of those and is just 'maybe no one asked nicely before'."

"Wouldn't that be nice."

"It would. Nice things do happen sometimes."

"That they do."

"If you could have anything you wanted, what would you want?" she asks idly.

"Immortality's a nice one," he says. "But only if I can take Tony with me, of course."

"Oh, yes, I imagine it would be terribly lonely if you couldn't take at least one other person along. I'd probably do it anyway, but I'd understand somebody else declining."

"I'd be all right with just Tony and the house."

"Is the house not already immortal in whatever sense houses are alive to begin with? Assuming you maintain it."

"Yes."

"You must be awfully attached to the house to bring it up anyway, then. It is a really nice house."

"It is," he agrees.

"My parents split up when I was little and I divided my time between them - I guess I still do, in the sense that when I take a break I visit whoever's more convenient to where I am. Maybe that's why I don't have any strong feelings about either house."

"Perhaps."