“H-hey…?”

  Sabrina took a step toward him, doubtful. The man didn’t speak, simply formed a small, tired smile. A smile that knew a lot, that perhaps knew it all.

  Suddenly, speaking became horribly difficult for her.

  “W-we can’t stop here, they’ll reach us any s-”

  All conscious thought left Sabrina as she saw him fall as though in slow motion, one knee giving in first, then another. She jumped to catch him without hesitation. His head was inches from hitting the ground when she slid beneath him, acting as his cushion.

  “He… hehe… I can feel my face going all red. Having a girl stop my fall like that…”

  A twisting, gnashing horror tore through Sabrina’s entrails, as though they were being devoured from the inside, leaving her empty, hollow.

  She didn’t understand. Her eyes studied him from head to toe; he was a bit bruised and scratched, sure, but none of his wounds were that serious. But his hand… he was pressing it against his side… The Nidoqueen’s slash? It’d been barely a scratch, nothing that could-

  Her eyes widened with the cold, cruel realization.

  “Do you see now, Sabrina? At the most critical moment, when it truly mattered, you doubted him! You chose to believe me! And now it’s too late, no matter what you do!”

  The young man formed that sad, apologetic smile again.

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  “The… poison…” Sabrina muttered.

  Panic flooded her nerves. This-this level of desperation was foreign to her; she wasn’t used to being worried, to fear, not even for her own life. Indifference toward everything had become second nature to her. A shield to keep her safe. Devoid of it…

  “It’s alright,” she said, trying to sound and appear calm despite every inch of her body shaking like a leaf. “It’s alright. I know someone who’s good at dealing with poisons. She won’t be happy to have customers at this hour, and it might not be… the safest option, but it’s our best shot right now.”

  “Sabrina…”

  Not giving him a chance to retort, she grabbed his arm and threw it around her shoulders, forcing him to his feet after a few failures. Her small, weak body shook under the man’s weight. Regardless, she put one foot in front of the other, again and again.

  “It’s… Everything will be alright,” she reassured him in between wheezes. The cold was getting sharper, more painful. She didn’t remember any Saffron colder than this one. “It’s not too far-”

  The world turned around. She caught a flash of light off the corner of her eye, and then something burning and weightless slammed into her from behind. All the air left her lungs. She was lifted off her feet, vision swimming, her body rolling a few times on the ground before finally crashing in the middle of the street.

  Her senses were in disarray. Numb, pained. Through cloudy eyes she noticed a few pairs of boots in front of her, and the familiar sound of derisive laughter and Pokemon barking.

  “We kill the pretty boy first, right?” she heard with sudden clarity, and saw a hand close around a familiar, wild mess of black hair, lifting the man with the cross’ head off the pavement.

  No…

  Even as a brat, Sabrina had known what she was. She’d never known other psychics in real life -it wasn’t a particularly common gift- but she’d read plenty about them; their talents and skills, what they eventually learned to do with that incredible power. And… even as a brat, she’d realized she was quite inferior to them.

  By the time most psychics could levitate small furniture, she still struggled to bend a spoon. She’d tried at first. To train hard, to shorten the gap between reality and expectations, what could be considered ‘normal’ for one of her kind, but her lack of progress quickly frustrated her. Soured her toward the whole ordeal. It drove her further and further away from her own nature, and brought her closer toward what she was actually good at: Pokemon battles.

  In that moment, as she rose to her feet, Sabrina’s own voice sounded strange in her ears. If she’d seen herself in a mirror, her eyes blank and expressionless, engulfed in psychic blue flames, her hair flowing freely behind her like tendrils of darkness, she probably wouldn’t have recognized herself.

  “DON’T TOUCH HIM!”

  In an instant, three of the men surrounding them -one of them their soon to have been executioner- were enveloped by a blue-ish light and then thrown against the nearest wall with inhuman force, the sound of shattering bones echoing like gunshots in the night.

  Sabrina stumbled forward, head low. Her clothes swayed with the wind, covered in the same blue flames.

  A single word, spoken by one of the surviving men, managed to break the silence.

  “M… Monster…”