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“I’m still standing after all this time
Picking up the pieces of my life
Without you on my mind
I’m still standing”

I’m Still Standing __ Taron Egerton (cover)

The ferry found a stowaway.

You know how I know?

Because said stowaway charged across the whole ship until he found me and refused to leave my side even at threat of being tossed overboard.

A new apricorn ball sits in my pocket. I’m in the ship, gathering my things before we disembark, and I glare at the little magnemite. He waves his magnets.

“No. You don’t get to be proud of yourself. You stowed away. You ran away from Edwards! He’ll think I stole you!”

Magnets doesn’t care. Zips of electricity zap from the ends of his magnets with unconcealed glee, and I drop my face into my hands. I groan, rub my cheeks and glower at the troublesome maintenance magnemite. “Look, you might think this is a done deal, but you are GOING BACK. Hear me? I ain’t having any legalities dragging me down when I’m finally on my way to living my life, got it?”

Magnet whirs like an electrical machine. He moves forward and taps his new apricorn. I scowl.

“I highly doubt that since I caught you that you don’t still belong to Edwards. I don’t know all the rules about catching and owning pokemon. Once I hit Nimbasa after this train ride, you’re going right back where you belong.” The magnemite laughs at me, a metallic tinkle that’s offensive. I narrow my eyes and yank out his apricorn. “Return, you little shit.”

I have exactly one hour from disembarking to get from the docks to my train. It’ll be tight, and I know I’ll be running, but it was cheaper, so of course I did it anyways. I head to the side of the boat where I’ll disembark and hover with my small carry-on. The second the gangway drops and we’re allowed to disembark, I’m running.

I go to the nearest dock worker and ask for directions to the station. They give it, and I head out to flag down the nearest taxi. It takes too long because they’re assholes, but when I step out in front of one, he’s forced to stop. It’s nearly been 15 minutes before I’m finally on my way in a half hour car ride. It’ll be tight, but I think I’ll make it.

That is, until we reach a stand-still in traffic and there’s still a bit of a drive left.

“Shit, shit.” I fumble for some money and throw it at the driver. “Keep the change!” I shout at the driver despite not knowing if I gave him enough in the first place. I hear the man yell after me, but I ignore him, lash my bag tight to my back and start running. God forsaken city traffic! I push through the people walking down the sidewalk and dig in my toes.

I’m gonna make it because I have to make it.

I can’t stay in Castelia for a night. It’s a waste of money and quite frankly, the huge city is giving me shell-shock because my ass is a country bumpkin and you could put all of Aspertia City into one block of Castelia. So I buckle down and run until I’m red in the face and my lungs are aching, but relief pours through me when I reach the train station with five minutes to spare.

Waiting in line is stupid. I know these other people aren’t about to miss their train, but can I push them aside and get taken care of? No. I check my dad’s handheld watch too many times to be healthy, slap my ticket down on the counter, get it punched and I’m pushing through the doors to the platform. The train is whistling. It’s about to move out.

I run down the platform with my ticket and try to find my car. It’s made easier since people are backing away since the train is about to pull out. I hold up the ticket, looking at the train car numbers and comparing it to the number on the—

A fluff lands on my hand, but it CUTS me. I yelp and yank my hand away, and I look up. That’s a—is that a COTTONEE? It makes off with my ticket and anger blasts through me.

“Hey! Get back here you piece of cotton candy!” I run and leap at it, but I don’t get much air. After running so many blocks—maybe a mile or two— I’m bushed. The grass pokemon easily evades with my ticket. It lands on top of the nearest light post, and I narrow my eyes at it.

All right, Candy, let’s see what you’ve got.

I clamber up the pole and snatch at the pokemon. It floats up like a damn cloud and I see that it’s chewing on the edge of my ticket. “That is NOT a snack!” I shout at it, but it just floats up and up and away over the top of the building. Terror seizes me. I hear the conductor yell for one last all aboard. I consider sending Magnets after it, but there’s no time to catch it anymore. I dash for the man who’s walking by the train to board near the front.

“Sir!” He stops and turns to me, and there’s one horrible beat where I realize he’s not going to believe a word of this story I’m about to tell him, but I plow ahead anyways. “There’s an asshole cottonee that snatched my ticket and it’s gone over the top of the building. I SWEAR I bought the ticket, you can check the logs—”

“Hold on, hold on lady,” the man says. He puts his hand between us like a stop sign, and he jerks his other thumb towards the train. “We’re running a tight schedule here. You either do or don’t have a ticket. And if you don’t, I can’t let you on board.”

“I HAD a ticket!” I stress. They can’t leave without me. I BOUGHT the ticket and I’m not buying another, I’m not paying a hotel to stay overnight, not when I know my apartment is there in Nimbasa waiting on me. All of my things are going to be delivered tomorrow evening. I HAVE to make this train! “Ask anyone over there, they saw that asshole cottonee!” and I gestured to people milling on the sidelines. “Check the logs for Josephine Ebele, I BOUGHT the ticket, I swear—”

The train whistle splits the air and interrupts me. The conductor checks his watch and shakes his head. He takes a step back. “Sorry lady, but you’ll have to catch the next one. No ticket, no ride—”

I grab the lapel of his jacket before he can leave, and I fist hard, refusing to let him go. “I HAVE to be on this train!” I snap at him. I’m sweating bullets. I ran so far to get here. I’m not about to let some cinder dick chisel me out of the ride I PAID for. “I paid for the ticket, I have a cabin on this train!”

His hand snatches out and grabs my wrist. He twists, trying to get me to let go, but I grab HIS wrist so we’re locked in a handhold. “You don’t have a ticket, and there’s no time to check the logs for your name! We are leaving right now—”

“I have a spot on this train! I know there’s an empty cabin—”

“Let go, or I’ll call security—!”

“Let me ON the train—!”

“And just WHAT is going on here?”

Both of us look over to a man in a trench coat of black and brown stripes approaches. My eyes widen at his matching hat. The conductor shoves me off and straightens his coat. “I’m sorry for the delay,” he says to the man. He moves to get on the train. “We can proceed—”

“No you can’t!” I butt in. I entreat the new man who can’t be much older than me. I jerk a thumb to the building. “A cottonee snatched my ticket, but I SWEAR I bought the ticket, you can check the logs! I have a cabin on this train, and I’m not going to miss it!”

He lifts a strong brow at my insistence. I can feel the heat in my cheeks. I don’t care if it’s rude. I’ll get on the train if I have to stow away like Magnets did on the ferry. The younger man checks his watch, looks at the conductor and looks at me, checks his watch one more time and scowls. “We’re behind schedule,” he says. He waves the conductor onto the train and and gestures for me. “Follow me.”

He strides off quickly, and I have to bolt to catch up to him. I don’t hesitate to follow him into the locomotive. We enter a small room with a single chair, and I stand awkwardly to the side while he sits down and puts on a pair of headphones, flips several switches, turns some knobs and reads some instruments. It’s noisy as fuck with the screaming engines, and I’m wishing for a pair of noise-canceling headphones myself. He picks up an old phone and says something I don’t catch. He flips a switch and the train pulls forward with a lurch.

I hear the conductor narrating the stops over the speakers, where the exits are, the usual gig. This man is ignoring me so far, and I sit back on my heels as we pull out of the train station. We cross several tracks, go through the city for a few minutes, and the driver pulls us to a halt at a crossing. He gets affirmation I don’t hear, and we pull forward again. The train hisses and spits and rumbles and whines with a cacophony of noise. As we approach a railroad crossing, the man suddenly takes off half his headphones, leans back and grabs a cord. He offers it to me.

“Want to blow the horn?”

I blink at him and stare. He shrugs and pulls it himself, giving the warning howl to stay off the tracks. Once we clear it, he flips a few more levers and gestures me forward. I come forward to stand next to him, and he glances up at me. He extends a gloved hand.

“Ingo Vanderbilt, at your service,” he shouts above the noise. I take his hand and frown. Vanderbilt? “Your locomotive engineer for the day, and lucky for you,” and he flashes a smile, “the station master.”

I gape at him. I know my jaw is sagging, but I’ve just touched the hand of one of the wealthiest men in the country. “Vanderbilt,” I repeat like I’ve got rocks for brains. “Like, Cornelius Vanderbilt. Commodore. Owns. Almost ALL. Of the railroads.”

I’m stammering. I can’t help it. Ingo Vanderbilt rolls his eyes and looks back to the tracks—he IS driving—and he says, “That’s my father, but yes, you’re right. What’s your name, Miss?”

“Josephine Ebele.”

Ingo glances up at me in surprise. “Oh! You’re that undertaker that put the hurt on good ol’ Cheren, aren’t you?” I don’t know what to say to that, so my face just pinches, but Ingo grins at me. He tips his hat before looking forward again. “That was a satisfying match to watch. Someone needed to put that pill back in his place.”

I look away. Young rich man. Complimenting something I hadn’t even meant to get involved in. I repeat Marshal’s words in my head like a mantra, don’t go digging, don’t dig, don’t dig—

“As for your situation here,” Ingo says, and he’s suddenly serious now, “you’ll have to stay in this cabin with me.”

“What?” Now I’m alert. I scowl at him and jerk my thumb back. “This is a 36 hour train ride! I paid extra for my cabin bed!”

“And until we make it through the first leg of this journey,” he said, “you’ll have to be stuck with me. You don’t have a ticket, and we can’t confirm this story until we check the logs at the halfway stop at Join Avenue.”

My jaw is clenched so tight I can feel my teeth grinding. Because of some prick cottonee, I have to be stuck up here in this noisy as shit cabin with the driver? And with nowhere to sit but the floor to boot! “You have to be kidding me,” I hiss at him.

Ingo glances calmly to me and hikes up a brow. “I could have easily left you,” he reminds me. “I’m taking you at your word right now. Besides, it’s illegal for you to walk between the cars on a moving train. You’d have to wait until this train stops anyways.”

I swear under my breath. Things just couldn’t get any better, could they? I get to smell train exhaust and hear the screaming engines for what, nearly 20 hours for this first leg of the trip? And sit on a metal floor. Ingo seems to sense this, because he reaches down and rummages. He leans back up with a mug and a pair of ear plugs. He tosses the plugs at me, saying, “Here. Chin up, you’re on your way to Nimbasa, and if your story is as you said, you’ll be in your bed by nightfall.” He toasts the mug to me, and it occurs to me that it’s coffee. “Some of us get to stay awake the whole 36 hours.”

I scowl at him, stomp about two feet to the back of the cabin, and plop on the hard floor. Prick cottonee. Prick driver. Ingo tries to make polite conversation with me for a bit, but I’m downright evil to him that first hour. Everything was finally going according to plan and then this shit happens. I just can’t catch a break.

Still, I’ve got a decent view out the front of the train to see what little sights there are. Ingo even offers me half his sandwich about halfway through the ride, but I’ve smuggled in my own smushed sandwich and mug of coffee. It’s cold as shit and taste terrible, but I drink it anyways.

I doze off and on. Ingo offers me a small book, but it’s fucking 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and I hate that shit. I fiddle with Magnets’ apricorn ball and consider who I have to see to find out who he belongs to now that he’s in MY apricorn. Honestly, I hope it’s me. Not because I want another pokemon, but just so Edwards’ face might get red enough to actually induce an overdue heart attack.

The sun sets. My butt and hips hurt, and I lay down, trying to get some sleep. Eventually, Ingo says my name and wakes me up before he pulls the horn again. The noise whistles like a foghorn in the night, and I stand back up. Oh thank GOD. I’ve never been so fucking happy to see a train station in my life. Ingo ignores me until the train has pulled to a complete stop, and then he spins around in his chair and stands. “Well, Miss Ebele, we’ve made it to Join Avenue. Let’s check those logs and get you settled in your room.”

“Finally,” I mutter while not-so-discreetly rubbing my butt cheeks. I pull the ear plugs out of my ears and shove them in my pocket. I follow Igno outside into the dark, and I can see other passengers getting off to stretch their legs. Ingo takes me up to the ticket pick up box where there’s a short line of three people in the night catching their rides. Ingo ignores the line—hey, he’s rich and owns the place, he can do what he wants. The people glare at me like this is somehow my fault, and I just shrug. Clearly they don’t know who Mr. Vanderbilt is, even with his flashy train coat and hat.

After a few moments of conversation, a printing machine whirs and the person inside hands Ingo a slip of paper. Ingo signs it with an ink pen and hands the receipt to me, and he says with a smile, “Congratulations, Ms. Ebele. Sleeping car four.” I take the slip from him, and he checks his watch. It’s like a nervous tic for him, though I suppose he does have a crunch schedule to keep. “You have eleven minutes before we depart. Enjoy the ride.”

“Thanks,” I say. Am I supposed to say more? Ingo turns and walks back to the train though, so I awkwardly let him leave without comment. Is that what it’s like meeting rich people? They simply have the power to do whatever they like when they own shit? I stuff the receipt in my pocket and muse on the fact that he wasn’t half as snotty a I’d expected. And I think about what a bitch I’d been to him on the ride here, and then that annoying thing my mother might’ve called “guilt” starts eating my insides. I groan. This is stupid. He’s rich as shit. He can take care of himself. But I find the nearest shop to get a cuppa joe, walk back into the locomotive and slam it down in front of Ingo. He starts since he didn’t hear me come on board.

I shrug and salute him. “Good luck,” I say about him staying awake for so long, but I don’t know if he can hear me with the noise and his headphones. I think he reaches up to tip his hat to me, but I’m already leaving the driver’s cabin to find my own. I flash the receipt to the cinder dick that wasn’t going to let me on board in the first place. The conductor grimaces, and I smugly brush by.

I find my sleeping quarters, and I’m stuck with the nosebleed bunk. I haul my ass up, use my backpack as a pillow, and crash even before the train starts moving.

*

The train stops in Nimbasa at seven in the evening. My things are going to be dropped off at my apartment at eight. So I get off the train, and I’m hauling ass again to beat people to the taxis so I can get on the road and make it in time for no one to steal my meager things. I meant to wave to Ingo—hey, he’s a fucking VADERBILT and I might as well try to keep that good connection—but I don’t see him, and I don’t wait for him. Snagging a taxi is easier at this time of night post-rush hour, and I’m well on my way.

Nimbasa feels like the same out-of-body experience Castelia did: large, dense, and swallowed me up like a durant in a mole hill. However, it felt more welcoming than the towering skyscrapers that loomed in Castelia, packed side-by-side like windowed walls. Castelia felt like it would devour me. Nimbasa? During the drive, I could see the smaller blocks with their little shops, and the glow of the neon signs and streetlights lit the night enough that it didn’t feel extremely foreboding. I could probably survive Nimbasa by the skin of my teeth.

I make it to Cliffview Park on time for once, and I praise whatever deities might exist out there. For once, SOMETHING is going my way. I check in and get my key before the truck arrives, and the guy waits for me to unload everything before driving off. I set both Golem and Magnets on guard duty as I haul things up and down the elevator until I have my few boxes inside. Golem and Magnets come in behind me, and I shut the door. I survey the apartment.

The front room is packed with my boxes, dresser, bed frame, and kitchen table and two chairs. It’s decent sized, and there’s more than enough room for a TV and couch that I don’t have. The wallpaper is loud and hideous blue. The galley kitchen is tiny, but it comes with a refrigerator and oven and microwave. I grin.

I brush by Golem and Magnets who are also both curiously inspecting the area. The bedroom is just big enough for my dresser and bed frame. There’s a teeny closet and the bathroom is ugly and white with chips in the porcelain, but I turn the knob of the faucet. The water runs clear.

For some reason, there’s a huge smile I can’t contain. Elation explodes in me, and I shriek like a banshee and stamp my feet on the floor. “Golem!” I shout. “Golem, we’ve got fucking clean water!” I dart back into the living room where Golem stares, eyes glowing with faint excitement. I bend down and scoop him up in the tightest hug I can with a huge laugh and shake him. “Clean water, Golem! Can you believe it?” I rock back and forth and walk across the floor. It doesn’t creak under my weight, and I jump up and down again, stamping my feet. “Golem, this is the BEST! Look, look,” and I point to the kitchen that is cleaner than my previous one ever was. “New kitchen! New floors! Clean water! A fucking BALCONY!” and I run past him and toggle the latch on the sliding doors. It screeches and pulls back, crooked on its tracks, but it opens to the tiniest balcony that’s shared with my neighbor. There are two really shitty white chairs on either side of it covered in rust and cobwebs.

My view is of some alleys, but down the way I can see the glow of Nimbasa’s entertainment district and the top of the ferris wheel. The twisting rollercoaster is inside that big fat lump of a building, I bet, and I know the gym is that way too. Half an hour by bus. Not a bad commute by my standards, though I wish I could walk. Maybe I’ll buy a bike to save on bus tickets.

I snicker like an idiot under my breath. I have a VIEW. A BALCONY. I go back inside and drag the door shut and lock it. I dash back to Golem and shake his shoulders. I tell him, “This. Is the BEST! Can you believe it? We’ve fucking done it, Golem! I’m finally gonna be able to make it! Imagine—we’ll get my mattress tomorrow, we can explore the city, and you!” I point at Magnets with a grin. “You want to stay with me, right? Screw Edwards, you want to stay with me?” Magnets whirs and twirls his magnets, zapping little bolts in the air like sparklers. “Yes! That’s right! We’ve got a new start here, boys!” I fling myself down on the floor. I kick some more and roll on the ground like a possessed person before lying flat and staring at a drab ceiling. My heart races.

I’ve made it. This is it. I’m in Nimbasa. I’ve got extra cash from kicking Cheren’s ass. I’ve got a steady job, and I can start studying for school again. I’m a two hour train ride to the Desert Resort. I have weekends off like a regular human being, so I can go on the weekends and explore. I’m . . .

I’m here.

I’m making it.

And for once, there’s no one to drag me down.