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Can’t Escape, Chapter 1: Likes To Run.

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A gentle northward wind blowing against saw-grass and cat-tails bordering Lake Myrcene East’s shoreline forced them to sway with a faint and rhythmic motion. Hearing a whistle from his partner, signaling eager readiness, an ampharos standing on the shoreline’s edge took a few deep breaths and plunged his head into that cold lake’s waters. Zap let his thoughts drift to favorite tunes until a naturally-grown gem embedded in his skull emitted a scintillating and enthralling glow that pulsated in-time with music he remembered.

Despite his lungs’ demand for air, Zap held perfectly still and watched a fish approach timidly. The ram’s long tail curled over his back and came into a triangular alignment with his horns and fore-hooves. Sparks crawled outward erratically as a sudden electrical discharge coursed through the fish, forcing it to reflexively hop into the air.

A cyan-blue flash of reflected moonlight immediately arced in place of the pure-white flash of localized lightning as a vaporeon burst from within the weeds and deftly snatched the fish before it fell back into its home waters. Relying on unnatural surface tension to stand upon Myrcene East’s surface, Phil’s paws cast gentle ripples in his wake as he reversed and trotted back to shore, through the weeds, toward a campsite where his other friends relaxed.

Zap withdrew his head and snorted harshly to clear lake water from his nasal cavity. Letting his tail’s orb illuminate his immediate surroundings, he stepped back from the shoreline and tilted his head from side to side, encouraging his ear canals to drain, too. Zap did not particularly enjoy fishing, but he appreciated having an opportunity to do something productive and contribute to his team. He turned to face the campsite and wondered if “team” was an appropriate term.

Phil seemed to vanish when he left the radiant glow of Zap’s tail, only to emerge from shadow a moment later with a smiling face broken by the fish he carried in his mouth as he approached a golden glow cast by low flames rising above a prone typhlosion’s shoulders. He placed the fish beside Theodore and whistled to capture his attention.

With a two-pronged stick, thoroughly scorched in the line of duty, Theodore skewered Phil’s delivery and flared his flame vents. The increased heat radiating from his shoulders compelled a nearby xatu to re-position herself slightly to her right, letting her master’s body shield her own more thoroughly. Leaning against his back with her wings folded over his shoulders, Vera opened her beak slightly and faintly whispered something only a member of her own species could fully understand.

Most of the fish that Zap and Phil caught that night found their way into the stomach of a dragonite named Hal, who busily gnawed on the latest one that Theodore had finished cooking. Wild dratini eat their fish raw, but Hal was hatched inside a cage and ate nothing but generic bagged kibble until he was liberated. Fully-evolved before his first sushi experience, Hal never developed a taste for it. However, being on the road meant being on a budget, and free fish will silence a demanding belly as well as anything else might.

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Scents of frying scales and a now-emptied can of beans drifted northward, beyond the trainer’s tent and into nearby bushes. A sneasel wove through dense foliage and peeked around from behind that tent, finding those fragrances truly irresistible. Her thieving instincts’ languishment brought on no atrophy and they guided her without a second thought. She saw a typhlosion between herself and the fish—not an option—but another scent caught her attention. She smelled berries inside the trainer’s backpack. Which variety they might be did not matter to her; anything would do. She awaited her opportunity; a few seconds without anyone looking her way. Silently she slinked around to the near edge of his tent and surveyed the entire scene. Evolved pokemon all of them, but none looked particularly observant. Having never seen a xatu before, she could not consider Vera’s power of psychic perception. While the intruder planned her heist, Vera cooed gently, putting both her trainer and his typhlosion on sly alert.

Slowly creeping beyond the tent and targeting the unguarded backpack that lay next to a slightly-scattered pile of opened pokeballs, she wore the campers’ long shadows as camouflage and monitored their every motion as she approached. Distantly, Phil and Zap prepared to catch another fish. Hal seemed to be nodding off, his eyes closed and his antennae dangling low. Vera appeared to be fully asleep. The trainer pecked slowly at a bagged snack, and Theodore rested on his belly with his eyes closed, humming an unfamiliar tune while neglecting the fish now burning black above his shoulders.

The soon-to-be burglar’s heart rate increased as she gently opened the trainer’s backpack and found a fine bundle of berries within. Thinking her heist a success, she slowly and quietly smuggled them beyond the tent. Theodore felt as though his body raised itself from the ground as his flames shortened and changed color with increased temperature. Using a degree of stealth that rivaled the intruder’s, he pulled his feet beneath him and pursued her.

Creeping along shadows with her back to her victims, the sneasel’s eyes fixated forward as there remained nothing behind her that she both needed and could take without being caught by a trainer with a Fire-type again. A line of bushes stood a few meters away. Beyond them lay escape, safety, and with stolen goods in-hand, her first complete meal that she could still remember. As those bushes’ leaves began to shine with a reflected light of all-too-familiar hue, she allowed her pace to slow and closed her eyes, knowing exactly what would come next.

A fireball struck the ground just behind her, bursting with a force that swept her off of her feet. She landed on her back, vision blurred and body numbed. Her only sense that still functioned properly was that of smell, and all it offered was a reminder that her fur was now freshly singed again. Soon, a puff of breath extinguished a tiny flame that burned at the tip of a magenta feather grown above her left ear. She felt something warm lifting her from the ground, followed by nearby words pounding through her dizzied head.

“Hey, Boss! We have a guest!”

Theodore surrendered the dazed critter to his trainer. On a claw dangled remnants of a loosely-knitted bag. The berries within were ruined to most, but to Theodore, char was just another seasoning. He dumped them into his mouth while starting a campfire proper within a ring of stones used for that purpose countless times by journeying trainers in the past.

Vera removed her wings from her master’s shoulders and stepped away unnoticed, choosing to now stand opposite the fire from Hal, who—discounting occasional twitching of his antennae—failed to respond to any of the recent activity, dozing peacefully in a seated position.

The young man held the intruder with his hands beneath her arms and sat her across his left thigh. “Are you okay, little thief? Can you talk? My name is Vincent. Do you have a name and a trainer?”

The sneasel, regaining her senses, thrashed weakly against the grip by which Vincent held her, but opening her eyes and seeing a Fire-type looming overhead paralyzed her with fear. Its face crept closer to her own until she flinched.

“The boss asked you a question. You should give him an answer.”

She squeaked out the word “no” twice in rapid succession.

Theodore huffed. “Is that ‘no’ to both questions, or ‘no,’ you won’t answer?”

Vincent nudged his starter. “Calm down and have a seat, Tio. I don’t think ‘bad-cop’ is the way to go, here.” His attention returned to the smoldering creature. “You don’t have a name or a trainer, so, you’re wild? I’ve never heard of sneasels coming down this far from the mountains.”

She could not look him in his eyes, glancing downward and away for a few moments. Hearing a low growl indicating that the Fire-type was becoming agitated, she reluctantly responded.

“I was caught. I was,” she cringed and whimpered as she finished her sentence, “trained.”

Vincent stood her up before himself, confident that she was in no condition to flee, even if Tio was not pinning her to the spot with his gaze. Without breaking that stare, Theodore sat beside Vincent and spoke with an indignant tone. “Were you trained to steal?”

“No. I was trained,” she hesitated again at that word, “to be punished.” The sneasel began to tear up. Vincent looked up from her and saw Vera casting him a compassionate nod.

With a whistle, Vincent called his team to attention, attracting Zap and Phil from the shoreline, and once they arrived with another lake harvest, bade the little thief to explain how she came to plunder his berries. “I would like to know your history before I make a decision about your future.”

She still could not look up at him, but she knew well the penalty for disobedience.

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“I’m a runt. I was always small and weak. My pack got good at weeding out the weaklings, and one day, I was it. Unlike the others they killed, I was fast. Not the fastest, but fast enough to survive and get far enough away that they stopped following me. I didn’t know how to hunt by myself and soon I was starving. I was looking for berries and when I pushed through a bush, I saw it.” The storyteller paused in thought for a moment. “A pidgey. I knew it had to be a trainer’s. The strongest sneasels would talk about finding a trainer so they could become part of a trainer’s pack and get even stronger. Part of me wanted to take that fat, slow pidgey’s position in its pack, but most of me just wanted to eat. It hardly fought back and when it did I had already tasted its blood. It was a small bird, but I was proud of myself. It was my first kill alone. I thought its trainer would be impressed. I heard him walking up, shouting, and I turned to face him with a smile, but when I did all I saw was his boot coming at me.” She curled her left claws into a fist and tapped her jaw on the same side of her face.

“When I woke up, I was sore all over. Many of my teeth were gone. He was sitting in a chair, slowly petting a ninetales. I had never been around humans before, so I didn’t understand all the things he was saying at first, but over the years I pieced things together when he would yell at me or talk to his other pokemon or just to himself. He had that pidgey all his life. When he saw me killing it, he swore to make me suffer, and he did. Every night, he ‘trained’ me. He would take me out behind his cabin, send out one of his pokemon, and let it do whatever it wanted. The only rule was it couldn’t kill me. It was a game; the more I was hurt, the better the reward his pokemon could earn. His ninetales would stand by him and watch to make sure I never fought back or ran for the woods. If I did, it became Ninetales’ night. Sometimes, when he was angry for whatever reason, it was Ninetales’ night anyway.” The little thief began to sob and knelt on the grass.

“I’d know it was coming as soon as he got home, but he’d act normal until after dinner, and after he—he would take the chain off of my ankle and throw me into a small back room. He’d say ‘nighty-night, you little shit’—you asked if I had a name; that’s the only name I’ve ever had—then his ninetales would come in and he would lock the door behind him. He didn’t watch, but I know he listened because his radio would be turned off and his ninetales always hurt me to make me scream and scream until I was too sore to scream anymore. Then, he would bite my neck and breathe that damn fox-fire over me to burn my lungs and choke me so I would pass out. In the morning, he would dump leftover coffee on me to wake me up and then he would jam a sitrus berry in my mouth. Berries were the only food I was ever given and it was just so I could get up and do his housework, starting by sponging up his coffee.”

Her gaze averted from the grass she sat upon and turned straight into Vincent’s eyes. Her voice raised to become emphatic. “Every day was like that. He would go to work and leave me with his ninetales guarding me. After he came home and had dinner and I finished washing his dishes, he would make me," she gasped, paused, and continued, “then, it was time for training.” Tears welled in her eyes. She covered her face and cried again.

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Vincent’s team members looked at each other, each one silently asking another if such a trainer could even exist. They met some cruel trainers on routes and in gyms from time to time, but none akin to the sadistic monster that this little thief described.

Zap broke the silence. “How did you get away?”

The little thief, for the first time that night since she saw Vincent’s apparently-unguarded backpack, smiled a sly smile that conveyed almost boastful pride. That emotion sneaked into her voice. “I figured it out. While he was at work, I was on the chain. His ninetales would be snoozing most of the time. If I stopped working and let the chain stop making noise, he would hurt me, but I could dust the bookshelf all day without getting into trouble, and that’s where my ball was. I got a screwdriver and bent its prongs a little to weaken it without messing it up. Fridays are special because he takes his team out for gym fights. He let his ninetales out to use the tree and that gave me a minute alone. I ran over to his berry jar and choked down an occa. They came back in, his ninetales blasted me, I pretended to be unconscious, and he put me in my ball. It took a while, but I forced it open. I broke it and I ran as fast as I could until I couldn’t run anymore.”

The pride faded and her words became monotone. “That was, uh, four days ago. I haven’t found anything to eat since then. I smelled your fish, and I had to try.”

Vincent reached inside his bag, withdrew an antiseptic spray, and hosed the sneasel down. It felt very cold and made the pain of her burn go away. Its comforting sensation startled her; experiencing for the first time a human doing something to her that made her feel better afterward.

“Alright, little thief, here’s the deal. I’ve got a fish here, and I’m going to give it to you. You can take it and run, and I won’t stop you. I’ve also got this.” Vincent withdrew a luxury ball from his bag. “You can have this too, if you want it.”

The sneasel picked up her fish and took a bite. For a moment, she savored the flavor of fresh meat as it linked her present with her distant past. She looked at the ball and then to its holder as she chewed on the right side of her mouth.

Vincent’s expression seemed light, but serious. “It’s a very pretty ball, so if you choose to take it, you’re going to promise to never break it.”

Her freedom had not been kind to her, but she was not expecting to surrender it again so quickly and she stepped back a pace. A clear path to the bushes extended before her, and she held a fish, from which she tore away another bite, in her hands. The temptation was strong.

Zap leaned closer to Vera and muttered, “I bet she’s gonna scoot.”

Vera closed her eyes halfway as her pupils contracted. “He can still save her life.”

Vincent overheard her, recalled the sneasel’s words, and got an idea. He looked toward Vera and saw her already nodding with approval.

“Let me offer you one more thing before you go. You can keep the fish either way. You said that you’ve never won a fight except against a pet pidgey. Would you feel better about yourself if you knew you once knocked out a trained dragon?”

Hal opened his eyes and groaned. Ice attacks robbed him of his consciousness many times in his past, and tonight his master asks him to job out a fight to improve the self-esteem of a burglar. It was not the way he wanted to end any evening, but he trusted Vincent’s intentions and remembered again how his origin story compared to hers as he stood to take a fighting stance.

The sneasel stuttered when she looked up at the dragonite, standing almost four times her height but seemingly six as he towered above her. “You—you want me to fight him? Ten fish for losing wouldn’t be worth it!”

Vincent rummaged through his bag again. “Here, try wearing this. I won it in a poker game. It looks like your style.” He tossed a razor claw onto the ground near her feet.

The thief looked at the claw, at the human, at the team, and at the bushes. She picked up that weapon and looked back toward Vincent again. He wore a sly smile, the smile of one of her own kind when knowing that a plan was about to succeed. She knew that she wanted to see what was behind it. Even if she took a beating, it would not be the first time that she had taken a beating to entertain a cruel human. With the claw equipped, she charged toward Hal’s wall of orange scales.

“Wow. She really is weak.” The scratch she delivered hardly stung at all. Hal intended his words to be matter-of-fact, but they were almost enough to make the little thief break down in despair. With a sharp breath, she managed to limit her reaction to a soured facial expression. She was so weak that even a phony fight that she was supposed to somehow win seemed hopeless. Grabbing the fish and fleeing felt like her best bet, but as she turned, she saw Vincent rotating the luxury ball in his left hand, staring into her eyes.

He tapped the ball twice with his index finger. “Don’t give up.”

She didn’t.

The sneasel threw herself at Hal relentlessly, while he yawned and soaked up her hits. After about three minutes, he reached down and planted his left palm on her head, covering most of it. She trembled slightly, unsure what his grip would do next. Hal rubbed the inside of his thigh with his right paw and verified that she indeed managed to wound him. He licked his blood from his stubby fingers and released the sneasel, gesturing an invitation for her to continue attacking. Her next slash lacked vigor, as being halted took from her what little energy her momentum carried. She had yet not eaten anything but a couple bites of fish since escaping, and this exertion completely exhausted her, ruining her focus. Her mind struggled to remember her old life when she was fighting alongside the pack that rejected her. Envisioning the attacks used by her leaders, an aged memory came to mind. She and her pack once fought a dragon, a disoriented garchomp that was far from its home. When they attacked, the leaders called out only one command, “use Ice!”

Vincent and his team watched dejectedly as the little thief began to stagger and miss her broad target, muttering something indistinct in her natural tongue. Despite the pathetic display that her body put on, within her mind’s eye, she was a leader of her pack, doing what she remembered they did. Her imagination took over. With the last of her stamina, she formed a cloud of frost around her knuckles and gave that garchomp everything she had left, falling to her knees as her swing connected.

Hal grunted, his eyes twitched, and his knees buckled. Theodore leapt onto the battlefield and dove in to shove the sneasel aside, just in time to save her from being crushed by the collapsing dragon and to get pinned himself beneath Hal’s bulk.

The little thief managed to stand again and catch her breath. She looked behind herself. She just knocked out a dragonite. He was not fighting back, but it felt good to bring him down, nonetheless. She stumbled over to Vincent, not knowing what to say after winning a fight for a trainer.

He maintained his smirk as he glanced across to watch Theodore wiggle out from beneath Hal, and looked back to the sneasel. “That fish is still yours. You just need to tell me your decision regarding this ball.”

She winced. Damn him for asking her again to surrender her freedom. And why should she? So he let her win a rigged fight; big deal. She knew now how to throw an ice-punch. She could probably hunt for herself, at least as long as she got the drop on her game. That, she knew she could manage. She did not need a trainer. She had speed, stealth, freedom, and a headache. It came on quickly and would not let up. It felt like something boiling inside her and would soon make her burst at the seams. Her hold on the razor claw faded and she staggered backward, gripping her head as the singed feather above her left ear fell away cleanly.

Vincent’s team quickly became concerned. Evolution was often traumatic, but this scene began to look more like torture than transformation as she failed to show any actual signs of development. Zap spoke first, and for everyone. “Vera, what’s wrong with her?”

The xatu laid the writhing sneasel on the grass and placed a hand upon her forehead. “This is bad. Her body is trying to evolve, but she doesn’t have enough energy to grow. I think it’s because of undernourishment. She needs food and water, now, or she may die, or become trapped between forms.” Vera closed her eyes and concentrated for a moment that seemed much longer than it was. “He can still save her life.”

Vincent thought for a second and started digging through his bag again. He threw an empty can of beans toward his vaporeon. “Phil! Water, fast!”

Phil filled the can with fresh, pure water as quickly as Zap could pour it into the sneasel, although much more spilled around her than she actually swallowed.

Vincent ran over to her and slid into position like a ball-player coming home. “She would choke to death before we could get real food in her, but maybe she can swallow this.” He unwrapped a rare candy and showed it to Vera, who nodded approvingly. He forced it inside the sneasel’s mouth and clasped his hands over her face so she could not spit it out. Zap leaned over and touched his head’s gem against the sneasel’s and gave her a tiny jolt to force her to swallow it.

She shuddered, curled over onto her side, and lay still for a moment before bolting upright. A crown of feathers began sprouting from her brow as she scrambled to her feet and ran into the darkness toward the waterfront, tripping and shrieking in agony as her development proceeded.

The team watched a moonlit-traced form lying beside the lake as it slowly gathered itself up, jostling a few cat-tails as it rose. It looked at its faint shadow’s shape and gasped before throwing an ice-punch that glanced the lake’s surface. A moment later, a plate of ice marched up a gentle grade toward Vincent’s campsite, illuminated by a small fire and a generous ampharos. The calm pond’s surface, frozen in form and in time, provided a full-body mirror necessary for the little thief to take in her new appearance.

“No—yes—it’s—I’m—.” As she pressed her forehead against the frozen surface, her babbling stopped suddenly to be replaced by diabolical laughter that echoed through the still night air over Lake Myrcene East and into Allylidene Forest, startling an owl into taking flight.

Theodore’s shoulders ignited instinctively.

Her laughter slowly transformed back into language as she held her mirror before herself again for a second look. “It’s really me. I’m bigger. I’m stronger. I—I have all my teeth again! Heh-heh, it’s finally my turn. I can finally have my revenge! Trainer!” Her gaze snapped instantly from her reflection to Vincent.

Theodore’s flames began to climb as he dug his feet into the soil, but he performed a double-take when he noticed Vera shaking her head in disapproval with such speed that she seemed to be vibrating.

The no-longer-little thief discarded her mirror carelessly before slowly turning to face Vincent, extending her clawed arms forward and pointing at him with her right. “You did this to me. You turned me into the killing machine that every sneasel wishes to become. And, for that, you need to get what you have coming to you.”

A few feet away, Theodore gestured at the feather-crowned demon with both of his paws while melodramatically mouthing his words of suspicion, but Vera remained confident in her prediction. The xatu’s track record proved her reliability, yet Theodore could not bear a possibility of something happening to his best friend. When the demon grinned and lunged at Vincent, he leapt behind her, ready to unleash the fires of the sixth, seventh, and eighth circles of Hell upon her, only to stumble and pause, hearing sounds of tearful laughter as she made contact.

Vincent lay knocked-over on the ground, wrapped tightly by the arms of a newly-minted weavile.

Once more, her laughter turned into language. “You did it to me. The only dream I’ve ever had other than escaping that damn cabin and you made it happen.”

Vera blew out the low flames on Theodore’s shoulders like birthday candles, wrapped her left wing around him, and whispered into his ear, “he has saved her life, but our family will not change in size,” before stepping away, picking up a singed feather from the ground and tucking it into a small bag hung beneath her right wing, and flying off to find a suitable place to roost for the night.

Vincent helped himself back up once he convinced the weavile to release him. “Tio, I can’t tell if you are confused or upset.”

His typhlosion began to speak, but reconsidered his statement and found something else to say as he passed by The Boss and ducked into their tent. “A little of both. I think I’ll sleep on it.”

Vincent stoked the diminishing campfire. “You wouldn’t mind catching another fish, would you, guys?”

Zap faked a smile. “No problem, Vince, if Philly’s up to it.” Phil was already exiting the lights of both ampharos and campfire when Zap finished his sentence.

The weavile approached Vincent from behind on unsteady feet. “Was that your fish?”

Vincent sacrificed half of the two-pronged stick to feed his fire. “What do you mean?”

“The one you gave me. Was that yours?”

Vincent turned to face her. “I wasn’t going to eat it, if that’s what you’re asking. Why?”

“You ordered them to get another fish, so I thought it was to replace the one you gave me.”

“I asked them to get another fish; for you.”

The weavile’s jaw fell slack. “But—but I’m—newest, lowest—”

“Hungriest.” Behind him, a faint crackle, a bright flash, a big splash, and a rustling in the weeds.

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The weavile felt slightly embarrassed as three pairs of eyes watched her eat. She tried to divert attention by asking of Hal’s condition before drinking dry another bean-can’s worth of water. “Is he going to be okay? I didn’t think I hit him that hard.”

Vincent glanced over at the still-collapsed lizard. “He can’t handle anything Ice. It’s a dragon thing, but he’s got it worse than most.” He turned toward Phil and Zap. “See if you can get him into the lake so he can sleep it off comfortably.”

Phil whistled and blasted Hal’s face with a stream of pure water to awaken him enough that, with Zap’s assistance, he could drag himself down to the shoreline. He rested best with his body supported by aquatic buoyancy. As payment for a full stomach, Hal permitted Phil to climb aboard and lie on his belly, tail drifting and swaying in the water alongside them.

Zap returned from the lake and unleashed a contagious yawn that quickly spread, making the remaining campers unanimously agree that it was time to retire. Zap settled in near the flap of his trainer’s tent and dimmed to night-light level while watching their campfire’s embers fade away. “Now that we have six, maybe,” he thought, before counting mareep and falling asleep.

Theodore, Vincent, and the weavile packed tightly inside a tent hired at a reasonable rate from Fenchone Pokecenter. Tio and The Boss slept together for years, ever since the then-cyndaquil became gravely ill and his young master refused to leave his side, but accommodating a third bed-mate was quite unusual.

The weavile snuggled closely against Vincent’s torso, resting her head on his left shoulder. “They don’t know how good this feels.”

Vincent was half-asleep, and half-vocalized his response, “they don’t?”

“No. To lie down and go to sleep. If I could even remember, I could count on my claws how many times I’ve just gone to sleep since he captured me. Every night—every single night—I was put to bed by being beaten or burned until I couldn’t,” she almost teared up again. “But not tonight, and when I wake up, I’m not going to be scalded with cheap coffee, and—and I’m going to eat actual food for breakfast, right?” She looked at Vincent hopefully, and he nodded approvingly. “Your pokemon don’t know how good this feels.” The weavile struggled to snuggle even more closely than she could.

Vincent, now fully awake, commented, “you know, with all that excitement you gave us when you evolved up, you didn’t tell me if you want me to catch you or not. You ate your fish, but you are still free to go.”

Her eyes burst open. “Yes! No. I want,” she flipped herself over to stand on all four and look him in his eyes. “Will you promise to let me fight and become someone I can be proud of? I don’t want to be a trophy trapped in a ball forever like the dozens he had on his shelves.”

Vincent reached up and rested his left hand on the back of her head. Her body stiffened instantly and she whimpered very faintly. “I’m not that kind of trainer. I don’t trap pokemon for sport or status. I don’t even walk with six pokemon, yet.” A gentle emphasis underscored that he expected her to choose.

She smiled faintly and settled back down. “First thing, tomorrow. Just wait, I’m going to make you proud of me.” The weavile reached across Vincent’s chest and bumped into Theodore’s paw.

Theodore spoke up. “She’s going to need a name. I don’t think what she was called in her story would be appropriate.”

Vincent asked the weavile if she knew a name that she wanted, but the only human-language names she knew were ones she once heard coming out of her captor’s radio, and she did not know which of those would be a good fit for herself. “I think I want you to give me one.”

He closed his eyes. “Okay, first thing that comes to mind; girl’s name. ‘Fiona,’ are you happy with that?”

Fiona hummed twice in a high tone.

Theodore groaned. “Boss, if you enter us into a double match, just promise you won’t register us as ‘Tio and Fio,’ okay?”

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