"I'd be interested in the results if you ever did. I suppose you'd have to go a bit out of your way to hunt them up."

He shrugs. "I like a challenge."

Bella laughs a little. "Come to think of it, I think some of Charlie's standard-issues might've been boxed before he got them. I'd have to ask, but it wouldn't surprise me."

"I will happily talk to them if so," laughs Sherlock.

"I'll call him after I talk to Renée about Porygon sweaters," says Bella.

"Perfect."

"Maybe I should just call now, Renée will be home now and by the time she lets me off the phone Charlie probably will be too," muses Bella, and she starts cycling through apps on her Pokétch.

The boys leave her to it.

Bella departs the tower to avoid disturbing them, although if they happen to be curious they could open a window. She phones Renée, makes small talk, listens to Renée talk about ill-fated baked goods, then explains that she has this friend who has this problem with these Porygon, and she was thinking sweaters. Renée takes the idea, squeals over it, and says she'll start figuring out a pattern right away. And she's going to let the kindergarteners vote on colors. Joy. There's a little more catching up - stories from the school, news about neighbors and Renée's Pokémon - and then Bella hangs up.

"Did I hear that right about the kindergarteners?" inquires Sherlock, out of the window.

"Ah-huh. Renée is going to pitch the idea of Porygon sweaters to twenty-four five-year-olds and get them to help her design them," sighs Bella.

"Well, that is bound to have entertaining results."

"Maybe some of the Porygon are in fact five years old?" suggests Bella hopefully.

"I believe that some of them are!"

"There we go, then, there should be relatively little trouble matching sweaters to wearers unless Renée has more attention span than I credit her with."

He laughs.

"Is it, like, a secret that you can understand Pokémon? I can find some other way to tell Charlie that you want to talk to his," Bella says.

"It is not something I would like the entire region to know, but I don't have an intrinsic objection to explaining it to Charlie as long as he is not the gossipy sort."

"That," says Sherlock, "is an interesting notion."

"It'd pass the time," laughs Bella. "If you wanted to. Obviously it's optional. You could probably even do it from here, as long as it works over the phone? Maybe it's body language or range-limited psychic powers, I dunno, that'd make it harder to work from home."

"I have never tried it over the phone. I don't frequently have reason to phone a Pokémon."

"Wanna try it? I'll go out a ways, toss somebody, call you? Zag's smart enough to understand phones."

"By all means!"

Bella wanders out of earshot, and tosses Zag and explains the experiment. And then she calls Sherlock.