A thank to Zarrelion for his help on this chapter.

Chapter 1: INFIltrate

"What to do with you?"

Jana Phet — better known by the Sinnohvian underworld as Hunter J — paced back and forth across the control room. Four new statues had been added to her collection, each of them held under a glass dome. The plinth that each statue rested on had a slider that allowed the degree of petrifaction to be controlled.

Her Salamance, Drapion and Ariados were in domes of their own as well and had been for four days ever since they started going berserk in her airship.

Yesterday, she had tried to restore her Ariados in an attempt to see if whatever made them go berserk had finally worn off. The moment she moved the slider down and removed the petrifaction from her Ariados's head, it frantically snapped and screeched before launching a salvo of Poison Sting needles at the force field dome, nearly breaching it. She immediately moved the sliding switch back to its highest level, restoring it to its petrified state. She hadn't dared restore any of her pokémon since.

Ariados was the weakest of her party, so if unleashing just its head put her at that much risk, she didn't want to even consider what would happen if she had done the same to Salamance or Drapion. For a long time she had assumed that all pokémon were like this now.

Until she saw two people wander into her airship with pokémon of their own. Not just ignoring them, but actually obeying them as if nothing had happened.

"And now I have the four of you here," she said aloud. Jana would never admit it to herself but having someone else to talk to was a welcome change of pace in the last few days. She had tried to contact her buyers and other associates but no messages were getting through. Those that did get through were greeted with silence.

"Whatever's happening is happening all over the world. That's the only way all of my contacts would be out of commission at the same time." J contemplated and slumped into her chair. She pulled off the visor and the petrifaction gauntlet, setting them on the floor beside her chair.

The only things she had left to worry were the Golbat. With them gone, there was nothing else she had to fear. Many of the Skarmory her grunts were given were killed in the initial chaos four days ago by the psychic outbursts from the Metang that she had also outfitted them with.

Fortunately for her, she had spent some of her ill-gotten gains to fortify her airship. And that included lining the walls with a psionic-repelling material.

While it meant that the halls of her airship were undamaged, it also meant that the psychic waves acted like light in a house of mirrors. Many of her grunts died in their quarters that night. Those that made it out were slaughtered in the halls. Not every part of J's ship was shielded and as such, the systems that kept the craft airborne had been damaged, forcing them to land When the dust had finally settled and the grunts went to work trying to remove mangled bodies of the Skarmory, the Golbat, Crobat, and Sharpedo awoke and turned on her men.

Each death she viewed upset her. Not because she carried any affection for her agents; they were all perfectly expendable and they knew it the moment they signed their contracts. No, it was the loss of resources that upset her the most. Those that tried to escape were bound to her airship from the Mean Look technique they were subjected to. The most J had been able to do was go into full lockdown mode and close the hallway into segments that kept the Golbat separated.

Her hope had been to starve the bastards to death or at least place them into a situation where they would kill each other out of hunger. Some of them did just that, starting with the Sharpedo who were out of their element. While the Crobat were faster and stronger than its preevolution, the golbat outnumbered them five to one and weren't as hampered by the enclosed hallways. J had expected them to finish each other off to the last one standing, but didn't account for the corpses of her men that she had also locked into their section of hallway. Worse was that the Golbat were smart and started rationing out what was left of her men's bodies to last them beyond the first two days. They slept most of the day to conserve their strength and started looking for weaknesses in the airship. Luckily, after the Shieldon incident several weeks back, she spent a considerable amount of money on reinforcing the walls to the point that a Rhyperior's charge and spinning drill or a Gyarados' Hyper Beam could only breach it with great difficulty.

Upon waking the Metang started acting strangely, making no attempts at trying to leave their section of hallway. Then without warning they disappeared from the airship.

Which upset her to no end, considering the material that lined the walls was also supposed to prevent pokémon from teleporting out of her airship. The Metang hadn't even bothered to kill the Golbat on their way out...probably because the bats hadn't bothered them. At the same time, the Golbat probably considered the Metang inedible thanks to their armored hide.

J's own food reserves were running low on the third day and it seemed like the Golbat would outlast her at her own game. The crew's food stores were in the lower parts of the ship and gaining access required her to unseal the hallways. Without her pokémon and facing so many Golbat, her chances of reaching the ship's lower level without falling prey to them were slim. In desperation, she had sent out a distress signal and hoped that someone useful would come along.

"And oh did they come." J smirked, letting her eyes wander to the bag that had dropped off of Newton's back before he got petrified. She wasn't sure why it had fallen off in the first place but decided not to question her good luck.

"Maybe he had something in there that he thought would've helped. Certainly not a pokémon, otherwise he would've used it earlier against the Golbat," J muttered, letting her eyes drift to the Shieldon at his feet. "Shame I can't contact that buyer. I'm certain he'd pay a pretty penny for that Shieldon. Of course, I'd have to charge him a higher rate for breaking the previous contract but he'll cough up the money. And I'm going to need it for the repairs on this damn thing."

J shook her head and sighed, reminding herself of the situation she was in. If things were as bad as she imagined then most of her buyers were hardly interested in her services being either dead or hidden away in some doomsday bunker.

"Then again, I could just procure supplies for them and they'd…wait! What good would fiat money be when the world's gone to shit? If the world's too fucked up, then business is going to be hard. If it returns to normal, then I could live like a queen. I could offer protection or transport; gems and metals might still retain their value. But if we're knocked back to the Stone Age, I may need to reevaluate what's valued…and I still need to get this ship off the ground to do any of that..."

J gave a frustrated growl and pushed herself off her chair, striding over to Newton's bag that she'd left inside the elevator.

"I guess you're worth a look," she mumbled before reaching out to one of the zippers. It was then that she paused as if something had frozen her mid-reach.

"I can't rule out the possibility of another pokémon completely. The boy used two pokémon but I detected three. Might be something that's too dangerous to use in such an enclosed space." J thought as she moved back to her seat and slipped on her petrifaction gauntlet and visor.

She briefly scanned the bag with her visor but the bag was devoid of any life signs. She reached over with one hand and pulled the zippers open. J's free hand kept her petrifaction gauntlet aimed at the open bag as she peered inside.

The bag's contents were nothing special; just a few ration bags, some bottles of water and an assortment of books and papers filled with sketches and terms she wasn't paid enough to care about. What interested her the most were the mechanical instruments that appeared to be part of the backpack itself. Five metal cylinders were visible like muscles just under the interior fabric lining of the bag. Two of the cylinders were noticeably thicker than the others that flanked them. The last cylinder was protruding out of a small hatch in the fabric lining and carefully tucked against the side of the bag. At the end of the articulated cylinder was a scanner of some sort.

The moment she made eye contact with the device, it whirred to life and rose from the bag like an Ekans. While it wasn't moving quickly, the act of movement alone was enough reason for J to back away and level her petrifaction gauntlet at it.

"Distress signal located. Would you like any further assistance?" A feminine, yet undeniably electronic voice rose up from the backpack.

J maintained her aim on the scanner as her visor conducted a scan of its own. It had detected no weapons in or on the backpack.

"Do you require further assistance?" the digitized voice reiterated. There was silence for ten seconds before it itself a third time.

"What is your function?" J commanded.

"I am the Investigative Navigational and Forensics Interface. You may refer to me as INFI. I am in charge of running diagnostics and damage control on the Megarig, an airship designed to locate and capture the Legendary pokémon Giratina. I am also designed to assist anyone in any task they ask of me to the best of abilities and memory. Do you require assistance?"

J slowly lowered her gauntleted arm. "Where is the Megarig now?"

"The Megarig was destroyed four days ago but its crash site is south of Hearthome City. Much of it is still functional but with no way to transport it, Newton left it behind until he could find someone to help move and salvage what he could from the wreckage. I can provide you with exact coordinates and an itinerary of the Megarig's resources if I'm allowed to link up with a computer," Infi replied, doing her best to keep her voice robotic and hide her enjoyment

The scanner rotated away from her, a hatch on the side of the backpack slid open, revealing a port with a large USB drive attached. J walked over and pulled the drive out. The metallic limb with the scanner fell lifelessly to the side of the backpack, along with a metallic disk.

She moved over to her main computer and looked around for a place to insert the drive. J was constantly updating her airship with the newest technology to stay one step ahead of the authorities. She'd never needed a program like INFI to run the ship seeing as she usually had three grunts at the computers before her main console. But with all her grunts dead she didn't hesitate to insert the drive. Immediately, several windows blinked in and out of existence on her screen Numbers, letters and words that had no meaning to her flashed across each window at a barely readable rate. Eventually, the torrent of data stopped, the screen went dark and a human shape materialized on the monitor.

J's first thought upon seeing the AI was that it looked remarkably like a technicolored Nurse Joy with the red and yellow loops that Infi had for hair. Heterochromic eyes blinked back at her and the AI blinked innocently while J glared at her behind her visor.

"I am now fully integrated into your airship, the Slave VI and have begun uploading the coordinates to the Megarig. Would you like me to run damage diagnostics on the airship?"

J nodded and settled into her chair as she braced herself for the onslaught of bad news.

"Zarrel ion battery bank is stable. Orretech antigravity generators two, three, and four are unresponsive. Exterior light reflective stealth panels are intact and weapon systems are offline but still operational. Light fixtures from Quadrants B7 to B8 show extensive damage. Communications array is functioning normally but is unable to locate a signal."

J's hand lifted to pinch the bridge of her nose in a futile attempt at quelling the oncoming headache. If the failing generators had been on opposite sides she could've managed but losing both of them on the same side made the prospect of flying next to impossible. She would have to go down and see the extent of the damage. But considering that they had been subjected to the shock of a hard landing that was little more than a controlled crash, what awaited her would not be pleasant. She was about to order one of her grunts to go inspect them and give her a full report until she remembered they were all dead.

"R is not going to be happy," J mumbled, wondering if the airship's mechanic was doing well. "Infi, did the Megarig have an antigravity generator?"

"Yes. The Megarig was equipped with several Orretech antigravity generators. It is possible that some may have come out intact after the fall."

"What brought down the Megarig?"

"The Megarig's pilot, Zero, had a large number of Magnemite, Magneton and a Magnezone. Four days ago the strength of their magnetic fields increased significantly. This resulted in interference with the onboard electronics and damage to its metallic structure, causing the crash of the Megarig."

If J didn't know any better, she could've sworn the program sounded sad to explain this to her but she chalked it up to the days she had spent without talking to anyone.

"Where are we in relationship to the Megarig's crash site?"

"Coordinates have been loaded into the system. I'll bring them up on the screen."

J watched the map of Sinnoh region shimmer into existence onto one of the many monitors on the Slave VI's flight deck as Infi carried out her command. The map then zoomed in on the quadrants that showed the positions of both airships. The Megarig's crash site was marked with a blinking red dot while they were represented by a flashing blue one. Several lines connected the two, representing potential routes that she could take to get to the wreckage. J frowned at the distance of each route had listed; Infi had also taken the liberty of adding the estimated time it would take for her to get there by foot or rover.

"A round trip would take six days?" J groaned at the information.

"These estimates are under the assumption that you do not encounter resistance in the form of wild pokémon," Infi added. She watched the hunter's head slump into her open palm at the news. J looked around, stopping at each statue in hopes of finding a resource she could exploit. With no guarantee that she could get them back under control, her pokémon were out of the question. Dealing with the Shieldon and the Weavile were also bad choices as they were more likely to kill her the moment they got out instead of listen to her demands.

That left her two options: the boy or the hypocrite.

"Infi, do you know anything about these two?" J demanded.

"Processing…" Infi replied back in an attempt to stall for time as she contemplated her next move. The subsequent minutes were spent listing off Newton Graceland's accolades, studies and papers which made the bounty hunter quickly lose interest. Having less information on Paul, Infi resorted to explaining what she had observed about the troubled youth.

"I guess that answers my question. I'll pick the hypocrite. The boy doesn't seem to care about anything but himself. If I sent him out he'd leave this man to die without a second thought. Mr. Graceland seems to have a soft spot for him and probably couldn't bear the idea of me holding this poor boy hostage." J laughed.

The bounty hunter walked over to Newton's dome and crouched down to lower the slider on the platform the scientist was placed on. She removed the petrifaction until his head was free. His gasps for air evoked a smile from J.

"You bitch! I can't believe I convinced him to not to kill you," Newton roared, the force field surrounding him was speckled with spit.

"Well aren't you the goody-goody." J replied "I guess I did right by choosing you if the boy was already planned on killing me."

"Let me out of here!" Newton's face reddened as he writhed in place an attempt to break the petrifaction.

"You're in no position to be giving me orders but don't you worry. You'll get your wish; you just have to do something for me."

"What do you want?"

"My ship is in dire need of repair and your little computer program told me about the airship that your student had."

"Infi?" Newton exhaled, looking up to the screen behind his captor to see his creation's avatar, staring blankly at him.

"She's been a great help and I see why you have her but I think she's of more use to me in my airship than in your little backpack," J smirked at the scowl that adorned Newton's face.

Infi's blank expression broke for a moment when she smiled and winked at him before returning to her dead-eyed stare. Newton bowed his head to hide his face and allowed himself a smile. He already had an idea of what Infi was doing. He lifted his head, glaring and snarling at his captor once more. "What if I say no?"

"I was hoping you'd say that." J smiled as she snapped her fingers and gestured to the frozen form of Paul.

"You wouldn't!" Newton blurted out.

"And why wouldn't I? You've made it abundantly clear what he was intending to do to me. I mean look at this face, does this look like the face of mercy," J replied, stroking Paul's frozen cheek in mock-affection.

"But he didn't. I talked him out of it so he hasn't done anything to you. Please don't do anything to him!" Newton pleaded.

"It's the thought that counts, right? And don't you think one good deed deserves another? I didn't make it this far by letting people with 'good' intentions stick around for too long. But I'm a reasonable woman, so I'll cut you a deal.

"I need an antigravity generator to get my ship off the ground and you might have one that's intact from the crash site of your airship. I'm going to be nice and give you a week to make it there, grab it and bring it back here. But!" J went over to Paul's petrified form and examined it closely. "After that week is up, every day I don't see you, I break off a piece of this little murderous brat. I think I'll start with his fingers." She made a move towards the aforementioned body part.

"If you so much as harm a single hair on his he—" Newton's words were cut off when J slammed her gauntlet viciously against the side of Paul's head. Newton screamed until J nudged the slider on his platform until the petrifaction was just under his nose, effectively silencing him save for the heavy breaths through his nostrils.

A closer look revealed that Paul was unharmed except for a small scuff on his stony visage, but J's message was clear.

"You'll do what?" J replied glaring at the frozen scientist. "What could you possibly do where you are now?"

Newton glared at her for a few seconds before lowering his gaze and giving her a resigned snort.

J smiled and nodded. "Glad we could come to an understanding. Listen up and listen well. Whether or not this boy lives is now up to you and how quickly you do as you're told. Piss me off again and the next strike will be at his neck and then we can see how he feels when I remove the petrifaction. Do we have an understanding?"

J lowered the slider, leaving Newton petrified from the neck down. Newton's face was flushed, looking like he could've exploded at any second. A glance at Paul helped him hold his tongue and nod.

"I'm gonna need my pokémon and backpack if you want me to make it there alive." Newton kept his voice low, doing his best to sound resigned.

"You can have them and one of rovers in the hangar bay. If I made you walk there's no telling how long it would take you to get there." J replied, snapping her fingers and pointing her finger at the blue platform that his and Shieldon's plinths were resting on. He watched the floor slide away beneath him until he was floating just behind the central console where he imagined J sat.

"Infi, open the escape shaft and lower the hangar bay ramp," J commanded. Newton watched a black crease materialize into a circle on the seamless and sleek floor behind J's work station. The circle widened with the barely audible rumble of machinery to reveal a dark hole with no bottom in sight.

"I'm going to remove the petrifaction from the rest of your body. If you try and break the force field, attack me or do anything I don't order you to do, I will blast you again and you can kiss the boy's life goodbye. Are we clear?"

"Crystal," Newton replied stiffly. He felt the warmth flow back into his body as J pushed the slider to the bottom with her foot, all the while aiming her weapon at his chest. The force field around him disappeared as she backed away, grabbed his backpack and threw it at him. He caught it and slipped his arms through the loops.

"You'll find a communications headset inside your backpack. I expect you to keep me updated. If I don't receive at least two calls per day, I will have to assume the worst and…well I'll let you imagine that."

"You'll get your damned updates. Anything else I should know?" Newton grumbled. He made a movement to step off the blue platform until J held an open palm to him.

"You might want to stay on that unless you like the idea of shattering your legs. I'll send in your Shieldon in after you. Just push the slider down until he's no longer petrified and the force field will disappear as well. And no funny business or I'll have Infi pull out the laser cannons."

Newton nodded and stepped back on the platform as he waited for her signal. J smiled, pointing at his platform and flicking her hand down. Despite explaining how much she needed him alive, Newton couldn't help but find the trip down the airship's depths unsettling as if he were walking into a trap.

"Relax," he mentally recited, "Infi's in command of the ship. She'd never actually harm me or let J harm me."

A minute or so passed in the shifting darkness before he started to feel the airflow change. The grass beneath the platform crunched, letting him know when to get off. Newton reached for the control pad on the left backpack strap, pressing the sequence that summoned the HUD eyepiece to let him see through the darkness. Infi's absence was made more pronounced as he pressed another sequence to summon the thin mechanical hand she normally controlled from inside his backpack.

The spindly metal hand grabbed the headset and handed it to him from a side opening. Newton slipped it onto his head and adjusted the microphone before pressing the button on the side.

"How long have I been out?" Newton asked, as he felt the transport saucer behind him lift off and fly back towards the airship.

"A few hours," J quickly replied. "Now head to the hangar and grab one of the rovers once you have your pokémon."

Newton watched Shieldon's statue descend next to him. He kneeled down and lowered the dial and his Shieldon's natural coloration returning to his hide as the force field dematerialized. A moment of shock and disorientation flashed over his eyes, which wasn't surprising considering the last time he was conscious he was in a well-lit elevator and not outside in the dead of night.

"Relax, Shieldon, it's okay," Newton said as the Shield pokémon glanced around to get his bearings and look for any potential attackers. The sudden movement of the blue platform beneath him made him jump off and start taking aim until Newton held out his hand. Shieldon let the Flash Cannon he'd been forming dissipate but stared at his trainer for some kind of explanation.

"The woman who caught us has Paul. She'll free him if we do something for her, but if we damage her things then Paul might get hurt," the scientist said.

Shieldon processed his words for a second before nodding and aiming his stare to the ground.

"Don't worry. We'll get him back." Newton's words were directed more at himself than his pokémon.

"I do hope you can drive," J said over intercom.

"Are your rovers stick shift or automatic?"

"Automatic. I doubt most of my grunts would've been capable enough to work the former."

Newton pressed one of the buttons beside the cockpit, causing it to jut out of the main body withe gap revealing the seats inside and the interior. He gestured for Shieldon to hop into the passenger seat behind his and climbed inside. Once his pokémon was settled in, he sat down, making the necessary adjustments before caused the cockpit to shift back into place and link with the rest of the vehicle. The controls were simple enough, and before long he put it in reverse and drove down the ramp and into the clearing. Sensing the darkness around them the high beams activated while a screen beside the steering wheel blinked on to reveal an onboard GPS that scanned the clearing for a way through the forest.

Newton drove onward and through a break in the clearing, glancing back and forth between the map and the road.

"So do you expect me to drive through the night," Newton said into the speaker.

"How you get me the equipment I need is entirely up to you. Feel free to sleep for the night and start in the morning but I'm not stopping the clock. If you need to rest so badly then you can shack up in one of the abandoned houses in the nearby town. Infi tells me you were there earlier and that's where you found the kid among the bodies that the Drapion didn't take with them.

"It would be a shame for the only survivor of the town to meet his end after going through so much. Now that I think about it, I guess his attitude makes sense after everything he's gone through," J replied.

Newton said nothing as his mind was already putting the pieces together as he slowly realized what Infi was doing for him. "I'm packing it in for tonight," he said.

There was silence for a few seconds until J replied. "Sweet dreams." Her was voice a mix of honey and poison and he could practically see the smug look on her face through the radio.

Newton threw the headset off his head and noticed that his map had a new addition. Infi floated in cyber space, smiling coyly as she pointed to the marker on the map that led him to the others in Pastoria.

"Sweet dreams indeed," Newton whispered with a smile of his own.