Tiger and I agreed that it would be a good idea to forget about sleeping and figure out how to keep everyone from noticing Adrienne's absence.
"Maybe we should just say she has the flu," said Tiger when I asked her what we should tell the school. "It worked last time, didn't it?"
"I don't know if they're going to buy that twice in a row," I said. "I mean, the counselors are pretty useless, sure, but they're not blind. I think they have this sixth sense that tells them, 'Hey, wasn't that the kid who just got over the flu two weeks ago?' And it's not even close to flu season. We can't just use that excuse over and over again. We need some new material."
Tiger frowned. "Well, it's not exactly like making up an alibi for Adrienne is the highest thing on our current to-do list anyway. Kind of takes second place to saving her from Darkrai and stopping the end of the world, ya know? Besides, maybe if we're fast enough about finding this soul core thingamajig, we won't even need one."
I sighed. "Let's hope so."
So we abandoned that idea and started discussing more important things. Like how to find the core of someone's soul. And how not to die in the process. Unfortunately we didn't know much about either of those subjects, so it wasn't very encouraging. We ended up just sneaking into the kitchen and taking a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch from the pantry. My stomach turned at the idea of eating, but I managed to force down a few spoonfuls before I couldn't take anymore.
We sat in silence for a few minutes, knowing we were wasting precious time but also afraid to do anything. Finally Tiger asked, "So how do we get inside Adrienne's soul?"
Glad you asked, a cheerful voice said in my head.
Suddenly dark shadows began to shoot from the ground up the kitchen walls. The shadows congealed on the ceiling, blanketing us in total darkness. I couldn't see my hand an inch from my face. I knew this must be the same stuff that had transported us to the weird mind-world where I'd first met inner-Maddie.
"Aaaaugh! Not this again!" I yelled.
"Holy Sugar-Honey-Iced-Tea!" Tiger shouted.
In a split second, the world turned from black to an empty whiteness. Sure enough, we were back in the blindingly white mind-world. Instinctively I switched to my Mesprit body. The change happened as quickly as the real world's transformation into the mind-world. I glanced over at Tiger and saw that she'd changed as well. If the Inners were here, we'd give them a fight.
For a few seconds nothing happened. Then, "Who's there?" Tiger challenged in a loud voice.
"I was wondering when you'd ask."
The voice clearly didn't belong to an Inner, but when we spun around to the source of the sound I still half expected to see one of their hateful faces. To my relief, it was a Dragonite, which just happened to be Adrienne's all-time favorite Pokémon. Adrienne loved Dragonite even more than she did Azelf.
"I am to be your guide into Adrienne's soul," said the Dragonite. He put his paws on his hips and stretched his puny wings to their full span, puffing out his chest importantly.
"Into?" I asked, puzzled. "Just into her soul, not through it?"
"I'm afraid so, Maddie," the Dragonite replied apologetically. For a moment I wondered how he knew my name, but then I figured it made sense if he'd come from Adrienne's soul. "I can lead you to the soul," the Pokémon went on. "But the journey to the core of a soul can only be made by people from your world. You'd call them 'real people,' though the word 'real' isn't totally accurate. Everything exists in some form or another, really."
It was so cool having the chance to talk to a Dragonite. He had such a compelling voice too, somehow both powerful and gentle, like the sound of a French horn. It was intensely comforting with the memory of Darkrai's horrible voice still haunting me.
Tiger looked troubled despite the Dragonite's soothing tones. "What exactly is the core of a soul?"
It occurred to me that I'd been wondering the same thing, but lately there had been so many other things to worry about that anything that wasn't extremely important had moved to the back of my mind.
"The core of a person's soul... How can I explain it? It's the thing that defines a person on the most basic level. It's what makes every person who he or she is." The Dragonite's voice became grave. He seemed to be choosing his words very carefully as he went on: "If someone... bad... were to manage to infiltrate the core another person's soul, that bad someone could seize control of the person's entire being. Even a 'not real' bad someone could do it, as long as they were powerful enough."
My heart throbbed hard against my ribcage and a wave of nausea crashed over my little Mesprit stomach. "So what you're saying is... if Darkrai reaches the core of Adrienne's soul before we do, I mean before Tiger and I do, then he could take over her body?"
The Dragonite nodded slowly. "Exactly. He may even have reached the core already, but he will not have the power to truly seize Adrienne's soul until the night of the lunar eclipse, when the moon shines red." Here, his voice dropped to nearly a whisper. He kept his composure, but from the look in his eyes and the way he kept rustling his wings in agitation, I could see that he was as scared as me. I suddenly realized that if this Dragonite really did come from Adrienne's soul, he was in as much danger from Darkrai and the Inners as Adrienne herself.
"Well," said the Dragonite in a voice that sounded braver than he appeared to feel, "no use standing here chatting. Now we go... to Adrienne's soul!"
And the whole world of light exploded.
"WOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOO!!" Tiger shouted.
"AAAAAAAUUUGGGHHHHHHHHH!!" I screamed.
Tiger and I were hurtling through some kind of tunnel made of light and sound—a horrible screeching noise that, had I not been distracted by the fact that I was hurtling through a crazy tunnel, probably would have made me want to rip my eardrums out with my own fingers. Everything was a chaotic whirl as we were pulled along by some invisible hurricane force. And just when I thought my head would burst open from the speed and the noise and the force of my own shrieking—
Everything stopped.
It was like a movie fade when one scene changes to another. The white slowly filled with color, and I found myself sitting on soft grass in a great field of flowers in every shade and hue. Tiger was sitting a few feet from me. Neither of us seemed to be hurt.
"Is this Adrienne's soul?" asked Tiger, looking around in awe at the endless meadow. It was the image of a perfect summer day here; the sky was a cloudless, powdery blue, and a cool breeze ruffled the flora on the ground, turning it into a flowing sea of flowers.
"It better be," I grunted, my short Mesprit limbs wobbling like fresh Jell-O, " 'cause I sure as heck ain't going back into that stupid tunnel."
"Oh, come on," she said, smiling at me. "You gotta admit it was pretty fun."
"Fun? Fun?! Oh, sure. If being sucked through some insane light tunnel to heaven knows where, all the while being forced to listen to obnoxious screechy sounds that make you want to just stab your ears and be done with it, qualifies as fun, then I've just had a blast. Seriously, Tiger. Haven't you ever been to Six Flags? Or Disneyworld? Where usually people don't become deaf due to side effects from riding the roller coasters?"
Tiger had been incapacitated with laughter through the whole speech. "Not... ahaha... as... hahaha... fun," she managed to choke out.
I rolled my eyes. "Look, if you're just going to be goofing off through this whole trip, you might as well—hey, pay attention! What are you looking at?!" Tiger had stopped laughing and was staring at something past my shoulder (well, not really staring since Uxie keeps its eyes closed, but you know what I mean).
"Shut up and turn around," she said numbly.
I turned and was startled so badly I nearly peed myself. An enormous cave had appeared, its mouth wide open before us, which was what had scared me; at first glance I'd thought it was the mouth of some monster, poised to hork us down its gargantuan gullet. From the look of consternation on Tiger's face, the cave hadn't been there just a few seconds ago.
"Should we go inside?" I asked quietly after a while of staring into the cave's dark mouth.
"Something's written on the side of the entrance," Tiger said suddenly. "Look."
Cautiously we floated closer.
"SOROREM ET AMICAM - INTRATE," I read aloud. "Sounds like Latin. Figures a Latin geek like Adrienne would have something like this in her soul."
"But what does it mean?" Tiger asked. "Sheesh, she could've at least left directions in English."
"I don't think she had much of a choice." I thought hard for a moment. "Adrienne told me the word intrare means 'to enter' in Latin," I said. "Maybe intrate means something like that. And Adrienne wouldn't lead us somewhere bad."
"So, what are we going to do?" she asked.
I paused, taking a slow, deep breath to calm my tattered nerves. Tiger watched me silently, waiting for me to go on.
"I say we go in," I decided.