The heart's tentacles whipped forward and struck Heatran away as easily as if she weighed nothing, but at least she distracted it long enough for the rest of us to fly out of the creatures' reach.
"Adrienne! You're going to be a freaking cardiologist when you grow up! Start talking!" Maddie screamed over the heart's incessant lubb-DUPP lubb-DUPP.
"Um... okay... okay," said Adrienne, starting to panic now that everyone was looking to her for answers. She stared down at the heart as it lashed out at Heatran with terrifying speed. Heatran was just barely able to dodge the attacking blood vessels, but she obviously wasn't going to be able to get close enough to make an attack of her own.
"Okay, this sounds like it could work," Adrienne began finally. "We have to pierce the... uh... the sinoatrial node. It's the pacemaker of the heart—without it, the heart has no electrical pulse to keep it beating. It should be in the right atrium."
"Meaning?!" Maddie asked, drawing the word out so it sounded like "Mean-iiiiiiiing?!"
"The top right chamber! If we stab it in just the right place, maybe it'll kill the heart!"
Maybe it would kill the heart. Great. We were all going to risk our lives on a big fat "maybe". "I just hope you know what you're talking about," Maddie snapped to Adrienne, echoing my doubt aloud.
FWOOOOOM! The heart's tentacles stretched farther and faster than I would have ever thought possible. They all seemed to be targeting Heatran when four of them suddenly whipped almost straight upward—and plucked Adrienne from the air.
"Oh, for crying out loud!" she shouted as she dropped her torch, writhing uselessly as the tentacle dragged her downward. "Guys, you'll have to—" The tip of the tentacle slapped over her mouth with a wet shlop, muffling the rest of whatever she'd been about to say.
At the moment, Dragonite, Maddie and I were too busy dodging the remaining three tentacles to try to rescue Adrienne. "But we need her!" I thought in panic. "How else are we supposed to find the sinoatrial node? Adrienne's the only one who knows..."
Oh. Of course. Knowledge, supposedly Uxie's specialty. Knowledge, which always seemed to desert me at the most crucial moments.
"Come on," I pleaded with the Uxie part of my brain. "Please tell me you know something—anything—on this particular subject!"
I concentrated as hard as I could on the giant heart while still paying enough attention to my surroundings to be able to escape its lashing tentacle. And slowly, before my eyes, a glowing spot appeared on the throbbing creature. The spot was definitely on the top right part of the heart.
If I looked harder still, I could even make out the bursts of electricity that spread from the node and throughout the rest of the heart with each beat. This had to be it—the sinoatrial node!
Without another thought, I darted toward that glowing point like a living missile.
"YAAAAAAHHH!" I shouted in total exhilaration. (Sometimes I just couldn't help it.)
The world blurred around me, my vision contracting to the single point of light that marked the heart's weakness. With Uxie's psychic power, I formed a mental spike, sharpening it to a deadly point.
The point of the mental spike quickly found its mark, piercing it with perfect accuracy. Less than two seconds had passed since I'd plunged from the sky, and quick as it was, the heart hadn't had time to defend itself. The heart gave an otherworldly roar of what could only have been pain, throbbed louder and faster than ever—LUBB-DUPP-LUBB-DUPP-LUBB-DUPP—and collapsed.
With surprising gentleness, the veins and arteries fell lifeless to the cave floor. Heatran and Adrienne popped out of them, gasping for breath. We all stared solemnly at one another, grateful just to be alive.
"That was WICKED," said Adrienne. I cracked up laughing, effectively ruining the moment, and Maddie and Heatran both gave me the Evil Eye. Adrienne and Dragonite were smiling, though. I grinned back.
"Look," Heatran hissed abruptly.
A strange, softly glowing blue mist was rising from the dead heart. Immediately the five of us were on the defensive, but the mist didn't seem to be giving off any bad vibes.
The mist slowly congealed into a shape. A very familiar shape...
"It's a Pokémon!" Adrienne exclaimed.
A Luvdisc, to be exact. The heart-shaped ghost stared at us with its small, bright eyes.
"I cannot thank you enough for breaking the curse that bound me to this place," it said in a thin, feminine voice. "I am deeply sorry for my actions, but rest assured that I am a good being. Foolish, perhaps, but good. But there is something I do not understand. Why is it that I remain here, rather than moving on to the next life?"
"This much I know," replied Heatran, the only one of us who wasn't stupefied with shock. "Giratina, the one who guides spirits on their journey to the next life, was murdered by a dark entity. We are on our way to find that entity and destroy it. After that, and Arceus willing, we will find a new connection between the living world and the spirit world." She frowned. "How came you to be trapped in Turnback Cave, Luvdisc? And what is this curse you speak of?"
The ghostly Luvdisc closed its eyes. "I have said before that I am a foolish creature. Long ago, and against the warnings of my friends and family, I ventured into this cave. I thought myself a fearless explorer. I was quite young then, and danger was just another face of adventure to me."
Luvdisc shook its head, which was really the entire front part of its thin body. "I quickly became lost, and the idea of adventuring farther into the cave no longer held any appeal. For a time I thought for sure I was headed toward the cave entrance, but the tunnels only kept twisting into more complicated patterns, and I became more lost than ever. I died here, without food or water or even the warmth of the sun to comfort me. I was relieved, for I thought that with my death would finally come peace. But even death was not the end of my suffering.
As I took my final breaths, a terrifying voice spoke directly into my head. 'Fool,' it said, 'do you truly believe that death will free you from the consequences of your idiocy? Be cursed.' And so I was. I became a monstrous heart that sensed all the suffering in the living world, both physical and emotional. Needless to say, it was torture." Luvdisc shuddered violently with the memory, then frowned. "Although I must say, the pain was far worse recently than it had ever been. There must be a creature suffering very near here, and a very powerful one at that."
"GIRATINA!" everyone except Luvdisc shouted at once. The ghost stared at us in bewilderment.
"Is it really possible?" Heatran murmured, half to herself. "If this Luvdisc can only sense the pain of living creatures..."
"Oh, yes, living creatures only. I'm quite certain of that. There is an electric ghost who passes through this cave sometimes, and he always has other ghosts with him at whom he seems to enjoy shouting abuse. The pain is always clear on their faces, but I cannot feel the suffering in their still hearts."
"Rotom," Heatran grunted. "Why am I not surprised? Luvdisc, is there any part of this cave where you felt the most pain from that powerful creature?"
"Yes," said the ghost, "as a matter of fact there is." Luvdisc nodded toward the darkest part of the cave. Now that I looked carefully at that part of the cave, I could see a very faint glow emanating from it. The weird part was that it was a dark glow. I didn't know how it was possible for darkness to glow, but it was.
Heatran's mouth fell open. "That... that's—" It wasn't like Heatran to be at a loss for words. That couldn't be good.
"That," she said in a shaky voice, "can only be one thing. An entrance to the Torn World!"
For a moment it was so quiet, you could've heard a pin drop. At the cave entrance.
"The Torn World?" I asked. "The one that was supposed to be introduced in Pokémon Platinum?"
"The one where Giratina reverts to his Origin Forme?" added Adrienne in a smaller voice.
"The one where we're probably all gonna die if we go there?" Maddie said sullenly, not sounding as if she particularly cared at this point. Gee, Maddie, thanks for your moral support.
"Yes, that one," growled Heatran. "And if the Inners are planning to do what I fear they are, then we are all in deep trouble. It is usually against my better judgment to dash into a situation without taking ample time to prepare, but we must depart for the Torn World immediately. There is no time to waste!"
"I will go with you," said Luvdisc. "It is the least I can do for having attacked you earlier."
"If you must," said Heatran, already headed for the dark glow. "Follow me, all of you."
"I have a bad feeling about this," Dragonite said under his breath.
"Don't we all?" Adrienne replied.
"You'll be feeling worse things if you don't shut your mouths and hurry," Heatran snapped over her shoulder. "Like my foot on your behinds!"
Despite the gravity of our situation, I found myself trying not to giggle.
I always seem to laugh at the most horribly inappropriate moments.