(DAY SEVEN)

Flo, happy about the lift on her grounding the previous night, was not pleased to see them when they turned up to say goodbye. She refused to answer the door, and when they continued to knock, she stuck her head out of her bedroom window instead.

"I hate you guys," she called down at them. "You got me grounded, you made my Bellsprout evolve into a Weepinbell so I can't enter the Dance-Off, you... You've all been awful!"

With that, she slammed her window shut and refused to speak to them anymore.

"Fine," Kaida yelled. "We're going now! Bye!"

John wanted to visit the Ruins of Alph. Kaida had protested at first – they were on a schedule – but John had persuaded them that it would be interesting and that they could make up the time.

"Come on," he wheedled. "It'll be a short visit. It'll be interesting."

They headed south west towards the Ruins of Alph. With Dunsparce and Hoothoot securely in their Pokéballs, John led the way with Totodile skipping to keep up with his long, striding pace. Kaida, who followed more slowly, had Cyndaquil perched on her shoulder and backpack, while Nila and Chikorita were in the middle.

"You know," John said, looking up from his guidebook, "this has a surprising amount of information about the Ruins of Alph in. Not the most recent discoveries, of course, but that's only to be expected. Did you know they actually caught video footage of a few of the Unown from hidden cameras a few years ago? Amazing. I think I saw that on the news..."

The Ruins of Alph did not look like much at first glance. There were a few crumbling remains of what might have been walls, but the site had been buried so the more impressive remnants were underground. John's face, however, filled with awe at the sight of the lumps of ground that lay over the tombs of the Unown.

Kaida knew a little of the Unown. She knew that archaeologists had found ancient structures filled with strange symbols that seemed to make up a foreign language, which was in the process of being translated into their own, and that they were linked to several areas across the land, including ruins in Sinnoh and the Sevii Islands. The Pokémon themselves were elusive, but rumour had it that they looked the same as the symbols on the walls of the places that they frequented. There were also often pictures of legendary Pokémon, such as the legendary beasts, where they were.

"This place looks better every time I see it," John marvelled.

"Eh?" Kaida said. "You've been here before?"

John nodded. "Of course. My mum has driven me here plenty of times."

Kaida growled. "Then why were you so desperate to come here?" she demanded.

John gave her a look of surprise, as if he couldn't fathom why she was asking the question. "So you would see it, of course."

Kaida smacked her hand to her head. "OK, been here, saw it, let's go."

"No," John insisted. "You have to take a tour!"

Kaida looked to Nila for support, but to her horror she saw Nila looking quite interested by the ruins. Damn it. You couldn't rely on brainiacs for anything! She saw Nila's eyes rove over the site and resigned herself to staying there. It looked like John was going to get his way despite Kaida's protestations.

John led them over to a small, modern building with several sheds nearby it. Ahead of them, a man sipping a large mug walked into the building, the door slamming shut behind him. They reached the door a few seconds later and John hammered on it with his fist. It swung back open and the man with the mug reappeared. He squinted for a moment and then his expression cleared.

"John," he said happily. He peered over the top of John to look at Kaida and Nila. "Who are your female friends?"

"Kaida and Nila," John introduced them. "This is Daichi."

Daichi was of average height and had a friendly smile. Black hair peeked out from underneath his hard hat, presumably mandatory for excavation underground, and his face had faint traces of laugh lines. His shoulders were broad and his arms muscled; obviously archaeology had a lot more physical labour involved than Kaida had first anticipated. She had always pictured them scraping the ground with trowels and dusting artefacts off, but here they were doing a lot of digging.

"Nice to meet you," Daichi said genially.

Kaida tried to wave, but with Cyndaquil in her arms it was a little difficult. She settled for nodding and smiling instead. Nila, who did have free arms, nodded anyway.

"You're just in time, John," Daichi announced, clapping his large hands together. "We just made a major find."

John's eyes widened in excitement and he leant forwards eagerly.

"Come see for yourself," Daichi offered. He glanced to Kaida and Nila. "You two can come as well." He went inside the building and returned with three hard hats. "Here you go. Smallest ones I could find. Now, leave your stuff here and follow me."

Nila eyed the dirty hat dubiously before she put it on her head. Kaida found the hat still hung loose even after she had adjusted it to the smallest it would go. John, on the other hand, was completely comfortable.

He led them across the site. There were various holes of various sizes dug into the ground that they had to go around, and inside those holes were workers scraping the ground with trowels, brushes, and other specialised equipment. Kaida spotted a Machoke helping to move several heavy objects and saw a man accepting a message from a Pidgey with particularly tufted feathers. There were also some people entering the mounds – which were places where the earth had piled up on the ancient buildings – and they all wore hardhats. They approached one of these mounds, and after Daichi spoke with one of the men outside it for a moment, they were led inside.

Even Kaida had to admit her curiosity was piqued. There were strange symbols carved in neat lines all over the inside of the ruins – symbols in the shapes of the Unown – and in the middle there was a strange altar. As they approached it, Kaida saw it was actually some sort of tablet with tiles slotted nearly into squares. However, the majority of the tiles were missing and the picture was incomplete.

"We've found the missing tiles," Daichi told John proudly. "We're about to put them into place."

An ancient box was brought forward by an old, spindly man with thick glasses. He placed it on the floor beside the tablet and opened it. Inside Kaida saw there were too many tiles to fill this tablet. Some of them had to go elsewhere. The men seemed to have figured out which tiles went where, as the pile on top was taken out and they began to arrange the pieces. John leaned forward in anticipation.

"It looks like a Kabuto!" he gushed.

Daichi clapped John in the shoulder. "You've got it," he agreed. "There are things like these in all the mounds, and we think they all show different ancient Pokémon. Most of them seem to be ones we've managed to bring back from fossils with new technology, but there are a few mysteries." As the last few tiles were being slotted into place, Daichi cleared his throat and said, "Hey, why don't we let John put the last piece in?"

John looked like he might explode with joy. He took the last piece with shaking hands and the other archaeologists backed off as he stepped up to put the tile into place. There were a few flashes as cameras went off. Then, John reached forward and pushed the final piece into the puzzle.

The cheer that arose almost masked the ominous clunking sound – almost.

The grinding sound was actually the floor underneath John. After the final tile was pushed into place it had rolled back, so, with a surprised cry, John fell down. The cheers turned into gasps and everyone rushed towards the hole.

"Are you OK?" Daichi called urgently.

There was a long silence before they heard a groan.

"I'm fine," John called. It hadn't been a long drop, and while he would probably suffer from some bad bruises, he was otherwise all right. He blinked into the darkness. He could see a little way around him because of the light from above: without that he would have been blind. John stood up and groaned again as his body protested. "Just bruised," he yelled up to assure the people above. "Ow. Wait... What's that?"

Silence.

John squinted into the black at the movement he had seen. The approaching object became clearer by the second until John was faced with something he had never expected to see. It was an eye. The eye was surrounded by a black circle, and attached to that by a line underneath the eye was a larger circle.

Unown.

"John?" someone called.

John blinked as the Unown whizzed away, startled by the sound.

"John, we're sending someone down! We think you're in our underground cavern. We have a ladder into there. Someone will be there soon."

It took John a moment to swallow and wet his dry throat. "Yeah," he croaked. "I'll just... wait." With rising disappointment, he realised the Unown was unlikely to come back. He should have reacted quicker and tried to take a picture.

A few minutes later John saw the familiar beams of torches heading towards him. The lights appeared abruptly from around a corner and he began to see the chamber had a very strange layout. As Daichi and a female archaeologist led John back out, John noticed that – while the chamber itself was even and rectangular – it was dissected by alternating walls, forcing them to take much longer walking around them. The walls, whenever torches were shone on them, revealed more of the script of the Unown in seemingly endless, neat and parallel lines. When they finally reached the ladder, John climbed up the sturdy rungs and found himself blinking as his head emerged into the fierce daylight.

"I saw one." John waited until both Daichi and the woman were out of the chamber before he told them. "It was an Unown!"

Daichi and the woman both looked astounded.

"You actually saw one?" the woman hissed. "How can you be sure?"

"Well," John said pragmatically, "it came right up to me and looked like two circles. It was definitely like one the symbols on the wall."

The woman's scepticism changed to excitement as she began to babble. "This is amazing. We've heard of sightings at sites like these, but we've only ever seen strange movements out of the corner of our eyes... it has been dismissed by some people as a rumour... overactive imaginations at play..."

"I definitely saw it," John affirmed. "I can show you which one it was."

Kaida and Nila greeted John outside the mound. John brushed them off in favour of rushing inside to scan the walls. Daichi followed him closely as he scanned the wall and found the Unown he was looking for.

"Here," John said, his finger millimetres away from the wall. "This one."

Daichi's face split into an enormous grin. "You have to draw it for us. Tell me exactly what happened!"

Meanwhile, Kaida and Nila, recognising John was now immersed in talking to the archaeologists about his discovery, went to sit outside. The archaeologists had begun to bring in their expensive equipment to analyse the tiles and the tablet. The tiles were now refusing to come out and the archaeologists did not want to apply more force in case they broke.

"It's so boring," Kaida groused, rubbing her neck.

"It's OK," Nila defended.

"Well, why aren't you in there?"

"They're x-raying the place," Nila replied. "They don't need more people in the way."

Kaida responded with a shrug and then winced. "My neck hurts," she complained.

"Why?"

"I don't know," Kaida said. She took off the hard hat and glared at it. "It's holding up my head?"

"It is a large head," Nila said dourly. "Your poor, poor neck."

Kaida glared. "Smaller than yours!"

"All of you is smaller than me."

She had a point. Kaida continued to glare anyway.

John and Daichi emerged again at around lunch time with sandwiches. It didn't take John long to find them even though Kaida and Nila had wandered off to a more secluded part of the site to train their Pokémon against each other. In his hand he clutched a large paper report of research.

"This is incredible," John said as he flipped through pages of their research. "I definitely want to become a Pokémon Researcher."

"You're a bit too young at the moment," Daichi said fondly. "In a few years time you should come back. We'll definitely take you on."

"I'll have missed all the food stuff," John said. If he had a sulky tone then he was using it. However, to most ears it just sounded a little disappointed.

Daichi shook his head. "Definitely not. There will always be more to discover. You've got a quick mind – and a lot of luck – so you're just the sort of person we want."

John beamed with pride. In a few years time he was almost certainly going to return to join their research team. Until then he had a lot more discovering to do in other areas of Pokémon.

"And you could work here or the Sevii Islands or even Sinnoh if you are interested in the Unown," Daichi added. "I'm going over to Solaceon in Sinnoh soon. They've found two different symbols over there."

John's eyes boggled. Apparently he hadn't heard this news yet.

"They're publishing information in the JOPA soon," Daichi explained. To Kaida's blank look, he added, "Journal of Pokémon Archaeology."

John gave Kaida an accusing look. "You've never read it?"

"No!" Kaida flailed. "I'm normal!"

John's look was making Kaida feel as if she had committed a criminal offense – which was ridiculous. She was twelve years old. She generally didn't browse journals most commonly used by specialists and university students as a pastime. She glanced over at Nila for support, but Nila was sporting a look best described as guilty. It was Kaida's turn to be accusing.

"What?" Nila said grumpily. "I like to read."

Kaida huffed. Was she the only sane one around?

John was looking at Nila with new interest. "Which articles did you read?"

"She reads everything," Kaida muttered.

Nila mentioned an article about the old belief that Unown were the building blocks of the universe.

"There's still the belief that Unown are the building blocks of Pokémon," Daichi told them. "There are depictions of the legendary Pokémon in the chambers of the Unown. In Ecruteak they show them alongside the legendary dogs. Then there is the myth about Unown opening holes in realities."

It rang a bell, but Kaida had thought that it had more to do with the legends of Palkia and Dialga in Sinnoh.

"The myth goes that once there was a world without Pokémon," John told Kaida. "We lived with animals and plants, of course, but there were no Pokémon until the Unown breached the wall in this dimension in Mount Coronet in Sinnoh at Spear Pillar. There, they brought Pokémon into being. Arceus came first, along with the beings of time and space – Dialga and Palkia – and Arceus moulded the world, creating Pokémon. So, because they came from Arceus, and so from another dimension, they had powers beyond the physical possibilities of our reality. Therefore, while weak by themselves, collectively the Unown hold a greater power than anything else.

Cyndaquil had snuggled closer to Kaida during the story, looking a little unnerved. Kaida patted her Pokémon reassuringly. On the other hand, Chikorita looked emboldened. She made herself as tall as she could next to Nila until Totodile, restless and dancing from foot to foot, knocked into her.

"We have had more and more alleged sightings of Unown recently," Daichi said, "so we hope this means we will be able to discover more about them. If we are lucky, John's sighting today will only be the beginning." Daichi was practically salivating at this point.

They polished off their lunch, disposed of the rubbish, and returned to the main site. Daichi jabbered on to John about different sediments – so Kaida tuned out – but her attention was caught again by an unpleasantly familiar sight. Two men dressed in suits – looking glaringly out of place – were joined by a shorter youth, whose black hooded jumper and dark hair shadowed his face. Kaida's eyes narrowed. It couldn't be...

But, before she could say anything, the trio had disappeared from sight. She whirled around and grabbed Nila's arm, shocking the taller girl.

"Don't touch me–ouch–Kaida–what?"

"I saw the thief from Mr Pokémon's house," Kaida blurted. "The one who attacked me last night! He's here."

Nila initially looked sceptical, but when Kaida tugged her arm again she conceded. "Fine. Just... let my arm go."

Kaida released Nila and hurried off in the direction she had seen the masked moron and his cronies, but, unfortunately, several archaeologists carrying heavy toolkits and canvasses stumbled by, delaying Nila and Kaida briefly. Much to Kaida's frustration, the pause was enough for them to lose sight of their target.

"We have to find him," she growled. "Who knows what that thief is doing now?"

Nila looked troubled. "He'd better not disturb the historical artefacts."

Kaida rolled her eyes – was Nila now John? There was a lot more at risk than that: she wasn't exactly sure what, but she doubted the masked boy was too interested in archaeology. Stealing from Mr. Pokémon suggested he wanted Pokémon – powerful ones – a lot more. Kaida couldn't quite envision what powerful Pokémon would be doing on an archaeological site, however. There were a couple of Machoke to help with heavy lifting, some Pidgey used to carry messages, and she'd seen some Voltorb used as glowing lanterns underground – probably with the flash ability that Cyndaquil had learnt at Sprout Tower – but not a lot more. Certainly nothing rare or particularly strong! Still, she thought she'd double check with Nila anyway.

"Powerful Pokémon? Here?" Nila was dubious. "Writings about powerful Pokémon, maybe. There are the translations of the Unown which talk about legendaries... but no actual legendaries, of course... unless, maybe he's trying to get a lot of Unown...?"

But Kaida doubted he was trying to get his hands on many Unown. She swerved to the side, ignoring Nila's confused yell, and started towards the low, temporary buildings the archaeologists were using to store their work in. She broke into a run. Cyndaquil squeaked at the sudden speed and hung on more tightly to her shoulder; he finally gave that up and clung to her neck as well. It was a few seconds before the bewildered Nila caught up with her – Kaida often cursed Nila's longer legs – and they reached the huts at roughly the same time. Kaida flung open one of the doors – lock snapped clean off it already – and burst in on the bizarrely-clad boy sitting at one of the computers, quite obliviously downloading information.

"You!" Kaida seethed.

The boy looked up. His face was shrouded by the hood, but Kaida saw a prominent nose and the same dark eyes before he turned away.

"You," the boy repeated, sounding thoroughly irritated. "Don't you ever learn? Leave me alone!"

"I'll leave you alone if you stop stealing!" Kaida blustered.

The boy didn't reply. Instead he clicked his fingers and the two bodyguards advanced on Kaida and Nila. Cyndaquil leapt from Kaida's back to the floor where he fired up his flame. He stood between the bodyguards and his trainer determinedly.

The boy snorted. "They've dealt with that runt easily enough before."

If she were a cartoon, steam would be pouring from Kaida's ears.

"Runt?" she yelled. "Cyndaquil's not a runt! He's perfectly proportioned!"

Nila stifled a laugh despite the situation. One did not make disparaging comments about size around Kaida without fearing the consequences, unless perhaps you were an oblivious Flo or knew Kaida as well as Nila did. Clearly this boy was an idiot. It was going to get ugly.

The man released his Golbat again, and despite his defeat the previous night, Cyndaquil stood steadfastly.

"Hang on a second," Nila said, putting her arms up to halt the battle. "We can't fight in here." Her tone was condescending as she said, "In case you idiots hadn't noticed, this is a very confined space with a lot of important equipment and research notes."

Of course, she was ignored. The bodyguard's Golbat leered at Cyndaquil.

"Thanks for reminding me," the boy said, pulling his memory stick from the computer and grabbing several notebooks that were set beside it. "These look like they haven't been copied yet."

"Back away from the historical documents," Nila said, now equally incensed.

"Air Cutter!" the bodyguard intoned to his Golbat.

As the large bat swooped at Cyndaquil, presumably to cause as much damage as it had before, Nila stepped back to let Mareep and Chikorita forward into the cabin.

"Mareep, Thundershock!"

Electricity crackled between Mareep's horns and shot at Golbat. Golbat had only been paying attention to Cyndaquil, so the bolt of electricity – its weakness – took it quite by surprise. It was flung sideways, crashing into the wall and leaving a large dent. As it stumbled back up – restricted due to its large mass being contained in such a small space – it was thudded into by both Chikorita and Mareep in a joint Tackle and Body Slam attack.

"Now," Nila began sternly, "put down the important historical information."

Just as Golbat hadn't been expecting a second – and third – attack from the side, both Nila and Kaida were unprepared when the second bodyguard used his Golbat to blast them out through the door, their Pokémon along with them. They landed painfully and rolled several feet, limbs jarring and tangling together. By the time Nila and Kaida had extracted themselves from the pile and were rubbing bruised limbs, the boy, the two bodyguards, and the two Golbat were out of the cabin.

"Thieves!" Kaida yelled, which attracted attention from surrounding archaeologists. "They've stolen your research and... stuff." She finished off quite lamely, but she'd got her point across.

"Machoke," one of the archaeologists called, "get over here!"

Two Machoke came lumbering over, flexing their strong arms.

"Golbat, Air Cutter!"

One of the Golbat swooped forward and swept over both of the Machoke, who tried to swing their arms out to hit their opponent but failed. Dismally, both Kaida and Nila realised that these Machoke had not been trained to fight. They got up again and faced the Golbat nonetheless, but they were horribly outmatched. It took two of them to even try to contain the one Golbat for the moment. While this was happening, the boy and his bodyguards were slipping away under the protection of the other Golbat.

No. Kaida wouldn't let that happen.

"Cyndaquil, Ember!"

The Ember struck the Golbat and did a little damage, which was good enough for Kaida. Golbat soon sent Cyndaquil flying backwards, and Kaida was lucky Cyndaquil's flame was extinguished when she caught him. She dug her feet into the ground so she didn't stumble from the force of the tiny Pokémon hitting her chest.

"Kaida? Nila?" The voice was John's. "What's going on?"

John had arrived at the sound of the commotion with Daichi.

"Thieves," Nila replied succinctly, and as Kaida set Cyndaquil back on the ground she ordered Mareep to use Thundershock again. Golbat swooped at Mareep but Chikorita covered the electric Pokémon by striking Golbat with Razor Leaf, which, while fairly ineffectual, at least was distracting.

"The one who attacked you last night?" John asked.

At the same time, Daichi muttered, "I'll deal with this!" and stomped off.

"Yep," Kaida said to John, and, almost immediately afterwards, she ordered, "Ember!"

John's face turned grave. He did not like this boy: stealing Pokémon and historical documents, potentially disturbing and destroying an archaeological site, and attacking his friend. He didn't take long to join the fray, ordering his Totodile to blast the Golbat attacking the Machoke with Water Gun.

With both Golbat busy defending themselves on three fronts, some of the archaeologists were moving towards the boy and his bodyguards with the intention of stopping them and retrieving the documents themselves. However, this attempt was foiled when the boy reached to his belt – tucked beneath his hoodie – and withdrew a solid black Pokéball (customised, Kaida thought, as she'd never seen one like it). He drew the ball back and cried, "Go, Onix!"

The enormous Pokémon burst out from the black Pokéball, forcing the archaeologists backwards. It reared up and swiped its tail outwards, almost hitting the cabins behind it.

"Stop them," the boy ordered.

Golbat, in sync with the Onix, flew upwards as Onix used its mighty tail to knock Cyndaquil, Mareep, and Chikorita aside. Nila grabbed Kaida by the shoulders and tugged her backwards so they both missed the blow. Kaida had been concentrating on Cyndaquil, and she rushed to his side as soon as she could. He was dazed and confused, but otherwise all right. Kaida was so relieved that she didn't hear Nila's yell of alarm as Onix reared up behind her, preparing to strike again.

Mareep and Chikorita both leapt to Kaida's defence. Mareep's electric attack was completely ineffective against the part ground-type Pokémon, but Chikorita's Razor Leaf stung. The attack that saved Kaida from harm was, however, Totodile's, as his Water Gun, from the other side of Onix, hit the great Pokémon in the eye. Onix, a hater of water, roared and drew backwards, shaking its large head as it recovered.

But it wouldn't be long before it did recover and evidently it was much more powerful than anything Nila, John, Kaida, or the archaeologists had to offer.

Until – "Ah ha!"

Daichi's cry turned many heads as he came tearing back around the corner. Kaida wasn't sure what to expect: did he have a super powerful Pokémon of his own or had he alerted the police? What he had actually done turned out to be even better. As Daichi pointed to the sky, they all saw a dot becoming larger and larger as something – someone – plummeted downwards. A few seconds later, Falkner landed on a Skarmory. He leapt off gracefully, landing lightly, and the image was only ruined by Nila and Kaida wincing, once again, at the fact that he was wearing socks with sandals.

"Who is this?" the boy asked one of his bodyguards, causing Kaida to glare. He didn't even know the gym leaders of Johto! His accent was clearly from their region, too, so she doubted he had the excuse of living in Kanto or somewhere farther afield.

Falkner took it in his stride. "I'm Falkner," he said simply, with a swish of his fringe, before ordering Skarmory to strike.

Skarmory was a blur. It rescued the struggling Machoke with a flash of its silver wings, and then it turned on the other Golbat. Onix, recovered from Totodile's lucky shot, lunged forwards, but Skarmory spun out of the way in the nick of time and slash down, the steel attack causing extra damage to the giant rock-ground Pokémon. The bodyguard was forced to return is Golbat to its Pokéball, but Onix was not yet beaten. It opened its mouth and used Dragon Breath. The dragon move hit Skarmory, but Skarmory was unmoved, simply taking the attack in its stride before slashing out another Steel Wing attack. As Onix crashed down, mercifully avoiding both people and the cabins, Skarmory moved as a blur to strike the other Golbat and save Kaida and Nila's Pokémon. It took one more blow to finish that Golbat off before the fearsome steel bird turned back to Onix to strike again.

Kaida was very impressed afterwards, as she had not noticed Falkner's Hoothoot sneaking behind them all to seize the research papers from the boy's bag, which it pulled open itself. It flew the research papers back into Falkner's hands, which was the point everybody else – Kaida included – spotted what the little bird had done. One of the archaeologists looked like he might cry in relief.

Meanwhile, Falkner's powerful Skarmory was finishing off Onix, and the boy, furious when he realised the papers were gone, and even more annoyed as he realised he was losing, cried out, "Smokescreen!"

It was not the Pokémon move. Instead, it was some sort of gadget imitation that one of the bodyguards pulled out of their black jacket. It didn't take long for Skarmory to blow the smoke away with its wings, but by then the Onix, the boy, and the bodyguards were gone.

"Thank you, thank you," one of the archaeologists gushed.

It was the same one who had been close to crying. He grabbed Falkner's arm and hugged him, which seemed to irk Falkner as he had put one sandaled foot forwards as if he had been planning to pursue the thieves. Every second he was delayed was a second more they had to escape him permanently.

"I hadn't copied these up–they were all new–thank you so much–I can't even–"

Falkner tried to extract himself from the man's grip but failed. Other archaeologists started to crowd around him, further impeding him. With a sigh, he seemed to give up.

"Everything's fine." He placated them, patting the man awkwardly on the head. "Just get a better lock and some better guards – and thank you."

The last part was addressed to Daichi, who wrenched the sobbing man away from Falkner. The man was still muttering his gratitude as Daichi steered him towards the cabin with the instruction of coping the notes up before any sort of incident could happen again.

"He downloaded stuff onto a memory stick, too," Kaida informed Falkner and Daichi when the archaeologists had cleared away a bit so she could reach them.

Daichi was troubled. "I don't think I want to know what he'll do with them," he fretted. "It's not like he could have wanted to take them to take credit for the information – everyone will know he's a thief then. To be honest, there's not a lot he can do. We don't have much information that's not public or won't be public shortly."

"He probably wants legendaries," Kaida guessed.

Daichi snorted. "Well, I doubt he'll get far with that. Don't you think we'd be tracking them down if we could?"

Falkner still looked concerned. "Forward me the information," he instructed. "I'll take a look at it."

"You're supposed to be off duty," Daichi said, patting Falkner's shoulder. "Sorry about this. I know you were busy with the gym stuff since it's summer, and Sunday is probably your day off."

At Kaida's confused look, Falkner said, "You don't think the Pokémon Association pay gym leaders enough to live on, do you?" He sounded faintly amused.

"I know that," Kaida said, unwisely trying to cross her arms across her chest defensively when Cyndaquil was in her arms. She quickly soothed the Pokémon before saying, "What do you do then?"

"He's in the police cadets," Daichi said eagerly, answering for the young gym leader. "He just started this year. He's sped through most of the basics on account of his Pokémon skill. He won't be doing grunt work with the ordinary lads, that's for sure."

Falkner seemed a little uncomfortable with Daichi now. His body shifted subtly away from the man as Daichi spoke, and once Daichi was finished he pulled away to examine Skarmory and pat his bird Pokémon on the beak. "I need to get back," he said. "I'll fly over and see if I can spot the thieves... but they're probably gone." With that, he jumped onto Skarmory, but not without a parting word to Kaida, saying casually, "You really need to stop getting yourself in trouble."

Kaida blushed and shrugged helplessly. She said nothing but, "Thanks." She then cuddled the bruised Cyndaquil more firmly to her as Falkner soared off on Skarmory, his little Hoothoot flapping behind him until it joined him on Skarmory by settling on his shoulder in a rather precarious position.

While Kaida had been informing Falkner and Daichi about the memory stick, Nila had checked on her own Pokémon, praising them briefly before lecturing Mareep that it was pointless to use electricity on a ground Pokémon, and that she should perform a different move the next time.

"Not that Body Slam," she permitted grudgingly, "would have done much good either. It would have been like me head-butting my house and expecting it to fall over."

John praised a gleeful Totodile for his shot to Onix's eye, but the Pokémon could only pay attention to John's words for so long before he danced off to irritate Chikorita, all seriousness gone now the fight was over.

Kaida returned to see Nila, who tried to use her foot to try to keep Totodile to stay away from Chikorita as she listened to Kaida's grumbling.

"We seriously need to get that guy," Kaida complained.

"We'll have to get a lot stronger first," Nila said. She rebutted Totodile as he tried to go behind her. "John!" she called, hoping he would come to deal with his mischievous Pokémon.

"Eh." John waved a hand lazily from several metres away. "Come back, Totodile." As usual, Totodile paid him no mind whatsoever, but John didn't seem to care and gave up. Nila scowled.

Kaida, oblivious, was still busy plotting her revenge. "And he called Cyndaquil a runt!" she objected. "You're perfect," she cooed to Cyndaquil. "You don't need to change!" Cyndaquil squeaked happily in her arms at these words. Satisfied that his feelings weren't hurt due to her 'damage control,' Kaida hissed to Nila, "A runt! That guy must pay!"

"Of course," Nila said patronisingly, although she agreed. It wasn't for the same reasons, though.

It was with many thanks from the archaeologists that they left the Ruins of Alph later on that day, planning to reach a campsite slightly farther south where they would have shower and toilet facilities as well as, hopefully, fuel for the fire so they didn't have to gather wood. John was disappointed about having to leave at such a crucial point in the research, but he was also eager to explore new places with Kaida and Nila.

They had scarcely set off when they heard a cry from behind them.

"Hey!" the voice yelled.

They turned to see Flo struggling with a large backpack in her mother's car – it was a bit too tall and so she was jammed in the door. Finally, she managed to free herself and she caught up with them after a few minutes, huffing and puffing from running. Weepinbell, who had been hidden from view by her enormous bag in the car, bounced up behind her.

"Uh, hello?" Kaida said, confused.

They were all perplexed.

"You thought you could leave without me?" Flo demanded, ignoring the fact that she had told them to go away and refused to speak to them. She jabbed Kaida in the chest with her finger. "You," she said crossly, "owe me a Bellsprout! It's your fault my Bellsprout evolved and I can't enter the Dance Off without it! I need to catch and train another Bellsprout now, so you are going to help me." She scowled. "And you'll help me catch cute Pokémon, too, since Weepinbell is ugly now."

Weepinbell, just behind his trainer, deflated. He looked extremely dejected. Apparently, he now had realised that evolving had not been his best move.

"Again," Nila murmured to Kaida, "since when was Bellsprout considered cute?"

Kaida couldn't reply as Flo continued to talk.

"You owe me!" Flo repeated. "You're helping me! I'm coming with you!"

Kaida sighed. It looked like Flo was joining the company.