It turned out that a bunch of the Pacifidians, as Scarlett had called them, had returned back to the floating village with boats full of Poké Balls. It was sorting time.

Scarlett and I each took a rowboat-full and, one at a time, released every Pokémon there. I have to say, there were some pretty miraculous Pokémon in those Poké Balls and it made me wonder; what did Scarlett plan for us to do with all these Pokémon? I was about to ask her, but the next Poké Ball I threw made me completely forget what I was going to say.

It was a gorgeous orange Dragon-Type Pokémon that was spoken of only in myths. A Dragonite!

"Oh, Zephi! You found my Dragonite! Thank you so much!" Scarlett squealed, throwing herself into the Dragonite's arms. The Dragon-Type hugged her back fondly.

"This...This Dragonite is yours?" I cried in disbelief.

I suppose it only made sense. Scarlett was a famous Dragoness. Her Dragon-Types were said to be extremely powerful.

"How did you get a Dragonite, anyway?" I asked suspiciously. Dratini were supposed to be next to impossible to find in the wild.

"When you've got the right lineage, you get special privileges," Scarlett said cryptically.

I was about to pursue the matter, but then I thought better of it. It wasn't really my business anyway, and perhaps she didn't feel like sharing.

"I'm sure we'll find some of your Pokémon, too, Zephi," Scarlett assured me, mistaking my thoughtful expression for sadness.

All of a sudden, I had a real "oh-no" moment.

"Mona!" I screamed.

She hadn't been in a Poké Ball! I had a terrible, eating feeling that she had been killed. I mean, there was no way that a tiny little Snorunt would survive a fall like that, right? I fell to my knees and grieved for my loss.

"Who's Mona?" Scarlett asked.

"My Snorunt!" I wailed. "She was just a baby! She couldn't have lived through that, who am I kidding? She's gone!"

"A Snorunt, you say? I hate to get your hopes up, but I saw one of those getting carried out the window behind me by a Rotom, I think," Scarlett told me.

I know Scarlett had warned me about getting my hopes up, but that just seemed too coincidental to not be Mona and the Rotom I'd just sort of captured.

"They're alive!" I screeched in awe.

"Don't get your expectations too high - it might not even have been them! Now, keep sorting. Don't you want to find your other Pokémon, too?" Scarlett scolded me.

Meekly, I returned to my work. She was right. I wanted to find Lunar just as badly as the other two.

Day stretched into evening and evening into night. Sometime between 5:00 and 6:00pm, I guessed, we found Lunar, who seemed a bit surprised to see me. But there was no sign of Mona and the Rotom. Late that night, at around 10:00pm, we released the last Pokémon from the last Poké Ball, and it just so happened to be Scarlett's only missing Dragon-Type, her Hydreigon.

"Yay! Success!" Scarlett cried out to the heavens. "Thank Arceus all my beauties have returned. How about you, Zephi?"

"I got Lunar," I muttered.

"That's it? That's all we found? Just one of your Pokémon? Oh, I'm so sorry!" Scarlett snatched me up into a consoling hug. "I didn't realize. We'll go look for them in the morning, 'kay?"

I just nodded. I wasn't sure if I liked or disliked the manner in which Scarlett was talking to me. It reminded me of the way my mother used to talk to me whenever I lost a stuffed animal when I was, like, six. I know Scarlett was only trying to be nice, but she didn't need to talk down to me.

It was too late to do anything else that night, though, so we decided to hit the sack. The Pacifidlog Pokémon Centre didn't have many rooms for passing Trainers, because it was so rare for them to have visitors due to the wicked fast current that separated them from Slateport, which was a short jaunt west. Scarlett had I had the place to ourselves, so we each claimed rooms with a great view of the sea, right next to each other.

It took me no time at all to fall into a deep, dreamless sleep.

When I woke up, it was the middle of the night, but strangely, I felt wide awake. I glanced out the window and saw the bright full moon reflecting off the calm sea.

"What if Mona and Rotom are scared out there?" I heard myself whisper aloud. "It's all my fault that we were captured in the first place. I have to do something to rescue them."

Moving like a robot, I got up out of bed and started to walk to the door. But then I stopped.

Zephi, your first stupid choice was to go into the Old Chateau. And guess what? You got caught! Making bonehead decisions has a bad habit of never working out for you, so go back to bed and wait until morning like Scarlett told you to! I scolded myself internally.

Oh yeah? It might be an even worse decision to leave them! They could be alive now and dead in the morning for all I know! I challenged my conscience.

I decided to go for it. I left my room, then came right back in as I realized that leaving the Pokémon Centre out the door was out of the question, for there was always a Nurse Joy, or Pacifidian in this case, working the night shift at the front desk just in case. Instead, I went straight to the window and lifted it up, enjoying the tropical summer air that drifted in and caressed my skin, seemingly the typical climate of this new region. Whatever this new region was.

I slipped stealthily out the window and landed on one of the floating dock things that the whole village was built on. Being very careful where I was putting my feet, I inched my way along the platforms to the "marina" where all the rowboats were. The current picked up on the west side of Pacifidlog, and unless I never wanted to see my Pokémon ever again, I wouldn't be going over there. Too much could go wrong, and besides, the jet had exploded over the sea east of the town. I plopped myself down into a rowboat, picked up the paddles, and started east, towards the sea of floating jet debris.

Using the full moon to guide me, I began to look for my lost Pokémon. Quickly, I realized that they could be anywhere, anywhere at all, and that my chances were terrible of ever finding them. I wondered with a pang if they were already dead. I stopped and looked up at the stars in the sky.

"Mona. Rotom. If you're up there, I-" I cut off as my voice broke and I was forced to collect myself and start again. "I-If you're up there, I want you to know that I'm... I'm really sorry for everything that happened to you. I wish you had found a b-better Trainer, both of you, that knew how to take care of you and didn't... didn't make stupid mistakes like I did. I h-hope you're in a better place now, where n-nothing can... can hurt you anymore. And..." I trailed off as tears began to slide down my face and I started to sob, not for my loss, but for theirs.

"I'm so sorry I let you down!" I cried, my voice ravaged with tears.

I put my head down and cried quietly, the sounds of night bugs echoing in my ears. I don't know how long I cried, but I know that I was startled out of it when my slowly drifting boat ran into something and stopped with a little thump.

I looked up as best I could with my hair all matted around my face and my eyes bleary with tears and saw that I'd hit an island. I almost fell out of my boat when I saw what was on the island.

It was a pillar; its height so great that it surpassed the clouds. Intrigued, I pulled the boat safely ashore so that it wouldn't drift off and walked up to the door of the tower. Fully expecting it to be locked, I almost fell straight in when the door opened in my hand. Something about this tower told me it wasn't dangerous, but sacred. Nothing inside would hurt me.

At least, that's what I'd thought before a random lightning bolt shot out of the darkness and hit me in the stomach. I jumped about four feet in the air with the shock and went limp, falling uselessly to the ground. Just then, something in the pillar lit up.

"Rotom?"

I raised my head, not believing what I was hearing. The Rotom was illuminated in the dark. It was alive!

"Rotom! You lived!" I squealed.

The Rotom, seeing that it was just me, floated down closer to ground level. Below him, was Mona, paralyzed through and through, but still, her.

"My Pokémon are alive...!" I mused, not quite believing it myself. "But I thought you were dead! How did you get in here?"

The Rotom ignored me and floated into the centre of the room. The light the Pokémon emitted illuminated a stone monument in the centre. Rotom just stood there, staring sadly at it.

"What is it, Rotom? I asked it. "Do you want me to look at the monument?"

It nodded emotionlessly. I obliged, walking up to it and staring at the words Rotom had illuminated.

"In. Loving. Memory. Of. All... Wait a minute, Rotom, this is a gravestone!" I said in surprise.

Rotom glared at me and zapped my arm a little to get me to keep reading.

"All. Those. Who. Fell. Victim. To. The. Sea. Then there are a bunch of names," I dictated.

Rotom floated a little lower and focused his luminescence on one particular name.

"Monty Saunders," I read, then looked down at the little Rotom in horror, everything suddenly becoming clear.

"Your Trainer was also taken from the Old Chateau before me, but he left you behind. Then you joined me, knowing I would get captured and figuring that would take you to your Trainer. Right?" I felt tears brimming in my eyes again.

"Rotom..." the Pokémon confirmed sadly.

I knew what I had to do.

"Rotom, you're free to go. I don't even have your Poké Ball anymore, so it isn't like I could force you to come with me, anyway. If you don't want to be a captured Pokémon after your beloved Trainer died, then that's fine with me. Go, if you want, Rotom. It's not fair to keep you against your will," I told it passionately.

It looked questioningly at me, then at the door that I'd left open to the sea. Then it dissolved in mid-air as only a Ghost-Type Pokémon could.

"Good bye, Rotom," I murmured.

Then, I turned my glance to the paralyzed Mona. I still had to take care of her. I reached to pick her up and she winced away, looking scared.

"Oh, Mona, it's okay. I'm not going to hurt you. It's Zephi, it's me. Remember?" I consoled her.

She looked warily at me, but relaxed a little and allowed me to pick her up and cradle her.

What's her deal? I wondered as I carried Mona back to the rowboat. It hasn't even been that long since I'd seen her. Maybe she doesn't trust me anymore because of what happened.

That last thought caused me to frown. I absolutely, positively could not make any more mistakes that would cause my Pokémon to doubt me. Now that I thought about it, even Lunar had seemed a little unsure of interacting with me. Ugh, I was going to have to step up my game if I wanted my Pokémon to ever trust me as much as Scarlett's obviously did.

A/N: Bit of a filler chapter here. Zephi still hasn't figured out that she's missing a few important things still from the jet explosion... Namely her Pokédex and her Eterna Gym Badge. And that book from Professor Carolina. Not going to say too much here - there's not a lot to say about a filler!