"No Nuclear in Tandor! No Nuclear in Tandor!" a huge crowd of protestors blocked entrance to the dock which backed onto the sandy flats outside town.

"Oi, 'scuse me!" I yelled, elbowing people aside in irritation.

Like most environmental protestors, they didn't seem willing to get themselves hurt for their political agenda and the crowd peeled aside to let me and my steel beasts through.

"Environmental protestors my ass!" I shouted to them in the sudden silence. Plebs always seemed to have a certain respect for pokemon trainers, I was coming to realise, and I wasn't above abusing the attention.

"Nuclear power is clean and green! Take your dirty coal somewhere else!"

"Life cycle impact!" someone yelled back at me and there were a few whoops from the back. "Your uranium mines are poisoning our workers!"

Someone waved a cardboard cut-out wind turbine which had probably taken the fibres of a whole tree to produce.

"It's a pity nobody thought to invent automation," I hollered back.

"Those machines are power hungry and take our jobs!" someone else shouted.

"Hurr durr fire is scary, Thomas Edison was a –"

"Kid, just get on the boat," the attendant at the head of the dock said tiredly, rubbing at his temples.

I got on the boat. I stood up on the deck and waved angelically to the crowd as the captain pulled away and started us towards Power Plant Epsilon.

It was about a fifteen minute journey, and I let the cool rushing wind blast into my face with a whoop. Metalynx bounced up and down on the deck as we went over the big waves, and pyrite complained so irritatingly at getting splashed that I returned it to its ball.

"Ari?!" a semi-familiar voice yelled at me from further back. I swivelled around. There was Theo, eating an ice cream.

"What are you doing here?" Theo mumbled through his full mouth.

"I could ask you that too, grunt," I replied.

"Er, durr, my dad works there? You know they're knocking down the old power station to build a new one?"

I shrugged. "Who cares? Did you see the protestors? How fucking funny was that?"

Theo scowled. "Dad said he'd beat me up if I ever used that word again."

"I'll cut him if he does that," I said, pointing to kitty's tail.

Theo rolled his eyes. "Not me, dummy. He'd never hit me. I meant he'd beat up my pokemon in a battle. And he can beat everyone with his Yatagaryu."

"His what," I said incredulously. Yata what the mcwhat?

"Yatagaryu," Theo said painfully slowly like he was teaching a kindergarten class how to spell. "Ya-ta-"

"I got it," I said with my dismissive bourgie wrist flick.

Theo frowned. "What was that?" He mocked the wrist flick. "Seriously? Are your hands paralysed? Are you having a fit?"

I blushed. How embarrassing. I'd thought it looked cool from this angle.

We got off the boat with Theo giggling and flicking his wrist more and more exaggeratedly.

"Theo, what are you doing?! Are you having a fit?!" someone yelled in the distance. There was Cameron. He was wearing high vis and a beat-up yellow hard hat.

"Ah, hello Ari," he said as he got closer. "Nice to see you again too." He examined the package I handed to him.

"These must be the forms I asked for," he said. "So many environmental exemptions to apply for." He sighed. "Well tell Kellyn I said thanks. Theo, come on."

Cameron led his son away to the offices and I was left standing on the dock like a beached whale. I was small fry here and it was a little disconcerting.

"Coming back?" the boat captain called to me and waved.

"Nah," I replied. "I'll stay a bit longer."

"Your loss." He shrugged and smirked, and his workers began untying the boat from the dock.

After the sound of its motor had waned into the distance, I looked around and stretched. Blissful! A hazy layer of dust hung omnipresent over the whole island, and from time to time a huge rumble from the mines made the ground shake.

"I feel so alive," I said to kitty, which was growling towards some nearby long grass.

"Come on. Let's go see if they locked the explosives shed." Kitty growled harder. "Mate, I was just kidding." I rolled my eyes.

Suddenly, out of the long grass sprang a Costraw surrounded by that eerie green glow we'd seen in the cave before Rochfale. Yikes! The Costraw hissed and kitty hissed back.

"Er kitty, that doesn't look good… Come on, let's go." Kitty wasn't listening to me. Oh no, I wailed silently. Not again. Not now.

"Use metal claw!" I tried again. Kitty seemed to snap back to the present, reached out and leashed metal claw on the Costraw. I let out my breath in relief. That was a one-hit KO on the wild pokemon. I frowned. Even with kitty's OP attack stat, metal claw was 1/2x affective on the poison-psychic type… That shouldn't have been a dire hit.

I examined my pokepod display. 'Psychic-Nuclear type' it said as I pressed the summary button. Was this a joke? Nuclear type?

I rubbed at my forehead. I grabbed onto the scruff of kitty's neck and pulled it away from the scene. This was so weird. The glowing Terlard in the cave hadn't had Nuclear listed on its typing. And kitty wasn't affected by any nasty stylus force field here.

I took kitty and hurried in the other direction, towards the mine entrance. It was about a ten minute walk to get there, but hoo boy was it worth it. From the office, we had a great view over the open pit, which was dotted with shafts sunk here and there. Huge trucks the size of a house rumbled around the staggered levels of the pit.

"Nice," I said.

The woman at the counter looked up suddenly, startled. She hadn't noticed me come in. "Can I help you?" she said.

I pushed kitty behind a nearby sofa with my foot. "I've come for a visit. Can I see the mine?"

She looked at her planner. "Are you Morgan Pierre from Vinoville Metals Research Institute? I wasn't expecting you until tomorrow."

"Yep that's me," I said. "Change of plans." I gave her a lazy grin.

"I'll just fetch Stan," she said with a smile. When she left the room I tried frantically to suck kitty into a pokeball. It yowled in protest, lifted its huge front paws and clawed a gash down the side of the sofa. "Kitty!" I hissed. "Get back here."

I chased it round the room, giving myself a stitch. The computer was knocked over on the desk. A potted plant fell over on its side. I wheezed from exertion and kitty yowled in glee, thinking this was some fun game.

I reached out my pokeball for one final attempt, tripped over the plant and went sprawling on my face. Kitty gave a manic screech and threw itself onto the lovely lace curtains.

The receptionist opened the office door at that exact moment, trailed by the mine manager. I closed my eyes in horror. My life had reached a new low. Things really couldn't get any worse right now.

Crack. Creak. My head spun and the two adults stared at me in shock. Oh no. Oh no, no, no.

My pokemon egg was hatching in my bag.

"Sorry," I said the S word. "I'm sorry about my pokemon."

The woman walked in wordlessly and started straightening out her desk. The man reached out gingerly and tried to pry kitty off the curtains.

I took the egg out of my bag and put it down on the floor to give it space. Then I went over to the curtain and scolded kitty. "You're not a little kitty any more," I snapped. It jumped down from the curtains; I ignored its demand for a head rub and closed my eyes after examining the damage.

I righted the potted plant. "Clean up the dirt," I said to kitty, and it obediently went over to hoover up the soil with its plant-like fur.

"It's stopped hatching," the manager said with a frown, pointing at my egg. He was right. After a couple of cracks, the shaking had stopped. "Must be a big old thing to be stuck in there," he continued amicably.

I picked up the egg and put it back in my bag.

Finally, I took out my bourgie wallet and deposited $2000 on the desk. "For the curtains," I said, and stuffed my still-bulging wallet back into my pocket.

The receptionist gave me a terse smile. "Enjoy your tour," she said.

"I think we could all do with a shot or two after that!" the manager said with a booming laugh after we let the office door slam shut behind us.

Kitty loped along obediently behind me. The manager fetched a flask from his pocket and offered me the cap. Lovely pungent clear spirits came out from inside. The Russian water!

"My hobby is breaking OH&S regulations," he said with a wink and took a big swig from the flask.

I still couldn't believe I was here, doing this. How had I managed to get past so many adults who should've known better? I smiled to myself in satisfaction.

"So Morgan, how's the research going? Superconductors, was it?" the manager asked, replacing his flask.

I sighed in relief. I should eavesdrop more often. "That's right. Sheldon and Solana are making good headway."

"Solana, that's right! From…"

"Inhore University."

"Yep. We had her down here a while ago too. Sounds like the funding sitch in Zhery's pretty hostile right now."

"She got an offer to work with us though, so there's always that as a backup."

"No way!" the mine manager gasped. "That would be amazing!"

I looked at his red face. I realised he had a crush on Solana.

We started the tour in the pit. The manager explained how the rock was extracted in blocks with a mixture of explosives, mechanical excavators and specially trained Drilgann. What a dream.

He described the pitchblende ore and its chemical properties, and how it was crudely processed on site before being sent off for refining on the other side of the island. After that, the uranium was used in fuel rods for the power plants north of Vinoville and east of Tsukinami, and soon right here on the island.

"If we want to go down into the shaft, we'll have to get safety gear from the office." The manager pointed towards a small weatherboard shack just ahead in the pit. We went in and kitted up with radiation-shielding coveralls and gas masks.

There was an immediate change of mood when we ducked under the steel ceiling beams and into the shaft. I felt the dampness creep into me as we stood waiting for the lift. My eyes took a while to adjust to the darkness, my old friend.

"We actually had an accident here ten years ago," the manager said in a sombre tone. "That's why you see these reinforced ground supports. We had to completely overhaul our tunnel construction codes after the collapse. That's one thing we can't get around." He sighed.

"We had visitors that day too, from the power plant… Such a shame. I'm sure you heard about it on the news, though you would've been young back then."

"I did," I said. "There was a scientist called Lucille, right?"

"Yeah. They never found her body, which was a big pity. She was Kellyn's wife, you know Kellyn at ranger HQ in the city? It totally ruined him. He had a kid but he used to say, looking in their eyes used to remind him too much of Lucille, so he couldn't take care of the child anymore."

I gulped down the lump in my throat as the lift clattered up to reach us. We climbed into the cage and it took us down at breakneck speeds to the underground.

"Anyway, it's all safe as anything these days, so you have no need to worry, Morgan." The manager smiled behind his mask.

We'd left kitty up at the office in the care of some of the men on shift. I still had pyrite in its ball, but I felt exposed and unprotected nonetheless. Perhaps this heightened my perception, which let me see the old grimy steel door set into the side of the drift.

I gasped. Those steel cross-bars… The shape of the lock… There was no mistaking it. This door was identical to the ones Theo and I had seen when investigating the rangers' escape routes back in Comet Cave.

"Hey," I said. "What's in here? Storage?"

The manager stopped short and frowned at the door. "To be honest, I'd have to look at my mine layout sheets." He reached forward to give the handle a rattle, but it was locked. "I don't think we use whatever's in there anymore. Might be an old emergency exit."

We moved on, and the door wasn't brought up again.

We examined the working face, where robots drilled holes into the wall and filled them with an emulsion mixture ready for blasting. Cool.

"Everything seems to be working fine down here…" the manager said. "Of course, we have engineers monitoring all of this from up in the control room."

The tour finished up soon after that, and we went back up to return the radiation gear. Kitty pounced on me when it saw me but I held out a hand and it sat back obediently on its haunches. I snickered. Of course kitty would end up being the only cat in the world anyone had to train like a dog.

"Good luck back in Vinoville," the manager said to me back at the front office. He shook my hand. "Let me know how the research goes. And maybe even the egg if you have time." He gave me a warm smile and we parted on good terms.

I still couldn't believe I'd got away with that, and walked away from the mine glowing.

A yell snapped me out of my reverie and I looked up to see Cameron waving at me from the path leading to the power plant site. He looked distraught.

"Come quick, Ari!" he shouted. "Theo's had an accident!"