Yvette rode her Rhyhorn through the badlands. The scarf tucked beneath her sunglasses shielded her face from the cloud of dust kicked up by her Rhyhorn. She kept an eye out in every direction. There wasn't a road, town or shack for a hundred miles. The only monument was a dusty red tabletop thirty kilometers ahead. That was where she knew the power plant was.
Except for a rest at a natural well, they kept moving. By the time they reached the foot of the ridge, it was nightfall. Behind the ridge, they stood at the edge of a basin. At the bottom was a blinking red beacon. While they descended down its face, she was depending on the darkness to keep them hidden.
They took the trail curving down the inside of the basin; her Rhyhorn in front, providing traction, while Yvette followed behind. Once they reached the bottom, they ducked behind a boulder. Then taking off her cloak, she took a canvas bag off her Rhyhorn and pulled out a pair of goggles.
"Let's see how father's latest invention works," she said, flipping a switch on the side of the goggles and fastening them over her eyes. She saw the powerplant but it was bathed in a green tint this time. She could see the plume of steam rising out of the stacks like a volcano erupting. Twenty-four hours a day, the plant pumped boiling water from deep underground, where it turned into steam and was used to generate electricity; electricity that powers Lumiose and much of Kalos.
A convoy of trucks was parked in front of the entrance. There were no workers, except for two people circling the perimeter with flashlights. Aside from those two, the coast was clear. She lifted her goggles and quietly pulled another canvas bag from her Rhyhorn. She pulled out one of a hundred pokeballs.
"Go. Vivillon," she said, releasing a pokemon with beautifully patterned wings. She fastened a tiny black bud to its head. "Fly close to those guards, so I can listen."
The pokemon nodded and flew silently ahead. Yvette pulled the goggles back over her face and wiped the sweat from her brow. "This heat is insufferable," she said, then tilted the goggles back on. "Alright, let's see what these clowns are up to."
#####
"I can't believe they put us on night duty," grumbled a boy with greased red hair. "There's nobody out here." He shouted into the night frustrated.
"You're scarin' me, Tony," said a girl with red pigtails. "Y'know we're doin' this for the boss."
"Oh, yeah, you're right," he relented. "Stupid corporate."
The two of them walked side by side, kicking fine red sand with their shoes as they combed their lights across the desert. The girl looked up at the tall, handsome grunt and his hand merely inches away from hers.
She blushed. "That's a nice jacket you got there," she said, with no answer. "Must be pretty cozy…"
The boy looked at her, wondering why she was acting so funny. "Well, if you want it so bad, why don't you just ask." He handed the jacket over.
"Thanks," she said, wrapping it around and rubbing her shoulders.
He put his hand behind his head. "Ya, no problem," he said. He glanced at the girl, sure she wasn't looking. He put on a good act of hiding his true feelings, but he loved the way her messy pig tails looked. "I mean it's nothing for me. I live for the cold-"
Trying to look casual, he turned his attention back to scanning the perimeter, only catching scampering Heliolisks and burrowing Digglett. But after walking together for the past hour, her hand practically touching his, he couldn't stop blushing.
"So, Amy, there's something I've been meaning to tell ya."
"Yes, what is it? Tell me," she turned to him eager, holding his hand without thinking.
They both stared into each others eyes, the night hiding their blushing cheeks as they stood close enough to hold in each other's arms.
"You're the hottest chick in the Arceus-damn world, Amy," he said, leaning closer to her lips.
"You really think I'm beautiful?" she blushed, closing her eyes and curling her lips as he drew her closer.
"I don't think so. I know-." They heard something rustle, next to them. "What was that?"
Tony pointed his flashlight over to a dead bush, and ran over to check it out. Amy followed behind.
"Amy, you have got to check this out," he said parting the bush for her to see.
Her eyes widened. "How pretty. Is that a Vivillon?," she said, as it climbed on her arm, while she admired the stained-glass pattern on its wings up close. "Say, that tickles. I think she likes me. Can you believe I'm holding a million bucks in my arms?"
"A million bucks, huh," he said, rubbing his chin and hatching a plan. He turned to his new girlfriend, and pulled her close. "Say babe, whaddya say we take this Vivillon and blow this popsicle stand? We have everything we need right here. No Lysandre. No Team Flare. You, me and the world, sweet cheeks.
The girl squeed. "How romantic. I've always wanted to be on the run...especially with my new man," she said, laying her arms on his chest.
The boy smiled, then looked at the Vivillon again now on his shoulder and noticed a black bud on its wing. He picked it off and squished it. "Say where'd this come from?"
"How touching," said a girl in black jeans and jacket walking towards them. "What a lovely couple. Like a modern day Bonnie and Clyde."
"What is this?" the boy grunted. "A chick."
"She better not be prettier than me," Amy said, glaring at the girl trying to steal her catch.
He turned to his beau. "Y'know what, Amy," he said, pulling out a Pokeball. "I got an even better plan. We got ourselves a trespasser. Think how proud Lysandre will be when he sees who two grunts got a hold of. Once he rewards us, we'll take the money and double it with this Vivi-"
He looked at his shoulder, but the Vivillon was gone. He looked back at the chick and saw it was at her side.
"Vivillon, use Supersonic." The Vivillon unleashed a wave of sound on the male and female grunt, disorienting them both. Yvette reached into her bag and tossed all the Pokeballs in the air. When all the Vivillon were released, the whole swarm wrapped around the two grunts and lifted them in the air.
Yvette stood in front of the dangling grunt's, now silenced by the noise cancelling effect of the Vivillon's wings.
"Now that wasn't very nice," said the chick watching them suffocate. Yvette turned to the careless boy. "You meant to harm me, didn't you?"
The boy and the girl squirmed, making only muffling sounds.
Yvette continued. "Tell you what. Why don't you grunts explain to me what you're doing here, and how to get inside that powerplant and I'll be satisfied with leaving you two unconscious in that ditch over there."
The boy shook his face barely, opening a pocket of air to breathe. "Screw you," he gasped.
"I beg your pardon," said Yvette, feeling hurt.
"I said screw you," he grunted. "Like you said-we're only grunts. Information is on a need-to-know basis, divulged on the basis of rank. We know nothing."
"That's a shame." Yvette snapped her fingers. "Vivillon, use Draining Kiss." The boy's body convulsed, ruffling his coif hair as life force drained from his body. His jaw seized shut, despite a slow, sickening groan coming out of his teeth. His pupils dilated. Then his body went limp.
The female grunt could only whimper, as a trail of snot ran down her nose.
"Please, don't kill me-," she managed to get out. "P-Please don't kill him. You-You have no idea what Lysandre has planned."
"Kill him? If you haven't noticed, he's still breathing," Yvette said. The red-haired girl quieted her breathing, to hear his. His was faint, but his heart was still beating. "Just answer my simple question, and I'll let you and your boyfriend go free. You can do that, can't you? For you and your beau?"
"I-I"
"Don't waste my time, like your lover over there. Vivillon-." Yvette held up her fingers.
"I-I'll tell you-"
#####
The Vivillon dropped the two grunts, and their bodies rolled down a ravine and into a dense patch of dried bush. She returned them to their Pokeballs and stood at the edge, looking at the bodies mangled in the brush. "Not the perfect place to hide a body, but it'll do," Yvette laughed, marveling at her genius. A straggling Vivillon landed on her shoulder, and she rubbed underneath its neck. "To think. They thought you were deadly. Even with a thousand Vivillon, at worst they'd be exhausted."
Yvette ran quietly over to the locked door into the Power Plant. She pulled the crimson card out of her pocket and swiped it over the scanner on the reinforced steel door. The light flashed green and the internal gears and barrels of the door slid and schlicked like an old bank vault. Cold air rushed out of the open door.
She waited and listened for any other footsteps coming up the stairs, but thankfully there were none. Quickly she took one of the red suits she had gotten from the grunts and tried it on. She also tucked her hair in beneath a red fedora.
"These suits aren't half bad," she said, sashaying in place. "A little tight, but I'll just say it's form fitting. Vivillon-."
Vivillon landed on Yvette's shoulder and she whispered to it. It nodded, and flew down the cold stairs making no sound with its softly flapping wings. She saw it round the corner at the bottom of the staircase. Then she listened until she heard a sound like two marbles clacking, the sound Vivillon make when they click their antennae together. The coast was clear.
She followed the trail of metal pipes down the steps, through a claustrophobic corridor of blinking red panels and valves whistling with steam, until she stood on a platform. She could see the whole operations floor, which was as big as a football field. She saw red suits on the floor and ducked behind the corridor. But they didn't see her. She peered again, and they weren't moving. They were all asleep in their chairs.
She stepped out to the platform's railing. Turbines lined the floor, like giant metal drums, whirring like jet engines. In the center, there was a giant well, too deep to see the bottom from where she stood. A pipe stuck out of it like a bent straw. To the right were a pair of silos connecting the well to the turbines.
She saw her Vivillon perched on some pipes along the back wall, and kept her eye on it. Yvette found a ladder to her right, and slid down to get a closer look at a control panel nearby. Then she slid between a pair of sleeping grunts blocking her way.
Knobs, switches and lights were crammed all over the panel. Yvette didn't understand how to operate the turbines, nor did she care because she found what she was looking for; two pieces of paper taped on the side. The first was a ledger with the names of every plant worker that worked that day, along with their shift. According to the ledger, there were supposed to be five workers operating the plant at night, but unless they were hiding elsewhere in the power plant, they were unaccounted for.
She grabbed the second sheets of paper. It was a maintenance record detailing any malfunctions on the turbine, and any repairs workers needed to make. She flipped through the report to the days leading up to the blackout in Lumiose, but found every box checked "satisfactory" on their daily inspections, along with some unflattering comments to her father in the margins. She found the page on the day of the blackout, but on that day and every day after the boxes were unchecked. This guaranteed her suspicions. The power plant had been operating fine up to the day of the blackout, but the workers themselves were missing. This contradicted all the reports she had heard on the news. She couldn't bear to wonder: could the disappearances of the workers be related to her father's?
A siren wailed above her. She looked at the orange rotating light on top of the turbine, turned to Vivillon perched on the railing and saw it clacking its antennae. She stuffed the papers in her shirt, and ran for cover behind some pipes.
The mechanical door on the north wall slid open, and a portley, well groomed man entered with an entourage on either side of him. The lazy grunts stood at attention.
The last grunt left snoozing by the turbine staggered off his chair and on his feet. "Professor Xerosic, sir," he saluted. "Turbine status optimal. No interruptions as of yet."
The man dismissed his entourage and walked towards the grunt at the panel, the contempt on his face wrinkling beneath his red-tinted goggles. "Number seventy-four, have you been sleeping on the watch," he said. The grunt cowered in the shadow of the man's girth. "Need I remind you that being chosen is a privilege, not a right. And a privilege that can be stripped without notice. That goes for all of you miserable grunts."
The grunts winced. Xerosic glanced at all of them and saw them shivering at the knees. "Don't just stand there. Get to work. Open the wells. Pump more steam. Divert more power to Geosenge. Lord Lysandre needs all the power he can get."
A pair of grunts ran over to the bottomless well in the center of the room, and budged at the pipe hatch, until the pipe started to gurgle. She listened to the gurgling snake its way into the bottom of a silo in the corner of the room. Fluid filled the silo, like someone filling a bathtub. She heard it whistle and rattle like a teapot, as steam exited through another set of pipes that led to the turbines.
The windings were now spinning three times as fast, forcing Yvette to cover her ears. Over on the panel, where Yvette had been standing, she saw the needle on the dial creep its way from a cool green to the edge of yellow.
Xerosic saw this too, and his hands flew to his head. "Are you mad?" he said, pushing the grunt at the panel out of the way. "The power grid can only handle so much of a load at a time. Too much power, and we'll have another blackout on our hands." Xerosic's felt his Holocaster ringing in his pocket. He pulled it out, and panicked when he saw the name. He grabbed the grunt back to the panel. "Here, break's over. Watch the dial."
Xerosic ran across the room and hit 'Receive' on the device. Light shot out of the button on the top of the device, and he stared at the image of the man with a beard like a Pyroar's mane.
"Professor Xerosic, is there a reason why you've been ignoring my calls?"
"No, no, not at all-" Xerosic laughed. "Just busy making preparations for the Ultimate Weapon. Everything is going according to schedule." Xerosic's goggles hid his fear well.
"Good. I'd like to hear a full status report. My helicopter should be landing shortly."
"Perfect. I'm looking forward to it. Anyways, back to work I go." Xerosic flipped the device closed, and ran back to the grunts. "If I catch any of you nodding off again, Lord Lysandre will not be pleased."
The grunts went back to working double time. Yvette watched the man run to the portal on the east wall, and disappear behind its sliding door.
Nothing that the man said made any sense to her. Geosenge barely had a population bigger than a quarter of Vaniville. What were they powering, and what were they up to? If she wanted an answer, it was behind that door.
The red suits had their backs to the door. She returned Vivillon to its Pokeball, and slid to the right along the wall towards the silos. She watched the red suits running and shouting back and forth, opening and closing the hatch. A siren above the door wailed again. She ducked behind the hot silos, before they could see.
Next to the silos there was a stack of crates pushed away from the wall enough for Yvette to slide through. Squeezing her way through, she got to the door and held the key card over the scanner. The light glowed green and the door opened. She slid through and the door closed behind her.
The door was unlocked and wandered in. The room was black, except for the glow from the monitors all over the wall. She sat in front of the screens, and luckily they were already unlocked. On the left side of the screens she could see security cameras of the entire operations floor. On the right she saw all the controls of the turbine operations.
On the bottom of the screen she saw a paper-and-pencil icon titled , and clicked it. The image filled the entire screen, a blueprint that was part flower, part machine. Behind her, the door creaked open exposing the glint of a pair of goggles.