Dear Diary,

The final trial is by far the worst, unsurprisingly. The first measures your ability when pushed to the limit of your psyche, bending your emotions and turning them against you. The second tests your wits and seeks a way to compare you to a mewling babe.

After them comes the test of will. Endure being buried alive with insects crawling over your body for forty-eight hours. Watch cities burn and be powerless to stop them. Be given the choice of enduring pain in order to prevent those your love from ever receiving harm.

All of these tests are designed so that even if you pass them, your life is changed forever after. A price to pay for a chance at eternal glory. Some species were reduced a single living member. Others lost the ability to retain memories for longer than a minute.

And one person saw everything upside-down for the rest of his life.

Pokémon

Transgression

By Crukix

|Rulers of the Night|

-O-O-O-

"So let me get this straight, right after I leave you, somehow you've ended up with two more gym badges – in addition to the one you actually need – nearly got eaten by ariados, saw a blue serperior… and you have a hypno that refuses to wear any form of pants?"

I snort soda out of my nose. The bubbles are nothing short of evil little spikes of pain that punish me for not letting them traverse down to my stomach. "Okay, my life isn't that weird!" I protest. "It's just when you say it like that it manages to sound all crazy and stupid!"

Ali laughs loudly. With ketchup smeared all around her mouth, she looks a lot like a demented madwoman that's ordering the death of millions or something. Her burger bleeds as she bites into it, dripping blood onto the plate. I pull a face at it. I don't care even if it is Ali – she's still a freak for wanting to eat bleeding meat. It's like, hello, my food is dead and I don't want it to pretend to be alive whilst I'm trying to eat it! That's just rude.

"You know I haven't had a burger since I started at this training dojo," she says, burps loudly and then grins at me. "A couple more days and I'm done. Though I'll miss it. Aside from the crap food and the crazy hours that you have to train, it's been fun."

I'm pretty sure she's also become part-gurdurr in her time there. She's only just a bit bigger than when I left her, but now she's just all pure muscle – I'm pretty sure I could live in a gym until I was her age and I'll never have a stomach that looks like that.

"So," she says, pointing at me with a fry, "what's been eating you? And don't say 'nothing'. I know you just said all that, but there's something more, isn't there?"

I shrug and sigh in one movement. My burger suddenly doesn't seem as appealing anymore. I pick the onions out of it and begin trying to peel the skin off them. "I dunno," I say, staring at my food. "I'm just… sort of… fed up? It's like; first I had to leave my home because Craig vanished. Then I see creepy things that no one else does. Then steelix nearly eat us, Eterna becomes full of zombies, a gengar tries to kill me and then stuff just keeps happening on top of all that and as much as I try to pretend that nothing's wrong, it just feels like it's crushing me, you know?"

"I think I can understand," Ali says. "I can't relate… but I can understand. There's a few textbook definitions for what you're feeling right now. But I'm your friend, not your therapist. So as your friend – it's not healthy to bottle everything up like you have been. If you need to cry, cry. If you need to be angry, go beat someone up and steal their money. You can say that you don't want to make people worry… but you only end up making them worry more when you get so upset you end up as down as this."

"I suppose," I say, poking my food.

"Hey!" She snaps her fingers in front of my face, again and again until I'm forced to look at her. "There's no 'suppose' here, alright? I'm right, whether you want to hear it or not. Now the cure for all this is to binge on milkshakes, order loads of pizza and sweet things, watch insane cartoons all night and maybe go online and troll some old people that think they can play video games."

"Maybe," I say, shrugging.

"Hey." She moves from her seat, takes the spot next to me in my half of the booth and hugs me. "When you're with me, you just have to be you, okay? No sudden hero of the world, no button you have to press to save the world… no weight on your shoulders at all, okay?"

"Okay." The fact that I'm not unconvinced comes across way too strongly in my voice. I wince and manage to hug her back. "I mean alright. I guess it'd be nice to pretend I'm normal for once."

"You are normal," Ali tells me. She grins. "Okay, maybe you're a little weird, but my point still stands. Some people can deal with going on their journeys alone. I think with everything that's happening to you, it'd be best if you keep someone around that you can actually talk to. Someone that will tell you you're being stupid if you think you have to help in every disaster that happens when you're nearby. You realise trainers don't have to help all the time, right? Hell, some of us cause the disasters. Now" – she grabs my plate and presses it into my chest – "eat something. Because believe me, if you don't finish that burger, I will."

I manage a little bit of a smile. "Okay."

"Good." She nods as if she's just taught me how to master kung fu or something. "Now, tomorrow you're going to head off to Ebony Town and get your gym badge. Then once you've done that, you're going to come back here and meet me. Then we're both going to get the coach down to Tohjo Falls. That way if anything crazy happens on the way, you can let me deal with it, alright?"

"Okay," I say again. "Thanks."

"Just don't let your flasher hypno near me," she says, shuddering. "I'm a fighter – I'm not fond of psychics. Especially not one with boundary issues and a distinct lack of clothing."

-O-O-O-

I regret everything.

I think this is what a hangover must feel like. Why did I eat so much sugar? I think I can feel my teeth rotting away. My head feels like I've got a loudred singing opera inside it and my tummy hurts so much. I think I ate my body weight in sugar. And pizza.

Also, I discovered that Cassie even freezes pizza before she eats it. Mandy is apparently quite happy to eat everything and anything, whilst Kiki only likes pineapples on her pizza. I take it as positive proof that she is a freak.

I rub my tummy and breathe in as much fresh air as I can. After leaving Saffron, I can feel the air get lighter as I get away from the city. As the normal fear about going into a new town tries to settle, I tell myself it's only a couple of days until I see Ali again. Then we're both getting the coach to Tohjo. Sure afterwards I'm going into Johto and she's heading up and around Kanto, but it still means that I won't have to be on my own in some random hot, smelly coach for a couple of days.

I flick through my pokédex as I wander through the grass, Mandy on my shoulder. After last time, I don't really like the idea of staying in Lavender. Anywhere that has to bolt the bed to the floor because ghosts like to fling stuff across the room is not somewhere I want to stay again in a hurry. It was everything like a horror film – except instead of running away screaming, people were treating it as normal. I shudder. No thank you.

"Aw," I moan, looking up in time to see a furry orange blur run away. "I could have caught that!"

Mandy trills, takes to the sky and takes a massive poop in the spot I saw the orange blur. As gross as that is, I get the message. Mr-Poops-Mountains was bad enough to have to look after once a day. I do not want to have to house train one of those.

"I'm not cleaning that up," I say to her. She just fluffs up and looks proud of herself. Whatever. With my luck I'd probably end up with a growlithe with delusions of swimming championships or something. I don't exactly want to teach one of those to swim, much less anything else. Why can't the big, terrifying monsters be polite and only do little poops? It can be like those shows where they get recycled into fuel or something, so people will be paying me to take my pokémon's poop away.

I sigh as I glance down at my pokédex and find it full of news about everything that happened in Celadon. Every site I can see reports that they're not sure what caused the massive sinkhole to erupt, but they think it's an onix changing paths underneath the ground. Then there's sites complaining that the wild onix are monitored because of reasons like this and none were in the area. A few conspiracy theory people are saying that the stuff that happened in Sinnoh decades ago is going to happen again, some are saying it's a sign that the Rockets are back, whilst most are just blaming the government for letting something like that happen.

Everywhere agrees that no one died in the accident, though.

I frown, hitting the button to switch off my pokédex. Ramos said it was a way to get people to investigate Erika for her part in the Rocket's schemes, even though they were so long ago. If it's taking this much to get people to investigate her, doesn't that just mean that she's innocent? Or she's hidden things too well to get investigated for normal reasons?

Mandy lands on my shoulder, cooing and rubbing her face against my cheek, as if she can sense that something is wrong. I rub her head instinctively, my mind elsewhere. Why does Ramos expect me to care? Why did he even feel like I, out of everyone that exists, needs an answer?

I'm still thinking about it as I finally reach Lavender town, a few hours later. Let them all play politics or whatever it is, I decide as streetlights burst above me, basking the street in darkness. Emergency lights in the ground jump into life, whirring and glowing an eerie blue. I'm not getting involved in their games, ever.

-O-O-O-

Ebony Town is entirely not what I was expecting.

The rest of Kanto is really laid back, almost behind the times in terms of everything. People still build using bamboo construction, rapidash-drawn carriages are favoured to cars and most jobs are carried out by pokémon instead of machinery. Saffron and Celadon are probably the only places that seem anywhere close to a vision of modern day living.

Meanwhile, Ebony Town seems like one massive party.

The streets are filled with parade floats of every colour I could ever possibly imagine. A float of almost every pokémon in existence trundles down the street, moving along to some horribly jazzy music that should have stayed in whatever layer of Hell it was made in. baton twirlers smile and perform in between each float, wearing pokémon costumes to match the float they're following. It wouldn't be too bad, if their costumes didn't look like their parents made them last minute the night before.

The streets aren't shut off to the public, which means that people are happily walking between the floats, apparently insanely drunk already. I check my phone and see the time staring back up at me, then I have to check my pokédex to confirm it.

Who has a parade at seven in the morning?

Men and women wearing bright pink scarves dance in the middle of the street. I take one look at them and quickly stare at the sky. Yup, they're just wearing scarves.

The buildings are just rows upon rows of apartment blocks, but the bottom of each one seems to either be a restaurant, a corner shop or a nightclub. In every other town I've been in, there have been people in suits trying to get to work first thing in the morning. Instead it looks like everyone is out in the streets here, busy drinking or doing whatever else – no thank you lady, I don't care if you're dressed like an alakazam, I am not taking a spoonful of whatever the hell that is.

The pokémon out in the streets are just as drunk or drugged up as their trainers. I could have happily gone my whole life without ever seeing a machop drinking an entire barrel of beer.

I have to cover my ears as the jigglypuff float drifts past. I know they might be famous for that, but I really don't think a man wearing nothing but candyfloss – never eating that again – and making sounds that would make exploud cry in pain is something that should ever be exposed to human ears. If he gets any screechier, I think only pokémon are gonna be able to hear him.

"Ali let me come here on my own?" I whisper to myself, running across the road. That venonat float is entirely too creepy to be allowed out in daylight. I don't care if it's made out of papier-mâché or polystyrene or even if it's just a psychic projection, it's staring into my soul.

I shudder as I run into a grocery store, pressing my back against the wall so I don't have to see anymore insane parades.

Except of course, the store is filled with people in bad pokémon costumes, apparently unconcerned that they've left nothing to the imagination. A woman dressed as a meowth would be a more believable snorlax, honestly. I'm fairly certain she'll stop talking at one point to pull some food out from between her folds and start eating that.

I would try to go down the aisles to avoid people, but instead they're filled with little kids running around in equally frightening costumes. I mean seriously, my parents would kill me if I left the house wearing a bikini! Who lets their kids go to a parade in one? I'd be dressed up as a slugma and have to like it. No one ever wants to go near a slugma. They're all gooey and stupid looking and fail to realise that they've set everything around them on fire with a badly timed burp.

All of a sudden the horrible music outside stops playing. I breathe a sigh of relief.

"Everybody, let's give it up for Ebony Town, where it's party central, all year long!"

I groan as the crowds outside start screaming and celebrating. A glance out of the store windows shows me a woman on a parade float, though there's no pokémon decorating it with her. Instead she stands behind an umbreon float, in front of an absol one and a murkrow balloon is flapping – how, I'm sure I'll never know – above her head.

As if that wasn't enough to draw attention, she also looks like she got into a fight with a glowstick and lost. Neon yellow is pretty much painted down her front – in fact, I'm sure it is. Her shorts are smaller than my pants and a horrible bright pink in colour, her hair is black and curly, long enough to reach the bottom of her back, but it has a long streak of bright purple running all the way down the side.

And I'm pretty sure she's wearing florescent green hooker boots.

I grab my phone and snap a picture of her, thinking of Ali's face when I show her it. As the woman looks around, dark blue painted over her eyelids, her lips bright red and generally looking like a mess, I get the feeling I've seen a picture of her somewhere.

Sure enough, as I flick through the internet on my phone, I realise just where I've seen a picture of her before. Lamya Channary – leader of the Ebony Town gym and an expert in dark pokémon.

I look back at her and groan. I think I've already gotten a headache from all that neon.

-O-O-O-

Unlike the other gyms where I've had to get one of these special badges, I don't get the chance to meet Lamya early to tell her about it. Instead I have to go the usual route, through the countless receptionists – who thankfully dress in dark colours, though they wear pink glow-bands – and have to wait a week before she's ready to see me.

It takes me a whole lot less than that to decide that I really don't like Ebony Town. The fact that everyone's partying all the time and constantly trying to drag me into the parties? Yeah, no thanks. I'm pretty sure my parents would actually hunt me down – with a lot more effectiveness than the people who Diz killed in Saffron – and ground me until I was sixty if I went with the suggestions of drinking along with everyone else.

So apart from sleeping at the pokémon centre – which thankfully isn't painted bright neon or filled with party decorations, just drunk and drugged up trainers – I spend most of my time outside training or just avoiding people.

It doesn't even surprise me when come the day of my battle, there's another parade going on in town. I sigh as I watch it, really, really hoping that Lamya doesn't decide that I have to battle her on one of the floats or something. Or worse, wear bright yellow spandex and have green highlights in my hair.

Unlike every other building in Ebony, the gym isn't built into the bottom of an apartment block. From the outside it's the same general shape, but the gym itself is only three floors – ground floor for the reception, apparently the first floor is where the gym leaders and the trainers relax and do everything they do behind the scenes, and the basement is where the battles happen. All the floors above the gym are apartments for the people who work in the gym.

The walls of the reception room are painted black. Black leather sofas and armchairs lay scattered around the room – some are even coloured in silly string. A painting of a murkow is the only thing that has any sort of colour – and even that's just a blur of dark blues and greens. I honestly don't know how the receptionist lady manages to cope with such a depressing room all day. She must have some sort of colour-filter in her glasses to make everything seem more fun than it actually is. Otherwise, I'm surprised she hasn't gone crazy and killed someone.

Or maybe she has. Maybe she's secretly a serial killer and she takes this job so no one will suspect her.

I feel the familiar nervous flutter as my name gets called. I'm forced to walk past the reception desk – I'm watching you, secret serial killer lady – to get to the elevator for the basement.

Predictably, the moment I stand inside it, all the power goes out.

"Hello?" I call out into the darkness. The sound of my voice surprises me. Am I really that tired? I don't feel it. Maybe I'm just bored of all these crazy things happening to me or something?

"Trainer!"

I recognise Lamya's voice as it crackles from all the speakers in the elevator. I can't help but groan. So this is how it's going to play out.

"I hear you're after a special recommendation. The Anville College of History and Archaeology? I hope you're aware that means you're going to have to work for this badge!"

The way she says 'work' reminds me of those crazy people on the fitness videos. Or the men that dress up as women. I can so picture her on those stupid floats screaming out, 'You better work it, gurl!'

I manage not to laugh at my train of thought. "I know," I say to the darkness. "What do I have to do?"

The elevator starts moving, still without any lights on. "As a trainer, you're often going to find yourself in places you don't recognise, terrains that are unfamiliar and unpredictable. The goal here is to see how well you navigate in something like that."

The elevator stops and the doors open.

I find myself staring at an indoor labyrinth. Stone walls that almost reach the ceiling stretch out and converge in all the weirdest of places. A couple of torches burn on the walls of some and I can already start to figure out most of the way I'll need to take, thanks to this view. Steps lead down from the elevator to the start of the impossible labyrinth. I have no idea how she managed to get this inside a building.

Then the lights go out and everything is pitch black.

"Of course," Lamya's voice echoes, "there's a catch."

My first instinct is to release Mandy from her ball, to help me deal with the sudden darkness. Instead I just keep my hand hovering over it, waiting to hear what Lamya says. I don't want to get disqualified just because she decides that I'm not allowed to have my pokémon out to help me find my way around.

"Of course there is," I say to the darkness.

The speakers crackle with laughter. "Worry not, dear trainer! I've sent you one of my own pokémon to assist you with this!"

Red rings begin glowing right in front of me. I shriek and nearly fall over as a pair of yellow eyes glow and stare up at me.

"Meet Bonnie, my umbreon."

The darkness-cloaked umbreon grunts up at me. I manage to smile at it a little, silently hoping it's not been told to eat me or something similar.

"She'll help you out and act as your guide. You're free to use your own pokémon as you see fit. Oh, and before I forget – you have a time limit of one hour to find your way from one side of the maze to the other. If you manage to exit and find me before that hour's up, you get your badge! Good luck!"

Above the maze, in bright red neon lights, a countdown begins ticking away. I see it above me, 59:59 and curse a little under my breath. Mandy joins me in a flash of white light, cawing and crowing at the umbreon.

"She's leading us," I tell Mandy. "Let's go," I tell the umbreon.

It bounces away happily, a blur of red ringed light. I have to crawl down the stairs slowly, spreading my feet out one in front of the other, constantly expecting to fall and break my neck.

The timer glows right in front of me when I reach the bottom of the stairs. 55:35.

Great, four minutes wasted trying to get down some stairs. The umbreon barks, lighting up a portion of the maze in front of me.

"Stay close," I tell Mandy. She chirps as she takes to the sky. I can barely see her shadow as she flutters above us, circling and chirping every so often.

Bonnie growls, as if she's getting impatient. I follow after her, moving as quickly as I can whilst still making sure I'm treading carefully. She darts off into the distance – with the lights out, I'm not even sure I can tell directions anymore. I stretch my hands out to the sides, to try and feel the edges of the walls around me. I feel nothing.

I move further and further to the right, waiting to see if I can touch something. The umbreon continues to run ahead, only just in my line of sight. Finally I reach over to the right far enough to touch the wall… only to discover it's covered in some sort of slime.

"Ew!" I groan, flicking my hand. The umbreon makes a sound I'm sure has to be laughter. I grumble about her under my breath as Mandy squawks. I look up and see her nestled on the countdown timer. 51:51. I groan and say nothing.

Bonnie barks at me. I can see her tail wagging, thanks to the glowing red bands on it. She's stopped in place for once. I start to jog after her, smiling to myself, thinking she's helping –

- And then I run face-first into a wall.

I moan as I bounce off the wall and hit the floor. Bonnie makes a sound like laughter. She walks up to me, licks my face and then leaps into the distance, over the dead-end she's caught me in.

Above, the timer still continues.

48:22.

I groan and push myself to my feet. Mandy flutters down and greets me, chirping softly. I begin to retrace my steps and stare in surprise at a flickering orange glow. I don't remember there being a torch on the wall before. I'm sure I've retraced my steps, which means that somehow I missed that before?

Something groans in the distance. It's almost metallic in sound. I shudder and try my best not to wonder what it is. Instead I run towards the torch, leap up and grab it from the wall.

A blast of hot, damp air rolls down my back.

Mandy trills in alarm, even as I spin around and find myself face-to-face with a very unhappy houndoom.

It snorts an acrid, smoky breath out of its nostrils at me. Despite the fact it's utterly pants-wetting terrifying, I kinda want one. Although maybe not one that looks so much like it's ready to eat me.

"Mandy!" I shriek as the houndoom opens its mouth. Mandy divebombs the houndoom as I leap backwards, swinging the torch like it's a sword. Stupidly, I realise that I'm swinging fire at something that breathes flames. Mandy Sheds feathers into the houndoom's face and spits a horrible-smelling bile into its eyes.

The houndoom howls and breathes a continuous plume of fire into the sky. I run in the other direction as quickly as I can. Everyone knows about houndoom fire. I do not want to be burnt with flames that I'll feel burning me for the rest of my life! The walls blur as I race past them. I choose directions at random. Right, left, another left, right.

Mandy trills as she flutters after me. The heat from the torch is almost nothing compared to the rampaging fire-hound behind me. Its growls are perfect replicas of what they use in horror movies I've watched with Jerry. The sound races down my spine and leaves me covered in goose bumps.

And of course, I discover that the turn I take leads me into a dead end.

Mandy soars past me, perches on the wall for less than a second and uses it as a take-off pad. She darts back at twice the speed and even as I throw myself to the floor, I feel the breeze whip through my hair. The torch flickers and barely manages to stay alive in the wake of her attack.

There's the sound of bodies colliding behind me. I turn in time to see Mandy fluttering above the downed houndoom, puffing up and screeching at it. She leaps for it whilst it's down, pecking it in the face and scratching anywhere she can reach. The houndoom whimpers and tries to burn her. She sheds more feathers into its mouth. Somehow they absorb all the fire and render it useless.

The houndoom yelps and deciding it's had enough, turns tail and flees.

"I'm not so crazy about houndoom anymore," I mutter. Mandy trills her agreement.

Above, the countdown still runs.

40:23.

"Crap," I mutter, retracing my steps. I try my best to remember the route I took. Mandy flutters up high, attempting to guide me with shrieks and the world's worst attempt at charades. Was it a left here? A right? I take a guess and find another dead end waiting for me.

This time though, there's a shiftry smiling and waiting.

I scream and run in the other direction. Its laugh follows me no matter how much distance I put between us.

The torch begins to flicker. I moan at it, tell it not to even think about going out.

Suddenly I'm plunged into darkness. I'm unable to see again and even the sound of my own breathing sounds like it's coming from the other side of a long hallway. Something tells me that Mandy is hovering just above my head, but the brushes of air just don't seem to be doing as much anymore. It's almost like the darkness is blanketing my senses, leaving me defenceless. Even the torch in my hand feels cold.

Red rings glow in the darkness. Bonnie saunters up to me, her eyes glowing.

"I'm not falling for that a second time," I tell her. My own voice barely registers in my ears.

The red rings begin to move, taking a turn I hadn't even realised was there. I growl, knowing I've already fallen for it before, but still decide to follow her through the twists and turns. A left here, a right there. I try to count the paces between each turn so that I might be able to retrace them a bit quicker next time.

Ahead I see Bonnie's tail wagging again. She turns to look at me, yellow eyes unblinking in the darkness. When I get close she bounds off to the left, almost faster than I can track.

I frown, think about it and check the other direction. Sure enough, there's a passageway to the right. I move slowly through it. The light begins to appear again. My torch seems to get stronger against the darkness. I feel the heat of the burning flames again. My breathing echoes in my ears. Mandy caws and sits on my shoulder, puffing up and clucking in anger.

"I thought as much," I say to my illuminated maze. "That umbreon's a dirty trickster." I make the note to myself to never trust it when its tail starts wagging. Or at all when it appears. I need to figure out how it makes the sense-blocking darkness though. That'd be useful for battles and sneaking up on people.

The clock above me gets louder. I look up and see the seconds roll past.

30:03. 30:02. 30:01.

30:00.

The lights blind me.

I groan as I hide my eyes under my arm. Mandy growls and I feel her hide her face beneath her wings. Blinking spots from my eyes, I see the walls of the labyrinth, coated in a thick, clear slime that's constantly oozing down to the ground.

And impossibly, the walls are moving.

Metallic groaning echoes from all around me. I throw myself to the floor as dust gets fired out of little holes in the wall. When nothing bad happens, I look up to see metal hand-holds sticking out of the walls.

"Three-second warning!" Lamya's voice echoes out. "You might want to hold onto something!"

I don't give it a second thought. I leap to my feet and throw myself at the hand-holds, grabbing onto one as if it's going to pull me out of the maze.

No sooner than I grab it does the floor give way beneath me.

I scream as suddenly I'm trying to support my weight on this stupid little metal thing that looks like it's about to break. Mandy starts squawking in panic. My feet dangle above a bottomless abyss. I can't see anything past my shoelaces, dangling against the darkness. The muscles in my arms burn.

The world begins to rotate.

I scream again as the walls of the labyrinth flip around. The floor beneath me is suddenly a slippery wall of the labyrinth. The ceiling above me is the other wall. The former ceiling is now the wall on my far right. The bottomless abyss beneath me is now a dark plunge on my left.

I continue dangling from the handhold for a moment before finally dropping to the new 'floor'. Unable to keep my footing, I slip and fall on my butt into the slime.

Mandy seems to find that hilarious.

"Shut up," I growl, getting to my feet and flinging slime at her. At least with the lights on I can begin to try to find my way out. The only problem is that walking through the maze now makes me feel sick. The perspectives are all wrong. I want to stop and close my eyes, to wait for everything to right themselves.

It's at that point that the wall in front of me disappears.

I stare at it like there's a punchline waiting for the joke. A groaning sound echoes from my left and I watch as a wall appears from the ground to box me in.

"Of course the maze moves," I mutter, moving into the maze, not quite jogging but not walking either. "Why wouldn't it? It's already been pitch black and rotated, why wouldn't it organise itself?"

The timer still continues to tick away, but now I can't see it. I can hear it continually clicking away, counting down the seconds.

The lights start to flicker overhead. I groan and start running a little bit faster. There's no way I'm getting stuck in a moving maze in the dark without stupid Bonnie to try and save me. Not only do I try to remember the twists and turns I take, but now I have to try and remember what walls are where.

And I'm fairly certain the one in front of me has eyes.

I don't even have to give a verbal command. I just point at the eyes and Mandy understands instantly. She leaps at the wall-eyes and suddenly the wall and almost every other wall around it vanishes. In their place is a zoroark, grinning mischievously.

Mandy pecks it in the head until it bolts into the maze, cackling all the while.

"I guess that explains a few things," I say, watching it leave. "Keep an eye out for more of them." The illusion of walls the zoroark created are gone, leaving a clear square of empty room to run through. When I reach the end, I look up to try and see Lamya or even the staircase I descended. I get the feeling like I'm in some ancient dude's painting of weird, impossible staircases.

The handholds erupt out of the floor and ceiling.

I grab the one on the floor and crunch my eyes shut. I feel the world around me begin to move again. The urge to be sick is almost the only thing my brain can think about. Blood rushes to my head. I feel like I'm spinning, even when I know everything's stopped rotating.

When I open my eyes, everything is back the way it started. The walls are walls again, the ceiling is ceiling and the floor is floor.

And I'm bathed in darkness once more.

I let go of the handhold and let gravity guide me to the floor. The timer above still continues its merciless countdown.

02:22.

"Crap," I mutter as I start running in a straight line. I keep my hands outstretched in front of me, hoping they'll hit something before I run into it again. Mandy flutters alongside, just in the glow of my torch. Bonnie hasn't appeared and I can still hear myself, which makes me convinced that the umbreon has something to do with the sensory-depriving darkness.

I look up and see the timer's lost another minute.

"No way," I growl. "This thing is cheating!"

As if to reply, the timer changes again.

00:05.

"That's not fair!" I scream. "Find a zoroark!"

00:02.

"Mandy!" I shout. "We need-"

00:01.

"-to find the exit!"

00:00.

A foghorn moans through the building. I stare up at the flashing timer, mouth wide open. The horror of the maze fades away under the desperate need to burst into tears. The umbreon didn't help! It just screwed me over! The clock went way too fast! There was no way that an hour's gone past already!

Some of the walls flicker out of existence. Others groan as they descend back into the ground. I drop to the floor and sit there in the middle of a rapidly-emptying room, confused, upset and humiliated.

Neon balloons and confetti rain down from the ceiling.

Lamya walks down towards me, from the very steps I entered from. Shame and anger colour my face red when I see just how close I am to the starting point. All that time and I just went around in one big circle?

"Well trainer," says Lamya, smiling widely. Her lipstick is impossibly glittery and bright pink. She wears a one-piece that's alternating neon green and black squares and has a smile on her face like she's just seen a baby playing with a room full of puppies.

"Any comments?"

I manage to glare up at her and her stupid neon. "You cheated," I accuse.

"I did."

"But you're not allowed to!" I protest. "You're meant to be a gym leader! You're not supposed to cheat!"

Darkness washes over me. Again I feel like I'm being deprived of all of my senses. When it vanishes, as quickly as it came, a sleek, black furred umbreon is sat beside Lamya, tail wagging, red rings on its fur glowing brightly.

"I train creatures of darkness," Lamya says, bending down to my height. "And as I'm sure you've noticed from your own vullaby, those pokémon don't play fair."

Mandy settles on my shoulder, shakes and puffs herself up. Lamya smiles at her.

"I need to go to Unova to get myself one of them." She stands up, still smiling and pulls a glow-band out of her pocket. "I cheated, but that's not what you were being tested on," she says as she snaps it around her wrist. "You want to go out into the wilds, into unfamiliar territories? Well I want to know how well you deal with that. Sometimes you won't be able to see what you're doing. Maybe you'll be deprived of your hearing. Even the terrain can give you trouble."

She runs a hand across her umbreon's head. "And you learnt the other lesson – never give a guide pokémon your complete trust. No matter what someone says when they lend you it, a pokémon is like a person – some might help you in any way they can, whereas others might just decide they don't like you and want to see you fail."

"And that's what you wanted from me?" I ask. "You didn't like me, so you made me fail?"

She laughs. "Think about this for a moment. I gave you a hostile environment – filled with my pokémon. In unfamiliar locations, the pokémon native there can and will use it against you. It's like guerrilla warfare – not that you'd know anything about that – in its truest, most brutal form. You overcame this. You noticed the zoroark playing with you. You managed to navigate in the dark and figure out that your 'guide' pokémon wasn't willing to help you all the way.

"And most importantly," she says, crouching to my level again, "when you were presented with instructions, you followed them. You didn't stop to argue, to contemplate. Sometimes when you're given instructions, you need to follow them perfectly. You did that." She stands up again, though this time she offers me her hand. "So it is my pleasure to tell you that you've officially earned my badge and my recommendation for the Anville College of History and Archaeology. Or ACHA. They really need a better acronym." She smiles at me. "Is there anything you'd like to say?"

I nod as I take her hand. "You wear way too much neon."