Interestingly enough, I think this is the first time I've actually had to list Isrea's surname. Not that that's important - it's just that I thought I'd already used it.

DISCLAIMER: There are some electrical and metallurgical shamaladingdongs that will probably make enthusiasts in those particular fields want to stave my head in. Still, I'm pretty sure the theory is sound. Right? Right? Please don't hurt me….

"Ah." The receptionist bobbed his head before putting on a pair of glasses. "Ok. What are the names of the missing people and do you think they'd be together or not?"

"Robert Palmer, Aron Silpha and Isrea Tanning. Aron and Isrea were travelling with me but disappeared yesterady. Robert's been missing for longer than that."

"Oh? Oooookkaaaayyy…." The man muttered as he typed the name into the computer on his desk. "That's 'Palmer' with one 'l', is that right?"

"Mmhmm."

"Riooooght. We'll start with Mr. Palmer first... Yep, got his profile. Where and when was he last- oh dear. If you'll excuse me." The receptionist stopped talking as the his phone began ringing.

"Hello? Yes. Yes, again. Yeah, it probably is. Ok, I'll be right over!" With that, the receptionist put the phone down and excused himself from the room. As closed the door, he glanced at Morgan again. "Sorry, something's just come up. I'll be back in a few minutes. Why don't you take a seat?"

Morgan's heart was pounding, but she nodded back. "Sure." She had no idea if she was heard, as the door was already closed. Sighing, she made her way to one of the seats and sat down to wait for...anything.

She sat there for what felt like 10 minutes, going over the plan in her head over and over again, acid burning in the pit of her stomach.

'What if Lucas can't make it all the way to Jirachi? What if they can only escape with Jirachi and I'm left behind? They wouldn't do that, would they? But they would. Still, doing nothing is worse than trying and failing. Is it? God, why can't something happen? The wait's killing me!'

The lights went out.

Saturn was fixing himself a cup of warm spiced water before bed when the phone rang. Turning off the kettle, he walked into his living quarters and answered the call.

The caller spoke first. "Hey there! Is that Trevor?"

Saturn grinned when he recognized the voice. Clearing his throat, he put on a hackneyed Unovan accent. "Yeah man! You got that stuff on the comet?."

"Yep! Had to pull rank to get the telescope reassigned to me for a bit, but I did. Mossdeep's observato-"

"Good. Know when it'll come closest to Earth?"

"Err...I don't have very accurate measurements, but sometime tomorrow morning. Lateish. I don't really have time to give you anything more detailed, I'm afraid. By the way, how did you know the comet was coming? They're notoriously hard to spot."

"Ahh well, y'know how it is. Got what they call a premonition. Thanks for the info. Y'all have a good day!"

"You too!"

Saturn grinned as he placed the phone down. 'Good. I was hoping I didn't have to wait long. A new era awaits.'

He hustled back to grab the water before going to bed.

Nikolai was heading to his sleeping quarters when his earpiece buzzed. Putting a hand to the earpiece to hear better, he gruffly spoke into his coat microphone.

"For crying out loud, it's midnight! Well, what is it? I'm about to sleep!"

"Sir, we've just subdued another trainer. She claimed to know Aron, Isrea and Rob."

Nikolai stopped walking. "Oh? That's interesting….put her in the same cage as the other trainers." Nikolai paused, and then spoke again, correcting himself. "Actually, no. We still don't know how those other trainers escaped. Put her in one of the cages in the room with Sonya. We'll figure out what to do with her tomorrow."

Rynade put the sleeping pills he had just bought from a pharmacy in his pocket as he walked into the room he shared with Kova. He had already popped 3 capsules out of their tabs and emptied the powderinside them into a bottlecap. Said bottlecap was then wrapped in glad wrap and safely stowed away in his other pocket.

Kova's head popped out of the bathroom, toothpaste foaming around his mouth. "Wheer werre yuuh? Itsh really lache!"

Rynade shrugged. "Couldn't find anywhere that served dinner this late, so it took some time."

Kova ducked back into the bathroom. "Noh fasth foo' jointh?"

Hurrying over to Kova's bedside table, Rynade replied as he pulled wrapped bottlecap out of his pocket. "Yeah, but I had to walk pretty far to find one." He unfolded the glad wrap before pouring the contents of the bottlecap into the glass of water by Kova's bedside. Rynade stirred the water with his finger until the power had all dissolved. After doing so, he walked over to the stove and pulled out two mugs and a can of powdered hot chocolate.

Kova walked out of the bathroom rubbing his face with a towel. Throwing it in the corner, he slumped into his bed and leaned over to grab a drink of water. "Ptah!" He shouted as he spat the water out. "This tastes disgusting!"

Rynade held up the can of cholocate. "Yeah, the tap water in this city is sometimes dodgy. I'm making some hot chocolate, want some to wash out your mouth?"

"Yeah….yeugh." Kova opened the window and threw the rest of the water out. While doing so, he didn't notice Rynade pour the contents of three more sleeping capsules into one of the cups of milk. By the time he had turned back, Rynade had stuffed the pills back into his pocket and was putting the cups of milk in the microwave.

A minute later, the milk was warm enough and Rynade took both cups out before pouring in a liberal amount of chocolate and sugar. Kova watched with a doubtful eye.

"That….is a lot of sugar."

Rynade chuckled. "That's just how we do it in Sinnoh." He held out the cup with sleeping powder in it, offering it to Kova. "Here."

"Thanks." Kova took a sip. "Hmm...y'know, it's not that bad. Sure, it's really sweet, but it's quite bitter as well. Interesting."

"Yeah, I told you so. Sinnoan cocca is very bitter."

Kova was fingering the hot chocolate container. "It says here that it was made in Jhoto."

Rynade tried not to gag as he swallowed the sickly sweet brew. "Oh, um...that's weird."

When both of them had finished, Kova went to bed while Rynade cleaned up.

He was snoring within minutes.

While the chilly night wind rustled the leaves below Lucas' hotel room, Lucas and Sean were finalising preparations for their assault on the police station.

"Ok, let's run over the plan again." Mew asked.

Sean packed a last revive into his pack before standing up. "Well," He moved over to the table where a large rectangle had been drawn on a piece of paper with a few red dots inked into the paper, forming a trail. "Looking at the data obtained from that tracker Morgan swallowed, we have a pretty good idea as to where the entrance to Galactic's underground base is, since it has to be somewhere along this dotted line."

"Right. I'll walk into the police station on my own and ask for a surprise inspection - they can't really say no to me. I'll try to excuse myself to send Rynka and Lear out. The bellossom's stun spore will be good for subduing people and my gallade's a ninja so he's going as well. You two knock out whoever is with you and we'll look for the entrance afterwards. There shouldn't be too many people here since it's before 2 in the morning, but you never know." Behind Lucas, Lear started bashing his head on the table while Rynka looked on in amusement.

Sean nodded. "Right. Then we move into the base and rely on Celebi's instructions to get us to Jirachi?"

"Yep!" Mew flew over with a road map and marked a dot several hundred metres north-west of the Galactica building. "That's where Celebi figures Jirachi is. Their base is really big."

Sean's eyes widened. "Wow! It's huge! Jirachi's a long way away….we're going to have to fight our way quite a lot of grunts."

"Yeah, but we've got way stronger pokemon." Lucas grinned as he elbowed Sean before turning to Rush, Steven and Morgan's pokemon. "You'll probably get in the way if you tried to fight your way in with us, but if you'll watch our backs, that'd be great. That fine for you guys?"

Said pokemon solemnly nodded.

Mew spoke up again. "When I change out of my human form, which I intend to be absolutely fabulous, what should I become? Just Mew?"

Arceus, who had previously been watching, decided to speak up. "Transform into me. We know that Galactic want me after the events at Spear Pillar, but we don't know why. Showing as an arceus might bait them into revealing important information which we can then act on once Jirachi is rescued. That, and you'll be pretty powerful in my form. Also, try to tone down the fabulousness. The last time you tried to be fabulous someone had a stroke."

Mew threw her hands up in the air. "That was three hundred years ago! You're no fun."

Sean piped up. "Fair enough. What if we get caught?"

"God help us if we get caught."

There was a moment of silence before it was broken by Sean. "Isn't that you?"

Arceus sighed morosely. "It was an attempt at humour."

"Personally, I don't really mind dying. Not anymore. After this, Lucas or someone else can become mew for good." Mew put her paws together and rubbed them furiously. "I've had my share of life and all the burdens that come with it."

Lucas cocked his head at this unexpected relevation. "But what about all the good things? You know, all the fun stuff you can do?"

Mew gave Lucas a rueful smile. "Diminishing returns."

'Right, I'm back. Time to find out what all this hullabaloo is about.' Rynade thought as he got off his murkrow.

He made his way towards to police station.

"...ake….lithering….of potat….." Kova wasn't sure where the yelling came from. It sounded like it was coming from far away, approaching quickly.

'ehhhh...what?' He opened his eyes, to find Giovanni staring back at him. He was apoplectic, judging by his ruddy complexion and what was left of the hotel door behind him. Giovanni had obviously decided that keys were something that happened to other people. Still drowsy, Kova didn't make things any better with his next statement.

"What?"

"I said wake up, you blithering excuse for a sack of potatos! You were supposed to keep track of Rynade instead of dreaming about the flaming Antique Roadshow!" Spittle was flying everywhere.

"Wait, how did you know about that?"

"Because you talk in your sleep!" Giovanni dragged him out of bed and threw Kova into a chair before heading off towards the kitchen area. Dazed, Kova thought about what had happened in the few minutes leading up to him going to sleep.

'I don't even like that show! Why did I sleep in so late? I could have sworn I set myself some alarms….'

Giovanni came back with 2 glasses of water. He handed the first to Kova.

"Thanks."

Giovanni then threw the contents of the second glass at him.

"What the- why'd you do that...sir?" Kova fell off his chair, spilling the water in his glass on himself in the process.

"Good, you're awake. Now, how are we going to find out where Rynade has gone since you've failed in what seemed to be a simple task?"

Gasping and dripping wet, Kova shook his head and headed over to his bedside table. "I might have a failsafe. Rynade shared his GPS data with me in Eterna City so we could track each other. Chances are he's forgotten to turn it off." He opened a drawer and started fumbling with his phone. "Ah. He has forgotten. Well, he's heading for Veilstone City. I-"

"Wonderful, let's go. Get changed - I'll meet you outside in one minute." Giovanni stood up and brushed himself off before heading out. Before he left, Kova asked one last question.

"Wait! What about the receptionist and other staff? What are you going to tell them about the door?"

A sneer. "I killed them all."

"You what?"

Chuckling, Giovanni turned around and waved a goodbye. "Of course I didn't. That would be evil. I'm not evil."

Sean, Lucas and Mew (disguised as a human) walked into the receptionist's area of the Veilstone Police Center. The squealing of the swinging door alerted the receptionist, who was currently writing on his desk.

While writing, the receptionist spoke. "Welcome to the Veilstone City Police Station! What can the VCPD do for you?"

Lucas kept his voice low and measured. "We're here to perform a surprise inspection on the treatment of short-term detainees in all police stations around the region."

Startled, the man behind the desk looked up. "You can't….oh, I'm sorry I didn't recognise you, Champion. I'm afraid that I haven't heard anything about this inspection."

Lucas resisted the urge to roll his eyes. "It wouldn't be a 'surprise' inspection if I told you about it in advance, would it? We won't be too long. We'll just look around the area and in your detainment cells to make sure they're being kept clean. Nothing fancy." He pointed at Sean and Mew respectively. "I'm mostly here as a figurehead. Samuel and Diane will be asking most, if not all of the questions for the length of this inspection, so please make sure you try your best to answer all their questions. If some of Samuel's seem a little odd, just be patient. He's apprenticing and is probably pretty nervous, aren't you, Sam?" He winked cheerily at Sean, who replied with an anxious grin.

The receptionist looked a little bewildered, but he recovered quickly. "Yes, indeed. Come! I'll show you around." He opened the door opposite the one that Lucas and the others had entered through. "These are the offices, which are in the centre of the building", he said, showing them in. "The station itself doesn't have a lot of detainment cells since crime is pretty low in this city. Do you want to see them first, or do you want a full tour instead?"

Lucas realised the question was directed at him, so he shrugged. "I don't know. Ask Diane. Do you have any coffee? This is an ungodly time of day, but those inspectors insisted, I'm afraid."

"...Yes. "

Lucas clapped his hands. "Well, when we stop by the kitchen, I'll probably stop there while Diane and Sam finish the inspection. Is that fine with everyone?"

Sean and Mew looked at each other. "Yep, it shouldn't be a problem. As to your previous question, we'd like to see the entire police station before we see the cells, especially if you have any footage of any recent interviews you've given to suspects."

The receptionist nodded. "Err….yeah. Well, I need to return to the front, so I'll call one of the other officers to lead you around, if that's fine with you." He stuck his head down a corridor. " Hoy! Mish! Come over here!" He yelled. "We got some tourists for you to lead around!" Turning back to Lucas, Sean and Mew, he smiled. "Mishaal is one of the 5 shift officers working here at this early hour. I'm sure he'll be happy to lead you around."

'Oh good, so that's 5 officers plus the receptionist to worry about. We can handle 6 people.' Lucas thought.

"Sure." Mew replied.

Morgan dozed in Sonya's lap as the latter watched Firael launch another flamethrower attack at the cage wall, more out of boredom than anything else. Opposite Sonya, Rai was lying on his back, staring blankly at the ceiling. Space was now at an extreme premium and everyone was getting a little testy.

Suddenly, something clicked in Sonya's head.

"Guys! I think I might know a way we can get out!"

Rai snorted and didn't move. Morgan, however, stirred and sat up, squeezing into a seated position beside Sonya. "Really? How?"

"Well, you know how I tried to get Rai to melt through the wire mesh by using the resistance of the mesh against it?"

"Yeah, apparently it didn't work because the resistance of the mesh was too low, or something."

Sonya nodded. "It was, but I've just remembered that we have a way to raise the resistance of the mesh. Heat."

"Oh?" Morgan cottoned on. "So you say we try the same thing again, but with Firael heating up the area as well?"

"Yep. With only Rai, I'd hoped that the small initial heat generated by the heat would raise the initial resistance so that we got a positive feedback loop that would eventually snowball into melted wire, just like how fuses work. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case, since the heat was dissipated too quickly. However, if the initial resistance is artificially raised using Firael's fire attacks, we might be able to get such a loop going and melt the wire."

Morgan blinked. "I'm going to pretend I just understood all of that and nod knowingly at you. How does that sound?" With that, Morgan proceeded to knowingly nod at Sonya.

"I'm sorry, I sometimes get caught up in my explanations." Sonya replied, a rueful expression on her face. "Do you guys think we should try? We might as well."

Firael was nodding enthusiastically but Morgan held up a hand, putting the other on Sonya's shoulder. "Wait. Before we try, let's try to be smart about this and plan out what we do if we get out, yeah? We only get one shot."

"Good point. So what happens when we get out?"

Morgan started counting off her fingers. "First, we need to disable the camera in this room. Secondly, we need to get out of the room that the cell is inside. Then, we need a way to get to where all our stuff has been kept. Finally, we need a way out."

"Huh. That's a lot of stuff."

"Right, I think I'll just stop here while you three continue with the inspection." Lucas yawned as he slumped into one of the cushy chairs in the kitchen area. "I really need some coffee."

"Do what you wish, Champion." Mishaal deadpanned. The dark-skinned policeman that was acting as their tour guide had been relatively taciturn and quiet as he showed them around. As soon as he left, Lucas shut the door befor letting Rynka and Lear out. As soon as Morgan's bellossom and his gallade had gotten his bearings, Lucas gave them a quick briefing - everyone already knew the rough plan, but it never hurt to make sure.

"Right, there are 6 people in this building we need to knock out. One is with Sean and Mew, so we don't have to worry about him. One is at the reception desk, so you can probably worry about him last. I saw two in the main office, so again, go after them after you find the other two."

After receiving confirmation from both pokemon, Lucas opened the door and let both of them out. Once that was done, he rubbed his eyes and yawned again. "Right, now let's try out some coffee!"

Janelli Serza had not been having a good day at her job. She'd been slapped on the early morning shift again, not because she was being punished, but because the head of the police department had a grudge against her after the noodle incident.

'I hate doing this shift' She thought while packing some police uniforms into a locker in the locker room. 'I'm just stuck doing grunt work in the early hours of the morning because nothing happens this early...'

Her train of thought was interrupted when the door to the locker room opened to reveal a gallade and a bellossom dragging one of her unconscious colleagues into the room. The bellossom seemed to be puffing out a lot of golden powder as she sashayed into the room with the legs of the policeman.

"Hey! You can't do that to Rick!" Janelli said, taking a short step towards the two pokemon. However, as soon as she neared the bellossom, she started to feel woozy.

"Ugh, I hate this shift. What are you two doooinng? If only I could fasjd alkjsdfhdsa….."

"So these are the detainment cells." Mishaal said as he led them into a small corridor. On both sides lay several cells, all closed off by a barred door. "We have eight in this police station, although we rarely have more than one full at the same time. I can show you inside them if you would like."

"That would be most kind of you." Mew smiled sweetly at him.

As Mishaal turned towards the nearest cell and started fumbling with the lock, Mew turned to Sean and winked at him. Sean took a few steps past Mishaal and silently let out his meditite.

"There." The unsuspecting policeman stood up and pushed the door open just as a fist cannoned into the back of his head. He crumpled like a rusty table (which is to say, not very much at all).

"Nice work!" Mew told Sean. "We'll just lock him up in one of these cells and see how Lucas is doing."

"That's two down. Your sleep powder combined with stun spore crazy. Remind me never to get you angry on a windy day. I haven't had to do anything yet!" Lear remarked to Rynka as they looked at the two unconscious policemen at their feet. For good measure, Rynka threw out a little more powder before they headed for the office.

"Turns out I'm a better ninja than you, haha!" The bellossom laughed. "I think it'd be better if I took the two policemen in the office out myself as well, since I can sneak around by going between the desks and use the air conditioning to circulate my spores. You can take the receptionist."

The gallade bowed. "I am eternally grateful for your generosity."

Rynka preened herself. "Yes, well, let it not be said that I wasn't willing to share."

"Well, I've got a decent idea for how we can move around the Galactic base without attracting too much attention, but we're going to have to ambush some grunts to pull it off." Sonya said after a few minutes of deliberation. "Still, that kind of disguise isn't going to stand under close scrutiny. Most people here know what I look like."

"Don't worry, they'll be distracted." At this point, Morgan realised that Sonya didn't know her name, let alone the reason why she was in Galactic's base. "My name's Morgan, by the way. I'm sorry I haven't introduced myself yet.

"My name is Sonya. I'm a- how did you know that they're going to be distracted?"

'Oh, THAT Sonya. Well, this is rather interesting. I don't think is the time to tell her about Jirachi...it'll only complicate matters.' Morgan shrugged. "You're just going to have to trust me. A bigger problem is that it sees us getting out of the cage, we're kinda screwe- oh, what is it, Fireal?"

The charmeleon had started tugging at Morgan's foot. Once Firael had Morgan's attention, she pointed at the camera and blew out several puffs of smoke before covering her eyes.

Sonya quickly joined the dots together. "Smokescreen! That's brilliant! The best part is that Firael's already been filling the room up with smoke since she's been hurling flamethrower attacks at the cage so often, which means they won't suspect if we fog up the room! Okay. So we can get the camera out of the way with smoke to fog it up, then we melt our way out. Then what?"

Morgan spoke. "We can use the toilet button to get those two grunts over and ambush them when they enter. As long as Firael keeps the upper part of the room filled with smoke, the camera won't see a thing. Then we can take their clothes, keys and lock them in our cells."

"After that, all we need to do is find our stuff and get out! Brillant!"

When he heard a knocking at the door, Lucas got out of his chair and opened it to find Rynka and Lear staring balefully at him.

"So, how did it go? You got everyone?"

Both nodded.

"Sweet! Let's round up all the bodies and put them in the cells. Then we can look for the entrance. After that, the fun really starts. Their coffee is actually really good."

Sean and Mew had found the two bodies in the office when they ran into Lucas, Lear and Rynka, the first two each carrying or dragging a body behind them.

"Well, this all seems to have gone perfectly to plan, Mew said as she briefly transformed back into her true form. "You guys lock everyone up. I'll keep Celebi and Palkia updated."

After hearing Morgan and Sonya flesh out the details of their plan, Firael turned to Rai and elbowed him in the ribs.

"C'mon, we've got to do this. Were you listening?"

"Of course I was. Don't exactly have much to do now, do I?" Came the testy reply. Rai got on all fours before brushing himself off, more out of habit than anything else.

"Jeez, what's with the attitude?"

Rai shrugged. "I've already tried this achieved barely anything, and it took a lot out of me. It's probably not going to work." Firael cuffed him. "Ow! What was that for?"

"Rob, if you're going to do nothing but whine, then can you let Rai in for these few minutes? I don't particularly care about your thoughts on Sonya's plan unless you've got something better. We've got nothing to lose by doing this, and if you're going to let your selfishness get in your way, I'd rather work with Rai."

"How'd you know it was me?" The raichu said before quickly shaking his head. "Never mind. I...I'll do it. Just give me the command and I'll do it."

Firael gave him a smile. "It'll just be like old times, huh."

Rob smiled back, but Firael could tell it didn't extend to his eyes, which were hollow and had a haunted look about them. "Yeah, just like old times….working together."

"Hey, I- I didn't mean to-"

"It's okay. Let's do whatever Sonya wants us to do."

It turned out that the hidden entrance was right under Lucas' feet the whole time. Moving the coffee machine revealed a handhold in the bench (much like a flat car handle). When pulled, the bench slid out, revealing a small staircase leading down.

"Well, I guess I could have saved us some time, but how was I to know?" Lucas had exclaimed upon tracing Morgan's GPS trail to the coffee machine.

Mew grabbed her head with both paws in fustration. "Maybe you could have used your free time to look for the entrance?"

"Yeah but…."

"Actually," Sean intervened. "That wouldn't have been the best idea. What if someone walked in on him? No harm was done, really, and Lucas got some free coffee, which can't be a bad thing."

"Mostdefinitelynot!"

Mew sighed. "Okay, let's go down. I'll transform into an arceus once we're down there and we'll blast this place apart." She said, before promptly descending into the base, Lucas closely following, leaving Sean standing at the top all by himself.

"Yeah, sure! I do this every other week." Sean quipped.

"Okay Firael, let's start." Sonya nodded at Firael, who summoned a slow burn inside her before blowing a lot of smoke through her nose. Within a minute, the top of the room was filled with a thick haze.

"That should be enough."

Firael grunted in reply and prepared a flamethrower, feeling a burgeoning flame build up within her, getting stronger and stronger. When she couldn't hold it in any longer, she let it out, feeling her throat warm up comfortably as the flames rushed out of her jaws. Like the other times she had unleashed a flamethrower at the cage wall, the cage mesh started turning a cherry red, but on her own, Firael couldn't get her flame hot enough to turn the mesh bright orange,whereupon she figured a steel claw would have been enough to break through it with enough effort.

"Okay Rai. Your turn." Beside her, Firael could make out the vaguely yellow shape of Rob as he unleashed the electrical charge that he had been holding in reserve. A thin trail of lightning appeared in the air between Rob and the cage as Rob began working on alternating the direction of the current as quickly as he could.

Nothing was happening.

'This is going to break Rob if it doesn't work...' Firael thought. Then, slowly, it seemed as though the wires might have gotten a little brighter. And brighter. As the process started snowballing, everyone could see that the wires were heating up at a steadily increasing rate again.

"It's working! Yes!" Morgan cried out as she and Sonya slowly baked in the slowly rising heat of the cage, rivulets of sweat running down her head.

However, Rob was struggling to keep up. Firael realised that the raichu wasn't going to last much longer, so she stopped her flamethrower attack (Sonya had explained to her earlier that it wouldn't be required past a certain point) focused hard on her claws, pushing a little...something into them. As they started glowing silver, she took one step towards the glowing web and slashed at them, scoring her claws off the wire. Again. And again. After several strikes, she could feel the wires starting to give, which hardened her resolve. She renewed her efforts, striking faster and harder at the mesh.

Suddenly, a break in the mesh. Firael inwardly rejoiced, but knew that the job wasn't over yet - they needed a large enough cut so that Firael and Rob could fit through. Slashing perpendicular to the cut, Firael started achieving more and more breaks. Once she felt she had opened a long enough slash in the cage, she stopped her blows and started pulling on the mesh, ignoring the immense heat of the bright orange wires on her claws. Bracing herself against her feet, she pulled..hard.

Behind her, Rob collapsed in a heap of small convulsions, having given all that he had to give. Knowing that she was now racing against time as the mesh cooled, Firael continued working on the hole she was making-

Finally, some luck, a large portion of mesh, about the size of her head, snapped off. Throwing it out of the cage (lest anyone else get burned by the metal). Firael moved to another part of the cage and mentally prepared her sore paws. It was going too slowly.

"That should be enough...Morgan, pass me the water, won't you?" Sonya got one of the bottles of water that they had been given for dinner the night before and opened the cap before throwing it at the cage. A loud hissing started up as the metal quickly cooled down while Sonya frantically tried to get as much water on the metal as possible.

"Pass me another one! Quick!" Firael could only stare as Morgan wordlessly passed Sonya another bottle, before taking their third and last bottle and following Sonya's actions.

'What are they doing? The hole is nowhere near large enough for anyone to fit through!' Firael thought.

"That should be enough. Sonya suddenly said as she dropped her second empty bottle, before gingerly raising a finger to the edge of the hole and lightly touching the wires, which had cooled down by now. "Yep, they're room temperature now."

"Why did you do that?" Morgan was now holding half a bottle of water and gesturing wildly at the whole. "That whole is nowhere near large enough for any of us to fit through! I don't think Rai has it in him for another go anytime soon, and we'll be caught with a small hole in our cage."

"It's not over yet." Sonya muttered. She then grabbed the edge of the hole with both hands and started pulling back with all her weight.

Contrary to everyone's expectations, another large chunk of mesh snapped off.

'What.' Firael thought, nonplussed. 'The cage was a lot more sturdier than that when I was working on it….'

Sonya grinned. "Well, don't just sit there staring! Help me out!"

Stoked into action, Morgan jumped up and started scrabbling at the hole, snapping small bits off at a time while Firael slinked to the back of the cage and poured the last of the water over her hands. 'Ooooh that feels good. Never thought I'd say that about water….'

In the space of a minute, the hole was large enough to easily fit Firael and Rai. While resting and waiting for the raichu to wake up. Sonya stared at it with a critical eye, frowning. "It's definitely enough for Firael and Rob, but it's going to be a tight fit for Morgan and I."

"Nevermind that!" Morgan replied with a laugh. "How did you manage to get the cage to fall apart like that?"

Sonya wagged a finger at Morgan. "Ah, it was something I thought of when I saw Rai and Firael heat up the cage. You see, metal is naturally pretty flexible, especially as a wire mesh, so when I whack this part of the cage," Sonya punched an unheated part of the cage. "There's a bit of give, which makes it really hard to just punch your way out. Sharp objects don't work so well either since a thin mesh is really strong, although you have a better chance of using that instead of blunt force."

Morgan had a confused look on her face. "Yeah, so?"

"However," Sonya emphasised. "If metal is heated to a high temperature and then quickly cooled, it essentially makes the steel harder, which is what we want."

"What? Why do you want it to be harder? Isn't that, you know, harder to break?" Morgan's look of bewilderment intensified.

"Actually, you'd be wrong. It's easier because it's so brittle. A toothpick is easy to break because it's brittle. A normal wire is very difficult to break because it isn't brittle - you just bend it. With this mesh, it was proving difficult to bend because it was pretty hard, but it still had some give in it, as you can see when Firael managed to bend it before a piece snapped off. However, if you heated that same wire up and then dipped it in water, it would be really easy to snap. Like pencil lead."

"Wow, that's pretty cool. So the water was meant to cool the metal down so it would be easier to snap?"

"That's about it. The process is called quenching. I only went for it because I didn't think Firael would be able to make a big enough hole for herself and Rai, so I decided to take a risk. If we hadn't cooled the metal down quickly enough, it wouldn't have been brittle enough for us to snap and you would have been yelling very loudly at me."

Morgan was nodding now. "Yeah. Really really loudly. Still, it worked, so we have you to thank. How do you know all this stuff?"

Sonya raised an eyebrow. "I'm a scientist. That's my job."

Yeah so I started this chapter intending to release two chapters at once with the story at [redacted]. Unfortuantely, if I were to do that, both chapters would be 12k words long and that's too long, so it looks like we'll be heading a bit past the 40 chapter mark. It's not like I've found new stuff that needs to be said, but I've been trying to flesh my writing a little and I keep underestimating how many words a 'scene' takes to write. That last one was 3 pages long!

About that last scene - I apologise if it doesn't work like that, but I'm almost certain that at high temperatures an AC current can cause a wire to heat up faster than the raising resistance of the wire due to the higher heat. I know it works for really thin wires (hence fuses), but in the case of a mesh….poetic licence applies? With quenching, it should work, but there's a bit of a difference between dipping metal in water and splashing it with water, so again I don't know if it's 100% accurate, but if you're looking for that you're on the wrong website. I'm not a metallurgist, so it's all you're going to get from me. I was originally going to have Sonya give a more detailed explanation, but I don't think anybody actually cares and you can google quenching if you're really interested.

Steven: It's no fair! I wanted to be the ninja!

Firael: You suck too much to be one. That's why you're in the back seat.

Rush: You just mad because you aren't a badass like me.

Firael: If I recall correctly, Lucas gave the two of you the same job?

Rush: Yeah but I'll do it with style.

Firael: And exactly how do you plan to watch Lucas' back 'with style'?

Rush: 360 noscope staring!

Firael: ...what. And how do you plan to ramp up the style if you need to do so?

Rush: STARING INTENSIFIES.