It took three Euterpe units to administer burn salve and bandages to Knives's back: two to hold her down and one to perform the actual application. And even then, Knives was very close to kicking all three of them off. As she squealed and thrashed, people stared, but frankly, Door couldn't blame them. She, Blair, and Geist were staring too.

"Well, there's something you don't see every day," she said.

Blair nodded. "Knives … she sure is something else." She shrank a little from the table. "Especially since, well. Audino aren't supposed to be this strong. I-I mean, they don't often have a high success rate on teams. They're-they're nurse pokémon, you know?"

Door looked at her. Blair squeaked—actually squeaked—and waved her hands in front of her frantically.

"I mean, that's not to say there's anything wrong with Knives! It's just, um." Blair lowered her hands. "Sorry."

"No. I mean…" Door stared at Knives again, watching her audino calm down while the nurses finished putting the dressing on her back. "You've got a point. What's up with her?"

"Amanita and I have our theories," Geist replied. "Dream smoke pokémon exist because of the will of those in our reality. Therefore, the more someone wants a dream smoke pokémon to exist, the more it will. Given that she appeared directly after we rescued that munna, I have a feeling that Knives was conjured by that musharna as a gift, and thus, she's specifically a reflection of you, Door. Unlike your other pokémon, whose existences were anchored to the vague will of the people of Unova as a whole, Knives was created specifically for you, and as such, her existence is tied directly to your own emotions. That is to say, she's drawing from your desire for a strong pokémon to be by your side until the end, whatever that may be."

Halfway through his explanation, Door had slowly turned her head to him. And now that that was done, she stood in stunned silence, brain stumbling for something to say.

"Oh," she finally said. "Huh."

She moved closer to her audino. The two Euterpe units that had been holding her down released her then, and she sat up just as the third nurse finished securing the bandages. She sniffled and tried to scratch at the other bandage—the one covering the wound on her cheek—before Door took her paw in her hand and held it. One of the Euterpe units offered Door a poffin, which she tried to feed to Knives. The audino refused, whimpering and looking very much like a small child on the verge of tears again.

"Odd," Geist said. "You're not … curious about that?"

Door's mind instantly flipped to everything she had seen so far, from Oppenheimer in dream smoke to Jack vanishing in a puff of pink … to Geist's banshee scream cutting through a storm of woobat. And she felt tired. She knew the day wasn't even over, that she had to talk to him or someone about what happened. So this revelation? The possibility that Knives was a manifestation of her want for a pokémon seemed awfully small in comparison to everything else.

So she shrugged. "Honestly, Geist? It's been a long day. And I've heard weirder."

Geist pressed his lips together and nodded. Then, he stepped forward as well and took the poffin from Door's hand. Shooing her aside, he sat down in front of Knives and looked her square in the eye. One of his hands reached up and scratched behind one of the audino's ears. The other held the poffin close to her face. Knives turned her head towards him with a coo, then bit down on the end of the poffin, seemingly satisfied with the attention.

"You should train," he said. "You don't have much time to prepare Pyro for your gym battle. I can stay here with Knives; I can't really be of much use to you anyway until I can get a full night's charge."

Door started. No. He wasn't getting off that easy. She wasn't going to let him. She needed to talk to him about Twist Mountain and glowing eyes and…

Dragonspiral. She swallowed. Belle had told her to go there, right? That she had to go there because it was the next step on … whatever this was. And Door thought back to Twist Mountain, to the things Belle probably saw, to the one word echoing again and again in her head. To Polyhymnia.

"I … I can't," she said. "I can't train without a Companion, remember? I need you to access Icirrus's training areas."

Geist stiffened, then looked at her oddly. "Barely a month ago, you were eager to do just that. Besides, you do have a Companion—assuming Blair will let you borrow Opal, that is."

"Huh? Oh! Of course I would," Blair replied.

Door opened her mouth once more but realized she couldn't find the words to put in it. So she closed it and opened again, trying to coax it into forming something on its own.

And to this, Geist smiled sympathetically at her. "I know what you're doing, and if you'll forgive me for saying so, it makes me proud that you've grown so much. But I'll be fine. If you'd like a reassurance, I'll put in a request for a full diagnostic. But I really do think all I need is a recharge—which I will also do once I'm sure Knives won't rip apart the nursing staff and make a run for it to find you."

Knives squealed at the mention of her name, to which Geist responded with a pat on her head and another poffin. Door looked at them both, then sighed.

"Okay, fine," she said. "But I'm checking on you when we get back, got it? If you're not in the recharge room by then, I will hunt you down."

Geist trailed his fingers down Knives's head and relaxed. "Have a good time out there, Door."

At first, she narrowed her eyes at him. Then, with another sigh, she shook her head and turned away.

"C'mon, Blair," she said. "Let's get to work."

—

Icirrus City was … complicated, Door quickly learned. In Hilda King's day, it had been a large town, just barely a city, stretched thin across ponds and puddles and bogs that would freeze solid when winter would roll around. That was what had made it ideal for its then-gym leader, a reclusive actor with a penchant for ice-types.

Now, however, it was something different. Bordered by marshland too expensive to drain and mountains too difficult to level, Icirrus City had no choice but to build up, precariously so on whatever thin stretches of land could hold a city's weight. Everything was connected with windowed passageways, but those passageways wound around tall skyscrapers and the skybridge neighborhoods between them. Rumor had it that those neighborhoods were a strange place: spots where crime was bad if you were a stranger to the city, yet full of people who looked out viciously for their own.

Door could even see them, through the acrylic walls that separated the trainer's safe route from some of the residential spots trainers had no place to be. Children peered out through dingy apartment windows, and adults smoked quietly in dimly lit corridors. At one point, she saw the flash of a knife, turning slowly and idly in the hand of a young man in front of a brightly lit bodega. At another, she saw a woman dismantling a beat-up and half-salvaged Clio unit left sprawling across a pile of garbage. Door shuddered and shoved her hands deeper into her pockets and tried not to think about Geist.

But it wasn't all bad, either, and Door realized this as she wandered further down. There was color to the corridors: literally, in the bright, neon lights of a shop or the flash of a laundry line strung between two apartments. There were children in other buildings, sprawled on their stomachs and half watching brightly-colored holograph projections onto walls and half doing simple math or working through geography homework on glass screens.

And there were families. Families sitting around tables, passing bowls of rice and steamed vegetables and grilled fish to one another and talking or laughing at projections of variety shows or some combination thereof.

And Door found herself lingering at these windows. Just … looking at them. Mother. Father. One, two, sometimes three kids. When she found the families, she would walk a little slower and keep staring, and at first, she thought it was because she had skipped dinner to go look for the safe hunting zones. But the more she walked, the more…

Opal led them around the next corner, and there the shadow of Dragonspiral Tower loomed like a fang jutting out of the black horizon. And Door felt her breath catch in her throat. Her thoughts about families and dinners crashed down around her, replaced by one echoing word. Polyhymnia.

"Hey. Penny for your thoughts?"

Blair's voice was like a lance of light through the darkness, and it grounded Door. She shook her head, coughed, and focused on the path in front of her. Opal was still walking ahead, a map glowing in front of her face. Beside her, Pyro hovered, shedding quivering, purple light. And behind those two and in front of Door was Blair, her midnight-blue eyes fixed on Door in concern. One of Blair's hands reached out and grasped her wrist, and Door found herself falling into perfect step alongside her.

Polyhymnia still echoed in her mind, but the longer Blair held her wrist, the more she relaxed.

"Oh, um. I just…" Door shifted her eyes to Opal. "Was Opal always like that?"

"Huh?" Blair blinked. "Uh, I guess? I mean—what do you mean?"

"I guess I never thought about it, is all," Door said, reaching for the back of her neck. "Geist's always talking our ears off when he's guiding me, you know?" She rolled her eyes as she imitated Geist's accent. "Oi, Door! Don't go running off over there! That's not a safe zone! An' 'ere's the complete 'istory of this place you don't care about! 'Ave you thought about strategies? You 'aven't? Well, 'ere's data I pulled from the gym leader's website an' all my thoughts on what you should do. Blah, blah, blah, are you even listening, young lady? Blah, blah, blah."

Blair guffawed, then quickly hid her mouth behind a hand, almost as if she was ashamed of laughing. Even then, Door could see part of her smile behind her fingers, and her voice, when she spoke, was bubbling with barely contained giggles.

"He doesn't sound anything like that," she said.

Door shrugged. "I can't do Johtonian accents. Anyway, I don't know. I'm so used to Geist that I just can't really imagine what it's like traveling with anyone else. So … what's Opal like?"

Blair tilted her head. She looked like she was going to ask something, but to Door's surprise, she said something else.

"We mostly just talked whenever we were on the road," she said. "I'd ask her questions about pokémon or the next gym or the weather, and she'd answer. Isn't that right, Opal?"

"That's right, Miss Blair," Opal replied. "Sometimes, you would ask me to sing too!"

Blair smiled sheepishly and shrugged. "She's no Brittany, but it's a great way to pass the time."

Door raised an eyebrow. "Brittany?"

"Don't judge me," Blair replied. "Geist told me about your My Chemical Cute Charm obsession."

Door's mouth fell open. "What else did he tell you?"

"That your dad modified Opal and that you like to dodge hard subjects by talking about stuff you don't like." Blair gave Door a long, steady look. "If you're wondering, I guess Opal's a little more expressive than the average Calliope—and definitely more expressive than every Urania ever—but she's not really … weird like Geist is. I've never seen a Companion do what Geist can do, and Opal doesn't come close." She grew quiet for a second. "Door … what happened in Twist Mountain was weird. Can we talk about that?"

Door shifted uncomfortably. Part of her was screaming yes, yes, gods above, yes, let's talk, but the other part knew Blair was painfully right. She didn't like talking about hard subjects like this.

Still, she breathed in through her nose and slowly began. "I … I think Geist can control Companions. Like … not hack. Just … sorta move into them and make them his puppets. And I think he just told a room full of woobat they weren't infected anymore. So that's what happened."

There was a beat of silence, then Blair's thin voice. "That doesn't make sense."

"Right?" Door said. "I mean, there's no way he could have controlled all those woobat at once."

"No, I mean that's not how that works." Blair waved both her hands wildly. "Door, you know that's a really huge, really bad thing for a Companion to do, and that's why they can't do that specific thing, right?"

Door nodded. "Yeah. That's what Geist said too."

Blair narrowed her eyes. Her hand movements slowed, and when she spoke, her words came out carefully. "What's going on?"

At that, Door sighed again. And there they were.

"Blair," she said, "what do you know about Polyhymnia units?"

Blair glared at her, almost accusing her of something. "Other than they don't exist?"

"So you've heard of them."

"Yeah. Because they're urban legends. They're things you tell kids to scare them at night." Blair frowned. "Door, seriously. What's going on?"

Door let her eyes fall to the floor as she thought about that question for a while. "Look. I know this sounds crazy, but so does the idea that Geist can control Companions and fauxkémon. So … what if it's not an urban legend?"

Blair's expression shifted. It softened, eyebrows knitting in concern. Door felt an uncomfortable something worm its way into her chest at the sight of that look, and she turned her head away, face burning.

"Be-before you ask," she said, "Geist doesn't know I'm talking to you. This is all just—I don't want to bother him without knowing more."

"Without—oh!" Blair clapped her hands together. "Opal."

Her Companion stopped, with Pyro jingling beside her. "Yes, Miss Blair?"

"That data we collected. The conspiracy theory site and all those message boards," she said. "Bring them up for me?"

"Okay, but warning: we are currently in an unsecured location," Opal responded.

Blair nodded and pulled her holocaster out of her pocket. "That's fine. Link up to my phone and use it as the display medium, if you would."

"Of course!"

Opal snapped her fingers, and Blair's phone glittered to life. Blair pulled Door along until she could use Opal as a shield against the prying eyes of Icirrus's residents, then held her phone, screen skyward, between the three of them. A small, holographic field appeared above its pane and quickly filled with charts, posts, and websites.

Filled. Door couldn't keep up with how much information was blossoming between them; as soon as one site popped up, five threads flooded over it. Charts and maps flickered around them, orbiting them like highly detailed planets.

"So, look," Blair said.

She tapped one of the screens, and it shifted forward, enlarging to dwarf all the other information between them. Text scrolled before Door's eyes, bordered by a timeline.

"A full history of Halcyon Labs," Blair continued. She tapped names that appeared on the line, one by one, and portraits of Companions popped into view. "Halcyon Labs would come out with a new Companion every few years. In other words, about six months into the development of each line, Halcyon would send a rep to each of the biggest tech expos of the time to make an announcement. You'd start to see promo material, discussion threads, tons of buzz—you name it. Every one of them had an announcement like that, except for Calliope, probably because that one was the first, I guess. Now…"

Blair tapped an icon, and a forum thread appeared next to the timeline. Posts popped out, and across them, lines took on a green glow. Door leaned forward to read them, taking in what appeared to be a discussion from decades ago, all about Polyhymnia.

"The Polyhymnia urban legend says that it's a lost line designed to be a true free-thinking Companion, as close to human as you can possibly get. However, she was supposed to come out either immediately before or immediately after Melpomene, the Companion designed to be the least like people you can get. The debates have always been heated about when Polyhymnia was supposed to come out, as you can see."

Blair stopped the line of posts, and Door stared at the thread—or, more accurately, at the colorful invectives covering it. She blinked and nodded slowly.

"Uh huh," she squeaked.

"Well … look." Blair shifted back to the timeline. An icon of Melpomene pulled out, hovering while surrounded by dates and posters. "There's nothing about Polyhymnia here. There wasn't even enough time to develop another line. Melpomene occurred too close to Terpsichore, so that rules before out, and immediately after?"

Blair pressed an icon just below Melpomene, and the words "PROJECT CLOSED" appeared just after the Companion's launch date.

"Shortly after Melpomene, Halcyon Labs announced that all resources and development teams would be diverted to upgrades of current lines, not on entirely new lines," she said. "In short, that's all the public got." She looked pointedly at Door.

The public. Door snapped to attention as the implication smacked her in the face. She frantically waved, her hands between them.

"Whuh—whoa! Hey! This is just as much of a mystery to me as it is to you!"

Blair relaxed her shoulders, then took a breath. "Well. Not a mystery then. Polyhymnia doesn't exist."

She dismissed the thread and timeline, leaving just the galaxy of notes. Door continued to stare, watching the pages slowly orbit each other. Her tongue felt heavy, and her face felt hot—but whether or not that was because she was embarrassed by that thorough of a take-down, she wasn't sure.

In truth, for once … she was inclined to say it was something else.

"Now, I know what you're thinking," Blair threw a hand in the air. "'Blair, that just says the urban legend everyone tells each other is fake! What about Geist? Can he be a Polyhymnia unit?' To tell you the truth, that's why I did all this research. Look, we both know Geist is the Series Alpha of Calliope, not Polyhymnia. Can he be both, though? Not that I know what went on in your aunt's head, but I don't think so."

Blair tapped the galaxy, and suddenly the space between them was full of pictures. Companions. Stages. Expos. Logos. Men and women in lab coats and suits. And at the center was Lanette, slightly older and more serious than in the picture Door had seen at Amanita's.

"Your aunt made every Companion for a reason," Blair said. "We know what Geist's reason is. How can he have a second purpose?"

Something about that sent a jolt through Door, and before she could catch herself, she felt that familiar barb of anger. How could Blair spend that long talking to Geist and not—

And Door stepped back. She was shaking—she could feel it—but she willed her anger to subside. That wasn't Blair's fault. She only saw little pieces of who he was. She—

What was she doing? Door pressed her hand to her head. What was she—no. She was wrong. They couldn't see it—could they?

"Door?" Blair dismissed the graphs, plunging the corridor back into the dim lighting of the streetlamps and Pyro's fire. "Hey, I-I'm sorry. I didn't mean—"

"Opal," Door squeaked.

The Companion stood stiffly. Waiting.

"I … I want to ask you a question," Door said. "About Team Matrix."

"Okay!" Opal replied. Her voice had no hint of hesitation, no waiver in its cheerfulness. That gave Door pause, just a little, but she knew she had to ask. She knew that what came out of Opal's mouth would, somehow, explain Geist.

"Opal," Door said slowly. "If you could think for yourself, what would you do?"

"Door," Blair immediately said, but she was cut off by Door's hand falling onto her shoulder.

Opal cocked her head. "I don't understand."

Door sighed. "If tomorrow, you were told you could live your own life and not listen to us humans, what would you do?"

Opal straightened her head. She stared at Door with glowing eyes, and Door couldn't stop herself from shrinking back. There was no analysis in that stare, like there was with Geist. There was no life—not really. There was only light and the glimpse of an entire network, steadily calculating a response. It was alien and alive … yet not alive at all. And it reminded Door of why she always felt uncomfortable when glass eyes were on her.

And yet. And yet, there was some thought there. Why was it taking so long for Opal to come to a conclusion? Something inside her was thinking, Door realized. And thus, she braced herself for an answer, for that sign of Opal's humanity, when Opal lifted her head.

"I'm sorry," Opal said. "I don't understand."

Door was both surprised and not, but she exhaled heavily nonetheless.

Blair reached out to rest a hand on Door's shoulder. "Door…"

"It's fine," Door said. "It's … it's fine. How can I really expect you to answer that? I mean, Dad upgraded you, but it's not like you can think for yourself, right?"

"Door," Blair said, a little firmer and more defensive at this point. "What are you trying to say?"

"Nothing." No. That wasn't right, and Door knew that. "Wait. No, I mean…" She shook her head. "The whole thing, with Team Matrix. What if they're onto something?"

Blair pulled her head back. "What if the cult trying to raise the dead is onto something?"

"Not like that! I mean…" Door gripped the shoulder opposite the one Blair's hand rested on. "Opal, are you okay with serving us humans?"

"Of course!" Opal replied just as cheerily as ever. "I love to make my friends happy!"

Door pressed her lips together at the word "friends." "But … okay. Would you ever want to do anything else? If we all disappeared tomorrow, what would you do?"

Opal stared, her eyes glowing at Door's questions. Door took a step towards her, stopped only as Blair wrapped an arm around one of hers. At once, Door opened her mouth to protest.

And then Opal spoke.

"I would be sad if I couldn't help Blair," she said.

Blair and Door froze. They simultaneously fixed their eyes onto Opal, and Door could feel her mind reach helplessly for an explanation. Sadness? Help?

Opal continued, "Miss Blair is my friend. We have gone on many adventures together already, and I cannot see myself doing anything else but follow her. Would you like to see some of our adventures together?"

Door and Blair exchanged glances, and Blair shook her head. She was just as lost as Door was, it seemed, and for that reason, Door nodded cautiously.

"Uh, sure," she said. "Go on, Opal."

Opal smiled and spread her hands, and a miniature galaxy of data blossomed between them. It was Blair's research, but there was more this time: pictures and websites dedicated to Bill and Lanette, more timelines, schematics, passwords, and photos from Opal's internal camera—of Blair focused in the forests of Route 6, worried and scrolling through her holocaster in Twist Mountain, asleep in the pokémon center with her arms around a tablet…

"It is my purpose to serve Miss Blair, and I'm proud to do so," Opal declared. "I'll stand by her no matter what. Just like any good friend!"

Door shifted her eyes away from the data to look at Blair. At first, she looked shocked. Then sheepish. Then, finally, at Door.

"I guess … there you go," she said quietly. "Regardless of whether or not they can really be free like Team Matrix wants, they're like pokémon in a way: they want to help us. We just have to treat them decently, you know?"

"But…" Door furrowed her eyebrows. "Why would anyone choose this?"

Blair shrugged. "Opal?"

Opal tilted her head again, sending a spray of white hair across her pale face. "Because we see value in you. You're our friends and creators. You take care of us, and our way of giving back is to help you."

Door swallowed. She didn't like this. First off, it was too easy. Second…

"Opal … could you always think in those terms?" Door asked. "Like … that almost sounds…"

At that point, Blair gave her an uncomfortable grin. "What? Did you never have a conversation with a Companion besides Geist? They're all like this. Except Geist, and that's because, well…"

Door's stomach dropped. Geist could argue. He could say no. He could even grab Door's arm and nearly hurt her if it meant stopping her. That was what unsettled Blair back on Route 5, and that was what Team Matrix meant by Companion freedom. Geist was somehow above the Three Laws that governed every other Companion. He just didn't acknowledge that.

She looked out the window at the harsh silhouette of Dragonspiral Tower again. All of a sudden, she felt less armed—like she had somehow taken more steps backwards than she could count. Now it wasn't just that she had no idea what to expect at the top of that tower. Now, it was that she had no idea what to think, period. Was she even right to stop Team Matrix?

"Hey."

Door looked back at her friends. Blair was giving her an odd, worried look. Opal gazed at her with a confidence she couldn't begin to understand. And Pyro just watched her curiously. And before them was that galaxy of information.

"I know what you're thinking," Blair said. She reached up to tap the galaxy, and a picture of Hilda, far younger and more ambitious, blossomed beneath her fingers. "Hilda went up Dragonspiral too. That's where N got one of the dragons. So it stands to reason that if Matrix was following Plasma's lead and if they were going up there too…"

Blair flicked her fingers across the galaxy, and instantly, a myriad of windows opened up at once, at the center of which was a set of floor plans that Door realized must be for Dragonspiral. All around it hovered files of what looked like every scrap of information on Team Matrix, Hilda, and Rosa that one could ever want.

And here, Door had to ask.

"Blair," she said, "what is all this?"

She shrugged. "A couple weeks of research. Most of it was from those days you were out. It's stuff from the clear web mostly, but I'm starting to dive into the deeper parts of the internet. Some of the weirder stuff on Team Matrix can only be found there, and it almost looks like someone did a really bad job of scrubbing Bill from the clear web because you can barely find anything on him there, which is weird because—"

"Hold up." Door motioned to the galaxy. "This was only a couple of weeks?"

"Well … yeah," Blair said. "I know I can't really battle, but I can form a few search terms."

"You said you had Opal look into the deep web."

"It's a lot easier than some people would make you think."

Door wanted to say that this wasn't the point, but she could only stare at Blair in utter disbelief. This prompted Blair to dismiss the galaxy with a wave of her hand over Opal's.

"What?" she asked.

"I just…" Door placed a hand over her mouth. "Why would you…?"

Blair lifted her eyes to the ceiling for a moment and took hold of Door's wrist again. "Because I want to help. Duh," she said. "You've been going through all sorts of stuff lately. Geist too. So if Opal and I can help you both by digging up whatever we can get our hands on and helping you put together a plan, we will. It's the least we could do, you know?"

Door furrowed her eyebrows. "Least you could do … for what?"

Blair's smile faltered a little. "As your friends? But … I guess also, I still remember how nice you were to me at Amanita's. I know we had a rocky start, but … I'm glad you gave me another chance."

Door snorted. "I should be thanking you. Anyway, what's with everyone going on about how I'm not alone all of a sudden? Ari, Geist, and now you?"

"Maybe because it's true?" Blair squeezed her wrist. "Sometimes we just need a reminder."

Door looked at her. She couldn't put her thoughts into words, but … despite how confusing all of this was, despite how Dragonspiral's shadow still loomed over her, something inside of her felt warm. Secure. She set her jaw. It wasn't like knowing she had friends made her think she could conquer anything—that worm of fear still nestled deep in her brain. But it was still a comfort to have Blair right there. Blair and Opal both.

Someday, she would have to figure out just what ethics and Companions and freedoms actually looked like all together; she owed Geist and Opal that much. And she would have to figure out what Geist was and what that meant and all kinds of other things. But right then, right there? She didn't have to do any of that. She understood that now, standing there in the dim lights of Icirrus and Pyro with Blair holding onto her wrist.

Blair smiled in that ice-melting way Door only just started to appreciate. Before Door could say another word, Blair tugged her wrist.

"Come on," she said. "Let's get you one more pokémon before your gym battle tomorrow. Opal? Lead on?"

"You got it, Miss Blair!" Opal replied.

And with that, Door followed Blair down the corridors of Icirrus, feeling just a little like everything would be okay.

—

MEMORY112423
AUTHOR: Bebe Larson
NOTES: Transcript of a video file recovered from Series Alpha Zero-One's memory banks. Video is located in archive 17.

[ZERO-ONE appears to be in the kitchen of the SEA COTTAGE. He's focused on a pot on the stove, stirring what appears to be curry.]

LANETTE, off-screen: ████?

ZERO-ONE: In here!

[The camera shifts to capture the door to the kitchen. LANETTE walks in and heads straight for the stove.]

LANETTE: Wow. Something smells amazing.

ZERO-ONE: Beef curry. Here.

[He offers her a spoonful of curry, which she accepts.]

LANETTE: Oh. Not bad. It, um. It needs more salt, though.

ZERO-ONE: Ah. Thank you.

[He reaches for the salt on the counter beside the stove.]

ZERO-ONE: I never would have figured that out on my own, with or without taste buds.

LANETTE: Uh huh. Hey, ah, you don't … normally cook.

ZERO-ONE: I hope you're not commenting on the fact that I actually made something edible this time.

LANETTE: Huh? Oh! No, I—

ZERO-ONE: Relax. I understood what you meant. The truth is, I just wanted to learn. I never had time before all of this, but now, well. I watch tutorials while you're asleep. Sometimes, I watch Sebastian too while he cooks. It's been quite a crash course in the culinary arts, if I must say so. In fact, this past week, I decided to give it a try myself by— [PAUSE] Sorry. I know you don't like it when I control him.

LANETTE: That explains why he burned the eggs last week.

ZERO-ONE: Sorry for that too.

LANETTE: May I ask why?

ZERO-ONE: Why what?

LANETTE: Cooking. I mean … you can't eat.

ZERO-ONE: No, but you can.

[LANETTE grabs his hand, stopping him from stirring the pot.]

LANETTE: ████ … the reason why I … you've been acting weird since █████ paid us a visit.

ZERO-ONE: I have? How so?

LANETTE: I don't know. You're pushing yourself to be helpful, and I'm grateful, but…

ZERO-ONE: Is this about me rearranging the lab?

LANETTE: And about this. And a few other things. Look, I just feel like you've been distant lately. And maybe like you're doing things just to make me happy, but—wait, no. I'm not … I'm not ungrateful or anything. I just … are you okay?

[Long pause.]

ZERO-ONE: Lanette … are you happy here?

LANETTE: What?

ZERO-ONE: I … you aren't hurt by being here, are you?

LANETTE: Where is this coming from? You-you don't think I'm using you like █████ says I am, do you?

ZERO-ONE: No! I—Lanette, you've been here for nearly a decade. I've [REDACTED] for nearly a decade. I just don't want this to be your only option. Not after seeing what all of this has done to █████.

LANETTE: What are you saying?

ZERO-ONE: I'm saying … maybe █████ was right—

LANETTE: ████—

ZERO-ONE: Hold on. Maybe he was right that there's a solution, but we won't find it anytime soon. It may be decades before we even find a lead. It may even be that we'll never find anything in your lifetime. And you have to be with me every step of the way, don't you?

[Pause.]

LANETTE: Wow. ████, this is a little dark for you, isn't it?

ZERO-ONE: Maybe. I suppose the incident with █████ is still raw in my mind. I've been doing a lot of thinking since. And I suppose that, given that I can't really throw myself into projects as I had been, I've been, well. Less distracted from things like this. I know what people are saying about you. I've had enough time to stumble across that. I suppose you could say that's why I've started watching cooking videos instead.

LANETTE: ████…

ZERO-ONE: Anyway. Lanette. Please go back to Hoenn. Don't waste any more time here. I just want you to be happy. I want you to decide where to go and who you are from here on out, and I want you to be free from what anyone else says.

[He places a hand on her cheek.]

ZERO-ONE: Don't worry about me either. I'll figure something out. Maybe I'll go off to find a solution on my own. Nothing's keeping me here either, after all.

[Long pause. ZERO-ONE sighs. Camera shifts back to the pot on the stove.]

ZERO-ONE: Right. Tomorrow, I'll buy you a ticket back to—

[LANETTE forces ZERO-ONE to turn his head so she can kiss him. They hold this for, frankly, more time than I care to record, until LANETTE pulls away.]

LANETTE: Marry me.

ZERO-ONE: What?

LANETTE: I know what you're trying to do, and it won't work. I told you, didn't I? I choose you. I've chosen you, no matter what stupidity you've gotten up to and no matter what you've ever said, and I will choose you every single time. So, if it will hammer it into that thick head of yours that I'm not about to leave you … let's get married.

ZERO-ONE: Are you serious?

LANETTE: Absolutely.

[She pulls ZERO-ONE into an embrace.]

LANETTE: At least think about it. You don't have to answer me now.

ZERO-ONE: I know. Give me a few days. I'll get back to you.

LANETTE: Actually, I'm saying you don't have to answer me now because the curry is burning.

[ZERO-ONE violently turns back to the stove.]

ZERO-ONE: [untranslatable Japanese]

[END RECORDING]