Diana kind of wants to be like Professor Burnet, but she'd refuse to marry a wrestler with a stupidly obvious secret identity.
After checking with Rotom to find where this new location was, they took Diana's rental Charizard. They saw Hau walking on the ground below, and both of them screamed his name to get his attention.
"Beat Mallow's trial yet?" Diana shouted down, as Charizard did a few slow circles just to keep moving.
"Just got my crystal!" Hau shouted back. He pulled it out to prove his point. "That Lurantis was hard to beat, wasn't it?"
"Harder than it needed to be," Diana admitted.
"I caught a Larvesta!" Eli added happily.
Hau laughed. "Finally embraced your destiny, huh?"
"Kind of forced to, pal."
"So where are you headed now?"
"Some research lab the professor suggested. Not really my kind of thing, but…" He gestured to Diana. "I figured that if I let her have this, she'll have to come with me somewhere I want to go."
"The faked moon landing site?" Hau asked.
Eli shrugged. "Maybe."
"Or maybe I'll help him hide his crazy to get a girlfriend," Diana suggested.
"Well, good luck on both!" Hau waved goodbye and started off. Charizard, though dizzy, followed without a problem.
They reached the Dimensional Research Lab, as the scientist out front told them. Lillie was already waiting there, Cosmog out of her bag. They wondered why she was allowing it out where people could see it, but it quickly became clear.
"Nebby, use...use Splash!"
Cosmog promptly fell over laughing. Lillie's expression changed to vague anger.
"I was trying to be like my friends," she said, and the small Pokémon struggled to stop. "Hau can smile at anything, Diana can survive no matter what stupidity she's thrown herself into...Eli even has pyrokinesis! Uncontrollable, yes, but it still makes him special. My only natural talent is dealing with my mother and brother, and that was only before Mother lost her mind. I thought being a trainer would make it easier."
Eli looked down at his hand. He'd heard his aunt say so, of course, but hearing it from someone outside the family seemed to confirm something for him. He closed his eyes and willed a small, controllable fireball to form.
Nothing happened. Just like every other time. Maybe his aunt's other theory was right. Maybe he was just haunted by a fire-loving ghost, though why it chose him was a mystery. Maybe his great-uncle had something to do with it. It was just his luck to avoid such a thing.
Diana cleared her throat, and Lillie froze. Cosmog jumped up in happiness and floated over to greet the new arrivals. "One, that statement about me is a lot better than the temperature immunity I thought I had all my life. Survival as a superpower...maybe I could have touched the lava after all."
"You still would have lost an arm," Eli interrupted.
Diana ignored him. "Two, why are you training Cosmog to battle when you don't want anyone to know it exists?"
Lillie looked embarrassed. "Well, Nebby seems to always end up hurt. I never thought I'd want to be a Trainer, but seeing you and Eli and Hau being so happy..."
Cosmog made the 'Pew' noise again. Lillie smiled. "I think it makes Nebby happy, too."
For the first time, Diana noticed Cosmog's reaction to the name. It wasn't the same as Diana's utter loathing, but its smile seemed just a bit forced after that. Diana made eye contact with the creature and nodded, telling it she understood without needing to speak. Cosmog giggled and lookde away.
Lillie didn't notice. "Come on, everyone - into the lab! The professor is waiting!"
The inside of the lab was wet, as if something had triggered the sprinklers. The scientists were all panicking, but a woman's voice rose above the chaos.
"It was just a faulty wire!" she promised. "A Pikachu gnawed through it! You act like you've never seen a spontaneous combustion before..."
"So that's how my powers work," Eli commented quietly. "I subconsciously manipulate the probability of something igniting."
Diana laughed. "A lot of big words, Eli."
"I'm not stupid."
"I know. In my heart. My head needs a bit more time to wrap around that fact."
Eli playfully shoved her, knowing a joke when he heard one.
Professor Kukui finished wiping off his glasses (or were they sunglasses? Who wears sunglasses indoors?) to face the kids. "There's my other assistant!" he announced, and the whole lab turned to look at Diana. "Sorry we couldn't have cake, Diana. It got too close to the fire, yeah."
"It happens." She shrugged. "Especially when Eli's around."
Eli shoved her again, a little bit harder this time.
The woman who had calmed down the panicked scientists approached the group, smiling despite the situation. "I'm so sorry about that. Things don't usually explode around here."
"It's fine, honey," Kukui told her. Diana blinked at the last word, startled. Kukui grinned. "Diana, this is Professor Burnet. She runs the lab here, and yes, she's my wife. Honey, this is Diana."
"Diana Freeman." Burnet almost laughed. "I've heard about you, from both my husband and Lillie."
"Good things?" Diana asked, though the bigger part of her brain was wondering if she'd ever have someone to love and do science with, as Burnet and Kukui had each other - and a lab like this one would be nice, too.
"For the most part," Burnet said carefully. "I'm sorry about the situation with Lillie, Diana. But when I found her on a beach three months ago, she and Cosmog both unconscious, I had to help them both." Burnet clearly felt the way Diana did about Cosmog's nickname. "And since the scientists here use a lot of complicated machinery, I had my husband take her."
"He did mention you found Lillie."
Burnet seemed relieved that Diana had let it go, and then looked over at Kukui. "No Hau today?"
"He's doing his own thing."
"Actually," said Hau's voice, "I'm right here."
He was carrying a large box of malasadas. It seemed like he'd anticipated the lab getting Eli'd and had stopped for more than just a snack. Maybe he was an alien descendant, too, with the power of foresight.
Diana laughed quietly, and brushed it off when Lillie asked. He just knew Eli, that's all. A childhood friendship was an even better explanation.
"That's great, Hau! Now the party can really start."
"Why did you really bring us here, Professor?" Diana asked, and both Burnet and Kukui responded to her question.
Burnet had the better answer. "He suggested it because we agreed you would like to hear about the Ultra Wormholes."
Diana was quiet for half a second. "The what?"
"It's extremely rare," Burnet explained, "but sometimes, a hole opens up in the sky over Alola. People theorize that this hole leads into a different dimension. They say that sometimes rare and powerful Pokémon come out of the holes. I have yet to see it happen, but if the Pokedex says that some Pokémon come from different dimensions...with all of us together, I'm sure we'll either bust this myth or confirm the existence of these mysterious dimensions."
Diana wasn't aware of her awestruck expression, but those who could see it all laughed. "She's in," Eli told the professors for her.
"Thank you." Professor Burnet didn't seem to care about Diana's young age, like Colress had seemed to. Instead, she looked down at her with a warm smile. "This will help Lillie and Cosmog, as well. Thank you for being such a good friend to them, Diana."
She sounded like she was Lillie's mom. From the way Lillie looked at her, she seemed to agree.
Before Diana could think of a reason why, Hau cleared his throat, gesturing at the large box of malasadas he'd brought in. "All right, everyone! As fun as this was, we did kind of beat all three trials on this island. Kukui promised a party! The cake has been replaced with malasadas! Dig in!"
As Eli and Diana left the building, brains full of new information and bellies full of malasadas, they were plotting how to deal with Olivia. Neither of them could guess what Pokémon she had on her team, so Diana's plot to send out a Dartrix and see how far he'd go wasn't their best. But, when even Rotom admitted that it was what had worked so far, it became her plan anyway.
Then, out of nowhere, something lit up in the night sky. It looked a bit like white fireworks, but it wasn't loud enough. The fire alarm in the building went off again, but it was just Eli. And it was gone before they could continue to investigate.
Luckily, Diana knew what it was. "That was an Ultra Wormhole, wasn't it?"
"Probably," Eli agreed. "But it didn't spit anything out, right?"
"Didn't look like it."
"So this interdimensional Pokémon must be invisible."
She was too tired to fight him on that. Besides, he might have been right.
"That or it wanted us to go through it," Rotom suggested. "But I'm sure the three of us..." he looked over at Diana, then spoke only to Eli. "I'm sure the two of us are rational enough to not do it."
"I don't want to get killed by a brain-eating Pokémon," Eli agreed.
"Gotta get killed by something," said Diana, but the wormhole was already gone.
She'd get the next one, she decided. There was only so much the others could do to stop her.