"... So, let me get this straight," Hau said, stretching their arms up and lacing their fingers on top of their rowlet, which perched on their head, "that litten tried to kill you, just 'cause it's got a chip on its shoulder and thinks all people are evil, or whatever… and you agreed to take it home? What for? So it can try to kill you again?"

"It doesn't look as aggressive as you made it out to be," Kiawe observed, from Ash's other side. Tucked into a harness and strapped to Ash's chest, the litten—bound in bandages that covered its entire midsection—flattened its ears to its head, teeth bared in a halfhearted warning.

Hau blinked. "Yeah, right. 'Cause good, normal, friendly pokémon growl at people all the time." They reached out to try and scratch the litten beneath its chin—and yanked their hand back when it swiped at them, rumbling low in its chest. "Sheesh! Lighten up, kitty. Not everyone's out to get you!"

"Hey, knock it off," Ash said, defensively, as though it hadn't almost cost him his arm to manoeuvre it into the harness in the first place. "It doesn't know any better. Professor Kukui said he—" Ash glanced down at the litten, then cupped his hands over its ears, and though it hissed, it couldn't quite reach him with its claws. He continued speaking in a whisper. "Professor Kukui said he thinks it might have been stolen from another island by bad people, 'cause Nurse Joy couldn't find it on the starter registry, or anythin'."

Kiawe grimaced. "It was probably taken from Wela Volcano Park. Litten and torracat are supposed to be protected there. My grandfather was Kahuna of Akala Island before Olivia—"

"Woah, really?" Ash and Hau chorused.

"Yeah, and he used to guard Wela Volcano Park. He said torracat flame sacs bring hundreds on the black market, so poachers try to smuggle litten out so they can use them to make a profit. It's disgusting. Those people are worse than scum."

"You're tellin' me. Pokémon poachers are the worst," Ash muttered.

Hau tugged gently on their rowlet's leafy bowtie. "You say that like you've met any before!"

Ash balled his hands into fists. On his shoulder, Pikachu whined.

He'd seen what poachers could do to pokémon. The Iron-Masked Marauder's treatment of Celebi had been nothing short of torture—it had almost cost it its life—and Hunter J—

After they had rescued Riolu, Ash had sat with it alone, for a while, and felt the tangled ball of Aura in its chest slowly unravel. It had been so bright, pure and burning in a way he hadn't felt since his time in Rota, cynicism beat out by the embers of hope despite everything it had been through.

It had wanted to go with him that day; Ash still felt that intention like an imprint on his soul. Riolu had trusted him inexplicably, trusted the world in spite of its capability for cruelty. Less resilient pokémon had been broken by far simpler things, but Riolu had been—Riolu had been special. One of a kind, and it'd had nothing to do with aura sphere.

When Hunter J had called Riolu special, she had meant that it had been valuable. She had meant that it had been profitable. Pokémon had not been living, breathing, feeling creatures to her; they had been commodities, items to be stolen and sold. Deviations from the norm were only sought after if they were worth more than the standard, and the rest had been discarded like damaged goods.

Ash had always wondered how she could be so cold, so inhumane. It was as though her visor had acted as a barrier between her actions and accountability. Even her pokémon had been cruel; the air around them had been wrong, dark and dead and cold.

He still had nightmares about her, sometimes, and her drapion's crushing grip, poison seeping into his skin. Or her salamence, and how nonchalantly it had razed an entire forest just because she'd told it to, like it lacked any agency, any moral compass of its own, more machine than monster.

"Pikapi," Pikachu squeaked in his ear. Ash looked up, saw his friends' faces peering at him, and realised he'd stopped walking.

"Oh— sorry." Absently, he petted Pikachu's ear. "Yeah, I've met… a few."

"Of course you have," Kiawe teased. Ash knew he meant no harm, but he pulled a face anyway.

They kept walking. Up ahead, Iwanko ran circles around Turtonator, weaving in and out of the slow-moving dragon's feet; Hau's new noibat fluttered excitedly about Iwanko's head.

"I have!"

"What, when you were in Kalos?"

"Bet it was in the same place he battled all those legendaries," Hau threw in. Kiawe paused.

"... You've fought other legendaries?"

"Y— I mean—"

"Of course he hasn't!" Hau rolled their eyes. Ash laughed nervously.

He didn't make a habit of talking about his previous journeys whenever he was in a new region, partly because he didn't think them to be of any significance to the people he met. It didn't—it didn't matter, as far as he was concerned, that he had met legendaries, or fought poachers, or stopped criminal enterprises from taking over or destroying whole cities or regions or even the world, not to those who hadn't been there with him.

But the people in Alola were… weird, and they kept asking questions, and when he answered them, they called him a liar.

"He lies as much as Lana does," Hau continued.

Ash didn't know who Lana was. "I do?"

"Uh huh. Just the other day, when we were learnin' about Hoenn, she was telling a story about how she'd fished up a kyogre, and Kiawe actually thought she was tellin' the truth, for a sec."

"I didn't!"

"Yeah, you did! You started askin' about whether or not a groudon could be around, like either of 'em would ever be anywhere near Alola, and—"

"Mrrow," Litten mewled, head lifted and ears perked. Hau and Kiawe's bickering ceased; out in front of them, Iwanko, Turtonator, and Noibat had gone very still.

Pikachu's nose twitched. A staggering sense of déjà vu crept upon Ash—then the creeping weight of expectation—

And then a large hunk of metal—polished chrome, vaguely humanoid, emblazoned with a crimson 'R'—dropped from the sky and landed in the sand several meters ahead of them all.

"Pipi-kachu!" Pikachu shouted, like it always did.

"Team Rocket!" Ash echoed, like he always did. From the top of the mecha, James waggled his fingers in a wave that felt familiarly patronising.

"What's going on?" Kiawe's voice rose to a shout, tone growing sharp and unsteady.

Jessie smoothed a hand through her hair. "What's going on is certainly not you!"

"That doesn't—"

"The nature of brats is they don't have a clue!" James interrupted. Kiawe had the sense to stay quiet after that.

"The beauty so radiant the flowers and moon hide in shame. A single flower of evil in this fleeting world: Jessie!"

"The nobly heroic man of our times! The master of darkness fighting back against a tragic world: it's James!"

"It's all for one and one for all. A glittering dark star that always shines bright! Dig it, while Nyarth takes flight!"

"... Did that weird lookin' meowth just talk?" Hau asked, screwing their nose up incredulously. Nyarth bristled.

"'Ey, who are you callin' weird lookin'?"

An ill-timed shriek from Sonansu marked the end of Team Rocket's motto. The arms of the mecha swung round, hand opening up and snagging Turtonator, Iwanko, and Noibat in thick, transparent cages.

"Iwanko!"

"Noibat!"

"Give our pokémon back!" Kiawe yelled. "Turtonator, shell trap!"

The ensuing explosion struck the walls of Turtonator's cage—it bounced back harmlessly, leaving it as pristine and unharmed as before. Ash supposed he shouldn't have been surprised: Team Rocket usually accounted for standard elemental attacks when building their contraptions.

"Like that'd work," Jessie scoffed.

"You brats are real boneheads!" Nyarth jeered, scrambling onto James' other shoulder.

"We'll make it easy for you: you hand over Pikachu, and we'll give the others back. Sound like a deal?"

"As if!" Ash snapped. "Electro ball!"

"Sonansu, do— something!"

The wobbuffet's mirror coat deflected electro ball, making it bigger and brighter. Thunderbolt blew it to smithereens.

"We know how you work, brat," James said. "Beating us won't be as easy as it used to be!"

Ash doubted that. They'd said it a thousand times, now, and it had never been the case.

"And we have a secret weapon," Jessie cooed. (They'd said that a thousand times, too, it felt like.) Ash looked back at her; a luxury ball was suspended between her index and middle fingers. "Last chance to accept my offer!"

"Yeah," Ash said, "no."

Jessie sighed. "Well, I tried. Mimikyu, show them how it's done!"

The creature that emerged from the luxury ball was—it was hauntingly familiar, like some crude knock-off done by someone that had only ever heard descriptions of what pikachu looked like. It was similar in the sense that from a distance, if squinted at, it might have passed for a pikachu.

Up close, the hemming of its rag stood out like old, gnarled scars. The twisted branch of its 'tail' was splintered and sharp; the markings on its 'face' bled slightly, fuzzed around the edges as though submerged in water and left to run.

Ash sucked in a sharp, unpleasant breath. Pikachu tucked itself against the crook of his neck and bristled, and he took comfort in knowing that it could feel it, too.

Something was off about this mimikyu. Most of Team Rocket's pokémon emitted light, despite their trainers' bad deeds, but this was—

Rotom surfaced from Ash's backpack. "Mimikyu, the disguise pokémon. A ghost and fairy type, bzzt! Skilled tailors, mimikyu conceal their true appearance behind a more appealing costume. While many presume that this is done to make themselves more palatable for people, bzzt, as mimikyu tend to avoid humanity, recent studies by behaviourists have implied that the primary function of these disguises is to attract prey."

"... Prey?" Hau echoed, a little dumbly.

The mimikyu's beady gaze found Ash, and the darkness around it flared into something fierce and twisted.

Ash's fingers sought the mimikyu pendant tucked beneath his t-shirt and gripped it tightly. It felt foreign and too-hot against his skin.

"Pikachu," he murmured, voice scarcely above a whisper. "It hunts pikachu."

He understood that some pokémon ate other pokémon. Pidgeot ate magikarp all the time—his own had often hunted for itself, after it had grown big enough to carry prey—and he'd seen his talonflame chase wingull across the sky. Sharpedo preyed on wailmer, pursuing them in packs; heatmor ate durant; and Rotom had told him that gumshoos would eat rattata and raticate, if it ever managed to catch them.

… But pokémon who hunted for food did so out of necessity, or out of instinct. They weren't—they were never guided by morals, or a lack thereof; it was nature.

Jessie's mimikyu did not seem driven by base instinct alone. There was something—awful about it, something sinister, that Ash couldn't rationalise, or put into words. It was just this gut feeling of badness that took root in his stomach, this hard knot of nausea that wouldn't budge.

"Alright, Mimikyu!" Jessie set her hands on her hips. "Use—"

The mimikyu gave an unearthly, rasping howl and launched itself at Ash.

"Steel wing!" Hau shouted, throwing their rowlet. The owl was flung aside by a brutal shadow claw and knocked out in one blow without doing anything to disrupt the mimikyu's momentum; Hau ran to retrieve it with a pained cry.

"Oh dear, bzzt," Rotom said. Mimikyu rushed forward.

"Out of the way, Pikachu!" Pikachu leapt down from Ash's shoulder and made a mad dash towards the rock pools to their right. "Electro ball!"

Wood hammer smashed through the attack; a second crumbled the rock Pikachu had scaled only a half-second ago as though it were chalk. Mimikyu moved with reckless abandon: there was nothing calculated, nothing coordinated, about its assault. It showed no care for itself, nor for its surroundings—

Only for catching Pikachu.

"Hey, Mimikyu, listen to me! I'm the trainer here, not you!" Jessie wailed. Mimikyu parried an iron tail with a shadow claw, then battered it aside. "... On second thoughts, good job! Keep it up!"

"Thunderbolt, Pikachu!"

The attack ricocheted harmlessly off a blue-green barrier. Ash's eyes widened. It knows protect? It has the sense to use it?

"Iron tail!" Pikachu flipped over another wood hammer and swung down: this time, the attack hit its mark—but Mimikyu didn't move. Its makeshift head tipped backwards, hanging awkwardly from a broken neck, and though the creature hidden beneath the rag seemed to hesitate and flinch, it quickly bounced back, like it hadn't been harmed at all.

"Rotom?" he asked.

"Mimikyu's ability is disguise, bzzt. So long as its costume is intact, it can absorb damage from attacks without suffering any injury."

If it had seemed furious before, it was frenzied, now. Its Aura loomed above it, a black, mangled shadow far, far bigger than any Ash had ever felt before. It was—unhinged. Hysterical. Murderous, even.

"Satoshi," Rotom said. "Statistically, Pikachu's chances of beating this mimikyu in a one on one battle are negligible, bzzt."

And Ash didn't like to take stock of any mathematical equation where battle was concerned, but it didn't take some complex calculation to see that Pikachu was outmatched by Mimikyu's sheer frustration alone. Love was a powerful modifier of a pokémon's strength, but hatred was, too. "Yeah." He cupped his hands around his mouth, panic a knife in his chest. "Change of plan!" Pikachu scrambled frantically through another rock pool, springing high to avoid another shadow claw. "Quick, into that tree!"

Bruised and breathing harshly, Pikachu put on a burst of speed with quick attack and scrambled up the closest palm tree, which Mimikyu set upon with rabid fervour. Ash scanned the beach desperately, searching for a way out.

There had to be something, but that Mimikyu—it wasn't normal. Jessie seemed to have as much control over it as Ash would if he tried to reason with it.

Against his chest, the litten began to wriggle, ignoring his protests—"Wait, you're hurt!"—and writhing until it could pull itself free of the harness and drop clumsily into the sand below.

"It looks like it wants to help in spite of its injuries, bzzt," Rotom observed. "Litten are proud, independent pokémon—they traditionally prefer solitude to cooperation. Perhaps it feels the need to settle a debt, bzzt?"

Ash blinked. "For those weird meowth," he surmised.

Kiawe made a choked-up sound. "It burns with the passion of Wela Volcano!"

It was a touching thought, if a little alarming. The litten drew in a deep breath, chest swelling beneath its bandaging.

Seconds later, the lower half of the tree—and Mimikyu—were ablaze. Ash stared down at the litten with something resembling bewildered wonderment.

"Mimikyu!" Jessie squawked. Mimikyu writhed and shrieked, dragging itself out of the flames and dousing itself in the sand. Its costume was a blackened, charred mess, and it heaved and shuddered while it recovered. "Get back here!"

"When a mimikyu's disguise is damaged, it becomes vulnerable to attack, bzzt," Rotom explained in Ash's ear.

"So it can be beaten?"

"... Most people who ruin a mimikyu's costume don't live long enough to find out, bzzt."

"Mimikyu, are you listening to me? I said Get back here!" Jessie's demands fell on deaf ears; though moving unsteadily, so as not to throw off what remained of its burnt rag, Mimikyu determinedly crawled after Pikachu, only it was so small and slow, now, that the sight was just sad. Ash would have felt sorry for it, if it wasn't so full of rage, still. If it wasn't out to kill his partner. "Mimikyu!"

"Just put it back in its ball," James said. "Forget pinching Pikachu—we should cut our losses and leave while we're still ahead!"

"Four might be better than three, but three's better than none," Nyarth agreed. Jessie hesitated—then recalled Mimikyu, who had since slumped in the sand.

"Like we'd ever let that happen," Kiawe snarled. The firium Z on his wrist glittered, as though agreeing. "Ash, that—that thing won't stand up to the might of our Z-moves, will it?"

Ash thumbed his normalium Z. "Nah," he estimated, "probably not."

(He was right. Team Rocket's mecha crumpled against the combined strengths of inferno overdrive and breakneck blitz: Pikachu punched a hole in the mecha's body, and Turtonator detonated with far more power than before, blowing it apart from within.)

When Team Rocket was gone, their pokémon were safe, and Kiawe had finally stifled his tears of relief, arms looped tightly around Turtonator's neck, he turned on Ash with a vengeance.

"Do you want to tell us who they were?" he asked, jabbing his finger into Ash's chest. Ash was reminded, abruptly, of the first day they met; on his shoulder, Pikachu sparked at the cheeks in a half-hearted warning.

"Team Rocket," Ash answered. "They're bad guys who try to steal other people's pokémon. They've been followin' me 'n' Pikachu around since we first started travelling, and they just don't know when to quit. I didn't think they'd show up so soon, but…"

"Pika pika, pikachu," Pikachu pointed out. Ash pinched its cheek affectionately.

"Yeah, exactly. They're never too far behind."

"... So you have met poachers before," Hau said dumbly, their rowlet cradled protectively in their arms. "Do they ever win?"

Ash shook his head. "Nah, they're not very good at being bad. They're mostly—you know—just annoying, but I guess facing 'em can be pretty scary if you've never done it before."

"Shell trap did nothing to that machine," Kiawe muttered. He looked back over at Turtonator, and his eyes filled with tears again. Ash wrung his hands, a little awkwardly.

"They're, uh, pretty used to getting set on fire, or shocked, or—you know, being hit by normal moves. You've gotta think outside the box, but once you manage it, it gets easier."

"Or you could just blast 'em with Z-moves," Hau pointed out.

"... Or you could just blast 'em with Z-moves," Ash acquiesced.

Kiawe clenched his fists, a grim, distant expression on his face. "Will they be back?"

"Uhh…" Ash scratched the back of his neck. "Probably? They'll stop at nothin' to get their hands on Pikachu, but—"

"Why?"

Ash blinked. "I dunno," he said. "There are loads of wild Pikachu they could catch, but they think mine's special, or somethin'. I mean, it is, but…"

Pikachu bumped their heads together gently. "Pika pika, pikachu. Pika chupi."

Its meaning was clear: warmth, and love, and a startling humility. Team Rocket's presence was unchanging, but it never failed to surprise Ash how far he had come, and how much Pikachu had grown, and changed, and matured alongside him.

"But it's okay, see? 'Cause when we all work together, they're real pushovers."

Hau's expression twisted into something disbelieving. "That mimikyu was not a pushover," they said. "Man, I dunno about you guys, but it gave me the heebie-jeebies. I mean, even after Litten set it on fire, it was still…"

They trailed off, shuddering. Ash glanced down at the litten, who was still sitting at his feet with its back turned.

"Hey," he said, kneeling in the sand beside it. "Thanks for saving Pikachu back there. I dunno what we would've done without you. That mimikyu was—" he swallowed. The pendant around his neck felt heavier, all of a sudden. "Let's not do that again though, okay? Nurse Joy said you've gotta rest—she'd kill me if she knew I'd let you try 'n' battle."

The litten sniffed his outstretched fingers—then turned up its nose, tail writhing like an angry ekans. And Ash knew a no when he saw one, so he dusted off his shorts and held up his hands.

"Alright, you can walk, but you better not try 'n' run off, okay? I don't wanna have to send Iwanko after you again," he huffed. The litten rolled its eyes, stretched itself out, and began a slow amble down the beach, the others in tow.

"... Hey, Ash," Hau said, a few moments later, "if the thing about the pokémon poachers was true, does that mean you weren't lying about the legendaries, either?"

The lab was quiet when Ash returned from the pokémon centre, the litten limp and listless against his chest. Rotom was updating, downloading some fancy new application that Ash was certain he'd never use, but made the 'dex feel more important, and therefore was completely necessary; Iwanko and Pikachu were asleep on the sofa, a chewed-up substitute doll sandwiched between them; and one of the lab murkrow had raided the kitchen cupboards and was snacking on dried pasta. It croaked at him reproachfully when he passed it, but lifted its head so he could scratch its beak.

Ash climbed the ladder to his makeshift room and unfastened the litten from its harness, setting it on his bed between his knees; it sank miserably into the mattress, limbs splayed out like a staryu's. He gently prodded its side, hoping to feel the sharp sting of claws, but it didn't swipe at him. It didn't even hiss.

When Rotom had finished updating, it joined them, hovering around Ash's head. "You weren't gone for long, bzzt," it said. Ash shrugged one shoulder ineffectually.

"They wouldn't let us visit," he murmured. "Something about it bein' too late, and apparently Stoutland was booked in for—for something, I dunno. Nurse Joy was pretty cagey about it."

"Did she say anything about its condition, bzzt?"

"Not really. She said it wasn't any worse, but…"

Rotom's screen cycled through several flashing colours. "That's good news, isn't it, bzzt?"

Ash looked unconvinced. "Yeah, I guess, but she was lookin' at this guy—" he gestured towards the litten— "while she was speaking, and she looked—she made that face adults do when they're trying to hide something from you, 'cause they think you're not ready to know about it."

Rotom lifted its 'arms', mouth falling open. "Oh," it said. "Do you think she was—"

Ash nodded. He'd never understood why adults felt the need to lie with their words when their expressions were so honest—when any kid with eyes and half a brain could discern an untruth simply by watching the way their brows crumpled and their mouths twisted like they'd just bitten into a particularly sour iapapa berry, even though their words were sweeter than pecha juice.

They were stupid like that, sometimes. They liked to think they were cleverer than children, that they needed to shield them from everything bad in the world, and it was nice of them to care, he supposed, but they weren't very good at putting it into practice.

"That's… terrible, bzzt." Rotom drifted over to the litten and tapped between its pointed shoulder blades in a clumsy, mechanical gesture of commiseration. "I'm sorry for your imminent loss."

Ash grabbed the dex in both hands and reeled it in, holding it away from his body. "Rotom!"

The litten mewled mournfully; it was a sound Ash had never heard it make before, and he turned its attention to it with a troubled frown.

"Hey, don't pay attention to Rotom," he said, "I'm sure Stoutland's gonna be just fine. The people over at the pokémon centre are real good at their job, y'know; they were probably just busy makin' Stoutland feel better, and that's why we couldn't go visit it. I was just bein'..." he trailed off. He'd been a real mudbray about it, in Professor Kukui's words. "I messed up, saying all that stuff. Sorry."

The litten turned its head away and said nothing. Though Ash could feel something like gratitude in the air around it, everything was still tainted by grief.

"Yeah, I know. When someone you love's hurtin', you wanna be by them all the time, right?" The litten looked up at him. "I bet Stoutland's missing you too. When we first got here, Pikachu got all beat up in a fight against Tapu Koko—" the litten's eyes widened, a touch— "and even though we only spent one night apart, I felt like I was going mad. But that's when you've gotta be bravest, y'know? When the people you love are weak, that's when you've gotta be strong on your own."

He steeled himself and reached out, gently petting along the litten's spine. "... And you're not totally alone," he continued. "You've got me and Pikachu and Iwanko and Rotom and the Professor to fall back on. I know you don't really like me much, or… or anyone, really, but I sure like you, so… if you ever change your mind about people being bad…"

He trailed off. The litten's breathing had slowed and deepened; its eyes were closed, and the stiffness of its back had melted out entirely.

"I think it's asleep, bzzt," Rotom observed, settling on Ash's thigh. Ash fell back against his bed with a sleepy grunt.

"D'you think I got through to it?"

"It's hard to tell. But its stress levels are far lower than they were, so it's possible that you did something right, bzzt. And that's—I think that's the best you can hope for, right now."

The dimensional research laboratory was—Lillie wasn't certain if it qualified as a building any longer, let alone a functioning lab. It was—it looked more like the aftermath of an explosion than anything recognisable, brick and glass and metal alike indiscriminately reduced to rubble and dust and mangled, shredded wiring.

She picked her way through the debris quietly, her cosmog clutched protectively against her chest. It, luckily, was unharmed—as were the majority of the lab techs, if Officer Jenny's search-and-rescue growlithe squadron had noses worth believing. But Professor Burnet's research was—it was destroyed, for the most part. Backup servers were useful, but they did little to salvage tangible samples. Lillie couldn't think too long about the years of evidence lost without her head beginning to throb.

… And it was all her fault. That—that thing… it had come for her. It had—it had known where she was. It had known how to find her.

More would come: of that, she was certain. Her mother had—her mother had told her this would happen, before she ran away, had told her that she was a conduit for something she didn't understand, something she never would understand.

She thought maybe she was beginning to. She knew there was a—a word for it, for people like her, who'd gotten mixed up in things and gone to places they shouldn't have, but she—her memories of it were distant. Blurry.

Her ribs burned, ice-hot and aching. The cosmog stirred in her arms and burbled at her, something bright and alien radiating from its semi-solid core, and she tucked it into her bag, zipping it shut and adjusting it against her hip.

She ducked beneath the yellow police tape and made her way towards Professor Burnet, leaning against one of the police cars.

"... expert intervention," Officer Jenny was saying, arms folded over her chest. "For public safety—it's in the community's interests to ensure that if something else goes wrong, there are parameters in place to prevent any more damage. Our department alone doesn't have the resources to deal with this sort of thing."

She was right, but Lillie still winced, anyway. Professor Burnet's expression was pinched and worrisome, and though she never looked away from Jenny, she looped one arm protectively around Lillie's shoulders once she came within reach, pulling her into her side.

"Interpol is—a little extreme, though," Burnet said. Lillie white-knuckled the hem of her dress and began to shake. "What happened today was an anomaly, Officer, and it wasn't the result of anything we did. We didn't summon that thing, it—it showed up on its own."

Officer Jenny seemed unconvinced. "I'm no scientist," she said, "but the stuff you do here—"

"Is related," Burnet agreed, "but this was coincidental, not intentional."

"And there's no chance that it was brought about by something done accidentally? Even if it wasn't purposeful—there's no way some sort of… experiment went wrong?"

"I'm confident it wasn't."

"Completely?"

"I—I believe so."

"Unfortunately, Professor, believing just isn't good enough."

"Officer, with all due respect—"

"Look, Professor, I get it. It's not—ideal, not for you, nor for me, nor for the people of this city. But if this happens again, or if something worse happens, and we can't stop it, or it takes us longer, and the damage isn't contained to one building… it's not worth the risk."

"I can handle it," Burnet insisted. "If my hypothesis is correct—"

"If—"

"—and I'm willing to put my career, my integrity, my freedom on the line for it—I can promise you that this won't happen again."

Lillie swallowed. That was—fighting talk, and famous last words seldom boded well. Did Burnet know that it was her? Had she deduced that something was off about her, that she was the root of the problem?

Officer Jenny looked unconvinced. But— "We'll station someone here," she said, "as a safety precaution, and if anything further happens, we will get interpol involved. In the meantime, we will keep this… pokémon in our custody, until we can be certain it doesn't pose a danger to anybody."

"That's… fair." Burnet nodded, shoulders slumping. "Thank you, Officer. And—thank you for your help."

The police let them go shortly after that, and the journey to Tide Song Hotel was mostly-silent. Burnet seemed… troubled—paranoid, almost—and locked her room the moment Lillie stepped inside, pulling the curtains shut, sinking into an armchair and dropping her head into her hands with a weary sigh. Lillie perched on the edge of the single bed in the corner of the room; the cosmog materialised in her lap almost immediately, face screwed up.

"Professor," Lillie murmured, then pitched her voice louder. "Professor. That pokémon—"

"It was an ultra beast. I know."

They call it UB Absorption, in the Foundation, Lillie thought, though she did not say so. "It was a buzzwole," she said. "It—it feeds on other creatures' life forces, I think. Draining others' vitality gives it strength."

Professor Burnet gave her a long, hard look, then nodded to herself, white in the face.

It had smashed through the laboratory walls like they were sodden paper. That the police squadron had managed to subdue and capture it in a standard ultra ball before it had rampaged through the city was nothing short of a miracle.

"Do they make a habit of trying to kill you?"

Lillie tightened her grip on the cosmog—it phased through her fingertips, warping and rippling against her palms—and thought back to that dark, swelteringly hot place. Like a jungle, only… wrong, with trees that shuddered with every breath, that moved and bulged like flexing muscles, sinewy and wet to the touch.

"It's—um… it's not the first time they've come looking for me."

An unspoken promise hung in the air: it won't be the last.

Burnet had suspected, when she'd taken Lillie in, that the girl would bring baggage with her. She had not anticipated that her baggage would come in the form of raging extra-dimensionals, and the nature of her research was too important, too fragile, to risk destruction again.

"I don't think it's safe for you to stay here anymore."

Lillie bowed her head. "I don't think it is, either," she whispered.

The man and woman both seemed human enough to be considered people, but just wrong enough that the station growlithe's hackles raised when they stepped through the door, lips pulled back to reveal wary, snarling mouths.

"Can I help you both?" Officer Jenny asked, smothering her initial instinct and putting on a patient, customer-service smile. The woman of the pair clasped her hands behind her and hung back in the doorway, as though guarding it; the man approached slowly, pulling papers from the binder he held in his hand and setting them on the desk in front of Jenny.

"You can," he said, voice warped and unnatural, like he was speaking underwater. "It has come to our contractor's attention that this police department is in possession of an ultra beast."

"... A what?"

"The creature you captured earlier today," the man pressed. "The reddish, insectoid creature that destroyed the laboratory near here."

"Yes. I don't know what it is, but it's dangerous. It took a whole lot of ultra balls to catch it—"

"That would be because it isn't of this world. Ultra beasts such as UB Absorption come from other dimensions—the research of the laboratory it destroyed centres around such dimensions, but the scientists there know nothing of the nature of what they hope to study."

"Professor Burnet promised me that she had everything under control."

"Professor Burnet doesn't understand what she has gotten herself into." The man tapped the papers. "But we do. Our contractor has requested that you relinquish ownership of the ultra beast in your possession and allow us to take it and return it to its original dimension—for your sake, and for its. She has already obtained permission from your superiors. This is not negotiable."

Officer Jenny squinted, suspiciously. "... And you promise that it won't cause any more problems for us?"

The man wrapped his bluish moustache around his index finger and nodded. "The Aether Foundation will ensure it."

The researcher's laboratory was quiet—mostly because neither she nor her nattering assistants were in it—which was good, but rare. Colress rarely had the room to perform his own experiments, and he was determined to take advantage of having the place to himself. He'd stationed his beheeyem by the door and hooked his rotom up to the security system; between the two of them keeping guard, interruption was impossible, and he was able to devote his full attention to the three monitors in front of him.

The first—to his left—displayed data collected from his research on the seemingly self-imposed limitations on pokémon's strength while funded by Team Plasma. The monitor to his right displayed a collation of the information garnered to create the prototypes: blueprints, documents, research reports.

The central monitor was split into two: a report on the final experimentation performed upon the previous iteration of the prototype—both its successes and its failures; and the vitals of the most recently revised model (which was suspended in liquid behind him), updating in real-time.

Unlike its predecessors, this newest prototype responded well to its accelerated growth; it seemed to have no adverse reaction to the drugs running through its system; and it had not rejected any of the wishing stars. Colress did not want to claim credit for the vast majority of the work that had constructed its basic blueprint, but the refinement, the perfection—that was all him. It was stronger, faster, smarter, and more durable than any that had come before it—it had proven that much in combat—and the tricky matter of its inherent behavioural issues was easily solved with a heavy dose of brainwashing and technological aid.

The researcher had seemed hesitant to dip her toes into mind control, initially. But that was these people's greatest flaw: their ethical code, and their resistance to breaking away from either. Success in science was never achieved by those too afraid to try things just because somebody could get hurt, and the greater good was never fulfilled if the lesser of two evils was reduced to 'just another evil.'

He had thought, when she had requested his help, that she understood. He was a little disappointed to learn that she didn't—but at least she was compliant, if not cooperative.

… And he was sure she'd come around soon enough, once she saw how much progress he had made by bending the rules of moral acceptability just a little. If she let him continue, she'd meet her deadline—and have time for more.