The world was painted orange. Pure energy swirled and flashed, flickering like shadow puppets stretched taut. Assembly staggered. It kicked and bucked and reared until its legs gave out, crumpled like a calf at its mother's side. Gunshot after gunshot tore through the air until the sky rained bricks.
Sheltered in the doorway of a Pokécenter ripped straight out of a horror movie, Nanu and Looker pressed themselves into the shadows and listened. Rooftops clanged. Bricks rushed to greet the ground with eager, weedy thumps. The ocean splooshed and dragged them down to its inkiest depths.
Moments trickled by. The moments turned into silence.
They stepped out. Tapu Village, for all it was worth, didn't look much worse than when they'd arrived. And that was saying something.
Colossal plants lay trampled, thick vines broken, buildings complete rubble. As per usual.
After picking through brambles and Assembly-brick-chips for what felt like forever, they found Sugar. She sat in a hollow of tree roots, fang-deep in a Razzberry, juice staining her fur. Like blood, because of course a Sylveon would bathe in blood.
000 nodded at her. "You seen your trainer?"
Sugar raised up, eyes rolled to the skies. (Almost literally.)
They followed her gaze up the trunk. Branches clung to their leaves, crumpled and stiff things curled like something dead. Sweet clung to a branch.
Her back was pressed to silvery bark, crouched like a cat, one hand on the branch beneath her feet. Also like a cat, she looked very, very stuck.
"A little help?"
000 shrugged.
"Please?"
"Kinda looks like a you problem."
"I'm going to kill you. When I get down there, you are dead."
Looker turned his head, trying not to laugh. (He snorted.)
"Thanks. I hate you both."
"Got a ladder, KR?"
He checked his pockets but came up empty handed. Obviously.
"Have the bird Psychic her down like in the Seven Eleven's."
Nodding as if that made perfect sense, Looker tossed out Natu's pokeball. In a flash of light as cold-white as the village itself, out popped Natu. She stared. Without blinking, she began to preen her feathers.
"Ian?" Looker crouched down, looking her in the eyes like an idiot. "Can you retrieve Sweet?"
Locked in a staring contest, he felt the future flash by.
Ian chirped. (Something somewhere in the ever quickening memories (?), premonitions, glowed blindingly bright. The light exploded like a bare bulb overheated, and then, nothing.)
A purple glow wiggled up the tree with all the vibrancy of a blacklight, wrapping Sweet in a tingly, immaterial hug. It was almost warm. Like a giant hand made of bees or something, it buzzed against her skin with fuzzy pinpricks and held her tight.
"UM?" She clung to the branch tighter, knuckles shaking and bone-white.
She rose into the air. The branch creaked in protest, bark peeling away at her fingertips. Ian squinted, and she rose higher, screaming.
Ian raised a wing, downy feathers sparkling purple-ly.
The branch snapped. It fell like a rock, or like a branch ripped from a tree, crashing into a bed of twigs and leaves that crunched sadly.
Sparks popped and crackled as the glow faded. Sweet floated majestically for all of half a second before becoming a crumpled, facedown heap.
Ian pecked her head affectionately, plucking out a twig.
She sat up and was pretty sure she tasted blood. Running her tongue over her teeth helped the iron tang seep in, sharp and biting. Fun.
"You," she said, pointing at Looker. "You owe me another box of malasadas."
"WHY?!"
"Box of malasadas. Mago berry filling and cinnamon sugar. Thanks."
The desert was a mess. A blisteringly hot and confusing mess, sure, but a mess all the same, cacti and trial gates be damned.
That was all that stood in their way.
Grinning so brightly it was blinding, Sweet took something from her pocket. That something was small and glossy and a lot like those pamphlets that lived in hotel lobbies. It crinkled between Sweet's fingers, bubblegum pink nails tap-tap-tapping.
The trial gate sparkled. 000 leaned against it, and for something that looked fit for a kindergarten classroom, it was more than sturdy. It let him doze as his head nodded and his body slumped.
Sweet hit him with the pamphlet.
"What?"
"Repeat what I said."
His brain scrambled like eggs in a frying pan. "Haina Desert, Tapu Bulu, something, something, breaking and entering."
"Start walking." She said, waving him off, and then, with the sun half-sunk but desert scorching, began fanning herself.
Haina Desert stretched out before them, and it sure as hell wasn't trekking itself.
The funny thing about the desert was that it didn't care. Didn't care to stay in one place, didn't care if the sun beat down and sweat rolled and lungs panted. Heat hung heavy and low. The sands shifted, slipping underfoot, step after step. The cliffs followed, like dish soap on a plate, warping slowly, thickly, or putty in a child's hands, one shape to the next and never perfectly still.
It took five minutes to get lost. Every cactus blossom looked the same. Every rock was solemn and worn.
Five more minutes and they were back at the entrance.
Sweet stared ahead. It was a blank look. Pure nothingness except for an ever so faint twitch. There was a scream there, locked behind bars and clenched teeth and common sense.
A family of Sandile sunned themselves nearby.
They laid belly-up on flat rocks or relaxed in a luxurious stretch. Black sunglass eyes peeked from the sand, shiny and stone-still. Their movements were lazy. Tail twitch and blink and snout wrinkled before a yawn.
One stood. Shook its stubby little legs and arched its back.
Another buried its snout into the sand. 000 nodded. He scooped it up, and it sat cradled between arm and chest, head cocked, tongue lolling, legs dangling just like those little pocket-sized dogs so famous in Castelia. If dogs were dry and scaly.
It wriggled, all twitchy spasming out and to the ground. With a chirp, it waddled off like a toddler in a McDonalds playground when their parents weren't looking. They looked. Mostly, they looked because they weren't its parents, or parents to non-crocodiles, but also because it was better than not looking.
The Sandile looked, too, over its shoulder. It waited. Looked. Waited.
Looked again.
It hopped foot to foot, claws dragging squiggly lines through the sand.
000 took a step, as slow and cautious as asking a stupid question before you know it's stupid.
Tail motorboat wagging, it chirped again and took off. 000 followed. The sand burned, the sun scorched, and the last thoughts in his brain shriveled, bouncing against his skull in an empty, rattling dance.
"Well?"
Well, the wind echoed back, nothing but a hoarse whisper.
Looker looked at Sweet. Looked at 000. Then, taking a long, slow deep breath, for show because it didn't make chest stabbing confusion anything less, he went with it. Sweet hurried after.
(Who was she compared to a Sandile, after all?)
The land dipped and rose in dunes and flats. It curved and wound. It was a writhing snake. Turns came. Turns went, left, right, left, shiny mirages of cliff cornerstones and scrub brush.
Blue-orange mosaicked the sky. Picture perfectly still. Watch, and it never moved. A moment focused on the ground, and it slunk down and darker.
Distant shapes blurred in charcoal smears. A mountain sketched large and stout stood there, right on the horizon's edge where the sun greeted it from behind. Something on the east lay like unspoiled yarn. Between, a shadow as square as any children's building block was sliver-lit by reddening fingers that brushed its chiseled features.
The block grew.
It grew and grew, gaining on them until it was all there was. The archway gaped. It was wide and shadowed, sand caking brick. The last dredges of sunlight struggled to enter, lapping in fading ripples along the edge.
Chest puffed, the Sandile danced a little, happy dance. Mostly, it chased its own tail and fell down, but it did seem happy, snaggletoothed grin and squealing barks.
"Think this is it?" 000 asked.
Sweet pursed her lips. She thought about it (or at least kneaded her eyebrows together), and shrugged. "Looks like the pamphlet."
"It's a ruin, definitely." Said Looker.
"I was asking the lizard." His voice was sand-dry. "Y'all weren't much help."
There was a scream. It echoed out from the ruins and into the night, raw even as it faded. It hung there like a ghost.
The last notes were drowned out by the wind. Inside the ruins, it whistled, stirring sand and brittle leaves. Then nothing.
The Sandile was gone.
"Fucking hell." Said 000.
Eyebrows high and face drawn, Looker gave the entrance a good look. The shadows looked back. "Ghosts are NOT of my jurisdiction."
000 stepped inside.
"Maybe it's a nice ghost." Sweet's grin was sharper than it was nice, camera gripped with fervor.
The plastic tried its hardest not to shatter. It squeak-crackle-crunched. With a shutter click, she was inside, the flash painting the dark to life, harsh light bathing the walls. Then nothing.
"This is above my pay grade." Looker said firmly. Standing alone.
A howl cut through the desert.
He dug in his heels. The sand in his socks really didn't appreciate it. Well, maybe he didn't appreciate ghosts. Or deserts. Ever think of that, sand, huh?
The sand had not thought of it, but by the time it had a reply, Looker was in the ruins, shivering.