Mawile held a vial at a perfect 30 degree angle, watching the water type dust inside slowly cascade down into a measuring beaker. The dust was finely grounded, filling up the glass container like a viscous liquid. It added onto the powders already in the beaker, rising to ten milliliters, to eleven milliliters, and closing in on twelve. She carefully watched for when it would reach fifteen.
"I haven't asked Espeon about the guildmaster successor situation in a few days now," Mawile thought. "I shouldn't ask about it constantly, else I'd look desperate and unfit, but this is getting rather worrying. If I hold myself back further, do I risk him forgetting about me altogether?
Surely not. My work is used daily during missions, I've been working here most of my life, and I'm a perfect fit for the leader. He can't simply forget about me if I neglect to give him reminders, can he?
Then again, he is more than preoccupied with questions of sound stones, Olivia, Crystal, and apparent assassination missions. I wouldn't- or rather shouldn't- blame him if the question on who his successor will be has escaped him.
Who would be my competition anyways? If he wanted Niot to be the guildmaster then there wouldn't have been any period of ambiguity at all. Armin is too recluse to desire such a position, Locke loves adventuring too much to give it up, Tamin doesn't want attention on her, Dewott would just support his girlfriend, Scampi, Nidorina, and Ludicolo aren't the types to want that at all, Yuki probably wants it but has no chance to… my competition would likely be Mienshao and Rustin, maybe Nidorino too… is there anyone else who might-"
Mawile realized that the beaker she was filling had already passed 20 milliliters and was still having more piled onto it. In her day dreaming, she had completely lost focus and ruined the mixture. She lifted her right arm up, paws clenched to fists before she slammed it down on the table in frustration.
"Are you okay?" Snivy asked from across the room.
"Yeah… just having trouble paying attention," she admitted. "Work might take longer today, I'm having some trouble measuring this."
"I sssure hope thisss isssn't you trying to trick me into learning how to measssure thossse out to I'll take over that job from you."
"What? No. Why would you make such an accusation?"
"Ssssssorry, I'm not in the bessst mental ssstate right now," Snivy admitted. "That'sss on me, I won't do that again."
"Well, I suppose that makes two of us," Mawile leaned against a wall, where she let out a sigh. "Still having issues working out what you actually want to do in life?"
"Yeah. And are you ssstill worried about the guildmassster sssituation."
"You're right with that," Mawile admitted. "Glad we've come to know each other, at least."
"Nice, only took usss literal monthsss to reach that point. That'sss a great usssage of my time."
"Dark humor, huh? That feels new for you."
"I don't remember the firssst time I've made thossse jokesss, to be honessst," Snivy admitted.
"Guess I'll just have to watch to see if that keeps up or not."
The two fell silent for a few seconds, taking the most relaxed positions they could in the lab.
"...Man, I just do not want to go back to making flares right now," Mawile admitted. "I've been perfectly complacent doing this work for months now, but I just do not want to do this today."
"I can definitely agree with you there."
"I guess I'll check out much we have stashed up; I think I'll call work done early today."
"I don't mean to be rude, but do you really need to be ssso preccccissse when measssuring out the ingredientsss? I think that would be quite exhasssting."
"Yes," Mawile said quite clearly.
"I mean, isssn't there that one sssuper big one you made one time?" Snivy pointed to a glass case which had an unusually tall and thick flare inside. "If it wasss fine for you to make that before, couldn't you jussst sssemi-haphazardly make sssome more flaresss with sssimpler production?"
"First of all, I made that because Espeon told me to, and I do not consider that to be safe," Mawile started off. "Second of all, I needed to be precise with my measurements with that as well, the process wasn't as simple as me just taping flares together or pouring a bunch of dust into a rod. I can find the exact schematics if you want."
"No, I don't think that'sss necccesssary," Snivy said.
"Overall, I think you underestimate just how powerful what we're working with is. Sure, we might be using it for simple applications, but they can be used for much greater and powerful purposes if someone has enough of it and knows how to use it. To which I believe the best word to describe it would be 'unholy'."
"Like what exactly?"
"It's hard to say, as it goes beyond the realm of what I would consider to be 'science'," she began explaining. "Look at it this way: pokemon of all types have some supernatural ability, like conjuring a sandstorm out from nothing or instantly chilling air. They are quite impressive if you take a step back to think about it. But, they are heavily limited to certain moves we can perform.
Now when you take stones and dusts connected to those types and begin activating them through indirect means like igniting them, shaping them into symbols, channeling them with sheer willpower, or even more extravagant means like rites with candles, then you can almost entirely remove those limitations. Cataclysmic explosions… memory alteration… changing a pokemon's typing… I've heaven read speculation that space itself could be warped and bent with this. So please, don't trifle around with them or suggest I be less careful."
"Where did you hear half of thisss? It sssoundsss rather outlandish."
"I have an education, I've read books that aren't available to the general public, and ones I can't share with you."
Snivy wasn't exactly pleased with that answer. Just when something interesting seemed to come up with this repetitive work job, it was over. He just became more drained than he already was.
"Ssssssssssoooooo… what exactly do you thinksss going on in Essspeon'sss head right now?" Snivy asked to try to break the ice.
"People uneducated in psychology give their armchair diagnosis of others' psychology. People who are educated in psychology know they aren't to give a diagnosis unless they have done proper procedures."
Snivy was drained even more. At the very least, it seemed he had time off work to look forward to.
Niot sat surrounded by shelves of file folders, containing innumerable papers whose origin dates spanned back the better part of a decade. Niot would take a folder from its shelf, flip through every page of its contents, and then often place it back to grab the next. He read back through every single documented mission the guild had done, most containing his own penmanship and signature on them.
His task was to collect every single mission they had received from House Breach before and collect them in a pile. Niot did understand the importance of such a task: they were all things that needed to be examined for investigative purposes and their motivations questioned. But knowing the purpose didn't make the task anything resembling fun.
Like Mawile, Niot found his own mind wandering between the times where he finally found a House Breach mission. He clued into the fact that Espeon wasn't going to have him be the next guildmaster, in spite of his desires. He could only wonder if this tedium was all he had to look forward to for his time working at the guild.
He wondered how his uncle over on the mist continent was doing. That was the man that actually inspired him to take up the job of working at a guild. It had been a few months since he'd heard about him, but Niot imagined he was still working at Wigglytuff's guild and dealing with his own annoyances. He knew that he'd gone through his own adventures over there, even dealt with his own near world-ending scenario that he needed to help resolve. Niot imagined he would either be hoping he got to have a similarly grand adventure once again, or was dreading having to face something of similar magnitude. Who knows, maybe that guild was also looking for a new guildmaster and the two were having similar experiences.
As the chatot thought about his uncle and looked over the old messages, it occurred to him that he never got to have ordeals anywhere close to what his role model had. Or rather, he hadn't had any ordeals on that level yet. He still had half of his life to live, so it was still possible for him to see something truly outstanding yet. It was still disappointing all the same.
Niot was now one-third done with his job. He had to remind himself that he was safe from harm, warm, well-fed and there were many pokemon who couldn't say the same. That was the only way he could summon the willpower to continue.
He wondered what they were going to do with this information. Was Espeon going to look through these select missions himself? Was he going to delegate it to Eno? Hard to say.
Eno still remained such a wildcard to Niot. Early into her new career as a guild member and when she began her investigations he tried to guess what she was up to, but he had come to terms with that fact that he could not predict what she was working on at any given moment. He supposed he'd have time once this was all over to talk with her and understand her on a more personal level, perhaps they'd work together someday. But that would be in the future, and Niot was not there yet. Instead, Niot needed to deal with the miniature library of oak shelves, pale orange folders, and white papers.
From his own volition, Nidorino binge studied in the guild's library. Every olden tale of humans coming to their own world he could find, he started reading.
They were written by authors on other continents, and it showed. The accounts seemed to assume that the reader was familiar with the region's culture and geography, and they all made it a point to praise their local heroes as being the best in the world which none could match. Hyperbolics that bordered on worship were really the bane for any hunt for objective truth and made Nidorino's task more frustrating than necessary. At the very least, he could confirm certain stories were grounded in truth because of them matching with the accounts of well documented history. That was something.
For every story he found with much corroborating evidence, he found one which stood on dubious claims. Such as the story of Hal the human turned vivillon, who flew into an obscure town and claimed he had numerous combat exploits before coming to the town. Nidorino couldn't find any evidence that those exploits had actually happened, nor could he find any accomplishments about Hal after the vivillon's arrival. Nidorino wished he could have just been a dumb kid ago who could blindly accept things without questions and believe the world was so much more fantastical. Alas, he just had to identify the truth.
With every story- trustworthy or dubious- Nidorino was left wondering what phenomena caused the humans to reach this world in the first place. Shifting his studies to that, he found there were a variety of causes being credited, but the underlying commonality is that all the humans met with legendaries. The most well-documented event involved Dialga, but other tales used other legendaries. Another interesting note.
The most fascinating aspect of all for Nidorino were vague descriptions of the humans having special abilities for them, such as one having an ability they called 'the dimensional scream'. Nidorino hadn't heard of such a thing before, but there were enough accounts corroborating them to make it believable. The abilities were never explicitly combat related (although humans were apparently good in battle) and were utility in nature. Immediately, he wondered what its full potential could be, and if there was anything stopping a normal pokemon from obtaining such an ability. If these such abilities existed, then what else was possible?
With boredom dispelled by intrigue, Nidorino continued his research for hours further.
Niot had no idea what hour it was anymore. He wasn't even sure he knew the day, but what he did know is that he was finally done. From all the way back to the days when Issac the whimsicott was the guildmaster and the guild was first founded, he had scoured through every past mission to collect every single last one that has House Breach's name on it. He needed to open a bottle of wine after having gotten through that. Or gin, maybe champagne. He needed to down some alcohol after what he had just gone through.
He grabbed the mission reports, left the room, and locked it up. All that was left is to return them to Espeon and he could get his well deserved break. It wasn't a terribly long walk to reach him- it was in the same building and floor after all.
The chatot knocked on the door to the office, and Espeon swiftly invited him inside. He really could've just walked in, but he still had the energy for some basic courtesy. Out of that same desire for courtesy, he explained what his job was one more time and Espeon thanked him for it. It took a minute to get through all the niceties, then they could actually discuss things which would make them learn more.
"So will it be you or Eno that looks through all of this?" Niot asked.
"I'll do it. I'm far more familiar with mission structure and intention than she is, and she's still busy today."
"What's she still busy with? Still in her room as normal?"
"No, she's still investigating the treehouse building as you told her to do."
That statement made Niot raise more than an eyebrow. "What?"
"She's still doing forensics on the building like you told her to do. She's been at it for a while so I don't think it will take her much longer."
"I never told her to do anything of the sort," Niot stated. "I quite frankly don't know what you're talking about."
Now it was Espeon's turn to be confused. "This morning, Eno told me she got a note from you to check the treehouse building, saying that you had reason to suspect something was wrong there."
"I never wrote any such note, and I most certainly never handed one to her. We've barely interacted at all."
"She said she found the note under her door when she woke up, it was the first thing she did this morning."
"I believe you, but I can assure you that none of this was my doing."
"Well I didn't write any note to her either," Espeon said. "If it wasn't you… who did?"
Locke, Tamin, Dewott and Mienasho had almost finished returning to the guild from an early morning mission. It was an alright (if overly easy) mission, and now they didn't have much distance left to walk as the guildhouse was within all of their sights. They all wished the mission lasted for longer, since the building no longer felt as welcoming anymore. All the mysteries surrounding the guild gave it an uneasy aura, which made them passively prefer to be elsewhere. They all had plans to make up for it: Mienshao and Dewott planned to go on another date while Tamin would hang out with her younger brother and Locke would rest in the way he enjoyed the most.
The team walked closer to the guildhouse, passing beside the guild's scarcely used treehouse. Locke naturally looked up at the treehouse to see it, but this time, his instincts began tingling when he did so. He wasn't sure if it was the lights on in the windows being different, the sounds were different, the smell was different, or something else. But he did know for sure that something was off.
"Guys, hang on," Locke halted. "Something's going with the treehouse."
"What is it?" Tamin asked.
"I'm not sure, but… we need to check this out." Locke said.
The luxio walked up to its main door. Concerned, the rest of the team followed. They reached the door to get inside the building's thin base. When they got there, Mienshao placed her paw on the doorknob and tried to pull it open, but it wouldn't allow itself to be opened. She tried a few more times, each time it only shook around a bit in place. "It's locked?" she asked.
"Is that normal? I barely interact with this building," Locke asked.
"No, this is my first time I've seen it locked."
"Out of my way," Tamin commanded as she stepped forward.
Dewott, Mienshao and Locke stepped aside and Tamin reached behind her scarf. Though she wasn't sure whether or not to believe Locke that something was going on at first, but the fact that the door was locked convinced her that something was amiss. She withdrew a case from behind her scarf and opened it up to reveal some small lock picking tools inside of it.
Tamin pulled some specific tools out of the case and then put the case in her teeth so she could hold the tools with both of her paws. She was quick with her work in sticking the thin devices into the keyhole and carefully moving them around. After a few seconds of precise movements and listening to the pins shift in the lock, a small clicking sound was heard and Tamin used the tools to rotate the picked lock ninety degrees and undo the latches.
With a decent amount of force, Tamin pulled the door open. The others immediately went inside while Tamin spent a second to put her tools back.
The team scaled a spiral staircase that was immediately in front of the door; Tamin last in the formation and Locke leading it. They weren't sure what they were going to find inside, but they were searching nevertheless.
Locke's instincts told them to get to the highest floor and scale the building as fast as possible, so that is what they did. Upon arriving at the first floor, they immediately rushed to the stairs toward the second floor without searching the first.
The second floor was much the same. They stuck to following Locke, so they didn't stop to check anything on the floor.
The third floor began in a small room with a door parallel to the staircase end. The four all got together into this small room before Locke grabbed the handle of the door and pushed it open with frantic force, revealing the room in front to all four of them at once.
What they saw at that moment when Locke pushed open the door was a sight that instantly burned into their minds, it was an image that was unforgettable.
In the center of the room lay Eno the absol, with a spear impaling her through her neck and lodged into the floor. The once white tuft of fur that surrounded her neck had been stained crimson red from the blood that had drained from her wound, and what could not be absorbed was left as a puddle on the wooden floor. Every limb on her body was limp, and the only thing that kept her head from being flat against the ground was the rod of the spear supporting it. Her mouth was slightly open, and her eyelids were almost completely open; showing lifeless and unblinking eyes beneath them. There were scratches on the ground beneath her claws that showed her last, panicked movement she had made before a force suddenly put an end to them abruptly.
Multiple hearts skipped a beat at that moment. There was no screaming, only four looking on in shocked horror as they stared at the lifeless corpse that laid in front of them. The person that they heard the voice of only a day before, one that they all knew the name of, how she acted and where she came from. Only a day before, they could speak to her if they wanted to, hold a conversation with her. But not anymore. Now all that's left was a soulless body, never to take one more breath or speak one more word ever again.
End of chapter 51.