Ch 5
Rui snapped awake when her body was jolted by a sudden motion. She looked around in a panic and noticed she was being carried around on someone's back. With a sigh, she closed her eyes and mumbled an apology to the trainer that walked along with her supported on him.
"It's okay, I should have made you some coffee before we left." Red replied with a smile, "But you did pretty good for a beginner at this. Silver konked out after about two hours into a late night job."
"I'm guessing Seth isn't here." Rui muttered. Red fell silent and shook his head slightly and she felt the hair rustle against her temple. "Damn. Any clues as to another Beginning?"
"Not any that I found. Can you think of anything yourself?"
"Nope. We'll have to talk to Nett and pull up Seth's history." Pikachu yawned once and smiled wistfully as Red nodded briefly and carefully turned around, walking back out to the Snagem hideout's entrance.
With the dawn of a new day came May and Silver's shot at the Colosseum Challenge. Both trainers were ready for action, but not for the job of waking up Rui. Red watched lazily and with a huge grin as they tried everything they could think of, short of dumping water onto her, to wake the exhausted 'Snagger'.
"Why don't you two go on ahead and start the challenge? I'll get her up." Red remarked and looked over at Brendan, "Since you're not doing anything, can you make us some coffee? I have a package of it in my backpack, but don't touch anything else." Brendan nodded and rolled his eyes as the two girls stepped back and sighed in exasperation.
"She sleeps like the dead!" Silver growled, "I don't sleep like that unless I had a wild night with Red! RED! What did you do?!"
"Nothing!" Red griped back, "She passed out while I was ransacking Snagem's main office. Seth's room was stripped bare and there were no clues as to where he could be." May scratched her head and shrugged. Rui lay flat on her back on the bed, mouth opening and closing with her breathing as the four Eons poked at her hands with their noses.
"Well, nothing we can do now. C'mon, Silver, let's go beat some chumps, get some cash and leave the boys to do the grunt work." she remarked with a grin and headed out the door. The 'boys' followed her out with angry glares as Silver broke into laughter and chased after the Hoenn champion.
"That's a good one! I'll remember that!" she exclaimed, "Ya! I'd better stick to my guy voice!"
"Tell me again why you're marrying a cross-dresser?" Brendan muttered as he plunked the coffee pot onto the stove for boiling. Red got up and started tickling Rui's nose.
"She beat me in fair battle. And she looks good in skirts." he answered under his breath, "Now just get the coffee done."
With Garik Evice, head of Cipher Corp., currently in his study room compiling a list of invitations to send out for his 'son's' birthday and welcoming party, Nascour had time to catch up on the reports sent in by Rezrik and his group of peons.
The team had made it into Orre and finished the investigation of the Shadow Pokémon Lab that afternoon. Though they found no signs of Seth, they managed to confiscate much of the abandoned security tapes and found that some other group had arrived much earlier than they did and had searched the building as well.
"Who could it be? Not that brat girl; she wouldn't have the courage to enter that compound without Seth beside her." Nascour muttered and clicked on the video snippets Rezrik had sent along with the e-mailed reports. Though the clips were badly rendered, he managed to see who had broken into the lab before his underlings. A red-headed girl dressed like Seth stepped into the room and stood motionless as several other people set to exploring the room. A second girl dressed in red and black bent over and picked something up from the floor, which the red-head promptly took from her and crushed in her grip. Nascour blinked at the figure's face.
"Impossible! That's the girl! And she's wearing the Snag Machine!" he murmured in shock. The feed went on to show what appeared to be the oldest two trainers talking to the girl. The male had a Pikachu on his shoulder, the female wore entirely silver clothing. A second boy ran up to them with sheets of paper, motioning excitedly. The red-head, obviously their leader of sorts, nodded curtly and the group ran from the lab room. "This isn't good. Ms. Roane has a head start on us and must know about the Beginning riddle as well." Nascour muttered as he thought about the situation. "Further back to the beginning of it all... Seth's beginning was in that lab, but to get the DNA to create him, scientists went to the Cave of Origin. That must be it!" He set to typing new orders for Rezrik and the peons. "Get to Hoenn on the double! Sootopolis City and the Cave of Origin is our next destination!" Nascour stood and looked determined, clenching his fist tightly as he listened to the sounds of delighted laughter in the next room.
"I'll personally go in and stop that girl once and for all!" he growled, "She'll not be allowed to corrupt that project again! Not when we are close to recovering the corporation!" He whirled around and stomped out the door of the hidden retreat, intent on using his new Pokémon to finally put Rui out of existance.Rui rubbed at her eyes, blinked and jerked her head up in surprise. Red leaned over her, glass of water dripping onto her face and a flat expression on his own. She looked around her, then raised an eyebrow at him in silent question.
"If you don't get up now, I'm going to make you wear this glass of water. Without the glass." Red threatened. Brendan snickered as she yelped and scrambled out of the bed.
"We should do that to Seth. He always sleeps in when it's the weekend." Jupiter chuckled and nuzzled Rui's hand.
"Yeah! Now feed us!" Pluto barked and hopped around her. Saturn and Neptune joined in and the four Pokémon's voices filled the air with pleas for food. Rui looked somewhat helplessly at the other two trainers.
"Uh, what are they saying?" she asked sheepishly. Red rolled his eyes and sighed, running his fingers through his hair as Pikachu broke into laughter.
"We're never gonna get through this day sane." he sighed.
Within a few minutes of feeding the Eons, Rui, Red and Brendan made their way to the Mining Co. building. The elevator had long since been open for anyone needing a quick trip to The Under and that's precisely where Rui wanted to go for additional help.
"Nett has the first major backup of Seth's memories and the Cipher database. If anyone can find the Beginning, it'll be him!" Rui remarked as the lift dropped them off at the dimly lit underground city. She led the boys towards a house on the far side of the town, the antenna that swiveled slowly before it a marker for the home of the kid genius.
"So this Nett dude can tell us exactly where Seth is?" Brendan asked, gazing up at the mechanical monstrosity that creaked and drifted rust powder every minute or so.
"I'm hoping he can and will. I want Seth back as fast as possible." Rui murmured and closed her eyes, hugging herself, "I miss him so much. I miss how he wakes me up in the mornings, and how he always has breakfast ready for us when I get up." Red knocked rapidly on the door and smiled down at her.
"Don't worry, I'm sure we'll find him." he remarked and looked back when the door opened. A small boy peered up at them, then blinked at Rui.
"Rui? That you? Last time you looked like that, you were gung-ho on chasing down Cipher to get Wes back!" he cried.
"Well, I'm doing it again!" Rui declared, somber mood gone in a flash and replaced by her fiercely determined expression, "Seth disappeared during the Earth Seal incident and we're trying to find him. We need your help and the info from his backup to do it." The boy looked up at the other two trainers in suspicion. "These guys are with me. This is Red, the Kanto Champion, and this is Brendan Birch, the son of Prof. Birch in Hoenn. Guys, this is Nett." Rui introduced them quickly.
"You're the dude that contacted my dad?!" Brendan exclaimed in shock, staring down at the boy. Nett grinned and nodded. "I thought you were a professor, too!"
"I get that a lot. C'mon in! I can boot up the memory files while you get comfortable." the boy replied and let them in, "There's sodas in the fridge, but watch out for the door handle. I kinda messed with it one day and now it randomly zaps people when they grab it."
"This kid's nuts." Brendan whispered to Rui as they entered the machine filled house. Red looked around at the various gadgets and smiled.
"I dunno, I think I'm gonna like him. We both seem to like tinkering with stuff." he remarked and grinned wider, "Although my tinkering comes with a price and usually makes people dead..." Brendan shut his eyes and sweat-dropped.
"God help me, please..." he begged quietly.
------
The three heroes were seated on various chairs and crates as Nett typed away at his computer, cables draped across the floor and connected to a large monitor that replaced one of the walls of his room. Since so much data was stored in compressed format on the disks after being downloaded from Seth's mind, Nett had trouble keeping them stored safely without losing so much space on his hard drive.
"Okay, route in from the Kids Grid Network... Access core database... Access Project: WSLY Memory Dump... Search for keyword: Beginning..." the boy muttered as Rui and her friends waited. Brendan drummed his fingers on the crate and blinked when his PDA went off. Pulling it out, he opened it up and checked the e-mail.
"Brendan! You're not gonna believe this but the prizes I got from this colosseum thing was a huge chunk of cash and a TM! It's one I was missing in Hoenn!" May had written excitedly. He sent back a congratulatory mail and got up to search the kitchen.
"Found anything yet?" Rui asked hopefully. Nett shook his head in an impatient manner, then yelped.
"I got a few hits on it! Lemme bring them up on the screen." he replied and the monitor was filled with windows, the word 'beginning' highlighted in each one. Rui and Red jumped up and began reading the windows, searching for new clues and new leads.
Upstairs, a zap sounded and various colorful words filled the air. The random zap had chosen the wrong time to go off. The group ignored it in favor of the information before them.
"Here! Look, another reference to the Cave of Origin in Hoenn!" Red remarked brightly. Rui pointed at another window.
"This one says Seth began to come to his senses after raising his Eevees. They were stolen from the Day Care Center in Johto." she added. Nett joined them in searching and poked at another window.
"This one says that the research on the DNA splicing began on Cinnabar Island in Kanto. This research eventually led to the development and creation of Project: WSLY." he discovered with a surprised expression. Brendan came downstairs, still swearing under his breath as he clutched a soda in one hand and shook his other fiercely.
"Kid, you gotta fix that fridge!" he yelled, "Your kitchen tried to kill me!" Nett shrugged.
"It'll succeed one day. I'm almost positive of it. My fridge is a good model." he replied offhandedly.
"What are you doing?! Get back here! No, don't touch that!" Caterpie wailed as it watched Raykyoudon scramble after a Weedle, laughing. "Come back and eat your lunch already!"
"Come on and play with me! Hey! My name's Raykyoudon, what's yours?" the young man declared and leaped at the grumbling Pokémon. It turned and aimed the stinger on its head at him. Caterpie ducked its head down as the air was filled with a piercing shriek of pain.
The Weedle scurried away with a grumble as Raykyoudon sat back on the grass, crying loudly as he held his bleeding hand tightly in the other. Caterpie sighed and made its way up to him.
"I... I just wanted... to... play... with him...!" Raykyoudon hiccuped between sobs, "Why... did... he... do... that...?!"
"I told you to leave him alone. He's having a bad day." the Pokémon scolded, "Now don't cry. Here, follow me and you can wash it off." The Caterpie turned and led the injured young man to a nearby river. As Raykyoudon let his arm dangle in the water and slow his sobbing, it curled up nearby and watched him. "You must be young if you don't even know enough to not mess with an angry Weedle. Think of it in these terms, kid. If it causes pain, then it is bad."
"If it causes pain, it's bad." Raykyoudon murmured and nodded slowly, "Okay, I got it." He lifted his hand from the water and whimpered slightly at the wound that crossed his palm. Caterpie lifted its head and sprayed sticky string from its mouth over it, creating a natural bandage for him.
"You probably have poison from that sting, so let's go and get you some medicine for it. There's a bush nearby that has leaves good for this kind of thing." the Caterpie went on and walked off to lead him elsewhere in the Beginning. Raykyoudon followed, his gaze still on the bandage on his hand.
"If it causes pain, it's bad." he echoed, "But what happens if I cause pain to something? Does that make me bad too?"
