.16
You were right.
I didn't deserve anything this world threw at me. Not a single bit of it. But I rose above it. I trampled those who wished me harm. I created an organization that's made life better for everymon on the planet.
Now I sit in my office, and wonder why it's all come to nothing. There are so many who were once like me, who could have risen to greatness, despite everything that was thrown at them. But they choose to wallow in filth. And who do they blame for their own bad decisions? Me. "Why don't you give more?" they cry, but no matter how much you give, it's never enough. And why would it ever be enough for them? They had their chance. They don't understand the way of this world. And so they are doomed to be stepping stones.
Selflessness is met with disregard in this world. Honesty with lies. Loyalty with betrayal. You win by gaming the system. Sucking up to the right pokemon. Stepping on the heads of others. Making sure the public never sees any of it and continues to believe you are as innocent as they are. Not because you're rotten to your core, but because you know the world is. Those who don't understand that are doomed to fail.
Tell me, why should I continue to strive for what's right when this world fights me at every turn? When it and the ungrateful pokemon within deteriorate by the day? When an entire continent hates me for the good deeds I've done? What have good deeds ever gotten me?
They've gotten me empty words, hollow sympathy, and blind hate. But no more. I survived by doing what was necessary. I can continue to do what is necessary. Grab this world by the throat, wring it for all it's worth, and sever those who are unfit to live on its ground.
I'll help you with your plan, whatever it is. You've guided me this far. Maybe you can take me to the end. And when it's all over, I'll sit in my comfy throne and watch the flames from a distance.
…Good.
"Your demons will devour you if you give them the chance."
~~~~\({O})/~~~~
PART II. THE SUMMER
~~~~\({O})/~~~~
12.
Deerling's Day
~\({O})/~
Open Pass ~ Water Continent
~Audino~
It was nighttime.
Audino had always been a superstitious 'mon. She'd depleted her store of herbs early this month, but superstition forbade her returning to the School Forest to collect new ones before the full moon had come again.
Luckily, she had a backup just in case. The Open Pass, a dungeon that lay far to the northwest of Serenity Village, had a few choice bushes of herbs that Audino could easily use as substitutes until the next full moon. And in a brilliant stroke of luck, the dungeon was only four floors long. She would be gone almost the whole day just getting there, but Simipour knew where she was and she had never been much for noisy holiday celebrations.
The bad news was that all the escape orbs in Serenity Village had been used by the school for Vice Principal Watchog's test, which left Audino without an escape plan. Not that she couldn't defend herself if she had to, but she preferred to avoid fights whenever possible.
She checked the clasps on her bag to make sure everything was fastened properly as she approached the dungeon. It took her eyes away from the path, but even without looking, she could tell she was here. The place just felt different, and when she looked beyond, the looming, massive trees were shimmering. This was the dungeon, and it was stronger than she remembered. Way stronger. Audino tightly hugged her bag against her side, donned a determined stride, and walked forward into the mouth of the pyroar.
The Open Pass made her work for her herbs. She couldn't find the bush on the first or second floors, even after a careful search of every hallway. Doubts swam in her head as she climbed the ethereal stairs that shone brightly in the dark. She didn't know this dungeon well, had she missed it? Or perhaps it had changed in the time she was gone. The bush could have vanished completely from the dungeon by now.
She shivered as the stairs deposited her on the third floor, her sensitive ears and fur catching the air around her shift. A slight breeze had picked up, tainting the air with a faint rotting smell. Stronger gusts would soon follow. But the shift was more than just the air, it went deeper. Everything looked darker, harder to see, the grass more overgrown, the trees more twisted and gnarled.
The dungeon was evil here, and its power stained both the ground and the plants that grew from it. Even the apparitions had taken note. Audino didn't see a single one as she walked through the labyrinth that the forest twisted into, the silence hovering around her like an omen. If the apparitions weren't here to defend this section of the dungeon, it only meant one thing: something worse was.
Every so often, Audino would hear a Swish in the distance, as if somemon was walking towards her through the tall, overgrown grass. But no-mon ever greeted Audino's eyes when she glanced back, so she hesitantly kept an ear peeled and went on her way.
She winced in pain suddenly, clutching the back of her head. For just a second, a sharp pain had punctured her there, not unlike a poke from a needle. But when she felt around for what it was—a bloodsucking bug?—there was nothing.
Ten minutes later, when Audino was beginning to lose hope, her eyes caught sight of leaves that matched the ones in the School Forest—an herb bush. Success! She quickly kneeled over it, rooting around in the dirt to make sure they were the right herbs. Upon finding that they were, she uprooted them from the ground and stuffed them in her bag as fast as possible. The sooner she could get out of here, the better.
Swish.
Audino froze. She whipped her head around. But just like all the other times, there was nothing there. But that didn't make sense. The noise was crisp and sharp, too sharp for it to be a trick of her mind. She wasn't alone in here.
It was only thanks to Audino's stellar hearing that she managed to notice the pokemon sneaking up upon her from the other side. The only warning she had was the sudden change in the way the air sounded, a strange whistle that meant something was flying towards her—
She quickly ducked. What looked like a large, shadowy ball flew over her head and exploded against a nearby tree. From out of the shadows flew a beheeyem, hurtling towards her like a speeding haunter with its limbs held out in front of it. Audino rolled out of the beheeyem's way and watched as it uncontrollably flew past her, then picked herself and the bag up and ran like the wind in the opposite direction. The stairs were just down the hallway, she could see their glow. It was time to get out of here!
By the time the mid-air-beheeyem was able to turn itself around and come back for Audino, she was already sprinting down the hallway with the stairs in close reach. The corridor seemed to stretch out longer and longer as she ran. Roots grew over each other as they twisted into a hall that wanted to outrun her. Or was that the fear playing tricks on her mind? All she knew was that she needed to keep running. Just a few seconds more—
—Audino suddenly dug her feet into the ground, trying to stop until it was too late. Her face whammed into a wall that just a few seconds ago, hadn't existed. It hurt. Frenzied, she unpeeled herself from the wall and looked around, recalibrating her vision. The corridor looked normal again, a T-shaped hallway that wasn't as long as it had seemed. There were no stairs. Why were there no stairs?
The air shifted–once more, then twice–and she spun around to notice that she was being approached on all sides by the trio of beheeyem. They closed in, faster and faster, until they were so close it was practically impossible for Audino to escape at all. The stairs: they were fake. This was a trap. She would have fought them like any dungeon apparition, but something in the way they moved threw her off. Just like it had back in the School Forest. These weren't ferals.
"What do you want from me?" she asked them in the most level voice she could summon. They had to be intelligent—dungeon 'mon would have attacked her by now.
The beheeyem said nothing. Instead, all three of them slowly raised their limbs in her direction, and suddenly Audino grunted as the pain from before returned, like an impossibly sharp phantom needle being inserted into the back of her head. The lights attached to the ends of the beheeyems' wrists flashed, and even though they had said nothing Audino somehow knew what they wanted.
Give us the child.
Espurr.
They meant Espurr.
And as much as she hated the thought, she wasn't exactly in a place to refuse them.
"Alright," she breathed, still backed up against the wall and making every effort to stay calm. "Alright. I'll take you to her."
~\({O})/~
Serenity Village ~ Morning
"It's summertime!"
A well-placed Ember sent several ducks and geese flapping over the poorly made fences of their enclosure, honking and quacking loudly. Seconds later, Tricky pounced into the middle of the flock, sending them all scattering in an even louder cacophony of noises.
"Vat?! Vat iz the meaning of zis? Tricky! You monster!"
"Sorry Hippopatas! I forgot about the—ack! Geese! Geeses!" A particularly largish goose had taken the opportunity to chomp down upon Tricky's tail, and began to run her down with wings spread wide the moment she bolted back towards the pen.
Hippopotas glared daggers in Tricky's direction as the geese continued to chase her relentlessly.
"Zerves 'er right."
~\({O})/~
~Espurr~
Slowly coming to. Espurr blinked her eyes open wearily to the grating tune of somemon banging on the windowpanes of the school clinic.
Wearily, she glanced at the window. Her vision was too blurry to make out who was banging on the window, but… the sun shouldn't have been that high.
…
She'd slept in!
Espurr quickly sat up in her bed, brushing the straw out of her fur. How come Nurse Audino hadn't woken her? In fact, where was Nurse Audino? The clinic was completely deserted.
"Espurr!"
Almost completely deserted. Espurr blinked a couple of times to clear her vision, then looked at the window despite having a good idea who was banging on it.
Sure enough, Tricky was outside, waving frantically at Espurr from behind glass panes. Espurr spent a few seconds catching her balance, then got the door for her.
"What are you doing still sleeping?" Tricky quickly asked once Espurr had let her inside the school clinic. "It's summertime! We should be going exploring! We won't have time to later today!"
She caught herself at the last moment, calming down and shooting the floor a hesitant look. "I-if you want to."
"I haven't even had breakfast yet…" Espurr wearily mumbled, still wiping the sleep from her eyes.
"Oh." Tricky's tail swished across the floor, batting away some of the dirt she'd tracked in. "Well… I'm sure we can get something from Pops! Pops always has a bunch of food around. And then can we take a look at the expedition gadget?"
Espurr and Tricky had agreed beforehand that the expedition gadget Ampharos had granted them would stay with Espurr. Which meant that for the time being, it would need to be stored at the school. She had stashed it inside one of the three packed straw beds that lay inside the clinic. Which in hindsight wasn't comfortable to sleep on, but at the time it had seemed like the best option for a hiding spot.
Espurr stretched, then walked over and dug the gadget out of the straw. She set it on the ground and looked over its sleek—dead—surface with Tricky. It then occurred to Espurr that the expedition gadget hadn't exactly come with an instruction manual.
"Do we know how to turn it on?"
"Um…" Tricky clearly wasn't expecting that question. She sat still in thought for a moment, digging for ideas. "Uhhh… wow. I guess we do need help... What—what did Ampharos say again? Something about a blue orb? And gastradon?"
"He said…" Espurr tried to remember exactly what Ampharos had said. Which was a bit hard when her mind was sleep addled as she was. "I think… 'just insert a blue orb and you're as good as a gastradon!'"
It wasn't a very good impression of Ampharos. Tricky snorted.
"You sound nothing like him," she said.
"Youtry, then," said Espurr, whose face was suddenly burning.
Tricky's impression was even worse.
"Soo… can we just put any blue orb in?" Tricky asked. "Do we stick an oran berry in there? That's blue. If we needed a specific orb, why didn't he just give it to us?"
"Maybe... he did," Espurr said, coming to the realization. "Remember the first day we met him, and he dropped that orb? Is it still in the bush outside your house?"
"I… think I took it inside," said Tricky, trying hard to remember. "…Yes! I did! It's under my bed!"
She got up from where she was sitting, scampering over to the doorway.
"C'mon! I can get us the orb and breakfast! I… kinda skipped it too."
Espurr grabbed Gabite's old exploration bag, noticeably tattered and bulky compared to the school's sleeker bag—Weren't there two of those before?—and dropped the expedition gadget in. Then she slipped it over her shoulder and followed after Tricky.
~\({O})/~
The townspokemon of Serenity Village seemed extra jolly today. Everymon was out in the village square, chatting with each other and hanging decorations from the luminous moss streetposts and buying things from Kecleon's stall. Espurr had only been here a week, and yet she had never seen things so… lively.
Perhaps it was because it was just the start of summer and this was how the village looked in summertime, but Espurr wanted to ask about all the decorations that were being hung. Was this some kind of special event? Tricky seemed to be right at home, prancing through the square and occasionally into other pokemon without a care in the world. It was all Espurr could do to keep up and sightsee at the same time.
"Oh! Hi, Espurr." Deerling tried to greet Espurr the best she could, who had briefly stopped for a moment to catch her breath and untwist her legs. She was still getting used to her legs.
Deerling, whose earth-green summer coat had grown in completely and become less tawny now, was with her mother. Both of them were waiting in the long, long line for Kecleon's stall. Tricky, who had backwards-walked all the way over to Espurr after noticing that she was no longer keeping up, did not receive the same politeness Espurr had. Deerling simply turned her head away and refused to acknowledge her completely.
"These are your friends from school?" Espurr looked up to see that Deerling's mother had turned away from the line to look at Espurr and Tricky. She looked at Espurr. "I think you came over a few days ago, right? To play chess?"
Espurr nodded. "I'm Espurr."
"She's new," Deerling added helpfully.
"I see. Are you excited for the festivities tonight?" Deerling's mother asked.
Espurr didn't know what the festivities tonight were about, but also didn't know how out-of-place asking about them would look. She nodded and settled for a generic answer instead. "They look like fun."
"Alright then. Go play, you three. You don't need to stick with me." The comment was directed towards Deerling, and she was gently nudged towards Espurr and Tricky. Deerling's Mother turned back towards the line, making it clear the conversation was over. Deerling quickly brushed herself off where she'd been nudged, then gingerly gave Tricky a wide berth walking over to Espurr.
"Mom thinks the shopping goes faster without me," Deerling explained as soon as they were on the other side of the square. "She's been trying to find an excuse to get me away from her ever since we started. She doesn't think that, y'know, maybe I actually like shopping…"
Deerling shook her head. "Anyways—where're you headed?" she asked Espurr.
"We're going exploring!" Tricky helpfully added from behind Deerling. Deerling waited for Espurr's answer.
"We're headed to Tricky's house," Espurr's response was short and simple. Tricky danced all around them, trying to find a good place to slot herself in. Eventually she just settled for walking on the other side of Espurr, which was as far she could get from Deerling while still remaining with the group.
Deerling tilted her head at Espurr. "You… don't know what's happening today, do you?"
Tricky's eyes practically bugged out of her head with disbelief.
"Wait, you don't know?" she couldn't help but blurt out. "It's Deerling Day!"
"What's Deerling Day?" Espurr had to ask. Finally, she was going to know why all the lampposts were being strung up with decorations!
"Deerling Day celebrates the start of summer," Deerling pointedly cut in, severing Tricky's statement before she could even say it. "Since Deerlings' coats change with the season, when Deerling Day is celebrated depends upon when a Deerling's coat changes. But nowadays mostly everymon just celebrates it at the start of Summer Vacation. It makes more sense that way."
A hint of smoke escaped Tricky's ears as she fell silent. She looked peeved at Deerling's silent treatment. If Espurr focused enough, she could see Tricky and Deerling's respective annoyance dancing in the air over them as colors. Blue-green for Tricky, a vague red-purple for Deerling. Unfocusing left them as brief flickers of color that she sensed more than saw.
The three of them walked past the tent that was decorated like a big red bird, which, unlike the Café Connection and Kecleon's, wasn't getting business at all. The sight of the tent turned all three pokemons' head for a moment. Espurr could smell something like strong incense coming from inside.
"I wonder what's in there…" she muttered to herself, before looking back at Espurr.
"I think I'll go see the inside of that tent for a minute," Deerling said. "Mom never goes in there. Coming?" she asked Espurr.
Tricky gave Espurr pleading 'please don't' eyes. "Don't you want to get breakfast?" she asked. "And then we can go look at… the thing…"
Deerling gave them both 'you're weird' glances.
"I guess not. Anyways… have fun 'exploring'," she said, making her disdain roll off the tongue at the last word. Then she turned around and walked off towards the tent, disappearing within its darkened entrance.
"What are you looking at that tent for?" Tricky asked, trying not to sound nervous. "Pops' house is this way!"
Espurr took one look at Tricky's uncomfortable, blue-greenish brainwaves and easily read between the lines.
"Right," she said. "Coming."
~\({O})/~
Carracosta's House
"Good morning Mist, and welcome back to another episode of the Jellicent Show, where we pair a hotshot reporter with a couple of celebrities and let the sparks fly! Sometimes literally. Wink-wink."
"We're coming to you today from Cloud Nine, currently cruising over the tourist hotspot that is the Great Glacier. For anymon in the possession of a TV set, you can see for yourselves just how stunning the Great Glacier really is! For those of you tuning in on the radio… well, you'll just have to take our word for it."
"Oh, but what a word it is. On the reporting side of things, we have Meowth, the leader of an up-and-coming news outlet in Lively Town. Meowth, do you have anything to say to our viewers here?"
"Well, I'd like to say that it's a pleasure to be here, Jellicent. And I'd also like to urge our viewers to check out the Lively Town Times—"
"Alrighty, moving on~"
"And for our celebrity fix, we have… the famed magnagate researchers who've been in a tizzy ever since their technology was shuttered, Espeon and Umbreon!"
"Thank you for the introduction, Jellicent, although 'tizzy' isn't the word I believe either of us would use to describe our current state of minds."
"Really? Tell us more, please."
"We'd use… 'cautiously optimistic.'"
"We're planning to appeal against the court's ruling in less than a month. We're hopeful Cloud Nine will see things the way we do, and rule in our favor this time."
"I see. Am I correct in my assumption that the initial ban had somewhat of a negative effect on you two?"
"Oh don't even get me started."
"Well, I'm sure our viewers would love to hear the story behind that…"
Carracosta's radio played loudly in the kitchen, where several things were sizzling and the smell of so many different foods only reminded Espurr of how much her stomach was growling. After enough pouting from Tricky, Carracosta let them both have an appleberry each.
They passed a large, multilayered, unfrosted cake sitting on the table on their way to Tricky's bedroom. Tricky lolled her tongue out and drooled longingly at it.
"Are you gonna stay there forever, or what?"
Tricky rolled upside down on her bed, staring at Espurr flatly.
Espurr slowly peeked out the doorway, where Nuzleaf had moved out of the doorways' view of the kitchen. Setting the core of the appleberry she had just finished eating aside, she walked to the other side of Tricky's room, unloading Gabite's tattered old exploration bag next to Tricky's bed and pulling out the expedition gadget.
"Where's the orb?" Espurr asked.
Tricky froze. "I… Wait just a sec."
Quickly, she rolled off her bed and buried her face under it in one fluid movement, rifling and rattling through junk until she finally emerged with a transparent blue orb clutched in her paws. "Here!"
"Ah—Fire! Fire!" Nuzleaf's voice suddenly emerged from the kitchen, accompanied by sudden scrambling movements, the clatters of a few pans, and then the sudden sizzling of water against a hot surface..
"It's out, it's out now. Calm down."
Espurr heard Nuzleaf pant in relief. "Ruin'd tha soup, though…"
"It's alright. We have ingredients for more. Let's just work on getting back on track."
"Ya gonna take this thing or not?" Tricky was still stretched out on the floor, the orb in between her paws dramatically. Espurr quickly took it once she noticed. Tricky hopped back on the bed, trying to get a better look from above than she could from below.
There was a large, sphere-sized indent in the middle of the gadget that looked just about the right size for the orb Espurr held in her hands. Carefully, she stuck it in, hearing a satisfying 'click' as it connected to the machine.
The gadget suddenly sprang to life, startling both Tricky and Espurr and causing both to jump back a bit. It whirred silently for a second, and then suddenly Tricky's room was filled with bright blue light.
It took Espurr a second to realize what it was, and where it came from. One minute, the room had been lit normally, and now the upper walls and the roof were covered in an ocean blue the same as the orb. Tricky rubbed her eyes, then gazed up at the roof along with Espurr.
"Wow… this is aMAZ—" Tricky lowered her voice at the last minute. "—I mean, wow… holy mystery dungeon…"
A few pots crashed from the kitchen, causing Espurr to glance at the doorway for a second.
"Think we can set it up on the wall?" Tricky asked.
Half a minute later, the expedition gadget was projecting its display onto the wall instead of the roof. Espurr and Tricky sat on Tricky's bed, studying it from afar. It hadn't taken long for Espurr to guess that the hovering portraits that now decorated the wall were missions of some kind.
"I wanna study it up-close…" Tricky grumbled.
"We'll block out the light if we do that," Espurr pointed out.
"I know…" Tricky mumbled.
"Look at that one." Espurr pointed to the top-left portion of the wall, where just one of the many, many hovering portraits on the wall dwelled. Spread out all large on the wall like this, the text was just large enough for Espurr to read. "Retrieve bag of poke from Wooloo Plains. Client: Eevee. Mission Rank: One Star. Reward: Half the bag of poke."
Tricky's ears shot up straight, and then she sat up straight. Her face gleamed with both excitement and mischief. "Did you just say wooloo?"
~\({O})/~
"That's the last of the soup vegetables."
Carracosta uncurled his flipper from around a large knife, removing the cutting board filled with neat piles of vegetables from one side of the counter and dumping them all into the large stockpan that currently sat beside the stove. Nuzleaf, who had just finished preparing one of Hippopatas' large geese, hesitantly tried to figure out how to set it over the fireplace without burning himself as well. Carracosta set the cutting board on the counter and quickly tromped over to the fireplace.
"I'll stick it in there. Why don't you go check if the cakes have risen yet? It's about high time we start icing them."
Nuzleaf gratefully handed the pan of goose to Carracosta, then haphazardly wiped his hands off on the apron he was wearing. "Y-yeah… I'll jus' go do tha' instead."
No sooner had Carracosta set the goose properly in the oven and Nuzleaf walked off to check on the cakes did Espurr carefully walk towards the door, apparently trying not to be noticed. Carracosta humored her.
"Epfur waiffor meeeee!"
Carracosta saw Espurr glance back towards the hallway. Tricky bounded into the kitchen, the sky-blue scarves Carracosta hadn't seen for so long hanging from her mouth. He hadn't seen those scarves since…
Looking away, Carracosta continued to play dumb, sautéing the soup vegetables purely from muscle memory. One eye discreetly stayed trained on Espurr and Tricky the entire time.
"Take one!" Tricky spat out the scarves and pushed one towards Espurr. She worked the other one around her neck, shaking herself off to let it settle properly.
"What's it for?" Espurr asked.
"It's an explorer's scarf!" Tricky explained to Espurr excitedly. "Pops got them for me from Lively Town when I was five. Now I want you to have one!"
It took a minute, but eventually Carracosta saw Espurr pick up the scarf and fit it around her neck. "Thank you," he heard her say.
Carracosta didn't even make an attempt to move until Espurr was outside the door and Tricky was about to follow.
"Remember to be back before dark," he warbled before Tricky could exit the door.
"Uh…" Tricky stopped dead in her tracks. "…Yeah! We'll do that! Bye Pops!"
And with that, she was gone before Carracosta could blink. He shook his head, then curled his flipper around the radio's volume dial once again and turned it up.
"…And now a final question from your hosts! Can you authenticate the claims from my source that things have been getting a little… 'steamy' between you two, shall we say?"
"Who told you that?!"
"W-who told you that?!"
"And that's the end of this episode of the Jellicent show! Tune in next week for more celebrity shenanigans~"
"Alright, listen up! You'd better 'authenticate' the name of your source to me right now so I can claw their eyes out!"
~\({O})/~
Expedition Society Vault
Cards were a game best played over the course of hours. At least, that was how Nickit liked to play them. It was a game where you kept your hand secret, stalking ever-closer to your unwitting prey like a midnight lycanroc, the winning card in your claw. But you had to be careful about how you did it, because if the other players were to figure out you had the winning claw, you got sniped. And Nickit hated being sniped.
Alternatively, you could play your claw all at once and steal the catch for yourself, like her partner in cards Murkrow almost always tried to do. But Nickit preferred what she called the Long Con. The trick was to draw it out until everymon else was high-strung and on their last strings, and you could be sure no-mon else could snipe you. Except that Murkrow had pitifully tried to play the long con once, and Nickit had still sniped him anyway.
"Prepare to suffer," Murkrow suddenly stated, somehow smirking with a beak. "Weep at the sight of my great orange wings!" he slammed a card down on the table, face-up. Nevermind that you were supposed to put them face-down; Nickit looked at what it was anyway.
Moltres. Murkrow ruffled his feathers in smug satisfaction. Nickit almost snickered and let the jig up. He really thought that would save him.
"But if I cry, you'll die," she told him.
"Dying builds character."
Nickit sniped him. Silvally. She had gotten the card during a random redraw of claws, and had been holding on to it for a moment exactly like this. Silvally was the most powerful card in the deck, after all, and also the only way Murkrow had ever won against her.
"You always win," Murkrow grumbled. Like a mannequin, his body began to stiffly reach for the empty card box.
"You never try," Nickit drawled. "Always the same thing, every time. You're even beginning to bore me a little."
"But no-mon else will play cards with you, so I guess you're stuck with boring old me," Murkrow said as he put them back in the box.
"Ain't that a shame."
Murkrow set the card box back in its place behind the chests of poke. "Our plans for tonight are still on, yes?"
"Duh. Spinda's?"
"I was actually thinking of the place where they only serve vegetarian noodles."
"You hate me."
"You do not like noodles?"
"…You know what? How does a bird even eat noodles?"
"How does a fox eat noodles?"
"From a plate. Your turn."
"…Not very cleanly."
"Alright. We'll go eat vegetarian noodles, and I will take embarrassing pictures of you eating on the expedition gadget."
"—Spinda's is fine."
A loud bang from outside the door of the vault startled both Nickit and Murkrow. They quickly looked towards the door of the vault, as a series of clicks came from the outside and the large metal door slowly opened.
"I had a feeling I would find the two of you in here," Mawile stated as she walked in. Her words echoed through the large room. She turned to Nickit. her hands clasped formally behind her back. "Your presence is urgently required in the main hallway, Nickit. That'll be all."
"What is it this time?" Nickit asked.
"Primarina."
One word was all that needed to be said.
~\({O})/~
"I had to tell him it was a poffin – and he was drunk enough to believe me – but I managed to knock him out with a sleep seed."
Nickit, Mawile, Bunnelby, and Braixen all stood at the foot of the straw bed in Ampharos' vacant office, where Primarina currently lay. Just a couple minutes before, he had dragged himself into the lobby, drunker than an intoxicated spinda and babbling incoherently. At one point he'd thrown up.
"He'll be like that until tomorrow," Nickit added. "Ooh, he's gonna feel bad tomorrow. But he'll sleep it off. Just don't give him any medicinal berries for the next couple of days and he'll be fine."
"That doesn't look 'fine'." Braixen glanced over Primarina's comatose body anxiously.
"He'll be fine," Nickit said. "I'm the doctor."
Braixen looked like he wanted to argue on that, but glanced at the other two pokemon in the room and decided against it. He silently bared his fangs at Nickit, then abruptly left.
"…'Don't think I like him much," Bunnelby decided once Braixen was out of earshot.
~\({O})/~
Wooloo Plains
By using the exploration bag to catch the gadget's display as they walked, Espurr had been able to find a brief description of the mystery dungeon on the gadget's logs—Wooloo Plains had been a field of grasslands before a strong mystery dungeon formed over it and tragically ensnared an entire flock of wooloo within. They were now the dungeon's inhabitants. Its placement blocked off the straightest line to and from Serenity Village, and the beaten path gave it a wide berth.
That was why Espurr was wary of entering the dungeon in the first place. But it was only three floors, and the dungeon itself was a fifteen-minute leisurely walk away from Serenity Village. No way would they be in there long enough to get in danger, let alone be late for the festivities.
Espurr and Tricky had found Eevee waiting there for them outside the dungeon's entrance. She hastily explained to them that she was in a hurry to make an important appointment, had taken the dungeon as a shortcut, and needed to have her money back by nightfall. Which didn't seem hard, considering that it was still afternoon.
The vast plains that stood before them had been barely recognizable as a mystery dungeon from a distance, but now that Espurr was up close she could see it reflected in all the little things. The little bits and pieces that added up to tell you that the place was just wrong. She could even taste the tiniest hint of the mystery dungeon's foul scent on her tongue if she stuck it out enough.
Tricky wasn't disturbed at all, and Espurr was almost unwillingly pulled along into the dungeon before Eevee could even bid them good luck. Although, it didn't look like she was going to.
"Huh," Tricky said as once they combed the dungeon's first floor for the bag of poke. "Where are all the wooloo?"
"Count us lucky," Espurr said. "I'd rather we didn't run into the wooloo before we run into the bag of poke."
Which was fair. Tricky didn't have a good comeback.
"You think they're all sleeping?" Tricky asked again once they were on the second floor. "It's not even dark yet… I wonder where they all went."
By the third floor she was just pouting to herself. They were both overjoyed to find the bag of poke hanging from a low tree branch shaped like a hook. After narrowly stopping Tricky from lighting the branch on fire and setting the dungeon aflame, Espurr used her powers to snap the branch and send the bag hurtling down towards them. She caught it firmly in her paws, that was half the mission done. Perhaps they wouldn't even need to deal with the wooloo!
"Tricky I can see the stairs from here," Espurr said, having stopped in front of an offhand dungeon corridor that Tricky had rocketed past without a second thought. The fennekin backtracked, glancing down the same corridor Espurr was.
"Oh," she said, restraining a cowed laugh. "There they are. Hah…"
The anchorstone looked almost like the rest of the dungeon. True to its name, it really was a large, rolling plain, with scattered trees all throughout. It looked from the inside just how Wooloo Plains had looked from the outside—breathtaking. Barren. Dead. The horizon was fuzzy, like a painting. Despite all appearances it was clear to Espurr that they were still in the mystery dungeon. And they still had no idea where all those wooloo were.
Espurr glanced up at the sky. She looked at the position of the sun. It was… almost sunset. Had they really spent that long in there? Even if they'd combed all that ground… now that she thought about it, the journey had been longish and tiring. She even felt a bit fatigued all over.
The same couldn't be said for Tricky.
"How big is this place?" Tricky asked excitedly. "Ooooh—do you think the wooloo are here, Espurr?" she couldn't help but let her tail wag furiously in excitement. Espurr, however, had her sights set on a dead tree in the distance.
"We can find out," she said, pointing straight at it. She did want to know. Knowing where they were made it so much easier to avoid them.
Tricky climbed the tree first. It took Espurr a minute, but eventually she managed to pull herself up into the barren canopy along with Tricky, who was glancing all around excitedly.
"I don't see any…" Tricky murmured with disappointment. Espurr quickly crawled beside her and began to study the distance from the branch they were both current perched behind. If she squinted, she could almost see the ethereal barriers of the anchorstone in the distance… but all those smaller branches were in the way. She could barely see over them all. She needed to get a little closer.
Looking left and then right to make sure that nothing would take her by surprise, Espurr carefully began to crawl out onto a larger branch. The exploration bag she was wearing threw her off her balance a little, but she was quickly able to regain it.
And then Tricky gasped.
"Look!" she said, pointing with a paw in the direction opposite Espurr. "Wooloo!"
Espurr could already feel the faint vibrations reverberating through the tree branch. She squinted to look in the direction that Tricky was pointing, and then she saw it: An entire massive flock of wooloo, all charging as one directly in their direction. And she was balanced quite precariously on a small branch.
Berry crackers.
Before Espurr knew it the stampede was upon them. Once they reached the tree the vibrations were so bad it was all Espurr could do to hang on for dear life. And then the exploration bag began to slip off her back. No… no no no no-
Espurr barely caught it just as it slipped off her arm. The bag hung from the tree unsteadily, suspended in midair only by Espurr's grip. Hugging the branch, Espurr glanced down at the stampeding wooloo below her, trying to pull the bag back up. But it was so heavy now that it had both the expedition gadget and the sack of poke and all Gabite's odd and ends inside it, and Espurr suddenly realized with horror that it was dragging her off the branch too—
"Tricky—help!" Espurr called out, unable to stop herself from slipping off the branch. Tricky snapped out of her amazed stupor to snap her head in Espurr's direction, but she was too slow—before Tricky could reach the tree branch, Espurr fell.
Intense, yellow fear mingled with her sight for a minute. She landed on the back of a wooloo in the middle of the herd. The exploration bag landed a second after her and smacked the wooloo in the face. It brayed loudly, losing control for a second and bumping into the wooloo to its left before steadying itself. Espurr quickly grabbed the straps of the exploration bag before it could fall off and dug her other paw into the wooloo's wool for steadiness.
The herd continued on without another care in the world, at the same fur-rippling speeds they had been going at beforehand. Espurr used both the exploration bag and her grip on the wooloo's fluff to pull herself properly onto its back. She looked behind the wooloo, taking in all the others flocking in the same direction exactly behind it. There was no way out. She would just have to wait until the herd calmed down.
Espurr had barely begun to catch her breath when she realized something was happening at the front of the flock—it looked like the wooloo at the very head of the herd was now… rolling. And then two. And then three. And then too many to count, all travelling through the herd… and down to her. Espurr's eyes widened. Could she just not catch a break?
The expedition bag jostled a bit, and Espurr remembered it was still sort of lodged on the wooloo's head.
That gave her an idea.
Steadying herself on the wooloo's back, Espurr carefully nudged the bag over the wooloo's eyes. It brayed loudly again at the loss of its vision, but Espurr kept it steady. If the wooloo couldn't see what was happening in the flock ahead of it, then maybe it wouldn't roll itself up into a ball and crush her. That was what she was counting on. It spread further and further down through the flock, until Espurr could see exactly what was happening in up-close detail. The wooloo's ears twitched. Espurr's eyes darted over to those, and then she grabbed them. The wooloo brayed perhaps the loudest Espurr had heard it yet, and then began to shake its head around wildly in an attempt to throw Espurr off.
Espurr barely held on. And even then, it was by letting go of the creature's ears and hoping that its wool was a good enough cushion to catch her. She barely caught a good pawhold before she could fall off its back. The wooloo shook off the expedition bag. It flew back and hit Espurr smack in the face. She cried out in pain and fell backwards, but she had more important things to worry about—it could see now! It was going to—
—Espurr's face suddenly ate dirt. It took her a moment to figure out what had happened, and in that time she was trampled by so many rolling wooloo she couldn't even hope to have counted them all.
And for some reason, she wasn't dead. Espurr then realized—wooloo felt like the softest thing in the world! It was like being trampled by a herd of blankets, and she didn't feel crushed in the slightest.
By the time Espurr had regained enough of her bearings and energy to even try moving again, the herd was long gone. She turned herself over in the soggy dirt, gasping for air.
That had been dangerous. She could have been crushed! But even so... she couldn't deny the rush that was coursing through her. That had been the most… exhilarating moment of her life! At least, as much as she could live in about a week, but still.
She was disturbed from her thoughts by a sudden chill that ran through the air. To her right, a massive wall of mist slowly encroached, bringing with it the smell of rot on the wind. It would have been breathtaking if it were anywhere outside of a mystery dungeon. Here, Espurr wanted nothing to do with it. It was time to go.
The lengthy trudge back to the tree they had been both perched on took a full five minutes, and it was more than enough to fully calm Espurr down. Her breath no longer came back in shaky, ragged gasps, and her limbs weren't trembling from excitement anymore. She exhaled one final time as she glanced up at the tree, which was empty—
"Espurr!"
Tricky pounced on Espurr out of nowhere, knocking her to her side unceremoniously.
"What happened to you?" Tricky asked. She looked like she was trying to keep up appearances for appearances' sake, but just from the sheer, blue-colored vibes she was exuding, Espurr could tell she was shaken. "I was gonna go look, but I thought—I…"
She shook her head. "…Nothing. Can we go now? I think I've seen enough wooloo for today…"
"Me too." Espurr got to her feet. They both looked at the ominous wall of fog that currently loomed over them. "I think I saw the exit off somewhere to the east."
~\({O})/~
Serenity Village
Eevee had definitely parted with a little less than half the bag of poke. Espurr was too tired to haggle it out and Tricky just plain hadn't noticed, so no words were exchanged over it. The mission was considered a success. Eevee had accompanied them back to Serenity Village, but she was silent the entire way and wouldn't speak a word even though Tricky kept nagging her.
The sky was already beginning to darken by the time that they could see the familiar wooden archways that stood above the village's entrance, but the village was already in full celebration mode. Colorful decorations hung from the houses, the luminous moss streetlamps had been pre-emptively uncovered, and a large bonfire burned in the center of the plaza. The square was filled with pokemon who were talking with each other in groups, warming up by the bonfire, or eating something they had taken from one of the food tables. Some were even dancing. Espurr didn't think she had seen so many pokemon out and about in the village in… ever.
Kecleon's stall had been rolled back, and so had the red bird tent. A trio of long, tree-carved tables had been set up all along the borders of the square, all filled to the brim with eateries of every kind. Espurr and Tricky both stared longingly at all the food—they hadn't eaten since breakfast! Eevee just walked over to the bench, snagged a bread roll, and trotted off somewhere.
The mud from Wooloo Plains had begun to clump up and stick to Espurr's coat, and it bugged her. She didn't want to be walking around town with unkempt fur in general, especially not like this! She'd have to wash it off in the river. Preferably before she ate anything. Espurr carefully removed the exploration bag from her shoulders, and handed it to Tricky.
"Want to carry this for a while?" she asked.
Like she suspected, Tricky was ecstatic at the prospect of carrying Gabite's old tattered bag for a while. "Where're you going?" she asked, jolly. "You're gonna miss the food!"
"I want to get cleaned up first," Espurr said.
The luminous lights and the spiderweb of decorations that hang above extended all the way along the beaches to the shore, but there were few if any pokemon loitering about there at all. Fine by Espurr. She didn't want anymon gawking at her as she washed all this nasty mud off anyway.
Tricky's scarf rustled against her neck, and then Espurr remembered it was there—she didn't want to ruin that. Undoing the tie and pulling it off, Espurr saw to her dismay that it had gotten dirtied just like the rest of her. She tried to brush the clumps of mud and dirt off, but to little avail. There were still small brown stains and clumps on the scarf by the time that she had accomplished all she could with her paws.
Oh, well. Assuming Tricky didn't ask for it back, Espurr could deal with that later. There was probably a way to wash them. There had to be.
The water of the shores was ice-cold to the touch. But it couldn't be helped. She needed to get cleaned up. Maybe if she just took a quick dip… She took a deep breath, put a rock on the scarf so it wouldn't blow off in the wind when she wasn't looking, and then tripped into the water.
The mud came off easily underwater, even if it left Espurr's coat of fur soaked. But it was cold. Espurr quickly resurfaced, pulling herself back onto the beach, gasping for air, and shaking her body off the best she could.
Maybe this had been a bad idea in hindsight. She felt freezing.
"I didn't know cat pokemon liked water."
The combination of the cold and the startlement made Espurr gasp. Her head snapped in the direction the voice had come from. Deerling sat next to a few wooden crates that had been hastily lopped just out of the reach of the tides. Espurr straightened up immediately.
"W-what are you doing here?" she asked, trying to recover from the shock of being startled.
"Stargazing," Deerling replied. After Espurr's glance made it clear she wasn't satisfied with that answer, Deerling continued: "Really, I just wanted to get away from the party for a bit. You can only get hit on by Pancham so many times before you want to bash his head in with your own hooves, you know?"
She quickly cast a glance back in the direction of the bonfire. "He didn't follow you here, right?"
Espurr quickly checked to make sure that Pancham indeed hadn't followed her there, then shook her head no.
Deerling relaxed. "Whew. What about you? I don't see Tricky anywhere."
"Tricky's off eating," Espurr said.
"Somehow that doesn't surprise me." Deerling's hoof toyed with a large splinter in the box she was leaning forward on. She looked at Espurr's soggy coat uneasily. "You went exploring with her again, didn't you?"
Espurr causally nodded yes. Deerling's face sunk.
"You're… not being careful, are you?" she asked. "Tricky's rubbing off on you."
Espurr realized she didn't have a counter for that. Mostly because… she couldn't deny it.
"Mystery dungeons are just dangerous," she improvised. "You come out of one squeaky clean and then talk to me."
Deerling sighed. "You're new. You probably don't know what hap—"
"Tricky told me already," Espurr interrupted. Deerling was silent for a moment.
"I just…" she paused, taking a deep breath. Changing gears. "I just don't want to see another Budew. I don't want to see another pokemon get hurt. You might think Tricky learns from her mistakes, but she doesn't. She always falls back into them. You're just going to get hurt. Please sto—"
"You're angry," Espurr said, interrupting her. "And confused. And… sad. I can see it on you."
Deerling's face scrunched up into confusion. "How do you…" A moment of realization, and then the red that Espurr saw swimming in the air suddenly exploded.
"Are you reading my thoughts?" Deerling seethed.
"I… I—" Espurr began. Was that bad?
"Ugh," Deerling shouted in disgust, vitriol aimed right at Espurr's face. "That's so creepy! Don't do that!"
Without getting Espurr a chance to respond, she stood up stiffly from the boxes she was leaning on, and turned back towards the village. The red cloaked her like an angry tornado. Espurr tried to turn it off, to go back to seeing nothing but flickers of color here and there, but she couldn't. The emotion was too strong.
And some of it was coming from her.
"And while you're at it," Deerling began impudently, hissing the words, "Hang out with who you want, I'm just saying you're making a bad choice with your company." She wouldn't look at Espurr. The bonfire in the distance framed her.
"And who should I hang out with?" Espurr spat. It came out both harsher and louder than she expected. Slowly, she realized she was angrier than she thought.
There was a pause from Deerling. An uncertain pause, like that had caught her off guard and now she didn't know what to say.
"I don't know," Deerling finally scoffed. "But you can do better than a child killer. Way better."
So that was how it was.
"I'll hang out with who I want, thank you," Espurr said, and then she snatched Tricky's scarf from the shore and briskly marched away.
Away from the beach. Away from Deerling. Back into the light. Back into the noise. Back where the fire burned bright, and the waves of the lake were a distant echo. She still felt cold. Maybe she could sit by the bonfire and warm up as she ate something. Espurr carefully retied the scarf around her neck so that she wouldn't lose it somewhere.
The pot of that soup that had smelled oh-so-heavenly earlier that morning sat on the middle table, and there was a makeshift set of stairs made out of a few boxes for pokemon too small to see over the top of the pot. Espurr carefully climbed to the top of the staircase and ladled herself some into one of the remaining wooden bowls that sat idly by the wayside.
"No! You will NOT eat like a dungeon feral in front of all these pokemon!"
"Buff Popff…"
"No buts! We practice manners here! You can eat like a civilized pokemon, or not at all!"
Espurr looked to her right, where Tricky and Carracosta were in the middle of a heated argument with each other that was quickly turning into a lecture from Carracosta. By the time Espurr had managed to successfully transport herself and the bowl of soup off the makeshift crate staircase, Tricky looked like she had had enough of Carracosta's lecturing for the time being. Espurr didn't hear exactly what went on between them, but she saw Tricky trot off in the opposite direction, and then Carracosta began to trudge in Espurr's.
"Espurr," he grunted in brief greeting as he passed her. Espurr watched him as he went. Yet another draft of summer evening breeze blowing through the square reminded her that her coat was still a bit damp. She needed to warm up. Taking a sip from the bowl (it tasted just as good as it had smelled), she began to walk towards the bonfire, looking for an unoccupied place she could sit. In the distance, Carracosta was talking to Nuzleaf, who seemed to be as far away from the fire as he could get, and Espurr couldn't see Tricky.
There was a spot on that currently empty log by the fire. Espurr quickly made a beeline for it, making sure to edge far in enough so that she couldn't see Nuzleaf or Carracosta anymore. And then, for the first time that day, Espurr relaxed. She took another sip of the soup. Somehow she had forgotten how pleasant it was to just 'sit' every once in a while, instead of trying to keep up with the world constantly. She could already feel the effects of the fire warming away the moisture on her coat. It was even a bit too toasty, now that she thought about it. Maybe there was a way to move this log out-
"Epferr! there you are!" Tricky quickly trotted up to the log, an entire piece of a goose hanging from her mouth. She passed the log, curling up nearer to the fire than Espurr thought was safe for anymon and letting the goose piece fall to the ground in front of her.
"I feel like I haven't eaten all day…" she proclaimed to no-mon in particular. Espurr felt the same, but she was too busy drinking soup from the bowl to answer her. Tricky quickly did a perimeter check to make sure that Carracosta couldn't see her, then proceeded to tear into the piece of goose with a ferocity that would have scared off a dungeon 'mon.
~\({O})/~
The sky got darker, and the lights of Serenity Village shined brighter, long into the night. The bonfire was continuously fed and controlled so that it wouldn't burn out or burn down the town, and Espurr and Tricky were able to eat their fills from the various foods and drinks that had been laid out by both Carracosta, Nuzleaf, and Kangaskan's crew (who were the only pokemon in the village with a lick of cooking sense, Espurr found out from a random liepard on an off-chance).
Sometime after the sky had fallen, four or five pokemon walked out into the square and began to play lively music for the inhabitants of the village. Some pokemon danced. Others ate. Still others loitered. A good few were holding conversations that quickly turned into yelling conversations against the music, and the music was beginning to win.
Eventually more and more pokemon began to dance, and even though Tricky thought it looked fun and wanted Espurr as a partner to join, Espurr could barely stand straight at that point. As fun as this had been, she wanted to rest now. She told Tricky as much, and went to grab the exploration bag that had been ignored next to the table where Tricky had left it.
On her way out of the square Espurr and Tricky managed to cross paths with Deerling once more. Deerling said nothing, simply taking in the two of them condescendingly, and then she walked off.
"I mean, what's her deal?" Tricky grumbled as she followed Espurr up the forest path to the school grounds. "Why does she hate us so much?"
"I think she just hates… you," Espurr said.
There was an awkward silence in which it looked like Tricky wanted to say something, but didn't.
They stopped once they reached the outdoor. The school grounds looked just as deserted as it had this morning. Not even the lights in the School Clinic had been uncovered, and under the shade of night the entire school looked almost as creepy as the Crooked House. Where was Audino?
Far back behind them, a light went out. Both Espurr and Tricky looked back at the sudden loss of light. The bonfire in the middle of the square had been extinguished, and the sounds of lively dancing music no longer drifted out from the square. The festival was over.
"I better go," Tricky said after a minute. "Pops probably wants me to help with the food pack-up. Night, Espurr!"
She hesitated a moment before she left. Espurr felt the brief flash of blue, and she was about to ask if Tricky wanted to say something, but Tricky scurried off before she could. Espurr watched her head down the square with enough speed in her paws that one would almost believe she hadn't been doing cartwheels in mystery dungeons the entire day. Then she felt a bit weary on her own paws, and remembered how tired she was. She'd ask tomorrow.
~\({O})/~
Expedition Society Headquarters ~ Nighttime
The celebrations in Lively Town were quieter this year. There hadn't been a parade or festivities of any sort, and for the most part Lively Town was looking particularly unlively tonight. Normally, the Expedition Society would have had fireworks imported from the Grass Continent to launch, but there had been a shipping delay due to a storm and they hadn't arrived in time. The great big double doors of the Expedition Society's lobby closed after Murkrow and Nickit, and then Mawile had the building to herself.
Mostly to herself. She caught a glimpse of something uneasily pacing outside Ampharos' office as she passed the hallway leading to it. Another glance to make sure she hadn't been seeing things, and there was Braixen. She rubbed her forehead for a second, then left him alone. Maybe she did need that night of rest after all. Mawile climbed the stairs that led to the third-floor observatory.
~\({O})/~
A gong crashed, unceremoniously rousing Jirachi from his sleep.
"Wha—wha…" he sleepily asked. "…Wha?"
"I assume you haven't talked to Nickit about replenishing that remedy yet?" Mawile asked, carefully setting the large gong-stick under the gong.
"…Yeah," Jirachi answered once he had assembled enough of his brain to do so. "I'll go talk to her later…" He yawned and stretched. "…Was gonna do it yesterday, but I fell asleep."
The observatory was currently a tangled mess of clotheslines that were empty and looked like a spiderweb. "Don't touch anything!" Jirachi called down to Mawile as he zipped up through the observatory to places only he could reach. "I know it looks like a mess, but I have a system!"
Any efficient system didn't entail covering the entire observatory in a mess so tangled even Jirachi had to jump hoops to navigate it, but Mawile decided to keep that to herself. Less than a moment later, Jirachi emerged once again from behind the brass telescope, descending to the ground with a few photos in his hands.
"See?" he asked. Newest photos up where no-mon'll see 'em, oldest ones near the bottom. And this is what I got. For now," he quickly added on at the last second. "Printer's still scanning the rest."
Mawile took the photos in her hands, and leafed through them. There were only ten so far, out of the combined fifty that she and Archen had took together. Some general shots of the devastation, a shot of a petrified pokemon up-close, but the last one was what caught Mawile's attention: A picture of the entity that had attacked them that day. It wasn't the main focus, but a good portion of its spined, muscular body was in the photo. Mawile held the photo up in front of her, and studied it closely. She clutched that one in her right paw, handing the other four back to Jirachi.
"I'll be keeping this one," she told him. Jirachi looked slightly hesitant, but what was he going to say? He just nodded and flew off to re-hang the photos before they could be lost. He could make another copy.
Mawile entered her cramped, cluttered office, the photo still in her paws. Outside, she could hear Braixen endlessly pacing, but if that was how he wanted to spend his holiday then she wasn't one to stop him. Mawile reached in her drawer and pulled out a chesto berry. It seemed she could subsist on one period of sleep a week after all. Tonight, she had research to do.
~\({O})/~
Open Pass
For all intents and purposes, Audino was a prisoner.
The beheeyem had left her the exploration bag once they had gone through it and realized it was filled with nothing but plants, but that was the only illusion of freedom that she got. She was made to walk ahead of them as they made their way through the dungeon, with her paws clasped behind her back so that she wouldn't try to attack them out of nowhere. It just so happened that the beheeyem had already found the dungeon's third floor staircase—the real third floor staircase—which had crunched the time she had to come up with an escape plan of some sort by half. By now she was leading them around in circles and hoping they wouldn't notice. Silently, she looked for a chance to break away and make her escape.
The beheeyem's lights flickered behind her as she walked. Audino focused on them out of the corner of her eye. The beheeyem had forgotten to close the psychic link to her brain. Which left them just as open to Audino listening in on their conversations as it did her to attack, but they didn't seem to realize it existed so Audino didn't clue them in on it. Instead, she focused on what they were saying, the link unconsciously translating it into words whenever the lights on the end of their arms began to flicker again.
And what they were saying didn't put her any more at ease. They were getting tired of her. They were beginning to catch on to the fact that she was leading them around in circles. They were beginning to consider the idea of disposing of her. Audino didn't like the sound of those thoughts. She would have quickened her pace towards the stairs or possibly tried to make a run for it in any other situation, but with the mental link open it was too risky. From what she knew of psychic-types, a powerful-enough one coupled to your mind would be able to lock up your body in seconds. She'd never make it far once they realized.
And then, a plan began to form. She'd have to break the mental link before they came around to the stairs again. Otherwise, she was done for.
Audino didn't expect the beheeyem to do it for her—even if she was crafty enough with words to convince them, she got the feeling they weren't open to talking. But she had read in a book she'd picked out from the library several months ago about Calm Mind, a technique that helped the mind repel psychic-type pokemon.
Psychic-type meddling reveled in a cluttered head, because the mental probes of a psychic-type could easily slip in unnoticed amongst the thoughts and noise. Calm Mind trained a pokemon to clear their head, to make the brain silent enough so that those psychic probes had nowhere to hide. And then the pokemon could snuff them out.
Unluckily, Audino had never been good at clearing her head. And she was on a time limit. She didn't think that the beheeyem would tolerate another round of the dungeon. She tried and tried, but to no avail—the thoughts of all the danger she was in weighed over her mind like an immovable wall, and she just couldn't make it disappear. Audino began to breath faster in fear despite herself. How was she going to get out of this?
No. She had to calm down if she wanted to maintain any hope of escaping. Surely there must be something else she could try. Audino adjusted the bag strap on her shoulder, and she suddenly felt the mental link in her head spike as one of the beheeyem snapped its head towards the movement. It faded almost as quickly as it came, but it gave Audino an idea. Slowly, Audino rustled the bag on her shoulder again. It was meant to look like she was uncomfortable with the strap on her shoulders, but if she could just locate that mind link again…
The mental spike came again, and this time Audino jumped on the opportunity. She couldn't clear her mind well enough to locate the psychic link on her own, but now that it had been brought to the forefront of her mind Audino quickly focused on that, and that alone, like it was her one chance at survival.
Because it was.
Within seconds, she had it in her mental grasp. But now what?
Audino kept her eyes closed, focusing on the link alone. How did she get rid of it? Could she cast it out with her mind alone? Audino doubted that was possible. Her feet stepped on a familiar twig, and without opening her eyes Audino knew that the stairs were coming up just ahead. How was she going to get rid of the mental link in time? She needed to get it out somehow. She focused on it as hard as she could. She wished she could just get rid of it—
—And then suddenly, it was gone. Audino opened her eyes once again. The lights of the beheeyem flashed, but she didn't understand them. The link was gone. She had done it. But there was no time nor cause to celebrate yet. She was still in danger. Audino cast her eyes towards the hallway in which she knew the staircase lay. It was a long corridor, and she needed to be ready to move at a seconds' notice.
A minute of walking passed, in which Audino felt like her heart might explode. She was sure that any second, the beheeyem might catch on to her and then she'd be done for. But it was just a little further. Just a little further, and then she'd be ready. Just a few more seconds…
Audino stopped at the corridor she had seen the stairs in. It was now or never. She just had to hope that the staircase wasn't another illusion, and take a leap of faith. Audino made to turn towards the right-hand corridor, then in one fluid motion pulled the exploration bag off her shoulder and whacked the beheeyem nearest to her with it straight in the grills. Caught purely off-guard, the beheeyem stumbled backwards into its companions, and Audino immediately began to run for it.
The wind whistled against her sensitive ears. Leaves rustled and sticks snapped under her feet. The exploration bag was carried less by Audino's arm and more by the air. Audino heard the attack the beheeyem fired, and there was no way to dodge it. She just had to reach the staircase first—
—Audino didn't know which had happened first. Perhaps they had both happened at the same time. But somehow, Audino had found herself deposited on her back outside the Open Pass, completely untouched. And if she remembered mystery dungeons, that staircase had moved, so the beheeyem weren't following her anytime soon. She took a moment to calm down, then grabbed her bag and began to exhaust the rest of her energy fleeing back to Serenity Village with the speed of a Quick Attack. There was no need to waste her head start on them.
~\({O})/~
Serenity Village
By the time that Audino finally staggered into the clinic, Espurr was already fast asleep in one of the straw beds. Not even bothering to close the door behind her, Audino let the exploration bag she had been carrying for the entire trip fall to her feet haphazardly. It hit the floor with a muffled thump, but Audino barely cared anymore. She still couldn't believe that she had made it out of that dungeon safely.
As she trudged off to her room Audino's ears suddenly picked up on the sound of somemon rushing towards the clinic. She spun around just as Watchog slid to a stop in front of the entrance.
"Hey, what's the—" Watchog stopped short at the sight of Audino. "W—what happened to you?!" he sputtered.
Audino didn't have the energy left to answer him.
~\({O})/~
Principal's Office
The torches in the Principal's Office were never lit after dark except in the case of an emergency, because the Principal's Office was never occupied after dark except in the case of an emergency.
Tonight, the torches were lit. All three teachers had gathered in the room after Audino had been given a chance to clean herself up. She sat in the stool in front of the teacher's desk, looking over a short pile of Water Continent outlaw posters.
"And you're absolutely sure these are the same beheeyem?" Simipour asked. "Are you certain we aren't dealing with different outlaws of the same species?"
"They wanted Espurr," Audino stressed. "They said it to my face. Why wouldn't they be the same beheeyem?"
Simipour sighed, deep in thought. He rose from his seat and walked up to the window. A moment later, he spoke:
"I understand you have a house near the center of the village?" he asked.
"Yes, for emergencies," Audino responded.
"Consider this an emergency." Simipour walked back to the desk. He grabbed a quill, dabbed it in the inkwell for a moment, then drew a straight line from the Open Pass all the way to the School Forest. "The school grounds are no longer safe for either of you. The beheeyem latched onto you because they saw you with Espurr. That puts you in as much danger as Espurr currently is."
"And I'm just fine in this?" Watchog asked, his voice beginning to squeak a little. "I'm guarding the bloody school—I don't want these things coming after me!"
"I'm afraid they don't want you," Simipour told him. He rolled up the map, and stashed it with two others next to his desk.
"I'll have to ask you that you pack up and move first thing in the morning," he said to Audino on the way out. "As I'm sure you've figured out by now, time is of the essence."
~\({O})/~
Music of the week!
The Dance - Bear McCreary
Travel Delays - Alan Silvestri