Lane's information from the Kanto soldier proved correct—Mt. Battle was more dangerous than anywhere else in Orre. There were hundreds of wild Pokémon milling about the structure from the outside, each one staking claim to nonsensical little plots of territory. It shifted constantly, with the flash of elemental energy and Pokémon attacks lighting the forest like a strobe.
Lane didn't fight her way in. With Elisa's help, she probably could have. But she just didn't have the energy to waste, not given what might be waiting inside. Despite how much the shaymin wanted to battle their way through the doors, she cloaked the two of them in illusion, and they flew quietly through the halls.
The stories were true—there were humans here, or there had been. There were bodies in the building now, dozens of them that she saw. There were huge piles of discarded armor and fallen weapons, without any sign of bodies or blood. Curious.
What she didn't see no matter how far they walked were any living people. Plenty of empty hallways, or the occasional confused Pokémon wandering around.
"What are we looking for, Lane?" Elisa hissed. Without any psychic powers, he had to do it physically, so he waited until they were passing through an empty stretch of service tunnel. "It looks like something happened here, I just don't know how we can help."
"We'll know it when we see it," she shot back. Typical for her to be the one to figure it out. Elisa would be at her back in a heartbeat no matter what kind of fighting they had to do. But the longer they spent as a shaymin, the less interest they had in anything man-made or mechanical.
She had called it a "cave", but the structure here was anything but. The mountain had been hollowed out in spectacular fashion, with dozens of levels each giving access to a different part of the massive underground stadium. Lane ignored every door leading in, if only because that seemed too obvious. Whatever they were looking for would be better hidden, she was sure of it.
"Over here!" She could feel something just ahead, not so much by the minds, but like intention set into the stone itself.
Lane sped up, weaving down an open elevator shaft and past a fallback point with more empty armor. Dozens of spent casings littered the floor, and the walls were scorched with elemental flame. But no bodies over here.
Elisa sped up to match her, sensing a chase. Besides, there weren't going to be any Pokémon to hide from in an empty elevator shaft.
Lane conjured a bright blue glow as she flew, abandoning the invisibility briefly. The walls blurred past her. But if she hoped to use the elevator itself to guide her path, that hope was dashed. She could see rubble far beneath her, and an elevator car sliced into halves.
There was something down here, pulling with its own kind of gravity. Was this the source of the strange impressions she felt from wild Pokémon?
She found a floor that seemed close by, and yanked the door with psychic force. It smashed violently open, crushing the steel.
The passage beyond was nothing like the upper floors. There were no Pokémon league banners, or posters of past winners. There were no broken vending machines, or military checkpoints.
Even the walls were different, cut in perfectly regular, rectangular hallways, with a steady, persistent white glow from bright lights. Bright enough that Elisa squealed and covered his face with one foreleg. "Augh! Why are these working?"
An abandoned airlock stood just ahead, with half a dozen different lab uniforms hanging inside.
There were no signs of battle here—no warring Pokémon, no scorch marks on the walls, no bullet holes. Maybe it was safe?
There were times when looking like herself wasn't her best choice. Lane landed on her oversized paws, then concentrated. She stretched and grew, getting older than her usual preference.
When she wasn't a mew, Lane could look like anyone she wanted. But she preferred forms that were closer—girls or teenagers mostly, with long pink hair and sometimes more obvious Pokémon features.
This wasn't the time to worry about her self-expression, though. She kept going until she was somewhere in her twenties, a more mature version of her favorite substitute body. She didn't fake any clothing to go with it, though—why bother when there was so much right in front of her?
Elisa landed at her feet, glancing over his shoulder. The attraction was gone from him—there would be no chase when the ending was a human. "That's just plastic. We could cut through it. You didn't have to get all bulbus."
She rolled her eyes, approaching the computer. They'd changed since she belonged to her old species. These days a single flat piece of glass was the standard, with sensors that read gestures from your hands.
She approached the screen, fiddling with it. "Access denied." Finally she reached into her satchel, removing the single pokeball from inside. "We could break in, but that would mean the people running the place know we're here. Let's try my way first."
Elisa stuck out his tongue. "You're just showing off. Don't pretend."
She didn't argue the point, just released the Pokémon she was holding. There was a bright flash of white light, and a humanoid form appeared beside her. Its outline was only a little shorter than she was, and better dressed.
The gardevoir could easily be mistaken for another human being, if she wasn't looking closely. But her skin was an impossibly porcelain white, her hair bright green. And most humans didn't have a red spike through their chest.
"Remember how I said I wouldn't need your help, Akiko? I lied."
The Pokémon balanced on delicate feet, her dress swirling around her. She stretched both arms, then finally looked up at Lane with a pair of red eyes.
Even her mannerisms were human, but her words were not. "I told you, Lane. There was no way—" She stopped, eyes widening. She looked away abruptly, wrapping her arms around herself. "Where in Arceus's name did you bring me?"
"I need you to open decon for me, without setting off any alarms." She shivered, though the underground was a perfectly comfortable temperature. It was always harder to be confident when she was surrounded by Pokémon who knew what modesty was. "Please, Akiko? Lots of people are counting on us. You should see the surface, it's bad."
The psychic Pokémon glared back, adjusting her dress around her as though she was about to make a dramatic refusal. But then she just floated forward anyway, right up to the computer.
Her hands only had three fingers, but she knew what she was doing with them. She held both in front of the screen, moving and twitching them in an intricate, deliberate fashion. She conjured a little piece of metal into the air with a flash of light, levitating it into the base of the computer. "Sometimes I wonder if you failed on purpose, Lane. Convenient to have a hacker in your pocket, isn't it?"
She winced. "It's not like that, Akiko! It was supposed to work. And it still might, one day. We don't know I can't ever make you a kitten."
I just have no idea how to do it and my mom says it's impossible. Akiko was a powerful psychic in her own right, but Lane had no fear of her trying to read her. Gardevoir were a league apart from legendaries, and that wouldn't change anytime soon.
"She's just hoping some brilliant human scientist is going to walk out of that door," Elisa said, hopping up onto the spinning-chair beside the computer. "She'll lure him in with that mew IQ, then let him sweep her off her feet with some cheesy pickup line. Just you wait."
"I wouldn't!" Lane said, lifting both hands defensively. "Wait, do you see someone coming?"
"Quiet you two," Akiko said, frustration in her voice. "I know how you feel about your mate, Shaymin. Just wait until I'm gone, please. Not all of us have such animal instincts."
Lane was halfway to coming up with some clever rebuttal, probably involving a gallade, when the computer made a satisfied chime, and a bright green light shone above the door. Akiko gestured to it, and the door swung open. "There. Is that what you wanted?"
Lane nodded approvingly. She rushed past her, catching the Pokémon by the hand and pulling her along. Elisa she didn't have to drag, the shaymin never got more than a few feet away when they were anywhere dangerous. "We might have more waiting inside. Stay with me."
She glanced over the hanging uniforms, at each of a dozen different hooks. All had laboratory jumpsuits and coats, with little names penciled in. She found one with pink hearts next to it, and correctly guessed she would find a uniform that fit.
"Are we in Orre?" Akiko asked, keeping her back on Lane while she dressed. "I thought Pokémon were going crazy. Why are we in a Team Plasma laboratory? Weren't they isolated to Unova."
It would've been strange to hear a Pokémon speak so articulately about human affairs. But then, it would be strange to see one hack a security system, too. "Is that whose base this is?" Lane asked, settling her jacket into place. "You know more than I do."
Akiko started to reply, before Lane pressed the "open" button near the other door. A blast of foam smashed into them from all sides, knocking Elisa from the air with a squeal of shock and discomfort.
By the time the smoke cleared, her confident mate had been replaced with a little green and white hedgehog, not much bigger than Lane's real body. She levitated the little Pokémon into her arms, brushing away patches of disinfectant. "Didn't like that?"
The cloud of smoke faded rapidly, long before the other door opened. Only then did Elisa shake herself out, squirming in Lane's grip. "It got into my mouth. Ugh, awful."
Lane ran one set of careful fingers through the leaves along her back, before settling the shaymin on her shoulder. Anyone who found them here probably wouldn't recognize Elisa for any kind of threat at that size. Unfortunately for them, that was because she wouldn't be.
"It was all in the file," Akiko said, brushing the dust from her dress with both of her strange hands. "It's their research post. There wasn't much in the terminal, so don't ask. I just know they wanted to put their watermark on everything." She nodded towards Lane's labcoat. "You know, the clothes you're wearing."
Lane looked down, then blushed. "Oh." She led the way inside, stepping into a laboratory cleanroom with two banks of identical-looking servers. A gentle hum suffused the building under her feet. But the tables were empty, the papers stacked. There was no sign of life, except for a subtle pressure against her mind.
Gentle for her, anyway. Akiko dropped to one knee as soon as they were inside, eyes going wide. "L-Lane! What is..."
She reacted instantly, extending both hands around them and tracing a sphere of power. It flickered once, then became invisible. Even so, the effect was immediate. Lane might not know what she was dealing with, yet. But she didn't need to understand the strange psychic force to know how to keep it out.
The pressure vanished from her own head too, like a headache fading in seconds instead of hours. Shame most of her training with Mom wasn't that easy.
"Did you feel it too, Elisa?" she asked, stepping forward into the lab.
The shaymin nodded once. "It was there. Not like I'm gonna let it tell me what to do. Stupid voice."
"So either psychic types are more vulnerable, or legendaries are more resistant."
Akiko rose to delicate feet, shivering all over. She reached one hand towards the invisible barrier of the shield, then pulled it back. She was psychic too, so she would see it. "I know how much I complain, but maybe this time I belong inside that poké ball. It can't be worse than this."
Lane patted her shoulder with her free hand. "I'm sorry, Akiko. As soon as we're through with this. But I might need a hacker. You've already told us more than we knew before."
The gardevoir did not reply, other than to make a frustrated grunting sound. But Lane didn't need words to sense her dissatisfaction. She obeyed, walking alongside her through the maze of laboratory chambers. Lane felt the resistance against her shield, and used that to direct their path. Whatever this unpleasant aura was coming from was obviously the source of all the region's problems.
"I guess we know why they evacuated," Akiko said, after wandering for several tense minutes through the lab. This was no panicked flight, like the streets of Orre's port. These people had known exactly what they were doing, and had plenty of time to pack.
Even the girl who wore Lane's uniform, and drew hearts next to her nametag.
"But what were they trying to do?" Elisa asked, her voice annoyed. "You two know who they are. Tell me!"
"Team Plasma claim to be Pokémon activists," Lane explained. "They don't want battles, or trainers at all. They think the power-structure between humans and Pokémon is always evil. There are no partners, no friends—every Pokémon belongs in the wild."
"Friends of yours?" Elisa asked. "Maybe you could get them to help with the nursery."
She shook her head sharply. "That's the opposite of what I'm trying to make. The nursery is all about how humans and Pokémon all come from the same place. I'm pretty sure they don't know about me. There was this whole mess with some dragons a few years back, but I didn't have anything to do with it."
"They didn't just fade away," Akiko added. "They still want a country with an absolute monarchy, where only the ruling class have Pokémon. It's all a sham, all about concentrating power. I could believe they would be crazy enough to turn all the Pokémon murdery."
"Not all of them," Elisa said. "There are Pokémon on the top floor, most of them just looked sad. Then there's us. I never murder anyone! When we fight, they have it coming."
Lane stepped through a huge open archway, and came up short. Spotlights came on with a series of mechanical clicks, all aimed at the same point in the center.
Something stood there, like a huge chunk of melted metal. It looked like nothing, just a bit of twisted scrap. A bit of twisted scrap from the Starfall, an ancient starship built by the mew who had first colonized their planet.
The debris was surrounded by supporting infrastructure. Huge pipes connected to it, along with faintly humming electrical cables. Lights flashed in steady rhythm, in time to a computer against the wall.
"Arceus help us," Lane whispered, stopping in her tracks. "These are not the people we wanted to have a piece of our ship."
"You know what that is?" Akiko asked, amazed.
"Oh," Elisa said. "Ooooh! Yeah. We lived in there for a while. Before Lane blew it up."
"I did no—" She stopped, taking a single deep breath. Finally she gestured to a computer console, right beside the relic. "Akiko, I need you to discover what they're doing with this. If we can find that out, we can design a way to reverse it."
They walked together towards the machine. Lane tried expanding her shield, but ultimately decided against it. Directly in the presence of this object, it just took too much of her concentration. She wasn't even an adult mew yet.
"You're a little optimistic if you think we can just reverse the signal, Lane." She pulled over a rolling chair, then hopped up into it, cracking her fingers in both hands. "But we'll see. I wouldn't mind saving the world."