Shiloh didn't think about what would be waiting for her as soon as she passed out of the cave; otherwise, her fear would overwhelm her, and she might just find a quiet corner to curl up in.
That worked to get her out into the open air. But then she flew past the waterfall, into the sky. At her size, she might as well have jumped out of an airplane for how small everything looked below, and how the winds buffeted and flung her.
Aspen went first, so she didn't even see her, zipping straight down with blurring speed.
Shiloh would never consider herself afraid of heights—she'd ridden on the back of flying types far higher up than this. But that was just it—the work of flying was always someone else's. Now she was the one supposed to keep herself airborne.
Mostly she fell, tumbling over herself through the air. She left a little streak of flame behind, arms and legs flailing uselessly to stop her descent—without success. "Aspen? Maybe... might need a little help here! Never flown this high before!"
Rotom appeared first, gliding parallel but some distance away, so there was no danger of smacking into the drone even in her wild tumbling. "I have significant b-roll of mew in flight since taking up residence with you. I believe they fly the same way as you do—why is your technique so different?"
Her only answer was a wild, desperate scream. The trees might've looked small before, but they were getting close! She caught one last glimpse of smoke rising from the jungle, then Aspen flew in close beside her.
"You know how to fly, Shiloh!" she yelled, zipping around her in a tight circle. Though with her voice so much deeper, maybe she wasn't a she? "You don't need me to rescue you! Do it yourself!"
You didn't give me much time to do that! She didn't have time to argue with the shaymin, or she'd be crushed. All Miya and Goh had said about gravity was still there—and more importantly, how easily she could ignore it. But she was moving so quickly now that ignoring it wouldn't be enough. Shiloh needed to fall the other way.
She started to slow, as though the air around her had transformed into honey. The trees rushed up to meet her, so close that the leaves brushed gently up against her face—and then she was above them again.
She caught herself quickly this time, before she could end up in a nauseating circle of falling and rising over and over again.
She stopped in the air, wrapping her stupid bird arms around a branch. She held on, eyes tightly closed. "I almost... died," she panted. Her head didn't ache the way it had the night before, this flight was far shorter. These effects were only to her sanity. "Do Pokémon really just—fly around like that all the time?"
It was a stupid question, she knew before she even finished saying it. Aspen nudged her shoulder with one paw, floating over her. Shiloh looked up to glare—yeah, definitely a male now. She'd never seen that in the pokédex entry. Shiloh did not blush, nor did she show any other signs of embarrassment. Those stupid huge ears were just folding back in the wind, that was all.
"Shiloh, you can fly. When my parents are together, they're so high up you can't even see them from the ground."
He gripped Shiloh's shoulder a little harder, starting to pull her away from the tree. It wouldn't be much force for a human being—but at her size, it was enough to pry her free.
She came loose, tumbling once over herself in the air beside him. She squealed and kicked, but didn't fall. She looked down, and just decided not to fall.
"I don't know how to tell you this, Victini—you're not human anymore. It isn't what you wanted, but here you are. A human would fall. A victini won't."
She curled in the air, looking away. Her tail kept flapping, a steady rhythm that felt entirely subconscious, involuntary. Whatever, she wasn't falling. "I don't know how a Pokémon thinks. But you need me to think like a person right now if you want to find your sisters."
Despite the fall, she could still point exactly to the direction she had seen smoke and rising flame. Shiloh turned, and started flying along the canopies of the trees.
Even up here, the world was full of life. Chatot nested, caterpie crawled, and flowers bloomed. Little pools of water in the branches swam with insects. Every breeze brought scents to her nose, some familiar and many totally unknown.
But she didn't fly far before someone appeared underneath, a white and green shape that lifted her onto his back. He was big enough that she could rest there without too much difficulty, or apparently slowing him down.
"I know you need the practice, but I need you to be faster. Hold on." He didn't give her much chance to prepare either, accelerating rapidly. Shiloh barely managed to get her arms around his neck before they zipped forward through the air.
But this was closer to the kind of flying Shiloh had already done—riding on another Pokémon, one who actually knew what he was doing, while she directed. If she wasn't naked, it wouldn't be so bad.
"Humans usually ask before doing things like—" But her words were too feeble to hear. She focused on holding on, conscious of trees much bigger than they were zipping around them with incredible speed.
Aspen didn't glide safely over the canopy, he shot between them, navigating the jungle with confidence. Despite the speed, it didn't feel like they were about to crash. Aspen turned easily, anticipating every obstacle with ease.
"Now... probably isn't the time to ask," she called. At least holding onto his neck meant she was speaking right into his ears. "How do Shaymin fly? You aren't psychic types, but you don't have wings."
"I have no idea!" Aspen yelled. He did one final loop, dropping lower and lower. Shiloh couldn't see any sign of the nursery yet, but she could smell the flames.
Seconds later, Aspen came to rest directly above the opening. Nothing held him there, but not having wings or obvious psychic powers didn't seem like a problem for him. "Here we are. Now, where did the humans go?"
Shiloh looked down into the crater, then rolled sideways right off Aspen's back. It took her a few seconds to catch herself, but she didn't fall. She had really overestimated just how hard flying could be. So long as she kept to low speeds and low altitudes, anyway.
"We're looking for something to track," she said. "Given the danger, I bet Plasma have somewhere local to stage."
She turned, looking up into the air behind them. If she guessed right—yes, there was Rotom, gliding down from high altitude. That drone just wasn't built for the speeds that Aspen could reach. It was a filming platform, not a racer.
"Hey, Rotom!" She waved both paws, gesturing down into the crater. "Are there any working electronics you could possess down there?"
The drone flew in close, hovering beside her. "I am too far away to answer that," it said. "The wireless network is no longer present, and the security apparatus has all gone offline."
"We wouldn't want that stuff anyway." Shiloh dipped down lower, angling in from the side to try and get a better view through the smoke. "We want something Plasma might've left behind. Something connected to their network you could follow back to them?"
She trailed off, curling both paws in frustration. This stuff was why she kept an assistant. Briar knew how to work things out. He made all their reservations, he tracked down places they needed to be. He would probably know someone who could report back to them with Team Plasma's movements.
And now he was with Team Plasma, without anything to suggest he was anything more than a wild Pokémon kept in the company of legendaires.
What do Plasma think we were doing out here? How did they find the Nursery? Those deeper mysteries would remain unanswered, at least for now.
"It is possible," Rotom answered. "This would represent unusual carelessness, but there is a chance. I do feel working electronics below, follow me." They zipped off into the smoke, straight down the crater.
Shiloh tried after a few seconds, but was soon coughing and spluttering, shielding her eyes with both paws. The heat didn't bother her, but she did quite like breathing.
As quickly as it came, the smoke rising around her just faded. A fog so thick she couldn't even see through it vanished in an instant, replaced with air so sweet it was almost perfumed.
Then she saw how. Aspen flew ahead of her, and all the smoke just passed through him. It only took a few seconds to fully clear, and suddenly she could see all the way down the canyon, and even into the building.
The damage was severe, as though the whole building had been doused in accelerant and purposefully destroyed. The huge mass of vines and new growth had hardly helped, serving as ample fuel to keep the fire going. Nothing Aspen had grown the night before still lived—the garden and trees were dead too, down to the last flower.
The structure's general shape remained, though. Most of it was underground, and the stone was stronger than a little flame.
Aspen made it to the ground, but nowhere near the burning entrance. He stopped, retreating in visible pain. "I don't think I can... go any further."
Shiloh wasn't even sure what he meant at first, continuing past him into the doorway. The breeze whipped past her, carrying with it a slow trickle of smoke, and the occasional orange wisp of flame. "Is there—" Then the obvious finally clicked. The building was on fire, and she was a fire-type. "Oh."
"The structure of this drone cannot survive those conditions," said a voice, faint against the wind. But it was familiar, so she could still pick it out. "Something is still transmitting, I feel a strong signal. Bring it out, and I will try to help."
"Can you point to it?" Shiloh asked. She stopped in the doorway, waiting for its answer.
"Not... inside," it said. Rotom extended the camera arm, pointing it towards the... pool?
Most of the water had boiled away in the intervening time. A black organic residue of burned plants took much of the remaining volume. For all she knew, this was the fuel that had sustained that first, explosive growth. Aspen remained overhead, but there wasn't much smoke down here anyway. Just black water and ash.
Wait, there was something down here—a plastic box, submerged in the water, with reflective glass aimed upward.
Shiloh stopped at the water's edge, unwilling to get wet—without knowing exactly how, she lifted the box out of the water, hovering it through the air the same way she moved herself. Doing so took all her concentration, slowing her motions and making it hard to talk.
She couldn't say what she was thinking until she had it all the way out of the pool, sitting on a patch of bare cement.
It looked like military tech, a hardened enclosure bigger than her whole body. The backside was wide and flat, slightly curved. An antenna, or maybe satellite dish? It had been aimed directly up into the air.
"Yes!" Rotom exclaimed. "Will look, wait."
The drone landed some distance away, on a rocky ledge well away from the flame. Lightning arched through the air ahead of them, striking the object directly.
A few seconds passed, during which its single stationary lens suddenly resembled a peering eye. It only lasted a moment—energy arced back across the air, and the drone began to hover again. "It was working, not-trainer trainer! The device was on Team Plasma's network!"
Poor Aspen looked like she was wilting in real time to be down here. Shiloh took his paw, urging him upward out of the canyon to join Rotom. "What was it doing?
The drone tracked them, oblivious. "The device was a wildlife camera, monitoring this location for any sign of your return. As you lifted it from the water, it phoned home, sending this location and images of the two of you back to a location near Cayari. I am not certain, but I believe a team has been dispatched to retrieve you."