The house erupted with a shrill noise. Panne immediately froze up, caught in the middle of the menial chore she was just doing to waste time. She tossed the rag over her shoulders and took off with a jolt, nearly colliding with Vallion on her way into the main room. Spitting out an apology, the Braixen slid past the corner of the table and grabbed the Expedition Gadget in one motion. The blue orb shimmered excitedly as she accepted the call, and after a few seconds of murky distortion, Floatzel's face materialized within.

"Geez, that was quick. Were you sitting next to this thing the whole time?" Floatzel chuckled, shaking his head. "Whatever. Get your bags ready, Panne. We've found the Hydreigon."

"What? Where?" She leaned her face in uncomfortably close to the orb. Her ears twitched as Val shuffled up to the doorway and began to listen. "Are you certain it's the right one? I mean, I can't imagine there are too many Hydreigon out there in the world, but you kinda had the whole world to search through. You're sure this is the one Vallion was talking about?"

Floatzel nodded. "Yeah, it's gotta be the guy. Mawile found him a few miles off Sahra town after I had sent everyone out. Says he specifically knew Vallion personally, then apparently went on to ramble about how he got to know a lot of humans. If Mawile believes 'em, then they're probably the real deal. The Lapras don't care much for large dragon types, though, so it'll take them a bit to find a boat to ride back on."

"Do they know how to restore his memories?" Panne pressed on. "How exactly do they know Vallion? When did they meet in the first place? Why do they know about humans in the first place?"

The water type put a little more effort into his shrug than usual. "I don't know any of that, Panne. Mawile just gave me the report and that's it. You'll have to talk with him when you get here, I suppose. If it makes it any better, you're obviously the first person I called. I still gotta get the rest of the Society up to speed. They're all running around looking for the dragon on every other continent we could think of. Try to be here by tomorrow, yeah?" He glanced over at something out of frame, sifting through papers on his desk. "How's Vallion been doing, anyway? You haven't sent any news my way, so I thought you must have been busy."

Panne glanced over at the Servine, who still eavesdropped from a good distance away. He tilted his head and just shot the same look back. "...Yeah, We've been busy. He hasn't regained any of memories back yet, which makes me think that that's not going to happen anytime soon. We might as well see what this Hydreigon's supposed to do for him before jumping to any conclusions. Aw man, if we gotta be there by tomorrow we basically gotta leave right now."

"Man, you guys suck at having vacations. Can't even go a few days without something bad happening." Floatzel raised an eyebrow, then caused the orb to fall out of focus as he leaned in closer. "Ah. That's like your old scarf, huh? Who'd Vallion get to tailor it? Seems like they did a pretty good job at replicating the real thing." Upon receiving a deep scowl from the Braixen, he just put his hands up in surrender. "Right, right. Not the time for it, I get it. Just get your butts over here and we'll figure this whole thing out."

"Mhm. I'll think about it." She twisted a knob on the gadget's side and watched the image fizzle out into a transparent blue. Her ears rang with the sound of the news even after the call had ended. For some reason, it was hard to believe that the wait was finally over. It was starting to seem like it would go on forever. Setting down the gadget, she wandered over to where she'd tossed her bag in the corner of the room.

"So...we're leaving, then?" Vallion finally said. "Just like that and we're gone?"

"Just like that," Panne assured him, emptying out the pack so that she could shove the gadget all the way down at the bottom. Everything still seemed so dreamy, like this was all just a bad nightmare that was about to come to an end at any second. A spell of dizziness overcame the Braixen as she went through the motions, her eyes glazing over all the random objects she was tossing around the table. Honestly, she thought that the Society might have been looking for an imaginary pokemon this whole time.

Panne turned around to see Vallion attempt to awkwardly equip his bag while he tangled his own his own vines together. Her eyes immediately refocused, and she moved to help him do all the straps before he tied himself into a knot. He shot her a nervous glance as she did her work. "I'm not really looking forward to going to Lively City."

"Why not?" the Braixen said, careful not to touch his scales too much in the process.

"Well this village is fine. It's small, and it's quiet, and everyone knows that I..." he paused as she finished up with his bag and let him move about once more. "I know that the Expedition Society at least knows about what happened, but what about the rest of the city? Not just that, but that place is probably huge, right? I was barely able to start getting used to here. I don't even really want to leave."

"Yeah, I know. I don't want to, either." Panne sat down at the side of the table and leaned on her elbow, her heart still thumping too quickly. She didn't even want to see any of her friends on the way out of the village, much less encounter any in the city. "We can take it all slow, too. You don't have to deal with everything all at once. Just as long as we make it to our room in the compound, everything should be fine."

Vallion sat opposite to her. He constantly shifted and adjusted the weight of the bag on his back, unsure of how to carry himself. "It still freaks me out that I'm supposed to recognize all this stuff. I feel like a total fraud half of the time, and the other half I feel like a dead-weight that's slowing everyone down because of how much I don't know."

"You're not slowing anyone down, and you're definitely not a fraud!" She would have hugged him right then if she wasn't so afraid of seeming too overbearing. "Trust me, you're doing absolutely fine just the way you are. I don't even know how much I'd freak out if was the one that lost my memories. Being cool and collected in such a crazy situation is definitely one of the most Vallion things I can think of. I still really appreciate that you seem to trust me in all this."

He glanced off into the distance with a small hum, disconnecting from the conversation entirely. Panne put her nose down and got back to work. In the process of scrounging up supplies, she realized how it might seem if the two of them just up and disappeared without telling anyone, and promptly scrounged up a scrap sheet of paper from one of the numerous drawers that dotted the house. After some brief deliberation, she jotted down her message in scratchy handwriting.

Hi Pops,
Call finally came in. The Hydreigon's coming right now, so we're kinda on a tight schedule immediately and have to leave right away. In any case, sorry for suddenly disappearing, and for taking the last of the berries in the house. I promise to bring a bunch of extra groceries next time we swing around to help replace them. Maybe I can get my hands on some more of that rock salt to help replenish everything we went through this last week. Val'll be better by then, so hopefully we'll finally be able to relax for once. Love you, Panne

There, that should do it. As long as it stopped him from worrying too much. The Braixen stared down at the paper, ready to set the quill down but was somehow unable to. The gears in her head turned with an urgency she couldn't quite place, and it definitely felt like if she left with the way things were now then there'd be a heavy burden on her mind later. Tapping the end of the quill to her lower lip, she tried to muster up something to tie the loose end that was bothering her.

P.S.
Could you tell everyone I'm sorry? Or that I'm at least planning on telling them I'm sorry? I've barely even spoken with anyone since Revelation Mountain. I didn't want anyone but me around Val, so I kind of started avoiding everyone at all costs. I'll make it up to them somehow. I just need to do this first. I can't afford not to.

There, now they were ready! With finality Panne slammed the quill back into place inside of the ink pot and turned towards the door. She beckoned for Vallion to follow her out and took a deep breath of the smell of home one last time. The Servine hesitated at first, but there wasn't much choice in the matter. They stepped out into the noon sun together and squinted against the light. They sped down the quiet paths of the village, eager to follow the road out of town and avoid the questioning gaze of anyone that might see. This was the easiest way. Farewells are just be too much for her to bear these days. Luckily enough, it seemed that most pokemon were still either recovering from their sicknesses or buckling down for the worsening weather.

The cold northern winds almost certainly carried the smell of rain, alright. Thin patches of cloud were blotting out the fringes of the blue sky with an ugly grey. Perhaps this was the perfect time to leave after all. Maybe if they moved quick enough, the mountains would protect them from the coming downpour. The only factor was how slow Vallion moved in his unfamiliarity, but ever since that agonizing trek back from Revelation Mountain, he seemed to have had gotten used to the swerving stride of his species.

There laid the road which connected this tiny town with the far eastern coast of the entire continent. The Braixen didn't dare look back for fear that a wave of sentimentality might suddenly strike. There wasn't any room for that kind of thinking right now. Just stay focused.

"Alright," Panne started to say, struggling to not speed ahead of the Servine in her introspection. "This'll pretty much be a two day journey, or a day and a half. Somewhere around there. You don't have to worry about how safe the journey is. This is a fairly well-traveled road since it one of the few that goes through the mountains. Worst thing we'd ever find is maybe a highwayman or two, but that's hardly a common thing around here, and I'd mop the floor with anyone stupid enough to come at us from the front. We probably won't find any trouble, though."

"It's not really the journey that scares me," Vallion muttered behind her.

"Hey, that's the spirit!" she chuckled outwardly, but bit her lip. "You know, the first time we tried to get through these mountains when we were kids, we didn't really follow the road too well and ended up taking just the stupidest path possible. What was supposed to be a short walk ended up being a confusing climb that lasted almost three days. It wasn't too bad, though. We were pretty damn good at our job by that point. And by our job I essentially mean getting strategically lost. Good thing we don't gotta do that anymore."

Bitter gales whistled through the treetops and crashed thousands of leaves together, covering the sound of their footsteps with a cold applause. Just to occupy herself in the emptiness, Panne went over their timescale over and over in her head, making sure they could account for any and all possible detours. She knew this route like the back of her hand, almost to the point that she could calculate its length down to tens of minutes just by their average walking speed. The only reason to obsess over any of this at all was to distract herself from...from everything else. If traveling the world had taught her anything, it was how to focus on the road one step at a time.

Within the trance of travel, Panne found herself moving at a quicker pace than usual, unconsciously desperate to make up some probably insignificant bit of distance before they had to stop for the day. Distance was now the only thing that kept Vallion from the chance to return to normal. Distance, and the time it took to cross it. She tried to relax if only just to let Vallion keep up, but slowing down felt so stressful that she inevitably sped up again.

There was that paranoia again, too. The urge to glance over her shoulder every few seconds, to peer into the surrounding woodlands to make sure nothing was there. It came accompanied by that ever-so-slight burning in the back of her throat that was just a nudge worse than what the pollen would have done to her. One symptom alone wouldn't have been any cause for alarm, but all together? There was no way their departure had gone unnoticed. Unaware if Vallion even knew they were being followed, Panne kept her eyes peeled for suspicious shadows beneath the canopy, refusing to utter a single word on the matter.

Apparently she didn't need to warn him after all. "It's following me," Vallion said before too much time passed. A shudder ran through him with a huff.

"I know." The Braixen made a detour to the side of the road and yanked a mossy, dislocated root from beneath a fern bush. She could get a few good blasts out of it. Maybe more, if she was lucky and it was dry. "Let the bastard come. It's not like it's going to do anything, anyway. Like I said, that thing's never going to lay a hand on you ever again."

"If we lead it into the city, is it going to try to hurt people there?" There was such genuine concern in his voice that it stuck in her chest like a needle. He wasn't wrong. She should have been worrying about that, too.

"Maybe," Panne muttered, unable to come up with a convincing enough lie. "Maybe it's too fixated on you to care. I really don't know. But where else are we going to go if not the city? We need to reach the rest of the Society to get you the help you need, and it'll be much safer inside Lively City than back at home. There are guards, they can handle anything that happens outside of our compound. We'll just have to see."

Bulbous patches of cloud continued to roll over the sun, their massive shadows slowly crawling over the forest. Without the sunbeams to bear down on them, the wind felt even colder. The foreboding in the air never quite got any worse as they walked, though it never got any better, either. It wasn't long before Panne started to feel more irritated than threatened. There was only so much horror you could wring out of a familiar country road during the day. She was more disturbed by the worsening weather than anything.

As time burned away and the valley fell farther behind them, the land seemed to grow just as restless as she felt. Sharp rises in the hills caused the road to swerve in every which way. It had been intentionally planned to follow the path of least resistance, but there were quite a few inevitable slopes that they had to trudge up nevertheless. This really wasn't so bad after all the hiking they had to do in the past week. Vallion did struggle a bit with some of the steeper parts, but never quite to the point that he needed her help-and knowing how he naturally acted, he'd never willingly let it get to that point anyway.

At the very least, the Spiritomb's ominous presence hadn't effected the countryside at all. More than a few wildlings appeared within viewing distance of the road. There was an especially popular cedar tree at the bottom of a gully that was covered with moss and colorful fungi-most of which were motionless grass types simply enjoying the breeze that filtered down. The peaceful hike she knew this place for was the same as ever. What few times Panne managed to space out along the way, it almost felt like things were back to the way they were before. The scarf on her wrist began to itch again.

Somewhere high up on the side of the mountain, Panne suddenly realized the only set of footsteps she could hear was her own. The Braixen spun around so fast that her bag whipped around and smacked her, fully expecting the Servine to be entirely gone from sight. He wasn't, though. The Servine was a short ways off the beaten path, his back turned as he stared down into the valley from a vantage point near the edge. She half-expected him to be gawking at a lumbering miasma of souls when she ran to his side, but it was just the normal view. Some innumerable amount of treetops dotting the land for such a vast distance that the colors of the far mountain range started to fade. The massive shadows of the clouds that had once darkened their whole sky were now just palm-sized blotches over the forests.

"It's so big..." Vallion muttered, his amber eyes glowing at the sight like the sun that was beginning to set behind them.

"You ain't seen nothing yet," the Braixen said, patting at her chest to ward off the panic that nearly set in. "There's so much more than just this. There's a desert in the middle of the Sand Continent where the dunes are thirty or forty feet tall, like a stormy ocean where the waves suddenly turned to sand. There's a floating island in Grass Continent that's hidden away inside the roiling mists of a bunch of waterfalls. There's tons of hidden shrines and temples from civilizations that came thousands of years before this one, where the crumbling stonework is held together by the plants and dirt that sneak through the cracks. This right here is only the beginning."

They must have stood there for a full minute or two. The weather was fair enough above the valley, but in the far distance Panne could finally see the storm front start to roll in from the north, bulging and dark. But that storm was surely too far behind them to matter. Panne instead shot a glance at Vallion, who smiled at the same sight that she had all those years ago when they first set off. The view was still nothing compared to him. She'd trade every memory of everywhere she's ever been just to see his face like this. There was nothing more beautiful in the whole world.

Panne reached over and tugged on his tiny hand, urging him to move on with their journey. He looked back at her, blinked like he'd been blinded by the sun, then gave her a short nod. They left the vista behind them.

As the day unwound, the angles of their shadows shifted out in front of them, elongated and distorted beneath their footsteps. Soon the whole mountainside was tinted orange, and the sky stretched out its colors across an abyssal gradient of blues and yellows. In the quiet, a low rumble slowly thumped its way over the land from so far away that there was nearly no echo at all. The Braixen turned back to the storm and saw an obscured flash within the billowing mass, and after a brief eternity the thunder finally reached her ears. The bulky storm had pushed its way over the last of the hills and unleashed a curved curtain of rain over the patch of forest it loomed over.

Sunrise Pass couldn't have been too much farther, but whether they reached it before the night settled in didn't really matter. The other side of the mountains was waiting for them tomorrow regardless. Panne started to scout the sides of the road for a decent campsite. It was easier said than done, since a majority of the path was flanked either by steep declines or jagged rock faces. When she finally did find somewhere relatively flat and open, it was up a short series of ledges and flush against a granite cliff. Vallion didn't object.

Digging into the dense, rocky ground was difficult up here, and with oxygen being as thin as it was, the Braixen started to wheeze as she clawed into the earth to make their fire pit. Vallion offered to help, but quickly retracted his words when his unaltered vines couldn't penetrate the packed soil. Maybe they could find some other grass type to catch him up to speed or something? It's not as if she had any idea how they hardened their vines or whatever.

With the pit more or less complete, Panne wandered off a short ways and came to an fallen log which looked like it had died a long, long time ago. The wood was perfectly dry from all the sun that had surely bore down on it over the last few weeks, so the bark stripped right off. Perfect fuel as far as she was concerned. In the process of passing the kindling into Vallion's waiting vines, she tossed away the mossy root she had planned to blow the Spiritomb up with. They returned to the pit with a modest enough bounty to last them until it got truly dark. Then Vallion watched as Panne effortlessly grew a perfect fire from nothing in the span of a few seconds. The wonderful heat washed over them and drove the mountainous chill back beyond its light.

There. Now it was finally time to run through that stash of berries and fruits that Panne had liberated from her father's kitchen. They weren't quite ripe anymore, and the flavors weren't exactly working together, but it was certainly a step up from hard biscuits and whatever else they found on the road. Even now, Vallion preferred the spicier berries over the others, which still confounded the Braixen to no end. All he would do is shrug and say that it was what he preferred.

When the food ran out, the only thing left to do was guide their stares away from one another in relative silence. The boom of thunder occasionally bounced around between the peaks, but otherwise there was nothing but the crackle of the fire to fill the space. It was now that Panne really started to miss the little conversations. They'd always just say anything that came to their mind out loud, whether it be nonsense thoughts or even just silly noises of exasperation. Now it felt like she had to watch every word that left her mouth. It was a constant drain on her mental energy, like she was eternally caught in some meeting with a disgruntled handful of important nobles. If only she could relax around him for even just a minute...

"How are we supposed to deal with the Spiritomb once we get there?"

It took several moments for Panne to even realize she was being spoken to, nearly believing that she had imagined Val's voice all along. "Oh. Um. I don't really know, exactly. There are ways we can trap it, sure, but getting it out into the open is the hard part. I'm certainly not going to let anyone use you as bait, but I don't know what else it could even be lured to." She sighed, eyeing the deepening shadows with a reserved malice. "Whatever. We can worry about that thing after we get you some help. I doubt it'll be able to do much once we're finally in the city."

"If it comes down to it, I wouldn't mind being used as bait. At least we know it would work." Vallion's expression flickered before it settled into that noble look of his-the kind where he's forced himself to be unnaturally calm. She always hated it because of how often it meant him rationalizing choices he shouldn't even be considering. The last time he looked like that was at the peak of Revelation Mountain with two Harmony Scarves in his vines.

"Well I'm not going to let you be bait! I don't care what you think, mister!" Panne crossed her arms, sticking her tongue out in his general direction. "We'll get rid of it somehow. Worst it can really do is make us all feel crappy while we're plotting on how to shove it into a rock or something."

His face didn't change. "If you say so."

"Hey! We totally will!" she shot back. "I know I can't do much but shoot fire and yell, but don't go underestimating the rest of the Society! We've got all sorts of ways to deal with threats like this. I bet Mawile would know a thing or two about trapping ghosts, or maybe Jirachi could build a wonder orb that would scramble it all up. We're not just cartographers. You gotta survive out there in the wilderness, too."

"Have you ever had to fight a ghost like this before, though?" he asked.

"I-" the Braixen turned herself away, sneering in the opposite direction. "I tend to...avoid things like that, so I guess not."

"Avoid?" Vallion leaned in as he repeated the word.

"Look! I don't deal with spirits and all that junk, okay? I prefer to keep that business far, far away from me at all times!

She could hear him snickering to himself. "You're afraid of ghosts?"

"W-well aren't you?!" Panne yelled as she whipped back around, her ears flattening backwards. "I mean seriously! Those things barely even operate on the same level as us! Like you probably wouldn't even know one was in a room with you until you looked down into the corner and saw something staring back at you! And you don't even see them most of the time, anyways! You just feel like something's horribly wrong and you don't know what and it's always-" The sound of the Servine's stifled chuckling only made her blood rush even more. "It's not funny!"

"I mean, it's a little funny." Vallion let the last of the laughter trickle out, clearing his throat once the moment was over. "You don't seem very scared of the Spiritomb, even though it's probably the worst offender of all those things."

Her ears flicked. She stared into the excited lapping of the fire, eager to let herself be hypnotized by its chaotic movements. "It pissed me off when it tried to hurt you. That doesn't make me not scared of it, but now there are plenty of more important emotions in the way of the fear. I'm way more scared of losing you than I am of a cloud of crazed souls."

In what seemed like the blink of an eye, the sun had set and a moonless night had taken its place. The fire burned through the last of its fuel, slowly withdrawing the radius of its light while the stars emerged above. Vallion had taken advantage of the last of the warmth and curled up into a ball right by the pit. It was impossible to tell if he had managed to fall asleep in time, or if he'd just closed his eyes so that his mind could wander back through the day. After a few minutes, a tiny snore emerged from his throat, and with it came a small wave of satisfaction for Panne. At least he'd manage to get some rest tonight. She, on the other hand, wouldn't dare try to sleep out in the open like this with that monster potentially skulking around. Some insomnia was a small price to pay for his safety.

It was certainly unnerving how patient the Spiritomb really seemed to be. Finally let loose on the world after some countless hundred years of imprisonment, and the first thing it does is just...wait. It's done a fair share of ominous looming thus far, but shouldn't it at least be as aggressive as being a ball of insane spirits would suggest? What was all this waiting for? It had to have some intelligence left if it knew what Vallion was and how to take what it wanted from him, but what it was doing now felt more like careful observation than anything. What if it was studying them? Was it even smart enough to do that?

Suddenly Panne didn't want the fire to burn out yet.

After some stretches, the Braixen made the short jaunt over to the fallen log she'd pried firewood from earlier. There wasn't much left in the way of bark that she could easily tear up, and there wasn't much light to search around for a new log either. Panne found a loose strip of the wood after a minute or two of searching, but even after digging her claws in and pulling with all her might, the piece hardly budged. On the second try, she placed a foot on the log and tried to gain some additional leverage. It didn't accomplish much other than making her fingers hurt. Why were inanimate objects cause the most annoying problems?

When brute strength wasn't the answer, a little more finesse was required to get the job done. Now she could just burn the whole damn log until it warped and cracked and gave way, but it was supposed to last her the whole night. Instead, Panne got into position for hopefully the last time and dug her nails into the wood. While she wasn't particularly stellar at it yet, she used her mental muscle as well as her physical ones and pulled at the strip with her telekinesis at the asme time. A pressure built up in her temples as she grasped at the notch. It seemed as though she'd explode away with a huge chunk of wood at any second, but the sensation in her head just kept on building and building. There was a flash of searing pain just behind her forehead, and suddenly she was on the ground.

Panne clasped the sides of her head to smother the pain. She did manage to pry that one piece off, admittedly, but at the cost of a ridiculous headache. What in the hell was that? Normally when she tried to overuse that power, it just gave out and made her feel dizzy for a few minutes. It's never built up and exploded like that before. Aw man, did she really hurt herself now of all times?

As the pain subsided, the first thing Panne did was look towards Vallion and make sure she hadn't accidentally woke him. He shifted in place a bit but otherwise seemed to still be asleep. A sigh fell from her mouth. She picked up the hard-earned chunk of firewood and admired the sheer size of what she'd splintered off the trunk. Just this piece alone was about the volume of all the bark she'd originally gathered-nearly the width and length of her whole leg. The pale inner flesh of the wood glowed in the firelight, the intricate texture of the break covered in tiny shadows. There definitely didn't seem to be any imperfections in the wood aside from the little edge she had been grabbing at. It would have taken an immense amount of strength to peel something like this off a log that solid. Hmm...

It went into the fire just the same, which gratefully began to burn away with a renewed vigor. She laid on her back next to the pit, gazing up at the night sky while her forehead continued to throb. At least there were plenty of stars to keep her company. She could already trace the lines of three of the constellations just at a glance, and as the heavens shifted more would surely come into view. Panne could scarcely comprehend the immensity of the sky, or how distant everything truly was from here. Making a map of the ground she stood on had been difficult enough. Jirachi was the only one of them who dared try to put the night and everything above to paper. Even just looking up, she could tell how difficult of a task that would be.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the realization that her throat was starting to burn. The Braixen shot up, but like always, there was nothing around to give cause to the symptom. Apparently she'd gotten a little to relaxed, huh? God forbid she have a moment's rest without having to worry about being shoved unconscious again. And so, just like before, she kept her tired eyes peeled for any sort of motion in the shadows, glaring at the hallucinations of her fatigue until they went away. The gentle rise and fall of Vallion's side kept her calm, and the flickering of the fire kept her focused. Another round of the waiting game had begun.