Now we know, the world Blake and Sylvia are trapped in is a prison of some kind. But what can we learn from this? Is there any way out of this prison? If there is, hopefully the two of them can find it, and soon!

Also, thank you to everyone who read my story "The Heir to the Dragon". I would appreciate if you continue to read and support it in the future! You can get there through my profile!

The Nomination Round of the Second Pokemon Academy Best Girl contest has ended! Now, the contest can begin in full! We have 19 competitors to choose from, and that's quite a step up! But there can be only one winner! But this process will take a bit of time. As I explained before, this will be a three-step process. First, each person can vote for five girls on the poll I'll post on my profile. Then, starting in September, the five girls who receive the most votes will make it from the Elimination Round to the main competition Semi-Finals. From there, you'll vote on your top three choices of the five listed. That will bring us into our Final Round, which will take place throughout all of October. Only 1 month. 1 vote. Which girl will win out of the three finalists? We'll have to find out! In the meantime, here are our current competitors!

Nominated: Alcea, Ayame, Carrie, Caelia, Cynthia, Dakota, Darla, Elaina, Elizabeth, Julia, Kate, Kitty, Lila, Maddi, Marion, Nikita, Olivia, Sango, Sylvia

KedharS: Well, Sylvia's a little smarter than your average YA protagonist so maybe they'll be fine.

Pokemonking0924: Well, the reason she prefers to have fun is because everything is so easy for her. Her level of reasoning is so far above the people around her it's hard for her to really get invested in anything.

Rowlets and Oshawotts: The nature of the Oracles will be made clear eventually, don't worry. Glad Darla and Lila made it in!

TurboDriver07: Exactly. Quite a horrible existence if you ask me. Blake, trapped there with nothing to do but listen to Sylvia go off on her theories.

JoshGamerV: Well, we'll have to find out, won't we?

Pokemon Academy: Beginning of Beginnings

Chapter 628

Blake waited for a while to let Sylvia's words sink in.

A prison? She'd called this strange place a prison. It was a reasonable conclusion to arrive at, he reasoned. After all, they were prisoners here. But he figured that Sylvia wasn't quite thinking in a metaphorical sense.

"So, wait, when you say that this place is a prison, do you mean that just because we're trapped here, or…"

"I mean that someone, something, maybe the universe itself or a god if there is one, created this world, for the purpose of imprisoning people," Sylvia said. "And not just any prison, either, a real solid one. No escape, not even through death. We're stuck here forever. And I can bet that a prison isn't exactly going to be easy to break out of."

Blake didn't like the way Sylvia's mind was going. She was already packing up her bag as she was talking, and it seemed like she was more focused on that than what she was saying. He realized that she had probably already figured this all out in her head and was just explaining it to him for his sake, which he found a little patronizing.

"Starting from the premise that this place is a prison, we can begin asking a few questions to try and arrive at a conclusion," Sylvia continued, slinging her backpack over her shoulder and walking down the dune.

Blake realized she was leaving and chased after her, following her in person while trying to follow her line of thought.

"First question. If this is a prison, what is it a prison for?" Sylvia asked. "This world has been very carefully designed. It grants immortality, but with none of the comforts that would make immortality worth living. An eternity in this emptiness would be worse than purgatory, it might even be a kind of hell."

Blake definitely could imagine that a place like this would be hell. Sylvia was absolutely right, there was nothing here. Empty boredom, an eternity in this endless expanse of desert would be absolutely miserable.

"Now, I'm assuming that you don't go to the trouble of constructing a prison of this level of complexity without a very good reason," Sylvia continued. "The only possibility of that would be if you were a god with a very sick sense of humor like me. And if there is a god I can't imagine its line of thinking would be at all comparable to mine, so let's eliminate that as a possibility. Which means this prison must serve a purpose. And I don't think it was to trap two teenagers, or that worm thing."

"Why not?" Blake asked. "I mean, that worm thing was pretty scary, maybe that's the reason that this place exists."

Sylvia turned back to him and shook her head, waving her finger back and forth. "Absolutely not, Blake, you're not thinking logically."

"…Well, the only thing we've seen in this prison that isn't a dead expanse of silver sand was that worm thing, so I think it's a pretty logical conclusion to draw," Blake said, scowling. "It sounds like you're the one just speculating stuff, maybe it really is just that simple."

"It's not!" Sylvia sang, skipping around the symbols she'd scrawled into the sand, holding her arms out with a flourish. "And here's why!"

Blake stared down at the symbols, even more incomprehensible now that they were at eye-level, and looked back to Sylvia with confusion.

"I don't understand," he confessed.

"Because you're not thinking logically about it," Sylvia said, giving him a wry smirk and tapping her finger against the side of her head.

Blake scowled. He didn't like Sylvia on her best of days, but he liked her even less when she talked down to him. It was becoming increasingly apparent that she was a LOT smarter than he was, and hearing her rub it in his face was really starting to piss him off.

"Think about it, Blake, what are we doing here?" Sylvia asked, throwing her arms out. "Why the heck are we in this horrible place?"

"Because we read from that tablet," Blake answered. Sylvia smiled, pointing her finger at his nose.

"Exactly!" She said. "And that's why this prison isn't just for that worm, because we're here! Let's assume, for a moment, that that tablet you read is the doorway to this place, and the symbols written on it are a one-way key. Anyone who reads the tablet gets transported into this nightmare. Now then, that leads us to our next line of thinking. If you create a prison for one thing, and that thing is already in the prison, why would you need a tablet that would continue to trap things in that prison? You wouldn't."

Blake's eyes widened and he rushed to catch up with her. That made a lot of sense.

"If this prison really was created for that worm, then whoever made it could have just plopped the worm right in and called it a day. But they didn't. They left behind that tablet, a gate to the prison. Which means that this isn't just a holding cell for a particularly angry leech, it must be serving an active purpose, one that the tablet facilitates by trapping anyone who reads it," Sylvia explained. "Simply by that tablet existing, this level of reasoning is possible for Sylvia Driscoll."

That last line sounded like a quote of some kind, but Blake didn't want to call her on it. He shut her mouth and let her continue talking. She had already turned her attention away from him, stroking her chin and continuing her trek through the desert.

"Now, we know that tablet serves the purpose of bringing anyone who reads it into this place," Sylvia reasoned. "And we know that not everyone can read it. I couldn't, but you could. With those two details in mind, what do we now understand about the tablet, Blake? There's a very obvious conclusion we can draw from this."

She turned to look expectantly at him, Blake flinching in surprise. Like when his teachers were droning on in class, he assumed this was one of those times when Sylvia just wanted to show off how smart she was, an active participation wasn't a factor. But the look in her eye told him that there was some amount of audience participation in this little diatribe of hers.

Blake squinted, thinking hard about what Sylvia had just said. Anyone who reads the tablet becomes trapped in this prison, and only certain people can read it. A conclusion that could be drawn from those two things?

"Well… I guess that the tablet sucks in only the people who are able to read it?" Blake reasoned out. Somehow, this had become a very bizarre classroom, and he was looking for Sylvia's approval that he'd gotten the answer right.

"Half-right," Sylvia nodded. "I suppose that was the most to be expected. You're exactly correct that we can assume that the tablet sucks in only the people who are able to read it, but that was obvious. The real conclusion we can then reach is the why behind that!"

Blake didn't quite understand. He looked at Sylvia expectantly, and Sylvia looked back at him, her lips curling up into a smirk.

"Why do you think you were the one who could read the tablet and not me?" Sylvia asked. "That's a very simple question we haven't spent any time thinking about, isn't it?"

"Huh?" Blake looked at her, confused. Sylvia sighed, rubbing her forehead, and gestured him to catch up. He walked over to her, thinking about what she'd said. She was right, there had to be a reason that he was able to read the tablet and she wasn't. "So what you're saying is that there's something about me that allowed me to read the tablet, and the tablet is designed to imprison anyone who can read from it, so…"

"So," Sylvia said, snapping her fingers and pointing at Blake, "with this level of reasoning it becomes possible to assume that there is a special trait inherent to you, whoever designed this prison did so with the intention that it would trap people who possess that trait, whatever it may be! This isn't just a prison, Blake, and we didn't stumble onto it by accident! This is your prison, because there's something about you that the universe decided was just no good, and that you needed to be trapped in here for an eternity!"

Blake's jaw dropped. That… that wasn't possible! And it certainly wasn't fair! What did he do?! He hadn't done anything, certainly not something that warranted being trapped in a hellhole like this, doomed to wander around in the desert for eternity!

"Oh, Blake, you bad, bad boy," Sylvia sighed, swooning in an exaggerated fashion as she pressed the back of her hand against her forehead. "You're such a naughty one, what have you done to deserve being sealed away like this? You're such an awful villain, it must have been terrible!"

"No!" Blake shouted defensively, pissed off by Sylvia's words even though he knew she was goading her. "You are! You're the villain!"

"Well that magic tablet with the creepy writing says otherwise, Mr. Naughty," Sylvia teased, sticking her tongue out. Blake was about to snap back at her when her expression suddenly turned serious. The jarring way her moods seemed to switch was really throwing him off. "But you are right, it is odd that this prison would trap you here. Joking aside, I can't really think of anything that would warrant your imprisonment…"

She mused for a while, walking through the sand as Blake trudged after her, the awkward silence hanging over the pair like a cloud. Blake may have disliked annoying Sylvia, but stoic and contemplative Sylvia was a different kind of worrying. Walking beside her and looking at her lowered head and the focused look in her eyes, he could practically see her thinking in front of him, and it was rather astounding. She wasn't saying a word, she wasn't doing anything, really, and it still felt like he could see her genius at work.

"We need to consider our differences," Sylvia suddenly said, glancing his way with a look in her eye so sharp he stumbled back feeling like he'd been stabbed. Blake gasped for air, confused, and more than a little worried.

"What, uh… what do you mean by that?" Blake asked.

Sylvia sighed. "What I mean is that right now, we don't have nearly enough info to determine why it is you were compelled to read that tablet and why you ended up trapped here. There's got to be a reason for it, it wasn't just coincidence. As much as it annoys me, this universe, or rather, our universe, or, well, both of them, is too well-designed for it to be coincidental. No, there's a methodology here, an intent behind your imprisonment, and until we figure out what that reason is, we won't be able to figure out how to get back."

"So you think we need to consider our differences?" Blake could kind of follow what she was thinking. "Yeah, there's definitely a reason why I was able to read it and you weren't, you're right. Since we only have ourselves to go off of…"

"Then we'll use me as a control group, and you as the variable," Sylvia finished, her eyes shining. "Exactly what I was thinking! Now, first, let's eliminate the obvious." Sylvia stopped walking and sat down, digging into her back and taking out her notebook. "Sex. You have a penis. I don't. It could be possible that this is a prison designed for men. The lack of pleasurable company would certainly play to that theory."

"It's not gonna be that!" Blake exclaimed, his face lighting up.

"No, I think not," Sylvia agreed. "But it does bring me to an interesting theory. Blake, when was the last time you achieved release?"

Blake's jaw hit the sand.

"B-By that… d-do you mean…"

"Mastur-"

"THAT IS NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS!" Blake exclaimed.

Sylvia rolled her eyes. "My point is, I'm assuming, judging by my own lack of… urges, that this prison is also affecting our desire to procreate. In the time you've been here, have you ever felt the compulsion to-"

"NO!" Blake shouted, his face bright red.

Sylvia blinked, and stared suspiciously at him.

"I'm not trying to embarrass you, Blake. This is vital data to help us understand everything we can about this world. Humans operate on three primal functions, hunger, sleep, and lust. We've felt no urge for the first two, it stands to reason that the third would be suppressed as well, wouldn't you agree?" Sylvia reasoned. "I understand this is a sensitive topic, but if you're lying just because you're embarrassed that could severely hamper our ability to return home. This isn't the time for being shy, this is the time to be thinking about anything that could possibly be relevant, do you understand? If sleep and hunger are restrained but not lust, then it could be possible that this is-"

"NO, I HAVEN'T FELT ANY URGE TO DO ANYTHING LIKE THAT!" Blake screamed.

Sylvia stared evenly at him. "…Well, you don't have to shout," she dryly replied, writing something else down in her notebook.

Blake wanted to kill her. He didn't want to kill her, but he wanted to kill her.

"So, that means all our natural, primal urges really are being restrained," Sylvia nodded in contemplation. "Now, let's get back to our list of comparisons. Next up is height. By my estimation, you're approximately 5'7". My height is 5'5". So, in theory, this could be a prison for anyone taller than 5'5", right?"

"Somehow I don't think that's it," Blake said, rolling his eyes.

"Neither do I, but it's a place to start," Sylvia said, twirling her pen in her hands. "Once you've eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. Let me ask you, Blake, how can you prove to me that the devil isn't real?"

Blake paused. "Wait, what?"

"It's a line of reasoning from a certain series I like," Sylvia smiled. "How can you prove to me that the devil isn't real? Assuming I came to you and said 'the devil is real' how would you disprove my hypothesis?"

"I wouldn't, I'd tell you 'the devil is real, go look in the mirror'," Blake dryly replied.

"Very funny. But you can't," Sylvia explained. "For you to declare that the devil isn't real, you must first disprove every possible place that the devil could be hiding. Can you do that? You can't. It's devil's proof. At the same time, no one would ever accept the absence of evidence as evidence in a debate of course, but then, this isn't a debate, this is reasoning. We can't say that this prison isn't a prison for anyone taller than 5'5", so until we can eliminate all other options and definitively state that it IS, we must assume that height is just as likely a criteria as any other."

"Okay, but I'm not sure how that's going to help us get out," Blake replied.

"It probably won't. We'll just have to figure out what the most likely difference is," Sylvia explained. "Rather than wandering aimlessly, we should be wandering with some purpose. Next, hair color. You have brown hair, mine is black."

"Wait, but you're a-"

"You think this is my natural hair? Oh, Blake, I thought you knew hair, silly goose," Sylvia purred, giving him a flirty smirk.

Blake rolled his eyes. He HAD noticed that her hair was blonde, he was just being polite.

"Eye color as well. Your eyes are brown, mine are black." She winked at him. "Color contacts."

"Is any part of you real, then?" Blake scoffed.

"Just my boobs. Speaking of which, that brings me to another potential difference between the two of us!"

"I'm pretty sure boobs fall under that 'sex' possibility you already listed," Blake noted.

"That's not what I'm talking about," Sylvia said, shaking her head. She sighed. "Okay, this is probably going to make you want to punch me, but I still have to ask. Blake, how far have you gotten with Ayame Toujou? Have the two of you already had sex?"

Blake was surprised, Sylvia really was a genius. He DID want to punch her.

"Sylvia…" He warned her.

"We need to explore all the possibilities!" Sylvia reminded him. "It's entirely possible that this dimension is a prison for sexual deviants, and that's why you were sealed away here and I wasn't. So answer the question, have you had sex already or not?"

"It's not going to be a prison for-!" Blake paused. Wait, what did she just say? "Wait, Sylvia, are you saying you think that the reason I could read the tablet and you couldn't is because you think that I've already had sex?"

"It's certainly a possibility," Sylvia said, staring up at him.

"Wait, so you're telling me that you've never had sex with anyone?" If the answer to that question was yes, Blake had to question everything he knew.

"That is correct," Sylvia confirmed with a nod.

Well, that was a bombshell he hadn't been expecting her to drop so suddenly. His brain was having trouble processing what he'd just heard.

"Wait, but… but you're always… you know, and the… and the touching, it's always…" Blake fumbled for words, trying to figure out how someone as sexually aggressive as Sylvia was actually telling him directly that she was a virgin.

Sylvia smirked. "My, quite the judgmental one, aren't you?"

"That-that's not… I mean, I didn't, I just-!" Blake shut his mouth and lowered his head. There really wasn't anything he could say in response to that, so he just let her have her victory while he contemplated what a piece of shit he had inadvertently come across as.

…Wait, no, that was a totally valid conclusion to arrive at! He wasn't a bad person for assuming she'd had sex already, it wasn't like he thought LESS of her for it!

…He thought less of her for a lot of other things, but never because he thought that she'd had sex before!

"Look, Sylvia, that's not what I meant," Blake protested, suddenly finding himself in the uncomfortable position of having to defend his morality to Sylvia Driscoll of all people. "I don't care one way or another about stuff like that, okay?!"

"I know, that's what makes it so much fun to tease you," Sylvia smirked, Blake shooting daggers at her in frustration. "Anyway, moving on, you still have a question to answer, don't think you're getting out of this that easily."

Blake sighed in resignation. He didn't want to say, because he felt like he'd be violating Aya's privacy and a big part of their relationship if he did. But at the same time, if he didn't tell her, well… he didn't know if this would help him get home, but it might. And besides, it wasn't like Sylvia could exactly shame her about it.

"…No, we've never… done that," Blake said. "I haven't with Aya, or anyone else."

"I see, so we're both still virgins, that one's out, then," Sylvia said, tapping the end of her pen against her chin. "…Okay, next is-"

"Sylvia," Blake snapped, Sylvia looking up from her notebook to glance at him.

"Yeah, what?" Sylvia asked, annoyed that she'd been distracted from her thinking.

"You can't tell anybody what I just told you," he pleaded. "Please, you can't."

Sylvia smiled at him. "Come on, Blake, we've been over this already," she assured him, her voice soft and gentle in a way that just felt wrong. "You can trust me. I promise, I have no intention of telling anyone about you and Aya. I swear."

Before, Blake would never have believed her. But remembering what she had told him, even if he had no idea how she could have learned it, he had to admit that he did trust her. He sighed and nodded his head.

"Sorry, just… old habits are hard to break," he said.

Sylvia nodded, "I know, I know. Don't worry about it. Now, let's come up with more differences!"

Well, this is quite a list they're writing up. Who knew that this strange new world they've arrived in, this world that seems to operate beyond the laws of physics, would in truth be spending so much time on theorization? Well, that's what happens when you get trapped with someone like Sylvia Driscoll.