Satori in Kalos
Chapter 9
Voltage 1
"Don't move," said the member of Team Flare as he raised his rifle. Satori decided that she would take this advice, and was not moving. She wasn't powerless, but there was nothing she could do that was faster than the pull of a trigger. And she didn't dare screw with his mind in case he pulled that trigger on accident.
After a few seconds the man's rifle drifted towards Tierno, who was likewise not moving. Satori wondered if he registered as more of a threat than she did, though the team member didn't seem to make any conscious decision about it. They stood like this for a moment until more Team Flare members emerged from the tunnel, totting rifles.
"Get the captain," one of them said. Was this supposed to happen?
Satori took stock of the situation. She was in a collapsed tunnel in a pile of dirt that stretched in only one direction. She couldn't see very far into the darkness though, and her roster of Pokeballs was out of reach. Stuck in the dirt. But her knife was attached at her hip.
Still, she wouldn't dare make a move. She could scan everyone's minds nearby without being invasive or having them notice though. Most of them didn't seem to know what was going on, but all took comfort in knowing that their superior would handle it and all they had to do was stand here and keep guard.
After about ten minutes at a standstill, Satori could see a light come from within the tunnel. As it got closer, Satori could make out the person holding the light. She had long, sky-blue hair and instead of an automatic weapon held a sword at her hip.
"Who the hell are these people?" She asked one of the others.
"They just fell through the ceiling, captain."
"That's dumb." Aww crap, is this what the boss told me to keep an eye out for? What the hell is he thinking? The woman turned back to Satori. "Stand up you two, hands on your head."
Satori carefully brought herself to her feet and put her hands on her head. She looked down at Tierno, who was struggling to do the same. He was extremely scared and his fear drowned out most of the others' thoughts.
"Don't worry, Tierno." Satori said softly. "We'll be fine, just do what she says." The woman didn't seem to object to Satori speaking. Tierno nodded, and brought himself to his feet next to Satori.
The woman gestured towards Satori. "Take her weapon," she said. Satori didn't change her expression, but was sad to lose one of her few advantages as a grunt took her knife off her. "Collect their belongings," the woman continued.
"Hey, wait! Those are my—" Satori said quickly but was interrupted.
"Don't worry. We're not thugs, we're not going to steal your pokemon. But we can't let you have access to them, you understand." The woman stopped speaking for a moment as she waited for her subordinates to collect the items. Afterwords, she faced Satori and Tierno squarely. "You two are damn unlucky. My name is Hinanawi Tenshi. Yours?"
"Satori."
"T-Tierno..."
"Nice to meet you. Now please follow me. If you try anything, my men will shoot you in the head." Well, the fat one at least.
And so Satori had no choice but to follow the woman further into the tunnel, hands on her head. She was waiting for an opportunity to get away, but they had her pokemon. Even though there were a couple of times where her captors' attention had wavered—for she was completely aware—there was no way she could grab her roster and escape. Let alone help Tierno to escape. It was impossible.
"Where are you taking us?" Satori asked. She did her best not to let her voice quiver, but she was afraid.
"The power plant," Tenshi replied. "You don't have to worry, we have no intention of hurting you unless you force our hand. The boss said we gotta stop being so violent." For some god forsaken reason. The hell are you so special for anyways?
Satori didn't say anything else as Tenshi led her through the tunnel. It was small and dark, the only light available from the flashlights everyone had and the odd lantern hanging on the wall at irregular intervals. It was a bit strange though, the cave was well-made. It must have taken several days or weeks to dig it out.
And yet, Tenshi's thoughts seemed to imply that they knew Satori would be here. But that was impossible. She and Tierno just happened to pick the spot to camp right above the tunnel? No way.
Something strange was going on, but Satori couldn't figure out what. Her captors' thoughts were no help, they didn't know much more than she did.
After a long walk, they reached an area of mangled metal. It had been cleared away from the ground, but it was ripped from the walls with little care. The ground beneath Satori's feet turned from dirt to metal as she stepped into the power plant. She looked behind her to see a hole had been ripped in the wall of the plant to make way for the tunnel.
Their footsteps echoed throughout the metal corridor. Tenshi directed them where to walk, and they zig-zagged through open hallways and rooms until they finally emerged in a massive, open area. In the center of the room was a massive pillar with huge cables running down it making a loud buzzing sound. There were catwalks suspended in the air leading to the central column, and on the ground were numerous cables running in every direction.
"This way," Tenshi said and pointed to a ladder. They went up and once on the catwalk, they were led around away from the central tower to a door that left the massive room. A few rooms and hallways later and Satori found herself being shoved into the last one before Tierno joined her, and the door shut closed. A click sounded as the door locked, trapping Satori and Tierno.
They weren't alone though. Satori turned around to see about ten people all staring at her. They looked worn and tired.
"W-Who are you guys?" One of the men asked. He was an older man and wore a gray uniform. Actually, they all wore the same, gray uniform.
"I'm Satori. This is Tierno. Team Flare, er, captured us."
"But what are you doing here? In the power plant?"
Satori recalled her bout of really bad luck, and explained the situation. The people there, after hearing Satori's story, explained theirs. They were power plant workers going about their daily lives when Team Flare rushed in and took them all captive. They'd been locked in the power plant's break room for weeks.
The news wasn't terrible though, apparently every day a captive or two was sent free. Plus they were given food and water and a couple of other amenities. Satori noticed they were considerably more relaxed than she expected for hostages. Team Flare must have been pretty good at controlling panic.
She couldn't help herself though, she just had to look for a way to escape. These people may have been content to sit and wait to be rescued, but Satori wasn't going to trust Team Flare. Not by any means.
The room they were stuck in was a large room with a few round tables and couches scattered about. On one of the tables was a large open crate with a lot of canned food spilling out. There was a can opener too. As Satori explored, she found there were actually a few more rooms. There was a small kitchen and an adjacent room with a few beds.
What was really surprising though was that Satori found a couple of items she could use as weapons. There were kitchen knives (although somewhat dull), screwdrivers, and some other miscellaneous sharp objects. Nothing that could go toe-to-toe with an assault rifle, but potential weaponry nonetheless.
As for escape routes, the obvious exit was the door to the break room. It was locked, of course, and probably guarded. Besides that, there was an intake vent on the floor and an outtake vent on the ceiling for the air conditioner. It was industrial-sized, large enough for Satori to crawl through. But Satori couldn't help but think something that was a staple of bad television dramas was actually possible let alone a good idea.
Besides the air vents and the front door, the only method Satori could think of next would be prying the floorboards up, punching through the metal wall or digging into the ceiling. None of those sounded even remotely plausible as solutions, and Satori stopped thinking when she felt she was scraping the bottom of the barrel for ideas. There was a nagging feeling that there was some better plan, but she couldn't put her finger on it.
Well, couldn't hurt to ask about the vent idea, Satori reasoned. She asked one of the workers, but he just shrugged.
"Prying the grate off would be easy enough, it's just four screws. But it wouldn't do you any good, there's lots of spinning fans that make it impassable."
"Can the fans be stopped?" Satori asked. The man shook his head, but Satori heard a stray little thought and acted on it. "Isn't there some sort of automatic shutoff in case of an emergency, or something?" Satori asked.
The man's eyes widened a little bit. "Yeah, actually. If smoke is detected inside the vents then they'll shutoff in case of a fire. But there's no point in trying, Team Flare is letting us go. Slowly, but they are. It's not worth it."
"Oh. Thanks anyways," Satori said, and went to go back to Tierno. She sat down next to him at one of the tables. He was trying to attach a can to the can opener. Satori saw the can read "sliced peaches." Tierno seemed to have some difficulty at first, but eventually started cranking open the can.
"Hi, Satori." He said nervously. His regular demeanor had broken somewhat at the situation they were in. "How can you stay so calm?"
Satori sat down next to him. "Focusing on other things," she said. "Mostly a way to escape, but I've just realized I'm starving."
Tierno laughed. "Thanks," he said before sliding over a few cans. "There's a pretty wide selection."
Satori looked over at a few cans. There was canned fruit, canned vegetables, and canned soup. Not exactly top of the line, but enough to live off of. "I'll cook us something," Satori said. Tierno nodded and stuck a plastic fork into his can of peaches and started eating. Satori grabbed a few cans of chicken noodle soup and went to the kitchen area.
She found a pot and some bowls. She opened the cans and poured a few into the pot to start cooking up something to eat. There was also running water, which was helpful. She thought again how strange it was that Team Flare let the hostages have all this, but at the same time she couldn't think of how it would be actually helpful for escaping.
Satori leaned against the counter top while she waited for the soup to cook. One of the other hostages came into the kitchen while she was waiting and gave a faint wave, but otherwise didn't say anything. Satori ignored him to the best of her abilities and focused on the food, but her ability didn't really afford her that luxury.
The soup looked to be about done before the man left, so Satori tasted it. A bit bland, but Satori couldn't find any salt so it would have to do. There was quite a bit so she poured the soup into three bowls and took them back out towards Tierno.
"Here." Satori said and placed a bowl down in front of him. He thanked her and started eating with one of the many plastic spoons that were lying around. Satori sat down and joined him, pulling her bandana down around her neck so she could eat.
Satori spoke in a whisper. "So here's what I'm thinking," Satori said. "We start a small fire in the intake vent, it'll shut off the fans. Then I can crawl through and try to escape. Now, I know what you're thinking, it sounds cliché. But there's—"
"But aren't they letting us go?" Tierno asked. "Plus, we're children. Won't we be the next to be released? Not to sound selfish or anything."
"I don't think so," Satori said in a hushed voice. She didn't want to say the real reason she thought they wouldn't be let go. Tenshi seemed to know of her, to be expecting her. If they were targeting Satori for some reason, well, they wouldn't just let her go with the other hostages.
Tierno was a bit caught up in Satori's actions, which she didn't stop since it was useful to her. Tierno helped her look around for something she could use to start a fire. It wasn't terribly difficult—there was a stove in the kitchen. There was a feeling of too easy that ran through Satori's mind, but she wasn't going to complain.
She grabbed the screwdriver she found earlier and made her way to the intake vent. A couple people watched her, but none moved to assist. In fact they all stepped back a little bit to distance themselves from her. The screwdriver was the wrong size, and the screws were stuck pretty hard. It must have been years since they were first spun into place.
It took over forty minutes for Satori to remove each of the screws around the grate. She got exceedingly frustrated as time went on, but she made steady enough progress that she didn't give up. As the last screw came out, Satori took the screwdriver and jammed it between the wall and the grate. She wiggled the screwdriver back and fourth until the grate separated from the wall, and Satori pulled it off.
She took a short break before looking for something to burn. There was a bookshelf in the main area that would make good kindling. Satori grabbed the biggest one she could find, a dictionary, and took it to the kitchen. As far as the burning of books was concerned, Satori considered dictionaries "acceptable targets." She twisted the dial on the stove to turn on the flame when Tierno approached her.
"Satori, are you really gunna..." he trailed off. Satori nodded, and stuck the dictionary into the fire. It took awhile for the flames to start eating into the pages, but after a quick minute it lit on fire of its own accord. Satori fast-walked to the air vent and stuck the dictionary inside to let it burn itself out. The smoke was pulled into the vent.
It wasn't clear how long it was supposed to take, and Satori nervously tapped her fingers against her arm as she waited. But the dictionary didn't even finish burning when the sound of a factory alarm buzzed through the facility. It wasn't actually sounding in the breakroom, but it was still audible. The alarm echoed throughout the vent, and Satori took that as her cue to get going.
She slipped the screwdriver into her pocket and got on her hands and knees. With a deep breath, she crawled into the vent. A couple of feet into it however, it became clear there were no lights. The vent turned a corner and the light from the break room was gone completely.
The alarm got louder the more she progressed, and after a minute Satori ran into the first fan. She would have run right into it if it wasn't for a red blinking light in the center. There was barely enough room for Satori to navigate around it, but the blades were stopped so she could take her time. Still, it wasn't something she could do quickly.
Figures something goes wrong, came a stray thought. Satori didn't really need to actually see people to read their minds, if that were true it would be trivial to turn her ability off. She couldn't pinpoint the thought's location, but it must have been close by. Some random Team Flare member patrolling.
Satori's little journey was mostly her bumping around, and it was hard to think with the alarm buzzing in her ear. Hopefully it masked any noise she happened to be making. When it ceased, she was relieved for a second. Then the realization hit her that this was a bad sign, and Satori hurried her pace.
Her heart dropped when she heard the hum of the fans start back up and felt the air rush past her as the system came back online. And a minute later, she came across another fan that was spinning at top speed.
She was trapped.
And worse, there were no junctions, no grates, no anything. There was a long stretch surrounded on either side by two fans that were now impassable. But instead of thinking of solutions, all Satori did was succumb to the fear. She immediately jumped to the worst-case scenario where she died of starvation up in the vents, lost and forgotten.
Satori tried to shake the bad thoughts away and focus her mind, but her heart was beating rapidly. It was hard to think clearly. What she thought was that if she could start another fire, they would shut off again. All she had on her though was her clothes, and she didn't know if it was possible to start a fire with just that.
No, there was something else. Satori could see the axle the fan was spinning on from the red lights near the fan. It stuck out a little bit, and Satori thought that she might be able to use that. If she could use the friction from that spinning axle to start another fire, she could stop the fans again. She undid her bandana.
It was hard to approach the spinning axle without getting her hands caught in the fan, which would be almost certain dismemberment. She folded the bandana a bit and slowly put it close to the axle. She inched it slowly, but had to stop when her hands started shaking. She forced herself to calm down and try again.
Satori managed to get the cloth exactly where she wanted it, but her hand was dangerously close to the spinning blades of the fan. She pressed the cloth against the spinning axle. She held it there for a minute, but nothing seemed to be happening. Getting impatient, Satori tried to push a little harder.
The edge of the cloth got caught up in the blade of the fan, and ripped the bandana out from Satori's hand. On reflex she pulled her hand away as the fan ate the bandana, tearing it to shreds and blowing it further down the vent. It was not on fire.
Back to square one.
"Dammit," Satori cursed under her breath. She looked around the fan, looking for anything at all she could use. She could try getting another part of her clothing to catch on fire, but she wasn't sure it would be any more effective. And there was only a finite amount of chances she would have on that front.
Satori couldn't help but think that these fans must have some sort of manual shutoff. They had to. What if something like this exact situation happened? Wasn't it plausible a maintenance worker would be crawling around just like Satori was and could get trapped?
But there was hardly any light besides the blinking red light on the base of the fan. Satori's eyes adjusted to the darkness by now, but she couldn't find anything that looked like it would turn the fan off. No switches, no levers, nothing. If there was such a switch it would be by the light, but there was nothing.
Dejected, Satori turned to her side to lay down more comfortably. When she turned though, something poked her from inside her pockets. Satori dug through her pocket and pulled out the screwdriver. She had completely forgotten about it.
With renewed vigor, Satori re-examined the fan looking for screws. If she could somehow unscrew the fan, even loosen it a tiny bit, its speed might be enough to break itself. Satori felt around the non-moving bit of the fan, looking for any screws. She could feel the air rush by her hand from the fan's rotating blades.
Satori felt a bump, the telltale feel of a screw. She couldn't help but start laughing and she had to pull her hand away from the fan. After she calmed herself, she brought the screwdriver up to start undoing the fan.
It was a hexagonal screw.
The despair hit her like a train. It was one thing to not have a plan, it was another to have your only viable plan completely crushed and decimated by something so stupid as the wrong type of screw. There wasn't a damn thing she could do to this fan that would stop it. Her best bet was probably to just strip down naked and shove all her clothes into it in the vain hope that it would twist around the fan and slow it somehow.
Satori closed her eyes. She tried to calm herself down, quiet her thoughts and just listen to the rhythm of the fan. Its hum was constant but not comforting, an ever-present reminder of what stood in her way. But she had to calm herself, so she breathed deeply and quelled her thoughts.
And then she heard something. Thoughts, but not hers. That person had walked by again.
Jesus, my shift lasts another four hours?
Satori's ability had a pretty good radius, about thirty feet or so. This usually was a major inconvenience since she heard every thought in that radius, but right now it was the only option left to her. Her ability was by no means line-of-sight, if so it would be trivial to turn it off. No, the landscape of thoughts was not so trivial, and she was not so lucky.
Except for maybe right this moment.
The guard's thoughts were wandering wildly, and Satori did her best to get a solid picture of this man. From his thoughts she concluded he was a Team Flare member, fully armed. As for his fears, his main fear was disappointing his boss. Tenshi. He also had some other common fears but Satori didn't see how she could use any of them until she heard a certain gem from his stream of thought:
God, I don't know dick about power plants. I can't believe that Sam just came in here and turned the ventilation off and on again. How is that supposed to fix anything?
Finally, something Satori could use. She latched onto that fear of his, and made sure it stayed at the forefront of his mind.
I hope that nothing explodes. Just my luck, something explodes right in my face and I die. Isn't cooling a place like this really important? I wonder if I should bring it up to Tenshi. But the last thing I want is to bug her...
Satori thought a moment about what to do. She was successfully keeping him focused on the potentially broken ventilation, but she needed something more. His other concerns were keeping him rooted in place rather than taking any action. She needed to push him over.
So she would give it to him. After backing away from the fan a little bit, Satori shifted her weight to one side of the air vent. With all of her strength she threw herself towards the other side, ramming into the metal wall.
BOO BOOM BOOMM
The entire vent shook.
FUCK what the hell was THAT?
Satori smirked as the man's fear grew, even though her sides hurt from the impact. But she didn't let up, and slammed her body into the vent again making an inordinate amount of noise. She didn't try to be too obvious that it was a person in the vent, she tried to make it rhythmic so it sounded like a mechanical part was misaligned or something.
She breathed a sigh of relief when the Team Flare grunt decided to call in the disturbance. Satori didn't let up on making the noise, even when she felt the minds of a couple more people arrive. Through their thoughts she could piece together the conversation they were having. Most people thought the exact words they were speaking as they spoke them, and other people listening had the habit of thinking the words that were just spoken. It was harmonizing, in a way. Although from Satori's long history of eavesdropping, she's noticed the amount of misunderstandings that occurred was staggeringly large.
"What the hell is the matter?" The person "speaking" was Tenshi, Satori guessed. The thought pattern was familiar. Satori rammed herself into the vent again to make the noise.
"That. Did you hear that? That started happening minutes after the vents were started back up again."
Tenshi's thoughts turned to a jumble of frustration and curses. Satori rocked the vent again for good measure.
"Alright, dammit, there's no avoiding it. Tell that bastard to turn off the vents and fix it for real."
Satori smiled, but didn't forget to keep up the thumping so it wasn't obvious she was listening. A minute or two later, the constant hum of the fan ceased suddenly and the blades spun to a stop. Satori similarly stopped the noise she was making, and rubbed her sides. The repeated slams hurt, but not too badly. No worse than having her arm bitten into.
As soon as the blades of the fan stopped spinning, Satori rushed to crawl through the opening. If she crawled too quickly it would get loud—the vents echoed quite a bit—but she could go pretty fast while keeping quiet. The ducts seemed to be build sturdily, not surprisingly. This was a power plant, not some run-of-the-mill store or bank.
It wasn't long before Satori came to a junction in the vents. They split left and right, although from the placement of fans Satori guessed that the left passageway led to another grate while the right led further into the air conditioning system. She didn't know what the best option would be, but she really didn't want to get trapped again so she decided to turn left.
The vent continued on for a little bit and made a few right angles that were really hard to maneuver around. The vent wasn't all that large, and the only reason Satori could manage this was due to her petite frame. And so Satori continued her struggle towards freedom.
She realized it before it happened, but was too slow to do anything about it. A little ahead of Satori's position, a bright light suddenly shown from the right side of the vent. Satori froze. A hand emerged from the light holding a flashlight, and shown it in Satori's direction. She had to avert her eyes from the light for a moment before looking back, where she saw the face of Tenshi.
"HA!" she cried. "Nice try, little Satori."
"Damn."
"If you want to beat me, you're going to have to do better than that. Now get out of there or we're going to shoot you."
Satori had no choice but to reluctantly crawl out of the vent and back onto the floor of the power plant. She pulled herself to her feet as Tenshi's men pointed rifles. Not directly at her though, more at her feet. Once she stood up, she brushed herself off a bit. She was covered in dirt and grime. She didn't realize it while crawling through, but her hands were nearly black.
"You look like hell," Tenshi commented. "How did you expect that to work?"
At Tenshi's words, Satori also realized her clothes were nearly torn to shreds. She couldn't recall how that happened. Were there screws or something in the vent her cloths kept getting caught on without her knowing? She was pretty angry at that, her supply of good clothing was dwindling rapidly.
"How'd you find me?" Satori asked.
"Uh, we heard you?" Tenshi said. "Do you know how much damn noise you were making? Wasn't hard to deduce what was happening, although I'm astonished you actually attempted it." Tenshi started laughing. "It's one of those things you always want to happen, you know? I'm going to have fun telling this story."
Satori wasn't laughing alongside Tenshi. She had gone through some trauma of her own in that vent, it wasn't nearly as fun and games as it sounded.
Tenshi turned towards one of her men. "Go get the system back online. No sense wasting any more time than we have to."
The man hesitated though. "Er," he said. Tenshi looked at him questioningly. "Well, it's just I'm worried that the girl may have caused some serious damage to the vents in her escape attempt."
"Ugh," Tenshi uttered. "Seriously? I thought the facility was designed to be resistant and sturdy."
"Resistant to earthquakes and tremors. Not malicious intent."
"Alright, fine, just get it fixed and do whatever you have to do keep us on schedule." The man nodded at this and ran off, leaving just Tenshi, Satori and two gunman.
"So," Tenshi said. She drew the syllable out as long as she could. "What oh what am I going to do with you?" Satori stayed silent. "I guess I can't put you with the others, you'll just try it again. You're the only person here who could actually climb through them, though."
Tenshi paced back and fourth for a bit while her men stood around nervously, not sure whether or not to train their rifles on Satori or keep them pointing at the ground. She did her best to get an accurate understanding of their mentalities in the quick amount of time she had. There wasn't much else she could do.
"I guess we'll throw you in a storage locker." Tenshi smirked. "Let's see you break out of that one."
Tenshi gestured to have Satori taken away to the storage locker. The grunts jerked their rifles upwards to tell Satori to start walking, and she begrudgingly did so. If Satori was really put in there she would have no hope of escaping. Tenshi urged her to try it, but if she was actually put there it would be too late. She had to do something before.
And yet there were two Team Flare grunts with automatic weapons walking her to her new cell.
Satori's only power here was the power of her Third Eye, and she had been using it to the best of its abilities to learn the stories of the two grunts escorting her. Although Satori's Third Eye read the surface thoughts of everything in the area, it required a focused effort to dig deeper than that. And Satori could only truly read into the deeper trauma and fear of the thoughts she invaded. Other things—love, happiness, sadness—these emotional memories were locked to her.
But luckily, at least in this instance, fear had a way of worming itself into the large majority of one's mind. Human beings were largely driven by fear whether they realized it or not, and it turned the people's minds into Satori's playground. But it took time, time which Satori did not have.
The man walking in front of her leading the way had an interesting story. His main concern at the moment wasn't that he was in danger, or that kidnapping children may not be the best career move. No, Satori learned that he was mostly worried about his three Pokemon he left back at his home. Two Poochyena and one Houndour. They were named Poochums, Biter and Brutus respectively. He had asked his neighbor to take care of them while he was "away"' but he worried that his neighbor wouldn't follow through.
Poochums was younger than the other two and seemed more submissive than Biter and Brutus. It's why the man named him something cuter, but soon after the man got Poochums the other Pokemon had roughed him up. It was typical behavior, but it was a minor trauma of the man. He really didn't want any of his Pokemon to hurt each other, and without him there he worried it might happen.
Satori couldn't really use any of this information. She gleamed a lot of details about the man's life and his love for his Pokemon, but in the current situation it was not exploitable. Satori turned her head around to look at the man behind her. While he pointed the automatic rifle at her, his finger was off the trigger resting against the side of the weapon.
This man, on the other hand, had a considerably darker trauma. Satori's investigation into his mind turned up that he was an ex-police officer. In fact, his mind was completely muddled with traumas and Satori learned nearly his entire life story because of it. This was depressing.
In his work as a police officer, the man had seen horrible things. Things so horrible Satori had to do her best not to show any sign of her disgust at it. He had seen a body mutilated by several knife wounds, he had seen Pokemon neglected and thrown on the street, and hell there were a few children that had been neglected and thrown onto the street. As a cop he saw gang fighting, he saw lunatics who got their hands on a gun, and good, innocent people who had no business dying were slain.
All of this is what forced the man to quit his job. The events that led to joining Team Flare, well, Satori couldn't pick those up. Those must not have been fear-related. The man's mind was compartmentalized to a certain degree, and any happy memories Satori could not access in any way.
It was something a little more useful, if Satori dragged all of those thoughts to the surface would the man's attention waver? She could buy a few seconds at the very least. Would they shoot her in the back? She didn't think so, they would likely chase after her instead.
Not that she could outrun them. She may have had the body type required to crawl through air vents, but that benefit came at the cost of her top running speed. On top of that Satori never really worked out, so outrunning them was not a good plan. Plus she might run into more grunts if she ran too far.
Satori considered a more pinpoint approach. Dragging all the bad thoughts to the surface was something easy enough to do, but it was crude. If she could zero in on a specific trauma, it might cause one of the grunts to seize up or run away. Something drastic enough that Satori could really exploit it.
But that would take time. And Satori didn't have time. With every step she took she drew closer to the end, when she would have no options. Climbing through the air vents was not a brilliant plan, but it did afford her one thing. This opportunity, right now, where she was the least secure. She had to take advantage of it, it was the last chance she would get.
She didn't have time for a surgical strike on their minds. But making them fearful wouldn't buy her more than a moment's hesitation at best. And if they were trained, like the ex-police officer, then it might not even do that. It wouldn't be enough.
The only other thing Satori could do...it was excessive. Despite what Satori called "minor sadistic tendencies," she knew there was a line. She couldn't help reading others' thoughts, it was her nature. She wouldn't apologize for it. But she had other abilities, and she knew that they were not something to be taken lightly. She had only used it once recently and a small number of times before.
Induced amnesia.
It was something Satori didn't understand fully about herself. An ability she hadn't used often enough—wouldn't use often enough—to get the experience necessary to understand it. Her Third Eye focused on the trauma of others and by extension she could only cause her subjects to forget those memories. But the mind was not something so simple.
Memories were connected to other memories. They all linked to each other in some way, so remembering some things triggered other memories. Satori could erase the memories of people's trauma. Remove that memory-node from the graph of interconnected memories in a human's mind. But if she removed that node, the connections would also fail, and it could cause a cascading effect.
With time, Satori could lower that effect when she induced amnesia into one of her victims. It wasn't something she consciously realized how to do, it was just her ability. The more time she spent analyzing the memory, the more sure she could be that only that memory would be effected by the amnesia. It wasn't perfect, sometimes things could be lost that were unexpected. But it was fairly reliable the few times Satori did it. Like with Calem, that night over a month ago.
But Satori had no time. Every footstep she took counted down to her confinement. And she had spent far too long thinking of her options already. She had to act, and she had to act now. She had to induce amnesia into one of these people and she didn't have time to pinpoint it. It was counter-intuitive, but the fastest way to do it is a complete erasure of all trauma. Satori didn't need time to build up strength, she needed time for specificity.
It was the only way to target both men. Total trauma erasure. Satori knew she would feel guilty over what she was about to do, but she was going to do it anyways. She focused on the man in front of her. Satori took a deep breath, and exercised the ability of her Third Eye.
A few seconds later, the man stopped walking.
"Hey," said the man behind Satori. "What's up?"
The lead man turned around, his gun pointing towards the ground. "Uh," he said, confused. "What...what am I...?"
"You hit your head or something, Mark?" The grunt behind Satori asked. She had turned her focus away from the man named Mark though.
"I—did I? I'm not quite sure why I'm—wait...I don't...remember...wait, I don't—!"
"Oi, oi, stop pulling my leg."
Satori was thankful for the conversation, it bought her the time she needed to focus on the man behind her. She didn't need to look at him, the Third Eye did not see through normal space. It worked on a whole different level. And the few sentences he exchanged were enough to give Satori what she needed.
"Ahh... ahhhh... AHHHHH!" The other man screamed as Satori erased his trauma, which was most of his life. All of his experiences, she buried them forever and wiped most of his mind clean. A man with that much trauma, it was almost a given that every memory he had was linked to the traumatic ones in some way. He would lose nearly everything.
He dropped the gun and it clattered to the floor as he grabbed his head. Satori turned and backed away from him feigning surprise, getting close to the wall and the gun he had dropped. The forward man, Mark, tried to go to the man's aid. He placed his own rifle on the ground and knelt down by the screaming man.
"Hey, buddy, what's wrong?" he asked in desperation. Mark's amnesia did not seem to be as debilitating, but it seemed to be enough to draw his attention away from Satori. She hesitated for only a second before deciding on her next course of action.
When no one was watching, in a quick movement Satori bent down and grabbed the assault rifle laying on the ground. She darted forward and turned her head to look behind her. The man on the ground didn't notice at all, but the second did. But he was too confused to understand the situation, and didn't do anything as she ran away. Satori breathed a sigh of relief and rounded the corner out of sight.
She wasn't exactly sure how successful the amnesia would be, but it seemed to have worked very well. Yet it exhausted her and she still had plenty to do. She had a weapon now, albeit one she didn't really know how to use, but it was a weapon all the same.
When she rounded another corner, Satori realized she had no idea where she was going. She could trace the path back to where Tenshi had found her but that wasn't anywhere special. She hadn't paid attention to her location while crawling around in the vents so she had no idea where the hostages would be nor anything else.
All the hallways looked the same, but she hadn't encountered anyone yet. After she had run a good distance away from the two men, she stopped. The farther she traveled the more likely it would be she would run into someone. This was not a time for rash actions, she needed to calculate.
While her ability could sense ambient thoughts within thirty or so feet, there was no way to deduce their locations off of it. Still, Satori kept her mind clear to listen. She couldn't hear anyone near her, so instead of running at full speed she crept along as quietly as she could. Her footsteps were audible on the metal ground, but if she stepped on the balls of her feet it muffled the sound to some degree.
Satori slowly crept through the power plant, but she knew that she only had a limited amount of time before someone realized what happened and she had escaped. All the Team Flare members seemed familiar with each other so when two go missing they'll suspect something. But even knowing that, Satori had no idea what she was supposed to do next. She hadn't thought this far ahead.
She needed to get her Pokemon back. That should be her highest priority. But she had no leads to go on as to where they might be. Tenshi had said they weren't thugs, they weren't going to steal them. So they were probably stored somewhere, most likely with the other hostages' belongings. But where would that be? There was no indication where she should begin, although if she found a Team Flare guard it was probably in the right direction.
It wasn't a comforting realization.
And almost as if on cue, she felt someone's thoughts. A Team Flare grunt, no doubt. She froze and tried to stay quiet, but rose the weapon she held level. She had never held something like it before, and it felt too large for her. But its usage was fairly common knowledge. You pull the trigger and stuff in front of you dies.
Satori had no idea if the grunt was getting closer or farther away, but his thoughts were still nearby. She was standing in the middle of a short hallway, a T-intersection on both ends. There were no rooms for her to hide in, so she got near the wall and kept looking back and fourth in either direction.
I think I'll have spaghetti for dinner tonight, I bet the guys would love if I made some.
The trivial thought offended Satori, in a way. How could he be thinking of something so simple when she was fighting for her life?
Satori waited in the hallway and prayed that the man would leave. But he didn't. Satori turned her head back and fourth looking down both ends of the corridor until she saw the orange figure of the Team Flare grunt walking down. He turned into the hallway Satori was in with a relaxed posture, not even carrying a rifle. When Satori saw him, she raised her rifle and pulled the trigger.
Nothing.
Satori tried to pull the trigger a few more times but nothing happened at all. The man, who had frozen in shock, started to go for a pistol at his hip. Satori turned away and ran the opposite direction cursing the useless weapon she held.
"Hey, stop!" The man shouted and Satori could hear his steps as he ran after her.
While she was running, Satori glanced down at her weapon. Why hadn't it worked? She looked up as she rounded another corner while hearing the man shout into his radio behind him.
"We have an escaped hostage," he shouted. "Escaped hostage! She has a weapon."
"Don't fucking shoot her, hold fire!" Came the response on the radio. Satori could barely make it out, but the words were amplified by the grunt's thoughts as they echoed the radio.
Satori looked back down at the rifle and turned it over in her hands. And when she realized what was wrong she felt like an idiot. Guns have a safety mechanism to prevent them from accidentally going off. Satori knew this, it was something that everyone knew. How had she forgotten such an important detail at the critical moment?
Once Satori knew what to look for it was fairly obvious. There was a little latch on the side of the rifle. But it had three states, not two, and they weren't marked. Satori didn't know what each one was, but she turned the latch all the way to the other side.
"Stop running!" A shout came from behind her. The man was gaining on her, but not quickly. She kept running, and turned left onto a large corridor. She cursed as she saw more Team Flare grunts on one end, and ran in the opposite direction. Now several people were chasing her.
She ran through the corridor and realized it opened up to the main floor of the power plant, with the massive column in the center filled with electricity. There were catwalks going around the walls and stretching out into the center. Satori turned right and ran across the catwalk hugging the wall. Her primary concern was to keep herself out of the line of fire of the other people, although she had heard the order not to shoot her.
At the sound of shouts ordering her to stop, which Satori had no intention of listening to, Satori turned to look behind her. The catwalk was narrow and so they had to run after her in single-file. Satori looked back in front of her and tried to figure out where to go next. She passed by a few narrow doors on her right but had no idea where they led.
Some movement below on the ground floor of the room caught Satori's eye, and she looked down. Running through the various power equipment was Tenshi, her red sword drawn. Tenshi looked up at her, her eyes wide.
"YOU!" Tenshi shouted. It echoed throughout the entire room.
Her attention caught, Satori was slow in reacting to the door bursting open in front of her. Satori's attention shot back to the door, and another Team Flare man came out holding a rifle. Satori almost on reflex brought up her own rifle towards him and pulled the trigger.
And it was loud.
The force of the rifle shot back and knocked Satori in her shoulder, throwing her to the ground. Bullets sprayed out of the automatic rifle towards the Team Flare grunt, and then towards the ceiling as Satori fell down on her back. Satori let go of the trigger seconds after she fell to the ground, but a huge amount of bullets had spewed from the weapon in that short time.
"AaaaAaahhHHhhHhhhH!" Screamed the man in front of her and fell to the ground himself. Satori couldn't see him, lying on her back. But she tried to roll over. Her ears were ringing and she could barely hear what was going on around her.
As she rolled over, a sharp pain shot through her shoulder. Satori bit her lip from the pain and tried to take pressure off of it, but it didn't help. It still hurt, the weapon must have hurt it bad. There wasn't any blood, but it looked funny. And she couldn't move it.
"Fuck! Fuck!" Tenshi shouted. Satori could barely make it out over the ringing in her ears, but looked over to see Tenshi staring at her. No, it wasn't at her, it was above her. Satori tried to follow Tenshi's eyes.
Satori had sprayed bullets onto the ceiling, and there was machinery there. Wires and tubes leading to the central pillar were sparking and a small fire had started. Satori was hurt and on the ground, but this gave her an idea. But she would have to do it fast, Satori could feel the catwalk shake as the men following her drew closer.
"No, leave her," Tenshi shouted. "Cops are going to have heard that, get the fuck out of here you idiots! Through the escape tunnel!"
Satori's weapon had fallen next to her, but she picked it up with her good arm. The recoil from the weapon had hurt her pretty badly, although the grunt who was standing not five feet in front of her got the worst of it. Satori knew he was still alive because of the screaming and whimpering, but she forced herself not to focus on that.
Dragging the weapon, Satori wedged it into the railing so that the recoil would be transferred into the metal rather than her shoulder. She loosely pointed the weapon towards the center of the power plant, the giant central pillar, and pulled the trigger again. The gun swung around widely and the thunderous noise drowned out everything else. It only lasted a few seconds before the bullets stopped, out of ammunition. Satori let go of the weapon, and it fell out of her grasp down onto the main floor below.
BZZzzZZzZZZzzzzZZZZTTTtttTTTTTTTT
The ringing in Satori's ears was even worse now, but over that she could hear the buzzing of the central pillar. Small explosions were occurring on the side as huge sparks came from it, arcing with the sides of the room and other equipment on the floor.
BBbbBbZZzZzZzZzzZZZTTTtTTtTT
Satori looked around, her arm still in pain, trying to get a grasp on the situation. She saw members of Team Flare fleeing, most of them running down onto the bottom of the room towards the escape tunnel Satori had been brought in from. As Satori watched them, she noticed Tenshi standing still, her sword drawn pointing at Satori. She had a wicked grin on her face, and as their eyes locked she started laughing.
"Yes!" Tenshi shouted, so loud that Satori could hear her even over the buzz of the broken power plant and the ringing in her own ears. "Yes!" she shouted again. "Defeat me, crush me, shove my face into the dirt and step on me. I'll be waiting, Satori girl!"
And with that, Tenshi turned away and ran into the escape tunnel. Satori relaxed somewhat, laying on the ground. She had successfully given Team Flare something far worse to worry about than capturing her. Still, all it would take is one stray bullet from someone wanting revenge to end her. So she crawled towards the dying man she had shot. He was coughing up blood and seemed to be barely conscious.
Satori averted her eyes as she crawled away from him, into the room he had come out of. It was a narrow hallway, but Satori thought it would be safer than out in the open on the catwalks. She rested against the wall just by the doorway.
But then self-preservation kicked in, and she turned back towards the dying man. He was covered in blood and Satori did her best not to look at him. Instead, she reached with her left arm towards the holster on his hip, and unbuckled it. She was at an odd angle, but she worked the pistol out of the holster and grabbed it. The man wasn't in any position to resist.
Satori then retreated back into the hallway, and flipped off the safety of the pistol. She wasn't going to make that mistake again. She would be a bad shot with her left hand, but at least she had a way to defend herself if anyone came.
About thirty seconds later, Satori heard the sounds of gunfire echoing through the entire facility. There were also shouts, but she couldn't make out what they were over the ringing in her ears. She pulled her pistol close to her and prepared to use it.
She heard the sounds of someone approaching from on the catwalk quickly. Satori mentally prepared herself and tried to raise her pistol. But before she could, a uniformed man quickly spun around into the hallway from outside the door. Unlike Team Flare, this uniform was blue and the word "POLICE" was clearly written across the front.
"KPD, drop your weapon!" The man shouted. Satori let go of the pistol and let it fall to the ground. "Hands in the air," he shouted again. Satori raised her left, but her right wouldn't move.
"I'm hurt," Satori said. "Can't move my arm."
The man nodded and lowered his own rifle, kneeling close to her. "Get me another medic," he said loudly. Satori figured he was probably speaking into his radio or something.
"I'm not—" Satori coughed. "I'm not Team Flare," she said. "I-I was a hostage, but—"
The man nodded. "Don't worry, you're going to be all right. Just don't move, someone will be here to help soon."
Satori nodded at the police officer's words, and rested against the wall. She breathed a sigh of relief, she felt a lot safer with the officer standing next to her. He looked far more equipped to defend himself than she was. He had body armor, an assault weapon, the whole works.
Despite the ringing in her ears, Satori could still hear thoughts. The ringing distracted her, but it didn't drown them out. There were so many though, and the situation was so chaotic. Satori had no idea what was going on.
A minute or so later, another officer came into the small corridor with her. Instead of looking at Satori though, he turned to the Team Flare member who was bleeding. Satori couldn't help but be offended that the Team Flare guy was getting medical attention over her, but she knew he was probably actually close to dying. Satori didn't say anything.
Shortly thereafter, a third officer came and approached Satori. He knelt down next to her and looked over at her shoulder. "What happened?" he asked.
Satori tried to organize her thoughts. "I shot one of those rifles," she said. "It hit my arm and I fell over. My ears are also ringing, I can hardly hear anything."
The man nodded, and gently touched Satori's shoulder. He pulled her blouse up over so he could get a better look at it. The pain increased as he did it and Satori winced. "Sorry," he said as he looked at it. "It looks like you dislocated your shoulder. It's not too bad, but I don't want to relocate it here. Once it's safe we'll put you on a stretcher and take you back to the tent as soon as we can."
"What about...the ringing, my hearing, I—"
"Don't worry," the medic said. "That should go away in a few days. You might have trouble sleeping tonight, but that's it. Ha, people do worse to themselves at rock concerts." The man joked. But his thoughts betrayed him, it was a white lie. But he was confident in his diagnosis so Satori still felt relieved.
"Thanks," Satori said.
"No problem. You'll be physically fine in a week, maybe two. Tops. But for now, just stay here until we get the stretcher. You don't want to make it worse."
"I can walk."
The man shook his head. "It'll be safer for you if we use the stretcher, if you walk it's too likely you might make the dislocation worse."
Satori nodded, and continued to rest against the wall. The man turned his attention away from her and focused on the Team Flare grunt on the ground. Watching the two medics try to save the man distracted Satori away from her own injuries, but it wasn't a nice distraction.
Less than a minute went by before they stepped back away from the man. Satori heard the phrase "we lost him" before one of the medics stood up and rushed off. The other officer came closer to Satori and stood next to her. It was just her and the two officers, but she had lost focus on them. She just stared at the Team Flare member on the ground next to her.
She had killed him.
Satori felt her stomach lurch, and she started throwing up. The medic knelt down and tried to hold her steady as she turned her head and emptied the contents of her stomach. When she was done, he wiped her mouth with a towelette.
"Don't look at him," the officer said. Satori lowered her eyes.
After only a minute or so, most of the activity had died down outside. Everything was happening really fast. There had been bursts of gunfire every now and then, but it seemed to have stopped completely. The only thing left was the ever-present ringing in Satori's ears.
A few men came over, carrying a stretcher between them. They helped Satori onto it, carrying her out of the power plant. They walked through the hallways at a brisk pace that just prior Satori was frantically running through with a weapon. As they carried her through, Satori remembered something.
"M-My, my pokemon." Satori said. "They're somewhere in here, I don't..."
One of the men carrying her looked over. "We'll find them," he said. It relieved her as she rested on the stretcher. Soon they walked down an incline through a long tunnel. It was dimly lit, and halfway through the lights cut out. The stretcher halted when it happened and a few police officers took out flashlights. They all tensed for a few seconds, but then relaxed and resumed carrying the stretcher.
Jesus, this entire wing of power plant is offline, thought one of the officers. Satori felt a bit guilty, that was her fault.
The passageway rose up after awhile, and the party emerged outside in the Lumiose badlands. It hadn't been more than an hour or so from when Satori had initially fallen through the escape tunnel, but it felt like a hell of a lot longer. The sun was close to setting, and the sky was a brilliant shade of orange. It matched the landscape.
Satori was brought to a large medical tent and was set down on a bed. A female doctor approached her and talked with the officer who had looked her over originally. After nodding a few times, she turned towards Satori and began inspecting her shoulder.
"So, what's your name miss?" The doctor asked. "You can call me Eirin."
"Satori."
"Well, Miss Satori. Let's fix your arm up, shall we?" Eirin drew a curtain around Satori's bed so they had some privacy. "I'm going to cut away your blouse, is that alright?" Satori nodded. "Can you remove that accessory first, please?"
It took a moment for Satori to realize what she was talking about. Her eye. "No, I can't, it's..." Satori didn't want to say it. The doctor looked at her questioningly, but took out a pair of scissors and cut away her blouse. Satori wasn't upset, it had already been ruined from the power plant.
"Oh my, it's...connected." The doctor uttered, and felt on Satori's back and neck where the cords of her Third Eye connected to her body. Her hands were cold and it sent a chill down Satori's spine.
"It's—" Satori tried to find the right words. "It's nothing to worry about, please, can you just ignore it?"
"Oh," Eirin said after a minute. "Right, of course. Sorry, not my place, let me have a look at your shoulder." Eirin focused her attention back toward Satori's injury. "This isn't too bad. I'm going to have to brace your body against the side of the bed while I relocate your shoulder. Should be no problem, but I must warn you that you'll feel a slight pressure as I do so."
Lie. That last one was a straight up lie, it was going to hurt like hell. Satori knew that doctors lied like this to make their patients feel better, but it had the opposite effect on Satori. She couldn't really say anything about it though.
Doctor Eirin positioned Satori's body in a certain way and used some sort of device to prevent her from moving around too much. Then Eirin moved Satori's shoulder with no warning.
"AHHHHHH!" Satori shouted. "Ahhh...uwahh...wahh..." Satori started whimpering as the pain subsided. There were tears in her eyes. But she could move her arm again, and the pain had mostly gone.
"There you go, all better." Eirin said. "Oh, well, except for the ringing in your ears, right? I have some medicine that will help, let me get it. It'll go away on its own but I have some pills you can take. Totally safe."
"Ah, wait." Satori said. "I, umm, I was recently on painkillers. A doctor in Geosenge prescribed me something, I don't know what it was."
Eirin rattled off the names of a few painkillers until Satori recognized it, and she assured Satori there wasn't a problem. Eirin thanked Satori for telling her though, and mentioned that it was important information.
A little while later the doctor brought two pill bottles over, a large one and a small one. "Take one of these every twelve hours until you run out," Eirin said. "One from each bottle. The smaller bottle will run out in two days, the larger in a week. If your shoulder still hurts you can take some over the counter painkillers."
Satori listened intently as Eirin rattled off the things that Satori should and shouldn't do to help her recovery. Eirin kept repeating that it wasn't that bad and Satori would be "just fine" in two weeks max as long as she followed instructions. Eirin helped Satori get into a light undershirt before putting Satori's arm into a sling. Then Satori was told to rest in bed.
About fifteen minutes later, an officer came in holding Satori's bag and roster.
"Oh thank god," Satori said. The officer smiled and set the bag down next to her bed.
"There's four Pokemon in here, is that all of them?"
"Yes, thank you." Satori said. "I, umm...thanks..." Satori was at a bit of a loss for words, but the officer just kept smiling.
"Someone will be by to take your state—" The officer began to say, but was interrupted when the ground suddenly started shaking. It was pretty violent, and Satori's bed rocked back and fourth from the force of the earthquake. She held her arm and made sure that it stayed immobile.
The earthquake stopped after ten or so seconds, and the officer began talking into his radio. "Was that anything I should be worried about?" he asked casually.
A minute went by in a bit of a frenzy as people recovered from the earthquake. It wasn't bad enough to have broken anything, but Satori could see Eirin running around making sure all her medical equipment had survived. That sort of stuff required very precise storage.
"Hey, we're...some strange reports..." Came a female voice from the officer's radio. He pressed a button on it and spoke back.
"Captain, say again."
"Just, listen to this." Came the voice. "Turn to frequency sierra."
The officer fiddled with his radio a little bit, and a different voice came through it. A male voice, this time.
"...my god, it's...no...no...how is this..."
The officer listened curiously to the voice on the other end, and Satori looked over too. The officer noticed her eavesdropping, but didn't attempt to stop her. The voice through the radio kept speaking, although it was broken up with static. It was hard to piece together what was happening until one phrase came through crystal clear.
"...my god, it's Yveltal."