Chapter Six – Sleep Talk

N and Rosa made camp on the side of the mountain, but it was at that point that they realized they brought no food or water besides that which they already had for their Pokémon. It was too late to go looking for food, so they settled down anyway and managed to nod off to sleep. It helped that they were already exhausted.

Rosa, a little paranoid after what happened at the foot of the mountain, snuggled up close against her Serperior. N leaned against Reshiram, running his hand over it in a repetitive motion; it was soothing being so close to it, but that didn't stop N from startling himself awake in the middle of the night over and over again.

"Cher… en…"

N couldn't see Rosa from where he slept, or attempted to, but he could hear her mumbling through the night. He wondered if she talked in her sleep all the time or if this was just now. She had always been so brave whenever he met her—but he knew that people had strange ways of coping with their stress. Ghetsis had almost killed her once before, and he imagined that this had to change things for her.

"Mur…"

She exhaled loudly, and he could hear her roll over. The Serperior around her growled low, but then silence settled around the camp once more. N grabbed the void cube attached by a chain to his belt loop, twisting it in his hands for several minutes before giving up and letting his head fall back against Reshiram.

"Nnnnn…"

What was he supposed to do?

"Der…"

N sat up, crawling forward on his hands and knees until he could see Rosa. Her hands were clenched, and her face was strained. Was that what she always looked like when she slept—so completely terrified? Was her normal attitude just a façade, and she was actually not as brave as she appeared?

Maybe Hilda looked like that when she slept, too. Rosa and Hilda were a lot alike, after all. But as N watched Rosa sleep, he realized that the two had to be at least a little bit different. N's heart didn't skip a beat just looking at Rosa the way it did with Hilda, nor did he get the strange urge—or, at the very least, irrational urge—to touch her, either.

But looking at Rosa was enough to remind him of the girl he loved. It was love, wasn't it? N didn't buy into that concept, but it was a label one might give, anyway.

"Hey."

Rosa's eyes had fluttered open, and she watched N with a small smile. Was she not aware that she had been dreaming in some sort of terror just moments before, or was she faking a smile because she was aware?

N pulled his knees to his chest and wrapped his arms around them. "Hey."

"You should get to sleep. I'm sure tomorrow will be a long day, and you look exhausted enough as it is," she muttered, before rolling over onto her side. Her Serperior rested its head on top of hers, and N managed a smile. In that sense, too, Hilda and Rosa were a lot alike—their Pokémon respected them more than he could have ever expected.

He closed his eyes, and he let sleep take him over, where, unlike Rosa, he was free from the problems of the day.

Rosa was right; it was a long day.

They reached the summit of the mountain, and a strong breeze made visibility particularly poor. Reshiram flew around and searched below for anything that might help them find Hilda but returned with no clues. Meanwhile, Rosa and N searched the ground, and the hours passed by without any results.

"Do you know you talk in your sleep?"

Rosa's eyes shot up to N's, and the shock in her wide eyes shifted to acceptance. "I've been having nightmares for a long time, ever since…" She rubbed her hands together and turned her gaze down, clearly pretending to search again. She didn't need to finish the sentence for N to know what she was talking about. Ghetsis had almost gotten her once, too.

So, her smile was a façade. Her smile, her energy, her confidence…

"Let's keep looking," she ordered.

"What did you dream about last night?" N asked, too curious to accept her demand. Her expression darkened, and she stomped away without answering his question. He followed close behind her, asking again, and she practically growled at him. "You mentioned Cheren. You were dreaming about him, weren't you?"

"Of course. I'm worried about him. Let's keep looking," she repeated quickly after her brief response, though it was enough to appease N.

They continued their search in silence, combing one side of the mountaintop before moving onto the other, and there was nothing. N had, admittedly, expected to find some secret fortress on the side of the mountain, as illogical as that sounded. The probability, he knew, was low, but he couldn't help but think it.

Rosa, on the other hand, was a little more pessimistic. As time passed, minutes turning into hours of the two humans and their Pokémon searching desperately, she grew more and more frustrated. N heard her muttering to herself again, as though she had fallen asleep again. "Shadow Triad…" she kept murmuring.

After several hours had passed, the two humans let their Pokémon go play, though not too far away, and they sat on a nice spot overlooking a deep drop.

They both couldn't say what they already knew.

Finally, Rosa sighed. "There's nothing up here." She put a hand to the side of her face, her eyes wide with realization. "We've wasted a whole day—Cheren and Hilda are waiting for us, and we wasted a whole day searching a mountain without finding anything." Her gaze softened, but she didn't move her hand. "What do we do now?"

N didn't know what to say, and he usually managed a response for questions like that. But what was he supposed to say? Rosa, who was usually calm and collected, was beginning to lose herself—no, she had already lost a bit of herself when Cheren was taken. He didn't understand, and if he couldn't, how could he know where to start?

Well, sometimes a solution presented itself when one began the proof, even if the starting point wasn't always clear. It was another mathematical truth, or at the very least a strategy that had yet to be proven.

"Do you regret coming with me?" he asked, which under normal circumstances would probably be much too forward to ask, and Rosa's eyes widened. But after a moment, her gaze softened and she gave a small, forced smile. And even without the verbalization, that was all the answer anyone else would ever need.

But Rosa knew N, so she made herself nod. "Sorry. I know it's only been, what, twelve hours—and we spent eight of them sleeping. But I guess I expected something else from this—to go sweeping into their stronghold and save Hilda in a day's work." She scooped her hand in front of her face as if to emphasize the "sweeping" and laughed bitterly. "That's how I've been trained, anyway. This is unusual for me. We have no leads, we're down a man and now have to locate two people…"

"I'm sorry."

Rosa waved her hands frantically. "No, no, don't apologize! This is my fault. I'm so used to playing the hero… I was conditioned to it after dealing with Ghetsis and Team Plasma, so that was why I jumped on board when you asked me to help. It's really selfish, I know." She reached out and took N's hand, smiling even though N's gaze was now on their entwined fingers instead of her face. "I want Hilda to be okay. I do. But I'm not sure I can help you."

N nodded, slipping his hand away from Rosa's. "Would you like to go home?"

"I'll stay. It hasn't even been a whole day, so I don't know how things will change, you know?" She put her hands on her hips now, much like Hilda did when she felt confident about something. "I wish we had some sort of lead. Where do you think the Shadow Triad would go? Back to your castle or something?"

"No. Not my castle… But that is a start." N grabbed his void cube, twirling it in his hand again. It was a puzzle, one that could be solved with diligences and logic. And once an expert, it could be solved quickly and easily. It was all a matter of knowing the algorithms—knowing the way things worked together.

And it clicked.

"They're the Shadow Triad," N stated. "We go where the shadows are."

The bucket in Cheren's hell—oh, cell, he thought—was not used for its intended purposes. Instead, he hovered over it, puking up everything he had left in him. He had been throwing up all night, and sweat dripped off his forehead like raindrops. His arms shook as he held himself up, and he coughed once before vomiting again.

By the time morning broke, he was dry heaving, nothing left in him to rid himself of. He was dehydrated, but he didn't have any water and didn't want to move.

The door to the dungeon, or whatever this room was, swung open. The light blinded Cheren, and when a flashlight turned on him, he squinted and wiped his mouth with a shaking hand. His cell door opened with a grinding sound that hurt his ears, but his stomach still felt so upset that the painful noise was a nice distraction.

"Come. We're moving you."

Cheren was too weak to stand on his own, much to his embarrassment. He couldn't force himself to his feet; his legs shook too hard, and his head lolled in his exhaustion. As much as he wanted to strangle this guy for everything he had done, there was no way he could. So, when the Shadow walked over to him and swung him over his shoulder like a rag, there was absolutely nothing he could do to stop the fiend.

At some point, he fell asleep or maybe passed out. He awoke in a new prison, though it wasn't quite so. Instead, he discovered as he blinked the haze out of his eyes upon waking, he was in some sort of tunnel. At the end, where he was, a circular opening was carved out, barred with gates not dissimilar to the ones in the previous area. However, he could see through this one due to the abundance of light pouring in from somewhere above them. It was day, or at least he thought so.

More importantly, the stench was gone, as was his perpetual nausea—not that he thought he could throw up anymore if it wasn't.

But he was too weak to stand, so he crawled along the damp floor towards the other, darker end of the tunnel. Yet his journey was cut short before he got too far; one of the Shadow Triad was leaning against the rounded wall, a Bisharp sharpening its blades across from him. This place wasn't confined like the other room…

It was a sewer. And not just any sewer, Cheren guessed.

"You're awake. Eat this."

The Shadow threw a piece of bread at Cheren, who still knelt on his hands and legs, and it rolled to a stop against his skin. Nothing was appetizing to him now, no matter how much he had gotten rid of earlier. He could admit that he was thirsty—really thirsty, and his throat burned from the acid—but he wouldn't eat that bread.

"We're in the Castelia sewers?" Cheren croaked, his voice barely audible. The Shadow held a hand to his ear, and Cheren tried again. "The Castelia sewers!"

The Shadow clapped, and the noise echoed through the tunnels and back, amplified to twice the volume it should've been. "Ding, ding, ding. Though it doesn't take a genius to figure that out. Eat the bread."

Cheren glanced down at the bread still resting against his hands, and he sat down and picked the bread up. No matter what, he couldn't eat this, but the Shadow was watching him intently. Strangely enough, he didn't think there was anything the least bit suspicious about the bread—it was just… bread.

He bit into the bread, and all of the nausea came rushing back to him. The Shadow chuckled as Cheren spat the chunk out. Coughing, he threw the bread back at the Shadow. The Bisharp looked up suddenly, its arms raised, but the Shadow waved it back. Even with the fabric covering the man's face, Cheren could see that he was amused.

"You moved me," Cheren noted, and the Shadow just stared at him. "What… what about… her? She was in there, too—she was—" He stopped himself before he went too far.

The Shadow didn't say anything, and after some time passed, Cheren no longer expected a response. But, finally, the Shadow answered, "Hilda won't be moved. Not until our lord N arrives." And then he threw the bread back at Cheren's hands.

Author's Note: I apologize for the delay. I've been in a bit of a rut as of late.

Please remember, my dear readers, that if you enjoy my writing, I always encourage you to consider checking out my novels. I have a new one that has a possibility of coming out fairly soon, as well. Just something to keep in mind.

Also, I appreciate feedback, especially on a story like this that is very experimental for me, so please drop a review if you get the chance. I definitely appreciate every review I get! Let me know how I'm doing!