next chapter up! ^ v ^
if you can spot the notsosubtle doctor who references that rio put in here, you are amazing and you may have a virtual pepperidge farm cookie. u v u
Buizel nodded. "Yep. This is the root of the crystal system in our base. Any place with base crystals has one of these rooms somewhere."
Eevee nodded, looking around.
"I can't believe none of us ever knew about this place," whispered Cyndaquil in awe to Zorua.
Zorua whispered back to Cyndaquil. "Buizel did."
"Well, obviously… but I meant, like, the rest of us." Cyndaquil looked around at the intricate crystals in the room.
Zorua frowned for a moment. It didn't seem right to exclude Buizel from 'us'. Trying to get her mind off that track of thought, she asked the question they'd all been wondering.
"What're we doing here?"
Buizel answered. "Checking Sirai's connection to the base. Sirai?"
The AI answered, her child-like voice ringing all around the cavern, echoing off of walls with the crystals themselves seemingly acting as speakers. "Yeah?" The echoes of that one word seemed eerie, accompanied by the sound of dripping water somewhere.
"How's the connection?" The Water-type asked.
"Meh." Sirai responded. "Not good or bad." The giant crystal cluster pulsed with light once. "No regular HEARTBEAT, but that's because Sinnoh Home shut most of my system down to fix the glitches."
"Yeah, I noticed that." Buizel replied. "A few days without the system won't matter though."
"Without what?" asked Eevee, tilting her head. "A heartbeat?" She now had no idea what Buizel and Sirai were talking about. With a little huff, she sat down and looked away, the picture of irritation.
Cyndaquil felt a bit overwhelmed too. Although exploring with Team J had made him a bit braver and more eager to explore new things, he was still pretty timid by nature.
"What's wrong with Sirai, then?" he dared to ask. "If the connection's not that bad." The thought that something might be wrong with his friend scared him, a sharp and unpleasant reminder that Sirai- although friendly and giggly- was, in the end, only a piece of technology. He tried to force himself not to think about that.
Buizel decided to answer Eevee's question first with one of his beloved techno-rambles. "A HEARTBEAT- Heat and Energy Articulated Regulation, Time-Beat. It's what regulates the crystal system and keeps them from overgrowing or… well… exploding." He gave a little chuckle and shrugged, as if to say, exploding. No biggie. "
"Sinnoh Home's tech division has a bit of a record when it comes to exploding things…" Buizel continued. "So, a couple months ago, one bright techie had the idea to make a program that could regulate the… exploding. And so, that's what the HEARTBEAT system is. It's that pulse of light you saw earlier. Most of the time it beats regularly, like a metronome- or a slow heartbeat. Basically checks everything over and takes any excess heat or energy down in here, to prevent the exploding. We actually got the overhaul to get it installed just a week before we met you guys." Buizel nodded to Cyndaquil and Zorua.
Eevee rolled her eyes, while Cyndaquil glanced nervously from Zorua to Buizel. Nobody wanted to interrupt Buizel during one of his rambles, but at the same time nobody wanted to hear it. Cyndaquil shuffled his feet and decided that maybe he had asked a bad question.
Buizel frowned. "I suppose this is why they're calling everyone to Sinnoh Home. Sirai's glitching, and no one can find the problem. They've even called me in, and I only worked in Supply Division."
"Sirai's glitching?" asked Cyndaquil. Eevee rolled her eyes.
"Yes, Captain Obvious," she said sarcastically, glaring at Cyndaquil and then Buizel. "Did you see the lights go off just now? I suppose that was because Sirai's perfectly in order?" She huffed again and resumed her former distant attitude. Cyndaquil stared at her for a while before shaking himself and turning back to Buizel.
"That wasn't me," insisted Sirai, piping up again. "I swear I didn't do anything!"
"Well, then, who did it?" snapped Eevee, looking annoyed that she didn't have anyone solid to level a glare at. "You're an AI! Of course you wouldn't have consciousness if you glitched off, you're not…"
Real. But even Eevee sensed that that would be going over the line.
Apparently Sirai could guess, though, because she abruptly switched off, plunging the base into darkness again.
"Waah!" yelped Cyndaquil, stumbling and almost running into Zorua. "What-"
Eevee cursed a few times and looked around for a light switch.
"I didn't mean it that way, you know I didn't!" she yelled. "It's not fair to turn the lights off just because you're mad!" A short pause. "Sirai?! I said I didn't mean it! I'm sorry!"
The lights still didn't come on.
Cyndaquil fired up the flames on his back, the flickering light illuminating four worried faces.
"Ugh. Why can't we just go back up already?" Zorua whined.
Buizel moved away from the darkened crystals and back to the rest of the group, speaking to no one in particular, and perhaps to himself. "This isn't right. Those should still be glowing." He frowned at the crystal cluster, as if telling them off for not giving any illumination. "This isn't Sirai. Something's gone wrong, and it's worse than the glitches before."
Eevee, secretly relieved that her comment hadn't been the thing that had set Sirai off, kept silent.
"I think we should go back up," agreed Cyndaquil with Zorua. Having weird blackouts with no warning was creepy enough, but in a strange room they had never visited before, without Sirai? He shivered and stuck close to Buizel.
Buizel nodded, and with the consent of one of the older members of the rescue team, Zorua bounded over to the hole in the cavern wall that so much resembled the base's entrance/exit. There was a lever on the wall at near floor level. More of a switch, really, it bore a significant resemblance to the switches on Pokemon Hunter J's frozen Pokémon container. She flipped it, and the slide sucked her up and away.
"Wheee!" The gleeful interjection echoed around the cavern, bouncing off the walls eerily.
A shudder ran up Buizel's spine. He hardly ever came down to the heart of the crystal root system, but the room had always been lit warmly and cheerfully by the light of the crystals themselves, and with Sirai chatting to keep him company.
"Let's go." he said, walking over to the windy tunnel base and letting it bring him up to the ground floor. Cyn and Eevee followed after quickly.
Moments after they left, the large crystal cluster that was the heart of the root system gave off orange sparks. Just briefly, and for less than a second, but they sparked.
Eevee popped back up and looked around the base warily. The lights still hadn't come back on, and she felt her way nervously through the darkness.
Buizel called out. "Cyn? Can you light it up a bit?"
Cyndaquil lit up his flames, making sure not to catch any wood on fire. The base was illuminated with the orange, flickering light, making it look nothing like its usual cheerful self. It was eerie. Eevee shuddered and looked around again.
"How long until the lights come back on?" she asked anxiously.
Buizel shrugged, squinting to make out shapes in the dim lighting. "No idea. Blackout reports from other bases have said they lasted anywhere from a second to five days. There hasn't been much to go on though. Most bases don't trust Sirai and the crystal root system, and the problems with the ones that do have only been happening over the past three weeks."
Zorua whistled appreciatively. "That's some range of time. A second to five days."
"Five days with no power?" Eevee said dismally. "I'm so looking forward to that." She stood up and almost crashed into the wall.
"Well, it's been an hour," said Eevee, sounding tired. "How much longer d'you think Sirai will be down?" It was weird not to have the AI talking with Buizel, or telling Cyndaquil about some new thing in the news, or teasing Eevee. Much though she hated to admit it, the Normal-type was actually kind of beginning to miss her.
Cyndaquil sighed and yawned. It had been tough keeping his flames lit for a long period of time, so eventually they had resigned themselves to sitting in complete darkness. Cyndaquil wished that they had built more windows.
Buizel suddenly sat up from where he was leaning against the wall, right next to the entrance to the base. He stood and moved in front of it, scanning the room to no avail, thanks to the lack of light. "Guys? Where's Zorua?"
Suddenly, a loud "Whee!" echoed around the room, and Buizel turned his head to look behind him, only for the dark-type to zoom out of the slide and hit him, knocking the water-type down.
Zorua bounced on his back once, asking. "Hey, what'd I land on?"
Buizel groaned. "Me."
"Oh!" She leapt off and let Buizel get back to his feet. "Sorry." She didn't sound like she really meant it though, distracted by Cyndaquil and Eevee. "Come on! Just 'cause it's dark in here doesn't mean the sun went out! The slide is still working!"
Cyndaquil tilted his head. Isn't she worried about Sirai at all? He knew that Zorua had been close to the AI, often treating her just like she might treat Buizel, Zorua, or Cyndaquil himself. Now that Sirai was obviously not working right, he was a bit surprised that Zorua was so carefree. The more he thought about it, though, the more it made sense. Maybe this is just the way Zorua deals with things. Buizel makes himself busy, Eevee sulks and worries, but Zorua… she laughs it off.
He lit his flame a little, just enough to see Eevee rolling her eyes. Everybody instinctually looked towards the light for a second.
"Here, I'll play, Zorua," he offered.
"Finally." She grinned. "Someone's seeing sense."
The sassy, cheerful Dark-type flipped the lever that would activate the tunnel fan, and proceeded to leap into said tunnel, cackling with glee all the way. Cyndaquil sighed before diving after her in a resigned sort of way.
Buizel blinked in the darkness, trying to clear his vision of the bright spots left behind from looking at Cyn's brief lighting of the entrance cavern. He glanced in Eevee's direction, not being able to see her, but trying to check on her out of habit. He sighed. "I really wish I could stay, but I'll have better luck helping the rest of Sinnoh Home figure out this problem. And if I don't get there on time, they'll just cut everything off anyway. I ought to go now."
Eevee hung her head, glad that the darkness hid her.
"Yeah…" she trailed off, fidgeting with her paws. "You're right. You should go. We'll be fine," she added, a little bit too quickly, as if trying to reassure Buizel of something she wasn't entirely sure of herself.
But Buizel had already left through the tunnel slide, and he hadn't heard a word.
Up on the surface, Buizel was blown up through the hole at the base of the giant oak tree that was Team J's rescue base. He landed in front of it on soft soil, warmed by the light of day. It was shady where he was standing, the noon sun above casting the tree's shadow right below it's branches. He walked out of the shade and glanced around the ringed clearing that their base stood in. Or, more accurately, grew in.
Zorua had cast an illusion around herself to look like Cyndaquil, and she was busy mirroring his every move while the Fire-type grew more agitated at her antics.
"Heeheeheehee!" Zorua giggled.
Buizel sighed as he watched the two youngest teammates playing. He wished he could stay instead of leaving for Sinnoh Home. I don't want to go… he thought.
Eevee shut the door to her room with a gentle click.
Buizel's leaving, she thought in dismay. And what am I going to do with two hyperactive kids and Sirai's glitching to manage? The thought made her groan out loud, flopping onto her bed. I'm going to die, she thought miserably, staring at the blackness all around her. She almost reached for the light switch before realizing that the power was out. Cursing, she tried to get off the bed and crashed to the floor, tripping over her spare rescue scarf.
Suddenly and unexpectedly, the lights clicked back on. The crystals that grew through the base like ivy lit up with their friendly blue-green glow. The three white, globular, semi-liquid ceiling lamps that hung down, arranged in a triangle, were revived. Then, everything flickered for a moment, the base was engulfed in darkness for a second, and then the lights were back on.
That brief moment of darkness would make anyone wonder, "Hey, who turned out the lights?". But this time, after the flickering, the crystals no longer held that same comforting blue-green glow, instead, they were a dull orange.
Eevee picked herself up and kicked the spare rescue scarf underneath her bed in disgust. Something about the room seemed a little different than the last time she had seen it with the lights on. Ignoring that, she pushed open the door and padded down the stairs. Hearing voices from outside, she looked out of one of the few windows in the living room.
"Lights are back on," she remarked to the two Cyndaquils, one of whom immediately flickered.
The two looked up at her, and the one who had flickered revealed herself to be Zorua. "Really? Great!" She then glanced around the clearing, her mouth open as if to shout something out to a friend, but then closed it in confusion. "Hey, where's Buizel? I saw him a minute ago." She said.
The entire circle around their base was devoid of anyone besides Zorua and Cyndaquil.
Up above, high in the air, Buizel was riding one of the Staravia flock that served as transportation for the rescue team. He looked down, and could just barely make out the giant oak tree that was home. Off to Sinnoh Home now… He sighed.