In Zoroark's dark and stormy cove, Cyndaquil and Zorua were contemplating what even the existence of the Sirai book meant. The Dark-type was even taking things seriously for once.

"So, if someone else knows about this thing…" she muttered to Cyndaquil, "Who do you think it is?"

"..." Cyndaquil thought for a moment. "...Buizel?" he suggested unsurely. "I mean… he always seems to know a lot about this stuff…it's definitely not Eevee, anyways."

"We don't know that." Zorua pointed out. "Come to think of it… what do we know about Eevee?"

Cyndaquil paused.

"Not much," he finally admitted with a sheepish grin. "I m-mean…" he winced as his stutter came out again, "it's not like she goes around telling the world about herself, is it?"

Zorua scoffed. "Humor, chats and being nice in general isn't her thing." She paused. "But I don't think she's said a word about what she did before Rescue Team J. You were a lab rat ready to be given to a rug rat. I did whatever I wanted. Buizel worked-" The Dark-type snickered before continuing. "-He worked a desk job." Both Pokémon shared an amused look, despite the less-than-light circumstances.

"But we don't know what Eevee ever did." Zorua finished, sobering up.

Cyndaquil blinked as the realization set in. He had never thought about it that way before. Zorua, Buizel, and he had all been forthcoming about their pasts- there was nothing to hide, it had just come up in conversation. But Eevee… in her own prickly way, she had somehow avoided telling the two kids anything about what she had been before. Cyndaquil himself had somehow always imagined, when he had given the matter any thought, that she had sprung full-grown from her egg, ready for battle with a Rescue scarf around her neck.

"Buizel knows, though," he realized suddenly. "Remember that one time they were fighting? He wanted her to tell us… whatever it was…"

"And Eevee wouldn't let him." Zorua stated flatly.

"Yeah…" Cyndaquil considered this for a moment. "D'you think that has anything to do with this?" he asked at last, looking back down at the holographic book. "And I mean, if- h-hey, did you hear something?" Nervously, he looked up towards an intimidating stand of trees nearby.

"Zorua? Cyn!" yelled Eevee frantically, holding one paw above her head to deflect the gigantic raindrops splashing onto her face. "Zorua?! I'm sorry! Where are you?!"

No reply came to her shouts, muffled as they were by the rain.

"Oh, Arceus…" Eevee sighed and wiped at the rain trickling down her nose.

"Hmm?" Zorua's ears twitched, listening. "No. Why, did you hear something?" She glanced around, but Zoroark's cove appeared to be devoid of any presence besides theirs.

"I guess I was just ima-eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!" The rest of Cyndaquil's sentence was cut off by a high-pitched squeal as he froze, staring towards a particularly dark patch of the forest, which was… moving?!

Up on the rocks that lined the rim of the cove, a vaguely humanoid shape crawled over a boulder, keeping itself low to the ground. It was shadow, a dark void in the rain. It stepped closer.

BOOM!

Thunder crashed and a lightning bolt struck the trees not more than a quarter of a mile away, outlining the frightening figure. It was standing up now, shoulders raised territorially and hands held in front of its chest. It darted forward, leaping down into the cove and dashed at the two small Pokémon behind the shiny disc. It stopped briefly in the shadows before it reached a patch of half-light that passed for illumination in the blasted thunderstorm.

Zorua glanced at Cyndaquil, shaking where he stood, and then narrowed her gaze at the figure approaching.

"Hi, Meema!" she suddenly and cheerfully exclaimed.

The figure stepped into the light patch, and it was indeed Zoroark. Holding a leaf basket full of Oran berries.

"Zorua! Cyn! Wasn't expecting either of you, but it's a nice surprise!" The taller Pokémon said, smiling kindly. She held out the leaf basket. "Oran Berry? They're always best in the rain."

Cyndaquil stared, petrified, at the suddenly-familiar figure, his bones still rattling.

"Z-z-zoroark?" he finally managed.

"Yes?"

"I-it's you," said Cyndaquil dumbly.

"Yes." she said again. "Why is it you two came here again?" The larger Dark-type looked at both of them curiously.

Oh, crap! We can't get her involved in this! Zorua thought. "Oh! Um… We were, uh, on a… berry-gathering mission! Then it started raining, and so, uh, yeah, we came here to dry off!" Well, it hadn't been her best deception ever, but she had been rushed.

"We were getting Oran Berries," piped in Cyndaquil. "But, uhh, we ate them all."

Zoroark looked from one to the other in confusion.

"But I was just gathering Oran Berries," she said, holding up her basket.

"Cyn's just being a stuttering dummy, Meema! We were picking… Cheri berries! 'Cause of all the stun spore floating around this time of year. That was the mission! Er, is!" Zorua laughed nervously, while at the same time discreetly folding up the memory disc with her front paws and trying to slide it behind her to Cyndaquil.

The Fire-type gave a very fake laugh and scooted closer to Zorua, grabbing the disk and sitting on it. "R-right. Cheri Berries. Silly of m-me, right?"

Zoroark narrowed her eyes suspiciously. Those two are clearly up to something… She gave a small sigh. I suppose kids will be kids, she thought philosophically, walking past them and setting her basket down. "Well, at any rate, don't go out again until the rain's stopped, you two. Zorua, I'm not surprised at you, but Cyn should know better." Before Cyndaquil could stutter or Zorua protest, the larger Dark-type opened the door and disappeared into her home in the tree.

"Whew…" Zorua let out a relieved sigh. "I thought we were about to be axed."

"Heh." Cyndaquil rubbed the back of his head and grinned sheepishly. "Anyways…" He slid the disk back out and stared at it. "If only Buizel were here. I bet he would know what this means," the Fire-type said wistfully.

The small pilot's cabin at the top of the Sinnoh Home construct was much like a pilot's cabin in a plane, only about eight times the size and complication. There were three seats and obvious steering mechanisms, again much like those you'd find in an airplane, and a dashboard spanning around them with more levers, buttons, knobs, scanners, and screens than you'd find in all of Sinnoh Home's main hub put together. The ceiling of the cabin was clear glass, like the windshield, but the walls were covered in even more wheels, gizmos, and blinking lights than the dashboard.

In all this, there were still only two pilots. One in the middle chair, the other in the one on the right. This was an oversight that had gone unnoticed, largely because the pilots were usually as much of a decoration as the manual steering panels. For the most part, Sinnoh Home was piloted by its one true resident, Sirai. Who...had...crashed. Right.

Lines of white light jumped out of the small, green teleporter circle at the back of the cabin, joining in a bright collection and forming a solid shape. A sort of wrrrn noise sounded and the light died out as quickly as it had appeared, leaving Buizel standing in its place.

The Water-type stayed still for a moment, blinking to let his eyes adjust to the dimmer lighting. Then, he realized he was facing the back wall and turned to look at the pilot area.

An Electivire whose head nearly touched the glass ceiling while in his seat and a Wigglytuff in a blue pilot's cap who looked to be hyperventilating were there. The Electivire, who wore a name tag with "Sparky" written on it, was calmer than the Wigglytuff, but kept glancing at the dashboard's lights and the steering wheel uncertainly. The Wigglytuff… well, he was on the verge of either a nervous breakdown or a heart attack. Whichever got him first, really.

"I-it's okay, T-Ty." 'Sparky' said to the Wigglytuff. "I-I think… W-we'll be okay. Um… W-which button is i-it?"

Buizel, incredulous, exclaimed. "You're the pilot! Shouldn't you know?!"

They both whipped around to look at him, and the Wigglytuff asked, a note of desperation in his voice. "Do you know how to fly this thing?"

"Er, not really..." Buizel replied.

"THEN WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!" The Wigglytuff, Ty, shouted. A stream of rapid and panicked words flooded out of his mouth. "We can't, we can't we can't! Agh! Not now, not now, not now! I don't know how to fly this thing! Agh! Training was years ago! Agh! Can't fall now, can't fall now, can't fall now! We're right over Alamos Town! Agh! Gonna die, gonna die, gonna diiiiiiiieeee!"

He flailed his limbs about, eyes squeezed shut. Buizel and Sparky both stared at him for a few seconds before turning to each other, apparently having reached the simultaneous and silent conclusion that he had gone temporarily insane and was to be ignored for the moment.

Sparky, even with his massive girth, looked pleading as he asked. "P-please say you know s-something!"

"Ah, er, that is…"

Buizel was trying to think of something. A protocol, a guideline, a training situation, anything. He drew a blank. There was nothing in the books for a falling air base. He didn't know what to do. Things were just happening too fast, no plan, no nothing. All that was missing was the red lighting and he'd practically be back in Team Plasma's research base.

Sinnoh Home, falling out of the sky. Nothing like it had ever happened before! How - no, not nothing. One moment in history, one time, in one situation an event had played out almost exactly like what was happening. Buizel remembered.

He blurted out to the pilots. "I got it! I know this, I know this! It's been fixed before, slightly different situation, but it's been fixed before! Quick, how much time do we have left?"

Ty, the Wigglytuff, took a peek at a screen in front of him.

"Ten."

"Hours?" Buizel asked hopefully. The engines still seemed to be running, so it seemed likely that they were just stuck adrift in the sky. Without the regular checks and maintenance performed by Sirai, he estimated that they could probably keep up about ten hours.

Then, the floor tilted again. To the right this time, and then back to level flooring.

"Woah!" Buizel caught his balance again before he fell into the wall monitor.

"Whoopsies, scratch that." the suddenly sarcastic Ty said. "Now we've got five hours." He glared at the screen, as if that could change its readout.

Buizel was about to retort, more habitually out of living with Eevee's negativity than anything, when something happened that changed everything.

Rrrrooooonnnnn.

A great, echoing, creaking sound, like a pod of migrating wailord, came from either side of Sinnoh Home. Pokemon all over the base heard it, and stopped. Sinnoh Home, while still moving on the outside, was a single moment in time on the inside. It was a little like the moment everyone realizes the submarine is about to collapse, or the gunman enters the bank. But more than anything, it was like someone hit the pause button at the most dramatic scene in a movie.

The false calm previously present in the base became the sort of calm one found in the eye of a hurricane.

The techies rushing about in the VISION lab froze where they stood, looked up, and listened.

The Steel-types working in engine maintenance looked on at the massive turbines in horror.

And miles away in a hi-jacked Sinnoh Home escape pod stolen by its inventor, Professor Pi stopped turning his map upside down and backwards.

He sat up straight, turned to look back in the direction he'd come from, and wondered aloud in an absent-minded, old voice. "Oh, what was that?"

The creak sounded again.

Rrrrooooonnnnn.

Pokemon everywhere rushed to get to their assigned headcount rooms. Rio was evacuating the main hub while simultaneously speaking into an intercom.

"EVERYONE, PLEASE HEAD TO YOUR ASSIGNED COUNT AND EVACUATION ROOMS. THIS IS NOT A DRILL."

"I think we got the whole "This is not a drill" part, Rio!" yelled Quill, who was currently trying to regulate the floods of Pokémon passing through, all of them desperate to get to safety first.

In the engine rooms, the Steel-types slid, floated, and zipped towards the exits as fast as they could. The massive, constantly-spinning turbines slowed, stopped, and then their axles snapped in half.

CH-RRRRK

The same thing was happening in each engine room. From the outside, you could see the blades of the engines slow, and Sinnoh Home tilt far to the right. It could no longer battle the jetstream.

In Professor Pi's stolen shuttle, the Raichu's eyes widened as he realized something. He whispered to himself, horrified. "It's starting… And they're all going to fall…" The old Electric-type paced back and forth around the limited space. One thought flashed in his mind above all the other competing for his attention: If only it were just out of the sky.

Back inside Sinnoh Home, in the pilot's cabin, Buizel leaped into the third pilot's chair and yanked the steering controls to the left. Ty and Sparky joined in when they realized what he was trying to do, and together, they yanked Sinnoh Home back upright as the fins each control was tied to leaned against the wind.

When the floor was back where it should've been, Buizel hopped back out of the chair and rushed to the teleporter. "Keep this place balanced! I need to help them fix this!" the Water-type called back to the pilots, one foot already in the teleporter. The technology recognized his Base Key immediately and in a small flash of light, Buizel disappeared back to the Main Hub.

You had to give the Sinnoh region credit. They knew how to evacuate.

By the time Buizel took the teleporter back to the main hub, everyone was gone, even Rio with the portable intercom microphone. The only evidence the room had ever been as busy as it usually was were the empty cubicles and papers fluttering to the ground. The lights were off, but the windows gave the place plenty of illumination. But with the absence of all life, the too-bright sunlight only managed to make the room seem creepy.

Buizel stepped off the glowing teleporter pad and onto the smooth tiled floor. Not a moment after he did, the luminous circles behind him flickered, sputtered, and died with a ftz. He glanced behind him at the noise and, with a slight quickening of his heartbeat, took note of the deactivated teleporters.

The Water-type took off at a quick running pace, headed straight for the major access hallway- a gaping, shadowed tunnel compared to the brightly lit, if eerily empty, main hub.

Okay, first it was ten hours left… then eight… and now it sounds like something in the engines blew out. The turbines maybe? Well, if that's the case we probably have roughly… ten minutes. Oh dear. As he brushed the threshold between the light and the shadows, he felt mild panic push against his mind and fought to keep himself sane. Buizel. No panicking allowed. Think of what Eevee would say!

He quickened his pace through the shadowy hallway, rather off-put by the lack of anyone else's presence. They'd likely evacuated to the emergency rooms, each one prepped with escape mini-flyers. It was probably just him left in the halls, and that was a very disturbing thought. Especially in the dark.

Oohm

Emergency lights on a backup support system blinked on with an echoing hum, and though the red tint to it bothered Buizel a bit, the background noise took the edge off the mind-grating silence. He kept moving.

Tk tk tk tk tk tk

The claps of feet on floor bounced off the cavernous walls as Buizel kept running. He knew where he had to go, he knew what he needed to do, and he knew how to do it.

Tk tk tk tk tk tk

In the near-silence, the red-ish lighting, and the pressure of being in a falling aircraft, his rapid footfalls were beginning to sound less and less like running steps, and more and more like a time bomb on fast-forward.

Tk tk tk tk tk tk

At the very end of the giant main hallway, there was a set of giant doors that led to the main mini-flyer bay where most of the pokemon in the base would've evacuated to. A glowing, red sign that red "Evacuation Bay 1" was mounted above the double doors.

Buizel suddenly stopped running and skidded the last few feet until he was just in front of the entrance. Then, he ducked to the left into a small, barely-noticeable hallway. One that led into back-alley maze that was the rest of Sinnoh Home.

Left turn.

Right.

Left.

Left.

Right.

Up a ladder.

Left.

Right.

Right.

Left.

Stop.

He was at what looked like a dead end with an elevator in front of him. It looked like an elevator, except for the pad at the right. Where there'd normally be an up button and a down button, or maybe a holoscreen, there was a rectangular of a dull, gooey, silver, clay-like substance that somehow didn't drip and fall out.

Buizel took out his Base Key and jammed the barely glowing blue-green crystal into the pad of liquid… something. The key was accepted and sank into the rippling substance.

The elevator doors opened, and Buizel stepped inside a- not an elevator, but a cavern.

A great, big cavern the size of which was at least half of the main hub's and a ceiling that curved up into darkness. But that darkness wasn't from a lack of illumination, it was from the sheer size and wonderment of the rest of the place. It was a cavern literally lined with technology. The floor, the walls, and the dome ceiling were all made of of a silvery-white material, and covered in thin lines of glowing blue in a circuitry pattern.

Lining the curved walls were computer stations, chairs magnetically hovering, keyboards on angled holopads, and glowing rectangles of light for computer screens. Every station was empty, but the sight was one that spoke of incredible technological advancement.

In the center of the technological wonder that was the cavern was a giant, rounded circle raised up two feet from the floor, made of the same fiber-optic material as the rest of the room. Stretching straight up from inside that circle was a beam of blue light, a pillar of binary code streaming up and down.

Buizel, even in his rush to complete his self-assigned mission, had to stop in the doorway to appreciate the place. It was sacred. Sacred in the way a small child's bedroom is sacred. Sacred in the way that a place is sacred when a friend calls it home.

And, well, a friend did.

A friend Buizel knew before Team J, before he was anything more than a newbie desk worker.

A friend who saw every file, every secret, and every face, but who had no face of her own.

A friend who was never made to be a friend, but a friend who was so much more than she was made to be.

A friend who had an acronym but no name, and so who named herself Sirai.

Sirai... Buizel remembered the task at hand and grabbed his Base Key, which had come out of an identical liquid pad on this side of the wall. He ran to a spot on the floor near the column of blue light in the center of the room, then glanced left, right, and upwards to check his position. The Water-type got to his knees and held the Base Key tightly in his right hand. He used the sharpest end and tapped it to the floor, gently.

Slowly, he moved it down towards him. Then right. Then up. Then left. Wherever he traced the Base Key, a line of blue light thicker than the circuit board pattern of light below it appeared. He had a rectangle drawn soon enough.

Tap tap.

He tapped the Base Key twice in the middle, and the thick lines of light grew inward to become a solid rectangle of blue. Then, it flickered, and disappeared, giving access to complicated wiring just an inch below.

Buizel jumped inside the tangled wires and dug through them, shifting most to one side or another. Occasionally he yanked one out completely and tossed it out the hole. Sometimes he'd rip one in half and then connect the sparking end somewhere else.

That one's a safety feature… Mmph! Out! ...There's a power transference cord. Snap, and connect it to the sologram feature… Oh… here it is…

Buizel gingerly lifted up a cord plugged into another one. It was thick, red, and had been buried underneath everything else. Standing waist-deep in the wiring, he held it directly in front of his face.

This… it's the key point in the entire system. Connects the power directly to everything else. Sirai, outside systems, doors, everything. Disconnect it, we go into freefall. Reconnect it again, and there should be a complete system reboot… That'd bring Sirai back. But… it's all theoretical. No one actually had to try it the last time a piloting system broke down… Sirai fixed it that time.

But that's why we need Sirai now! All or nothing. Save Sinnoh Home and Sirai, or fall out of the sky trying.

He squeezed his eyes shut, gripped both wires tightly and pulled.

Pf-ZZZ!

There was the connection point sliding apart, and then a zap and a few sparks of electricity, and then there was darkness. Everything went out. The floating chairs crashed to the floor, the holopad keyboards disappeared, the screens and floor went dark, the column of light went out, and in the mini-flyer bay Rio's microphone stopped working.

Outside, the entire, massive, silver-white structure tilted, the great, fantastical wings folded in, and Sinnoh Home started falling.

TZ-zzz-mmmmmmm

A spark from where Buizel was, and then the lights came back on. He had plugged the wires back together and Sinnoh Home… rebooted.

The chairs started floating again, the keyboards reappeared, the column of light came back, and when Rio's microphone started giving off feedback he dropped it and covered his ears.

"It worked." Buizel breathed, amazed.

In the engine rooms, small, flying robots with lenses on them came out of the walls and light was projected at the snapped-in-half turbine axles. Lines of solid holographic rope, or solograms as they were known, appeared and pulled all the broken pieces back together. The robots landed on major breaks and formed sologram rings around themselves and the breaks in the metal.

In the evacuation bay, Rio turned off the microphone, cutting off the feedback, and then looked at the crowd of pokemon evacuees in the hanger. Holoscreens then appeared all over the room, and cheers rang out. Pokemon started filing through the double doors and back to their work stations. Rio just sighed and slid his back down the wall until he was sitting on the floor.

"Whew…" He blew a sigh of relief. That... was... a close one.

Ten minutes later, Sinnoh Home was back to normal, more or less, and Buizel was talking to Rio outside the mini-flyer bay. Several blue holoscreens floated around the vincinity as Rio was constantly approving requests from Pokémon in the headquarters to return to their team bases.

"The theory was right! It worked!" The Water-type exclaimed.

"Well, that's great! I always knew things would work out!" Rio replied. He laughed. "You ought to tell the new Tech. Manager though, that department needs these kinds of facts."

"Come to think of it, who is the new manager?" Buizel asked.

Rio looked away, obviously unwilling to give Buizel the answer straight. "Well, it's someone you know…"

Suddenly, the holoscreens flickered out. Then, they reappeared. But they weren't normal holoscreens, they were orange.

"That isn't right…" Buizel and Rio both stared at the floating orange squares. "Something's really wrong." the Water-type said, glancing around him and then back at the Riolu.

"Mm-hmm." Rio nodded dumbly.

Professor Pi, the old Raichu, was currently sending his stolen mini-flyer on a death spiral straight down at the forest below. Flashing warning signs, red screens, and beeping lights were everywhere in the cockpit. The good professor had himself strapped in the chair tightly, and slammed his tail on a big red button at the left.

Proooomf!

The back of the mini-flyer opened up and the chair flew out of it, freefalling half a mile before a parachute activated and Professor Pi started falling much more slowly. He turned his head over his shoulder to glance at the distant cloud that he knew hid Sinnoh Home in its mists.

I knew it the moment those screens turned orange… at least now it has one less accessible port. But now I've gotta make the rest of the way on foot. Eh, at least I got a map!

The wrinkled old mouse Pokémon grinned madly and tightened his grip on the paper clenched in his fists. He turned his head forward again and looked out in the direction of Sandgem Town.

Hey hey, guys! It's been forever lol omg xD But we're back now and good as ever (hopefully), and hopefully you'll enjoy this chapter as well. Rio wrote most of it, so go give her all your hugs B)

Also, I put my ANs at the bottom of the page now. Surprise! /shot.. again