The Power of Teamwork
The way Giratina stood on upright on six legs, the bulky rhydons didn't even reach halfway up its torso. But together, they brought significant strength against the giant serpent. Three rhydons alternated attacks on all sides to keep Giratina busy and distracted while they whittled away at its stamina, building on the wounds Indy created.
"Rats will always find companions," Tilly mocked, "but they are still just rats. I can exterminate them all." Her body shone, and suddenly Giratina seemed to power up. With a single, blindly-fast spin move, to swiped all three rhydons simultaneously.
"We're running," the Professor told Claire softly. He grabbed her wrist and led her through the valley, over the rubble from the collapsing mountain and into the Temple of Alph. Building the temple in the shadow of a mountain seemed a bad choice suddenly as chunks of the roof and walls suffered damage from the battle with Giratina.
"Shouldn't we help Jomon? Three rhydons might not be able to stop that thing."
"Jomon is going to have the same odds of success without us as with us," the Professor pointed out. "Giratina is nigh unstoppable in a straight battle. We'll have to cut it off at its power source."
"Do you even have any pokémon?" Claire asked.
"I try not to get too attached to living things," the Professor replied.
Walking inside the Temple of Alph this time shocked Claire even more than her first venture inside the TARDIS. Instead of golden walls decorated with various glyphs, the walls were invisible behind clusters of particles floating through the air like galaxies through the universe. Illumination came from the unown floating through the space, their eyes glowing a soft shade of purple.
"Be careful," the Professor warned. "We don't know exactly what we'll find in here. Be prepared to flee at any moment."
A loud crash suddenly hit the temple and shook its very foundation. The Professor and Claire grabbed one another to brace themselves while O'Connell leaned overhead to protect them from falling debris. But the largest debris collected at the front door, sealing the marble doors shut and preventing escape through the entrance.
The Professor sighed. "Right. Like I said: No turning back."
The air in the temple was creepy, and all the floating unown seemed lifeless. Claire wondered if the temple was still the same behind all the air, or if the unown had warped it into some brand new space, somewhat like the TARDIS. It felt like anything could happen in here, especially if the unown were accessing an anti-dimension while dwelling in this one.
"What's the plan?" she asked.
The Professor held his sonic screwdriver in the air and scanned the unown. His expression did not make him look happy with the results. "We need to stop the unown from generating power. I'd hoped it would be as easy as waking them, but it seems things were not intended to be so simple."
The Professor stepped through the passage into the next hallway and was immediately assaulted by a shadow in the dark. When he hit the wall, Claire realized the unown hadn't disappeared the temple; they only changed the air. His assailant seemed equally stunned by the realization of that fact and left himself open for O'Connell to land a quick strike to the head. The Professor's assailant dropped to the ground gripping his head.
"Thanks for that," the Professor said as he turned to find out who attacked him. It was a woman, bulky and with sharp facial features. She wore thick, dark-colored clothing, but they were nice clothes, suggesting some relation with the palace. The Professor recognized her as, "Ariel? Why are you here?"
"The harem supervisor?" Claire remembered the name.
Ariel scowled. "You? Have you come to put me to death for my crimes?"
"And what are your crimes that require a death sentence?" Following Ariel's subsequent gaze, Claire noticed a bag tied shut and a small, stone statue. She couldn't quite tell what the material was, but the shape of the statue was that of an omanyte.
"Maybe I can guess," Claire suggested. "You were part of the conspiracy to kill Alph. When you realized the Professor had it all figured out, you wanted to escape before we came looking for you. But you can't just leave without much money. That sack there is probably full of trinkets, and the statue has got to be worth something, too. Am I close?"
"I would say you're spot-on, Claire," the Professor replied.
With the sudowoodo in front of her, Ariel opted not to attack back. From her cowering position, she explained, "I spotted three samurai and thought they were out to bring me back. I hid in the temple hoping they would pass me by, but Prince Penta was with them, and he brought a rhyhorn. He commanded the floating pokémon to obey him, and they proceeded to kill him."
Claire gasped, and the Professor simply uttered, "Oh, dear. How did they do it?"
"I don't know. He looked like he was in pain, and then he suddenly disappeared."
"Either by implosion or drawn into the void," the Professor assumed.
"What happened to get from that to the super-powered widow?" Claire asked.
"I was scared to death when the pokémon killed Penta, but even though they saw me, they didn't harm me. I wanted to leave right then, but one samurai remained outside the door alongside Tilly. Tilly witnessed the event. She grieved heavily before the pokémon, and they responded by making her stronger. They've been nearly catatonic and floating around ever since."
"They offered her a wish expecting her to want her son back," the Professor surmised, "but instead she wanted power."
"How much power?" Claire asked.
"Almost limitless if we don't stop her." He looked around as if hoping to find the answer among the sleeping unown. "What we need is a brilliant stroke of genius. There must be something we can still do to awaken the unown and stop their resonating with Tilly."
Claire spent the last several years of her life researching and locating the Solaceon Ruins, but her early years were spent in studies of the Ruins of Alph. The ruins were a fascination of all archaeologists because of the puzzles. No one knew why the puzzles were in place or where the unown came from. Looking at the omanyte statue, she began to determine a purpose for the sealed rooms.
"If we separate the unown and seal them apart from one another, will that weaken their power?"
"What?" But he didn't give time for her to repeat the question. The Professor pressed his hands on both of Claire's cheeks and kissed her on the forehead. "Claire, you are simply a genius!" Turning away from her and walking toward the entrance to the temple, he began to speak as much to himself as to Claire and Ariel.
"The unown formerly dwelled in an alternate dimension comprising Griseous Particles and antimatter. Alone or in small groups, they have always been prey but when they gather in large numbers their power can create brand new worlds. Perfect resonance like they are exhibiting right now has only been achieved on two occasions. The first was the creation of our universe. The second was when… the TARDIS became an only child. We would be unable to disrupt these radio waves through simply closing the door on them. We'll have to add some sort of reciprocal signal in order to seal the unown into a deep sleep."
"Can you create such a signal?"
"I can," the Professor said, "but I'll need some kind of symbol to use as a seal." He reached for the sack Ariel carried and took the rope she used to hold it shut.
With a confused look on her face, Ariel asked, "A rope?"
"Any symbol will do for the first round," the Professor answered. Standing in the small passageway between the entranceway and the second hall, he pressed the rope against the frame and held up his sonic screwdriver. The blue geode grew bright and the sound of the tool resonated counter to the unown signal, creating such dissonance as to make the sounds louder than Claire heard yet. The stone walls of the temple began to close in the passageway, turning the rope into seal to maintain the door in place. Already, Claire felt the atmosphere in the temple weaken. The Professor lowered his sonic screwdriver and winked. "I'll bet you didn't know a rope could do that."
"No," Claire admitted. "But we don't have another one and there are supposed to be four doors in this temple to seal off the unown. Plus, after we do that, how are we going to get out of here?"
"One crisis at a time," the Professor insisted. He led the women past the second passage and stopped. "We'll need something this time with a little more energy to it. The rope was fine for a first run, but the sonic screwdriver doesn't have the power to seal every door alone."
Claire snatched the sack from Ariel and pulled out the first thing she got her hands on. It was a small, blue stone that shimmered in the light of the unown. "How about one of these?" she asked as she put on a grin and tossed the rock to the Professor.
"A water stone?" he asked.
"That has no power," Ariel objected. "It is simply a mineral from the mines nearby. Its unique existence makes it a valuable trade item with other countries."
"It's not unique to this place," the Professor corrected her, "but it does possess a certain level of radiation that you don't know about yet. It will do for our second door." Claire just smiled as he created another seal in the hallway and decreased the pressure in the atmosphere. When he stopped, he looked at the dimming geode on the sonic screwdriver. "I don't know how many more we can make."
"Two is all we need," Claire told him. But they'd still need a way out. The earth shook violently, reminding her that somewhere outside, Giratina fought with a team of rhydons and the mountain was collapsing on top of the temple. Staring up at the ceiling, she noticed the passage into the emperor's personal worship room on the second floor. It was a small room, but if the mountain collapsed overhead, maybe O'Connell or Indy could dig through the rock and create an exit.
"The fourth chamber," she commented. "We'll do that one next. And then we'll seal off this hall and climb to the top." Ariel eagerly grabbed the ladder and began to climb, not looking to wait for a clear exit. Claire called after her, "There's probably no exit up there!"
"Let her go," the Professor said. "She won't find anything, but she can't contribute anything more, anyway. Let's keep going. We need to seal off all of the unown in order to get rid of that Giratina."
The two of them ran to the last chamber and stood in the doorway. As he stared at it, the Professor decided, "We need something more than a stone this time. The sonic screwdriver needs to be recharged, but without the TARDIS right here, I can't do that."
"You can draw energy from something living, right?" Claire asked.
"Yes. Like you?"
"Like a pokémon," she said with an incredulous look.
"It would have to be a rare one in order to prevent the seal from being easily broken," the Professor said. In response to Claire's look, he said, "You must have known already that the seals may be broken one day. The goal is to make it difficult. So name a pokémon. Come on, anything as long as it's the rarest pokémon you can think of."
"The rarest," Claire repeated. Scoffing at the thought, she remembered her studies of the Ruins of Alph. "Ho-Oh is the rarest I can think of."
"The Guardian of the Skies, a bird living its entire life in flight, never resting and resurrecting itself in its ashes. A symbol of fortune and friendship, said to bestow happiness upon those who witness it."
Claire nodded, feeling the sorrow in the Professor's words. "Then you've heard of it."
The Professor pulled a single pokéball from within his jacket. As he opened it, Claire took a step back, her heart rate rising rapidly in anticipation of the only pokémon the Professor carried with him. A flash of red light quickly shrank and failed to take form, materializing only as a pile of goop with a plain, smiling face.
"A ditto?" Claire asked. "I thought you might actually have something rare."
"A ditto that has spent much time with the time vortex," the Professor clarified. "A ditto's body is like that of an undifferentiated cell. Contact with other cells gives it that ability to transform and become that new cell."
"Everyone knows what a ditto can do."
"But this ditto is special. It has an eidetic memory. Any pokémon it has previously copied, it can transform into again." He looked to the ditto and nodded. The ditto simply stretched itself and smiled, and then its body began to grow and take new shape. It grew bigger and developed red feathers. Its underside turned white, but its tail feathers shone yellow and prismatic, causing a rainbow effect every time it flies and earning it the nickname "the Rainbow Pokémon." And as no normal pokémon, the ditto generated new cells at an incredible rate, rapidly creating new mass at immeasurable speed; it grew to twelve-and-a-half-feet long and weighed almost 450 pounds within mere moments.
Recognizing the phoenix pokémon from the storybooks, Claire uttered, "A ho-oh. Then you've encountered one in the past?"
The Professor didn't answer her. He simply turned to the hall and said, "Ditto, stand near this frame. I'm going to draw energy from you to create a seal, so try to resonate with the sonic screwdriver if you can." The affirming cry from the pokémon didn't match the size of the bird, but the power coming from it was impressive. The body of the massive bird shimmered and turned blue in resonance with the sounds of the screwdriver. Slowly a door appeared in the passageway, sealed by the image of a phoenix.
"Good work, Ditto," the Professor said as he patted the bird. Quite rapidly, the bird shrank back to its former, goopy form. It still smiled, but it looked exhausted. The Professor withdrew the pokémon into its pokéball. "Rest now, old friend."
Claire ran her hand along the sealed door, noting how heavy it was. Nothing was likely to break through that without incredible force. "I can't believe this is where those doors came from," she uttered, thinking to the mystery of why the temple was sealed off. She never would have guessed that the unown inhabiting the temple once threatened the safety of the world.
"One more door," she announced.
The Professor shook the sonic screwdriver, which struggled desperately to remain lit. "Well, we're just about out of juice here, and given how much energy that drained from Ditto, we can't try that method again. It's too risky to take the power straight from a living creature."
Thinking on it for just a moment, Claire said, "Too risky to take. But what if the pokémon offered the energy up in a more natural way?"
"Like what? Executing an attack technique?" The Professor stopped his cynicism and stared back at Claire. "Like executing an attack technique! That's brilliant! But we'll need to make sure it's a move that won't hurt either of us for being nearby."
"I'm an archaeologist. The majority of my pokémon have moves that won't hurt me." She pulled a pokéball and summoned Chan, her white pachirisu to her side. She held out her hand while Chan scrambled up her leg and out on her arm. "Are you rested?" she asked him. Chan looked happy and sounded energetic, to which she smiled. "Are you ready?" she asked the Professor.
He aimed the sonic screwdriver at the frame while holding it near the pachirisu. "On your command, light him up."
"Alright. Chan, use Flash." With a high squeak and a burst of energy many times the size of the pachirisu's body, light filled the halls of the temple with such energy as to maintain the light for a time. Instead of dwelling in the air, all of that energy converged with the sonic screwdriver to create a seal across the hallway, dividing the temple into five sections. The unown continued to float, but the galactic air faded and was replaced by the darkness of the temple again.
"Well," the Professor uttered as he stowed his dead screwdriver. "Shall we see about an exit? Giratina ought to be significantly weakened by now, if it's even still out there."
With Chan back in his pokéball, Claire led the way up the ladder to the emperor's personal worship room. Ariel was still in there, pressing her hands along the walls to find some way out. "I see nothing," she announced.
The Professor reached up and pressed against the walls. "Yes, it is rather well built."
"Nothing that can't be taken apart by the elements," Claire countered. She summoned her roserade Croft to her side. "Use Giga Drain around the cinderblocks." Croft placed her bouquet-like hands around a cinderblock on the ceiling and began to draw in all the nutrients she could absorb, weakening the cement and turning it brittle. Scattering dozen of leaves from her arms, she manipulated a Magical Leaf attack into cutting around the edges of the cinderblock. By the time she executed the attack a third time, the cinderblock slid completely out of place and slammed onto the floor just over the hole to the ground floor. Only the barest twilight drifted in to illuminate the room, but they could see the sky, and it was no longer purple.
"Well done," the Professor said proudly. "Now we can get out of here."
Ariel shoved Croft aside and clambered to be the first out of the temple. As she rounded the roof, she took a tumble and somersaulted to the ground below. "What happened?" Claire wondered.
"That," answered the Professor, pointing to a series of blood spots where Ariel climbed. He gently reached for Croft and turned her arm outward. She had thorns on her limbs, hidden just like on a rose, and one of them possessed a small drop of Ariel's blood. "It appears in her selfishness, Ariel poisoned herself by accident."
The Professor and Claire each climbed out through the hole and stood on the ceiling for a moment to catch a view of the events. Ariel lay on the ground by the temple's entrance, contorted but alive on the rubble collected from avalanches. Giratina was just as large as before, but the mighty beast no longer gave off such a mighty air.
One rhydon appeared to be knocked out, but a second body slammed Giratina to the ground while the third stood a few yards back and prepared to charge. As it waited, the horn on its snout began to spin rapidly like a drill. When it collided with the body of Giratina, its drill horn punctured the skin and ripped the misty flesh. Instead of perishing the way living bodies do, Giratina simply turned to ash, staining the clay black.
"It seems that we did it, Claire," the Professor stated. "The unown are sealed away in the ruined Temple of Alph, Giratina is no longer a threat, and the conspiracy to murder Emperor Usimare Alph III has been brought to light. Not bad for your first trip through time, eh?"
With a groan, Claire asked, "Are all your trips like this?"
"Pretty much."
"Don't you ever use time travel to take a real vacation?"
"This doesn't relax you? Knowing the world might come to an end at any moment, then relieving that stress in one grand, baffling, impossible moment. This feeling right here? That's what relaxes me."
"I'm happy that you're happy," Claire groaned. "I'd settle for a massage."