Up close, the dilapidated mansion looked positively enormous. Arden walked around it, looking at its charred and weathered walls. "I wonder what happened here," he muttered to himself as he came upon the rusted and broken double doors of the building, which swayed gently on their hinges. He pushed one of the doors and, with only a squeak of resistance, it opened inward easily. Biting his lower lip, the boy entered.

Within, the building was dim and smelt of burnt wood and dust. The floorboards creaked beneath Arden's feet as he walked over a damaged red carpet covered with chips of wood and other debris. The only light came from holes in the ceiling above, which streamed down like the beams of flashlights.

"It smells like fireworks in here," said Arden approvingly. It reminded him of a painting of a cathedral he'd seen in a picture book as a child, except where that building was grandly decorated and decadent, this one was worn out and dying. Yet the impression of a cathedral—all silent and dark and full of something supernatural—lingered.

Arden pressed his hand to a stark, cracked pillar which was supporting the building, and when he pulled his hand away again it left behind an impression on the pillar's dirty side. Rubbing his hand off on his pant leg, he started deeper into the building. A strange statue caught his eye and he approached it cautiously—a carving of a pokemon he'd never seen before and couldn't even begin to imagine the origin of. "Is this one of those extinct pokemon Elara was telling me about?" he wondered, running his fingers over the statue. Like everything else in the mansion, it was covered in dirt. As his fingers ran along it, he encountered a hidden knob. Arden craned his neck around the statue to see what it was, and found it to be a sort of switch. "That's weird."

Curious, he pressed it. Within the walls there was a clinking sound as some old mechanism, accustomed to years of disuse, creaked to life. Arden looked around and scowled to see no visible changes. "Who hides a completely pointless switch?" he wondered to himself. He walked away from it, deeper into the building.

At length, the young trainer came upon a rickety staircase, whose rotten banister had fallen away from it long before and now lay on the ground collecting dust. "Jeez," mumbled Arden, starting up it cautiously. It creaked under his feet as he ascended. "Sloppy building codes, much?"

The second floor was far brighter, as the roof was almost completely destroyed, leaving a spectacular view of the bright blue sky and the towering volcano which had formed Cinnabar and the azure ocean sparkling beyond it all the way to the horizon. Arden took a deep breath as he looked out on the picturesque scenery. "This was totally worth it," he mumbled. "Stupid Gimpy—he doesn't know anything."

"Hey! Who's there?!" shouted someone behind Arden. He spun around quickly to see a man in a burglar's outfit, with a sack over his shoulder. The man's face twisted into an almost comical exaggeration of a frown. "Ah, crap!" he shouted. "I thought this place was empty!"

"It was," said Arden, gesturing over his shoulder. "I just got here right now."

"No, no, no," said the man, clutching his head. "You can't be here, man! If there's someone here, then that makes this a robbery instead of a burglary. I could go to prison, man! I can't handle prison—do you know what happens in prison?"

"I… didn't even know we had prisons around here, actually," said Arden. "Eh—wait, burglary? It's a run-down house. What could you possibly be stealing?"

"Plenty, man," said the burglar, unslinging his pack from his shoulder and opening it. He pulled out an old diary. "Like this, man. I found, like, six of these things."

"Old books?"

"Old journals," said the burglar. "For some reason, they only ever wrote on one page of each. That's a lot of unused paper, man—and I'm gonna be the one that uses it."

"What's it say?"

"Eh?"

"The journal," said Arden, nodding toward it. "What's written in it? What kind of people were the people who lived here? What happened to this place?"

"I don't know that, man," said the burglar.

"You've got their journals."

"Yeah," said the burglar. "But they're all… rushed and confused, man. Something bad was going down here. They were scientists, man, working on some sort of pokemon experiment. A pokeriment, if you will, man."

"Scientists?" said Arden. "Like the fossil researchers at that lab?"

"I don't know, man! Stop asking so many questions," said the burglar, grabbing his head again. "It's too much. I gotta think, man. I can't go to prison. You know what they do to you in prison? They make you do crafts, man. I hate crafts. I'm no good at them. I get glue on the table, and then it's all sticky."

"I—what?"

"I've got it!" said the burglar. "If I get rid of you, man, then no one can say this was a robbery because you won't, like, be here."

"That's murder," said Arden, rubbing his temples. "It's an even bigger crime. I—honestly, it's not like there's a police station around. I'm not going to tell anyone about this, except for maybe mentioning vaguely how weird you are."

"No dice, man. You have to be gotten rid of," said the burglar. He reached to his belt. "Go, Growlithe, man!"

He threw out a pokeball and a growlithe appeared, arching its back and barking. Arden's face faulted. "Oh," he said. "You're one of those."

"Those whats, man?"

"Those people who force me to battle for the craziest reasons," said Arden. "But, fine. Whatever. Go—Cruelty!"

The raichu appeared and Arden physically recoiled to see, now, the damage which had been done to his face. He'd been able to put it out of his mind—that fight and all the fear and horribleness associated with it—but it came rushing back as he looked at Cruelty's broken nose, which was now somewhat crooked in his face, and his cheek which had been smashed and so was partially caved into his face. Arden could see, as well, that one of his paws didn't look quite right, like his toes had been broken, and that a chunk had been torn from one of his ears, and that his ribs on one side looked strange as though they, too, had been broken, and that his tail bent sharply near the base in a way that was unnatural.

Despite this, however, Cruelty showed no signs of feeling any pain. His eyes were as fierce as ever and he arched his back with a growl of, "Cha!"

"Growlithe, ember!"

Arden pulled his whip from his belt. "Dig, Cruelty!" he said cracking it. The pokemon lunged sideways as the enemy growlithe spewed a mouthful of flames at him. Swiftly, Cruelty burrowed into the ground.

"What's with the whip, man?" asked the burglar. "It's so hostile."

"He doesn't listen without the whip," said Arden.

"Did you, like, do that to his face, man? That's so hostile."

"No, I didn't," said Arden crossly. "And stop saying 'hostile'."

"Man, so hostile…"

"Stop saying 'hostile'!"

"Fine, man, fine. Chill out," said the burglar wearily.

With a blast of energy, Cruelty rocketed out of the ground beneath the growlithe, throwing it violently upwards. "Raaaicha!"

"W-wait a minute," said Arden. "Come to think of it, how on earth did you just dig inside a building? On the second story?"

Cruelty glanced over his shoulder at his trainer, flattening his ears in annoyance. "Cha!"

"Grooowl," mumbled the growlithe, struggling to his feet.

"Woah, Growlithe—easy man," said the burglar. "Don't, like, strain yourself or nothin'. Use ember again."

"Cruelty! Thunderbolt!"

Arden cracked his whip and his raichu's intact cheek sparked. Arden's stomach dropped as he thought of how much pain Cruelty must be in. A bolt of electricity shot from Cruelty to the burglar's growlithe, knocking it back and fainting it. "Oh, man!" said the burglar, picking up his pokemon. "That's just so… oh, man. I'm outta here!"

He turned and ran away, to the stairs, one of which broke beneath him, sending him tumbling down with a clatter. "Are you okay?" Arden called after him. "Did you get hurt?"

"Only my pride, man," came the reply from below.

Arden turned to Cruelty. "Does—it hurt badly?" he asked after a tentative moment.

Cruelty flattened his ears and shook his head. "Raicha."

"You don't have to pretend if it does," mumbled Arden, crossing his arms. "I'm… I'm sorry. You got messed up like that because I did something stupid—believed something stupid."

"Rai. Raichu." 'Of course,' he was saying. 'But that's the lot of a captured pokemon.'

"Are you mad at me for it? I mean, more than you're usually mad?"

The pokemon shrugged. "Cha."

Arden bit his lip. "I don't know what that means," he said. "I mean… I guess you can't be too mad, right? Or else you'd be attacking me, right?"

"Raichu."

The response, given with no body language or inflection to indicate anything in particular, was not a great help to Arden. Arden sighed. "Well, whether it hurts or not, or whether you're mad about it—and I can't imagine how you couldn't be—just… I'm sorry, alright? I feel bad about that."

"Cha," said Cruelty. 'Don't.'

Arden turned and looked at the mostly destroyed roof, and the marvelous landscape beyond it. "Hey," he said after a moment. "Would you like to look out at the ocean with me? I think we could maybe see the mainland from here—we're pretty high up."

Cruelty shrugged nonchalantly but, all the same, followed Arden toward a spot where the wall had fallen down along with the roof, leaving a strip of floor exposed to the outside. They walked to the edge of the floor, carefully avoiding the holes which dotted the level, and sat down—Arden with his feet dangling over the edge and Cruelty with his own long feet sticking up over his round stomach.

"I wish I could understand it when you guys talk," said Arden distantly. Cruelty looked at him long-ways. "I wish I were a good trainer like that. If I were, then maybe… Maybe you would've been alright back, in Mahogany."

"Raichu. Cha." Cruelty looked out at the ocean. 'Forget about it,' he was saying. 'My scars are my own fault.'

"And if I could understand you," said Arden. "Then maybe I could understand why you're always so violent."

"Cha," said Cruelty. 'I fight to be stronger.'

"But I can't," said Arden. "And I don't think I ever will. So I guess the point's all moot, huh? Just… I just want you to know that I wish it was different. I wish that it was… That I were better."

"Rai," said Cruelty. 'We all understand that.'