The end of the crystal maze broadened into a tall, shadowy chamber, and set into the chamber wall was an impossible door. Blanche estimated it to be 50 feet tall, but the top of it vanished into the black void above, so they couldn't be certain it didn't continue out of sight. Hundreds of intricate designs were carved into the dark stone. Humans and pokémon, plants, landscapes, cryptic designs and ornate patterns, a thousand details to drink in. The only indication that the enormous structure was a door rather than a stationary monument was the seam dividing it down the middle. Though the design indicated that the door should have been functional, the power required to move such titanic slabs of rock was hard to imagine.

Blanche and Spark sat about 20 yards away from the door, at the edge of the crystal passageway. They leaned together, supporting each other's tired bodies, Spark lending Blanche his heat. Blanche had finally warmed up to merely uncomfortably cold, rather than painfully cold, or fall-asleep-and-not-wake-up cold. Their hands and feet felt irritatingly tingly as they thawed, but they preferred that sensation to feeling nothing at all, as they had before. They flexed their sore fingers and tucked them beneath their arms, hoping Spark had been wrong to suspect frostbite.

The door had to be the start of a new maze or trap. Spark and Blanche had agreed on that point immediately, and so had decided to give the door a wide berth while they recovered their strength. As curious as Blanche was about the intricate carvings on the door, they weren't eager to set off whatever new booby trap awaiting them by getting too close.

"How are you doing?" Spark asked, nudging Blanche.

"Much better," they said. "What about you?"

"I want to sleep for about a century, but I'm pretty much OK," said Spark. He chewed his lip, choosing his next words. "Can we, uh, regroup for a moment? I'm still trying to put everything together, but my brain feels a lot like oatmeal right about now."

"I think that's a good idea," Blanche said. "We should go chronologically. It sounds like you faced Dr. Dillinger before I woke up. What happened?"

The muscles in Spark's jaw twitched. If his experience was anything like Blanche's, they knew it couldn't be easy to talk about. Still, they needed all the information they could get. Blanche risked losing some heat in their hands to take hold of Spark's.

"When I woke up, everything was dark," Spark said. "I could feel the walls of a tunnel close to me on either side, and I remembered your tip about keeping your left hand to the wall in a maze. I followed it along for… I'm really not sure how long I walked. It felt like ages. And then she showed up with a lame flashlight-under-the-chin stunt, which was a LOT scarier in the moment than it probably sounds now."

Blanche squeezed his hand. "After meeting her myself, I'm sure she can make anything scary."

"Yeah, I'm not sure how she manages that, considering she has the face of a kindergarten teacher," Spark said. His light smile faded. "She tried to convince me that I was going to die back there, in the dark. She claimed that she'd seen into all of our heads, and after everything she said, I believed her."

"What did she say?" Blanche asked. When he hesitated, they added, "If you don't mind me asking."

"No, it's OK. I guess you need to know, right?" Spark drew a deep breath. "She said you and Candela had left me behind. And no, I didn't believe her. I mean, I did a little, but…"

"How could you believe her?" Blanche asked.

Spark laughed, but it didn't seem authentic. It sounded pained. Blanche hadn't meant it to be hurtful question, and wasn't sure what to say.

"I don't know, Blanche," Spark said, sounding defeated. "I get worried sometimes, that's all. I don't always feel like I'm… I don't know how to talk about this. This point is, I was scared, and I would have believed anything."

"We would never leave you behind," Blanche said firmly.

"I know, I know, but sometimes I don't understand that," Spark said, a hint of color rising in his cheeks. He turned his face away, trying to hide it from Blanche. "Compared to you and Candela, I feel like I'm a failure. I'm the weakest link at the lab. I didn't even know how to conduct a proper experiment until you taught me, and I'm supposed to be a researcher! I studied for this, but I'm still the one accidentally losing data files or setting equipment on fire or begging for help with statistical analysis. I'm an embarrassment and a burden, and maybe it would be better if I weren't dragging you down all the time."

"That's… that's not true at all," Blanche said. They'd known Spark had a few insecurities to sort through ever since the events of the thunderstorm, but this exceeded their suspicions. He wasn't kidding around or exaggerating, that much was clear by his discomfort and averted eyes. He really felt like this, and Blanche couldn't believe they'd been so blindsided by it.

"I shouldn't have said anything." Spark cleared his throat and proceeded to backpedal. "It's not a big deal or anything, but I'm a little touchy about it, and somehow Dr. Dillinger went spelunking in my subconscious and dragged up a great big bundle of ugly."

"Obviously, it is a big deal, or you wouldn't have put us both in danger with your mad dash out of the crystals earlier," said Blanche. They felt him tense against their shoulder, and realized they might have come off too harshly. For all their analytical expertise, they still struggled to read other people, even their closest friends. "I'm sorry. I knew something wasn't right, but I didn't know what to do about it, or just how bad it was."

Spark pushed his hand through his hair, leaving it even messier than before. "Let's stay on task. Dr. Dillinger said she saw our dreams. Doesn't that freak you out a little?"

The moment of forthrightness had apparently passed. Not wanting to cause further injury, Blanche moved on. "It does. She showed me an implant on the side of her head that connects her with her pokémon. Remember that hypno that knocked us out? He had a matching diode. Dr. Dillinger must have used him to see our dreams, and then played on the fears that manifested in them. What happened next?"

"I eventually got sick of Dillinger's game and caught her off guard. Then there was this earthquake, and that weird feeling of power like you described. Then she kicked my leg and threw me down some stairs, and once I'd pulled my act together, I followed a path to the crystal chamber."

"Is that what happened to your ankle? Can you let me see it?" Blanche asked.

"After you tell me your side of the story," Spark replied. "What did the ever-charming Dr. Dillinger do to you?"

Blanche inspected their fingers as they spoke, relieved that the feeling had returned to them, along with their tan coloration. "She invited me to join her lab, and I declined. She's a member of Team Rocket, an underground criminal organization that Professor Willow once told me of. The two of them used to, uh, see each other."

Spark looked at Blanche like they'd lost it. "Come again?"

"We can come back to that later," Blanche said. "The point is that she knew about us and wanted me on her team. To keep you from pursuing me, she manufactured a situation in which she'd kill you unless I convinced you I wasn't worth saving. If she deemed me unconvincing, she would have used her arbok against you."

"And the only way you knew how to ditch someone as clingy as me was to use Resolute to vicariously slap me in the face," Spark said, laughing at what Blanche considered a rather unfunny joke.

"I thought it was the only way, and I didn't have time to think, and-"

Spark held up his hands. "Whoa! It's OK! I knew it wasn't you. You did what you had to do, and you saved my life. Again."

Blanche puffed warm air onto their hands and rubbed them together. They didn't want to keep reliving the scenario. They had to push past it. "Right. Now that I'm away from the situation, I've developed some theories. First of all, I don't believe it was ever Dr. Dillinger's intention to kill you."

"Really? Because it seems like my death was an option in, if not the goal of, both of her traps," Spark pointed out.

"But she didn't kill you. She pushed you as hard as she could, and then the earthquake happened. I don't think that was by accident," Blanche said. "I think that's what she did to me as well. She pushed me into a place of powerful emotion, and then I felt the earthquake. Based on the cry I heard during mine, I believe Articuno caused that quake, and Zapdos caused yours."

"Which means the third quake had to be Candela and Moltres," Spark said, resting his chin in his hand.

"When I met Articuno, I was in a similar position. It was a time of very strong emotion for me," Blanche said. They'd never talked about this before. The words felt strange and new on their tongue after having spent so long as an old story in their head. "I wonder if that's what drew Articuno to me in the first place."

"So, you're thinking that Dr. Dillinger knew we had some kind of… emotional bond or something with the birds, and she intentionally tried to draw that out," Spark said. "You know, Candela used to talk about seeing Moltres on the hill where Willow's lab is now, around the time her little brother passed away. I believed her, but one day she told me she made it all up. I never knew what to think about that. I'd almost forgotten." He turned to them, worry wrinkling his brow. "Blanche, she must be in trouble, too. We have to get to her."

"I know," Blanche said. "I think I have control of all my limbs now. Let me look at your ankle."

Spark planted his hand on the ground, as if preparing to move away. "I really do think it's just bruised."

Blanche grabbed his knee before he could try to stand. "Forgive me if I find it hard to trust you. Let me see it."

With a reluctant sigh, Spark rolled up his pant leg. Blanche slowly got to their knees, glad to find their legs could support them now, though they were still a bit tingly. They eased Spark's shoe off, noting the sharp hiss of his breath as they did. It was bruised, that was certain, but the swelling betrayed a deeper injury. Blanche pressed a finger into the inflamed joint.

"OW! I said you could look at it, Blanche!" Spark exclaimed.

Good, it wasn't numb. "Can you move it?"

Spark grimaced and flexed the ankle in tiny increments. "Kind of… but not happily…"

"It looks like a bad sprain, but I can splint it," Blanche said, shrugging off Spark's fluffy coat. They positioned their hands on a section on the back and prepared to rip.

Spark caught Blanche's wrist to stop them. "Wait a sec! Two things. First: are you warm enough to dismember my coat? Second: hasn't my coat had a hard enough day as it is?"

"I'm only tearing part of it. There will still be plenty of insulation," Blanche said, immediately regretting the chill they felt upon removing the coat. "I'll buy you a new coat. I can't believe you haven't said it yet."

Spark tilted his head. "Said what yet?"

Blanche smiled as they tore strips from the back of the coat. Fluff spilled into their lap. "You've had all this time to say 'I told you so,' and yet you've held back."

Spark's eyes lit up. "Great stars, I forgot! You told me to lose the layers, and I said you'd regret it, and I was right! I did tell you so!"

"You saved my life with your stubbornness, Spark," Blanche said, aligning the strips around his ankle.

"We really need to break the habit of saving each other from near death situations. It's getting exhausting," Spark commented. "Which reminds me… if Dillinger wants us alive, why does she keep almost killing us?"

"Hold still. This isn't going to be comfortable," Blanche warned, and started to wrap Spark's foot. "It must be a calculated move on her part. Or she's absurdly reckless."

"Or… OUCH, OK, you weren't kidding. Or she already got what she needed from us. It's safe to say she has the birds somewhere in this mountain. Maybe all she needed was some emotional distress from us, and now we're just the leftovers of her experiment, and she doesn't care whether we live or die. Ah! That's a little tight…"

"I'm sorry, Spark, but I need to keep your ankle still before you do any more damage to it," Blanche said, though they did ease up a little, not wanting to cut off his circulation. "I have a feeling that she doesn't want us dead. She must be building up to something."

"Like whatever's on the other side of that giant door? That sort of something?" Spark suggested.

"Maybe," said Blanche. "Though I can't imagine what. However, given what we know of Dr. Dillinger, it's probably another trap, and Candela must be in the middle of it. There, you're wrapped up."

Spark helped them slide the coat back on, and Blanche relished the heat that was still trapped in it. They wondered if they'd ever truly feel warm again. They tucked their hands into the pockets of their own jacket, beneath Spark's, and remembered the object they'd hidden there before the jynx attacked.

"Then we need to get moving," Spark said. He gingerly maneuvered his bandaged foot into place and stood, wincing as he put pressure on it. He offered Blanche an arm, and they took, though tried to rely on it as little as possible as they got up. Their legs felt heavy and clumsy, and they had to balance themself against Spark, but at least they were upright.

"We still have a lot to talk about," Blanche said.

"I figured you'd say that," said Spark. "We can all have a deep, soul-baring chat once we find Candela."

"That, and also this," Blanche said, procuring the object from their pocket. It was three-sided spike formed of some kind of smooth, reflective mineral, about as long as Blanche's hand and tapering to a point at one end and a short pyramid at the other. They'd thought it was a crystal in the half a second they had to look at it before the blizzard. Now, they weren't so sure. It was much too precise, and the material was closer to obsidian than quartz.

"Where did you find that little bauble? And do you know what it is?" Spark asked, taking it from their hand to see it better.

"Dr. Dillinger's pocket, and I have no idea," Blanche said, and was pleased by Spark's look of admiration. "I got her pinned against a crystal after you left. I was reaching for the pokéballs she'd stored in her coat, but came up with this instead."

"You feisty, thieving scoundrel!" Spark teased, but then his face fell. "I'll bet she'll notice her thingamajig is missing."

"Probably," Blanche agreed. "So we'd better move, and hope this thingamajig can give us some leverage when she comes looking. Now, let's see about that door."