The current priority of S-EARLY has changed! From ending SA to… ending SA and SY. … No, not cancelling.

Chapter 7: The Professor

Opelucid City, 12:30 am…

Black stared at White, who was lying unconscious on the bed of the med-bay of the private jet. Though the existence of the med-bay itself surprised him, it surprised him more to see all sorts of equipment that most hospitals didn't have. Black made a note to himself to visit Skyla and ask her what exactly she planned to do with this state-of-the-art private jet once this crisis was over. But for now, he was staring at White, waiting for her to wake up. The girl already had various status monitors attached, including a heart rate monitor and a brainwave scanner. According to Platinum, who helped set this thing up (somehow), there were no irregularities.

Black sighed. He wanted White to wake up. But he wasn't sure if he wanted to stay around her. Though she was mind controlled (or so he hoped, anyways), her words still hurt him a lot. The fact that White never mentioned Curtis and the fact that the two Unova Dex Holders didn't contact each other that frequently made Black believe that his relationship with the girl was not as stable as he had thought. Once the girl woke up, she'd have a lot of explaining to do.

The plane started to shake as it prepared for takeoff. Apparently the resupplying finished. Black cast one last look at White before he headed towards his seat. Before long, the plane took off, with the destination set to Violet City of Johto.

…

Several hours later, skies over Johto, 10 am, Skyla's private jet…

…

The Dex Holders woke up one by one as the pilots announced the entry into the new region. Platinum, who had been awake for some time, finished her call back home for the routine update of her parents' condition. They were showing some progress to recovery. The heiress let out a long sigh of relief and wiped away a forming tear.

Sapphire watched her from behind and smiled a little bit. Sure, that particular junior was a pain in the ass to her, but she still had to respect the love and care she showed for her parents.

"So," Black started. "Who are we trying to meet?"

"Her name is Crystal," Ruby answered. "A Johto Dex Holder. We last saw her when she was 20, so that was 6 years ago. She's really smart and nice. She works as a research assistant for Professor Oak of Kanto and volunteers her free time at the orphanage in her hometown. There's no way she'll refuse a request for help."

"I wonder if she got married yet," Sapphire said with a slight glare at Ruby.

"I wonder how Emerald's doing," Ruby said to change the topic. "I haven't seen that guy in a while. We'll all Hoenn Dex Holders, but we just never see him around."

"You know, Crystal's been going out with Gold for years now. Surely by now, they'd have gotten married," Sapphire tried again.

"I wonder if Emerald still stays around that orphanage," Ruby said, avoiding her comment once more. "Maybe he took it over. He's 24 now, so he wouldn't be staying in it."

Black glanced at Ruby and Sapphire. Sapphire kept glaring at Ruby while he kept avoiding eye contact. So the Unova Dex Holder decided to do the wisest move. Just back away.

After several dreadfully tense minutes, the plane landed in Violet City. All the Dex Holders flooded out to escape the tension. Ruby was the first one off the plane. Sapphire was last.

"Alright, so… where are we going?" Black asked.

Ruby looked to the left and to the right. "… I don't know. I've never been to Violet City."

"Weren't you born in Johto?" Sapphire asked.

"Yeah, but I never really left Goldenrod. At best, I've been to Azalea."

"Senior Ruby, you said that senior Crystal volunteered at the orphanage in her hometown," Platinum started. "So perhaps we should start by finding this orphanage. According to the map, it is not far away from where we are."

The 4 Dex Holders soon headed towards the orphanage. It wasn't that hard to find, as over the years, the once small facility has grown quite big. Inside, they met Earl, the owner of the orphanage. According to him, Crystal was currently working as a professor in the Celadon University. As such, the 4 Dex Holders headed for Kanto with their aerial transport.

The university was easy to spot. It was the largest building in Celadon, even bigger than the Department Store and the condominiums. But finding Crystal inside the massive building would be a problem.

"So, what now?" Ruby asked. "This place is huge. We can't look for Crystal in every room. That'd take hours."

"We should find the Office of the Registrar," Platinum said. "It is usually within the first two floors."

Sapphire suddenly froze and focused on her hearing. "No need for that. I think I can hear her voice."

"Alright then, lead the way," Ruby said.

"Are you certain, senior?" Platinum asked. "Since you have not met senior Crystal in years and given how big this place is, it is possible that you are mistaking the voice of someone else."

Sapphire narrowed her eyes. "No, I'm sure."

Platinum didn't say anything, so the Dex Holders slowly headed where Sapphire was going. On the way, the heiress spotted a map of the current floor and took a couple of seconds to study it.

Soon, Sapphire quietly opened the door to a lecture hall. There was a lecture currently in session, so the Dex Holders quietly peeked inside.

"… That's not Crystal," Ruby said. "Since when did she have yellow hair?"

"Crap," Sapphire muttered. 'Damn it, how embarrassing…'

"The Office of the Registrar is on this floor," Platinum said. "We should give that a try next."

The Dex Holders quietly shut the door and headed towards the office. From there, they learned that Crystal was currently teaching a calculus class on the third floor.

Within a few minutes, the Dex Holders reached the lecture hall. After checking the room number and hearing Crystal's voice coming from inside, the Dex Holders silently entered.

"That's Crystal, alright," Sapphire said.

The professor had dark blue hair formed into two side tails that were bent upwards at the end and had a lab coat on. She also had a pink shirt and black pants that were only visible when she was looking at the students instead of writing on the blackboard.

The professor checked the time. "Okay class, this is it for today. Next class, we'll be reviewing simple vectors, the dot product and the cross product in preparation for vector functions. And for those who are struggling with Taylor Polynomials, the tutorial today will cover them more thoroughly."

The students began to file out of the lecture hall and the professor proceeded to erase the chalkboard. Ruby, Sapphire, Platinum, and Black took this time to approach her. While walking, Sapphire could hear the chatter amongst the students. The girls were talking about school stuff. The boys were… all talking about Crystal and how… attractive she was. Hmm… perhaps that's a problem.

The professor didn't hear the Dex Holders as they approached her.

"So… professor?" Sapphire started, choosing to ignore all the chatter she could still hear.

The professor continued to wipe the blackboard. "Yes?"

"Do you remember us?"

The professor turned to face the Hoenn Dex Holders. The moment she saw them, she smiled brightly. "Ruby! Sapphire! It's been so long!" The Johto Dex Holder briefly hugged her two juniors. "Wow, look at you both! All grown up, huh?"

"Hi, Crystal!" Sapphire said happily.

Platinum and Black simply watched silently. While Black was lost in thought about his status with White, the heiress examined the blackboard. Lots of information was still present, and she wished that she was a student.

"How've you been?" Sapphire asked.

Crystal shrugged. "Ever since the horrible Dunsparce Wars last year, everything's been quiet and consistent. And productive, if anything."

"Boring?" Sapphire asked.

"… Maybe a little. How are you?"

"Can't complain. Nothing chaotic happened in Hoenn for a while now."

"Still trying to get Ruby to accept you?"

"No. Now, I'm trying to get him to get down to one kn-"

"So you're a professor now?" Ruby quickly asked to change the topic.

"Yeah, as you can see," Crystal answered with a smile. She understood what was happening.

"What do you teach?"

"Nothing much. Chemistry, physics of electricity and magnetism, calculus, and computer sequential programming. Within a few years, I'll stop with chemistry and move on to teaching quantum physics and complex analysis in the pure mathematics branch."

"… All the 'nerd' classes, huh?" Sapphire muttered.

Crystal smiled. "You can say that. It's fun, though."

"So what, did you retire from being a capture specialist, research assistant, and orphanage volunteer?"

Crystal shook her head. "No, no. I'm a full time professor, but a part time research assistant for Professor Oak. And I still accept Pokémon capture tasks and help out at the orphanage. There's another set of hell raisers in the orphanage. I can't leave, or they might burn the place down." She let out a short sigh. "I don't know why, but there always seems to be some hell raisers whenever I'm at the orphanage. Apparently, there were no such hell raisers before I started all those years ago. Then when I started, Emerald came. He was quiet, most of the time, but when he got upset… Then the self-proclaimed hell raisers came in and made themselves legendary. Now, they've left the orphanage and a new set came in, wanting to out-do the legends. It's a mess."

"So you're telling me that you're a full time university professor who teaches four major courses, a part time researcher, and you still have the time to volunteer at the orphanage and capture stuff?" Ruby asked in disbelief.

"And I'm going for a doctorate degree too. Well, if you put it that way, it sounds crazy," Crystal said. "But yeah. And I still meet the other Dex Holders frequently. Gold, Green, Blue, Emerald…"

"Red?" Sapphire asked. "And Yellow?"

Crystal suddenly looked troubled. "Well… that's… different. I'd rather not talk about it." As an attempt to change the topic, the Johto Dex Holder looked over at Platinum and Black. "Who are they?"

"He's Black, Unova Dex Holder," Ruby answered. "She's Lady Platinum Berlitz, Sinnoh Dex Holder."

Sapphire rolled her eyes. 'Lady Platinum, huh?'

The two junior Dex Holders bowed. Crystal bowed in courtesy as well, and shook hands with her juniors.

"I didn't know I had so many juniors," she muttered, getting hit by the sudden sense of her age.

"I know, right?" Sapphire said. "Back in the days, being a Dex Holder meant something. Now there's just so many. I don't feel special anymore. It seems like the Pokédex are being given to anyone nowadays."

"Senior Crystal," Platinum started, ignoring everything Sapphire just said. "If I may ask, were you teaching the class about sums of infinite series?"

Crystal looked up at the board. "Yes. A little bit. You know what I'm teaching. I have to teach the class about the Fourier Series. A simple concept, really. Given any continuous periodic function, an infinite sum of sine and cosine functions can be used to represent it. It's so useful in the field of research. But apparently, this topic is difficult. I have to remind the class that rearranging the terms of an infinite sum changes the actual sum."

"… I don't have a clue of what you're talking about," Sapphire said. She looked at Black and Ruby for support, but they were both staring at Crystal and Platinum, trying to understand what they were saying. It was either going to be a free lesson, or a free headache.

"Of course. Rearranging the terms alters the partial sums," Platinum said. "And the sum of an infinite series is determined by its partial sums, and what the nth partial sum approaches as n approaches infinite. Assuming the series is convergent. Of course, there can be no sum in a divergent series."

"Yes. You understand," Crystal said with an impressed look. "So why can't my class understand this? They're all failing miserably. Well, the girls aren't, but the boys are. It's like they're not even hearing what I'm teaching… which is weird, because based on what I'm seeing, they all have perfect attendance…" She let out a sigh. "Of all the years I've been teaching… three years, actually, I never had anyone get confused by the arrangement of the terms of the Fourier Series. Usually, people get mixed up with the coefficients and the integrals. But never the order of the terms. If they're struggling with this stuff, I'm going to have so much fun teaching vector functions… These students better not be visual learners. Because there is literally no possible way for me to draw a vector function if it has 4 or more components. 5D vector functions drawn in 3D space? Impossible."

"You may be able to draw the function with 3 components at a time," Platinum suggested. "It is similar in theory of drawing a 3D object in 2D space. Though you will have to draw n choose r number of the diagrams, in which n is the dimensions of the function, and r is the dimension in which you intend to draw the function."

"Enough with the nerd time!" Sapphire yelled out. "Crystal, we actually came to ask you a favor."

Crystal smiled and continued to erase the blackboard. "Of course. Come now, I know you didn't come all the way over here just to hear me talk about multidimensional vectors. So, how can I help?"

Crystal finished erasing the blackboard and listened as Black proceeded to explain the current situation involving the 3 Unova Dragons. She crossed her arms and paced around a little as she thought of a solution.

"Hmm… So you want me to go to Unova to help you?" she asked eventually.

"Yes. We need help from the other Dex Holders."

"That's… going to be difficult," Crystal muttered. "Midterms are coming up and I still have lots of material to cover before the students can be ready. But this is a crisis…" She let out a sigh and thought for a few more seconds before nodding. "Alright. I'll help you. I'll clear this with the university so they can find an acceptable substitute."

"Thank you," Black said as he bowed.

"But I'm sure you'll need to recruit more Dex Holders for this mission," Crystal said. "So why not go get Gold? He's not doing anything nowadays. Then again, when has he ever done anything?"

"What about Silver?" Sapphire asked.

"Team Rocket suddenly vanished recently, so Silver went off to find out what happened to his father," Crystal explained. "I haven't heard from him ever since he left a few months ago."

"Where's Gold, then?" Ruby asked.

"He should be working in the recreated Pokémon Daycare in Goldenrod City. And by "working", I mean dozing off and screwing around all day long."

"Alright then, we'll head for Goldenrod afterwards," Black said.

Crystal looked at the clock. "Hmm… I do have chemistry class coming up, so I'll have to talk to the faculty pretty quickly." She gathered her belongings as she looked at her juniors. "Wait outside for me, would you? I won't take long."

The four junior Dex Holders left the lecture hall and exited the university. On the way out, Platinum's Pokégear started to vibrate as she received a call from one of the Berlitz Mansion guards she had brought along.

"Hello?" Platinum answered as she picked up the call.

"My Lady, the girl in the med-bay is waking up," came the guard's voice.

"Black, White is waking up," Platinum said to her junior.

"Oh, that's… good," Black muttered. "What's her eye color? When she was under control, her eyes were red. Normally, they're blue. I'm half-expecting purple here…"

"Could you check her eye color?" Platinum said through the Pokégear.

"At once, my Lady," came the guard's reply. There was a sudden sound of a door opening.

"Ugh… what… what's happening?" came a female voice, presumably belonging to White. "Ah! Wh – Who are you?!"

"Open your eyes wide!" the Berlitz Mansion guard ordered.

"What? Why? What do you want?" White asked.

"Silence!"

Platinum sighed as she listened to her guard's fantastic communication skills. Perhaps she had to fix that issue the moment she returned home.

"Ow! Ow!" White yelped. "Stop poking me in the eye!"

"Silence!" The guard returned to talking to Platinum. "My Lady, her eye color is blue."

"Ow… Who are you talking to?" came White's voice again.

"I said silence!" the guard yelled.

"Okay, okay! You don't have to yell…" White muttered in the background.

"White's eyes are blue," Platinum relayed the information to Black.

"Does she remember what happened?" Black asked.

"Does she remember anything about what happened to her recently?" Platinum asked the guard.

"One moment, please." The guard returned to the abrupt interrogation. "What do you remember?"

"What?" White asked back.

"What do you remember?!" the guard asked again. "Recently!"

"I don't know! A lot of things happened," White said. "Um… I got kidnapped… … Are you one of them?"

"No."

"… Then why are you interrogating me?"

"I am ordered to. Start talking."

"That… doesn't convince me to trust you."

"Silence!"

"B – But you told me to talk!"

"What do you remember after the kidnapping?"

"Mind control and…" White suddenly gasped. "Black! I – I killed him! In Opelucid! H – He tried to save me and I… I killed him! Black! I miss you so much!"

White started to cry and the Berlitz Mansion guard returned to talking with Platinum. "My Lady, she believes that she-"

"Yes, I can hear," the heiress said. "Please calm her down."

"I apologize, but I cannot hear you," the guard said. "One moment, please." Again, he focused on White. "Silence! I cannot hear the Lady!" White continued to cry for a few seconds until her cries suddenly became muffled. "I apologize, my Lady," the guard said to Platinum.

"… Please calm her down," the heiress said again.

"Yes, my Lady."

Platinum soon hung up and let out another sigh. "Black, we should head back to Violet City as soon as possible."

"We'll be heading there when Crystal comes out, so we should wait for her to come out," Ruby said. "Besides, if we're going to get Gold in Goldenrod, we'll be passing Violet City to get there."

"We'll wait then," Black said. He knew he had to go talk to White. But… he actually didn't feel like it. He had to yet sort out his feelings towards her after the recent revelations.

Sapphire smirked. She heard everything. "Your guards are so educated and kind," she said sarcastically to Platinum.

The heiress narrowed her eyes but didn't respond. Ruby glanced at Sapphire and at Platinum. He now saw what was happening. There was something happening between the two. Something… very hostile. He had three choices. Choice 1: he could… encourage the hostility and watch the show. Choice 2: he could put a stop to this before it escalated beyond control. Choice 3: he could step back and make sure he didn't get burned in the crossfire.

This was a delicate problem. If he wasn't careful, it would appear as if he was taking sides. Taking Sapphire's side would make Platinum hate him too. And he preferred to be liked rather than disliked. If he appeared to take Platinum's side, Sapphire would kill him. As such, he chose Choice 3. He'd stay out of this mess. If the fight showed the slightest hint of involving him, he'd do the manly thing and run like hell.

As mentioned on top of this chapter, I am trying to end SY. Why (heh)? SY is over half way to completion. That's right, folks. On estimate, 5 to 6 chapters are left. At best, SY will have a total of 15 chapters even if I stall as much as possible. And I'm not stalling. Pitiful length when compared to the likes of SE and SA, but SY was merely a test. A trial. Like a gimmick Pokémon in a Pokémon team. It's unique, different, and not designed to last long.

This isn't bad news. Maybe. With SA approaching completion AND SY also approaching its conclusion, I'll be left with SR and SL. Which means… bring forth Rakutsu, Faitsu, X, and Y. Not a whole lot's known about X and Y currently, but that didn't stop me from including Rakutsu and Faitsu in SE #040. More news to come later.

What Could Have Been:

"Rumor has it, there are two other Dex Holders in Unova," Black said. "And two more in another region."

Crystal smiled and patted Sapphire on the shoulder. "Welcome to the senior side of the Dex Holders!"

Sapphire groaned. "I thought this day would never come…"