Chapter 11

For another driver, keeping the jeep on the wet, darkened roads would have been nigh on impossible. Pokemon Ranger Peck, who had long since memorised the entire layout of the island eight times over, could have made the journey with his eyes closed. He kept his hands firmly on the steering wheel and his focus firmly forward though, because he was the kind of man who knew that just because he could do something, didn't mean he should.

Air whipped past his ears and hair and the jungle around him swayed in constant motion from the remnants of the passing storm, giving the rather unsettling impression that the entire forest was alive. Given the circumstances, another might have fearfully suspected a hundred snapping, vindictive Pokemon were the cause of the jungles current vibrancy. As it was, while Peck was sure there were any number of violent critters out there who would take exception to his presence, he felt in no immediate danger. Not while he knew the lay of the land so well and not with his Pokeballs strapped securely to his belt. Hopefully there wouldn't be a need to call on them for aid, but something had stopped the backup generators from working and, unlike his employer, Peck would take no chances.

He'd know this who thing would be a disaster right from the beginning. Though, even his scepticism hadn't covered the idea that they might lose three of the world's most venerated Pokemon trainers to an out of control theme park.

He'd never work again after this fiasco.

He should never have taken the damned job in the first place.

Wet foliage cracked beneath the wheels of the car as he approached the Shieldon enclosure. Five more minutes and he'd reach his destination. Quite what he'd accomplish there remained to be seen - while he had a basic knowledge of the compound's electrical system and how to operate a generator he was by no means an engineer.

He was mentally running through the check-list Jackson had given him when he saw it. Movement up ahead out of the corner of his eye. A hand instinctively went to the tranquiliser gun on the seat beside him, other hand steady on the wheel. He eased his foot off the accelerator and squinted into the darkness.

Someone fell into the road and Peck slammed on the breaks.

Tires squealed as they slid across the muddy ground. Peck braced himself for an impact which, thank the gods, never came.

The car juddered to a stop and Peck jumped out of his seat and over the car door. His heart thumped steadily but loudly as he marched around the vehicle.

Just in front of the car grill lay a dishevelled Steven Stone. Peck felt only a tremor of relief as he knelt down in front of the fallen man and rolled him over onto his back.

Steven's eyes were open, his breathing coming out in short, sharp gasps. His entire body shook violently and beneath what seemed to be a layer of foul smelling muck, his face was stark white.

"Breathe, son," said Peck. Steven's eyes snapped to his and he jerked his head in a nod. One hand came up to clutch at Peck's shirt. "You're safe now." In a manner of speaking.

Peck did some quick calculations. Based on where his car had stopped in the tour, Steven was miles out of the way of where he should be if he'd been heading back to the visitor's centre. And why was he alone? Where was the-

More movement to his left and Peck whipped around, Pokeball in hand. Another human shaped figure emerged from the darkness, though it wasn't the one Peck had been expecting. A girl stepped into the light, a look of wary apprehension on her face. For the first time that day, for the first time in a very long time in fact, Peck was speechless.

He looked back at Steven, who's chest now seemed to be rising and falling with less of a frenzy. Peck noticed his shirt had lost a few buttons, though he couldn't see any blood. Hopefully the man had taken a fall rather than an attack, though the meagre first aid kid in the car wouldn't be much use either way.

"Martin's dead," the man choked out. His red eyes watered. "The Tyrantrum-" He let out a pained breath, but Peck didn't need him to finish the sentence. He got the gist and honestly the only surprise was that it had taken this long to happen. He frowned at the grim satisfaction of having been right all along.

The girl came to stand beside them, arms folded across her chest. Try though she might to conceal it, Peck still spotted the Team Skull logo on her shirt. Curiouser and curiouser.

"All right," said Peck. He helped Steven up into a sitting position. From there, the man seemed to breathe more easily. "We have an errand to run, but after that let's get you back to your uncle."

Exhaustion and a jittery sort of hyperactivity were at war in Diantha's body. Her eyes felt heavy and her body even heavier, but at the same time she snapped to attention at every sound and movement around them. Despite her fatigue, she was ready to make a break for it the second danger presented itself. Sheer anxiety drove her forwards and, for probably the twentieth time in the last hour and a half, Diantha inwardly cursed her decision to stay out here rather than follow Steven back to where it was safe and dry. Though it was on the tip of her tongue, pride prevented her from complaining to her companion about it, who had barely made a sound since their ungraceful escape from the portentous death cave.

Using the insubstantial moonlight to see by they were following along the edge of the jungle, neither willing to take their life into their hands by trekking through it in the heavy darkness. Part of her knew she was hardly much safer out here than she was in there, but she felt better about it all the same. At least she felt somewhat covered here from prying eyes without actually being lost within the forest with its bizarrely shaped, greasy looking trees and effervescent smell of decomposing vegetation. About half a kilometre to their right began the outskirts of the small, grey mountain range that had looked so impressive from the sky. Its jagged points blotted out the stars.

A branch snapped behind her and she jumped and looked around. Nothing there. Nothing she could see anyway, her brain unhelpfully supplied.

As they walked, Cynthia pulled at overlarge leaves to tip rainwater into a plastic bottle that she'd taken from one of her numerous pockets earlier. Diantha wondered if she'd grabbed it from the visitor's centre or if it was just something she kept with her at all times. It turned out that impractically bulky coat of hers was bringing more to the table than just aesthetics at least. Cynthia sometimes offered the bottle to Diantha, who reluctantly drank from it. It wouldn't do to pass out from dehydration out here on top of every other unrelenting horror they faced.

Her foot squelched into a muddy puddle and she cringed as disgustingly lukewarm water gushed into her shoe. Dismay was turning into a simmering anger and she let out a long, slow breath. She should never have come to this island in the first place. She should never have gone on the dreadful tour. She shouldn't have left the tour vehicle. She absolutely should not have stayed out here in the wilderness when she could have returned to the safety of at least the facsimile of civilization.

She needed a distraction or she was going to lose her mind.

"How do you know Steven?" she said, breaking the suffocating silence. Diantha quickened her pace so she drew level with her companion; she hadn't even realised she was lagging behind. "You seem...close."

Cynthia tilted her head and her eyes caught the moonlight, making them shine liquid silver. Diantha found herself mesmerised by them.

"We met when he showed up in Sinnoh making a nuisance of himself," she said in that slow, easy way she spoke, and though she sounded faintly annoyed, her lip curled upwards into a smile. "We were both still young and both happened to be looking for the same old relic. Have you ever heard of the Adamant Orb?" Diantha shook her head. "Well it's...It's not really important what it is, but people had been searching for it for years. In a fit of youthful arrogance I was absolutely convinced I'd pinpointed the exact spot it was buried."

As Cynthia warmed to the topic, her body seemed to relax.

"It was the dead of night and I was sat in the Eterna library surrounded by maps and eighteen different research papers, when some asshole wandered over and began to explain to me why my calculations were off by at least eleven and a half degrees." She sighed. "We argued about it until morning. Probably would have carried on if his husband hadn't shown up and dragged him away." Then she said in the most ridiculous attempt at a Hoenn accent Diantha had ever heard in her life (and she was an actress so she'd heard far more bad accents than any one woman should have to endure): "For goodness sake, Steven, you know how much I hate it when you make me be the responsible one!"

Diantha stopped walking. "Husband?"

"Well they weren't married at the time," said Cynthia. She frowned. "You've heard Steven mention Wallace a few times since we arrived?"

"I thought…" Diantha faltered, suddenly embarrassed. "I thought maybe you and Steven were…"

Cynthia laughed and Diantha felt heat rush to her cheeks. "Steven and I? Oh gods no. I'm really not his type."

"Oh."

Stupid, she thought. Ten minutes away from civilization and she'd already lost all sense of propriety and offended-

"Anyway," said Cynthia, with a bemused glance in her direction, "the whole thing turned into a ridiculous race to see who could find the orb first. Orb," she then repeated, "not rock. Orb. No matter what Steven kept insisting."

Diantha swallowed down the specific brand of rising shame that came from a social faux pas and then cleared her throat. At least it had distracted her from the wet way her foot was sliding around her shoe. Already she could feel blisters beginning to form. "Did you find it?"

Leaves rustled high above them and Diantha shivered, desperately ignoring the sudden feeling that they were being watched.

"We did," said Cynthia. "Eventually. And the place we found it in was...indescribable. Everything I'd ever dreamed of really. Ruins below caves below ruins and in such good condition. So much we hadn't known before!"

"And who won?"

Cynthia's silence spoke volumes and Diantha let out an ungainly snort even as hairs prickled at the back of her neck.

"Well I'm sure it was...close."

"That's what Steven said," said Cynthia, with an edge of exasperation in her voice, "which was so much worse than if he'd gloated like a normal person. He tried to share the credit of the discovery with me. Claimed he'd never have found it if we hadn't been pushing each other so hard, which might have been true, but he still won fair and square."

For a moment, Diantha tried to imagine it. A teenaged Steven Stone and Cynthia bickering over dusty old tomes by candlelight while Steven's longsuffering boyfriend despaired of them. Somehow it was more difficult to imagine Steven as a young man. Every time she tried he merely morphed into a slightly shorter version of himself as she'd met him at the League conference last year. Cynthia, on the other hand, she had no trouble picturing as a belligerent youth, brimming with determination and self-confidence that edged into hubris just a bit too often for comfort. Briefly, Diantha wondered how she might have fit into that trio, or if she'd have fit in at all.

Not that it mattered. She'd never had much time for friends growing up. A rigorous schedule of estimated goals and expected achievements saw to that. But, she thought, somewhat dimly, at least she had the opportunity to rectify that now. The rigorous schedule she followed was of her own making. For the most part.

Diantha bit back a sigh. Had her assistant noticed she hadn't returned to her hotel room yet? Though she was only on this island at her mother's strong suggestion, she very much doubted that either of her parents had noticed that she had been out of contact for the evening, despite telling them she'd call after her meeting with Dr Stone. She pursed her lips, annoyed with herself for even wasting her time thinking about it. Every single time they 'encouraged' her to do something she'd tell herself that it would be the last time. She'd stand up for herself. She was a busy and successful woman and she didn't have time to ask 'how high' every time they told her to jump. Then it came down to it and the word 'no' would stick in her throat.

"The rest is, as they say, history," Cynthia continued. A tree branch snapped behind them and the both looked around. Still nothing there. "I'd never really had a rival before then. It was new. The...spirit of competition, I suppose it was. It's easy to fall back into that rhythm even if we haven't seen each other in a couple of years, though we tend to agree more than we disagree these days."

The mountains were looming closer to them now as the treeline curved outwards. It was a foolish fear, she knew, but what if the jungle never ended? What if they kept walking and walking and it never led them back to the secured areas of the island? This time, Diantha actually interrupted her own train of thought by yawning. She brought a hand to her mouth to cover it. Cynthia looked at her but said nothing.

"I didn't think we'd be this active when the day began," said Diantha, feeling a sudden need to justify herself.

"Neither did I," said Cynthia after a moment. Then she sighed rather mournfully and said: "My feet are soaking."

It took Diantha a second to register what she'd said. When she did, she let out a strangled sort of giggle and immediately wished she hadn't. "So are mine," she said. "It's absolutely dreadful."

They both looked down at each other's shoes, and though Diantha couldn't see a blessed thing down there in the dark she let out another one of those embarrassing little laughs anyway. Cynthia laughed too and it made her feel better to know she wasn't the only one suffering.

"Can you believe it's only been about twelve hours since we got off that helicopter?"

"It would have been even longer if you'd actually been on time," said Diantha. She felt a sharp pang of oh no you shouldn't have said that, and then abruptly decided she was done with caring for the day. Maybe just for tonight on this unforgiving cesspit of an island (and how quickly it had shifted from an astonishing marvel to an atrocity in her thoughts) she would speak her mind without fear of the consequences. Or at the very least she would try.

She'd already said a number of things that the voice in her head (mother's voice) had disapproved of, and Cynthia had never minded.

"I know," said Cynthia. "I'm sorry about that. It was a long night. My grandmother lost half of our luggage in transit somehow and I spent hours trying to find it again. Then it was too late to get back into my hotel and I ended up having to rest in the Pokemon Centre. Let me tell you, there's nothing quite like sleeping on the floor to remind you that you're not eighteen anymore."

"You didn't mention any of that this morning." If she had, Diantha might have been a little more charitable and a little less irritated about the whole thing.

Cynthia shrugged and then, bizarrely, bent down to pick up a rock from the ground. She tested its weight and then resumed walking.

"I thought it would be better to just apologise than offer a string of excuses."

That didn't sound entirely true, but Diantha decided to let it go. Anything to make this weary trudge less stressful.

Somewhere in the distance she could hear a gentle hooting.

"Maybe your luggage got lost for a reason," Diantha settled on saying. "A higher power was trying to spare you from this near death experience."

"Could be," Cynthia replied easily. "If I have any say in the matter, next time I'd prefer for the universe to try and save me in a way that doesn't result in my suitcase floating in the ocean." A beat. "Don't worry though; my grandmother's trunk was completely unscathed. Only my clothes are encrusted in salt and something I'm pretending not to know are dead Corsola branches."

Diantha's mouth twisted in disgust. She'd skimmed an article a few weeks ago about the declining Corsola population and the pictures hadn't been pretty. Apparently the poor things were almost extinct in the Galar region.

A warm, wet breeze blew past her and Diantha yawned again.

"At least it's an excuse to go shopping," said Diantha. Then at Cynthia's dubious hummed response she said, "Or not." Personally, she always jumped at the chance to refresh her wardrobe. One of the many perks of being Kalos' most famous actresses meant that designers often created outfits specifically for her. Usually, being used for her fame rankled, but in this case she considered it a mutually beneficial arrangement.

A tree rustled behind them. Before Diantha could even react, Cynthia spun around and launched the rock from between her fingers at one of the trees. There was a loud cry of alarm as the projectile struck it's mark. Diantha's eyes widened with astonishment as a small, human shaped something toppled into sight, hitting several thick looking branches on it's fall downward.

"Shit!" it cried, as it hit the ground with a soggy sounding thud. It? No. Not it. He. "What the hell did you do that for?"

"Oh my!" said Diantha. She sprinted towards the fallen figure, and Cynthia followed more slowly behind her.

The figure rolled onto his back and sat up abruptly. Diantha stopped, almost recoiling at the tearful glare he pointed at her. Even in the dim moonlight she could see the boiling anger of a creature about to lash out.

"Cynthia," she said, her voice strained. "Please tell me you're seeing a child on the floor right now."

"I'm not a child," the child snapped.