Chapter 96: Needle in a Haystack
"I wasn't scared, okay?!"
Elty flicked his ears after hearing a voice cry out in protest for what felt like the thousandth time. He jostled his legs, prodding up against Pladur with a grunt before squeezing his eyes shut. Right, their cell had about half as much space to go around per Pokémon ever since the pirates since the pirates dragged those guards in. Elty shifted and rolled onto his feet with a low sigh. He wasn't exactly a stranger to sleeping in crowded quarters, but never with this much background noise. A casual glance revealed the culprit: a Hakamo-o defensively snapping to an unamused-looking Torracat and Lairon beside him… much as the Dragon-Type had done more times than anyone could count.
"Travellers above, this again?" the Torracat grumbled, throwing a paw over her face. "You were shaking like a leaf out there!"
"Lutz, just give it a rest," the Lairon sighed. "Everyone panics sometimes, okay?"
"It was just a little chilly, alright?!" the Hakamo-o protested, raising his fists with a sour huff. "I got caught off-guard, that's all! If I'd just been able to get free, I could've turned things around!"
Elty flattened his ears as annoyed groans went about the cell from both sailor and guard alike. If nothing else, this Hakamo-o was certainly persistent, even if he sure didn't show much of that while Dirk had a blade at his throat. The cell's air suddenly filled with a sharp harrumph as Pyry stared alongside with Pekka at the Dragon-Type guard with an unamused frown, folding his arms over each other.
"Against 'Dirk the Despoiler'? Really?" the Gabite pressed.
"More like if you tried, you'd have left a mess on the ground one way or another," the Vibrava scoffed.
The Hakamo-o growled and promptly stomped over, looming over the Vibrava with bared fangs and rattling scales. Elty blinked and reflexively made his way over to intervene, when a sharp shout suddenly rang out from the cell directly opposite theirs.
"Das reicht jetzt!"
The Hakamo-o abruptly froze, as did Elty, Pyry and Pekka, along with the rest of their compatriots wedged in the cramped cell as they collectively turned towards the hall. There, visible through the cell bars, was a Quaquaval looking up from an Empoleon stirring in a heap of stale straw. The other Imperials in her cell swiftly hushed up and backed out of the Quaquaval's way, as she walked up to her cell's door and with an irritated scowl.
"As if my poor husband needed more to worry about after that chest wound that horrid pirate gave him earlier today!" the Quaquaval snapped. "Give him some peace and quiet so he can rest!"
Lutz and the other guards reacted much like scolded hatchlings and slunk away quietly, the Hakamo-o mumbling a grudging "Sorry, Your Grace" before settling back down to his place in the cell. Nida blinked at the sight and twitched her ears in surprise. 'Your Grace'? The same thing that Pokémon were calling Valter on Pioppo?
… Wait a minute, there was an Empoleon and Quaquaval among the Pokémon that Dirk had paraded around outside the garrison earlier. A similar flash of realization came over Pladur's eyes, the Fraxure tilting of his head as he spoke up to the Quaquaval.
"Oh, so you're the Duke and Duchess we saw on the steps earlier…"
"That's right," the Empoleon replied. "Duke Franz and Duchess Augusta of Gestirn Island."
Nida watched as the Empoleon shifted and started to sit up. For a 'Duke' and 'Dutchess', these two looked very different from Valter. She supposed that meant the Imperials had Pokémon of all sorts in their nobility. Partway through rising, Franz abruptly froze and winced, moving a flipper over a still-raw cut across his chest. Augusta's eyes briefly widened as she went over and pawed warily at her husband, before lowering her head with a tired sigh.
"Though I can't say that I ever saw ourselves winding up in a situation like this," the Quaquaval murmured.
"Story of our lives really," Nida said, shaking her head. "But at least now you believe we're not pirates, right?"
Elty reflexively raised a paw to protest, only for Nida to summarily shut him up with a sharp elbow. The pair traded dirty glares with one another, though thankfully the Duke and Duchess didn't seem to notice, as Franz sized up them and their companions in their cell, before shaking his head with a low sigh.
"I suppose I'd be more open to the idea, yes," he replied. "And the Protector in the courtroom claimed as much when he said he went willingly with you."
"I suppose pirates wouldn't be pursued by an entire fleet of their peers…" Augusta mused to herself, before glancing down at Nida and her companions.
"Though what are your names?"
Nida stepped forward and introduced herself, as one by one, her fellows from the Siglo Swellow did likewise. After completing their introductions, Franz visibly paused, before he turned his head and shot a skeptical glance out the corner of his eyes.
"And just how did you all convince Her Highness that you're such a villainous lot, then?" the Empoleon asked. "Since regardless of who raided us last week, we received a bounty for you that was issued by Queen Aleria's court itself."
Elty blew a puff of breath up at his face and pinned his ears back with an unimpressed harrumph.
"Tch, in case you haven't heard, but 'Her Highness' doesn't exactly have a reputation for being fully there- Ow!"
Nida swiftly checked Elty with a stiff smack from the back of her paw, before clearing her throat to try and speak up. In what she hoped would be more diplomatic and inoffensive terms.
"I'm afraid you would know more about what's going on there than we would, really," Nida replied. "We haven't done anything like piracy or the like. We've just been trying to help Pleo return home and be able to live at peace with us."
Franz and Augusta paused at the Nidorina's explanation and didn't make eye contact. Did… they not believe what she had to say? Nida thought to herself whether she should try to explain their circumstances more to try and win the pair over, when Augusta let out a sigh and shook her head with a quiet frown.
"… Even if what you say is true, I'm not sure what we're supposed to be able to do about things right now," the Duchess murmured.
Nida hesitated and looked around at the bars of her cell. It… was admittedly hard to think of how they would get out of their present situation right now. Though at the same time, the pirate ships in the harbor hadn't gone anywhere, and pirates still came into the cell block every now and then to check up on them…
So that meant that those pirates still hadn't caught Pleo yet, and with their attention focused elsewhere, this would be the time when they were most likely to slip up and make mistakes. If they could just find a way to get one of the pirates to open one of these cell doors…
"… We might have a few ideas," Nida began. "But it'd require a lot of things to go our way."
Franz and Augusta along with a small crowd of Imperials and sailors across both cells traded curious looks and murmurs with one another. The Empoleon Duke glanced about his surroundings warily, before leaning in against the bars to listen more closely.
"Go on…?"
Nida opened her mouth to speak, only to abruptly catch herself as dull thumps rang out from the hall, which seemed to grow stronger as it quickly became apparent that they were nearing footsteps—heavy ones. The lock to the door in front of the cell block abruptly clattered and the door flew open with a sharp crash that made Nida and her companions recoil.
Nearing voices rang out, as Elty looked down the hall to see Hess approaching with a small party of golden-scarved pirates. The Aggron keenly eyed the entrances to the cells as he made his way down, a few of the more timorous Pokemon in them hurriedly slinking away. Others from among the former pirates on the Siglo Swellow looked over with surprised gapes, which Hess returned with a moment of blinking disbelief, as a grin began to curl over the ends of his mouth.
"Well now, I didn't think I'd see any of you in here."
Hess carried on until he eventually reached the door to Elty's cell, where the Aggron turned and peered through the bars. His eyes first went to Pyry and Pekka, who stiffened up with a pair of nervous squeaks, before settling on Elty with a firm, piercing scowl. The Growlithe cringed with a low whine, expecting to be hit by a hail of rocks at any moment.
Except, it never came. The Aggron pirate folded his arms and batted his tail back and forth, before letting out a sharp, dismissive scoff.
"Well aren't you all just sitting pretty right now?"
Nida and most of her cellmates duly returned the question with piercing glares of their own, but even so, a number of them like Pladur couldn't help but shrink back from the Aggron's imposing form. The Fraxure paced back warily, and after sucking in a breath to steel himself, tried to muster what courage he could to face down the pirate captain.
"Wh-What do you want?" he demanded.
"I'm here to pass along an offer," Hess harrumphed. "One that you don't need to worry about."
The Aggron turned his gaze towards his former underlings in the surrounding cells, and after a moment, his features eased as a small smile came over his steely face.
"… You've all come a long way since we last saw each other," he said. "Aren't you tired of sitting in these cells?"
Elty blinked at Hess' question, not expecting him to take on such a friendly demeanor. The Growlithe trotted up as a wary smile began to spread over his face, before he sat down and wagged his tail with a sheepish grin.
"Well it would be nice to get out and stretch a bit-"
"Not you," the Aggron growled.
Elty flinched as Hess' smile faded as soon as it came. The Aggron turned away from his cell and let his attention drift back to various figures standing behind the bars. He looked at a Jigglypuff, then a Zebstrika, a Quilava, and still others who met his gaze. One by one, the former pirates warily peered through their cell bars and watched the Steel-Type captain as he made his way towards the middle of the cell block. After a few paces, Hess stopped and looked around both ends of the corridor, before he raised his voice again.
"It's for the rest of you who've got something against these Imps that shoved you in here, especially those of you here who got caught on Tromba originally. I don't know the stories behind why you're all here, or for those of you who used to be on my crew, how those hicks put you up to this… but frankly it doesn't matter," the Steel-Type said. "I'm a gracious 'mon and understand that sometimes a 'mon's gotta do what he has to to get by. And this is a prime opportunity for you all to get back into business."
The Aggron cracked a warm smile, holding out both claws in welcome to any who would hear him.
"So what do you say?" Hess asked. "Up for joining up with some friends looking to bust you out?"
Scattered murmurs went about the different cells as a few of the former pirates like an Ekans traded hushed whispers of "Wait, we can do that?" with each other. Elty sucked in a sharp breath at the sight and started to grow nervous, when he looked back at Pyry and Pekka and saw much to his astonishment that the pair had dug their feet in and were sporting a pair of sharp scowls that they leveled back at their former captain.
"Sorry, we're not interested," Pyry scoffed.
Hess blinked at the Gabite's sharp rejection, and made his way over to the front of Elty's cell and stopped with a puzzled cock of his brow.
"Pyry, you're not in trouble if that's what you're afraid of," the Aggron insisted. "We need some extra 'monpower, and we've got all the beer a 'mon could wish for right now to offer in return. Sounds like as good a reason for ditching these landlubbers, doesn't it?"
"We're not interested, alright?" Pekka buzzed. "And if you really cared that much, you could've come back to get us over a month ago!"
Hess' face curled into a sharp frown at the pair's protests. He turned around and eyed the rest of the cells in the block, before letting out a loud harrumph.
"And all of you agree with this? Really?"
Elty expected to hear others chime in alongside Pyry and Pekka, only to be met with silence beyond some uneasy chatter. The Growlithe looked over at the cells opposite his, where a few of the Pokémon he'd once counted as comrades were visibly faltering and seeing what their companions would do. Eventually, the silence was broken by a Quilava making his way up to a set of bars at a cell further to the right, who after a brief moment of hesitation, let out a low huff.
"I don't," the Quilava said. "Count me in, Captain."
At once, other Pokémon in the cell block broke out into startled gasps and outcries. The Golduck from Nida's cell stared wide-eyed as the Water-Type spluttered in incredulous shock.
"Huh?!" the Golduck cried. "What are you-?!"
"Look, you all can't even keep your own teammates safe!" the Quilava spat. "Alice gave us a chance with your crew to begin with, and for what? For you to leave her behind in the Company capital to fend for herself?"
The Quilava reared up by the bars as his vents came to life with irritated fire, looking back with a sharp, defensive scowl that made Elty grimace. He knew that Kenny had been close with some of the Pokémon still on the Iron Fleet, b-but he just didn't think that he'd actually…
"You already pushed me around for a month and stuck me with those stupid Nidoran," Kenny scoffed. "I've put my hide out there for you more than most others would, so why should I have to go down along with your ship?!"
Hess folded his arms at the Quilava's turn of heart, as a small smirk spread over his face.
"Heh, figured you'd come around, Kenny. You always were a clever one," Hess remarked. "Rodion, go ahead and let him out."
Rodion went up to Kenny's cell, with a keyring in paw. After undoing the lock, the Floatzel opened the door just enough for the Quilava to squeeze out before clamping it shut, leaving the pirate to all but pounce on the Floatzel with an affectionate nuzzle, who stooped down and gave a pat behind the stoat's ears.
"Wasn't sure if we were ever gonna see you again just a moon ago," Rodion said. "Glad to have you back, Kenny."
Elty looked on as the Quilava reared up and pawed at the back of his head with a bashful smile, when he noticed the rest of his old comrades traded looks with one another as something seemed to come over their moods. The Growlithe pinned his ears back and blanched, when the moment he was dreading came to pass.
"Oi! I want in too!" a Jigglypuff cried.
"Me too! Me too!" an Ekans chimed in. "I want some of that beer!"
One after the other, his former companions began to voice their desire to rejoin the Iron Fleet, every one striking him like a Water Gun to the face. Some Pokémon he didn't recognize also joined in, while a few of the more stubborn former pirates yielded after they saw they were increasingly alone, and a look back at Pyry and Pekka revealed that they were staring blankly into space. So even they were wavering about rejoining…
Elty wasn't sure what he was expecting, but it wasn't this. The others from the Siglo Swellow didn't seem to be taking things much better as their once-allies left them behind one after the other. A few sported hurt expressions, while others like the Golduck were visibly livid.
"Y-You backstabbing little weasels!"
"Hey, I'm a stoat!" Kenny shot back. "Big difference there."
"Hrmph, can you really blame us for wanting to be on the side of the winners here?" a Zebstrika asked. "What's your side got to offer us, huh? Being a Gyarados' chew toy?"
There was a moment of dead silence afterwards, as Elty stared at the ground with an empty feeling in his stomach. What on earth was he supposed to say back to that? A glance over at Nida revealed that the Nidorina was similarly tongue-tied, even if her red eyes were visibly smoldering. Pyry and Pekka appeared little better, and were both visibly uneasy and looking away.
Elty's ears pricked from a set of heavy thumps and looked up to see Hess returning towards his cell. The Aggron shot a smug grin down at the Growlithe and the rest of the cell's occupants, before the Steel-Type spoke up with a chiding scoff.
"Looks like I know my crew a bit better than you, brats," Hess said. "So, Pyry, Pekka. What about you two? How come you're dragging your feet so much? You can't honestly say you prefer getting pushed around by a bunch of hicks, do you?"
The Gabite and Vibrava both squirmed a bit at the question, when their eyes briefly moved elsewhere in the cell. Hess followed their gazes, and found himself looking at Elty, staring at the floor visibly defeated and downcast. The Steel-Type let his gaze linger for a moment, only for his expression to ease slightly.
"Ah… this is about Eltenios, isn't it?" Hess began. "I get that you like him, but that doesn't mean you need to chain yourself to him."
The Aggron stooped down, holding out a claw just past the bars with a reassuring smile.
"I'm a reasonable 'mon. If you're that worried about him, I'll let him off easy. He can even go back to that podunk island to be a punching bag again if that's what he really wants," Hess insisted. "It's better than what a backstabbing ingrate like him deserves, but hey. I know how to look out for my crew."
Pyry and Pekka remained silent, and the Vibrava of the pair gave an uneasy beat of his wings. After a moment to kick at the floor uneasily, Pyry sucked in a sharp breath, and looked back up at the pirate captain with a shake of head.
"Then good luck with that, Captain," the Gabite replied. "Since we won't be a part of it."
Pekka stiffened up and let out a startled buzz, giving a surprised gape at his Gabite companion.
"Wait, Veikka, we won't-?" the Vibrava began, only to catch himself. "I mean of course we won't! Even if we did want to go back, we wouldn't just turn on a 'mon that's like a brother to us!"
Hess' eyes narrowed in reply and let out a low, displeased growl, before he bared his teeth and glared at the pair through the cell's bars.
"Have it your way then," Hess spat. "You can stay here and wait for the Company to deal with you!"
At once, the entire cell block seemed to jolt up with a start—even including Hess' newly joined underlings. From his place in his cell, Pladur darted up to the bars and shot the Aggron captain an alarmed look.
"Wait, the Company?!" Pladur exclaimed. "You mean they're behind this raid?!"
Hess' eyes widened and his mouth hung open, before he bit his tongue with a startled grimace. The Aggron fumbled with his words briefly, only for his Floatzel first mate to step in front of him and scowl over at the Fraxure with a sharp frown.
"That's not anything you need to worry about," Rodion harrumphed. "Just sit down and don't cause any trouble if you know what's good for you."
A few other cries of protest rang out from the cell block, only for Hess to silence them with a sharp snarl. There was a tense, lingering quiet afterwards, as Hess turned back to his rejoined crew members and noticed that they seemed to have grown uneasy. The Aggron pirate hesitated for a moment, before a flash of inspiration came over his eyes. The Steel-Type suddenly clapped his claws together and spoke up with a cheery grin.
"So, who wants some of that Gestirner beer?" Hess asked. "There's an entire brewery's worth back at the tavern!"
That seemed to do the trick. At once, the pirates' newfound ranks seemed to forget about the mention of the Company entirely and let out whoops and hollers as they hurried along after Rodion at the group's head. Hess followed up from the rear, pulling the door to the cell block shut after him with a slam loud enough to make Pyry and Pekka flinch. The pair watched the closed door wordlessly, before a sharp scoff turned their attention over to the Torracat in their cell as she narrowed her eyes at them with an unamused scowl.
"Nice crewmates you've got there," the Torracat spat.
Pyry and Pekka said nothing in reply, as they let their eyes drift glumly towards the ground. Pyry paused after feeling a warm and furry weight lean up against his legs, looking down to see Elty there and patting at Pekka's head with a paw.
"… You didn't have to do that for us earlier, you know."
The pair turned their heads up as Nida and his other teammates joined in and drew near, giving grateful smiles.
"Yeah, thanks for staying on our side," Nida said. "It really means a lot to us."
Pyry and Pekka gave smiles of their own back, even if they seemed visibly wavering and forced. A general pall had settled over the Pokémon of the surrounding cells as worried murmurs went about and Duke Franz gave an uneasy glimpse off at the cell block's exit.
"The Company is involved in all of this?" the Empoleon asked. "Just what on earth is going on?"
There was a moment of silence as Pladur uneasily fidgeted his claws and glimpsed back towards the door at the end of the hall with a quiet gulp.
"… I don't know, but it can't be anything good."
Ellsberg's office was more cramped than he'd remembered it being for a long time, not with visitors or colleagues, but with box after box full of paper files stacked atop each other on the floor around his desk. The Mothim tiredly leafed through a set of files at his seat, occasionally shifting his wings as the warm tones of a late afternoon's sunlight filtered in.
He'd been going through these files all day since Sorge managed to get his request with the records department approved through Commander Olivia. And yet, somehow, after all these hours, it'd felt like he'd gotten no closer to finding a suitable candidate for their plans.
"… I know that we were supposed to cast a wide net for leads, but this is ridiculous."
Ellsberg pushed away his present file and put a tarsus to his brow with a low sigh, resigning himself to a long night with the surrounding paperwork. He moved his tarsus away and started to let his eyes return to his papers when at the corner of his vision, he noticed that the candle in his room's lantern was spent. Ellsberg supposed that at this rate, things would be getting dark well before he was even close to a lead. It would surely be best to have a candle ready to light for when that time came, and being able to double as a break from looking at his files couldn't hurt either.
The Mothim got up to fetch a spare from a set of drawers against the wall, when a knock at the door rang out. Ellsberg blinked briefly, before making his way over and pulling it open, where he found Aldrich waiting in the hall.
"Hey there, I hope I'm not interrupting anything?" the Noivern asked.
"No, not at all," Ellsberg replied. "Please, come in."
Aldrich entered as Ellsberg pulled the door shut behind him, the Noivern pacing ahead and spreading his still-bandaged wings slightly after he made it into the room's more open center. He turned towards Ellsberg's desk and stopped after he noticed the stacks of boxes. The Dragon-Type let his gaze linger on them briefly, before he turned his attention back to Ellsberg.
"I see you've been busy," Aldrich said. "How have things been going?"
Ellsberg rummaged through a drawer to fetch a fresh candle, before making his way over to his lantern with a low sigh.
"Slow. I've been going through boxes of records all day and I still haven't found anything that stands out as something we can use."
The Mothim glanced off at the boxes briefly as he switched the candles, before looking up at Aldrich with a puzzled tilt of his head.
"Though I wasn't expecting this much material to work with," he remarked. "How on earth did you and the others convince Commander Olivia to give us access to all these files? Let alone so quickly?"
"We told her the truth…" the Noivern began, before giving a small smirk in reply. "Or at least, mostly anyways. After telling Olivia that Darzin interfered with an attempt of ours to apprehend the Vault thieves and how he falsely accused us of being Imperial Spies, it wasn't hard to convince her."
Ellsberg pushed the spent candle aside as the Noivern shifted his wings and continued on.
"As for getting these so fast, while Olivia's very firmly in Director Inler's camp, she doesn't like Darzin any more than we do," the Dragon-Type insisted. "She wants to see that newt pushed out for good, just like us, so it wasn't hard to convince her of the value of trying to find out if Team Traveller had any inside help. Especially if Darzin had anything to do with it after his stunt with that Imperial scarf."
Aldrich glanced at the files strewn about on the Mothim's desk next to the opened box, and then to the ones piled up at the sides of the desk. The Noivern quickly noticed that one side visibly had more boxes stacked up than the other. He supposed that those were the ones that Ellsberg hadn't gotten a chance to go through yet.
"Anyway, did you need some help with these?" Aldrich offered. "With this many boxes, it'll probably take the rest of the evening even if we go through these together."
Ellsberg beat his wings in place with and bobbed his feelers in surprise, before glancing up with a grateful buzz.
"Oh! I mean, it'd be helpful," he said. "But you don't have to if you have something else to do."
"No, it's quite alright, Ellsberg. After all, two sets of claws will make this work go by a lot faster," the Noivern replied. "I just hope that there's something we can use for dealing with Darzin amid all of this."
Ellsberg fell quiet, before turning an uneasy glance over to the larger pile of boxes by his desk.
"… What do we do if there isn't anything?"
Aldrich paused and looked back at the boxes himself, before slowly speaking up in reply.
"Then we'd need to find another way, obviously," the Noivern said. "Sorge and Zelle are reviewing his record to try and find unexplained absences, so that should help a bit."
Aldrich trailed off, as he raised a claw and tapped it against a nearby box with a quiet click of his tongue.
"Fortunately, I think these files will come in handy either way," the Noivern insisted. "If they help us turn up a patsy to pass off as a spy or else another lead for where Kline or Team Traveller could've gone, it'd still be a net positive for us."
Ellsberg blinked and drifted off in thought. Aldrich certainly raised a good point. Darzin wasn't their only target, and the chances of someone on the inside having helped Team Traveller was pretty high. The way that Lugia's friends had evaded them around the Academy after being ambushed, the way they were able to slip in and out of the Academy's Vault… all of it would've been more feasible for them were someone there on the ground to help guide them in and out of it.
"Anyway, I'm sure going through these files will be worth the trouble," Aldrich said, giving a small smile back. "Come on, let's get started. I doubt a dimwit like Darzin covered his tracks too carefully."
The Noivern made his way over to the boxes, wrapping his claws around the topmost one as he tugged it off the stack. The Dragon-Type carried the box a few paces towards a small set of drawers, only to stiffen up and sharply wince before he hurriedly set the box down on it. Ellsberg turned his head up as the box hit the drawers with a sharp thud, watching as Aldrich pawed at a set of bandages along the top of his wing. The Mothim shot the Noivern a worried glance, before fluttering over to his side.
"Aldrich, are you alright?"
"I'm okay," the Dragon-Type replied. "It's nothing I haven't slept off before after a day or two of rest-"
"No, no, I insist!" Ellsberg protested. "I can use Psychic and easily move any boxes you need! It's part of my job as a notary, and-"
"You'd wear yourself out after moving not even a dozen boxes."
Aldrich turned from the dresser and wrapped his wings around his body, looking at the Mothim with a small frown.
"Look, I appreciate what you're trying to do, Ellsberg, but it's not that hard for me to move a few boxes around. Just getting through all these files will take a while and the process will go by quicker if we stick to what we're good at."
Ellsberg fluttered in place briefly after Aldrich's response, staring back at the Noivern in confused silence. After a brief hesitation, the Mothim gave a puzzled tilt of his head and began to speak up warily.
"I'm… not sure if I follow you, Aldrich."
A lingering quiet hung in the air, before Aldrich shook his head in reply.
"Different Pokémon have different things they're inherently advantaged in," the Noivern explained. "It doesn't make sense to overexert yourself trying to match other Pokémon's abilities and skills all the time."
The Noivern turned aside briefly, before lowering his head with a quiet sigh.
"Like you trying to intimidate a party of guards into doing your bidding," he chided. "Don't take things the wrong way, but as a Mothim you're lacking a certain… stature that Sorge and I have. And I'm not sure if we would have successfully scared that Grimmsnarl and his lackeys into line with how determined they were."
Ellsberg paused, before thinking back to the run-in with the Grimmsnarl just before they ambushed Team Traveller and Team Zephyr. The Mothim beat his wings with a flustered buzz. He… supposed that it hadn't really gone the way he wanted, but Lyn always seemed to have no problem throwing his rank around. Had he really done that poorly while trying to handle things?
"B-But I couldn't just stand back and let them badger us like that!"
"And you didn't have to," Aldrich said. "But if you'd played to your strengths as a Mothim instead of trying to copy someone else's, those four probably would've taken you more seriously. Even if it meant they underestimated you at first."
The Noivern pawed at his shoulder briefly, before giving a quiet shake of his head.
"It's how our team's been able to be as successful as it is," he insisted. "All of us have different talents which we make the most of. We become stronger by bringing them together to cover each other's weaknesses, not by trying to do everything by ourselves."
Ellsberg fluttered in place and let his gaze drift down towards the ground. He knew that he wasn't the strongest Pokémon in the Company, but was he really that off-base with the way he used his strength? The Mothim felt a pat on his head and looked up to see Aldrich giving a reassuring smile.
"But don't beat yourself up too much about it. That moment's in the past, and you can always learn from it," the Noivern reassured. "We're a team now, meaning we look out for each other."
The Mothim hesitated and fluttered in place for a moment. His mind turned back to Ketu's admonishment back on Buyeom to stand up for himself more. Even if he'd been a bit hesitant to take advice from him at first, Ellsberg couldn't say that it didn't turn out well.
… Perhaps Aldrich's advice was something to think about. Or at least, sometime when they didn't have a room's worth of files to worry about.
"I'll try to remember that… thank you, Aldrich," Ellsberg said, before his eyes drifted off back for the nearby boxes.
"Though I suppose that we should get back to those files. After all, there's no shortage of them to get through."
Aldrich and Ellsberg went back to their respective boxes and began to comb through the files. The sheaves of paper passing their eyes one by one blurred together in a sea of First-Ranks who all didn't work for one reason or another. There was the Corvisquire from Bunsen's crew who'd never returned from her mission to Tromba, a Pawmo that worked in Accounting but had been on paid leave for the past two weeks, a Grovyle who recently had transferred in to serve as part of the Academy's security detail…
Ellsberg paused and took out the Grovyle's file for a closer look, letting his eyes go back and forth over the paper's runes. He skimmed through the various sections until he reached the part about her job history within the Company. He read it over for a moment, before a flash of recognition came over his face. He hurriedly turned over to Aldrich, sharply buzzing for attention.
"Hey, Aldrich, we've met this Pokémon before."
Aldrich looked up from a file in his claws, before setting it down and making his way over to Ellsberg's desk with a curious raise of his brow.
"Hrm? Who did you find, Ellsberg?"
"See for yourself," the Mothim said.
Ellsberg passed the file along to Aldrich as the Noivern's eyes turned down to rows of runes along with an illustration that had been attached for a Grovyle named 'Salvini'. She was a few years younger than himself and born on Vollezee, with multiple family members who had served in the Company: her parents, who had been killed in action during the great pirate raid on Canalhouse City, and a brother who was a Second-Rank stationed on Tromba.
Aldrich slowly blinked as his mind turned back to what Ketu had to say about his time embedded on Lyn's crew. The Weavile had mentioned that the Captain of the Guards on that island was a Sceptile, one who apparently had a slew of demerits on his record and attempted to aid Pleo when Lyn first came along.
The Noivern supposed that this all sounded promising as a lead, but why did this all sound vaguely familiar?
The bat's attention drifted down towards the end of the file as he continued skimming along, where newer sheaves of paper had been added. A few weeks ago, this 'Salvini' had been demerited by none other than Administrator Zorn himself, and then flagged for observation before being reassigned to Vollezee. His grip on the paper tightened as he made it to the last line and read it aloud to himself:
"'Reassigned to security detail at the Academy'? Wait, this is the same Grovyle that we ran into on the day we were at the Tintoren!"
"It doesn't stop there," Ellsberg insisted. "This Grovyle was also present on Mengir the same night Darzin broke into the room where the Guardian of the Seas was being held. That's the entire reason why she has that recent demerit on her record."
Aldrich paused briefly, before his eyes narrowed in realization and he looked over the file more closely with a quiet click of his tongue.
"Sounds like we found that help on the ground we were looking for," he said. "Or else the Cradle's most credulous patsy if she was really kept in the dark and used in such a fashion. Let alone twice."
"Neither would really surprise me, honestly," Ellsberg remarked, crossing his arms. "Though, can we still make things work if she was just being used as a patsy?"
"It doesn't matter if she was or not," Aldrich answered. "We'd be able to put her to use either way."
Ellsberg blinked at Aldrich's reply and glanced up puzzledly at the Noivern. The Dragon-Type shook his head, before flashing his teeth with a devious smile.
"At the end of the day, what we need is a storyteller to get a narrative straight that doesn't reflect well on Darzin," he explained. "What better candidate is there for that than a Pokémon who has already encountered him before? One that based off what happened on Mengir, likely has reasons to personally resent him?"
Aldrich stared down at Salvini's file for a lingering moment, before taking it into his claws. Ellsberg looked after the Noivern briefly, as he tucked the file away into his satchel.
"I'll ask Zelle to go find her. The sooner we can get ahold of this Grovyle, the sooner we can get things moving."
The beaches on Gestirn Island's southern shores were quiet that day, as waves lapped up against tawny sand and spruce forests sprang up from behind a set of dunes. There among them, the undergrowth shook as a tall figure pushed a few shrubs out of the way. A chitinous scythe parted the branches, revealing a Kabutops in a blue-and-white scarf with a Cubone following close behind. Dimitri stepped forward and panted briefly, before shaking his head and looking down at his companion.
"I think we're safe for now," he said. "Let's take a moment to check things from those dunes up ahead and figure out our next step."
Guardia nodded and started to make her way out of the brush and up the side of the nearest dune. The past few hours had been a whirlwind for her and Dimitri. The escape from town had been a chaotic ordeal where Dimitri had only managed to elude the pirates chasing them through a timely swim carrying her across a river just past the outskirts. Since then, the pair had been going as far away through the forest as they could from sounds of fighting, until they'd run into the sea again. They'd hoped that they would have found some sign of the others along the way, but no luck.
Guardia made it to the top of the dune with Dimitri and looked off at Starpeak Square in the distance. The plumes of smoke had largely died down, but even with the day nearing sunset, the pirate ships in the harbor were still flying their masts proudly over their surroundings.
So those pirates hadn't gone anywhere just yet.
The Cubone sighed and let her eyes drift towards the beach, when she blinked after noticing a curious sight. All about the beach, there were pits dug into the sand with berms around them… just like the one near Starpeak Square they saw while arriving on the Siglo Swellow.
"Nani…? Why are there so many holes here on the beach?"
"I'm not sure, actually," Dimitri replied. "I think it's just a habit some Pokémon on this island have."
Guardia blinked in surprise. She supposed she couldn't grudge a Pokémon for wanting to dig around a bit, but doing it on a beach where things would inevitably get uncomfortably damp the further one dug was downright strange.
The Cubone clicked her tongue and sighed to herself. It was a shame that the pirates couldn't have come through here during their raid earlier. Why some of the holes looked easy to fall into if one wasn't paying attention!
Were they traps to slow down enemies? She supposed that would make sense, even if it didn't explain their location. Then again, it could've just been some sort of peculiarity of 'civilization' on this island to build perfectly good defenses so far away from their actual colony. There was probably some sort of lore behind that, but none of it mattered when they were stuck on an island with hostile Pokémon all on their own.
"What do we do now?" Guardia asked. "Are we supposed to just swim out to the Subway again?"
Dimitri paused and raised a scythe to his mouth in thought, eyeing the water briefly before he shook his head in reply.
"I don't think things are that dire, Guardia," the Kabutops responded. "We know the pirates were looking for Pleo, and they usually aren't the type to linger around for long after a successful raid. If they haven't sailed off yet, they probably don't have him."
Guardia raised her head and slung her bone over her shoulder. So then Pleo was still out there somewhere on this island. If they could just get back to him before the pirates did, they'd have a fighting chance against them. After all, he'd literally blown Bunsen over the horizon before, and Nida and the others said he'd fought off the Iron Fleet on Tromba with his powers… What were a few extra pirate ships compared to that?
"Then we don't have any time to lose!" she exclaimed. "Let's find our teammates and get out of here!"
"Easier said than done."
Dimitri motioned off eastward along the beach, towards Starpeak Square in the distance. Guardia turned her head back towards the harbor which was still choked with pirate ships.
Right. The Siglo Swellow was probably still stuck there. And from the way that the ships' masts were all upright and lacking signs of being torn or broken, she supposed it was a bad sign for how the guards had fared in their fight. But what were they supposed to do now? For all they knew, everyone other than Pleo had been captured in town. With just her and Dimitri, how on earth were they supposed to make a difference against an enemy like that?
A faint crack from the treeline made Guardia jolt her head up, as the sounds of rustling brush and footsteps followed. The Cubone reflexively tightened her grip around her club and started forward, only for Dimitri to block her path with a scythe and look down with a hushed whisper.
"… Let's find a place to hide," he said. "We should see who we're dealing with before picking a fight."
Guardia and Dimitri hurriedly scurried behind their sand dune, lying low as they watched a party of Pokémon in matching scarves walk past along the beach's treeline. A Garbodor, a Beautifly, a Grafaiai, and a black-and-white Linoone, all wearing gold-and-silver scarves. They didn't remember seeing any of those Pokémon from the Iron Fleet before. The pair sucked in a sharp breath as a Beautifly from the group stopped and looked around the surroundings, before narrowing her eyes with a grumbling frown.
"Why on earth do we have to go out and look around the island for that bird?" the Beautifly huffed. "You'd think that we'd be better suited to actually defending our positions in town while those incompetent dweebs who were on the crew before us could handle poking around a few trees."
"If you ask me, the Captain's just trying to stiff us on drinks," the Garbodor growled.
The pirates carried along, with the Grafaiai of their lot moving off slowly at the rear and stopping to look over the beach one last time before he too headed off after his compatriots. After seeing the Grafaiai drift off into the brush, Guardia and Dimitri warily emerged from behind their dune. The Cubone glanced after the direction where the pirates had headed off to, before turning to Dimitri with a tilt of her head.
"Do you think they're searching for Pleo everywhere on the island?"
Dimitri looked off towards the woods and paused briefly. After a moment's silence, the Kabutops turned his head down to his Cubone teammate with a quiet murmur.
"Sounds like it. Though we're probably not going to get many better chances to figure out where they went," Dimitri said, before he motioned with his scythe for her to follow along.
"Come on, let's see what those pirates are up to."
The black Linoone and his party continued to prowl up the coast, stalking along the treeline and occasionally going up the dunes to scout for any sign of Pleo or his companions. The Linoone motioned off at the latest dune they came across for the Beautifly and Garbodor to go and check, and began to make his way towards it himself, only to look back towards the treeline and see his Grafaiai teammate was lagging behind a ways.
"Oi! Mike! Stop dragging your feet already!" the Linoone snapped.
The Grafaiai glared back and flicked some paint from his fingers in reply, before piping up with a sharp huff in protest.
"Oh screw off, you're the ones who keep zipping off ahead without me!" the Grafaiai yelled. "We're supposed to be searching carefully here!"
The Linoone and the others grumbled under their breaths about how the Grafaiai was drawing out their duties. Or worse still, cheating them out of time that could be spent celebrating their fortune over pilfered beer and spirits. The other pirates eventually continued on with their search, leaving the Grafaiai to once again round out the group from the rear and scan his surroundings carefully.
… And not even a minute later, the others were already drifting off again.
The Poison-Type let out an exasperated sigh and turned with a sharp scowl off towards the treeline. He wasn't really being slow with his search, was he? No, it was surely the others who were wrong and being careless.
A quiet rustle rang out from behind and the Grafaiai froze for a moment, whirling around just in time to catch a set of bushes shaking. He paused for a moment, before reminding himself that he was in an unsettled forest. The shaking was probably just a local Feral. The Poison-Type started to turn away when he noticed what looked like a bone poking out of the bush, prompting him to blink and warily shuffle forward as he reached out to grab it.
"Hey, what the-?"
The bone suddenly jerked back as a flash of scythes could be seen briefly, before the Grafaiai vanished into the brush. A few muffled yelps and blows rang out afterwards, when the path returned to silence. From the beach, the commotion carried along enough for the Linoone to twitch his ears and abruptly perk to attention. He called out to his peers, as the pirates turned around, and much to their surprise, saw that their Grafaiai teammate was nowhere to be seen.
"Hey, Mike? Where'd you go?" the Garbodor asked.
The Linoone flattened his ears with a sharp scowl, as the Dark-Type made his way down the path shaking his head while grumbling under his breath.
"I swear to the gods, that Grafaiai."
As the Linoone neared the bush, he paused briefly after noticing footsteps abruptly stop by a bush at the treeline. The Dark-Type crept forward towards the bush, and narrowed his eyes as dark wisps began to gather on his front paws. The Linoone approached, ready to pounce with a Night Slash on a moment's notice when, all of a sudden, a dark shape burst out of the bush and struck the Linoone in his face.
"Ow!"
The Linoone pitched backwards and fell to the ground with a yelp as his peers hurriedly rushed in. The Linoone looked over and saw that much to his alarm, the missing Grafaiai was there slumped over his back, now lying unconscious with cuts and bruises showing through his pelt.
"Wh-What in the-?"
A peach-colored sphere sailed out of the brush and smashed against the ground next to the Linoone's shoulders, spewing mist all in between the pirates. The three devolved into coughing fits, their eyes shooting wide as they recognized the peach haze was the telltale mist of a Slumber Orb.
"Ack! It's a trap!" the Garbodor cried.
The Beautifly vainly attempted to displace the mist with frantic beats of her wings as the Garbodor turned to try and flee. In spite of the Bug-Type's efforts, the Orb's mist made its way forward barely impeded, as the Beautifly's limbs grew stiff and her wingbeats grew slow and heavy.
"Someone call for… help…"
The Beautifly slumped over asleep, the Garbodor following suit not long afterwards. Before long, the pirates were fast asleep, with the Linoone snoring from underneath the Grafaiai still lying on him. The bushes rustled again as Dimitri and Guardia emerged, the Cubone of the pair walking up and prodding the Linoone with her foot.
"Hrmph, I'd rather have clubbed the lot of them," Guardia huffed. "But this works, too."
"Given that that Grafaiai didn't have any berries on him, it was better to just use his orb and avoid risking a drawn-out fight where one of us could get hurt," Dimitri insisted. "Let's just get their bags and get out of here, since they won't stay asleep forever."
The pair went from one Pokémon to the next in the clearing, rifling through their belongings and taking whatever they could until they finally made their way last to the Garbodor. Dimitri stepped forward, rolling him over onto his back as Guardia reached for the pirate's bag, when the clearing suddenly came alive with a barking voice.
"Oi! Everyone who's on this channel, we might've found something! We're just south of the mountain and there's footprints heading straight for the Mystery Dungeon!"
Guardia jumped back from the Garbodor's body, before seeing a glinting badge pinned under his body against the ground. The Cubone and her Kabutops teammate turned towards the north, where there was the mountain looming high into the sky, with visible patches of fog that looked like they might come from entrances to a Mystery Dungeon nearby. The sound of shuffling prompted the pair to brace themselves and look back at the Garbodor, who shifted and batted a hand in his sleep.
"Ngh, five more minutes…"
Guardia blinked after realizing that this pirate was using a badge just like a Rescue Team. Just how much planning had the pirates put into this raid? The Cubone looked on warily with her club raised at the ready, when there was another brief crackle from the badge as the dispatcher's voice came through it once again.
"… Wait a minute, Oscar? Is that you? What happened to you and why do you sound half-asleep right now?"
Dimitri reflexively snatched the badge from the dozing Garbodor. He cradled it in the tips of his scythes as he clamped down on it and raised it to speak into it.
"Sorry, Oscar can't talk right now," the Kabutops answered. "If you want to take Lugia from us, send someone who can actually put up a fight against a Protector!"
Guardia shot an askew glance at the Kabutops, as a few cries of surprise came through the badge. She briefly heard voices talking over each other in the background, when the first voice spoke up again with a noticeably wary tone.
"How on earth did you get this badge? Who's speaking right no-?"
The voice abruptly cut out after Dimitri hurriedly threw the Badge aside into the bushes. The Kabutops hurriedly moved towards the Garbodor's bag and started shoving their pilfered gear into it as Guardia traded glances between him and the undergrowth, before raising a brow skeptically.
"Not that I don't mind a good fight, but why did you tell them that Pleo's with us?" she asked. "It will draw all those pirates right to us!"
Dimitri finished transferring items into the Garbodor's bag before snatching it up and throwing it onto his shoulders, taking a few paces off towards the Mystery Dungeon in the distance before turning back.
"That's the point. The idea is that we'll get out of here before they catch up," the Kabutops insisted. "Better that they waste time trying to find us here instead of all going straight to the Mystery Dungeon where Pleo really is."
The pair stared at each other for a moment, before Guardia glanced off at the Mystery Dungeon in the background. She looked at it briefly, only to give a sheepish tug at her helmet.
"Okay, fair enough. Let's get going then."
Pleo wasn't sure what he was expecting from the inside of Gestirn's Mystery Dungeon, but it definitely wasn't this. Inside, the space overhead was tall and without an apparent ceiling, with layers of fog and stony ridges jutting out at impossible angles in the far distance. In place of solid walls, the paths in the Mystery Dungeon often had steep drops into fog-filled abysses—which looked like they would've been easy to fly across… if only his flight feathers hadn't been cut.
It certainly would've made their travels easier. The ground underfoot was stony, and on the more recent floors like the one they were on, the air carried a nipping chill and some places were even flecked with hints of frost. All of which resulted in Crom and Ander becoming sluggish like they'd been on Haipheh, making them occasionally draw closer to their companions for warmth.
"Can we please just get this over with?"
And of course, there was Bunsen, who was now standing at the bottom of the next set of stairs headed up. Still muzzled and with his arms and wings tied behind his back from when Robbie sent him off. The whole time, the Charizard had tried to keep his distance from the young Lugia and would squirm whenever Pleo got too close. But aside from a couple moments where it looked like he was about to sneak off, he largely kept quiet and hadn't made a fuss.
Pleo wasn't sure whether or not he preferred it that way.
"Well, we're at least another floor closer to Starbreak Square," Ander sighed. "Let's head up and see what we're dealing with."
The five made their way up the stony steps, the earth groaning and grinding behind them as the steps sealed in their wake. The group came out into a chamber ringed by stony bluffs with mist hugging the ground that made it difficult to see too far ahead. After a brief moment to check the surrounding passages, Crom turned his attention over to Bunsen and warily tilted his head at their Charizard guide.
"It's been twelve floors, the entrance to Starbreak Square should be here, right?"
Bunsen hesitated and uneasily shifted in place, before turning his head away with a low murmur.
"It was on the twelfth floor when I left, and we already checked the earlier floors for stable zones," the Charizard said. "But the floors in Mystery Dungeons are always shifting. If it moved, we could still have one or two floors ahead of us."
Pleo and his companions traded wary looks with one another. They didn't like how evasive Bunsen was being at the moment. He'd made no secret of the fact that he never wanted to go along with them and the "demon" in their midst in the first place, and part of them wondered if they'd really made the right choice to let a Pokémon who'd been bullying their friends and families just a week ago to serve as their guide.
Ander hesitated, before shaking his head. No, they knew this was a risk, but they didn't have better options to work with. Whatever their feelings about the former Commissioner were, they had to trust that keeping Bunsen on a tight leash would keep his guidance reliable enough to successfully find an entrance to Starbreak Square.
"It's a good enough start, at least," the Scyther sighed. "Let's start by checking the left passage."
Ander prodded at Bunsen as the Charizard begrudgingly set off down the leftward passage, the group making their way down a path between two stony bluffs that rose up above them, until they entered a large chamber. A moment to study it revealed that the chamber carried around a bend, and had cliffs dropping into the Distortion's fog off to the left.
Trizano could've sworn he heard something moving in the distance, and cast a wary glance off at the cliffsides. It was then that he noticed that Bunsen was doing much the same and keeping particularly close attention to them.
The Skarmory narrowed his eyes at the Charizard skeptically. He had gotten the feeling that Bunsen had been trying to slip away from them for some time, but surely he wasn't desperate enough to do that by leaping into the Distortion, was he?
"Aspetta, what exactly are we looking for?" Trizano asked. "You mentioned earlier that the entrances to Starbreak Square were easy to miss."
Bunsen stiffened up and curled his tail, limbs, and neck in towards his body as much as his bindings allowed. All the while, he keenly eyed Pleo and visibly squirmed with an audible hem and haw in reply.
"I… er… uh.. I-It's hard to say, really," the Charizard stammered. "With the way that dungeons shift around, and fog kicking up like this… it makes it easy for details to get obscured and-"
… So he was dragging his feet. Crom folded his arms, shooting Bunsen a sharp frown in response.
"Look, you clearly know what to search for if you went out to go gathering in the forest," the Druddigon harrumphed. "And you're not going to get back to your family any faster if we don't know where to go."
Bunsen backpedaled, briefly glancing over his shoulder as he seemed to get visibly nervous and flighty. … Travellers above, he really was going to try and run away from them, wasn't he? Crom sighed and began to make a move for the Charizard, who drifted back faster, raising his voice in stammering protest.
"L-Look, just take a minute to check things more closely! I'll go ahead and start on this side a-and-!"
Bunsen hastily swung his tail into the Druddigon and knocked the young Dragon-Type to the ground. He lowered his head and dashed ahead for the ledge as the others cried out and attempted to give chase, only for Bunsen's foot to brush against a patch of dirt with the faint impression of an arrow-like barb on it. By the time he noticed it, the faint click of a trap triggering rang out, followed by a series of pin-like barbs shooting up from the ground and digging into his scales.
"Ow!"
The Charizard yelped and fell forward after losing his footing, before hitting the ground face first. He lay on his stomach with a pained wince and rolled over to see the barbs were lodged firmly firmly into his hide. His head began to feel faint, a chill coming over his body as he sat up, only to see Pleo walking up with a Pecha Berry in his wing.
"Here, take this," the Lugia insisted. "You stepped on a Poison Trap, but this berry will make you feel better."
Bunsen looked up at the young Protector and his Pecha Berry as blank confusion spread over his face. He stared at the berry dumbfounded as the others of Team Traveller caught up and gathered around him, before speaking up with a wary stammer.
"Wh-Why are you doing this for me?"
"Because you're our guide right now? We can't exactly get help from you if you're passed out on the ground," Ander replied, rolling his eyes. "And just because you've done bad things before doesn't mean we want to see you suffer."
The Charizard gave a tug at his bindings, before giving a small wag of his tail and forcing an overeager smile over his snout.
"I mean… you could undo these bindings and let me go-"
"And we will," Ander harrumphed. "Once we get these barbs out of you and you lead us to Starbreak Square."
Bunsen's tail immediately went still and his wings and head visibly dropped as a brief twinge of disappointment came over his face. The Charizard got up and shuffled forward and took the Pecha Berry as Crom and Trizano set to work plucking barbs. All the while, Pleo tilted his head up with a curious chirp.
"… But why is your family here anyways?" he asked. "The Company doesn't hire Commissioners from islands run by the Empire, do they?"
Bunsen winced from a barb being pulled from a more tender spot on his hide and squirmed briefly, as the Marked Charizard seemed to visibly be fighting for courage to speak up. After a brief moment, the Fire-Type's tension eased as a glum look came over his face, and he turned his head aside with a low mutter.
"… Brigid and I aren't from here, we're from Vollezee," he replied. "She and the kids moved out here after I became a Commissioner."
Trizano and Crom stopped from pulling barbs and blinked at the Charizard's explanation. Since when were Company Commissioners allowed to move their families out to Imperial territory? Or away from Vollezee for that matter? Why there was a whole Settlement Protocol that should've kept Bunsen from doing anything of the sort!
And then, a dawning realization came over Trizano as he realized that the move surely was because of the Settlement Protocol. Or rather, an attempt to evade it.
"Right, the Settlement Protocol applies to every Pokémon holding a Third-Rank or higher in the Company," the Skarmory mused. "Still, why hide them away in the first place if you were at worst just moving from one end of the island to another? Surely with your mate pitching in, it couldn't have been hard to feed a family with a salary as generous as a Commissioner's."
Bunsen turned away and closed his eyes with a bitter shake of his head.
"You're acting like it's the easiest thing in the world for 'mons like us," he huffed.
The Charizard's audience stared at him puzzledly, aside from Ander, whose face remained fixed in a sharp frown. After a moment's hesitation, the former Commissioner bit his lip, before his tail fire visibly dimmed and he continued on in a guarded tone.
"… We lived out in one of the island's fringe towns. A couple years before my promotion to Commissioner, Brigid and I had our youngest child and we were having trouble getting by. She always had a hard time finding work because we're Marked, even within the Company because she's not a fighter," Bunsen explained. "Rents in Canalhouse City are significantly higher, and a lot of the time, my pay was the only one coming in to get us by. If we went along with the Settlement Protocol, it'd mean the kids having to grow up with others ready to ruin their lives at a moment's notice and constantly living one missed paycheck away from having to skip meals."
Ander narrowed his eyes at Bunsen, the Marked Scyther leveling a blade at him with an accusing scowl.
"I'm not exactly a stranger to those struggles myself, Charizard," he spat. "Somehow I never went around bullying others and threatening to rip up families to get by."
Even from his bindings, Bunsen seemed visibly offended by the charge. His tail fire briefly flared, as he shot a piercing glare back over at his fellow Marked.
"Hrmph, and somehow I never went around cutting up dead bodies for meat. And yet, you don't hear me judging you for that, Scyther," the Charizard growled. "We all do what we need to to get by."
Ander and Bunsen stared each other down with piercing glares. Fortunately for Ander, Bunsen was restrained at the moment, since he seemed like he was upset enough to spit fire at him if he weren't muzzled.
"You're acting like it'd be the simplest thing in the world for me to not follow orders. Like there weren't others in the Company constantly looking for reasons to get rid of 'mons like me if it looked like we were slipping up," he fumed. "For crying out loud, I couldn't even consistently get Brigid a janitorial position!"
There was a long, uneasy silence afterwards, before Bunsen glanced off at his surroundings.
"That was what gave us the idea to send them out to this place. Brigid and I decided to hide that we were related while I'd pass money along to someplace where things weren't as expensive. And if they were already going to have to leave Company waters to avoid being found out, they might as well go someplace where there were others like us around them," Bunsen explained. "At least in Starbreak Square, the kids could grow up without anyone questioning them or judging them for their background…"
Bunsen trailed off mid-sentence, before hanging his head with a low, deflated murmur.
"Not that I'm really sure how that's supposed to work out this month. I wasn't able to send out my usual portion of my pay before I got sent to your island, and I don't know if it's even possible to make it up with the sorts of jobs around Starbreak Square."
Crom hesitated after seeing the Charizard droop. For a second, one could almost forget that this was the same Commissioner that had stormed into Bluewhorl Town and bullied its Pokémon for almost a week. That said, even if he and the others had seen another side of Bunsen, it didn't change the things that Bunsen had done, and Crom couldn't say with a straight face that he was ready to forgive him for it.
But they still needed the Fire-Type's help. So for now, at least, it made sense to at least try to leave things be…
"I guess I can understand why you're so eager to see them again," the Druddigon sighed. "I don't know how I'd handle having to try and hide my family like that."
The Charizard gave an askew glance that made Crom and his companions falter. Even if Bunsen's motivations weren't completely unsympathetic, he was at best an ally of convenience at the moment. At worst, he was a prisoner who was only being kept in line by Sheriff Robbie's threat of punishment. Was it really safe to trust him?
Trizano gave an uneasy ruffle of his wings, before warily eying the Marked Charizard.
"Which, you know, would be easier if you gave us something to work with for how to find Starbreak Square and not try to run off on your own."
The Charizard looked off at the foggy abyss for a lingering moment, before turning back and turning his snout up with a skeptical harrumph.
"Why are you so interested anyways?" Bunsen demanded. "It's not as if this is going to turn out well with that demon you hang out with."
Ander visibly tensed up after Bunsen's remarks and cast an aside glance at Pleo. The Scyther remained quiet as the Lugia looked back with an uneasy blink, before Ander turned his attention back to Bunsen with a sighing shake of his head.
"… That's just a risk we'll have to take," Ander remarked. "So are you going to stay and help us? If so, what exactly are we looking for?"
Bunsen visibly hesitated as the Scyther eyed him. Was Bunsen thinking of his family? Whatever his motivations, the Charizard eased up afterward, before speaking up in reply.
"… The entrances are normally pointed out with waypoint markers written in Unown Runes," he explained. "The floor doesn't sound like it's about to be cleared, so if it didn't shift while I was out, it should still be there."
"… 'Unown Runes'?" Crom asked.
"It's writing that we use to record things like the Scripture of Truth," Ander explained. "Long ago, when Marked like us were more common, it was the writing our ancestors used in everyday life."
Crom's mind turned back to when he snuck a peek at the mysterious book in Ander's bag. So they just had to look out for lines of Unown on the walls? It didn't sound too difficult. Except, Bunsen still looked visibly on-edge and glanced about his surroundings worriedly before turning back to the rest of the group.
"It's just that… I don't think that getting there is going to be as easy as just finding it."
"We'll worry about that when we cross that bridge," Trizano said. "Let's just keep an eye out for Unown Runes for now."
Trizano and the others made their way down the chamber and carried on through winding corridors and chambers surrounded by sudden drops. All the while, the floor remained curiously quiet and went by without the expected Feral encounters. If nothing else, it made traversing the floor straightforward, even if on a couple occasions, Crom swore that he overheard movement or faint chatter in the distance.
After what felt like an eternity that was probably no more than five minutes, Trizano came across a line of glyphs that looked like Unown. He paused, before turning to Ander with a wary quirk of his brow.
"Does it say anything, Ander?"
The Marked Scyther approached the line of glyphs painted on the stone, and ran his eyes along their length.
"… 'Sixty paces right, then forty paces left'."
Trizano had no idea why it would take so many symbols to say something so short. Why, in normal runes, that message would've needed around a quarter as many glyphs. Did Unown Runes not each have meaning on their own?
A casual glance at Bunsen revealed that he didn't seem fazed by the reading, so Ander must have been onto something. The five pressed on rightwards where sure enough, about sixty paces away, they found an intersection branching left and right. Forty more to the left, they entered a room surrounded by cliffs dropping into the fog on three ends, with passages surrounded by sheer drops leading away. One of them on the left appeared to stop abruptly in empty space, which made Pleo raise a brow as he neared. He looked more closely at the end of passage when his eyes lit up in realization that it didn't stop at all, but instead went straight ahead into a bank of fog.
"Ah! That must be it!"
One after the other, Pleo and his teammates made their way towards the passage's entrance. All the while, Crom couldn't help but think back to Bunsen's warning from earlier, and turned his head towards the Charizard with a puzzled tilt.
"Wait, why'd you say this wouldn't be easy again?"
"Hold it right there!"
A sharp snarl rang out as a Golbat suddenly swooped down from the air above and green scales abruptly appeared from beside a small pile of stones as a Kecleon revealed herself. Pleo jumped back with a startled cry, when a Dugtrio with steely golden hair popped up from the ground from behind with a growl. Pleo shrank back along with his teammates, as they noticed the strangers were all sporting orange scarves along with the telltale Mark on their heads. The young Lugia sucked in a tense breath, before hearing Bunsen gulp. He turned his head and looked over towards the Charizard, who stared at the approaching Pokémon with a startled grimace.
"Th-That's why not."
Author's Notes:
- Das reicht jetzt! - German: That's enough already!"
- Aspetta - Italian: "Wait" / "Hold it"
