THREE FOR THREE WEEKS IN A ROW QUARANTINE IS AMAZING jk it's actually not but this is a highlight

Thomas, Riley, and I entered the first series of caves. Trust was out at first, because head torch, but once we realized it was attracting every wild pokemon on Iron Island to us, I pulled him back into the ball. Riley's lucario held up an aura sphere, lighting the way with a dim blue glow.

There were a couple of arons we encountered who attacked the minute they saw us. A stray beldum, a forretress, a small fleet of bronzors. Riley was right about it just being the steel types; we passed by plenty of zubats and geodudes, to no effect.

Oh, also there were mawiles. I've always called these guys "anklebiters" in my head because you know, they're small and bitey. I don't know if what happened next was karma or just irony.

"Ow!"

Anyway I call them "little shits" now.

While prying the mawile from my leg, I asked, "Def, can you tell me what's up with this guy?"

"Il est in pain," Def said, sounding surprised.

"Oh really? I wonder why I don't feel sympathy for him," I said, still trying to remove the little shit's teeth from my skin.

I heard a snap and saw a flash of red light; Thomas had caught the mawile in a pokeball. "He is okay now," Def said. I relayed this information to the others.

"So it's not the pokemon themselves," deduced Riley. "It's something on the island… something that can be blocked by a pokeball."

After Def took a second to heal my leg (life dew aw yeeeeeee), we continued down. I realized something.

"Lucario is a steel type, right?" I said. "Why isn't he reacting?"

"He is aware of something affecting him," said Riley. "He's been blocking it out with his aura abilities."

"Aura?" Thomas sounded confused. "I thought that was just a fighting move?"

"Aura sphere is a way of using aura on the offense," Riley explained with the patience of someone who had explained this a thousand times, but still wanted to get through to his audience. "Aura itself is not inherently violent, but rather the energy that flows through all of us. Some of us, like myself and Lucario, know aura well enough to sense and even control it."

"Oh, cool, so it's not just a pokemon thing?"

"Nope – some pokemon tend to be more attuned to it than humans or other pokemon, but since aura flows through us all, any of us can access it."

"Neat. And Lucario is using it as a… shield?"

"That's a pretty accurate image."

"And you can… what else can aura do in a practical sense?" I asked Riley.

He misunderstood my intention. "Humans have a much more difficult time with aura," Riley said. "Even with Lucario to help me out, it still took me years to master."

"Okay. But what can it do?"

"Well," Riley said (with what might've been a sigh), "aura sphere is the obvious use. Arguably, creating shields with aura is more useful. Additionally, sensing aura in itself means a variety of things, such as sensing illness, mood, and simply a state of life – we can more or less see in the dark by sensing the vibrations of living things around us. And of course there's aura communication, which is how Lucario and I connect as well as we do."

I stopped walking. "Aura communication?"

Riley turned back. "Yes, aura communication."

Excitement bubbled up inside of me, unsure how to escape. "You mean–?! Arceus – I can't believe – talk about 'telepathy, but fighting type' –"

Riley looked at Thomas for clarification. "She's trying to ask how it works," he said. "And if you can teach her pokemon how to use it."

"If it's not too much trouble," I said quickly. "Just knowing it exists is cool too, I can find another aura user–"

Riley had taken the opportunity to look at Lucario, then back at me. "Well, it works through… a sort of projection and reception. The aura user can project a message outward to others. That's the easy way. They can also facilitate communication towards them through a conscious reaching outward to another being – a sort of meeting in the middle and pulling in. Back-and-forth communcation is much easier if both parties involved are aura users. I'm not sure exactly what you hope to gain from this, but Lucario is tentatively willing to show your pokemon, as am I."

"Really? Just like that?"

Riley nodded. "I'm too used to people asking about learning aura fighting. I'd be glad to teach you communication."

"It's my umbreon and gallade," I told him as we kept walking. "They became close friends when Coeur was still an eevee, but now they can't communicate through psychic means."

"So this isn't for battling's sake at all?" Riley said, surprised.

"I mean, it'll be cool to link with Coeur again, but it's really about the two of them."

Riley seemed even happier at this. "Okay. It may be difficult; I'm unsure how easily an umbreon can pick up aura."

"Oh, she'll be fine," I said.

"Courage literally added a new umbreon move to the dex," added Thomas.

"As for the gallade, I don't really know if his prior use of psychic communication would be a help or a hindrance. Aura is a different language."

"Okay. Well… For him it's mainly about meeting her halfway," I said.

"Oh, well, then any amount of aura training will help him there."

We crafted a plan – first we'd address whatever the hell was going on with the steel types on Iron Island. Whenever that was solved, Def and Coeur would start training with Riley and Lucario. Thomas and I would move our things from Canalave to the Pokemon Center on the island that night – or maybe just tonight, depending on how long it took to help the steel types.

Our plan set, we kept on going with the first part of it. The wildlife suddenly changed (there were full-on aggrons coming at us now) and became much more aggressive – according to Lucario, the signal he was sensing had strengthened. Knowing now that they were in pain, I defaulted to fighting with Prom in a protective capacity and only sent Trust in if necessary. Thomas used the gotta-catch-em-all strategy a few more times.

This lasted all day. Thomas and I hadn't prepared for more than one day on the island, so I teleported with Def back to Canalave to pick up the things we'd need for cave camping. It was mostly just the things we already owned but had left behind – a perk of having a teleporting pokemon was that I could go back to the market again later.

"So, how you feeling about aura training?" I asked him.

Def (who was out and walking around the marketplace with me) physically smiled and responded, "Feeling très bien. I am looking forward to talking avec Coeur again."

"I'm glad we found a way," I said softly.

"Moi aussi."

We spent the night in the caves, taking turns on watch – Riley and Lucario, me and Prom, Thomas and Marcassin. Day 2 was much like the first: exploring the cave system, battling with or shielding ourselves from the steel types attacking out of blind rage, following Lucario's sense of whatever it was affecting them. We got closer to it over the couse of the day, although a couple of times we hit dead ends and had to loop back around to continue in the right direction.

Getting closer to the source still meant higher levels of aggression from the pokemon, but now it also seemed to mean less frequent encounters. "Maybe they're moving away from the source," I suggested. "Less painful."

That night, we did something smart that we could have done the first night: Def teleported each of us back to the pokemon center in Canalave. "Well done," I said to him. "You seem barely winded."

"I have had practice," he said cheerfully. In fairness, the Iron Island-Canalave trip was nothing compared to the cross-region jumps he regularly took me on.

Riley took the bunk above Thomas. We were all sound asleep when my poketch started pinging.

I scrambled to stop it – it was a call, so I picked up and stumbled out of the room. "Hello?" I said quietly in the hallway.

"Everything okay?" Looker.

"Yeah, we just – everyone's asleep."

"Oh, oops. Sorry. I forgot what time it is in Sinnoh."

"Where are–" He probably wouldn't answer that. "It's okay. What's up?"

"I found a way to locate the orbs!" he said cheerily. That's right. Looker sounded cheerful.

"Oh, nice! What's the plan?"

"Remember how Cynthia said the Spear Key can be used to locate artifacts?"

"No, but I see where you're going with this."

"We saw it in terms of preventing Team Galactic from using it to locate the Orbs," said Looker. "But now, it can help us get the Orbs back."

"Do you know how that works?"

"I've consulted Cynthia. Apparently it's like a magnetic pull which gets slightly stronger as it gets closer to the Orbs. It shouldn't be strong enough to leap from your hands, at least, we're hoping. We'll also need to be within a certain range of the Orbs in order to feel a pull at all, so I'll be searching for that signal around Sinnoh for a bit."

"Doesn't it need to be activated by the Red Chain or something?"

"I'll stop by the Veilstone meteorites first to activate it. They're the source for the Red Chain derivation, after all."

"Right. So once you find it, you'll need us to go in and retrieve them?"

"Yes."

"Okay… Cool, that's a good excuse not to register for the Hearthome Contest." It also might interfere with Coeur and Def's training with Riley, although that was easy enough to rearrange.

"I'll be retrieving the Spear Key tomorrow morning and starting the search immediately. You'll hear from me when the time comes."

"Great. Nice job," I said.

"All in a night's work," he said cheerfully before hanging up.

We teleported back to Iron Island early the next morning, at the location we'd left off. I think we were only thirty minutes into our day's search when Lucario growled suddenly.

I tensed with a hand on Prom's pokeball, ready for a fight. "It what?" Riley said in shock.

Lucario growled again, although I assume the actual communication took place silently. "It's gone," Riley translated. "The signal targeting steel types – it's disappeared."

"Just like that?"

"Just like that."

"Now what?" I wondered.

"We probably shouldn't leave just yet," said Thomas. "In case it returns."

"You're right. And even if it doesn't, we can still try and find what caused it," said Riley.

So we kept going. Lucario led us in the direction he remembered. We passed some mawiles and lairons who were entirely uninterested in fighting us. Finally, we heard voices.

"…so close to scanning the whole mountain."

"It's fine, we'll have more opportunities to locate Spear Pillar. I don't think we'll return here, though, what with all the high-level steel types trying to fight us…"

A pair of men rounded the corner in front of us. One was carrying what looked like a classroom projector, the old kind that shines light through clear plastic sheets that you write on. They were very clearly Galactic.

"Prom, stop them," I said, throwing his pokeball forward. He burst out of the ball and put up a protect shield around where they – where'd they go?

I ran past Prom to the corner where they'd disappeared. Looking around, I saw some grunts just before they teleported out – and also Mars in front of them. Prom caught up to me; we got ready to fight.

Mars shrugged and released a Porygon-Z from an ultra ball. "Bye," she said, teleporting out of sight.

I told my friend Matt (who also reads Chance now!) that I was excited for three things in this chapter, but in the end the Galactic encounter was barely an encounter and something else I was excited to hint at barely happened either. At least Coeur and Def are making progress.

Anyway see you all again next week...?