WOOOOOOO Y'all aren't ready for this chapter :)
Publication might not actually speed up these next few months, bc a) I recalculated and the chapter I'm worried about is later than I thought, and b) the irl reason I'm worried about it might get pushed forward yikes.
(CW: graphic battle/death)
The long-abandoned Fuego Ironworks stood deep in the leafless woods. Black trunks leaned out of ground, sticks of charcoal standing ghostlike around us. The distant forest cacophony of pokemon life that wouldn't even register as a sound, normally, was noticeable here only as an absence (even while listening to music in one ear). The ironworks itself loomed over us, massive and shadowy, half-rusted over. If greenery had reclaimed the industrial iron towers in the years since the closing of the ironworks, fire had erased any trace of it.
The cloudy January gloom brushed past, making me shiver. Tricia led me and Megan to the side of the building, where the building drained into the mysteriously pristine tributary. "Here's the outlet," she said, pointing to a large pipe spewing water into the stream.
"Why's it active?" Megan wondered. "If no one's in the building, then there shouldn't be any water coming out. Right?"
The three of us stared upward at the wall of gray and brown in front of us.
"Should we go in?" I whispered.
We picked our way around the perimeter, looking for an entryway. There was a back lot with a locked metal grate, and a heavy iron door in the front with no way through.
But we kept poking around, and eventually Tricia found a portion of the wall with panels missing. We could see inside. "Def, could you help us in?" I requested.
Def looked through the crack in the wall to imprint on the location visually, then teleported each of us in, one at a time. Inside, there was a little bit of wintry light coming through the wall, but otherwise it was pitch black. "Trust, help us see, please," I said, letting Trust out and calling Def back.
Trust's headflame flooded the room with flickering light, revealing metal structures and pipes twisting around us. Dust-covered conveyor belts crisscrossed the room, one leading into a short hole in the wall.
"I don't think we should be here," whispered Megan.
"We gotta figure out what's up with the river," I whispered back, invested in the mystery. "Come on."
We crept around the conveyor belts towards the door in the corner of the room. Something leaped suddenly and I jumped, but it was just a shadow moving as Trust walked alongside me.
Tricia opened the door, which led to a much larger chamber of conveyor belts and tall machinery. It seemed like the main room of operations here. Trust's flame was dim enough that I couldn't quite see the far edges of the room.
"We should find the side of the building with the outlet," Tricia said softly. "That should be…"
She turned in a circle, trying to orient our entry against the outlet pipe we'd seen. "Over there?" She pointed across the room.
Tricia, Megan, Trust, and I started across the ironworks floor. Single drops of water echoed in the expanse.
Megan turned suddenly. "Did you guys see that?"
Tricia and I shook our heads.
"I thought I saw…" She looked confused. "I don't know what I saw."
We kept walking. The far end of the ironworks came into view, and with it a series of doors. One was slightly ajar.
Tricia walked up to the unlatched door, glanced back at us, and pushed it open. "Whoa," I heard her say.
I peered in over her shoulder – a machine the size of a printer lay on a table in the center of the room, covered in loose wires and glowing LEDs. About a million wires led to various sockets in the wall. The shell of the machine lay to the side.
We entered a little deeper. The light inside machine to our right – sort of an enclosed fume hood – flickered, exposing in flashes what looked like a thousand tiny bugs flying around inside it.
"I don't think there's water in this room," I said nervously.
We moved to the room next door. Inside was a wall of screens in front of an old desktop computer, looking like a command center. All of the screens were dark.
Something white flickered in the corner of my eye, but when I turned to look, it was gone. I blinked. "I just saw something."
Tricia looked around. "I still don't see it."
A screen on the edge suddenly burst into light. "Arceus," I hissed. Megan flinched reflexively, then halfheartedly laughed at herself for doing so. I wanted to stay close to her, but I didn't want Tricia to be farther away.
I took a closer look at the screen. It was… security footage? It was a recording from back when the ironworks were in operation, years ago. People in gray work clothing moved crates and checked machinery in the main room.
"Wait, if there's security cameras…" Tricia realized, "Maybe we can see what's going on from here?"
She walked up to the desktop computer and pressed the spacebar. "Oh. There's a password," she asked, backing away like she was giving up already.
The password bar spontaneously filled with dots and let us in.
"Uhh… okay," Megan said nervously.
Tricia returned to the computer and hunted through files. "Security… here it is," she said. "The dates… Oh. Huh."
"What is it?" I asked, moving closer.
"It… The footage only exists up until…" Tricia squinted at the screen. "Isn't that the day the fire started?"
I looked. I didn't remember what day the fire began, but the timestamp was from May the year prior, and that sounded about right.
Tricia clicked on the file. Every screen in the room suddenly flashed to life, showing scenes from all around the ironworks. One showed the front gate, one showed some people unloading boxes from trucks into the back, one showed the factory floor. All the outdoor scenes were bordered by healthy green trees.
"Here's the tributary." Megan pointed to a screen in the corner. "It doesn't look different."
"I mean, most of the pollution was from when the ironworks was still operating," Tricia said.
I realized – the ironworks had been abandoned for decades before the fire. So… who were the people bringing things in?
A flash of motion caught my eye – a fight. A group of small orange pokemon fighting a huge red magmortar. The magmortar blasted a ball of flame that missed them entirely and tore through the trees behind them. The people in the scene scattered.
The orange pokemon shot water at the magmortar, who blasted fire again and again, getting visibly frustrated that none of his fire blasts were hitting. Fireballs ripped into the trees, setting everything in their path aflame.
"That's how it started?" Tricia said, horrified. "I thought it was a factory accident?"
Another pokemon joined the fray – a blue and red toxicroak. The orange pokemon turned their attention to the newcomer, who slashed across them all at once and jumped away. A fireball slammed into two of the orange pokemon, blasting them into the wall of the ironworks.
By now, people on all the screens were running and packing equipment back into the trucks. Something in the corner of my mind found it odd how committed they were to removing their things from the building, but most of me was focused on the fight that I had now realized contained a family of buizels.
The toxicroak returned and slashed again at the two buizels that had been hit by the fire blast. They fell, a mix of blood and poison flying from the toxicroak's clawlike knuckles. A third buizel attempted to attack the toxicroak from behind, but in a flash – Tricia gasped – the toxicroak impaled his poison knuckle clean through the buizel's chest. The last buizel charged at the magmortar, who smacked the buizel down and pinned her to the ground in front of his cannon.
I looked away, nauseous, but still saw the flash of light and smoke in the corner of my eye. The trucks started driving away. Flames licked the bottoms of several cameras.
A tiny buizel emerged from the river and ran to the bodies.
Megan swore as the toxicroak turned his way, but I watched as if I'd seen it all before. The toxicroak swiped his poison knuckle across the baby buizel's chest, knocking him back into the river. Both the magmortar and toxicroak turned like they were being called offscreen, and in a flash of red light, both were recalled into pokeballs.
Every screen stopped at once, like the fire had just spread far enough to cut the connections. The room filled with a reverent silence in the wake of what we'd seen. "Do you think the baby was okay?" Tricia whispered.
"No," I said softly. "But he's alive."
"How do you…?"
Megan figured it out. "That was…?"
Trust squeezed my arm. That was our friend.
"Prom."
All the screens in the room – including the computer screen – shut off at once, leaving us in the dark. My eyes readjusted to Trust's comparatively dimmer headflame.
"I guess… should we keep looking for whatever's purifying the water?" Tricia said hesitantly.
The next room gave us what we were looking for.
This room was as still as the other two – machinery lay silent all over the room, inactive. It looked decidedly too high tech for the old ironworks. From one corner came the sound of running water – we followed it to a series of pipes letting out gunk into a small pool. In the middle of this pool stood a cage.
"Arceus," I exclaimed. The cage contained five exhausted-looking shaymins – not only is any number of shaymins a rare sight, but also they'd been here for Arceus knew how long, and this explained the clean water, and Arceus this meant–
"It's Galactic," I said in a hushed voice. "This is what they kidnapped the shaymins for."
The door to the room slammed shut.
I hurled a pokeball. "Def, get them out of here!"
Def took Tricia's shoulder and vanished with her. I waited a moment.
"Def? Def, are you there?"
"He's blocked out," Coeur said in aura.
"Fuck." My stomach turned. Megan's still here. Arceus almighty, Megan's still here.
"Fancy seeing you here," said a voice across the room.
"Oh, fuck off, Saturn," I said, frustrated. At least he didn't have any pokemon out; I had time to let out mine. "Is this where you've been working all this time?"
Saturn nodded thoughtfully. "More or less. Valorous things have been accomplished here, in the name of a new world."
Gross. "How'd you even find us here?" I asked.
He shrugged. "The ironworks ghosts are on our side. Frankly, I should be asking you that question."
"Water was too clean," I said. "So… we fighting?"
"Not really–"
I knocked pokeballs haphazardly from my belt before he could finish his bad-guy one-liner. Saturn threw a few pokeballs and shoved his hand into his jacket – my next pokeball didn't open. I took a head count – Coeur, Trust, and Hope were all out.
Saturn sighed deeply. "I was going to say we aren't fighting because pokeballs are blocked, but evidently you saw that coming. I was also going to ask who you are. I don't believe we've met."
He gestured at Megan. I stiffened. "This is my trainer friend."
Saturn gave me an infuriating grin. "I find that hard to believe. Toxicroak, get her!"
"Protect Megan!"
My pokemon burst into action – Trust launched himself with flame wheel at Saturn's toxicroak, knocking them both back ten feet; Hope started blasting leaves and electricity at Saturn's other three pokemon. Coeur put up an aura shield around me, Megan, and the shaymins.
I pulled a handful of loose heal balls from my backpack and shoved them at Megan. "Get the shaymins before we go," I told her.
Hope managed to take the golbat down fairly quickly, but the fact that she didn't have space to fly was messing with her ability to battle. Kadabra had figured this out and was blasting moves left and right at her – so far, she was countering most of the hits with her own attacks, but a few were already getting through. Faith had put the magmortar to sleep and was now hitting with a bunch of dark pulse blasts. Trust and Toxicroak were evenly matched still, although those poison knuckles…
I frowned, putting the pieces together. Saturn… Saturn had a toxicroak and magmortar.
Saturn was responsible for the murder of my buizel's family.
"Coeur, I need Faith to take out Saturn."
Coeur relayed the message, and pretty soon, Saturn had collapsed, hypnotized to sleep. Faith pulled a small metal box from his pocket and smashed it against the ground (it didn't actually break, but she did press the button in the process).
"Def?" I said. No answer; that must have been the pokeball blocker.
Magmortar woke up and shot a blast across the room, barreling into the shield Coeur was still holding. Toxicroak had Trust backed against a wall; Kadabra's attacks had Hope nearly down. Faith was still rummaging in Saturn's pockets. Hope's body was suddenly gripped in a psychic hold; Coeur let down the shield to blast Kadabra with dark energy and free Hope.
I saw a pink flash, and a tired-looking but otherwise healed shaymin appeared. "Shaymin, use seed flare!" Megan shouted.
A green glow began at the shaymin's core. It grew and grew, until the shaymin's whole body was emitting a blinding green light. "Return!" I shouted, pulling Trust, Hope, and Faith back all at once. Coeur put her shield back up as the shaymin released months of toxic waste from their body.
The blast shook the room – metal appliances and computers fell off of shelves, conveyor belts slammed into the walls, Saturn and his pokemon went flying. I did a quick scan – only Kadabra was left standing. Coeur took the shield down.
"Return," said Megan, withdrawing the shaymin into one heal ball while cradling the others. I wanted to hug her, or at least tell her how fucking amazing that had just been.
But instead there was fear blocking me from doing any of that, and besides, there was business to attend to. "You're gonna want to get your friends out of here," I said to the Kadabra. "Go ahead and stop the teleportation block."
Kadabra looked at me resentfully, but walked over to his unconscious trainer and pressed something on his poketch. Noted. The two of them disappeared, and Kadabra began shuttling Saturn's unconscious pokemon away.
"Should we go?" Megan said.
"You should," I said. "There's one more thing I have to do."
"Okay. Stay safe?"
We locked eyes. It was far too dark to make out the color of her eyes, but in my mind I could still see the brown that shone like smooth topaz. I swallowed. "I'll do my best," I promised her, lying through my teeth.
Def reappeared finally; I nodded at him, and he took her away.
Arceus, I hope I don't regret this.
This, right now, was a chance. Now that Galactic knew I knew about this place, they'd want to empty it of all the things they'd been working on here. But this tiny window of opportunity was my chance to destroy their work, using their work.
"Meet me two doors down," I told Def.
I opened the door to the room with the odd machine in the middle. Picking up a piece of the loose shell, I found a yellow G printed in the center. I'd never seen the Galactic Bomb before, but this seemed about right. And they'd even left the Red Chain here, flying around a fume hood for me to obliterate. Considerate of them.
"The instant anything happens, yank me out," I told Def, who'd just appeared.
Luckily for me, the bomb's operation was pretty easy to understand. Unluckily, it was another password.
I gave it some thought. It went off at Lake Valor, which meant Saturn must have been the one who detonated it.
"Toxicroak," I typed. Nothing.
"Magical password fairy?" I murmured to the room. "Now would be a great time for your help."
Nothing responded, so I tried a few more passwords on my own. "Jupitersucks," I typed. "#1GalacticAdmin." Still nothing.
I stopped. If this thing was full of two cities' worth of energy…
I backed up and put a hand on Def's left shoulder. "Def, psycho cut, and get us out!"
Def, understanding my intent, powered up his right arm with psychic energy. As soon as he swiped forward, blasting energy through the Galactic Bomb, we were gone.
Def and I landed. Immediately, I heard a thunderous rumble in the distance. I looked around – the Valley Windworks lawn, with Megan and Tricia and Maya as well as Rusty and Annie and Prom nearby. In the distance, there was a cloud of smoke billowing into the air.
I looked at Tricia. "I'm sorry," I said. "I think your river's polluted again."