o
Chapter 95
Part 2
Adamant's eyes blinked open in a dark place. At first he assumed he was in his room back at the base, waking up for another miserable, waterless day of work.
But the room was far too small. He pawed around and found the space to be quite cramped. Was it a closet? There were boxes in front of him, blocking the door. Boxes of what, he couldn't tell. They didn't smell like food or perishables.
Then he remembered something about deciding on spending the night somewhere else. He remembered the conversation with Scarlet very clearly. He remembered defiantly telling her to tell Tallie that he'd be spending the night in one of the fountain pools in the park.
He had the thought: Then why am I here, and not underwater right now?
He started to wonder – how had he even gotten back here? Had he squeezed behind the boxes? Did someone throw him in? Did they lock the door?
Or… Was he hiding from something? Was that something still out there?
His front paw felt a scrap of paper on the floor. At first he disregarded it as rubbish and began to anxiously fiddle with it, but he felt a familiar pattern of bite marks across the paper's surface – his own. He understood at once that he'd brought the paper into this dark, cramped space with him. It was even still damp from when he tore it off the roll with his mouth and paws.
He squinted down at the half-mangled sheet, but there was simply nothing he could see or read. His night vision was enough to make out the shape of the paper in the sparse light coming from the edges of the doorway, but it wasn't enough to reveal any of the note's contents.
Carefully, Adamant pawed around further and found he could climb over the boxes. He took the mysterious note in his mouth and began to prowl his way out. He almost made it over, except that the third box had its lid open and he stumbled inside, tangling himself with a pile of notebooks. He realized the contents of the box were already scattered and crumpled – almost as though he'd made the same mistake on the way in.
He nudged the door open slowly, ever-so-slowly, squinting and sniffing for some kind of a foe on the other side. But there were no other creatures around, and nothing that even began to resemble a threat to his animal senses.
The door creaked open, and Adamant blinked the darkness away. He found himself in a classroom at the Cliffside Academy, after-hours, with soft early-evening sunlight streaming in from the windows.
He began to put the pieces together in his head. The academy. The memory wipe. Resistance teams weren't supposed to linger in the academy halls for this long. They were supposed to be out in Iron Town before the spell kicked in. There were a few times they broke that rule, like the time Char had taken them out for the team tryouts, to build the secret base. Something must have spurred him to stay.
He spat the note out, set it in one of the fading rays of the sun, and squinted at it. There were claw-markings on its surface. Barely legible. He almost had to laugh at how bad the handwriting was, until it occurred to him that just moments ago, he was probably writing the note blind, in the darkness of the closet. That thought gave him a terrible chill down his fins.
Though it gave him a massive headache, the desperation was evident in the way the note was written, and he forced himself to squint and stare at the crumpled scratches until they made sense.
espeon attacked dragonbane and gemstone tell tallie
cant go normal way go hideout
hurry
Adamant blinked at his own terrible handwriting, trying to process the message it implied.
Espeon? Was it Eva? Why didn't he just write Eva? There weren't other Espeon in the base, were there? Did he suspect it was a doppelganger? A Zoroark or something?
"Wait," he whispered at nobody but himself. "You're telling me that I have only… what, four hours until the Watchers come out, and I have to make it all the way to the secret hideout, just to tell Tallie that Eva might be the related to the base impostor?"
He flipped the soggy note over twice, checking for any more clawmarks on the back, but there was nothing more.
Then the real horror dawned on him.
"I told my team not to worry about me," he hissed to himself. "They're not going to even come looking for me if I don't show up to the team meeting tomorrow morning…"
He sat in the silence for another few moments, listening to the distant reverberations in the floor from the resistance teams probably moving throughout the main halls like they usually did. Somehow, the sun seemed to be falling faster than it was supposed to.
Adamant realized, with some irony, that he had a promise to fulfill to his past self – the past self who was only just a few minutes ago cowering in a cramped, dark space and blindly scribbling his desperate plea onto a soggy note. He found it funny that it was similar to the way he always thought about himself in the silence of his mind. He always had mental conversations between Evan, his child self, and Adamant, his Vaporeon self. But those were just fantasies to him, alternate personalities he could project his thoughts and ideas into when it suited him. And he was no stranger to the idea of his future self making promises to his past self. He always knew he had a lot of promises to Evan he needed to fulfill, and he felt genuinely bad about not evolving as strongly as he had hoped, and not being able to fulfill those promises he'd so bravely made to his inner child who still looked up to him like a hero.
He realized it had all come true in this one instant. His past self really had made a very desperate, important plea to his future self.
The task was set before him. He realized he had to do something truly difficult. Something grueling. Something that could very well get him killed or cursed by Watchers if he didn't hit the road right now and run at full tilt to the secret base.
"Evan," he whispered to himself. "Hey, Evan. Look at me. Looks like I'm actually gonna get to be a hero now. I have to be. I… I have no choice. I have to save the Gold Division."
He shredded the paper in his claws, making sure it wouldn't be recovered by the enemy. He found an inner energy that he didn't know he had, something made of pure willpower and not of water. He sprinted out the door.
"Ahh, back to old Team Carrier," grunted Zachel, crawling down the halls on her all-fours. "I can't even begin to describe how thrilled I am to see them again. Thought that chapter of my life was all done and over."
"Don't think of it like that," helpfully buzzed the Ninjask at her side. "Think of it as a spy mission. You're infiltrating Team Carrier! That's much more exciting than just going back and doing your old job again, isn't it? Did I ever tell you about the time Watcher went back and infiltrated Team Spider and told everyone about, y'know, the whole splitting-in-two evolution thing? He said that was some of the most fun he's ever had."
"Yeah, not a lot else he can compare that to, when he only existed for a few days at that point," Zachel groaned, sticking out her tongue. "But no. This is going to be boring, I can already tell. First off, there's no secret conspiracy going on with Team Carrier. Wanna know their biggest secret? Biggest secret that nobody knows is that they weren't named after carrying bags. Nah, the rumor is, originally they were named after aircraft carriers from the human navy. Like, 'Hey, we're this big, strong, monolithic force of steel and military discipline. And also kind of a launching-off point for new members.' But then someone made a stupid joke like, 'Hey, look, I'm carrying the bag for another team! Get it? Because I'm Team Carrier!' and for some reason, Pokémon thought the joke was so funny that they started hiring us to carry their bags all the time, and eventually that became our gimmick."
"That's actually really adorable!" buzzed the Ninjask, flying around and landing on her other side.
"If by adorable, you mean absolutely cringeworthy, then yeah," Zachel sighed. "Nah, there's nothing interesting about them. They're a really low-drama training team. They have this really irritating system of rules about gossiping and it has a way of stopping fights before they start. Which, if you ask me, just isn't helping to prepare Pokémon for the real world. You're supposed to learn how to deal with stupid drama in training so you're ready for the real stuff in the rest of life, you know?"
"Drama? You mean there's drama on Team Ember?" said the Ninjask. "I haven't noticed it."
"Well, no offense, but you're not known for your good eyesight, Buddy," she said.
"I have good enough eyesight to know that you're just upset because you're not gonna get toyou're your Seviper for a while," he teased back. "Bet you'd have much more fun infiltrating Team Carrier with him around."
Zachel had to laugh at the observation. "Yeah, oh yeah, absolutely. Teaming up with Sabertooth to hunt out suspicious activity in my old team? That'd be the dream. Unfortunately, Sabertooth is busy with his own team at the moment."
"You know, you could just give up the whole 'rivals' act and just be friends in public?" Buddy suggested. "Ever considered that? Then he could go more places with you. Maybe even on some missions."
Zachel looked away, trying to hide a look of whimsy on her face. "Nah. That'd just be stupid and embarrassing."
"What, you're embarrassed to be friends with him?" he echoed back, wobbling in the air like he was hit by a rock. "Really? How come? You're such good friends!"
"It's… it's complicated," Zachel grumbled. "It really is complicated, and I don't have a lot of further comments. But… suffice to say that yeah, there is a bit of drama on Team Ember if you know where to look. Like, don't even get me started with whatever is happening with Eva and Saura. I don't think anyone really understands what's going on there, so we just stay out of that. Then there's something going on with Adamant and Tallie, which I'm a bit too afraid to ask about, to be honest, but I think Scarlet's intervening and taking care of it. Then there's something going on with Brace and Otto, which, if you ask me—"
A brown missile came shooting through the air, zooming in through the central chamber window and nearly going splat on the far wall. Instead, it opted for a messy crash-landing, tumbling head-over talons in a flurry of feathers.
"Hey! Hey! HEY HEY HEY!" shouted the bird. "You! You gotta – you gotta see this, fast! Wait, wait, No, Tallie, it has to be Tallie."
Zachel crawled over to the confused little bird, still scrabbling around in a shower of its own down. "Oh, it's Brace," she sighed. "Brace, what's the matter?"
"Tallie. We need Tallie. Or someone else who can fly," gasped the bird, flapping around and standing back up. "Found something. Something big. At Team Silverwing. Don't know what to make of it. Need Tallie."
"Oh! I don't know if Tallie is… available right now," Buddy warned. "She's flying around with her head cut off right now, she's talking to Prince and Lily, she's –"
"Yeah, how about you take Buddy with you instead?" Zachel suggested. "He can fly up to Team Silverwing with you. Probably better than you can."
Buddy shook his head and ruffled his feathers again, trying to dislodge some of the crooked ones. "No, nonono. I want Tallie to see this. I don't know what to make of it, and I think she needs to be the one to see it."
Zachel was pretty eager to turn around and go back the way she came. She galloped back to Team Ember's hall with more enthusiasm than she'd shown trying to head for Team Carrier. And once she got there, it was another whole ordeal trying to get Tallie's attention. Knocking on the door once, twice, hearing her squawking voice shouting from inside the room about how it was important and how she'd be right out. It took waiting for Buddy to make his way back. Buddy went to get Watcher, told him the whole story, then had Watcher phase through the door and impress upon Tallie that they'd found a huge lead in the hunt for strange anomalies in the other teams.
"Alright, bozo, this had better be good," Tallie said to Brace, still waiting patiently where he'd crash-landed in the hallway. "I was in the middle of about twenty different things."
"Just see for yourself," Brace urged, taking wing and nearly slamming into the side of the window in his hurry.
Brace led the way through the increasingly narrow tunnels leading up to Team Silverwing, flying with enough skill to show Tallie that he'd made tremendous progress after his evolution debacle. Tallie, however found the tunnels far on the intimidating and claustrophobic side. Despite being a bird herself, she never really ha d a reason to fly up these particular tunnels herself, and was afraid she'd get lost when the tunnels started splitting and offshooting in many different directions, and the light started fading. She nearly flew into about four different birds at the turning of corners, and wondered if Team Silverwing had established protocols about which side of the tunnel to fly.
Deeper and deeper Brace went, taking Tallie all the way back into the nesting chambers, where the flocks of birds supposedly roosted. It immediately struck her as one of the safest, darkest, most obscure corners of the entire Gold Division base, for one because it was hidden at the end of so many crazy tunnels that you'd absolutely have to memorize, and because there was no way for Pokémon to even come up here unless they could fly. The anxiety was instant – it made a lot of sense that this is where the base intruder would probably be hiding. So it was a bird, all along? Team Silverwing's chambers were absolutely a perfect place for them to hide, and also to blend in. Tallie began to fear what Brace had come to show him, but of course she didn't say anything, because she was supposed to be acting as a strong, confident leader who had everything together and didn't break down in the face of stress.
Brace flew to the very last roosting chamber at the end of the hall. He swooped inside, and led her to the very last nest at the very highest shelf. "When I saw this, and realized what I was looking at, I turned around and swooped back," he gasped. "Didn't want to say anything in public in case this is some kind of a big secret. But here. This is what I found."
Tallie's heart leaped at the sight. A particular bird occupied the nest at the far corner of the room. The bird's heart seemed to leap just as much, and a face of dread and defeat spread over its eyes.
"Otto…?" Tallie hissed, flapping to land on the edge of the nest. "I'd recognize this featherbrain anywhere. What. In all the blazes of the sun. Are YOU doing here…? WHY aren't you out with Char?!"
Otto shifted, as though wanting to hide his head underneath his wing, but deciding not to.
"I can… I can… explain…" said Otto meekly and quietly. "I… I… Ahhh… I'm sorry…"
Brace hobbled over to Otto's side, and cuddled up against him affectionately. "Hey, brother," he said. "Look… we're your team, we're on your side. We're always going to be on your side, alright? So, beak up, wings out. We just want to know what's going on."
After a pointed moment of hesitation, Otto seemed to bravely stare into Tallie's eyes.
"Before… before Char left," he began to explain, "I was approached by Domo. He said… it was very important that he go to the Black Division with Char. He needed to take the form of someone. He said it was very important, part of Hunter's plan. So he took the form of me. He… he asked me to keep it a secret for as long as I could."
It took Tallie only a few heartbeats to process this information. But once it clicked in her head, it sent her into a fit.
Tallie angrily roused her wings, making the two Pidgeotto flinch. "AWWWWWK! Domo, again?! That absolutely obnoxious ball of slime… he thinks he can just pretend to be someone else whenever he wants whenever he wants?! Does Char even know he's there?!"
Otto looked scared to reply. "Ahh… as far as I am aware… no, Char does not know. Nobody knows, but me," he admitted quietly and shamefully. "I'm sorry… I… I did not mean to break any protocols or disobey any orders… but I trusted in Hunter's plan. Hunter seems very trustworthy and I chose to respect his request."
Tallie flared her wings again. "Domo seems to be a master at making us not worry about Pokémon we should absolutely be worried about," she seethed. "I don't know what I should be more angry at: the fact that I have to trust this little furball with the safety of my boss… or that this has absolutely nothing to do with the base intruder!"
"Base… intruder?" Otto parroted. "What do you mean? I was… I have been here for days…"
