Turns out, Ronnie was very efficient in packing. She had all her numerous clothes packed up neatly and ready to go in the time I extracted my bra from under the bed. She proceeded to help me finish packing, making my bag neater than I thought possible. We hauled ass to the front desk and impatiently waited for the receptionist to check us out. Gertrude was a nice old lady, but she was slower than a Slowpoke. And she made way too much small talk. Luckily, she didn't recognize Ronnie as someone who had just beaten the Elite Four. She already had an unhealthy fondness of her.

Theodore teleported us to the NH HQ directly from the front desk to an empty room. Ronnie immediately walked to the door. I only had time to take in the bare walls before a beep sounded and an electronic voice said.

'Welcome, Nighthawk.'

Was that facial recognition? How high tech is this place? Who is Nighthawk? I gawked at the inconspicuous camera that had scanned Ronnie's face. Ronnie dragged me out and led me through a confusing path of winding corridors, past many identical doors, some with a number pad beside it. After many twists and turns later, we reached a door with a plate that said 'Meeting Room'. Above it, a sign flashed: Meeting in Progress. Without bothering to knock, she punched in a series of number. The door slid open to reveal a medium sized room with long meeting table that had way more people that it's intended limit. There was a huge hologram floating in the middle of the table. A floorplan, I realised. True to the sign, a meeting was underway and it was chaos. People were standing and talking over one another, and the echos in the enclosed room didn't help. When everyone realized that the door was opened and their discussion could be heard all the way from Johto, a stunned silence met us. A well-groomed middle age man, who was sporting a thick framed rectangular spectacle, looked up from rubbing his graying temples and walked over.

'Nighthawk,' He nodded at Ronnie, then turned his gaze at me. I squirmed as I felt him studying me. In the haste of departing from The Relaxing Skitty, I only put on my travelling clothes, which paled in comparison to Ronnie's more stylish outfit. Fashion was definitely not my forte. And I was sure my hair was a mess. I didn't even have time to pull it up in a ponytail. At least Ronnie had a cap hiding most of her hair. Wait, since when did she have a cap? And sunglasses. In the room, the conversation around the room picked up again, and some people yelling profanities just for the heck of it. I noticed one of the guys discreetly wiped the hologram, though.

'You must be Cara,' He finally said. 'I'm Vincent Dell. Call me Vince. Welcome to the New Helios Headquarter.'

I shook his proffered hand.

'I'm glad you guys are here. This is chaos. And we are beginning the raid at one-three-hundred!' He whispered, sharing a conspiratorial grin with Ronnie. Then he turned to me. 'Choose a name.'

'I uh – what?'

'Nevermind, you think of a name,' He said as he led us to one end of the long table.

'That's the boss,' Ronnie told me.

'What name am I supposed to be thinking of?' I whispered urgently.

'Guys,' Vince clapped twice, sharply. 'Many of you may already know her. For those who don't, this is Nighthawk from the poacher's team. And this is…' He turned and look at me expectantly.

Was he asking me to choose a code name? How did he expect me to think of one in the few seconds we walked into the room? How can I beat Nighthawk? That was badass as hell.

'Daenerys,' Ronnie whispered.

Oh. The mother of dragons, from Game of Thrones. I wouldn't know though, because I didn't watch the show. But it sounded cool, and I didn't have much of a choice, so I shrugged.

'This is Daenerys,' The corner of Vince's mouth twitched in amusement. 'Both of them have information that could help us in the raid later.'

Raid?

'Actually, it's Daenerys,' Ronnie turned to me, motioning for me to tell my story.

I cringed as every single pair of eyes in the room fell on me. Clearing my throat, I began. 'I had a dream last night –'

'How do we know we can trust her?' A guy with spiky black hair spoke with a heavy accent, cutting me off before I could progress.

'Yeah,' The guy beside him, presumably his friend and the one who switched off the hologram, piped out. 'I don't even know her.'

Their circle of friends quickly burst out in agreement, their volume raising higher and higher with each sentence. The room was split into groups, I realized. There was the gang of people voicing their disagreements right at the opposite end of the table. This was also the same group that was causing chaos when we first entered. They were made up of younger people with wild and exotic hairstyles, most of them sporting a tattoo or two. Then there was a bunch of older people, not by much, maybe in their early thirties, who looked weary at the constant argument. They are the ones sitting in their chairs awaiting orders. Then there are the people who gave orders. Or I assumed so because Vince was one of them. Maybe they were all VIPs. They stood near me, looking very important.

'Couldn't stay out of trouble, can't we, lass?' One of the men nearer to me wheezed. His accent and quavering voice was extremely familiar.

'Arthur?' I asked incredulously. His normally white hair was now brown, and his face looked a million years younger. He would have been quite handsome in his youth. I could definitely see where Lucas got his genes from.

'Shh, I'm incognito. Call me Fred,' Arthur gave me a wink.

'What are you doing here?' I mouthed.

'Listening to a load of rubbish, it seems. These young punks don't know what they are saying,' He rolled his eyes at said young punks, who were still bickering.

'You know Nighthawk, don't you?' A lady with mousey brown hair beside Arthur finally snapped.

Her tone suggested that Nighthawk was someone important, admonishing them for daring to even suggest she wasn't trustworthy. At least they look properly chastised, their faces had identical grimaces. Some of them hung their heads, mumbling an apology. But the spiky hair boy still looked defiant. The lady motioned for me to continue. Arthur gave me another wink, while Ronnie sighed in exasperation at the lady's words.

Deciding that the boy, whose eyes were boring holes into me, was not worth my attention, I told the room about my dream which Estelle sent. I told them about the Pokemon I saw and outlined the escaped route on the Hologram that the boy begrudgingly switched on. It was slightly unnerving to go over the events of my dreams again, much less in front of so many people. I could see most of the people nodding along to what I said, though the young punks remained largely unconvinced.

'So what?' The friend of spiky hair boy demanded. 'We're just supposed to believe you have this helpful dream right before we are entering the raid? Come on, are you for real?'

'I verified that dream myself,' Ronnie spoke up, her eyes daring the boy to challenge her.

'There's a good lass. She's got spunk,' Arthur whispered to me.

'But but…' He sputtered.

'Enough,' Vince held up his hand. 'I think it is clear what we must do.'

Vincent Dell was a very charismatic man. He wasn't handsome, not really, but very striking. A man you definitely won't forget meeting. When he spoke, the entire room was silent, every single person hanging on to his words. I could see why he was the leader of a resistance. As he outlined the plan, there were many nods of agreement. He split the people into groups, mixing the young punks with some of the older ones. And then assigned two leaders in each group. After receiving their assignments, the people filed out of the room, presumably to prepare for the raid they were having.

'Daenerys,' Vince beckoned. 'Stay here for a while.'

Actually I hadn't been planning to go anywhere because Ronnie was still in the room, but I pretended that I was merely following his orders. He waited for everyone to leave before turning to me. Or everyone except for a select few. Was that an inner circle?

'Cara,' He said when the door slid shut after the last person left.

I raised my eyebrow.

'Oh, don't worry. These are trusted people,' He explained. 'It honestly is not ideal for most of us to show our true identity. But we can trust you, right?'

Aha! There was an inner circle. His question seemed to be phrased as a threat and I nodded in response. Who was I going to tell? I don't even know who was here. I looked around the room, trying to see if I could identify anyone. He made it sound like these were people or importance in the Pokemon world. Of course, there was Arthur. A retired Galarian Champion shouldn't be seen heading a group of people who may be seen as rebels in Hoenn. Who knows what the bad guys would do? Though they only wore simple disguises like sunglasses and cap, I couldn't place them at all.

'Of course we can trust her! I train her, didn't I?' Arthur tugged on his brown hair and it came off after the third yank. Of course, it was a wig. 'Don't know why we bother with these. I had to wear make up. What a load of bollocks.'

'You trained basically everyone in this room,' Vince looked exasperated. I was briefly shocked. I didn't know Arthur trained Ronnie too. I slid a glance at her, but her face remained impassive.

'It's to protect you, Grandpa,' One of the room's other occupant took off his sunglasses. Arceus! It was Lucas. How did I missed him? He straightened out of his slouch and immediately he became ten times more imposing like the Gym Leader he was.

'That's why they are here, innit?' Arthur chose to ignore his grandson's comment.

'Anyway, Cara,' Vince said with a sigh, glancing at Ronnie. Her face hardened. 'You must have lots of questions.'

'I uhh… Is your real name Vincent Dell?' I blurted out.

I mentally smacked myself. That wasn't the question I had wanted to ask. Of course I was curious why he didn't have a code name, but there were more pressing questions I wanted answers to.

'That's for me to know and for you to find out.' He replied with a mysterious smile.

His answer sounded so familiar yet I couldn't placed where I had heard that from. There seemed to be an increasing number of reasons I should check myself for brain damage at a hospital. Perhaps Theodore destroyed my brain. Should I be worried?

'So,' I slid a glance at Ronnie. 'What's going on?'

'Well,' Vince began.

'We were not exactly sure, but there were cases of Trainers going missing in Sootopolis a while ago. The public wasn't too concerned, because the Trainers always turn up a few days later, though with seemingly no memory of what happened. Many members of the public who knew about this chalked it up to too much partying and drinking at The Altitude, the local nightclub in Sootopolis. But it seemed suspicious to us, especially when reports came in where witnesses swore that they saw those Trainers entering the Vaporean Labs, or where their friends mentioned that they were responding to a call for Psychic Trainers to help in an experiment in Vaporean Labs. We already knew that there was something fishy with Vaporean Labs.'

'Wait, you do? Why?' I asked.

'Do you know Nathan Sugiwara?'

I thought about the conversation we had at Arthur's house. He was the ex Sootopolis Gym Leader whose house caught on fire. I nodded.

'Well, Nathan was the Gym Leader of Sootopolis Gym,' Vince explained anyway. 'He retired under extremely suspicious conditions. He had a good, high paying job and he was coming into his own as a Gym Leader. At almost the height of his career, he suddenly retired to become a low paying research assistant with terrible work hours at the Vaporean labs. That was weird enough for us to start a little digging.'

Oh that I didn't know. Though the story did sound very familiar. Except my sister was at the start of her promising career as a trainer when she quit to become a research assistant. Now I wondered if something else had happened to Ariel that had influenced her change of mind. She had always been a sweet and amazing sister, unlike Ben who liked to sit on me and fart. There was no way she was working with the poachers willingly.

'Anyway, we couldn't find anyway weird on Sugiwara's records. It's almost too clean, if you ask me. But either way, we sent two guys in to scope the situation at Vaporean Labs about 3 days ago, but they never made it back. That's why we are mounting this raid to get them back. We didn't know what they were doing until you came. Actually, we still don't, but at least we have an idea. You really saved us this time round. We had no idea our floorplan was so outdated. At least now we know it'll be a rescue mission of sorts, including all the humans and Pokemons we can save. We can tweak our plans according. Of course, we will ensure that we will get your Gardevoir back.'

'I want to go,' I said immediately after he finished the story.

'Well,' He seemed slightly taken aback at my outburst. He shared a glance with a small, wiry woman next to him. 'Certainly, we could use –'

'No!' Ronnie snapped, glaring at Vince for even daring to entertain the notion.

'Veronique,' Vince's face was a picture of calm. 'We need all the help we can get.'

'No,' Ronnie crossed her arms, her face set in a stubborn expression.

'Why not?' I demanded, slightly angry that she wasn't even talking to me.

'It's too dangerous.' She finally turned to me, her eyes unreadable.

'Ronnie!' I all but shouted. 'That's my Pokemon in there!'

'You don't know what you're getting yourself into!' Ronnie retorted. 'No, I won't let you go. I can't… Not af –'

'V,' The brown hair lady took Ronnie by the elbow and let to the corner of the room where they spoke urgently in soft tones. Ronnie was gesturing animatedly, her face a mix of anger and anguish. That should be the woman I heard in the hospital. The one who asked her to 'take care of [me]'. I felt a spike of jealously biting me. They seemed close, though Ronnie has never mentioned any brown hair girl. Or I assumed she was brown haired, I don't know who had what hair now. Though the room was quite silent, I couldn't hear their conversation at all.

'You mustn't blame her,' Arthur told me, eyeing Ronnie and the other girl. 'That lass has been through a lot.'

'I know,' I replied quietly.

I caught snippets of 'Cara's not Charis' and 'What if Theodore' before Ronnie threw her hands up and stormed out of the room. There was a moment of awkward silence as we stared at each other until the brown hair girl returned to our circle.

'It's ok. She understands.' The girl told us.

Ronnie's actions actually looked far from understanding to me, but I took what I could get.

'I'll speak to her later,' Vince said. 'Anyway, you're sure you want to do this?'

'Yes!'

Vince outlined the plan once more to me, emphasising where I would be, all the protocol and how an NH operation works. It included all the nitty gritty details, emergency plans, who was my leader and so on and so forth. He repeated a lot of the safety details which seemed like an overkill to me, but I guess whatever it takes for me to get Estelle back.

'Alright,' He finally said. The entire conversation had taken more than an hour, and it was lucky that the raid had been pushed back to 630pm (during dinnertime when the lab is the least staffed). Most of the people had already left, leaving only Arthur and the small, wiry woman. 'Just follow Nicolle's orders and you'll be good. She's been a leader in missions for almost 5 years. Now, go and get something to eat. I'm sure you're hungry. The cafeteria is on Basement 2. Try the oyakodon, it's amazing.'

I took that as a dismissal and left the room, thanking Vince for letting me join the raid.

As I left the room, I heard Vince said. 'So, Doris, was I right?'

'I've already told you,' Arthur grumbled. 'I've trained her myself, I would know.'

'Yes,' The small, wiry woman replied. 'She's perfect for Operation Ascalon.'

I turned around, maybe to listen more. They were clearly talking about me, but the door had already slid closed and no sound could be heard.

With no choice and stomach grumbling, I found an empty room that was opened. It wasn't that I didn't want to find the cafeteria. Or that I didn't want to find Ronnie. This place was like a maze; I didn't even know where I was, much less how to get to Basement 2. Ok, maybe I was avoiding Ronnie a little. I was afraid she was going to talk me out of joining the mission and we would end up in another fight.

Looking around the room, I realized it kind of look like one of those generic rooms in Pokemon Centers that Trainers can use to train their Pokemon. It was medium sized, and perfect for what I had in mind. I released my Pokemon, and after a chaotic moment where we found the best way to fit everyone into the room, I was sitting on Lexy's tail, rubbing the bruise where his tail had whacked my ribcage. I clearly underestimated Lexy's size. He fit snugly into the room, if he curled up his tail and folded his wings. That left very little room for a huge tiger dog, a slightly smaller goat with a huge, sharp scythe on his head and an energetic marsh monster. And me. Wrestling with said marsh monster, who, in the absence of mud, had taken to wiggling and jumping around on me, I quickly gave them a rundown on the situation.

Just as I finished, Yuan jumped from pawing and whining at me towards the door, which opened to reveal a brown haired Arthur. He grunted as Yuan tackled into him. He was way stronger than he looked, and I was secretly glad Yuan had turned his whining and pawing to someone else. All my Pokemons were understandably distraught and angry for Estelle, but my shirt was quickly becoming drenched in Marshtomp slobber.

'Oy you nasty little git,' Arthur said fondly, rubbing Yuan on the base of his fin.

'Maaaaaarsh,' Yuan whined, wiggling his fins.

'Blimey, your dragon is quite something, ain't he,' Arthur told me. He chuckled. 'Mother of dragons indeed.'

He picked up Yuan, an incredible feat considering the fact that Yuan came up to his chest, and tucked him under his armpits. He stepped over various paws, hooves and claws as he inspected my team.

'Good job, lass. You should be proud.' He nodded, peeling open Dawn's mouth to check her teeth.

I had to smile briefly through my flurry of emotions. Arthur didn't hand out praises easily.

'Your girl sent me to get you,' Arthur said. 'Said you haven't eaten anything since morning. Let's get to the cafeteria, shall we?'

With a nod, I returned my Pokemons (who 1. Wouldn't fit into the corridor and 2. Would have caused more chaos if we met anybody) and followed Arthur out the door.

'Shame you had to meet this lot under the circumstance,' Arthur told me as we made our way to the cafeteria.

'What do you mean?'

'I was thinking of asking you to join, see? Only I was planning to ask maybe after you got more badges.'

'Wait, you were?'

'Of course,' Arthur gave me a withering look. 'Why did you think I picked your sorry ass off the marsh and trained you lot?

'Not because we looked sorry as hell?' I smiled weakly.

'Oh, you looked sorry as hell, no doubt' He grunted. 'But I'd reckon only Trainers who were bonkers enough to brave Route 119 are worth Training. Most young punks take the trains now, don't they?'

I hadn't even thought about that. I was too preoccupied to notice where I was going. Maybe in some strange way if I hadn't lost Neo, or fought with Ronnie, I wouldn't have met Arthur at all.

'You trained Ronnie too?'

'Absolutely. And her sister. Dominique came with the recommendation of the previous Fortree Gym Leader. Excited little thing, chock full of beans she was. Told me all about her sister. Then a few years later, Veronique dropped onto my doorsteps. A scrawny little thing if you can imagine. I'd reckon a few more days and she'll be dead from the chill, her lady friend with her. Oh they were quite a pair. Willing to follow each other to the end of the Earth. A bit bonkers if you ask me, but no one can deny that they were brave.'

I was silent for a moment. I couldn't imagine Ronnie ever being scrawny. I tried to picture her drowning in the rain, then doing ridiculous pose for Arthur's insane trainings but failed miserably.

'Err… About that,' Arthur scratched his head awkwardly, misinterpreting my silence. 'Veronique.. she…'

'It's ok,' I had to hide a smile at his awkwardness. Of course I couldn't let him see, he'll whoop my ass as it were. 'I'll talk to her later. After.'

We had reached the cafeteria after winding through the corridors. We had to step on a warp that took us to Basement 2 and I was positive that the warp used the technology of Psychic's Teleport, because it felt exactly the same. I had no idea how Vince expected me to find my way to the cafeteria without Arthur.

'Don't get me wrong, lass,' Arthur walked to a huge screen after giving me a long look. 'I'd reckon you might be a slight better for her. They may have been a blaze together, but the both of you are more like a warm hearth. Say, you remind me a lot of Charis, but you are not as reckless. And you slow Veronique down. She ain't quite as reckless after she met you. More importantly, that lass fancied you so much that when she came over to give me the tickets, she blasted me with so many ridiculous questions about you. She was bloody upset when the both of you fought, it was miserable to be around her.'

Arthur scrolled through the screen thoughtfully. 'No oyakodon. That's rubbish anyway. The great leader has no taste buds. Bah! What you need is a good steak. Now don't go around telling my grandson that I've been eating steak.'

'I heard that, Grandpa,' Lucas materialised behind us. His long arms reached across us to delete the 2 items in the cart and adding 3 Tynamo don. 'Steaks are only for weekends.'

Arthur muttered profanities at Lucas' back as he walked over to Stall 3 to collect our food. 'That is one amazing lass you have there.' He turned to me as we made our way to the Pokemon food booth. 'That being said, if you hurt her…'

He left the sentence hanging, but I could imagine him ordering Sebastian to tear me from limb to limb with his great square jaw. Or he'll do it himself. He certainly was strong enough.