Interceptor's Wish

by Masterdude21

What started as a young man's search for his abducted mother spirals out of control. Soon, he is fighting a desperate war for survival against greater odds than a more generous God would have allowed. The enemy is everywhere and allies are far too few. With the entire region at stake, who can prevail when fate itself seems set against you? - Novelization of Pokemon Rejuvenation.

49. Behind A Shattered Mask

AN: This chapter is the first of a two-parter that functions as the culmination of many small changes and additions I made to the story. It gets heavy and emotional at times but, then again, that is the reason why many of you are here, is it not?

~~~~~~~(0)~~~~~~~

---

Chapter 11– Through the Looking Mask

Behind The Shattered Mask

~~~~~~~(I)~~~~~~~

---

Change was a slow, bleeding thing. It was a torn artery, a life silently dripping away. It was a gentle breeze slowly gaining intensity until one day, it became a full storm. Without him ever noticing it, things had changed yet again. Instead of crawling, everything had fallen from one side to the other in a cluttered, violent mess, sweeping him along.

Change was a slow, gradual thing and it was starting to bleed him dry.

It was the dead of night and yet Grand Dream City never slept. Hundreds of thousands of people went about their lives down below, oblivious to the souls grinded beneath their heels, oblivious to the silent predators skulking in their midst.

Pidgeot and he sailed through the dark, cold sky above Grand Dream City, but the dome encapsulating the innermost portions of GDC was ever present. It was like a cage, a constant reminder that out here, in Aevium's capital city, true freedom was far beyond his grasp.

Will clutched Pidgeot's neck tightly as the Flying-type skimmed close to the inner surface of the dome, a shadow across the night. They touched down on the roof of a skyscraper that he couldn't be bothered to identify.

You weren't there all these years!

Venam's voice continued cutting a bloody swath across his mind. Something twisted in his chest when he lowered himself off Pidgeot's body and onto that cold, dark roof.

You're wrong.

"Goddamnit!" Will shouted. His boot connected with the nearest solid thing in sight - the base of a solar panel in this case - and the resulting vibrations trembling across its frames brought him a grim sense of satisfaction that lasted for a microsecond before the maelstrom in his mind swallowed it up again. "Fuck!" He shouted.

He hated crying. He had decided that he hated crying, because he couldn't remember shedding a single tear before he came to Aevium. There was no point to it, because if he broke down and started crying it meant he'd lost, it meant he hadn't been resilient enough and that something was wrong and -

But everything was wrong. He hadn't been resilient enough and now he was alone, because Adam was gone and Val had hurt him and Venam - Venam - !

"I don't fucking get it!" He roared, kicking at the solar panel again. Pidgeot stopped his careful grooming session for a second to shoot him a disapproving look. "What was that? Seriously, what happened?"

Ever since you washed on shore things have been so fucked.

He didn't want that, he hadn't wanted any of that! All he apparently ever wanted was to settle down with his mom in Akuwa Town and start a new life there but he couldn't even have that knowledge because he couldn't remember, he still couldn't remember a damn thing!

"She's wrong," he snapped. Anger was good. Anger burned away the tears, shoved aside the raw, agonizing grief that things had fallen apart again and this time, there could be no putting them back together because Venam hated him, Venam hated him and he didn't get why. "I didn't ask for fucking Team Xen! Fuck!"

He lashed out again, kicking the solar panel so hard that something snapped and its black glass shattered. A second later, pain lanced through his shin. He spat a curse and ran his hands through his hair, parts of his anger turning into frustration, which again turned into helplessness -

"...ow," he said, forcing his voice down. He looked over at Pidgeot, who had yet to return to grooming his feathers. "Well, she is!"

Pidgeot blinked slowly.

"Prioritise," Will said. He began pacing across the rooftop, leaned against the small structure in the middle and then felt a fierce wave of nausea sweep through him. Tears welled up in his eyes again and he began shaking despite doing everything he could to get a hold of himself. The anger slipped through his fingers and bled away leaving him with nothing but grief and sickness.

Adam was gone and Val had hurt him and Venam hated him. He couldn't stay in that penthouse any longer. He couldn't…he couldn't handle this, couldn't live with Venam in the same room now.

Will slid down against the back of the building, dropped his head between his knees and tried not to think.

Aelita would have known. Aelita would have seen this coming and he would have headed it off. Aelita would have…she would have…

But Aelita had run away from him.

Something fuzzy tickled his head and his hands. Will pulled his head from his knees and saw that Pidgeot had nestled himself up against him.

"I can't divebomb my way out of this," he muttered.

Pidgeot brought his great head towards him and goddamn Will's entire head could fit inside of that hooked beak of his.

"As much as I want to."

Again, the bird of prey gave his trainer a nudge, but it was rougher this time.

Will rubbed that hooked beak. "What am I supposed to do at the penthouse now? How am I gonna…" His throat swelled up again. He shook his head, dragging his eyes from the edge of the little building to the solar panel he'd…refurbished. That helped alleviate some of the pressure and heat building up behind his eyes. "Gonna face Melia now?"

Pidgeot shoved him.

"I like Melia, nothing's gonna change that," Will said, a bit surprised at how rough Pidgeot was being. "I want her to be happy…but…"

I want to be happy too.

Will didn't dare vocalize that bit. It felt strange. After the past two days, he felt like his entire world had been turned upside down. Adam was a completely different man, Val had forgotten all about her friends and Venam…

He didn't know much, but he knew that putting himself first was the last thing he ought to be doing. He couldn't stay with Rhodea and Melia and Venam like before, that would only cause problems. What he needed was to figure out who was turning people to stone, put a stop to it, and then find a way to figure out what the hell had happened to his loved ones.

Maybe it was Team Xen. Maybe, just maybe, Indriad was involved, farfetched as that might seem.

"Priorities," he whispered.

Keep Melia safe from harm, even if from a distance. Solve the petrification. Figure out what happened to Adam and Val - and by extension, figure out where the hell Saki and Braixen were - and if possible, fix that too. Then, if at all possible, he'd figure out what to do with this whole mess with Venam.

"Th-That's the o-order of priorities," he told Pidgeot, and he took great solace in the fact that nobody was around to hear the quiver in his voice, or the way it broke again when he added, "And I'm s-sticking to it."

Pidgeot rested his head against Will's and kept it there. Warm, fuzzy and soft. His feathers billowed ever so gently in the wind.

They remained there like that for another hour. During that hour, Will closed his eyes, tightly embraced Pidgeot and focused on breathing. Breathing was good. The Eldest and Aelita had taught him that breathing was one of the best ways to handle stress, pressure and pain, both physical and mental. Adam had taught him that breathing could be used to get a handle on panic attacks, as well.

His friends had taught him a lot. The way things were now, they might well have taught him everything he knew. He owed them. He owed them.

Embrace resilience, he told himself, again and again. As he got himself back under some semblance of control, the entirety of the day's affairs washed over him. When his emotions simmered down, the exhaustion settled in.

"Tonight, we're heading back to the penthouse," Will told Pidgeot. "After that…who knows. Maybe Yira has a spare bed."

Pidgeot snorted in disapproval.

"Or maybe Flora will let me sleep in her garden. I can dig a hole. Sleep in it. Be a Ranger - "

Pidgeot didn't grace him with a response to that one. He took off with explosive force and it was all Will could do not to slip and fall. Within minutes, Pidgeot swept back around to Rhodea's penthouse and touched down in her high-altitude backyard again.

Surprisingly enough, the door to her balcony was still unlocked. Will made sure that he didn't miss anyone lying, sleeping or otherwise chilling outside, then closed and locked the door behind him.

It was late. Half past one in the morning. Tomorrow was likely another intense day full of unwelcome surprises. Better to go to bed now, figure shit out later.

…Venam and Melia were nowhere to be seen. They had likely gone to bed long ago.

Had…had Melia noticed? Did Melia figure out that her last two remaining friends had torn each other apart mere meters away from where she'd been sitting?

His heart started pounding in his chest when he remembered the things Venam and him had said to each other. What they'd yelled at each other. God, it would destroy her, knowing what had taken place.

Merely thinking about that made his stomach cramp up in pain. Will dragged himself up the stairs, lingered in the opening to his door, then turned around and gazed out over the living room again.

Was Venam still awake? Did she…would…had she really meant what she said? Was she still awake or had she managed to fall asleep in spite of everything?

Almost mechanically, Will forced himself to enter his bedroom and quietly shut the door behind him. He shrugged out of his jacket, jerked his shirt over his head -

Or because I'm not fucked up enough yet?

- and did not think about the scars, or how Venam might be right and how he might not be what Melia needed, or even wanted.

He tried not to think, tried not to think -

Hoursminuteseconds -

Will woke up in a panic, jumping out of the wooden chair in a frantic hurry. It clattered to the floating rock with a deafening clattering noise that grated his nerves and it wasn't until he was about to leap off the edge that he realized that he knew this place.

"Welcome back, welcome."

His thoughts were hazy and he flipped hurriedly through his memories, trying to remember. The search for Talon's assailant, the masked person, the Night Market and the Cold Storage and Venam -

Venam.

Slowly, it came to Will that he'd rarely had two nightmares that were so alike, let alone so lucid and realistic. He turned to the man seated behind that blasted chess board. "Seriously?".

Tophat spread his arms out in a welcoming gesture. "Today's game is simple!"

"Today's game is canceled," Will growled. "I'm not doing this." He turned his back to the stranger and glanced at that freaking, oversized chess board below. "Go plague someone else's nightmares."

"My," Tophat calmly replied. "Someone has not been embracing his resilience."

Will turned so abruptly that he heard something in his neck creak. "How - "

His dream intruder smiled a disgusting knowing smirk.

Slamming his palms against the table, Will snarled, "How the hell - "

"Ah-ah," the man said, his voice excruciatingly calm. "You are not asking the right questions, and the answers I can offer would not make sense to you anyway."

"Try," Will all but growled.

Tophat reclined back in his seat. "Time is not linear. The answer might come. It might not. Know that now is not the time to rest your weary head."

Will regarded the man suspiciously. That was his thing. His thing. Sure, he'd written it down in his journal, but the idea of this mysterious dream visitor having read his very-physical journal did not inspire much confidence in him at all. It was that, or this guy being able to read his mind, and he didn't know which one was worse.

Eat sand, Will thought angrily, channeling a Saki classic as he eyed his dream visitor for any hint that he'd heard it.

"I am going to ask you three questions," tophat said. He folded his hands atop the table, fingers intertwined. "Don't get stressed. Let go of your anxiety. Being wrong just means that you and I are not meeting in the right order. This would be your first time here, so to speak. Let's begin."

When Will made no indication that he was going to sit down and play tophat's games, the man sighed and reached for one of the chess pieces - a big one - and picked it up.

"Adam didn't recognize me," Will said.

"Quite so."

"Val…Valarie didn't recognize us either."

"I would imagine."

"So what," Will said through clenched teeth, "Is going on?"

"Who is the Puppet Master's main subordinate?" Tophat replied.

Will stared at the man, who shamelessly stared right back. He could almost imagine an expecting, patient look in the guy's eyes. When it became obvious that he wasn't going to get any answers, Will gripped the seat of the chair and pulled it back up. "Whose side are you on?"

"That, too, shall become known."

"I would prefer for that to be known."

The man moved his chess piece back, then picked up a smaller one and moved it in a straight line, four spaces towards him. "Would I truly be entertaining your thoughts and questions if I were an opposing force? Consider the damage I would wreak, offering you twists and turns and lies."

He wasn't sure if it was exhaustion or the fact that he was still, technically, dreaming, but that made an awful lot of sense to Will. He slowly eased himself back into the seat, stared at the chess game for a moment and then said, "I don't know."

"I am sorry, but that is not the answer I am looking for," Tophat said, and the corners of his mouth rose in a pitiful smile. "But do not worry. These answers will come to you as time passes by. It will be your job to find them and return here sometime in the future, or the past. Time, like I said, is non-linear, of course."

"What - "

"Please excuse me for taking your sleep," Tophat continued. "Our meeting today will be short. Why?"

"Because you have other dreams to ruin?" Will muttered. He reached for one of the chess pieces and found, much to his annoyance, that his pieces weren't truly there. His fingers passed through them as if he had become part Ghost-type. That, or Tophat was one hell of a magician.

The man chuckled. "Because you have another threat that has yet to be dealt with." Again, the dream intruder reached out, took another piece and began moving it towards Will's side of the board.

"Wait," Will said. He snatched the man's arm. It was corporeal. Real. "What threat?"

"Morning comes."

Will increased his grip but the man didn't seem to care, didn't even react as Will dug his fingers into his slender, bony wrist. "Where do I need to go? What is going to happen?"

"We fade away."

"Tell me!" Will shouted as he pulled the man's wrist towards him, holding on to that realness, that solidness like he was drowning.

"Wake up, Interceptor."

"Where - !" The world grew darker and the islands faded away.

"Wake up…wake up. Wake up! Will!"

The blackness lifted, parted, and the man was gone and Rhodea was there, only Rhodea. Rhodea and the urgency in her voice as she yelled at him shook him awake, truly, actually awake -

And he was gripping her wrist, his fingers were wrapped around her wrist and gripping it so hard that his knuckles were turning white. Rhodea was struggling against him, her face ashen and shaken and pained -

"Rhodea?" Will whispered, his voice choked and brittle. He let go of her immediately and then shoved himself upright in his bed, away from her. Rhodea immediately put some distance between herself and his bed, clutching her wrist as her expression became one of shock and discomfort.

They stared at each other, both of them frozen, but Rhodea didn't meet his eyes. She kept her gaze fixed on his chest, slowly rubbing her wrists as she opened and closed her mouth repeatedly, but no words came out.

"...sorry," Will breathed, aghast. "I'm…I…"

It came back to him in pieces; Talon, Val, Venam -

"Finally, woke you up," Rhodea said. Then, and only then, did she flick her eyes up to meet his. "Will, we have a situation. R-Remember that paper with the weird symbols on it?"

Will stared at her wrist. He wanted to apologize more, tell her that he'd been dreaming and that he didn't know that it was her and that he was so, so sorry for hurting her -

But no words came out. His throat was tight and dry and his body had cramped up, refusing to budge.

"It turned out to be a phone number," Rhodea continued. "When the team called it, it turned bad. There's someone threatening to destroy Somnium Mall. And their ultimatum? You."

It took him a few moments to process what she was saying. When her words came through to him, however, he jolted out of the bed. Rhodea flinched away from him as he reached for his clothes and that, more than anything, made him realize how wrong it was. The darkness of the night, Rhodea's breathing, the deer-in-the-headlights look she still wore, the way her body was still so tense and -

Ever since you washed on shore things have been so fucked!

Rhodea, I didn't mean to, he wanted to say. What came out, however, was, "Whats…what's the situation?"

"The police has the place cordoned off, Explosive Ordnance Disposal teams are on the ground."

Will managed to put his clothes on in record time. He heard the wailing siren of a police car coming from far away. "You're saying terrorists are specifically asking for me?"

"Yes," Rhodea impatiently said. "They're going to blow up the entire thing unless we bring them you. The Mayor is on-site, she has specialists on the ground who can inform you, but we need to move!"

The second Will finished strapping his boots on, he swung his backpack over his shoulders and ran after Rhodea towards the elevator. He noticed that Rhodea hadn't woken Melia, Venam or even Kanon.

It was just the two of them.

At least his friends wouldn't be anywhere near an active terrorist threat, but…that meant he'd be going in there alone. Without Melia, Aelita or Adam to cover his back, he felt…exposed. Vulnerable. Knowing now how Venam felt had changed everything, made everything in the city that much more daunting. He had come to rely on her company even during the moments where Melia had been distracted.

Suddenly, Will felt very much alone.

Rhodea didn't say a word as she escorted him through the deserted atrium and towards the police escort waiting for them. Will stepped through the atrium doors and saw an entire motorcade fanned out across the street. Five of the vehicles had their lights on while a pair of sleeker, black cars had been parked in such a way to block off the two side-roads leading to the penthouse.

As he stepped outside, the intense glare of a searchlight swept across the street as a helicopter buzzed overhead. At the bottom of the steps, a female police officer with short, brown hair was involved in a heated conversation with a colleague wearing a face-concealing helmet. They broke it off the second Rhodea and him came within earshot, and the helmeted officer walked off.

"Miss Rhodea? Mister William?" The police woman said, nodding at the two of them with a grim expression. "I'm Sergeant Hikowa, GDC-PD." She offered him her hand.

Will wondered if she could say that with a mouthful of pizza. "Sergeant. I'm Will."

Sergeant Hikowa wore the coolest vest he'd ever seen. It was a thick, sturdy-looking piece of black armor that went over her torso and her abdomen with all kinds of pouches attached to them, one of which had a compact radio poking out of it. He hadn't seen the rangers on Terajuma walk around with gear like that, had he? If he'd gotten his hands on that, the final confrontation on Valor Summit might have gone very differently.

"Sergeant," Rhodea returned the officer's greetings. "That's a lot of cars for an escort."

"We are taking no risks," the officer replied. "We do not know if the perpetrators have accomplices out here. We have RK-9 units scouting the buildings along the route."

Said accomplices would likely want to take a shot at him, and the GDC police had come out in force to keep that from happening.

…Will wondered if those armored vests came in his size, too.

"Any developments in the situation?" Rhodea said as the Sergeant hurriedly escorted them towards the center-most police car.

"They have holed up on the lower levels," Hikowa said. "They claim to have smuggled weapons of mass destruction within the city walls. Although that scenario is very unlikely, we had to take the claim seriously regardless."

"Any Pokemon spotted?" Will asked.

Hikowa opened the door and gestured for them to climb inside. "Not that we have seen. We will be escorting you to the mall as fast as we can. Should we come under fire, you are to stay inside the car unless it too gets targeted. When that happens, you use your Pokemon and retreat. We shall provide cover in the meantime."

Retreat.

The command was simple enough, and open to interpretation. Will could tell that this crisis had just unfolded; if, during their assault on Valor Mountain, his friends would have run into any kind of scenario that needed them to "retreat", chances were that the entire plan could have been thrown out of the nearest window.

…what kind of Xen operation started with them demanding the city bring him to them? Unless they were planning on blowing him up along with the entire motorcade, they were literally handing him the initiative on a silver platter. And why threaten to blow up an empty shopping mall?

No, there was a hidden angle to this plan, some sort of trap that they expected him to spring. He had to proceed with extreme caution here.

"The Mayor arrived on the scene just minutes ago!" The driver told Rhodea and Will as he hauled ass through the city. Next to him, Sergeant Hikowa coordinated with the rest of the police escort through the radio. "She's got an expert on the target structure in the field! He'll brief you on the specific details."

If he was Team Xen's ultimatum, what happened when he resisted? Would they simply detonate those weapons of theirs underneath his feet? Try to blow him up alongside the mall?

Who was he kidding, of course they would. He needed to find a way to survive whatever Team Xen was about to throw at him.

It all depended on how they would try to kill him.

It was such an insane thing to think about. Damnit, he should have asked Risa how she survived that explosive ambush in the Cold Storage facility.

"The Mayor…" Rhodea said. "This is such a mess. How would they even know you're in the city? You've been here for a day and a half."

"They've been watching us," Wil replied without really thinking about it. He peered through the tinted windows of the police cruiser, wondering what Venam would have said if she knew that the police was actually being useful for once. Melia would be beyond herself with concern if she knew what was happening right now.

If he made it out to tell her. If nothing went wrong and he managed to figure out how to beat Team Xen this time around.

An eternity ago, Keta had told him that he had the power to stop Team Xen. What that meant, Will still didn't know, but he had to believe that Keta had known more than he did. He had to find some way of keeping hope, even if everything was falling apart around him.

Focus, he told himself. Prioritize. Resilience.

Venam no longer being his friend didn't matter because it couldn't matter. The same went for Adam and Val. He had to push those emotions away, lock them in boxes, to be filed away for later. If his emotions got the better of him at the wrong moment, it would cost him his life. He needed to be cold. He needed to be detached.

People depended on him getting this right. If he screwed this up, people would die. No question about it. Innocent men, women and children would be caught up in the aftermath.

And Melia and Venam would be left to fight Team Xen alone.

Will focused. He breathed. He prioritized.

And he started planning.

Within minutes, the police escort reached Somnium Mall. Will scanned his surroundings, eyed the police officers already waiting there at the barricade they'd erected.

"Sergeant, have the surrounding buildings been checked?" He asked. "Any threats?"

"The entire neighborhood has been cordoned off. We have evacuated the civilians and sectored off the rooftops," Hikowa said. She turned around in her seat and met Will's eyes. "The only threats we have located, are inside of the mall."

An image flashed before his eyes. Giratina, spearing Jenner with a surprise Dragon Pulse.

Will couldn't do much more than take Hikowa's word for it. If Team Xen wanted him dead so badly that they were willing to do things this brazenly, this openly, he could expect them to try and nail him from a kilometer away. Something he wouldn't see coming.

An aggressive tactic, one he didn't really have a good counter to.

What was the point of a cool vest if Giratina could blow apart his midsection with an errand Dragon Pulse regardless?

A nervous giggle bubbled up within his chest and he forced it down, hard. "Okay Froslass," he said, sending out his number one ambush-ambusher. She materialized right between him and Rhodea and the Stormchaser uttered a cry of surprise, flattening herself against the door when the Ghost-type came into being.

"Oh shit!" The driver said.

"Eyes on the road," Hikowa calmly said, as if Will had simply unfolded a newspaper instead.

"The situation is the same as ever; we're in deep trouble and the enemy could be about to ambush us at any moment," Will told Froslass. "Do you have my back?"

Froslass reached around and rested a frigid "hand" against the small of his back. Will gasped, arcing his spine as Froslass began giggling.

The next second, Will was laughing too, and the puzzled looks Rhodea and Sergeant Hikowa gave him didn't matter.

Their escort reached the mall. They disembarked, and Hikowa wasted no time in directing Will towards the barricade at the front of the mall.

There, standing as close to the mall as the police cordon would allow, stood Grand Dream City's mayor. She was taller than he'd expected and a lot younger. He'd pictured someone looking more like…well, headmistress Hazuki. The mayor looked younger than his mother, younger than Tesla and Chasity. Her long, black hair reached down to her waist, a stark contrast to the pink business dress she wore.

A young man flanked her, steel-eyed and tense. Unlike the mayor, who eyed Will with open curiosity and something that might have even been a reserved smile, this guy looked at him like Will had personally stolen his wallet and then kicked him down six flights of stairs. He looked at Will like he wasn't just some dirt beneath his shoe, but dirt that had slandered his mother just seconds before latching onto his best and most expensive sunday shoes.

It wasn't a look Will had gotten often, and it took him a moment to adjust. He almost missed the black-clad woman standing a few meters to the left of the pair. She didn't seem like a police officer to him, though the leather and heavy motor helmet meant she could be some sort of special anti-terrorist agent or something.

"You must be William then," the mayor said. The two police officers watching over her stepped away for a moment as the woman approached him, before holding out her hand. "Cassandra, the Mayor of Grand Dream City."

Will took her hand and shook it. "Please. It's just Will."

"I am certain it is," she replied, regarding him thoughtfully. "I apologize for meeting through such circumstances." She let go of his hand and turned to the offended-looking young man, who had folded his arms over his chest in a clear sign of impatience. He was even tapping his foot against the ground, as if every second spent getting Will up to speed was one too many. "This here is Thomas Blakeory Junior. He is here - "

"I'm here to figure out who would even dare to threaten my property," Thomas Blakeory Junior snapped, his eyes glistening with fury. "The audacity to smear the Blakeory's rightful property should be punished by death."

"What a charming boy," the helmeted woman sighed, her voice a bit muffled.

Cassandra shot her an odd look, before turning her attention back to Will. "Right, anyway, he was the one who originally called about the threat."

"I received the phone call at exactly two hours thirty-four, which was fifteen minutes ago. I then proceeded to call the judicial branch police department. It took seven minutes for the forces to gather themselves here." The young man shook his head with disdain. "What a slog."

Seven minutes? To navigate the freaking capital city and get to a terror threat at night? How was that anything less than impressive?

"We can have a meeting about the slow response time another time." Cassandra replied curtly. "The plan." She snapped her fingers a few times. "Explain it to Will."

"I was getting there," Thomas hissed as the two police officers hurried to get the attention of another officer. "Listen subordinate. The one threatening to destroy Blakeory property supposedly wants to see you. Don't you think that's a little suspicious?"

"Mister Blakeory, Madame Mayor."

"Superintendent, it was about time you arrived," Thomas told the new police officer coming their way with a stern tone. "Will, this is Superintendent Jaggers. He helped give form to the plan you will obey to the letter."

So there was a plan? Good.

"Superintendent Jaggers," the mouse-haired, bearded man introduced himself, hurriedly shaking hands with Will. "I am in charge of coordinating our response to this threat."

"The plan is to go along with their demands," Thomas said. "But don't you worry your pretty big head; we won't send you in with the dogs. Not alone, at least. We have a team ready to storm the building with you."

"We?" Will asked. "Are you with the police too?"

Cassandra sucked in a breath. The helmeted woman turned her mirrored visor his way, and the Superintendent's eyes went wide.

"Of course not," Thomas Blakeory spat. "Preposterous. Did you not hear the mayor introduce me, or are you just especially dim-witted? I am Thomas Blakeory Junior."

Will waited for the guy to offer up a more detailed explanation, but the way everybody just looked at him like he was the dumb one told him that was it. That was all the explanation he'd get.

What kind of sense was that? This was a life-or-death situation, a terrorist threat, and the one doing the explaining wasn't even part of the armed response? Weren't the Blakeories rich business owners? Why was Thomas doing the explaining and not the Superintendent who coordinated this entire response?

"And is that a special rank or - ?"

"Mister Blakeory is the owner of this establishment, and that gives him a certain precedent," Superintendent Jaggers quickly said. "Considering his family built it, owns it and finances it, he is considered a vital authority in the matter."

There was an urgency in the officer's voice, a pleading look in his eyes that told Will it was better to shut up.

Before Will could think of something to further piss Thomas Junior off, Rhodea quickly hurried towards his side. "We are all ready on our end! What is the insertion plan?"

"Rhodea, good. If you two would follow me…"

"We move immediately after you went over the plan of attack," Thomas's cold voice rang out as Will and Rhodea moved to follow Jaggers. "Don't mess this up, subordinate!"

The only Blakeory Will would ever take orders from was Saki.

"We hope to see you return alive and well!" Mayor Cassandra added.

Thankfully, Will wasn't the only one who liked a little cover before he charged head-first into the fray. Superintendent Jaggers had tasked an entire breaching squad to bash down the front doors, sweep the initial resistance with a pair of experienced Magnezones and then order a pack of massive Arcanine to go for the trainers.

When Will made his way to the front of the group, Sergeant Hikowa and Rhodea moved as one and instantly herded him back again.

"What- "

"It's you they want, Will," Rhodea explained. "We can't risk them seeing your face and trying to instantly take you out."

"Isn't that the point of me being here?" Will argued. "To show that we followed their instructions?"

"Not by putting you at risk," Hikowa said, a hint of surprise in her otherwise cold voice. "We don't put civilians at risk. Had it not been for - " She promptly cut herself off. "Rhodea, we are ready."

They pushed into the mall. The Magnezones blew the front doors open and rushed in, electricity crackling around their metallic frames as they readied themselves to zap down whatever they encountered. A second later, the three Arcanines darted underneath them and quickly fanned out across the massive, open space of the mall's ground floor.

"There!" Rhodea exclaimed as she and Will ran in after the other officers.

Will saw them. On the first floor, both of them standing next to a support pillar. One to the left, one to the right.

"Freeze!" Hikowa yelled as she and the other police officers spread out. "Do not move a muscle!"

Out of nowhere, a spotlight flickered on, bathing the leftmost figure in light. Long, wavy blond hair cascaded down her back, which she kept towards the aggressive and very hostile police force who had just barged into her mall without as much as a shiver. "The cogs in the machine whirl."

A second light flicked on to illuminate the person standing next to her. Equally blond, though his hair was much shorter, and he was clad in the kind of dramatic tuxedo that Tophat would have loved. "The blades of its fans twirl."

As one, the two figures turned and put their backs to each other, revealing matching masks fit for a dramatic masquerade ball.

"Under the cruel act of the world's subjugation," the girl spoke.

"Lead the pattern of humanity's assured eternal damnation," the boy added. As one, they suddenly yelled, "Follow forth."

In an act that Will refused to believe hadn't been practiced a dozen times beforehand, the pair separated with even, matching steps and headed for the stairs that snaked around the left and right sides of the mall.

He also noted that none of the police officers actually moved in or even gave the order to attack. Everybody gawked as the twin figures slowly and methodically headed down.

"Why is it this way? All but for the one, the powerful, the elite, the well fortunate!"

"The evil, the corrupted, the malicious, the mischievous! And all for what?'

Had Will not seen the no-nonsense type of person Flora was himself, he'd have assumed this was now a Bladestar operation. As it was, it seemed like the good mayor had herself an imago problem.

"To drive down the weak. The meek and all those who seek…"

FInally, the girl in the blue dress turned to face her guests. "Freedom!" She exclaimed. "Peace!"

The boy, too, faced Rhodea, Will and the breaching squad. "Love! Virtue!"

As if someone flipped the switch, all the lights in the mall suddenly flicked back on. Spotlights flashed, machines whirred and spun and billboards lit up like candles.

And the blonde strangers made it to the fountain at the mall's ground floor, both of them coming to a synchronized stop just half a dozen meters away. "Come then, denizens of Grand Dream City!" The girl shouted. "By the will of the Puppet Master, the threads of our fate shall be undone!"

"What in the hell is going on with these two?" Rhodea said.

Why in the hell was nobody attacking these two yet?

Sergeant Hikow stepped forwards, putting herself right underneath the two Magnezones. "Under GDC law, you are under arrest for the threat of terrorism and disturbance of the peace!"

At that, the young man began laughing theatrically. "And look at this, my darling sister. They think we shall follow their folly!"

Sister?

"Their belief that we follow their rules does amuse me, brother," the sister laughed. "We have no interest in the likes of you!" She raised her hand and pointed down at the assorted Pokemon and police officers, finger outstretched and pointed at Hikowa. Then, she dragged it over towards him. "But Will!"

"Approach us, Will!" The girl called out, her voice manic in its glee. "You shall be the will of our Master!" Her arm dropped by her side. "Lest you are content with your annihilation!"

Will began walking towards the pair. He didn't understand much of what they said, but that sounded like a challenge if he'd ever heard one."Rhodea, I'm going to need some space."

"You take them down," Rhodea said, her voice as cold as ice. "Hikowa, we need room and we need it now! Things are about to get violent!"

"Come!" The masked girl commanded.

"And be lost within the power of darkness!" Her brother shouted.

"We shall be the ones to bring you forth with guiding light!"

If the mystery duo wanted a fight, he would give them a fight.

"Move, move!" Hikowa shouted.

Pokemon emerged from their balls, the Magnezone began blanketing the area with jolts of electricity and the Arcanine burst into motion.

The blond duo was faster still, sending out one Pokemon each and prompting Will to do the same. Within seconds, four Pokemon began engaging each other in the center of the mall. A spiky Ferrothorn sent out its feeler tentacles while a Milotic quickly blasted the Arcanine back with a Hydro Pump. Blaziken flicked her wrists together and blasted Ferrothorn back with a quick Flamethrower as Fraxure closed in on Milotic for a Dragon Claw.

"Milotic, use Ice Beam on that Fraxure!" The brother yelled.

"Blaziken, block it!" Will ordered.

"Go Ferrothorn, pin Blaziken down!"

Milotic opened its maw, gathered a small, glowing orb of white light and then fired dual beams of energy that speared through the air. Blaziken tried to physically block the incoming attack, but Ferrothorn lashed out with its whips and managed to keep her from interfering.

The incoming beam of ice dragged across the floor, coating it in a thick layer of ice before it swept across Fraxure. It froze one of his legs to the ground, pinning him in place.

Furious, Blaziken pulled at the vines around her arm, but Ferrothorn had anchored itself in place with its spikes and it wasn't going anywhere.

Fraxure pulled at his leg and clawed at the ice but it wasn't budging.

"Again, Milotic! Knock it out!"

"Fraxure, charge a Dragon Rage," Will said. "Blaziken, another Flamethrower!"

As both Milotic and Fraxure gathered energy to themselves for their ranged attacks, Blaziken sprayed Ferrothorn with white-hot flames. They poured across its body, forcing it to let go of her and wrap its feelers around itself.

"Ferrothorn, use Protect!"

The instant Will heard that command, he yelled, "Blaziken, engage Milotic!"

A heartbeat later Milotic unleashed a second Ice Beam and Fraxure retaliated with Dragon Rage. The sphere of pure draconic energy arced through the air like a comet and Milotic's twin beams of ice struck that instead. The resulting clash of energy resulted in a violent explosion that tore through the mall.

Huge, glowing nails appeared across Fraxure's right arm and he clawed at the ice keeping him pinned again, shattering it into pieces. He jerked his leg free just in time to see Blaziken land an uppercut on Milotic's face. The serpentine Pokemon's head snapped up and its entire body went limp for an instant.

"Hydro Beam, Milotic!"

"Ferrothorn, Gyro Ball!"

Streaks of green light enveloped Ferrothorn's body as it began spinning rapidly, before using its feeler tentacles to propel it forwards like a speeding train. Milotic craned its head back around and unleashed a torrent of water at Blaziken, but Blaziken snatched its neck and grappled its head away from her, and the resulting Hydro Pump instead blew a hole through the mall's ceiling.

Ferrothorn came in Gyro Balling at incredible velocity and a quick Dragon Pulse from Fraxure didn't even slow it down. He threw himself sideways just in time to keep the steel-skinned Grass-type from running him over.

Milotic brought its tail around and tried to ram it against the back of Blaziken's head, but she caught with her other arm just in time, shoved it aside and then struck a quick hook against the side of Milotic's head. Thus stunned, the serpentine Water-type wasn't able to keep Blaziken from throwing its bulk in Ferrothorn's way when it came back around for a second strike.

Ferrothorn slammed into Milotic's main body and the resulting impact flung the Water-type to the floor and Ferrothorn completely off-course. A quick Blaze Kick from Blaziken and a simultaneous Dragon Claw from Fraxure knocked both of their opponents out cold.

"Marvelously played!" The sister declared.

"But the game is far from over," the brother joined in.

As the battle raged on, the siblings sent out a Kricketune and a strange-looking Pokemon that looked like a chain of flowers. For the first time since their visit to the past, Will pulled out his Pokedex and took the moment to scan it. As he did, Blaziken and Kricketune began engaging each other while Fraxure began pelting the strange Pokemon with Dragon Pulses.

Said Dragon Pulses had zero effect on the flowery Pokemon despite packing the power to cut through steel walls. The draconic energy washed off of its body like water on a rain-proof coat, and Will realized to his frustration that this Pokemon - Comfey, according to his Pokedex - was Fairy-type.

So Will recalled Fraxure and sent out Nidoking instead, after which the girl promptly recalled her Comfey again and sent out an Aevium variant of Breloom.

"Nidoking, Sludge Bomb!"

"Breloom, use Spore!"

Spore?

Nidoking stomped the ground with an armored foot and spat several globules of brown gunk at his foe, but the Breloom was quick on his feet and sprinted out of the way. As the poisonous bombs exploded with tile-shattering force, several of the mushroom-like growths on Breloom's body opened up and ejected a wide stream of strange dust towards Nidoking.

That couldn't be good. "Nidoking, don't inhale that!"

Nidoking roared, dropped down to all fours and quickly scurried out of the way of the incoming cloud.

And the girl grinned. "Seed Bomb!"

As Blaziken literally wiped the floor with Kricketune, she jerked her head around just in time to see Nidoking and Breloom exchange bombs again. Nidoking's exploded across the mall and ensured that the janitors would hate this mall for years to come, whereas Breloom's exploded into clouds of puffy dust. Their shockwaves and exploding seeds bounced harmlessly off of Nidoking's thick hide and because he'd protected his face with his arms, it didn't exactly faze him in that regard either.

"Another Sludge Bomb Nidoking!" Will ordered. The blond brother reached for his next Pokeball.

Nidoking took two thudding steps forwards, shuddered, then swayed. His tail sagged to the ground and his arms dropped to his side.

"Nidoking?"

His aggressive, armored Poison-type fell on his side, curled his tail around himself and promptly went to sleep.

Will sighed. At least someone was getting their rest tonight…

Begrudgingly, he had to admit that it was a solid move. He recalled his sleeping king, then eyed the Breloom as it bounced back and forth, visibly eager for his next fight.

"Okay Froslass, your turn," he said, and his trusty Ghost-type manifested herself in front of him. "Take out that Breloom, don't let it put you to sleep."

"Breloom! Use Zing Zap!"

"Blow it back with Blizzard!"

Breloom surrounded itself with a crackling dome of electricity and charged at Froslass. It moved with a blazing speed, but Froslass was faster on the draw and the resulting hailstorm of ice blew out every single window in the ground floor. The blond siblings clutched their masks tightly and braced themselves as the howling wind nearly flung them off their improvised pedestal.

Out came the Comfey again, as well as a strange, bipedal Pokemon with long, white ears, reddish-yellow fur and a very humanoid build.

"Onwards Cinderace!" The boy ordered. "Show them our resolve!"

Froslass instantly brought forth another storm of ice and hail towards the two Pokemon opposing them, but Cinderace broke into a flat sprint and damn, that rabbit-looking thing was quick on its feet. it zipped across the battlefield like a blur, crossing the ten meters in less than a second and going straight for a roundhouse kick aimed at Blaziken's neck.

With inhuman reflexes Blaziken swept her arm up and aside, parrying the kick, but before she could retaliate, Cinderace instantly pivoted, dove for the ground and then lashed out with its other heel. It rolled across the floor, putting some distance between itself and Blaziken. Then, as Blaziken raised her arms and eyed her quick-feeted opponent warily, the Cinderace scooped a piece of glass up from the ground with its toes and began bouncing it up in the air like a ball.

When it did, the air shimmered and the piece of glass melted and ignited like a match. Energy and heat swirled around Cinderace's foot as it bounced the burning fragment up several times in quick succession. In a flash, a fireball flared to life -

The very air exploded in a flash of heat and force and Blaziken hurtled across the floor, trailing smoke and superheated fragments. She smashed through a brick wall, slammed one of her claws into the ground and tore herself to a lurching halt.

"What the hell was that?" Rhodea yelled, having ducked for cover the second that explosion went off.

Blaziken snarled as she leapt back to her feet.

Cinderace hopped onto its left foot, then its right, then kicked up another pebble, likely going for another round.

"Kick its ass Blaziken," Will said. "Close the distance!"

Blaziken braced herself against another wall with one leg, then kicked off. She bounded forwards as the wall behind her shattered, jumped in the air to catch the remaining half of a metal banner and -

Cinderace launched another fireball her way in another vicious explosion of heat and energy. Blaziken flung herself up and over the projectile and if there had been anything left of that shop when her body had tumbled through it, Cinderace had just rectified that.

She landed on the floor and instantly closed the distance. She drove her knee at Cinderace's chest, who hopped back to avoid it, but Blaziken aggressively pressed him. She drove one jab after another at the strange Fire-type, who was agile and fast enough to avoid them all, but didn't seem to put much effort into blocking or parrying. When Blaziken's last uppercut missed, Cinderace shifted its weight to its left leg and threw another roundhouse kick at Blaziken, who jerked her head back and let its fuzzy heel pass by an inch in front of her face. Instantly, Cinderace pivoted and his other leg came up in another blur of a kick. Blaziken avoided that one too, but Cinderace pushed itself off the floor and drove that same leg at Blaziken's throat, driving her further back.

Will knew that she could lay him out with a solid enough hit, but Cinderace was a slippery bastard. Froslass hadn't taken kindly to the intense heat and the explosions and neither had Comfey. The two of them were going back and forth on the first floor.

"Blaziken, you need to grapple it like Ren's Greninja!" Will ordered. "Heavy hits, use Brave Bird!"

Cinderace ducked beneath one of Blaziken's own kicks that she seemed to have aimed just a bit too high. It jumped into the air, twisted around and then drove its foot against her face, which she blocked with her left forearm. Cobra-quick, Blaziken then snatched Cinderace's shoulder with her right claw, jerking it off-balance and towards her.

Then, Blaziken rammed her forehead against Cinderace's face and Will winced. Even as his slow mind struggled to see the two speed-demons going at it, Blaziken struck a heavy downwards blow with her left hand, stunning Cinderace just long enough for her to leap up and over the smaller Fire-type, wrap her arms around its waist as she came down behind it and, still upside-down in mid-air, managed to land on her feet. Her momentum carried Cinderace up and over her head in return and the impact of her supplexing it against the floor could have been its own explosion

Tiles shattered and a cloud of dust very nearly shrouded what happened next, but Will still caught Cinderace struggling to rise to its feet before Blaziken landed a kick against its head.

It did not get up from that one.

Will looked up to see Froslass happily rearranging several mannequins. No sign of the Comfey.

"Sublime! Utterly sublime! Our Master shall be most pleased!" The girl yelled, sounding ecstatic at her own defeat.

"Yes, yes!" The boy said. "Such power is needed to further our Master's wishes!" As one, the pair of siblings began walking towards Will, who really didn't like how gleeful the pair was at their own defeat. "In that case, you need to - "

Two of the three Arcanine bounded towards them, cutting the blondes off before they could get any closer.

"I think we've seen enough here," Sergeant Hikowa commented. "We are taking you in. Do not resist!"

The two Magnezone floated over towards the two and again, the two seemed more amused by the idea of getting arrested than anything else. The girl threw her head back and laughed. "My dear brother! The naivety of man is a sight to behold!"

"My dear sister! They've seen the play, but it seems they've forgotten the epilogue! Do not assume the show is over until the curtains fall!"

Will spotted the blur of motion, knew it was coming and yet it happened so fast that there was nothing he could do about it.

A Pokemon swept through the mall before the Magnezone could attack. It swept one of the blondes off their feet with its talons, then seized the other by their outstretched arm with its jaws.

"What?!" Rhodea exclaimed.

Will followed the prehistoric Pokemon as it returned to his mistress. Laughter echoed through the empty mall's walls as the sister, now safely back up on the first floor with her brother and their savior, looked down at them. "Look at their bewilderment, dear brother!"

"Such a plot twist was unbecoming of them, dear sister!"

And the woman who had saved them stepped out of the shadows, beaming down at Will with a grin that was manic in every sense of the word. "I've got no idea why these freaks are talkin' like this, but heeeeeyy! Heeeeyyyy Little Dove~! Little Dove~!"

"Karen," Will growled.

She waved at him.

Not every major decision took hours of planning. Not every call required careful consideration or reflection. In that Unown Dimension, Karen hadn't been a threat. Somehow, she'd gotten out, and now, she was a threat again. An enormous one.

An exposed one.

Perhaps she had her magic at the ready. Perhaps she had another spell at her beck and call. However, Terajuma had taught him that a good offense always trumped a solid defense.

Will raised his hand. A command to take her out was on his tongue.

"Now we shall be making our grand escape," Allen said.

"We shall find you again, Will. Do not worry about that," Alice said.

The kids were close, perhaps too close. Froslass could take the shot right now, and the chances of her missing were damn low.

"But until then!"

The boundless enthusiasm in Alice's voice trumped all of her theatrics.

"Sayonara!"

Damn low odds weren't impossible.

The command went unspoken. Karen teleported all three of them away with a single spell.

And the mall was silent again.

The police spread out and began searching the mall. Their radios crackled as they reported to their superiors and called the other squads in for the search. They wouldn't find anything.

Will felt numb as Rhodea guided him back outside again. The twins he had last seen in an alternate dimension playing house together were gone. The woman who had tried to kill him and whom he had vowed to kill if she ever left that dimension as well, had gone with them. The warning given to him in his dream had come true.

The Puppet Master.

One new thing after another. He should have been delighted to have new variables to work with, a new lead to follow. He waited for the delight to come.

It never did.

Venam still hated him. He would still have to wake up in the morning with the knowledge that he had lost three of the closest people left to him, all in one day. There would be no more reassuring words from Val. There would be no more guidance and support from Adam.

There would be no more relief from that.

A part of him wondered what he could have done differently. The rest of him was just…numb.

They took Rhodea and him to the judicial department for a debriefing. Rhodea did the talking. There wasn't much to report anyway.

"So the assailants escaped with the help of a third party and are now roaming the streets freely."

A laugh. "Yea."

Superintendent Jaggers heaved a tired sigh. "Well, it looks like my officers have turned the mall upside down to no avail. We're thinking this is nothing more than an overblown prank made by some delinquent teens. We'll be on the lookout for those two, but the city is not in any danger as if this moment."

"Great?" Rhodea said with a shrug. "I guess. Well, can we go now? It's four in the morning, I'm tired, Will is tired, we're all musty and gross and…yeah."

Jaggers didn't seem convinced. "We did want you all to stay for a little more questioning, but I think we'll be able to manage it at this point - "

Rhodea's hand found Will's arm. As she leapt to her feet, she dragged him with her, and within moments they'd left the police department behind. Rhodea waved down one of the constables who'd been tasked with driving them back home after the entire crisis had been solved.

Moments after that, they were on their way back to the Dream Complex.

"Man, I am exhausted," Rhodea said as she rested her head. "Chasing down two blond vandals in the dead of night was not on my bingo card for today, what about you?"

"I need to print a new bingo card," Will muttered from his spot pressed up against the car's window. Traveling through the residential district at night confirmed what he'd seen from high above. It was night, but the city had missed that memo. Too much light glare to even have a chance of seeing the stars. The only thing he saw was the occasional shape of a Pokemon flying from one rooftop building to the other. "Mine is full."

"I am starting to get an inkling of the stuff you, Melia and Venam have been up to together in the past," Rhodea said.

Will closed his eyes. He wanted to go to bed and forget this day ever happened yet he dreaded the thought of going to bed because when the morning came…nothing would be the same again. He wasn't sure he could handle that.

"Yeah," he said. "Together."

It was a ten-minute drive back to the Dream Complex. From there, the two of them took the elevator back up to the penthouse, where Rhodea unlocked the door and let them in.

"Home at last," she sighed contently.

The living room was still as dark and quiet as they had left it. Nobody was waiting for them. With some luck, nobody would know anything had happened and he had something to talk about when morning came, to keep things objective, to keep…

…that was strange. Either his vivid dream visits were starting to take their toll on his mind, or the air felt different somehow.

"I know it's very late, but it's a little quiet in here, isn't it?" Rhodea said. They walked into the living room -

And came face to face with a certain pair of mask-wearing blond siblings.

"Oh hell…" Rhodea spat.

"The world turns regardless of our impact," Alice declared.

"Or at least, besides the Interceptor, of course."

Oh Interceptor.

"Hang on," Will said. "I heard that before…what - "

"In any other situation," Alice cut him off. Allen joined in and they shouted, "The outcome is the same!" Before freaking rushing towards them without even bothering to send their Pokemon out.

Will ducked around Rhodea to put the Stormchaser to his left. He caught a glimpse of white light as Rhodea sent a Roserade out of its ball, a blur of motion when the Grass-type flung Alice back with its tendrils, and then Allen was within striking range.

Not particularly interested in getting up close and personal with someone wearing a tuxedo with over a hundred places to hide a knife, Will settled for the next best thing. He lifted his left knee straight forward and allowed his weight to fall forward as he aimed a front-kick at Allen's abdomen

Whatever it was the kid was expecting, it certainly wasn't that. Will's boot connected with Allen's chest and the impact sent the tumbling over the floor.

Aelita would probably not be amused that Will's first application of one of her favorite moves was to knock a kid on his ass, but he was tired and Aelita wasn't here.

To his credit, Allen bounced right back on his feet. Alice and him shared a look and they rushed towards Rhodea and him again, before switching spaces and quickly fanning out to the sides, as if trying to catch them in a pincer attack.

Being physically assaulted by the blond twins wasn't on Will's bingo card this night either. What was their plan here? Was it to keep them distracted so that Karen could swoop in when they expected her the least?

"What are you freaks doing in my HOUSE?!" Rhodea demanded.

"Our meeting with the Interceptor was not finished," Alice said.

"Their destiny must be known," Allen chimed in.

"Do not interfere!"

Again, the two kids charged at him.

Rhodea interfered and Will was very grateful she did. Roserade put herself in-between Allen and him and he felt Rhodea physically putting her back to his, protecting him from Alice as well. "If you wanna hurt my roommate so badly, then you're gonna have to go through me," she growled.

Despite the exhaustion, despite the adrenaline and the mounting dread that Karen was on the loose and personally involved with him, the certainty and steel in Rhodea's voice shocked him. He'd hurt her. When she tried to wake him up for a crisis, he'd hurt her and now she was physically putting herself on the line for him?

Faced with stiff resistance, Alice and Allen actually backed up again. They rapidly withdrew towards the door leading to Rhodea's balcony and Will could almost see the little gears grinding in their heads.

"Playtime's over," he said, his hand reaching for Blaziken's Pokeball.

The living room lights flashed on, revealing an old woman clad in a grey dress standing between the twins. Will recognized her at once.

"That should suffice," Hazuki the headmistress said.

Will kept his grip on his Pokeball just in case.

"M-Misses Hazuki?!" A thoroughly surprised Rhodea exclaimed. "What is going on here?"

A damn good question.

"These two are the ones behind the false threat, are they not?" Hazuki questioned. As she waited for Rhodea to answer, she strolled towards one of the tables Roserade had accidentally knocked over when it flung Alice off her feet. "Yes, it was quite the comedic story. Here I was on my way to check on the site per my grandson's request…and there I was being attacked by the two juvenile individuals who had failed to be captured."

Something told Will that Alice and Allen hadn't exactly been out to snatch Hazuki's purse.

"It is true!" Alice said with a big smile. "We attacked her!"

Her voice was so triumphant…it was as if Alice was just so utterly proud of herself that she wanted nothing more than to share it with the world.

"But in the end, we were no match for her!"

"But what are you doing HERE?" Rhodea insisted.

"No, I'm sorry, but what about Karen?" Will said.

Hazuki looked at him sharply, but did not speak.

"Alice, Allen, that woman is insane! She's dangerous!" Will insisted. "You shouldn't be with her."

"What woman?" Hazuki demanded with a scowl.

"The Garufan lunatic who teleported these two out," Will said, tense and agitated. "Alice, where is she?"

"We serve the same enigma!" Alice said.

Will ran a hand through his hair. This couldn't be happening. He'd lost Adam and Val and Venam and somehow, Karen, Karen had come back. "Allen," he said, his voice coming out strangled and growly. "Where is she?"

"Wherever the Puppet Master so wills it," Allen said.

Again with this Puppet Master nonsense -

"I see you are familiar with these two?" Hazuki said. "You need not concern yourself with this woman.

"We walked through the Funky Forest together," Will said, a pressure building up inside of his head that threatened to rip its way out through his temples. "I…"

"Misses Hazuki, I must insist, why are you here? Who even let you in?" Rhodea asked.

"I did."

Will startled and spun around to see Erin standing on the stairs behind him. When had she done that? How had he missed that, where had she even come from?

It wasn't just Erin. A few meters further up the stairs, silently watching the scene unfold, stood Melia.

Melia didn't know about Alice and Allen, he'd never told her. And Karen - if Karen were to come booking for him like the twins had she'd…she'd…

Breathe.

"Erin?" Rhodea questioned, a hint of betrayal in her voice. "Why would you do that?"

"Because she knocked and asked to enter," Erin replied as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "It's not like she's some stranger either. That's Hazuki Blakeory. I felt like you would be suffering a different kind of hell if I refused to let her in."

"Even still…" Rhodea turned back to the old woman again. "You should have taken them down to the department!"

"I have thought of that, most certainly," Hazuki replied calmly. "But they were so insistent on meeting Will that my curiosity sparked an unwise idea. Being head of academia, it would be unfitting of someone such as me to advise such a serious gamble. But I'm a scholar before a Headmaster, and as a scholar, I am driven to learn the meaning behind everything."

Behind them, Will heard Erin and Melia come down the stairs.

"You brought terrorists to my apartment based on pure curiosity?" Rhodea all but shrieked.

"Man has done much worse in the name of curiosity, but yes," Hazuki bluntly replied.

Will couldn't help himself. He was starting to feel like everyone was in on a huge joke that he didn't get. "Oh, that makes it much better!"

Hazuki glared at him.

"Uh, Will?" Melia quietly said.

He barely heard her. "No, no! Did your scholarness consider that it might be Karen who's petrifying people out there?"

"Control yourself child," Hazuki chastised him.

Will sucked in a furious breath.

"He is looking, but in the wrong direction," Alice told her brother.

"As is his nature," Allen muttered back.

"I was curious about how two children were capable of breaking through GDC's impenetrable security," Hazuki continued. "Perhaps this woman you speak of was involved. I have the right people searching as we speak. However…" she gestured at the blondes behind her. "They say it was the work of the "Puppet Master"." She let her words sink in. "First I've heard of such a person. I want to know more. Will, they seem to have a particular fascination with you. Why would that be?"

It could be a dozen things. It could be Karen's stringing them along for some insane new idea of hers. it could be Team Xen having bought off the right people to go hunt him down. It could be the Puppet Master was already on Team Xen's side and eager to get rid of him.

He didn't know. He didn't know and that, more than anything, made the hysteria start bubbling up in his stomach. Val was gone and Adam was gone and Venam was gone and Karen was back and he didn't know, he didn't know and it would cost him, it would cost him -

"Rhodea," Hazuki said when Will didn't answer, "Would you keep these two here for a little while?"

"NO WAY! THAT IS EXTREMELY INAPPROPRIATE TO ASK OF ME!"

"Perhaps it is," Hazuki said. "Forgive me. But…" she turned to address the still-masked siblings. "May I ask, children, are you going to stop seeking Will out after this?"

Still speaking with that boundless and shameless enthusiasm, Alice replied, "Absolutely not! We will definitely keep on trying!" Alice leveled a look his way. "Even if it means breaking down doors and such! We will definitely keep trying!"

Hazuki nodded, apparently satisfied with that answer. "Now…to me it sounds like a nightmare to live every moment in fear of when these delinquents will attack next."

"It won't be a problem if we just arrested them," Rhodea said through clenched jaws.

"Jail will not stop us!" Allen declared. "But we encourage a challenge!"

Alice promptly ran up to Rhodea - her Roserade tensed up but didn't interfere yet - and the girl just latched onto Rhodea's left arm with the poutiest voice. "Aunty Rhodea, won't you please take us in?"

"AUNTY?" Rhodea shrieked.

"We will have so much joy and fun together, I promise!"

Will watched as the strange convincing game swept Rhodea towards the other end of her penthouse, followed by a concerned-looking Roserade. Hazuki turned her back towards the group and calmly headed back to the door. "It's quite late, and I've overstayed my welcome here. I'll be sure to get into contact with you all very soon. Melia, would you call me a taxi please?"

Had Erin already introduced themselves to Hazuki?

"Oh, of course," Melia said, ever polite. "But um…how do you know my name, Misses?"

So she hadn't. Then how - ?

Hazuki chuckled. "Oh, children can be so silly sometimes. I know the names of every citizen in Grand Dream City. Besides, who can forget that legendary interview you were broadcasted in?"

"...right, the interview," Melia replied. "I forgot all about that."

Hazuki swept her gaze through the room one final time. It lingered noticeably longer on Will than the others. "I bid you all a good night."

With that, the headmistress was gone, and Will noticed that Venam still hadn't appeared. Melia and her shared a room, didn't they? This strange confrontation with the twins and Hazuki had made a lot of noise, hadn't it?

So why wasn't Venam there?

I thought you cared!

But she didn't, she didn't and now, she had left him.

"That was odd…" He heard Melia say. "Will, are you okay?"

Something inside of him was bleeding. It was bleeding and he couldn't stem it. He wasn't okay, nothing was okay -

But Melia asked him, she asked instead of observed and that meant she didn't know. God, she didn't know what happened, didn't know what Venam and him had done to each other.

If he told her, it would rip her apart.

But if he didn't…

"I'm tired," he said. "Had a few bad nights and…all of this." He gestured around the room. "Just concerned."

Melia glanced over at Erin, who had sat down on one of the couches in the living area. "I can imagine. Those kids and…that woman? Karen? You met them before?"

He didn't trust himself to speak much more than that, so he nodded and eased himself down into the other couch. "Long story."

Melia sat down next to him. She put herself right next to him, close enough to brush up against his side, against him. Her soft hair tickled his arm, and the familiar warmth of her body even through her clothes quelled some of the growing unease within him. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"...maybe another time," he said. Now more than ever he longed to rest his head against her shoulder, curl up against her warmth and try, just try to relax, to close his eyes and pretend that maybe, one day, things would be better.

The effort it took him to remain there, seated, keeping a modicum of calm on his face was nearly unbearable. "Sorry if we woke you up."

Melia shook her head. "You didn't. Shortly after you and Rhodea went out, Lavender booked it out of here. That's what woke us up. Venam went after her to make sure she wasn't getting herself into any trouble. but…"

After Lavender. Whom she'd barely known for more than a day. But when he…when he…

Will smothered that line of thinking. Lavender needed people looking after her more than he did. The city was dangerous. Of all of the people living here in the penthouse, he was the last one they should be wasting their time and energy on.

"It's been hours now," Melia sighed. "I don't suppose you ran into them there?"

He sat up straighter in alarm. Melia shifted to look up at him. "Do you want to go look for them?"

Melia gazed into his eyes, her expression weary, yet surprised. "You just said you were tired."

"Tired can wait," he replied. "They could be in trouble."

"It's a big city," Erin said. "Massive, even. They're fine."

Pensive for a moment, Melia nevertheless shot a look out the window and said, "...Yeah, and the sun is about to rise. I'm…sure they're fine. I mean, this is Venam we're talking about - "

Will's stomach clenched painfully.

" - I'm pretty much up for the night at this point, so I'm just gonna…wait for them to return." She snaked her arm around his shoulders, making it seem so casual, feel so familiar. She pressed her slender body against his, close enough that he could feel the faint hum in her chest when she said, "Thank you for offering. You should get some rest. Erin and I will wait here."

"...How come Erin is here?" He asked.

Erin raised an eyebrow. "I was invited? I recall you being there whan that happened."

Mentally, he went over the words he just spoke to her, found nothing that warranted Erin's odd reaction and guessed that, as always, he had likely missed something. "Sorry," he mumbled. "I meant…Aelita…"

"Yeah, Aelita," Erin said in a deadpan voice. "Twenty-six thousand steps in one day. Aelita. I'm gonna kill her." She gave a half-shrug, then added, "Nice place, though."

"No killing please," Melia hummed. "Huey and Kanon are fast asleep."

Kanon slept in the room next to his, so chances were he'd woken up already, made the decision that his presence wasn't needed and headed back to sleep. Kanon was a wiser man than him.

"Okay, I'm gonna murder her," Erin corrected herself.

"Eh, better? I'm not sure, I'm tired as well."

"It is not better," Erin said. "For her."

"...Will, Erin and I will be waiting for Venam and Lavender to return, so don't worry. Go sleep."

"I know I probably will," Erin commented.

Will wasn't sure. "You said you were tired as well."

Melia squeezed him a little tighter. "I didn't get pulled out of my bed to go fight terrorists in the dead of night. Yeah, I caught that bit," she added when Will gave her a surprised look. "We can figure this mess out together tomorrow, once the others are back. If we have the time, we might even be able to help look for Aelita. Get some rest, Will."

…it was probably for the better that he wasn't down here with Melia when Venam came back. It was their problem to figure out, not Melia's.

"Fine," Will said. Melia let go of him and he got back to his feet. With the way his nights had been going, he probably had some fun things to look forward to when he closed his eyes.

At this point, he almost welcomed the idea of night terrors. Every damn time he'd bothered with that dream invader, things had gone terribly wrong.

He'd figure things out tomorrow. For now, he might just be able to catch a whole hour of sleep.

~~~~~~~(II)~~~~~~~

---

Panting and wheezing, Venam came to a stumbly, painful halt a few meters behind Lavender. Man, that girl could run. People who ran for fun were out of their damn minds but shit, if it didn't make them a bitch to catch up with. "You know…" she gasped, "I gotta give it to you…Lavender…you have proven to me that, actually, a lanky bitch CAN run…"

Her lungs burned and she had that annoying stab in her sides she got whenever she pushed herself too far, but at least she managed to catch up to Lavender before something else could go wrong because holy fuck this day sucked.

She longed for a distraction, for something to take her mind off of the sheer clusterfuck that this night was shaping up to be.

"V-Venam!" Lavender said in shock, spinning on her heels on that lame Risa Raider mural. "What are you doing here?!"

"Trying not to fuck up again," Venam said bitterly. "Been hanging out on the rooftop, waiting for, uh, someone to come back because of something really fucking dumb that happened…then I saw you running out of the apartment like they just announced some middle school book fair. Shit's dangerous out here Lavender." She paused to look around the back alley, wondering why the fuck a girl like Lavender would even be running here in the dead of night. It didn't make sense and Will always said, when things didn't make sense, that was when shit got dangerous. "Why are you out here?" She asked when she didn't immediately see anyone around.

"I…" Distraught, Lavender reached into her bag. "I found this letter addressed to me inside of our mailbox."

"Huh?"

Venam took the piece of paper and read it through. It was an anonymous tip talking about the whereabouts of Rune, Huey's sister, and that the person who sent the letter would meet them here tonight. If nobody showed up, they would take their information and find someone more willing to go along.

"Shit," Venam breathed.

Pacing now, Lavender said, "It was inside of a red envelope, the same kind Talon was given before he was attacked and turned to stone."

This reeked of an ambush. Will would have made the call to pull out and he would have been right. He'd been right so many times before but she'd always taken that for granted.

Taken him for granted.

Lavie and her might be in serious danger and the one guy in this city who had the power to pull them out wasn't here now and every second she spent thinking about that, made her think more and more that had fucked. Shit. Up. Big time.

But that was a fuck-up she would think about later, now they needed to haul ass back to cover. "Okay Lavie, cutting this meeting off right here. We're hauling ass. Come on!"

Before Venam could even begin to make Lavender understand just how serious of a situation they had, the wind picked up. No, that wasn't right. The wind didn't so much pick up as it suddenly did a fucking one-eighty and began howling from the opposite direction. Leaves and pieces of garbage began flying through the air, bright lights started flickering from nothing.

Then, the Storm broke loose.

~~~~~~~(III)~~~~~~~

---

That night, his sleep was a fitful one. During his brief bouts of sleep he dreamt of Adam, dreamt of Venam, and the nightmares lurked at the edges of his mind. When he finally woke up, the sun had just started to creak past one of the skyscrapers blocking the view, and Will tiredly dragged himself out of his bed. He got dressed, then headed out, dreading the confrontation that would inevitably erupt when he saw Venam again.

But Venam wasn't there. Nobody was there except for Melia, who had fallen asleep on the couch. Erin was gone.

His tired mind still recognized that as troubling. Either Venam had pulled one hell of an all-nighter with Lavender or the two had simply walked past the sleeping Melia and ignored her. If anything, Venam was still Melia's best friend, and he simply did not see that happening.

So Venam and Lavender hadn't returned.

That wasn't good.

Will sat down next to his sleeping friend, sighed, and then very gently placed his head on the crown of her head and whispered, "Melia, wake up."

She stirred, but didn't wake.

Knowing first hand just how intense and horrible it could be when someone roughly shook him out of a particularly vivid dream, Will simply took Melia's hand, intertwined their fingers and gave it the barest of squeezes. "Melia," he said again, raising his voice just a bit. "It's morning."

She moaned weakly. Will waited until she finally swam her way back to consciousness. When she did, she jolted upright. "Venam, Lavender, you're - " Her expression turned to confusion, then to the shadow of disappointment when she saw that it was just him. "Oh…" she looked away, and Will wished he had something, anything at all, to tell her that could lift her spirits. "Wh-What time is it?"

"Nine forty-ish. Venam and Lavender haven't come home."

Melia sighed listlessly and rested her head against the couch. "Venam would have woken me up…"

"We're going to look for her," Will said.

"Y-Yeah," Melia agreed. She got to her feet, then glanced at one of the papers lying on the table. Cocking an eyebrow, she picked it up and read, "Melia, I woke up around seven thirty and noticed that Venam had not returned home yet. I'm doing another run around the city for Aelita. I'll make sure to keep an eye out for Venam. Erin."

That feeling that something had gone horribly wrong was growing stronger now. Will saw it in Melia's eyes. She felt the exact same thing.

"No," she muttered. "No, no, no no no!"

"Let's go," he said.

Just when Melia had donned her jacket and was ready to head out, the phone rang.

Will felt his stomach sink.

Melia hesitated, then darted for the table and snatched the phone. "Hello? No, this is Rhodea's roommate." She gasped, and Will saw the blood drain from her face. "A-An incident?"

Fuck. Goddamnit, no!

"Where?!" Melia shouted. "Th-The Back Alley? Okay, I'll let everyone know right away."

An incident. An incident.

As they hurriedly gathered the others, packed their stuff and headed out, Will never left Melia's side. No matter how intense the feeling of impending disaster got, he kept his voice controlled and his expression calm.

They gathered Rhodea, Huey and Kanon, then ventured out.

Will tapped Rhodea's elbow as they left the Dream Complex. "Take the lead, stay up front," he told her.

Rhodea gave him a quizzing look. "What for?"

Kanon, Huey and Melia walked past them. Kanon did his best to inspire confidence in Melia, to tell her to remain hopeful.

It wasn't working.

Will looked up and scanned the rooftops surrounding them. If…if the worst had come to pass. If the enemy had…had gotten to Venam, it would have happened in the brief hours between her leaving the penthouse to go after Lavender and now. That wasn't a lot of time in a city this big.

If something had happened to Venam, she'd been targeted. That meant Team Xen knew where to find her.

It was very likely they were being watched.

"Funny feeling," Will said.

Rhodea didn't protest or complain. She didn't sneer or ridicule him. She simply nodded, then did as he asked.

Kanon and Melia behind her. Huey in the middle, Will bringing up the rear. That was how they made their way towards the back alley and goddamnit, Will felt like someone was watching them the entire way. He kept turning around, kept scanning his surroundings and eyeing the rooftops. He knew better than to expect Xen members out in the open but they could have just as easily mingled with the civilians.

Sometimes when he turned around, he caught someone staring. Sometimes, he spotted things flying overhead. Could have been Pokemon. Likely were Pokemon.

And yet…

That painful feeling of disaster became worse and worse with every passing minute. When they reached the alley, Will felt physically ill.

Up ahead, a small crowd had formed. A couple of police officers were trying to keep the situation under control.

"I have a bad feeling about this," Huey admitted.

Will caught snippets of a dozen different hushed conversations.

"So horrible…so, so horrible…"

"No," Melia whispered. She picked up her pace.

'"This can't be happening!"

Will followed after her, but slowed his pace down. Kanon overtook him. Melia and him disappeared into the crowd.

"Didn't this happen on Terajuma too?"

Cautiously, he glanced at the people crowding the police. It didn't make sense for Team Xen to linger after an attack, he knew that and yet…and yet -!

"Maybe it's time I leave the city…"

And then…

"No!" Melia shrieked.

Will shoved and elbowed his way through the crowd. Come on Venam, he thought desperately. Don't do this…come on…you're stronger than this…come on!

Then he saw her.

Something in his head started burning.

"NOO!" Melia screamed,

Everything inside of him came to a lurching, wild halt.

"VENAAM!"

Because this couldn't be happening. This couldn't be real.

With an absolutely heart-rending sob, Melia sank through her knees. Kanon barely managed to catch her.

But it was.

There, standing with her hand still raised as if to ward off danger, stood Venam. Encased in stone. Petrified, like Nim, like Talon -

Okay, Will thought. Breathe. He had to breathe. Had to be calm and still.

You made her run away, an insidious voice inside of his head whispered.

Will grabbed that thought.

You just couldn't let it go.

And smothered it. He slammed everything inside of him shut. Everything. The sight of Venam standing there, possibly dead, possibly worse, was agony. It filled him up and nearly swept him off his feet, but he remained standing.

What kind of monster could have done this?

Take it in, he mouthed. Take it all in. Details. Find the details.

Her expression. One of shock, disbelief and fear. It told him that the force that had taken her, had come as a surprise.

Her arms. One rigid and straight in front of her, horizontally across her throat, her hand clenched into a fist. The other raised in front of her face, just an inch above her eyes, still in the process of tightening into a fist as well. It told him that she'd had time to see it coming, and had had the time to realize that she was about to get hit.

Her hair and jacket. Petrified mid-billow, as if blown backwards by a heavy wind, or a storm even. It told him that…that…

It told him that they might have killed Venam and that there was nothing he had done to stop them. That they had parted ways hating each other.

That the last words Venam and him had flung each other's way had been of pain and vitriol.

"Clear the way!" One of the officers shouted.

Slowly, Will turned his gaze across the crowd. The majority of them were staring and whispering, their eyes locked on the petrified girl standing alone in the back alley, or the girl crying at her feet.

But there, all the way in the back, Will spotted a man and a woman who weren't looking at Venam or Melia or even Kanon, as he tried to console Melia.

They were looking at him.

Slowly, Will backed away into the crowd. Their eyes followed him.

His hand dropped to his Pokeballs. They knew.

"Will!" He dimly heard Huey yelling. "Will!"

They knew and he would make them fix this.

Then Huey was all up in his face, clutching at his arm and pulling at his jacket. "V-Venam was with Lavender last night…b-but where's Lavender?"

Will jerked his arm free.

The man and the woman watching him slowly backed away.

"Leave this to me," Rhodea said in a hushed tone. "Huey, Will, please look for Lavender."

And then the two were gone, swallowed up by the crowd as the police began breaking things up.

Will mentally went over their features, their clothes and position in the crowd, and then sent out Froslass. "Rhodea, I need you to call Erin immediately"

"Erin?"

"Tell her to return to the penthouse. She could be the next target."

Rhodea didn't protest. She nodded firmly and immediately pulled her phone from her pocket and Will felt a wave of affection for the Stormchaser. "The two in the back, a man and a woman," he told Froslass. "He has a blue shirt and silver hair, she has a green jacket and short, reddish hair. Follow them. Don't let them see you."

"W-Will?" Huey said. "What are you - "

Lavender was out there. When the enemy had taken Venam, they would have killed any and all witnesses. That they hadn't petrified her as well, made no sense. Had they taken her? Had she fled and hidden away? Had they simply murdered her and dumped her into the nearest body of water, leaving Venam's body behind as a message? A warning?

Froslass disappeared without a sound of trace.

"W-Will?" Huey stammered. "We…w-we need to move, right? But where…how would we?"

Will looked around. The Back Alley was a dead end. It had two ways of; one up and one down. The way up involved going up a flight of stairs and into the Night Market. Possibly Lavender would have fled there to seek out other people, but he didn't think she had, not when the other way was much easier to navigate and took her straight back on the route towards the Dream Complex.

"This way," he said. "Come on Huey, focus. With me."

They ran down the southern entrance and crossed the bridge there when suddenly, with a piercing shriek, a Staraptor streaked down towards them. The heavily-built Flying-type eyed Will sternly.

"What the…this thing has a piece of paper attached to it?" Huey said.

The Staraptor landed and held out one of its legs. Huey untied the paper and read it aloud, "Details on Lavender's whereabouts. Meet me at the subway platform via Grand Station." He sucked in a breath and yelled, "WHAT?"

Its message delivered, the imposing Staraptor gave another shriek and flew away, presumably back to its trainer.

"Will we gotta move!" Huey exclaimed.

Wordlessly, Will sent Pidgeot out. The temptation to just write this off as another ambush and instead follow after that Staraptor was tempting, and it had been anyone but Huey, he would have told them to continue on alone while he did just that.

But it was Huey, and Huey was a terrified kid whose best friend might have just been murdered a few hours back. Leaving him to do it on his own made the most sense, but…he couldn't. He just couldn't.

"Get on," Will said as Pidgeot lowered himself.

"W-What? N-No, Will' that's t-too much! We - "

"Lavender is out there, and she needs us," Will said, his voice hard. "Now, you can do a lot more than you think Huey, but you need to try."

Huey took a small, hesitant step towards him.

"You gotta be strong, man," Will insisted. "Come on. We got you."

With a terrified whimper, Huey climbed onto Pidgeot as well and then flung his arms around Will's waist, holding on for his life as Pidgeot beat his wings and took off. They shot up into the sky and Huey screamed his head off, but he didn't let go, and they made it to the station in record time.

And just like the letter had claimed, someone was waiting for them there.

"STOP," the voice of a woman rang out when Huey and Will marched down the dark, empty subway platform. "Stop right there."

Will held out his arm and Huey bumped into it. He didn't like the way this woman spoke to them one bit, but since they were here, they were either about to walk into the mother of ambushes, or she genuinely knew where they could find Lavender. In either case, he'd prefer some distance.

"Who are you?" Huey shouted with a quivering voice that echoed across the underground platform. "Where's Lavender?"

After a moment of silence, the woman, whom Will realized had concealed herself behind one of the pillars, replied, "Who I am isn't important. Just listen to me. I found Lavender earlier by the river bank. Near the waste treatment site entrance. I took her and kept her hidden in the Night Market until she was semi-conscious again."

"Hey!" Huey yelled, and this time, there was genuine anger in his voice. "You just LEFT her at the Night Market? Anywhere would have been safer!"

The genuine anger in Huey's voice was like a bucket in the ocean compared to the raw, burning fury contained within the woman's reply, "Would you just freakin' relax?!" She snarled, and Will felt something crackle and hiss, like a static discharge. "Do you think I would just leave her there? Alone?! Don't be such a goddamn idiot!"

Huey staggered back as if physically hit.

The woman took a deep breath, then another. "She's being guarded by one of my own," she said, having brought her voice down to something reasonable again. "And for the record, the paramedics are already on their way to her."

"So how come you didn't write this down on the note, huh?" Huey demanded, which actually impressed Will because that was a very good point.

"Because…" the woman haltingly began. "Because…I wanted…" But then she stopped, and when she spoke again, her voice was harsh and detached once again. "This was the way I was instructed to do this. The next train goes to the Night Market. Better catch it."

"Will, come on, we need to get on that train," Huey said. He was about to run off but Will grabbed him by his arm. He peered at the pillar concealing this mystery woman, wondering if he had imagined how familiar her voice sounded.

"Screw that," he said, loud enough for her to hear it. "We're flying."

"Don't be such a freaking stubborn fool!" She snarled and again, something like a flare or a burst of electricity crackled through the air.

At this point, Will was so completely and utterly done with doing what people expected him to do that he didn't even bother explaining himself. He'd let Team Xen plan. He'd let them scheme. When the time came…Froslass would have their number.

He could fix this.

He could fix this.

Pidgeot took them to the Night Market. True to the strange woman's word, Huey and him found Lavender tucked away in one of the furthest corners, guarded by a Hawlucha.

The Hawlucha spotted Will and instantly hopped onto the dumpster, stared at him for a moment longer and then flew away.

…that Hawlucha…and that Staraptor…?

Will watched it go with a numb sense of detachment. Huey and him knelt down next to Lavender who, miraculously enough, was still alive. As Huey began fuzzing over Lavender's wellbeing, talking about her asthma, Will began feeling things falling apart inside of his mind. The walls he'd thrown up in a desperate desire to stave off the ruinous impact of Venam's loss were crumbling now. He could hear the pieces rolling around inside of his head as he paced numbly through the alley.

Venam might be dead, he realized with sickening clarity. Nim had, for all intents and purposes, still been alive but Nim had wielded literal psychic powers and even those hadn't helped her

He tried to backtrack, tried to flinch away from that thought but his mind wouldn't let him. It latched onto that idea, and began replaying his last confrontation with Venam over and over again until the paramedics arrived to take Lavender away.

Will went with them.

"W-Will? Rhodea said we were supposed to report back to the penthouse?" Huey protested.

Venam, what the hell is that supposed to mean?

Doing what they were supposed to wasn't going to bring Venam back. Initiative would. Offensive actions would.

Nothing could -

"Tell her you tried," Will told him as he headed out.

"Will, wait!"

He didn't. He hitched a ride with the paramedics. They protested at first, but Will was so very much beyond caring that he hadn't hesitated to point out that Lavender had been targeted by a terrorist organization, that they might well target her again and that he would rather burn down the entire Night Market rather than let her go unprotected.

Then he name-dropped Rhodea as well as Mayor Cassandra, which in hindsight he really should have started with but his head was buzzing, something inside of him was buzzing and bleeding and he couldn't get it to stop.

So he didn't.

They rode in silence to the Hospital of Hope. Word must have gotten out that he'd been on his way because when Will walked in through the atrium, there was already a group of police officers waiting there. Will didn't recognize them, but one of them did recognize him, and after a quick phone call with Superintendent Jaggers, they decided that they hadn't received any reports of threats of arson and violence coming from the paramedics.

"Eight floor, section H, room three-oh-three," he muttered to himself as he wandered through the hospital. "Eight floor…section H, room three-oh-three…eight floor…"

Will was so sick with worry and fear and numb exhaustion that he nearly lost track of Kirlia three times as she took him through the massive, labyrinthine halls of the hospital. Every time he did, she stopped, ran after him and then psychically pulled at his arm until she had him in the right direction again.

How Kirlia could be so patient with him when she was an empath and he was so numb and confused, he didn't get. Her life had been one of constant fights and horrible influences ever since he adopted her from that horrible island on Terajuma.

His throat constricted when he thought about that, and the tears burned in his eyes when his mind inevitably reminded him that Venam had said that exact same thing, that things had been once nightmare after another, that things never ended -

Except they had, because Team Xen might have just murdered her.

He forced the tears down, forced them down together with all the other madness swirling around inside of him.

You cannot break, he told himself. Without her, Melia has only you. You cannot break.

He could not break.

He would not break.

Room three-of-three was silent, save for the steady humming and beeping of the life supporting machines and the hollow, muted sobbing of the lone visitor. The hospital staff had prepared an entire room for the petrified victims, a tasteful, dark shade of blue and black, housing all kinds of sophisticated and advanced machinery.

They had placed Venam into a steel-lined pod or…not a coffin, it does not look like a coffin - and padded in such a way that the petrified victims, frozen in their final moments, weren't at any risk of physical damage.

Melia looked up when she heard him enter. "Will?" She whispered hoarsely. "What are - "

"We found Lavender," he said. "She's safe. We…" His voice trailed off when he saw just how many pods there were. There were…dozens of them, all of them shielded off by curtains and prefabricated walls. The hospital staff had removed the walls between at least four hospital wards just to make space for all of the victims and give even a shred of privacy.

His breath hitched in his chest.

How had nobody figured out how to stop this thing?

His mask must have slipped, because Melia said, "There's so many of them…"

Will made his way over to Venam's pod. "Goddamnit, when does it end," he muttered. He reached out and placed his hand atop the glass layer that separated their world from hers, mere inches away from Venam's head. With as much grace as he could muster, he said, "I'm going to find a way to fix this, Venam," he said, even though it was useless, even though Venam wouldn't be able to hear him.

"...how?" Melia whispered, her face streaked with tears.

That's what I am about to find out, he thought. "I'll find a way," he said.

Melia would stay in the hospital that night. They wanted to keep her there, just in case. She planned to return to the penthouse somewhere in the morning if everything went right.

Pidgeot Froslass found him again outside the hospital. Kirlia helped guide them there. Something had happened, and Froslass had lost track of the two people he'd asked her to shadow, somewhere in the industrial park. It wasn't even that far away from the Dream Complex, but the neighborhood Froslass led him to was impossibly large. Will counted at least six skyscrapers packed together with double that amount of warehouses, workshops and other structures, the purpose of which eluded him.

Pidgeot touched down on top of a billboard that oversaw a large highway, circling around the industrial complex. His claws found purchase on its metal railing and wrenched it apart, but Pidgeot stayed perched.

If Team Xen had their base of operations here, it would be like searching for a needle in a haystack.

But he had to start somewhere.

They spent the next two hours circling the area, touching down occasionally for Will to draw a map of the place in his journal. It was cold, his hands wouldn't stop trembling and the maps he sketched down were half-assed and would appear as gibberish to anyone else.

They made sense to him though, and after another slow pass around the industrial park, Will was reasonably sure he had penned down, drawn or otherwise noted every structure in the place.

Four skyscrapers with more than thirty floors, one skyscraper with eleven floors, five houses, eight warehouses, a gas station and seven industrial structures he wouldn't know how to name. He was pretty sure one was a refinery, but the other six just seemed like huge buildings with the names of their business and companies on their sides.

Will spent hours circling the place, touching down to get another angle time and time again. He counted entrances and observed the workers who came and went. He had Froslass and Kirlia taking note of security systems and routes and alleyways.

Through it all, a deep exhaustion began to settle within his marrow. It filled him with dread, that he was wasting his time, wasting everyone's time.

When the hunger became too much to ignore, he withdrew, bought food for himself and his Pokemon and returned to the industrial park. He touched down on the rooftop of the tallest skyscraper, laid down on his stomach and gazed out across the city.

Kirlia and Fraxure were playing around. Nidoking was sunbathing. Pidgeot was taking a break from the constant flying around and Blaziken had placed her back to a section of the fence surrounding a radio tower of sorts, keeping an eye on the door that led to the rooftop.

What are you? Will thought as he replayed the image of Venam's petrified body over and over again. What could you possibly be?

The police knew nothing. Flora knew nothing.

That nameless terror inside of his bones became stronger still.

He couldn't meet anyone's eyes when he returned to the penthouse late that evening; not Rhodea, not Erin, and certainly not Huey, who continued to look at Will with hope despite everything. Will walked past all of them, unable to bring himself to speak even a single word, and paced in his room until his legs grew tired.

Nothing came to him. No new plans, no other options, no brilliant yet risky move that could undo what the enemy had done.

Nothing.

Weary to the bone, he decided to lie down on top of his bed and rest his eyes for a moment, only for a moment…

He woke up to someone whispering in his ear. He jerked upright to find that the alley was dark, eerily dark now. The lights of a city that never slept, failed to light his way.

Will got up and ran without knowing why, without knowing what for. He ran, his legs impossibly heavy as he hurled himself onwards. The ground was sticky with a burning, crimson mud, and every step was a slog.

"Are you feeling homesick, Will?" Melia asked as she strolled ahead, her golden hair casting an almost ethereal glow on the blurry, shadowy walls of the endless alleyways.

What would you know?

The mist pressing in on them grew darker, and heavier and Will had to fight to keep going. Melia suddenly screamed, a long, high-pitched wail because it was Venam, they had taken Venam. The monsters had taken her last friend from her, turned her to stone, like they had to Nim, to Nim -

Shadowy arms appeared around Venam's body, a mass of oily writhing limbs, some armored, some tendrils of shadowy blackness, all of them latching onto her arms and legs and her head and her neck, their fingers scratching and clawing across her petrified form.

"Venam!" Melia yelled, running through the crimson mud. He had to save her, he had to get to her! "VENAAM!"

Will did, he tried, but things shifted and the sky darkened but there were no stars, where were the stars, they should have been there.

Those many arms clawing and tearing at Venam snapped off her arm and a spray of crimson painted the ground red and you weren't there for all those years -

The limbs snaked around her neck wrenched, hard and Will screamed, he screamed as the bright red slowly seeped down her neck and across her chest. One of the Deathwings got around to his side and they wrapped their hands around his neck and yelled, "Will, what's wrong?"

Something struck Melia's side and she crumpled. Blood erupted from the gaping wound left in the attack's wake and her mouth opened in a silent, frozen scream. She pressed her hands tightly against the enormous wound, blood flowing between her fingers, so much of it, so bright. Will watched with mounting horror as her knees buckled and she slumped to the ground, a massive chunk of her abdomen just missing. The blood was everywhere, pooling on the ground in a rapidly spreading stain of crimson - red so very red, red red - and she turned her golden eyes towards him, her expression going from confusion to agony to anger, blazing, hot anger -

He'd promised, he'd promised they would make it and things have been so fucked since you washed up on shore and it was true, it was true -

Will screamed. He screamed and howled and fought against the Deathwing grappling him with everything he had, but he couldn't breathe and Melia went limp, the blood slowly seeping into her golden hair, but still he screamed as he tackled his enemy to the ground and got his hands around his throat, screwing his fingers tighter around the man's windpipe -

"Let go of him! Stop! I said let go!"

Something heavy slammed into his body and he felt himself crash to a sudden halt. His back hit something solid and hard and all of a sudden a Pokemon was there right in his face, snarling at him. It took several seconds of blinking away the tears before he could even recognize what species it was. His heart was pounding, his chest heaving and laboring.

He lay on the floor for a few seconds as the adrenaline burned through his veins, terror clutching at his heart because he didn't know why Erin sounded so mad, didn't know what was happening or even where he was -

Coughing. Gasping. Erin's voice, tense and concerned.

His senses slammed back into existence and he saw, vividly, Kanon lying on his back, writhing on the ground and struggling to breathe as he gripped his throat -

"Kanon!" Will said, his voice high and trembling. He scrambled towards his friend -

"Stay there!" Erin's voice lashed out like a whip and her Absol shoved him back against the ground, hard. It snarled at him, its canines a mere inch removed from his face. "Kanon? Kanon, can you hear me?" She continued. "Can you stand?"

H-How did - but -

Coughing and wheezing, Kanon waved at Erin with one arm. "I'm…m'fine. Er-Erin, I'm…okay…"

It came to him in flashes. Venam crumbling and breaking apart. Melia falling, bleeding, falling and Team Xen attacking him, getting the drop on him and -

Team Xen…?

A nightmare, Will realized with sickening clarity. He'd been dreaming. He'd been dreaming but he hadn't known and when Kanon tried to wake him up he'd…he'd…

Screwing his fingers tighter around the grunt's windpipe

"Kanon!" Will cried out desperately. "I'm…I'm sorry, I - "

Erin helped Kanon back to his feet. She got one arm around his waist and guided him out of the room. They left him lying there on the dark floor, with Erin's Absol lingering for several long moments before it too left him there.

"I'm sorry," Will whispered, not daring to get up. "I'm…I'm…"

Oh God.

He sucked in a shuddering breath. His throat burned.

Oh God.

Nausea swept through his body and up his throat. Will whimpered, dropping his head between his knees. "I didn't mean to," he whispered. He laid there for several long, silent minutes before he even dared to raise his head again.

His room was a mess; his sheets were a tangled heap, lying half on his bed, half on the floor. His pillow lay several feet away on the floor as well.

Screaming, he screwed his fingers tighter around the grunt's windpipe -

He could have killed Kanon.

Tears blurred in his eyes.

If Erin hadn't been there…if Erin hadn't dragged him off of his friend when he'd been out of his mind with fear and anguish and sickening fury -

He would have killed Kanon.

The realization propelled him to his feet and he paced through the room, tearing at his hair as he let the enormity of his fuck-up sink in. What was he still doing here? He wasn't like the others - he wasn't like Melia or Erin or Kanon - he was a mess, a damaged, fucked up mess and he couldn't be here, not with the others there, not now, and not ever again.

If Erin hadn't interfered, if she hadn't just happened to be here in this penthouse this night he would have woken up next to Kanon's lifeless body and -

That image drove him over the edge. He took the scream that erupted from his throat and managed to choke it off into an agonized, wailing gasp. The stillness and silence of his room sucked all the breath from his he couldn't stay there for a second longer, he lunged for the door and stumbled into the hallway and fuck, he had to get out, get out get out -

He clung to the stair's railing life a lifeline as he hurried down, keeping his eyes locked on the floor for fear of what he might see - who he might see - if he dared to look around Rhodea's penthouse.

Nobody stopped him as he pulled the door shut behind him and ran. He found himself stumbling into an empty elevator, trembling so hard that he could barely keep standing. He jabbed at the button for the ground floor and missed it three times before it got it. Only when the metal doors slid close and the cart began descending did he grip the gilded railing and try to steady his panicked gasps.

"Fuck," he gasped, clutching his stomach in the hopes that he wouldn't throw up all over the elevator. "Fuck."

Two days. Everything had fallen apart in just two days and now, Venam was gone, Adam and Val were gone and now, he knew that Kanon and Erin were gone too -

Because of him. Because he was a damaged mess.

The elevator stopped around floor thirty. Some couple stepped on and Will turned away, turned the scarred and blind side of his face towards the corner, turned the anguish and horror he felt into a steel mask as best he could.

They got off on the ground floor as well. Will was out the second the doors opened and he hurried towards the Dream Complex's exit, his thoughts tumbling and falling around his head. With mechanical focus, he reached for Pidgeot's Pokeball and sent him out. People gasped and cried out in alarm when the great bird of prey materialized right there on the curb, but he didn't care.

"Let's go," he said.

Pidgeot took to the sky and Will closed his eyes, trusting his friend to take him along. The wind tore at his clothes, savage and cold, but Will welcomed the cold. He needed to be cold, needed to wash away the turmoil and the fire inside of his skull.

If he couldn't be in that penthouse anymore...he would find another place to stay. Things had fallen apart, but he would concern himself with that later. He needed to be resilient.

Team Xen would consider this a victory. They had taken out another one of Melia's friends, another one of her protectors, and that made her vulnerable. If he allowed himself to break and fall apart now, Melia would have nobody left.

And his mom would have died for nothing. Mightyena, Nim and Jenner would have died for nothing. The rangers who gave their lives defending their home would have all died for nothing.

Facts. He…he needed facts.

One: Adam and Val were still alive. Team Xen either hadn't seen a reason to murder them, or they had a specific reason not to murder them. They were not lost to him just yet.

Two: Team Xen didn't have a stranglehold on the city. They had Bladestar to deal with and this mysterious Puppet Master was starting to look more like a third party than anything else. Lavender being alive proved as much.

Three, and this was the big one: Team Xen would be focused on Melia now. Why wouldn't they? She was vulnerable. They'd taken her best friend from her and her other remaining friend…

But that could be fixed. He could take steps to ensure he wouldn't hurt anyone else. Team Xen wouldn't take their focus away from Melia because they still needed her. That necessity drove their tactics and Will was going to use that to rip them apart.

No fleet of battleships to block off their headquarters. No Legendary Pokemon to guard their skies. No well-prepared base and established defenses to ward him off or hostages to leverage against him.

He was going to get Venam back. He was going to get Talon back. And maybe…maybe then they could start making things right again.

Dawn broke. The sun shone blood red in his eyes. The city was wide awake, a constant buzz of noise and smells and sights. Its population crawled around like ants on a hill, ever busy, ever distracted.

Yet the city was silent and still. Will found nothing. No new petrification victims, no sign of Team Xen or this mysterious Puppet Master. No sight of Aelita, no grand breakthroughs from the police or the Hospital of Hope.

Dawn turned to afternoon. Melia would have returned to the penthouse by then, falling into the great emptiness left in the wake of Venam's petrification. He wouldn't be there to catch her.

Erin would. Kanon would. So would Rhodea and Huey. She would find out what he'd almost done. When she learned, she would…she would…

Will didn't know what she'd do because he could barely comprehend it himself. Two days - three? - two or three days was all it had taken for their lives to fall apart.

Chew you up and spit you out…

Will stared at the mural of Risa Raider in the Back Alley. He didn't fully recall coming here, but he guessed his feet must have carried him back to the scene of the crime on their own.

Venam and Lavender. Why hadn't they petrified Lavender as well? Why hadn't they killed her? What was the plan here? That mysterious girl who had helped them find Lavender…had she interfered, saved the girl's life? Who did she work for then?

His heart skipped a beat with the realization that, if he could find that girl, he would be one step closer to the truth. He could find her. He had to retrace the steps, maybe he'd find a clue he hadn't seen before.

Will turned around again. More out of habit than anything else, he craned his head up to glance around the rooftops -

High above him, on top of one of the larger apartment buildings, someone was watching him. The second he'd noticed them, the person jerked their head back.

Heart pounding, Will sent Pidgeot out. "Go, go!" He urged.

Pidgeot obeyed without hesitation and seconds later, they shot up over the apartment building just in time to catch a figure sprinting to the other side. Will caught a glimpse of an armored suit the exact same colors as the apartment's roof and gleaming, metallic wings.

"Stop!" He yelled.

Of course the figure didn't stop. They dove headfirst off the building. Pidgeot shot after him, but was forced to bank sharply to the left when a dark Yanmega shot up towards him. Explosive waves of overpressure burst from its many wings, buffeting Pidgeot and knocking him off course. By the time Will managed to shake off the disorientation, the Deathwing and his Yanmega had taken off at high speed.

"After them!" Will ordered.

Pidgeot screeched in defiance of his prey and gave pursuit. That damned Deathwing was fast, but Pidgeot and Will had tangled with deadlier foes in the sky. The chilly wind tore at his clothes and his hair as Pidgeot pushed him on. They started gaining on the fleeing Xen member, whom Will kept in his gaze with laser focus.

The two Pokemon soared above the city, passing over the residential district and speeding towards that industrial park Froslass had led him to before.

Will realized with a start that he'd been right, Froslass had been right and the enemy had been there the entire time. It was Team Xen who was responsible for the petrification! If so…if so -!

Another base, another base right underneath the noses of the people but this time, this time he had them. This time, he would be the one to strike first. He'd tear their base apart and find the cure.

That Deathwing led him straight to one of the skyscrapers he'd scouted out the previous evening. It was the one with eleven floors, the one that was just a bit more isolated from the other buildings. Will watched as Yanmega circled around the building somewhere around its fourth or fifth floor, then disappeared from view.

Will had Pidgeot touch down opposite of the building, which he realized had to be a front. Team Xen must have paid off whoever owned this place to run their operations in peace without fear of the law or any form of reprisal.

Unease slithered its way up his spine as he eyed that tall, grey building. It was an icy chill, one that he'd felt before, and suddenly he felt very much like he had when he'd been first informed of the terrorists in the mall.

Small, scared and alone.

Then, he pictured Melia, sitting in that penthouse. Alone. Alone, because the bastards had taken everything else from her. Alone because they had taken her best friend away in the dead of night.

Will clenched his fists, and wiped away that lingering sense of uncertainty.

Even if he wasn't Venam's friend anymore - even if he had never been a friend in her eyes -

She had been his friend.

That still meant something.

More than that, it meant something to Melia.

Resolution turned to braided steel, and he headed inside.

~~~~~~~(IV)~~~~~~~

---

AN:

I honestly wasn't sure if I could ever get to that nightmare scene when i started writing Interceptor's Wish. It is one of the scenes that I truly, genuinely NEEDED to put in the story. The fight with Angie was one of them. The fight with Geara atop Valor Summit was another. Keystone Scenes, if you will, and the next chapter contains several big ones, all of them original content. Accurately depicting something like that was a big challenge, but getting it right was SO important. I hope I managed.

Things ARE going to get better for Will, I promise!

...eventually. 0.0

Anyway, I really busted my ass to get this one out this week. I really hoped you all enjoyed it! If you did, don't hesitate to drop a review, best way to support the story and help me improve :D

Thank you all for your time and I will see you with the next update!