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.

50. Buried Alive

AN: For my 50th chapter of Interceptor's Wish, I got something special cooked up!

Let's get to it.

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

Chapter 11– Through the Looking Mask

Buried Alive

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

---

"What happened?" Erin inquired as she half-steered, half-carried Kanon down the single set of stairs and guided him in the direction of the kitchen. "Why did Will attack you? Physically, what happened. Start from the beginning."

Kanon massaged his throat with one hand, using his other arm to keep himself upright around Erin's shoulders. "H-He di-didn't attack me," he said, his voice still coming out rough and well, choked.

"I find that hard to believe." She found a seat at the kitchen counter, pulled it up and helped Kanon sit down. Once she was convinced that he would not slide off and collapse again in spectacular fashion, she started opening Rhodea's many, many kitchen drawers until at last she found her treasury of glasses and goblets. "Considering he was choking you and you were going slack already."

Her white-haired companion began arguing, found his voice breaking and promptly broke down coughing again. Erin slid the glass of water his way and he took it gratefully.

Erin was no light sleeper by any definition of the word. She assumed that the screaming only woke her up when Kanon flung Will's door open, thus making it easier for the noise to reach her ears. It wasn't often that the sound of another human screaming the walls down woke her up, so it had taken her a few moments to adjust, realize that someone had to be in peril and gather her bearings. Once she had…

"You were on your back and about to pass out," Erin reiterated. "What do you think would have happened if I had not been there?" She pointedly looked around the empty kitchen; their graceful hostess was still fast asleep, as was Huey and their two rambunctious and impromptu guests. They were alone.

"I know, I know," Kanon said with a small voice. He emptied his glass, put it down carefully and rubbed his throat again. Erin assumed there would be bruises. Bruises in the shape of Will's fingers. This was quite the interesting situation she found herself in. "I don't think he meant it."

"We shall see," Erin replied, keeping her scepticism out of her voice for the moment. "Your side of the story, please. What happened?"

Kanon looked away, clearly ill at ease with this whole situation. "When Will started screaming, I was awake in seconds. I have always been a light sleeper." He cleared his throat once more. "It was…" He gestured vaguely as he struggled, physically and mentally, to pick the right words. "A disturbing sight?"

That was one way of describing it. Erin could not remember ever having heard a person scream quite as harrowing as Will just had. It was very likely that the context and immediate aftermath colored her judgement, it being the dead of night and him having very nearly murdered what was supposed to be his comrade. Nevertheless, hearing those screams had sent fingers of cold ice digging into every vertebra of her spine. Not a pleasant experience, and the mere thought of it still raised her hackles. "Quite."

"I know people who sleep badly at night toss and turn, but those screams…" Kanon met her eyes. "I had to wake him up. So I did."

"And then?"

Kanon looked down at his empty glass again. "I think…Erin, I believe the error might have been mine."

Narrowing her eyes at that puzzling statement, Erin said, "How so?"

"I grabbed him by his shirt and tried shaking him awake," Kanon said. "His screams were…it was like someone was hurting him, and I believed that I needed to wake him up as soon as possible." He sighed and his shoulders slumped. "I think that might have been in error."

Interesting. Interesting, but ominous. Kanon's account told Erin that this had not ever happened before. Had Melia and Kanon known Will was this dangerous to be around, they would have given her a heads up at the very least. They did not strike her as foolish enough to just leave someone this volatile behind on his own. Nevertheless, it was possible that, with the petrification of their close friend, this had slipped their mind.

Of course, Kanon's explanation did suggest this was his first time trying to wake Will up as well. Disastrous as it might have been. "He screamed, you tried to shake him awake. What happened then?"

Kanon winced as he recalled the next part. "He…well, he kept screaming. After a few moments of me trying to shake him awake, he…attacked me."

Erin exhaled a quiet sigh.

"It was a blur, and I don't think I was really that awake myself yet, because the next thing I knew we both fell to the ground," Kanon continued, his eyebrows knitting together in a slight frown. "He got his hands around my throat and because falling took me by surprise…I…"

The rest, Erin knew. That was where she had found them.

Will, having tackled Kanon to the floor.

Will, his hands wrapped around Kanon's throat.

Will, about to take the life of a supposed friend.

This is a fine mess you've gotten yourself involved in, Erin, she chastised herself.

"Thank you, by the way," Kanon said.

"Hmm?"

"For interfering? I do not think I would have been able to get out of that one myself," Kanon said.

There was every possibility that, had she not interfered, Kanon would have died then and there. Will had not heeded her warning, had barely seemed to register her words. It was only when she ordered Absol to physically separate the two before Will could do any permanent harm to Kanon, that he seemed to snap out of whatever mania had come over him.

"I really wish it hadn't been necessary at all," Erin sighed. "Melia or Rhodea could have at least given me a heads up…"

"I don't think I can go back to sleep now," Kanon said. He hopped off the seat and refilled his glass. "What do you think should happen next?"

"We wake the others," Erin said, surprised that Kanon hadn't figured it out himself yet.

Kanon shot her a searching look. "What? Why?"

"Kanon, Will could have killed you," Erin said. "Intentional or not, you shaking him or not, Will attacked you. This could have happened before. It could happen again. The others need to know."

"Erin…I didn't think he did it on purpose," Kanon protested.

"Possible. Irrelevant. It's dangerous, and the others need to know," Erin said.

Kanon looked like he wanted to protest more, but he relented. "What about Will? We can't just leave him on his own."

Why not? Was Erin's first, somewhat knee-jerk response. As long as Will was there, in his own room, there was no current danger. Not to him, nor to any of the others.

Regardless, keeping him somewhere where they could keep an eye on him might be a more prudent decision, and she wanted to know his perspective on things as well. Perhaps it would help her put together a more coherent, not to mention accurate picture of this whole mess. "If he wanted to talk about this, wouldn't he have come down here after you?"

"I…had not considered that," Kanon said. He bit his bottom lip, looking pensive as he glanced up at the first floor again. "Perhaps…perhaps it would be better to leave him to himself."

Night turned to morning as the other occupants of the penthouse woke up and came downstairs. Rhodea came first, stretching and yawning as she did. "Morning," she said, reaching back to start tying her hair into its usual dreads. "You two are up early."

"Not voluntarily," Erin grumbled.

"Oh? Bad night?" Rhodea asked.

"You could say that…"

Kanon eyed her warily as Rhodea began rummaging around in the kitchen, putting together several porcelain cups and a kettle. "I forgot, did you drink tea or coffee, Erin? I want to say tea, but…"

"Tea is fine," Erin replied evenly. She noticed that Will still hadn't come down. Neither did Huey, but Erin regarded that as a positive outcome; she was unsure if Huey would have any concrete contribution to, or even understand, what had the potential to be a very volatile situation. "Rhodea, did you notice any disturbances tonight?"

"Nope," their hostess replied. "Slept like a brick. Yesterday was enough of a nightmare, so I'm glad that I was able to get some rest."

Kanon shifted uncomfortably when he heard that. "I see."

With Lavender and Melia still at the hospital, Huey and Will were the only ones still missing. SHe would disregard Alice and Allen for the moment. She still was not sure how to label them.

A cursory look at the clock revealed that it was only half past seven, so it would be another hour or two before Melia came back. "Have you had strange occurrences the previous night, here?"

"There was this one time a special police unit rang me up because terrorists were about to blow up Somnium Mall and the entire block around it unless I brought them Will," Rhodea answered, and Erin was no stranger to the sarcastic undertones she used. "That was pretty strange. Even ended up with two gremlins in my home. Apart from that? Not really…" When she finished setting up her kitchen devises, Rhodea turned around and met Erin's gaze. "Why? Did something happen?"

"...as a matter of fact," Erin slowly said, "It did."

Kanon stood up abruptly. "Okay that's it. I'm getting Will."

"Whoah, where'd that come from?" Rhodea said. "Coffee is still brewing."

"No, that's not - look, Erin, I haven't known Will for very long, for from what I know about him, this isn't something he would hide from."

"Hide from? This?" Rhodea looked at Kanon with confusion. "What happened?"

"I am not going to stop you," Erin said, before looking back at Rhodea. "I think you need to know that Will had some sort of episode or…freakout tonight. I found him strangling Kanon. He didn't listen to reason, so I had to resort to violence to get him off."

"Oh my god," Rhodea breathed, nearly dropping her own mug. "That…is not good. Is Kanon okay? Is Will okay? Where is he now?"

"Kanon's fine," Erin assured her. "Will's…I don't know."

"What happened?" Rhodea insisted. "Why Kanon? Are you sure it was Will? Shit, this is bad! Someone could have hypnotized him, or…did you restrain him?"

Solid thoughts, and an excellent suggestion. "We didn't restrain him, mostly because he seemed to snap out of it at the end. Kanon and I woke up to screaming and when Kanon went to check up on him - "

"Guys, trouble," Kanon called out to them from the first floor. "Will's gone!"

Rhodea seemed even more alarmed at that. "He's what?"

Their white-haired companion appeared at the railing. "He's not in his room. He left his backpack behind, but I think he has his Pokemon on him."

"Fuck," Rhodea spat, much to Erin's surprise. "Oh, this is not good. This is not good at all."

"What are we going to do?" Kanon said. "Do we go after him? Where would he even go?"

Rhodea jumped to her feet. "Okay. Okay, Erin, what happened tonight? I want every detail girl. And Kanon! You don't have any Pokemon of your own, right?"

Erin detected the faintest hint of bitterness in Kanon's voice when he replied, "I do not."

"In that case," Rhodea said as she whipped out her phone, "I need to make a few phone calls. Kanon, the city's dangerous, and if we are very, very unlucky, so is Will. So there is only one thing you can do."

Kanon gripped the railing with both hands. "Which is?"

"Call Melia."

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

---

A full frontal assault on a heavily fortified position wasn't usually the best of plans, but Will believed he had two things going for him that would work to his advantage.

The first was the element of surprise. Team Xen built their bases in hard-to-reach, secret areas for a reason. They wouldn't be expecting a frontal assault, especially not during the day.

The second was that this time around, he had nobody he needed to protect. No vulnerable elements Team Xen could capture, threaten or otherwise use against him.

It was just him, his Pokemon, and a chance at setting things right.

With his plan B in motion, Will entered the towering building.

Right away, the air felt different. The building was cooler than the outside and lacked the usual polish and style of the average Xen base. For all intents and purposes, it genuinely looked like a massive office complex. The atrium was similar in design to the Central Building, what with the several receptions desks spread out across the sides. At the far end of the atrium, Will spotted three large elevator doors and another set of doors to the far right that led to the staircase.

Eleven floors. There was no saying how much space Team Xen had hollowed out beneath. He'd find out soon enough.

Will felt the eyes of every single reception worker on him the second he entered the complex. They were all clad in civilian clothes, too. He ignored their stares, picked the leftmost counter, where he could keep the rest of the atrium in his peripheral, and headed towards it.

"Can I help you?" The lady behind the desk inquired. She was a woman somewhere in her thirties, her hair tied back into a knot underneath her cap.

"I'm looking for someone," Will said, keeping his voice.

The woman leveled an annoyed look his way as she stopped typing. "Do you have an appointment, or a visitor's badge?"

"Just a masterkey," Will replied. Watching the receptionist for any nonverbal signs of trickery was useless; he didn't have Melia or Aelita with him. As it was, he was one angry teen without depth perception and his patience had officially run out when he walked out of that hospital, the image of a petrified Venam seared into his mind.

"All visitors are required to schedule a meeting in advance," the receptionist told him. "I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

It would be just like Team Xen to put actual civilian workers in place, employed underneath some sort of front company so that they could stonewall any curious investigators. And he couldn't even threaten to change their password and then not tell them the new one because they were likely genuine civilians, and the police tended to frown upon the abuse of civil servants.

He'd have to keep Plan B in place and execute Plan C in the meantime. Plan C, being a product of ten seconds of planning and lot's of pent-up frustration, was deceptively simple in its execution.

Pick up a very big rock, smash a window on the fourth floor and fly inside.

Just as Will turned on his heels to leave again, the receptionist did something that rooted him to the spot.

She began giggling.

Ignoring the sudden chill running down his spine, Will glanced back at the woman to find her gaze was now solidly fixed on him. A cursory look around the atrium revealed that all the receptionists had stopped working and were now staring at him.

"Want to share that knock-knock joke?" He growled.

"Oh," the woman said, brushing a strand of auburn hair back past her hair. "I was just wondering if it was really that easy to get you to give up on your buddy Venam." She giggled again and Will felt himself get nauseous with fury. "I mean, this is about her, isn't it? Payback for some great injustice?"

Will stalked back towards her desk, acutely aware of the fact that he was now officially surrounded by the enemy. That knowledge aroused nothing but a grim, burning satisfaction within him. Finally.

Finally.

"You assholes were involved with that, weren't you?" Will demanded.

Her lips parted in a cruel smirk. She dragged her index finger and thumb across her mouth, miming a zipping motion.

Luckily, he knew just the way to unzip her again.

As his hand dropped to the satchel containing his Pokeballs, all hell broke loose. He got Kirlia out, two of the receptionists behind him got their Pokemon out and the next second, projectiles started flying through the air.

Will planted his hands on the desk and vaulted over. His connected with the woman's chest and he kicked her out of her chair. She uttered a surprised shout as she crashed into the ground, chair and all.

Kirlia flickered into existence on top of the prone woman, who had been just about to scamper back to her feet. Kirlia's eyes flashed with power and the receptionist promptly slouched to the ground.

Froslass, meanwhile, had made her grand appearance by freezing half the atrium with a punishing blizzard, which flung a Crobat to the ground and forced a Banette to teleport out of the way. An errand Shadow Ball narrowly missed Froslass and proceeded to boil a hole through the walla few meters above and to the left of Will's cover, creating a jagged hole with smoking edges.

Kirlia teleported onto the receptionist's desk, nearly lost her balance when she materialized right on top of the ledge and almost fell off. She panic-teleported a few inches to her right, this time with more solid ground beneath her little feet, and she wasted no time in providing Psybeam support as Froslass cleared the atrium.

Just as the two ladies had located and thoroughly blasted Banette to unconsciousness, every single light, computer and screen in the atrium went out. Kirlia's eyes glowed an incandescent crimson as the Xen building was plunged in total darkness.

No emergency lights activating, either.

"Very funny Froslass," Will said. "Now put them back on."

His Ghost-type didn't materialize on top of him to frighten him. She didn't shout the Ice equivalent of boo in his ears and she didn't even drag a ghostly finger down his spine.

Which meant that the hairs on his neck started crawling all by themselves.

Kirlia wandered over to the inert keyboard and stepped on it, pressing her weight down on several of the buttons in a random order. Of course, without power, the computer didn't do anything.

"Froslass?"

She slowly floated towards him, her body giving off the faintest shimmer of white light.

"They cut the power," he whispered. "Team Xen cut the power."

Kirlia walked across the length of the receptionist's counter, looking up at him with those bright, blood-red eyes.

"That works both ways," Will said. "We can't see, but they can't see either."

The disembodied sigh of multiple women echoed through the silent atrium and Will stiffened in fear. "I know they can probably see in the dark. Let's kick their ass before they can put on their glasses."

With his fear so thoroughly masked that none of his Pokemon would ever know it, Will began advancing towards the other end of the atrium. Without power, the elevators were defunct. With some luck, the cars were stuck somewhere on the higher levels, allowing him to sneak through the empty elevator shaft without having to cut through the staircase, where they would most likely have Pokemon waiting for him.

Blaziken pried the elevator doors open, revealing an empty elevator car.

Will exhaled in frustration. A trip through the staircase it would be.

"Okay, we're still in this," he quietly said. "We're here for information, so if those Deathwings start getting funny ideas, we have to take them alive, got it?"

His mute Kirlia silently applauded.

He'd take what he could get. "Blaziken, on point. Kirlia, take the rear. Froslass…I want you half a floor ahead of us, invisible and in the walls, scouting. Do not engage unless I order you to."

Their orders given, his Pokemon moved out. Blaziken and he began heading up the stairs, moving with quiet, measured steps. Will put his shoulder to the left-most wall, as the staircase snaked around in a constant U-shape as it circled towards the eleventh floor.

Eleven floors of Team Xen members and their Deathwings to clear out.

Only one way to go.

By the time his Pokemon and him made it half a floor up, Kirlia was already looking ill at ease. Her eyes glowed faintly in the dark, giving her a rather ominous appearance, but the way she constantly glanced around as if reacting to sounds only she could hear, did not inspire much confidence.

They continued, quick and quiet, and Will pressed himself against the door leading out of the stairwell. The darkness wasn't as bad as the silence that pressed down on them from all sides. It was just eerie. No groaning of elevators moving up and down the building. No distant phones ringing or buzzing of voices.

Just the low hum of utter silence…occasionally broken by the scratching noises of metal brushing past metal.

He reached for the door handle, waited a heartbeat, then was about to open it when it occurred to him that he was being profoundly stupid about this. The second he opened that door, Team Xem could nail him with whatever attack they deemed fit.

"Kirlia," he whispered, his lips suddenly feeling a lot drier than before. "Kirlia, do you sense anything on the other side?"

Her eyes glowed an incandescent crimson as she gazed at the door, her head slowly moving from the left to the right as she performed a cursory scan of the hallway and, Will presumed, all the offices and other rooms as well. After thirty seconds of silence, during which he was pretty sure Froslass was fighting the urge to make it snow, Kirlia looked up at him and shook her head.

"Blaziken, let's go," Will said.

They passed through and ended up in a hallway flanked on both sides by a series of doors and paintings. Some of the doors had windows panes in them at eye-level, but they were the blurry kind of panes, the ones that only let you see the shadow of an outline instead of a person's face.

Kirlia would have noticed any humans or Pokemon lying in wait in these office rooms, but his incursion hadn't exactly been subtle. Team Xen had cut the power for a reason - big ambush. So where was the ambush? Why didn't they just attack already, get it over with? Or did they hope that the suspense would kill him?

Maybe it would be better if -

A blur of motion - Blaziken got one arm around his back, the other bracing his neck - before the world spun around and a ray of boiling black energy tore through the ceiling and across the spot Blaziken had just pulled him away from.

Will barely had the time to gather his bearings before Kirlia and Froslass returned fire. Multi-colored lasers and shadowy orbs of destructive, spectral energy tore through the air and ripped the ceiling apart.

A blue Pokemon with a truly massive claw on one limb fell through the crumbling hole his Pokemon had blasted. It looked like an armored shrimp, but that was all he was able to make out before the Pokemon twisted in mid-air, raised that enormous oversized pincer and -

Blaziken's left snapped up, impossibly fast, and caught the falling Clawitzer with a Blaze Kick. An explosion of heat and air threw Kirlia off her feet and blew out the window panes of the nearest two doors. Fire engulfed Clawitzer's body as the singular kick flung it back through

"Move, move!" Will ordered.

They ran through the hallway, Blaziken plucking Kirlia up from the ground before overtaking Will again. Things weren't as quiet now; Will heard the ratcheting of steel scraping across steel, much closer, and he guessed they'd just sprang their Deathwing ambush.

Motion at the far end of the hallway. Something large and spherical rolled into view.

"Kirlia! Light Screen!" Will shouted.

Kirlia, still nestled in the crook of Blaziken's arm, reacted just in time. With a flash of light and an ear-splitting noise, twin claps of lightning erupted from the spherical Pokemon. The prongs of electricity stopped a mere fraction in front of the shimmering screen of light Kirlia summoned in front of them, but judging by the distant sound of shattering glass, a second round of thunder would plow straight through them.

"Blaziken, use Flamethrower!" Will ordered. "Fill the hallway!"

Blaziken offhandedly dropped Kirlia as if she were a wet towel, took two bounds forwards and then brought her wrists together. Flames erupted from her arms and swept through the hallway in a torrent of orange light. Every single window erupted as the cascade of fire filled the air. The temperature sky-rocketed and Will quickly turned away as the heat of the flames fanned his face.

Kirlia, not one to care about silly notions like gravity, gracefully floated down as Blaziken cleared the way. She shot an annoyed look at the larger Pokemon, dusted herself off and then craned her head up.

Blaziken kept up a steady approach as she bathed the Electrode with flames. The instant she broke the attack off, Froslass swept in from behind the Electrode and blasted it with a Shadow Ball.

If Team Xen didn't know where they were before, they did now.

Will remained in position, bracing himself for the inevitable follow-up attack…but it never came.

Odd. He'd have expected a lot more opposition given the way Team Xen operated. So where were they?

Knowing that the Deathwings were not above risking their own lives to get a cheap shot in on him, Will didn't dare lower his guard. Together with Blaziken, Froslass and Kirlia, he made it to the other end of the hall.

The stairwell on the other end of the hallway was much the same as the one he'd just vacated. Presumably, it led all the way up to the eleventh floor…where hopefully, he'd find someone to have a friendly chat with regarding Talon, Venam and so many other victims Xen had left in their wake.

Will approached the stairs again - and froze.

There, perching atop the railing, keeping themselves in place with one hand, was a Deathwing.

Blaziken moved a fraction of a second before the suited menace could. She put herself in front of Will, physically interposing herself between him and the threat. The Deathwing uttered a quick, barking laugh and leapt -

The gears in the Deathwings exo-suit whirred as his suit propelled him upwards with superhuman speed. Within a second, he was gone.

With a shaky breath, Will steadied himself against Blaziken. Anxiety began gnawing at him. He was alone in a dark building filled with who knew how many Deathwings. They'd just taken two shots at taking his life and he hadn't even taken out one of them in return.

"No time for hesitation," he whispered. He breathed - deep, steadying breaths - and took a moment to identify the fear creeping up on him.

Mom had been afraid when she faced off against Madame X.

Nim had been afraid when she suffered in silence.

Yet both of them ventured on.

"No time for fear," he continued.

These kinds of feelings were something he couldn't afford. Not when he had a chance to find the cure to this plague of petrification that swept the city. If it wasn't him, then who else would step up? Who else was left?

Just him. He had the chance to set things right. He was not going to waste it.

Lives depended on him.

Will steadied his hands. Took his fear, acknowledged it, and then set it aside.

And he continued on.

From the first floor, to the second. The layout was different here. Instead of a double row of offices separated by a hallway, this floor seemed to be one enormous hall that wrapped around a quartet of bathrooms, copying rooms and a small coffee room. Front to back, left to right, nothing but cubicles. The grey panels that separated the cubicles from each other were just barely high enough that, if he stood on his toes, he could peek over their edges.

Will did just that, peering over the slate-colored wall and taking a look around. All of the windows had shutters in front of them. Support beams jutted out of the ground at regular intervals - massive pillars of reinforced concrete or stone or something else sturdy enough to keep the entire superstructure of the skyscraper in place.

With a few gestures, Will directed Blaziken across a path that cut through the cubicles a few meters to his right. Standing at nearly seven feet tall, Blaziken was hard to miss, and stealth wasn't her style. So, with Kirlia in the front and Froslass…existing somewhere on this floor as well, he crept forwards.

Suddenly, Kirlia stopped. She swept her ruby gaze across the dark cubicles again. Slowly, she raised her arm and pointed it to somewhere to the right.

Will froze.

Trouble.

Slowly, he raised his own hand and curled his index and middle fingers inwards. Having garnered Froslass' attention, he flicked his hand down, making a subtle slashing motion at the section Kirlia had pointed out.

Froslass proceeded to not give a single crap about being subtle and flung a pair of Shadow Balls that direction. She put some extra oomph in them, too, as they promptly detonated. Will didn't see the effect of that explosion, but he sure felt the wave of overpressure as it nearly flattened the separating walls he was currently hiding behind.

Motion exploded from the center of that explosion. Will caught a glimpse of a hulking, humanoid Pokemon with yellow fur and black stripes exploding into motion. A second dark shape burst through one of the walls, tore through the shutters like they were made of paper and threw itself at him. At the same time, Will heard the metal above and behind him groan and then break and a Deathwing exploded out of a freaking air vent that should have been too small to contain it.

Will couldn't scramble out of the way fast enough. The winged bastard was on top of him in a second. His armor was thicker than Will remembered it being, and more protective in the important places. Through the crystalline and feverish perceptions of the raging adrenaline, Will saw the Deathwing swipe at him with a knife. The motion was way different from Geara's, too. Three quick, blurry slashes aimed at his throat and stomach in the span of a second, aimed with deadly precision.

A split-second later, the shimmering Reflect screen that prevented the bastard from cutting him up swept upwards, slamming him into the ceiling with bone-crushing force.

"Kirlia!" Will shouted, hurrying to get back to his feet.

Kirlia was already on the move, firing Psybeams at a dark shape that blurred through the air. At the same time, Blaziken came crashing through one of the cubicles, holding off a massive Electivire as it tried to shove a crackling Thunderpunch into her face. She landed heavily on her back, holding off its lightning-wreathed strike with both hands.

Behind Will, the Deathwing slammed into the ground, dropped into a roll and went on the offensive again. Kirlia peeled off one of her attacks to make a slashing motion at the Deathwing and an invisible battering ram slammed into his legs. He flipped head over heels and slammed to the ground again.

Electivire snarled at Blaziken's face, pulled back with its free fist and aimed a second Thunderpunch at her throat. Blaziken managed to seize its thick, muscled wrist before it could land the blow, barely managing to stave it off.

Sweeping low, Crobat carved one of the cubicle walls in half with its wings, dodged a Shadow Ball courtesy of Froslass and then dashed her way, opening its gaping mouth in a vicious snarl -

A storm of frigid air exploded outwards from Froslass's body in an omni-directional blast. It knocked the bat-like Pokemon back and caused Electivire to flinch, which was all Blaziken needed. She jerked its dual crackling fists aside and slammed her forehead against its flat nose. Electivire reared back in pain, and Blaziken managed to get one knee between herself and the Electivire. She heaved and rolled backwards, before planting a burning foot against its chest and jerking the heavy Electric-type up and over herself. With a final kick, Blaziken flung her opponent overhead. It sailed through the air, crashed through one of the windows and just barely managed to grab a hold of the window frame. Before it had even fully brought its momentum to a halt, Blaziken landed a Blaze Kick against its head and that was the last they saw of Electivire.

"Blaziken!" Will yelled. "Get that bastard!"

As Kirlia shifted her attention back to Crobat, trying to shoot it down before it could start menacing Froslass again, the Deathwing saw his chance. He engaged his metallic wings and moved, soaring over Will's head and back the way he came with a speed that Will was pretty sure couldn't be healthy.

Blaziken leapt after him -

Kirlia reached out and clenched her fists -

- And the Deathwing jerked backwards when one of his wings snagged as if on an invisible hook. That was all Blaziken needed to latch on to his other wing, her claws easily finding purchase and piercing its metallic frame. Still the Deathwing fought, writing and twisting as Blaziken began pulling him down. He slammed spine-first against one of the support beams and then crashed to the ground in a noisy crash. Blaziken hauled him upright to a sitting position, ripped his Deathwings off with one violent motion and then struck a quick jab at his face for good measure.

Will waited for another Pokemon to rip their way through the ceiling, or for an explosion to engulf him. He watched as the Deathwing struggled weakly in Blaziken's grip and then exhaled, and stared death's face once again.

In that fleeting moment between death and victory, Will had never felt so alive.

"Let's have ourselves a chat, you and I," He told the Xen member. He kept a few meters between the Deathwing and himself, just in case. That bastard was way too quick with that knife of his, and Will wasn't very eager to find himself at the business end of something sharp ever again. Likewise, he also wasn't sure how long he could keep his own cool. This was the unit that had murdered Mightyena, and beaten him within an inch of his life.

The Deathwing spat out a mouthful of blood. "Got nothing to say to you," the Deathwing said, and Will was amazed that the guy was still conscious, let alone still had all of his teeth. Sure, Blaziken could have punched his head into a fine cloud of skull fragments and wet stuff if put even a mild effort into it, but Will had also seen her knock people on their asses with less effort.

He glanced up at the spot in the ceiling where Kirlia had made a Deathwing-shaped indentation. These people had no business being as resilient and strong as they were. Something told him that it wasn't just wings these guys earned upon their promotion.

"Suit yourself," Will said. "Kirlia is going to rip the knowledge out of your mind anyway. Kirlia? Sweetie, please try not to melt this one's frontal lobe as well, could you?"

Kirlia looked at him with the kind of expression that was anything but a promise. She began walking towards the pinned Xen grunt with malicious intent.

The Deathwing began squirming and writhing like crazy, but Blaziken held him down almost effortlessly. "Wait, hang on, wait - "

Kirlia's eyes glowed their demonic red, and a purple crackle of energy seeped from her broken horn. Given that she was the closest thing to a lightsource on the entire second floor, Will liked to think the effect was extra spooky.

"The top floor!" The Deathwing cried out. "Neved's waiting on the top floor!"

Neved.

Some people never fucking learned.

"That wasn't so hard, was it," Will muttered to nobody in particular. This was a trap. It had to be. Nine more floors of ambushes and attempts on his life until either one of the Deathwings got lucky and slipped a knife into his spine, or one of their Pokemon scored a good hit.

Even in the best-case scenario, by the time he reached the top floor, his Pokemon would be too exhausted to protect him if the Deathwings decided to mob him all at once.

"Who petrified Venam?" Will asked.

The Deathwing laughed. It was a low, rumbling chuckle. "Wouldn't you like to know?"

His heartbeat quickened. "Yeah," Will quietly said. "Who was it?"

Again, the bastard just laughed.

"Blaziken, if he doesn't answer again, break the other arm."

"Other?" The Deathwing asked.

Blaziken punched the man's elbow. Bones broke. Flesh tore and skin parted. A brief spray of blood coated the ground. The man screamed.

"Who petrified Venam?" Will asked again.

The man groaned and snarled and clutched his ruined knee. In-between pained gasps, he groaned out, "Neved knows. We don't know shit. They don't tell us. SHIT."

That was good enough for him. "I believe you," Will said. "Kirlia, please put him to sleep. We're moving."

The Deathwing could count himself lucky. His buddies hadn't been as merciful back in Akuwa Town.

Something seeped into the edges of his brain. It wasn't panic, though. As Kirlia allowed the broken Deathwing to slump to the ground, Will felt a strange calmness come over him. Here, inside the darkness of the Xen base, he had a clear enemy, and a simple objective. He knew what to do and he knew how to do it.

"Change of plan," Will said. "Come on."

He cut through the wrecked office towards the elevators. There, Blaziken pried open the steel doors As he'd hoped, the cart was still stuck on the bottom floor. The shaft was dark and empty…but the elevator cable was still there.

Will wasn't sure he had the upper body strength to climb nine floors on a steel cable with no slack, but he supposed he didn't need to. Blaziken hopped in, wrapped her claws around the cable, and then glanced at him.

"When we're up," Will said, before recalling Kirlia again. "Froslass, cover us. They might know we're coming."

With that, Will jumped into the dark, empty elevator shaft as well. He wrapped his arms around Blaziken's fuzzy and rock-hard frame and then held on for dear life as she began climbing. She made good progress, and within a minute, they were already halfway up.

Will glanced down. If he, or Blaziken for that matter, slipped now they'd be enjoying a twenty-meter plunge. Having to explain that to Melia would be so awkward…not to mention, Venam would never let him live it down. Because he would find a way to fix her. He would set things right.

When Blaziken reached the last floor, a solid hum buzzed through the building. Emergency lights flared back on and light flooded the elevator shaft.

"Crap," Will hissed, looking down again.

The elevator cart was coming back up, because of course it was.

"Blaziken, quick," Will ordered.

They braced themselves in the corners by the closed elevator door at the top floor. Once she was certain that her trainer would not slip and fall, Blaziken climbed up as far as she could, hooked one foot on the cross brace above him and hung upside down. With a fell swipe of her superheated claws, she cleaved through the steel cables and the cart plummeted again.

"Good riddance," Will muttered. He held up his hand, curled his fingers inwards into a fist and then pumped it.

Froslass slipped her "hands" between the cracks of the doors and silently pulled them open. Her supernatural strength never ceased to amaze Will.

The jerks really had reactivated the power in the building again. When Froslass wrenched the doors open, she revealed a pair of Team Xen members guarding the elevator door. They must have heard the violent crash of the elevator cart and guessed the rest. They were still in the process of looking alarmed and reaching for their own Pokeballs when Blaziken flipped herself onto the floor and did what she did best.

Blaziken swiftly punched one of the Xen grunts in the chest, breaking ribs. She delivered a swift kick to his knee, which exploded backwards much like Neved's had back in Teila Resort. She caught the other Xen grunt with a lightning-fast kick to the side of her head.

It happened so fast that Will would have missed it all if he'd blinked. As it was, the two grunts went down, and Will and his team moved on.

Everything about this floor just screamed "official" to him; from the fancy red carpets to the elaborate paintings, down to the whole aesthetic of the floor. The wall had been treated and painted over to look like solid oak wood, and even the air smelled different.

Will sent Nidoking out to cover his six as Kirlia, Froslass and him followed Blaziken across another U-shaped interior design. Unlike the Dram Complex however, both hallways eventually wrapped back around to a large, central office.

Now that had Neved written all over it. With some luck, he could take the bastard out without having to spread him all over the office as well. But he needed answers as much as Neved needed being alive. If everything worked out…he would have all the time he needed to present Neved to the proper authorities.

It wouldn't mend a broken friendship, but maybe, just maybe…Venam and him could move beyond that.

And Melia would be happy again.

Will paused, wrestled down his rising anxiety until only cold, hard certainty remained. Then, Blaziken kicked the doors in.

He took in the situation in at a glance. A large, O-shaped table dominated a conference room lined with pictures and graphs. A large flatscreen television hung on the far end of the wall…

Nidoking barged into the room as well, ready to smash things and people and rearrange the furniture, Kirlia riding atop his shoulders, clutching one of his venomous spikes, holding on for dear life.

And that was where Will's mind stopped taking the details.

Because Neved was on the screen.

Only the Xen Executive's upper body was visible. He had his arms crossed over his broad chest - how does he have his arm back I took it he couldn't have recovered this fast - and then straightened when he laid eyes on Will.

"You have made a grave error coming here, William," Neved rumbled. "One you shall not live to regret."

Will clenched his hands into fists. "What did you do to Venam?"

"Veronica Vasile, the other meddlesome "guardian"," Neved said, every word dripping with disdain. He even did the air quotes to further ridicule that idea. "You are so painfully predictable, young man."

"Neved," Will growled. "Tell me how to fix her. Tell me - "

Neved threw his head back and uttered a barking laugh. "Or what? You played your cards already. All of that strength…all of that power - what for? Wasted, on a mind like yours."

Nidoking snarled a warning, his ears flicking in every direction. It wasn't hard to guess why; Will heard the activity around him, too. People were surrounding the office. People? Pokemon? A mixture of both, likely.

"Fan out, form a perimeter," Will breathed. He fumbled for Fraxure's Pokeball.

"You were never going to find salvation in this building," Neved continued.

Fraxure materialized in a flash of white light.

"You were never going to claim victory here."

His Dragon-type took his position in the semi-circle the other Pokemon formed around the central table, flexing his claws.

"Neved - what did you do?" Will breathed.

Pinpricks of light gathered above Froslass. Slowly, a deep cold began spreading through the air.

"Ridding Team Xen of a hated enemy," Neved said.

Nidoking raised himself to his full length as Kirlia, still riding his shoulders, began conjuring Light Screens and Reflects into place.

"Finding closure. And, perhaps, finally offering you the peace you seek."

Will felt more than saw the energy building up inside of the office, as well as outside of it. The air practically hummed with power.

"This place shall become your tomb," Neved said.

Then, the television screen flickered off.

And all hell broke loose.

Elemental energy tore through the air, burning and blasting the walls down as his own Pokemon returned fire. Bolts of fire sizzled over his head and crisscrossed the office. A spiderweb of attacks and projectiles rippled the very floor apart.

What happened next wasn't clear. Pokemon shrieked and cried out, Will screamed in defiance, fear and rampant adrenaline as the fight broke out of the office room and spilled out into the hallways around them.

An Infernape wreathed in flames collided with Nidoking and sent Kirlia rolling across the floor. At the same time, a sickly-looking Kommo-O burst through one of the walls and tackled Blaziken. A lance of white-hot draconic energy erupted from Fraxure's maw, plowing through the interior wall in a concussive chorus of shattering materials. He dragged it along the length of the entire right flank, stopping a charging Bouffalant in his tracks and throwing back a charging Kabutops.

"Go, go!" Will bellowed. "We are getting the hell out of here!"

Froslass brought up a Blizzard and swept it through the building's interior. She froze a speeding Hawlucha in its tracks and coated the Kommo-O's face with ice, allowing Blaziken to knock it back with a spinning kick, creating some room for herself.

Nidoking shrieked in pain as the flames washed over his body. Then, a blast of Psychic energy blew Ifnernape off of his body. The simian Pokemon rolled across the ground, leapt back to its feet and was about to throw itself back into the fray when Blaziken shoulder-checked it out of the way. The two Fire-types began engaging each other in a frenzied hand-to-hand fight.

"Come on!" Will shouted, pausing to nudge Kirlia into action. "Move!"

He sprinted through the hallway, but he barely made it ten meters before a Bronzong came floating from around the corner. He skidded to a halt as the Bronzong opened up with a Flash Cannon. The beam of white energy lanced through the air and Will was only barely able to scramble to a stop. That burst of intense light through the walls and cut a deep trench through the floor a mere meter in front of him. The resulting shockwave of energy flung Will off his feet and onto his back.

Nidoking slammed the Aevium Kommo-O through several walls, before coming to a violent halt against one of the support beams. Then, he slugged his opponent across the face with several quick, vicious hooks, before the Kommo-O repulsed him with a blast of draconic energy.

Deathwings came in from all around him -

They rushed in.

Mightyena went crazy.

With a snarl of exertion, Will shoved himself back upright.

There were so many of them.

As Nidoking fell to his knees, Fraxure came in out of nowhere, blasting back the Kommo-O before he could follow up with another attack. When Fraxure came close enough, the Kommo-O tried to take a swipe at him, but a quick Ice Shard from Froslass put a stop to that.

"This way!" Will shouted. "Rally on me! We need to move!"

Nidoking roared - a bone-rattling, ear-splitting noise that echoed painfully through Will's head - and then threw himself back into the fray. He vaulted over a collapsed piece of wall and then struck Bouffalant in the neck with the tip of his tail in a whip-like motion. He paused, looked aside and then threw himself against the floor. For a second, Will thought that an errand Psychic-type attack had addled his mind, but then he looked closer and saw Nidoking wrapping his arms around Kirlia's tiny body.

The full-bodied Psychic Headbutt that the Bouffalant struck against Nidoking's flank flung the armored Pokemon across the floor, but that didn't keep Nidoking from clutching Kirlia against his abdomen to protect her from the crisscrossing arcs of lightning that appeared to come out of nowhere.

Kirlia looked up and her blood-colored eyes met Will's. Even from that distance, he saw them widen in horror - but why? "Fraxure! Get Kirlia!"

The little Psychic-type began twisting in Nidoking's hands and he released her, rolling onto his back to give that Bouffalant another lashing of his tail.

Will began yelling another order even as Kirlia thrust one arm towards him. "We - "

The world exploded - fire-noise-light-heat - and Will caught the snapshot of a screen of energy enveloping him a split-second before the white light consumed his world. The scream that left his throat went unheard even by him as the entire world crumbled around him. The floor collapsed and he felt himself skidding down a ramp of shattering concrete.

He curled in on himself as the entire floor began falling apart. Dust welled up from everywhere and his vision blurred. Blasts of draconic energy flickered around him as the entire ceiling came down. Before he knew it, Nidoking shoved him roughly back to the ground as a chunk of rock twice his width slammed down on top of his broad, armored shoulders. He didn't collapse, not entirely, but the weight was too much for him, Will knew it was.

Another explosion and Fraxure dropped down a hole in a rain of falling stones and rubble. He carried Kirlia in his arms. She wasn't moving.

Cursing, Will recalled her. "Froslass!" He yelled. "Get us out!"

Nidoking uttered a pained yelp as the ground beneath his feet collapsed and he fell, followed by hundreds of kilos of reinforced concrete toppling after him. Will barely had the time to register that before he recalled Fraxure as well. He dropped down that wall and suddenly, Froslass was there around him, too. She jerked out of the way before he could impale himself on a protruding section of freaking rebar that he could have sworn hadn't been there when he first jumped in after Nidoking.

A blurry shape emerged from the shadows - a freaking Leafeon - and the instant it spotted Will, it pivoted towards him.

A push between his shoulder blades sent Will stumbling forwards, which turned into a full-tilted sprint when Leafeon began blasting him with Bullet Seed. This wasn' like the fun times at Crawli's gym; where those superdense pellets struck, they did so with the force to pulverize wood and dent concrete.

Will dove for cover on the other end of an upturned table and felt the thing splinter when Leafeon struck it with another barrage of Bullet Seeds.

Something else exploded with so much force that Will wasn't even sure if it was a Pokemon attack or something man -made. The entire building shuddered and the ground quaked beneath his feet. The building's alarms started howling, adding to the chaotic clamor.

That damn Infernape rode a part of the collapsing building down, fire pouring off of its shape like liquid flames. Its eyes, blazing orbs of crimson light, settled on Will, and it bounded towards him.

Froslass drove it back with a Shadow Ball. Infernape exploded - no metaphor there - and filled the room with fire, but then bursting upwards from the rubble was Blaziken. Infernape went wild, pelting the Blaze-Pokemon with a series of punches and kicks, before driving its knee against her abdomen.

Blaziken managed to catch its knee, stepped back and then managed to jerk the Infernape off-balance. With one hand, she flung the crazed simian to the ground, and then sprinted after Will as what felt like the entire goddamn building started to fall apart beneath his feet. In their mad dash to get out, the world seemed to tilt on an axis. The sheer, utter noise of it all threatened to blow out his eardrums, and the only reason Will was only able to gather a hint of his bearings was because Blaziken and Froslass were there to guide him.

Another explosion went off, this one so close-by that it reduced Will's entire world to a white haze of static and pain. He felt, vaguely, Blaziken wrapping her arms around him and pressing her against his abdomen before an enormous invisible hand swatted them across the floor. It wasn't even by his own will and drive that he managed to whip his body into something resembling movement. He felt an icy cold spread across his limbs, felt a phantom hand against his spine and chest, and knew that Froslass was doing something spooky to force him to move.

He didn't care. Reason had stopped when the explosions started. As the world continued crumbling, his rational mind further shunted in on itself until only the animalistic desire to escape was left, steered by what little discipline and on-his-feet thinking he had left.

Blaziken lay on the floor. She wasn't unconscious yet, but Will wasn't sure if she could still fight, so he recalled her. Better safe inside of her Pokeball than hurt, hurt like Houndoom, hurt like Mightyena -

A tumbling search for Nidoking turned into recalling the only Pokemon who could feasibly dig him out again.

Then, it was just him and Froslass. "Pidgeot!" Will shouted at her. He could barely hear his own voice. "Forget the exit, get us to the nearest window! We need to - "

Suddenly there was no more solid ground beneath his feet. The floor disintegrated and fell apart underneath him. He barely had the time to scream before he fell, tumbling down one floor with the ceiling, the walls and damn near everything else. He slammed into something hard and unyielding with bone-crunching force and it drove every last bit of air from his lungs. His vision went white as pain shot through his chest like a white-hot razor.

His chest seized up. His muscles stopped working. As he struggled to shake off the dizzying pain, the only bit of air he managed to suck into his burning lungs was a pained, shaken wheeze.

Something cold and soft wrapped underneath his armpits and began dragging him across the floor. Someone blew cold, freezing air across his face and throat and he gasped in shock. His chest uncramped and the air flooded his lungs once again, together with a whole load of adrenaline when he realized that the building was still collapsing around him.

If he didn't get the hell out of dodge he'd be buried alive!

Will scrambled back to his feet, breaking into an unsteady run this floor started falling apart as well. All around, the ceiling began crumbling apart. Chunks of rubble the size of fridges slammed into the ground. Behind, but also in front. Froslass was a constant blur of darkness and expanding energy as she tore through the obstacles as they fell in Will's path, lobbing Shadow Balls in every direction, flinging cascading rows of frozen teeth and throwing up massive pillars of ice that only barely managed to hold. Her ghostly projectiles ripped through solid concrete, shattered chunks of rubble that would have been impossible to climb over, but they also threw up large amounts of smoke and dust with every obstacle she annihilated. Within seconds, visibility had been reduced to a mere half dozen meters.

"Shit," Will yelled as what was left of the floors above him came falling down right in his path. A support beam groaned, snapped and then collapsed mere feet ahead and he dove for the ground before it could brain him.

As he hit the deck, Froslass threw up another wall of ice and the support beam slammed into it with a deafening noise, sending fragments of ice in every direction. Clouds of dust welled up around him again, making it impossible to see. He tried to stand up again, but he hadn't even gotten up on his knees before his back scraped against the debris that had fallen atop Froslass's barricades.

The realization that he would have been crushed to death just now if it hadn't been for his Pokemon was sickening, but it was nothing compared to the wild, frenzied desire to escape. Literal tons of concrete and metal and plastic and glass began filling in space around him. What should have been his escape route shook itself apart. Rocks and chunks of plaster slammed into the ground around him and he felt more than one hit his back or his legs.

Will didn't care though. He crawled through the cramped, dust-laden gaps as fast as he could, not caring that he cut his hands on the glass and shards of rock in his path. It felt like the earth itself was shaking beneath his body, and his heart raced in his chest, faster than ever before.

Froslass was a beacon of white light, shining through the dust and the debris. She blew Icy Wind through his ever-narrowing tunnel, blowing away the smothering carpet of dust long enough for him to actually see what he was crawling to.

A window, straight ahead. He didn't know how she'd it, but Froslass had lined the floor with sturdy, rigid walls of ice that bore the brunt of the collapsing rubble. If he was fast enough…he might make it!

Froslass flickered in and out of his vision every few seconds. His throat felt tight and coarse, but he made steady progress. He tried to ignore the frantic, panicked edge in his breathing, tried not to focus on how the creaking and groaning of the rubble around him grew worse and worse or how the very earth kept shaking around him.

He crawled and crawled, his body pressed against the floor and -

With an ear-deafening noise, the earth shook again and something massive came down from above. Something exploded, the ground trembled and shook beneath his body and then the world shunted in on itself.

An enormous impact exploded through the tunnel, shoving him down the ground as if by an invisible boot. His left arm exploded into pain, carrying with it the acute sensation of something breaking for a split-second before it expanded into an all-consuming white canvas of pure agony.

Will screamed and writhed, but his back scraped across the rubble that pinned him to the ground and panic took over every rational part of his being. It was something base, something animalistic in its intensity; get out escape get out -

Turning his body was almost impossible. As the pain washed over his body, every sense in his arm howled at him to do something but he couldn't even claw at the massive weight pinning him to the ground, because his other arm was stuck stretched out in front of him and he couldn;t get it out.

The pain was simply too much, and he screamed himself hoarse. He pulled and tore at his arm, every sensation sending nauseating tinges of agony through his spine, bad enough that he nearly passed out. He twisted in panicked, frenzied movements, desperate to free himself.

Then Froslass was there, her masked face filling up his narrowing, blurry vision, and she made a sound that he didn't recognize, couldn't process.

And she breathed ice across his elbow, freezing it against the vast, endless weight that had crushed him to the ground.

"Wh-what are you doing," He managed to grit out, the effort nearly making him vomit. "F-Froslass…wh-what - "

He saw, through dimming sight, that the light up ahead swiftly faded away as more and more rubble piled up. The sunlight shining through the window seemed miles away now…before one final collapse took that away from him, too.

That was when Froslass began filling what little space he had left up with ice.

"Wait, wait," he choked out in a panic. "Stop!"

She didn't stop. As she laid her hands against his cheeks in an almost loving gesture, Froslass continued expanding the cold, sweeping it around him and slowly coating the inside of what little space he had with ice.

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

---

Rhodea's Penthouse

11:24

"You're lying," Melia said, glaring daggers at the white-haired young woman leaning against the wall. "He wouldn't. He never would."

Erin had the audacity to roll her eyes at that, and Melia bristled. "What would I possibly have to gain by calling you over here, telling a bold-faced lie and then staying around for the aftermath? Think logically here, Melia."

With a cry of frustration, Melia turned away and began pacing around the living room, the frantic and pained feeling in her stomach threatening to explode out of control. It was too much - losing Venam, being all alone in a hostile and foreign city, the unbearable helplessness of not being able to do a damn thing about it and now this?

"How? How can you expect me to think that is the logical thing!" She exclaimed.

"I could give Kanon a call, ask him to stop by," Erin said, her voice as measured as always. "He's got bruises around his neck and around his throat."

"What happened?" Melia demanded. "Will wouldn't snap like that. If you knew him, you wouldn't say - "

"Melia, calm down," Erin said. "I told you to take a seat. Kanon and Rhodea would corroborate the story, but that's not the point of telling you."

Melia stopped pacing. "You're telling me that Will could have killed Kanon?" She said. "The one night - the one night I wasn't there - "

Erin crossed her arms. "He did," she said, and the calmness in her voice drove Melia crazy. "It happened. But I'm not sure it was intentional. In fact, Kanon and I both think he genuinely didn't mean to."

"I.." Melia took a few deep breaths, then glanced over at the couch. "Okay…no, Will wouldn't ever intentionally harm his friends. But…" She thought back to Indriad, and that foul, evil Gardevoir and the impossible fact that Will had died atop Valor Mountain. Then, she put Erin's words back into context for herself, and suddenly Will attacking someone in a nightmare-fueled haze of panic didn't seem that impossible anymore. "But…" She sat down on the couch and rubbed her eyes. "Things haven't been simple. Things haven't been easy for us, Erin."

Erin sat down next to her. "I'm not saying they have," she said simply. "I get that Will is your friend. I am getting the feeling that you may have been through some…complicated events, together."

"You could say that again," Melia muttered. She reached around for her tail and ran her fingers through her hair, feeling nervous and ill at ease. "Is Kanon alright?"

"He is now," Erin said. "He's out with Rhodea - "

Melia wondered what Venam would say if she heard that - and then her thoughts quickly devolved into wondering when Venam would ever wake up to say dumb, funny things like that again, or if she would even wake up again -

- and she missed what Erin said next, because the next thing she knew, she looked up to find the older girl watching her intently.

"But the fact remains that things could have gone horribly wrong last night," Erin then continued. She heaved a sigh, leaning back into the couch as she continued to watch Melia, likely gauging her reaction. "Did anything like this happen before?"

Melia forced her thoughts back to the here and now. "He's…struggled with sleep in general, and I think he's been a restless sleeper for a while now, but something as severe as this…" She had never heard Will make noise when he slept…but then again, she had barely ever been awake when he'd been sleeping. "Nothing like this before."

"I see…"

She had never heard of people having nightmares so bad that they started screaming in their dreams. "I didn't know his nightmares got that bad," she said after a few moments of silence. Knowing that Will had screamed in his sleep was horrible, just horrible, but not knowing why he did it was even worse. Had he dreamt of something that happened? Was it a feverish nightmare he couldn't escape from?

Had he cried out for someone so hard that he managed to do so even while sleeping?

Had she been in the penthouse that night, Melia was sure she would have woken up as well. It would have jolted her awake and, like Kanon, she would have hurried to his bedroom and tried to wake him up as well. The thought of someone not trying to help Will when he was in such obvious distress was unbearable.

"He would never put so much as a pinky finger on someone without a really good reason," Melia started. "And he would never hurt a friend, Erin. That's just not like him."

"So he wasn't aware of what he was doing?" Erin suggested. No, not a suggestion. A statement. One meant to jostle her thoughts.

Which…"Oh…" She muttered when she realized exactly what Erin was getting at. "No, I am certain he had no idea it was Kanon…but…"

"Which means anyone else could have tried to wake him up, and the result would likely have been the same," Erin said, her voice tense and unhappy. "Melia…that is a problem."

"I know," Melia said. "I know…but we'll figure something out. We'll have to! Because under no circumstance is anyone telling him to move out, or go sleep somewhere else!"

"Melia - "

"No!" Melia said. "Will is doing too much good, he is too important to me, and he's doing it all by himself!" Her voice was getting louder, more shouty now, but she didn't care! "Yes, we've been through some really bad stuff, but it's only thanks to him that we've gotten this far at all. He…he needs people looking out for him, not - not - "

"Melia, that is why we called you," Erin said, her voice so succinct and calm that it brought Melia's voice down by a lot. "I am not telling you this out of a place of judgement or resentment. I am telling you because it involves the wellbeing of the people staying here, yes, but also because it involves his wellbeing."

Which…yes, yes it did! Will was going through some heavy stuff and he still didn't talk to the people around him, STILL didn't talk to her, and now it had gotten bad and things might just get worse because nobody knew where to find him!

Still feeling angry and sick with worry, images of Venam lying petrified and helpless in the hospital flickering through her mind, Melia angrily took a hold of the closest pillow she could find and tugged it against herself. The desire to scream and throw it somewhere was there, but she liked to preserve something of a facade of reason. "I don't know what to do," she admitted.

"He doesn't have a phone?" Erin asked.

Melia lowered her head against her pillow and made a noise that a charitable person could have dismissed as a tired sob. "He doesn't have a phone…" How. How. With the constant threats to their lives and weird situations and downright life-threatening stuff he had to deal with on a daily basis…how was it possible that nobody had ever thought to go buy a freaking phone with him?

"He doesn't have a phone?!" Erin repeated, her eyes widening a fraction.

"He doesn't have a phone…" Melia said, feeling even more defeated than she felt a minute ago.

Erin sighed and shook her head with painful disapproval. "He does not. Have a phone. Of course he doesn't. That would be too useful. So how else are we going to find him?"

"If Will doesn't want to be found then I don't think anyone could find him," Melia said, feeling more miserable with every second that passed.

"I have a feeling I am missing the context behind a great deal of things," Erin sighed.

"Yeah…" Melia said quietly. "Did you…did you not see that interview with Volta?"

Erin's eyebrows nearly disappeared into her hairline. "No? I've been…occupied."

"Maybe that's for the better…it wasn't accurate anyway…" Melia sighed. "Do you know an organization called Team Xen?"

"May have heard of that name once or twice, yeah."

"They've been after me for months now, doing anything and everything they can to take me," Melia explained. "And I mean everything. Everywhere they appear it's nothing but death and misery. Will and I both lost loved ones to them…not to mention, Terajuma."

"Terajuma?" Erin asked.

Horrified, Melia stared at the white-haired girl. How was it possible that Erin had not heard about what happened there? "The siege? The Battle of Terajuma?"

Erin stared back. "As I said. Occupied."

"But…it's been such a big thing," Melia said. "Team Xen has the entire Terajuma island chain in a vice grip, blockaded and under constant siege. During the penultimate days, it was a literal warzone. Dozens of people died. How…how did you not hear about that?"

Erin shrugged. "I don't pay much attention to the news. If I had to guess? It wasn't covered very well, out here."

A stab of anger coursed through Melia with no warning. So many people had suffered and died those weeks and the mainland never even bothered to cover it? "Well, it happened! Team Xen hurt and killed our friends and loved ones, and Will has spent his entire career as a Pokemon trainer in Aevium fighting them to protect me."

"...I see," Erin said slowly, as if carefully mulling over Melia's words. "It seems strange that the Elite Eight didn't interfere. Or rather, that the Champion did not come to your aid."

"Nobody came," Melia said, and those words felt heavy and painful to utter. "Nobody ever came. Even when the Terajuma Rangers helped us, it's only ever been…just us. And at the very end, it was just Will. All that stood between Team Xen's cruelty and me…was him."

"...that scar on his face?" Erin asked.

"Team Xen," Melia quietly said.

Erin sighed and stood. "I'm going to make some tea," she said, before wandering off to the kitchen. There, she put on some water, began shamelessly pulling open drawers and scouring the cupboards for tea leaves or bags. "You said Team Xen has been after you for months."

"Yeah?"

"You also said Will's been fighting them for his entire trainer career."

"I did."

"Does that mean Will has only been a Pokemon Trainer for a couple of months?"

Astute. "He washed up on East Gearen's shore back in July."

Erin put down two glass mugs and shot her a puzzled look. "He washed up on shore?"

"Oh, that's kind of an entire thing on its own. But yeah, he got his first Pokemon in the lab my dad worked in the first week of July. That's where I met him."

After letting the tea well for a couple of minutes, Erin came back with two mugs of steaming hot tea. "Interesting."

Melia blinked at her. "Huh?"

"I didn't think it was possible to get that strong in just a few months," Erin said as she softly blew on her tea. "Watching him battle down on Darchlight Caves has been an experience."

"Yeah," Melia said. "Will's like…the strongest person I know."

They drank their tea in silence. Erin's expression was one of carefully guarded neutrality, but Melia didn't think that was apathy. Or rather, Erin didn't feel like an apathetic person.

When she had finished her tea, Erin put the mug down again and said, "How does Aelita fit into this?"

Melia mirrored her motion. "Aelita…that's an entire story on its own, too. When Will - "

Between one heartbeat and the other, an enormous crash erupted at the other end of Rhodea's penthouse and Melia screamed. She scrambled off the couch. expecting black-clad Xen grunts to start charging into the room.

"What was that?" Erin shouted, having nearly fallen off the couch in response to the sudden violence. "What - "

It wasn't Team Xen. It wasn't even Will forgetting how the brakes worked. Well, not completely. To her shock, a frikkin' Pidgeot had crashed through the glass door separating the interior of Rhodea's penthouse from her balcony.

"What is that thing doing here?" Erin cried out.

The Pidgeot took great and personal offense to hearing her say that. It flapped its wings, spreading shards of glass in every direction. Then, ir shrieked, and Melia had to cover her ears as the sheer noise of its cry made her teeth hum.

Then…it stopped. It stared at her, the black markings behind its eyes giving it a sharp, almost judging glare.

A Pidgeot in Rhodea's penthouse…that wasn't attacking them?

"Wait…are you…Will's?" She asked.

Pidgeot folded its wings against its body and then maneuvered its feathery body back towards the large hole it had smashed through Rhodea's door. It oriented itself back to the exit, then looked at Melia again. Another ear-splitting shriek followed.

"Is this normal for you guys?" Erin cried out.

Oh no. Oh no, no no no no.

"What's happening, why are you here?" Melia asked, her heartrate spiking. "Where is Will?"

Pidgeot flapped his wings with an almost impatient air. Come on, he seemed to say. Hurry.

Melia reached for Hapi's ball, her mind racing. Will wouldn't dare damage something in Rhodea's penthouse after what Erin had just told her. She knew how easily he let the guilt and shame get to his head. For Pidgeot to literally break down Rhodea's wall without Will being there took a very special kind of emergency.

"Melia?"

"Something's wrong," Melia said. She sent Hapi out and her Togekiss took one look around the damaged room, spotted Pidgeot, and then proceeded to babble happily at the noble bird of prey.

Pidgeot uttered several sharp, chirping noises, made a rattling sound with its beak and then shrieked again.

In return, Hapi fluttered his cloud-shaped wings and hopped up and down. Then, he shot his trainer an expecting look.

"Something is very wrong," Melia said, hurrying towards Hapi and quickly climbing on top of him. "Erin, if he needs me, I have to go."

"It could be dangerous," Erin started.

"I don't care!" Melia hotly said. "Will saved my life, time and time again. He's all that I have left, and I am not going to let anyone lay their hands on him again!"

Erin sighed, then rolled her eyes. "Fine. Do you have space on that Togekiss?"

Hapi made a purring noise.

"He does?" Melia said, Erin's candid response completely disarming her determined anger. "Why?"

Erin approached her, peered at Hapi as if deciding what would be the best of mounting him, then climbed on top of him as well. "Because apparently, people keep getting into trouble when they strike out on their own," Erin said. "I'm here now. Might as well tag along."

"...yes!" Melia said. "Thank you!"

Unlike his trainer, Pidgeot wasn't awkward or uncomfortable around heartfelt moments. Such moments were simply beneath him. With a few mighty beats of his wings, he took off again before Melia could even finish thanking Erin, and Hapi hurried to catch up.

Erin wrapped her arms around Melia's waist, clutching her tightly as Hapi vaulted over the balcony's railing and fell into the sky. Melia felt Erin's breath leaving her lungs in a silent scream, but she only had eyes for Pidgeot. He picked up speed and began veering off in the direction of the Grand Station, moving faster than Hapi could but never fast enough to actually shake them off.

"What are we expecting?" Erin shouted over the howling wind.

Something must have happened, something terrible. When that monster had claimed Venam, she hadn't even had the chance to get her Pokemon out to defend herself. It would be just like Will to raise seven kinds of hell to defend himself, to make the enemy bleed for every single step they took in his direction.

It would be just like Will to run into the worst kind of enemy imaginable so soon after everything fell apart for him.

"A fight," Melia said, struggling to make herself audible. "Or…the aftermath. I don't know!"

If she found him…if she found him petrified like Venam or…or worse she would…she'd…

No. No! That wouldn't happen to Will. Not him. Of all the people Team Xen had tried to destroy, Will had been the only one to successfully and consistently deny them. Will was unbreakable. They wouldn't…they wouldn't!

"I won't let them," she snapped.

Pidgeot soared right over the Grand Station and continued his trajectory towards the industrial sector, where Melia knew from previous studies the heart of Aevium's industrial power lay. Anything from factories to shipyards to manufacturing of consumer goods to metallurgy and construction - her knowledge only reached the surface level of topography, but she did recognize it.

When she scanned the horizon for anything that could indicate Will doing what he did best, she spotted it, and she felt her blood turn to ice.

The plumes of smoke that billowed forth from the industrial district were all natural and common occurrences…except for the one in a smaller, more isolated park, where the enormous cloud of dust and smoke that blossomed up into the sky was not only a different color, but a completely different form as well.

And Pidgeot led them straight to it.

"That shouldn't be there," Melia said. "Hapi!"

Hapi followed Pidgeot in an arc down towards the ground. Already, Melia saw pinpricks of flashing lights indicating the presence of various emergency services. The closer Hapi got, the bigger Melia's picture of the situation became, until finally Pidgeot arced around one of the skyscrapers and Hapi followed suit, and she got a firsthand look at the damage.

"That's not good," Erin said.

That great cloud of dust came from a building that had thoroughly collapsed into an enormous pile of rubble and debris. Miraculously enough, it looked like the upper floor, or even the upper two floors, had remained sort of intact. It rested on top of that mountain of rubble, its walls cracked and its windows shattered, but still sort of intact.

"No…" Melia whispered.

As the two girls began descending, that anthill of people and emergency workers running around the collapsed building grew into a veritable crowd of people. She saw police officers cordoning off the sector, herding away the mass of people who came to gawk or, more disturbingly, may still have loved ones and family inside of that collapsed building.

She saw firetrucks and ambulances. She saw officers shouting orders at each other as they began putting up fences with a narrow opening allowing aid workers through.

Then, oddly enough, she saw a pair of suited-up rescue workers with helmets and protective suits run towards the site of disaster, only for a beam of bluish-white energy to carve through the air. In a flash, it tore across the road mere inches in front of the workers' feet, producing a swath of jagged-looking ice of teeth that blocked their way.

Though this ice was a pale white and not the reddish black, Melia still felt her breath hitch in her throat, and her stomach clenched sickeningly. Her heart began pounding in her throat and she tightened her grip on Hapi, pressing herself down against his soft, warm body as he sped towards the ground.

"What was that?" Erin said.

The two rescue workers scrambled for cover.

Pidgeot and Hapi didn't go unnoticed. Whereas Pidgeot disappeared into the cloud of dust for reasons that Melia didn't even dare think about, she tasked Hapi with touching down in front of the most official-looking police officer she could find.

"Seems like that one is running the show," Erin pointed out.

Several of the officers began waving them off, and another flash of light erupted from the building ruins, narrowly missing a trio of policemen who were trying to gain entry into the wreckage. They had their Arcanine fire off quick blasts of fire, likely to flush out or otherwise suppress whoever kept taking shots at them.

The direct area around the collapsed building was filled with icy protrusions. Walls and sharp-looking hurdles and massive knife-like shards, all of them impeding these people's efforts to get inside. Why?

Melia took the panic bubbling up within her stomach and kept it from filling up the confines of her mind. Instead, she thought of Will. Will, staunch and always in control. Will, unbreakable and so fiercely loyal. Will, who never failed to make her laugh, who was gorgeous and sweet and the one person she knew she could put her unwavering trust in -

Will, buried alive beneath thousands of tons of rubble.

"Oh god," she whispered. "Oh god, no, no no no - !"

"Melia?"

"We have to find him, we have to save him!" Melia gritted out. She had Hapi land in front of one of the police officers who kept gesturing at her.

"This area isn't safe for civilians!" The man yelled at them. "We have the situation under control, please move along!"

"It doesn't look under control," Erin said dryly.

A blast of the blackest energy threw one of the Arcanine off their feet. Its trainer had perhaps two seconds to react before another beam of ice tore across the ground, freezing one of their legs to the ground. He screamed as his forward momentum turned into a jerking fall.

"As I said, move along!" The officer insisted.

"Sit, please, our friend is stuck inside of that collapsed building!" Melia said. "Let us help, we can get him out!"

"Hell no!" The man officer yelled. "This situation is under control - "

"It seems to me like you could use all the help you could get," Erin said, hooking a thumb at the unseen aggressor who kept the rescue workers at bay. "Aren't the first minutes during a disaster like this the most crucial?"

Melia could see the man's gears grinding inside of his head. "We got hostile Pokemon on the site attacking everything that gets too close to the wreckage. I am not in the business of letting civilians meddle in emergencies like this, let alone put themselves at harm."

"But - "

"No buts! What if I let the two of you in, only for you two to get hurt? That'd put an even bigger burden on our relief efforts. No, we'll wait for reinforcements and storm the wreck. If your friend is still alive, we'll get them. "

Her frustration threw her concern to the wind, and Melia stomped the ground in anger as she said, "I am not waiting for that! We are trainers, we can help!"

But the police officer was already turning away from them,. "Sergeant Stirling, get these civvies away from the perimeter…"

The beating of wings, a storm of wind. Suddenly Pidgeot hovered in the air directly overhead, kicking up a galestorm of wind that flung the approaching group of policemen off their feet and hurled their rapidly-erected barricades through the air.

"Engage that Pokemon!" The officer shouted. "Damn thing keeps interfering!"

Melia and Erin ducked low as a pair of Talonflame emerged from thrown Pokeballs. They immediately began attacking Pidgeot, who was forced to disengage and get out. With the two Talonflame on his tail, Melia didn't think he'd be able to interfere again.

It was now or never.

"Erin, go, go!" Melia hissed.

With the police force occupied, Melia made a break for it. She ran towards the collapsed building, trying to ignore that rational voice in the back of her mind that clamored at her to stop and think.

It could be dangerous. It could collapse further. She didn't even know why it had collapsed, or if this could even be another Team Xen ambush.

"People usually run away from collapsed buildings," Erin shouted after her, which didn't help matters either.

Melia knew that. She knew all of that. But she also knew that losing Will was not an option. It simply wasn't. It wasn't just because Will was her friend, and he'd suffered enormously to keep her safe. It also wasn't just because he was the last one she had left, and without him, her entire world would come crashing down around her. It was…he…

He was alone and he could be hurt and she. Wasn't. There. She needed him, but right now, he needed her.

That was more important than anything else in the world.

So she ignored the warnings the police yelled at her. She ignored the various orders snapped at her from multiple directions and even ignored the potential enemies that could be hiding in the rubble.

But Erin came after her. In spite of what had happened, in spite of being not even remotely involved, Erin swore to herself and then came after her. Why? Why would she do that?

She wasn't the only one though. As Melia ran towards the collapsed skyscraper, she heard someone yell an order and she risked a look over her shoulder. Behind her, hot on Erin's heels, were another pair of police officers. They caught up with Erin with frightening speed and -

Out of the dusty confines of the rubble, a shape blurred through the air and a thin line of light flashed. An instant later one of the police officers screamed in surprise, fury and what Melia took to be a whole lot of fear as a wall of ice erupted between him, his colleague and Erin. They were barely able to slow down before bonking against the icy obstacle and Melia was very, very grateful that this one didn't have any sharp edges.

At least, not ones she could see?

Without any meddlesome officers to get in her way, she made it past their cordon and towards the collapsed mountain of rubble. It looked…just enormous. The dust made it difficult to breathe, and as she covered her mouth with her sleeve and began looking around for any sign of Will, she noticed a shimmer in the air to her right.

"What…were you…thinking…" Erin panted, clutching her side as she slogged her way up the piles of rubble. "Melia, this is seriously dangerous and we could get into trouble."

"I don't care, I'm going to find him," Melia said.

"How do you even know Will is still…here?" Erin said, and Melia had the sneaking suspicion that was not what the white-haired young woman genuinely wished to ask.

That was when freaking Froslass came out of the cracked wall to Melia's immediate right. Will's creepy-yet-cute or cute-yet-creepy Ghost-type made absolutely no sound as she emerged from the wall, her white "dress" wavering in a wind that blew the opposite direction. The temperature instantly dropped when she emerged.

Froslass glanced at Erin with those piercing eyes of hers, before she shifted her gaze and looked at Melia. A smile split her mouth, and Melia liked to think it was one of relief. Of all of Will's Pokemon, she had never quite gotten used to Froslass.

It didn't help that Froslass's mask was streaked with splatters of blood. Droplets of red dripped from her hands.

She heard Erin suck in a breath. Froslass's eyes shifted back to the other girl as Erin fumbled for a Pokeball.

"Whoah, easy!" Melia hurried to say. "Froslass, this is Erin! You know Erin, right? She's here to help."

"Melia, that Pokemon has blood on her," Erin said stiffly, every muscle in her body looking tense.

"Froslass, what happened? Where is Will?" Melia asked.

Froslass suddenly turned around and floated away, leaving a trail of chilled stones and frozen dust in her path.

"Come on, let's follow her!" Melia said.

"Following the blood-stained Ghost-Pokemon into the collapsed husk of a skyscraper, sure, why not," Erin said, her every word dripping with sarcasm.

But she followed Melia nonetheless.

The path Froslass took them on was perilous and very difficult to navigate. Shattered pieces of glass and little bits of ceramic crunched underneath their feet. They had to climb over protruding ledges with broken rebar and tiptoe across entire collapsed walls. All the while, the half-collapsed building continued to groan and shudder ominously.

"This is getting too dangerous," Melia mused. "Serenity, could you lend us a hand?"

Her Meganium, with her iron-strong tendrils and soothing, regenerative presence, was a perfect choice for a nightmarish scenario like this. With Serenity up front, they were able to follow Froslass up the strange route she'd charted into the interior of the fallen building. With her vines, Serenity brushed aside broken plaster and glass, lifted chunks of rubble that lay in their way and even provided Melia and Erin with a way to reach Froslass when the ghostly gal suddenly zipped up towards the still-intact frame of a window. There, she dove inside without waiting for the others.

"Why was that Froslass fighting off the disaster workers and police officers?" Erin asked as Serenity lifted Melia up towards the window opening. "You'd think she would steer them towards her trainer, rather than antagonize them all?"

"Maybe…maybe she didn't trust them?" Melia replied. She crawled through the narrow opening and found, much to her surprise, that much of the collapsed building was still hollow and somewhat intact on the inside. Sure, everything was collapsed and the ceiling had become the floor in various spots, but it was roomy enough to stand, and she could even recognize parts of the interior. She saw what had once been an office section, for example, with several cubicles still somewhat intact. The floor sloped dangerously where she entered through.

"Why on earth would she not trust rescue workers?"

"Bad experiences?" Melia suggested. "It wouldn't be the first time Team Xen infiltrated a civilian agency to get close to their targets…"

Serenity boosted Erin up too, then Melia recalled her Meganium and carefully slid down the semi-collapsed floor. When the building collapsed, it looked like the bottom few floors were all smashed to absolute bits, while the upper floors had survived somewhat intact. She could make out several individual hallways. Some of them had completely collapsed but others actually led to rooms.

Froslass hummed the tune to a song Melia didn't recognize as she floated down the dark hallway, her ghostly body faintly shimmering with white energy as she continued to exude an aura of coldness and terror.

With much more grace then Melia would have expected, Erin came tumbling down the slope as well and even managed to land on her feet. "This is crazy," she said. "This place could buckle at any time. We need to hurry."

"Right!" Melia said. "Let's follow our…guide? I guess?"

A guide Froslass was, and guiding them she did. Froslass paused at an intersection, turned around and patiently waited for Melia and Erin to make their way over towards her. Then, Froslass took a left. Melia followed -

And came face-to-face with a Team Xen Deathwing.

A scream wrenched its way up through her throat and she instinctively backed away. She had already plucked Fortitude's ball from her belt before she realized that this particular Deathwing wasn't anywhere near a threat.

It was so much worse.

He must have been bleeding when Froslass caught him. Bloody smears had colored the dust-covered ground with streaks of red, so much of it.

His right hand was frozen to his head, which had been so thoroughly encased in ice that Melia couldn't even see his features anymore. A vaguely spherical block of blurry, milk-colored ice. His metallic wings had been iced over as well and stuck to the wall. A thin layer of ice covered the rest of his body, keeping him rigid and upright. His left arm was twisted at an unnatural angle, fashioned into a gesture that pointed them in the direction Froslass had just fluttered towards.

"Oh my god," Melia whimpered.

Erin rounded the corner, took one look at the macabre sculpture and covered her mouth with her hands. "...come on, don't look at that," she said, tugging at Melia's wrist and gently pulling her with her. "We're looking for someone. Ignore that."

Froslass noticed that they'd slowed down. She turned around to look at them, her expression one of mild curiosity.

Had she…had Will's Froslass frozen this man to death? Or…had it been the fighting that claimed his life leading her to just…pick up his body and contort it into this?

Had Froslass wrapped this man's head in ice and left him to choke to death?

"Come on," Erin insisted, pulling Melia along.

Froslass continued humming to herself as she floated down the mazelike interior. Melia sent out Fortitude regardless, and she even managed to convince herself that he would be a safeguard against any remaining Xen members lurking in the cold darkness.

"So, that was Team Xen, I presume?" Erin said when they rounded the next corner and came across a round hole in the floor, one that looked like it had been put there with much violence and energy.

"Y-Yes…"

"So they are involved after all."

Froslass zipped towards that opening, looked down, before glancing up at Melia and Erin. A series of invisible knives began carving symbols into the wall next to the Ghost-type. It took Melia a few seconds to realize that it was a side-view of the collapsed building; Froslass had carved an improvised map into the wall, showing that once they'd hopped down this hole, they would have to continue making their way down three more "levels".

"Is he alive? Please, tell me he's alive?" Melia implored Froslass.

The Ghost-type regarded her coldly, before suddenly giving her a small, genuine smile. With another hum, Froslass disappeared into that hole.

Melia nearly sagged with relief when she processed what that meant. Will had rescued Froslass all the way back when she'd been a Shadow Snorunt. Enigmatic and scary as she was, she had always appeared fiercely loyal to Will, and frighteningly protective to boot. If Will hadn't made it, Melia didn't think Froslass would be so calmly escorting them down. "He's alive," She breathed. "God, Erin, he's alive! We made it just in time!"

"Let's focus on keeping him alive, then," Erin pointed out.

"Yes!"

They dropped down into the heart of the collapsed skyscraper.

Melia had been to Xen bases that were less ominous and less spooky. Somehow, somehow, the power hadn't completely cut out yet, which meant that Erin and her didn't drop down into a dark, scary, about-to-collapse wreck but instead they dropped down into a dark, scary, about-to-collapse wreck with damaged, flickering lights. Some of them had been smashed as if by a great force.

"Oh Will," Melia whispered unhappily.

More blood. The stuff was splattered across the floor like someone had chucked half a bucket of red paint through the hall. The air stank of blood and dust and perhaps even a busted sewer pipe or two. Breathing quickly became a chore.

It could have been a lunchroom, once upon a time. The left side would have been lined with windows letting in just the right amount of sunlight. They were all shattered to pieces now, their frames barely recognizable, having collapsed on themselves as if the entire left side of the floor had tilted inwards, breaking apart against another floor when the entire thing came crashing down.

And the right side…

Melia saw two more Deathwings seated around a collapsed piece of ceiling. They were made to sit there as if the debris was a table, and their bodies had been frozen into poses to make them look like one of them held a cup of tea, while the other was reaching for a…a teapot? Did she see that right?

Before Melia's eyes could adjust to the dark and she could catch a look at what they were actually holding and reaching for, Erin pulled her along.

The remains of a partially collapsed floor led them down another level. A support beam had collapsed partially across the massive slab of broken concrete, offering them a passage barely large enough to squeeze through.

Erin grumbled with disgust as she shook some dust out of her hair. "This is stupid," she muttered, and Melia wasn't sure if she was supposed to hear that. "So stupid…"

Deeper into the cramped, ravaged interior they went. It seemed impossible at times, but Froslass had been thorough in mapping out the best way to navigate this mess. With Fortitude up front, Melia and Erin continued climbing and sometimes crawling their way through the most dangerous and improvised route both of them had ever taken.

He's alive, she kept telling herself. He's alive. You'll find him. He'll be okay.

Why, why had Will chosen to do this by himself? Was it because of what happened with Kanon? She couldn't think of a better explanation than that. Somehow, Will kept reaching the absolute worst and unhealthiest conclusions when things went wrong.

Finally, after almost half an hour of following Froslass through the dark, dusty remnants of the building, the Ghost-type fluttered through a smashed-apart doorframe and down another floor.

"Oh God," Melia said.

Sunlight streaked through the crushed walls. Half the floor had collapsed in on itself so thoroughly that it was nothing more than a mountain of debris. Miraculously enough, the support struts on the other half were still intact enough to sustain the uneven weight pressing down upon them.

"I can't even make out if I'm looking at a floor, a ceiling or a wall," Erin commented.

Froslass hovered silently between them and what had to be a frankly impossible amount of debris and rocks to move.

…Will had been so close. From where they stood, Melia guessed that this was one of the building's corners. He'd been maybe ten meters away from salvation, before everything collapsed on top of him.

"This is the place?" Melia said.

Froslass's silence was her answer.

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

---

His own ragged breathing woke him up. Shallow. Pained. The darkness fully surrounded him now. When he closed his eyes, he barely saw the difference anymore. The pain in his arm hadn't gone away. It was still there, a cold, throbbing thing. He couldn't see the blood dripping to the ground anymore, couldn't even feel the thing anymore.

He couldn't see anything.

Panic skittered through his thoughts like nails digging into his mind. His next breath came out in a choked whimper when he realized that he'd been buried, he'd been buried underneath the combined mass of a building. Almost on instinct, he tried to shove himself back upright again, clawing around with his free arm as he gasped and struggled, but the ice that Froslass had created was as absolute as the debris that had pinned his arm. He bumped his back against shattered concrete, scraped his knees across the cold floor, but nothing gave.

Buried, buried -

Will fell back on his chest, gasping and shivering. He couldn't die here, he couldn't!

With renewed vigor he tried everything he'd tried before. As the mass around him groaned and hundreds of little fragments kept falling and rolling around, he tried with howling desperation to snake his free arm back around to his waist. It couldn't. Even if he broke his arm he wouldn't have enough space. He was completely pinned.

"Please, please please…" He whispered. His teeth were chattering from the cold and his body started trembling. "God, please…"

The noise of the collapsed rubble was all-encompassing and yet so utterly silent. Will grit his teeth and tried, again, to pull his pinned arm free. Why? Why had Froslass done this, why had she abandoned him like this?

She's getting help, he told himself. She's getting help, she's getting help -

The ice that had frozen his arm to the rubble was absolute. He could have swung a hammer at it and it would have rebounded.

"She's getting help," Will whispered frantically. His throat tightened. Was it becoming harder to breath? He was breathing in dust now. Was that going to coat his lungs? Would he choke to death from that?

God, oxygen. Did he…did he even have enough air? Surely a messy collapse like this couldn't seal him off so thoroughly that he'd have to conserve his air, would he?

I'm not going to die here, he thought, frantically. He couldn't, he wouldn't!

It was so cold, his body wouldn't stop trembling. Why the ice? What was the point of that?

Pain seared through his ribs when his body erupted into a coughing fit. Was that just spittle he felt on his lips? Was it blood? Was he bleeding on the inside without knowing it?

He was dying, he was going to die here -

"I'm not," he growled. "I'm not! I'm…"

The darkness had consumed his world and he couldn't tell if his eyes were open or closed, if he was awake or not. Ash and dust in his hair, a biting cold in his face. What little sensations he got from his left arm were pangs of agony.

Agony. This, this was agony. It was hellish.

"Please…" he stammered. clawing around with his arm in the hope that something would give, that something would change and he could reach for his Pokemon, for his friends, for any kind of salvation. "Please…I can't…anyone?"

Nim had told him she'd be watching over him but Nim was dead now. Mom had told him to keep up hope, even when they murdered her, but he couldn't…

"Mom," he whispered when the realization struck that he would never be digging his way out of this on his own. "I need…I need you!…Please, I need - "

The world shuddered and shook. Little fragments of stone or plaster rained down on top of him. A cloud of dust erupted from somewhere and another coughing fit set his chest on fire. He gasped and drew in a shuddering, sobbing breath.

Buried. He was buried in the dark, cold and alone.

This place shall become your tomb.

"She'll find you," he murmured. "She'll find you…"

His body started going numb. He closed his eyes and rested his forehead against the shattered concrete. He tried to think, but his thoughts were scattered across the place and they went to Adam, whom he hadn't even recognized. Adam, Adam, Adam.

Adam and Val would think nothing, feel nothing, if they knew he was buried here. Venam would care, wouldn't she? She would…she would have tried to help, but -

But the bastards took her, too.

And now, they had him, too. What did he have to show for it? What had he learned, what had he gained?

Nothing. It was all for nothing.

"Count," he whispered. His mind was going places he couldn't afford. "C-Count."

So he counted.

Adam had taught him that. Adam had cared. Nobody could take that away.

So he lay there, buried in the freezing, yawning blackness, counting silently and alone.

The yawning blackness was everywhere and it leaked into his mind, snuffing out every angle of hope. His world had narrowed down to this, to this nothingness and freezing darkness. He lay there for minutes. Hours. Days. He couldn't tell, couldn't tell if he was even awake or not.

His world shuddered and broke apart and light streaked in. Light, so much of it, and warmth.

Will struggled to look up. Through blurry vision, he caught the outlines of people and motion. People…people?

That bright light burned away the blackness and chased away the cold. Someone approached him - a figure wreathed in light, her golden hair billowing around her as she came for him.

"Oh my god, Will! There he is! Careful Patience!"

An angel, come to lift him up out of this hell.

"Melia," he choked out as something huge and soft filled up the space, lifting up the debris. "Melia."

She came down the path they'd cut through the wreckage. The sunlight was so bright that it stung his eyes, but he didn't care. She'd found him. She'd found him.

"Will, are you alright? What happened?" She asked as she crouched down next to him.

Will closed his eyes, basking in the knowledge that things would be okay. He would be okay.

Her hand caressed his cheek, wiping away the dust and the blood and the tears. He felt her other hand pat around his body, searching him for injuries.

"Oh, that's not good," he heard another woman say.

Erin, he dimly noted. That's…that's Erin.

"I am going to get you out of here, okay?" Melia said. "You're going to be alright. Froslass? That ice…why did you…?"

He heard and felt the ice around him shatter and fall apart. He heard something that could have been Froslass, a mourning, pained keening noise that bounced around the inside of his head as much as it echoed off the walls around him.

Will reached for her with his free arm. Pins and needles coursed through his legs and something huge and soft went around his waist. "Melia…Xen…it's Team Xen…"

She took his hand between hers, holding it tightly. "I know, I know," she said. "You're safe now. There is help on the way. Just…just hold on, okay?"

He did.

Erin came down as well. "I'm not sure if we can move him."

"I'm not leaving him."

He closed his eyes and held on.

"Look at all that blood…I'm not sure…"

"Patience, can you lift that rubble? Careful! We don't want to bring the place down on our heads!"

He didn't even feel the immense weight on his arm anymore. Again, the world shifted and groaned but he didn't feel the change.

Melia sucked in a panicked breath. "Oh God. Oh God."

"That's not good. He needs medical attention right now."

"Erin, that's his- "

"I know! We're on a timer now, Melia."

"Patience! Get him up right now!"

"Wait!" Erin's voice rang out. "Wait, hang on. Will, can you feel your legs?"

Will tried to blink away the blurriness. Mental focus came and slipped away again.

"Will, your legs? Can you feel them?"

He blinked sluggishly. Of course he could feel them. It wasn't his legs that had been pinned by the debris, had it? "Yes."

Erin appeared in his vision, her deep, grey eyes peering into his. "Does your neck hurt?"

Will tried to turn his attention to his left, wondering what had happened to the ice Froslass had coated his arm with, but Erin's hand was suddenly on his face and she kept him from looking. "Your neck, Will."

"No," he said. ""Doesn't. Doesn't hurt."

Then, that huge and soft presence lifted him up. Melia untangled her fingers from his, staring at him as she covered her mouth with her hands. Tears welled up in her eyes and Will realized that the softness was Patience, was her Snorlax.

"You're going to be okay, Will," Melia said again.

"We need to bring him to the hospital, now," Erin said urgently.

Will blinked. A deep, deep exhaustion welled up inside of him and suddenly, he had to struggle to keep his eyes open. "Melia," he blurted out again.

"I'm here," she whispered. "We've got you, Will."

He was slipping.

He closed his eyes. He barely managed to get them open again. "Team Xen…"

"We've got you."

Patience moved. The light shifted. It was so bright and so golden, Melia's words so warm.

There was no more gold, then. Only black, intermittently broken up by flashes of input that his weary senses struggled to register.

Frigid wind washing across exposed skin. Voices, both men as women, loud and alarmed. A sharp pain at his left arm as someone began hurting him there. It was so sudden, and he was so tired, that he couldn't help himself. A scream tore from his throat, short, raw and agonized.

"It's okay," Melia said, her breath ghosting on his neck. "We've got you. It's okay."

I was just wondering if it was really that easy to get you to give up on your buddy -

Venam, he wanted to say. Venam -

But he couldn't stop the screaming, couldn't stop what had been weeks in the making, so he grit his teeth and wrestled it all down again. It was killing his throat anyway.

The world wasn't as bright anymore when he next woke up, swimming in warmth and an almost featherly lightness. Slowly, his blurry vision came into focus. The pain that washed over him as he drifted closer to consciousness was a distant, strange thing.

Will blinked. That unfamiliar haze in the left side of his vision bothered him for far too long before he remembered why he couldn't see out of his eye, and with that realization came the broken pieces of memories.

A building collapsing. His entire world falling apart around him. Fragments and rocks and glass and the screams of the Deathwings around him…

And Froslass. Cold, horrifying, bone-chilling cold. The incredible pain of debris pinning him to the floor and shattering his arm…and the crushing weight of thousands of tons of rubble falling in place around him, pressed to a cold, unyielding surface as he lay there, screaming, pleading…

But then Melia had been there. She'd found him. She'd found him.

But where was she now?

Will hadn't even bolted a third of the way upright when his body screamed in pain and a searing lance shot through his ribs and he fell back with a pained yelp.

"Whoah! Hey take it easy there!" A voice to his right cried out. "Will, you're safe, you're safe here!"

Since moving was starting to feel like a very bad idea, he opted for turning towards his right instead. There, seated in a chair right next to his bed, was Melia.

He was safe.

"Hi," he muttered. His throat felt like he'd gargled with gravel and then drank twelve of those shots at Amber's club. His head sure felt like that.

"You're awake," Melia said, her breathing leaving her parted lips in a soft gasp. She looked tired and her eyes were puffy and red and goddamnit if she wasn't the best thing he'd ever seen in his life.

Something in Melia's body relaxed, and she lifted her hand to his face to brush the hair out of his eyes. "Please, try not to move. Erin's getting the doctor right now. How are you feeling?"

Warm. Snug. Confused. Like someone had encased his mind in cotton wads. "Alive."

What should have been a harmless quip made a shadow pass over Melia's features. "Okay, please, please do not move," she said, and the urgency in her voice was starting to creep him out a bit. "Just…the doctor's gonna be here any minute. Just…just stay focused on me, okay?"

Okay.

Doctor. A hospital, then. Melia and Erin had saved him. It seemed impossible.

His head was pounding something fierce and he wanted to drag his hands over his face, but Melia's odd insistence that he didn't move kept him rooted in place. "What happened?" He asked.

"I feel like I should be asking you that," Melia said. "Will, where were you? What did you do? You scared the heck out of us!"

Her voice cracked there at the end. A hint of hysteria, a note of carefully crafted self-control slipping.

Will sighed and closed his eyes. His ribs hurt. His head hurt. His everything hurt. "Neved…" he muttered.

Melia shot up straight in her chair. "Neved!? He's back? After…and he's in the city"

"It was a Xen base," Will said, struggling to get the words out. "Fought my way up looking for…" He stopped. Not the right words, not what she had asked. "But Neved wasn't there. Was a recording. The…the whole thing was a trap."

"They ambushed you?" Melia said quietly.

"Deathwings," Will choked out. Despite Melia's instructions, he clenched his hands involuntarily. He felt strange. Groggy, as if he couldn't feel all of himself. Medicine, then. Painkillers? Something to make him sleep? "Bunch of Deathwings. Then…"

Explosions. Flashes of thunder - noises lightning fire quaking - and then the sickening lurch of freefall and a desperate scramble for survival.

"Neved exploded the building," Will said. "Floor by floor…until the entire thing collapsed."

"Oh Will," Melia said, her tone anguished. "Why, why did you go there?"

Because Venam and I left hating each other.

"I had to…" he murmured. His thoughts were like spun glass, threatening to fall apart at the slightest nudge. The strength had drained from his muscles. "Froslass…I got stuck…Melia - "

"Don't think about that," Melia said, her voice as sharp as a lash. "Don't…look, you really had us scared. I - "

The door opened and a man clad in a long, flowing doctor's clothes walked in. Will barely had the time to notice the man's dark grey hair, which spiraled down in a fringe on one side, before he saw Erin entering after the doctor. Then, the feeling of shame and guilt began suffocating him, and he couldn't bear to meet anyone's eyes anymore.

"Ah, there you are," the doctor said, holding a clipboard in one hand as he pulled up one of the remaining seats with the other. "Patient William, no last name. Your personal dossier is woefully missing in details, young man. I am Doctor Isha. It is a pleasure to finally make your acquaintance."

Will looked at the man. His eyes were large and dark and bright but…cold. They seemed cold, to him.

"Now William, you gave us all quite a scare," the doctor continued, before turning his attention to the two girls sitting - or in Erin's case, standing - at the side. "Who might you be?"

"Friends," Melia answered.

"I suppose, considering the circumstances, I can permit you two to stay here," Isha continued. "It might even be better." He glanced at Melia. "Does he know…?"

Silently, Melia shook her head.

Know…what?

"Now, William, can you tell us what happened to you?" Doctor Isha said. "In detail?"

Will glanced over at Melia again, but she had averted her gaze. She was staring into her lap now, her expression tense and…pained?

"...I was trapped," Will said. He sucked in a gasp and his lungs felt like he was still pinned beneath that rubble. "Couldn't…I couldn't get out. Froslass, she…she did something."

Memories, simmering just below the surface of his thoughts, suddenly slammed back together like puzzle pieces and he remembered vividly the pain, the maddening realization that he was trapped and couldn't get out and how Froslass had started filling what little space he'd had left with ice.

And then she'd left. She'd left him alone in the cold darkness, with only his own ragged, panicked breathing to remind him that he was still alive.

"...she left," he said, struggling to get the words out and the air in. "I got pinned and she left me in the cold and - "

And he was trapped beneath that rubble, the world shaking itself apart around him as he bled and screamed and pulled but he couldn't get his arm loose, couldn't get it loose and he'd screamed and -

Buried.

The adrenaline pulsed through his body and Will jerked himself upright, pain lancing through his body as he tore at his blankets to get free, to reassure himself that he was free -

"Will no!" Melia said, lunging for him at the same time as the doctor jerked upright in his chair.

One hand groped around his throat to reassure that he could breathe, that he genuinely had the space to breathe. The other, however, only registered as a sharp pain in his shoulder and elbow, and his left hand never reached his throat.

"Please," Melia begged with a small, vulnerable voice. "We - doctor!"

With quivering breath, Will pulled his elbow above the cover of the blankets. His heart stopped.

His arm was gone. Everything just below the elbow was gone. How…there was a stump wrapped in bandages and neatly covered and tied off and how could his arm be gone?

"Where…" he said, his voice choked and tight.

"I'm sorry," Melia whispered.

"When your friends found you, they claimed your arm had been pinned beneath rubble and sealed off by ice," Isha continued, his voice smooth and utterly unbothered. "At one point, what could have been a crush injury seemed to have turned into a traumatic amputation on-site. Be it the heavy weight or something sharp, whatever caused the separation of your arm, it was not a clean amputation. We had to shorten the remaining tissue, shave off the bone fragment and sterilize the site."

Erin groaned.

"Which means a reattachment wouldn't have been possible even if we'd been able to salvage your arm," doctor Isha continued.

His arm was gone?

"The frostbite damage was surprisingly light, all things considered, and we were able to prevent any further nerve damage through surgery. Due to the nature of your injury, the potential for rhabdomyolysis development was there, but we managed to prevent that from happening as well. I personally oversaw the debridement procedure -."

Trembling, fighting to hold back the tears, Will ran his hand over his face to try and compose himself. His remaining hand hand all kinds of bandages around it. Scrapes and cuts, no doubt.

You're lucky, he told himself. Yelled at himself. You could be dead.

" - sical therapy required to get used to the new normal - "

His arm was gone.

You don't need your left arm to fight, he shouted inside of his head.

"Rehabilitation is possible, and the marvelous technologies available at our disposal means you could be outfitted with a prosthetic," doctor Isha continued. As he began talking about insurances and the specific clauses of healthcare and procedures, Will kept staring at his arm. Was that…was that what Froslass had done? Had she known?

"A combination of occupational therapy, physical therapy, vocational rehabilitation and psychological support generally promote a sense of well being and return to a level of independence," Isha continued on.

When Will looked up again, Melia had taken his right hand - his remaining hand - in her own, clutching it tightly. His fingers found her wrist and he wrapped them around it, holding on as he tried desperately to not go to pieces.

He'd made it. Melia and Erin had saved him. The worst thing he could do now, was lose himself again. After what he'd almost done to Kanon - what Erin had seen him do - he needed to be composed, more than ever.

"At least I'm still right-handed," he said, and the effort that it took to keep his voice level was almost unbearable.

Then, Isha was on his feet and in Will's face. "Your ribs have sustained severe bruising, hence the discoloration, but aside from some minor fractures, you were spared the worst."

"Yay…" he muttered.

"That eye of yours does arouse concern…" Then, doctor Isha reached out and wrapped his long, cold fingers around Will's chin and his cheek and tilted his head aside.

Will flinched hard, digging his fingers into Melia's wrist as the doctor began doing things in his blind spot. "Wait, wait," he stammered. Instinctively, he tried to shove the doctor's hand away from his face but his left arm was gone, it was gone and this man was dragging his thumb across his eye -

"Hmmm…" Doctor Isha hummed.

"Doctor, please, is this necessary?" Melia said, cupping her free hand over his wrist.

"Stop squirming young man," Isha said with annoyance as Will bucked and twisted, his heart bending and twisting in his chest. Will felt the man trace his scar with a gloved finger, before moving across his eyelid and slowly spreading his eyelid open -

Will gasped, fighting and losing an impossible battle to wrestle himself back under control. Panic exploded in his gut at the idea if having someone he didn't know in his blind spot, having someone he didn't know with their fingers at his eye -

"Is this uncomfortable?" Isha said, his voice nearly a whisper at his ear. "You seem stressed."

"Doctor, please," Melia insisted.

Isha froze in the middle of his motion, the tips of his gloved fingers at Will's eye, and it was everything he did to focus on his breathing and staying utterly, completely still. His skin was crawling, and if it hadn't been for Melia clutching his wrist he didn't think he could have done this, couldn't have stayed still -

"This eye injury is an old one," Isha slowly said. "It has mostly healed over…but not the right way. Who treated this?"

"The ranger medics on Terajuma," Melia said. "They did what they could. Nobody on the island could have done better."

Isha made a disapproving clicking noise with his tongue. "I could have done better," he said dismissively. "I do not imagine you have much vision in that eye, do you?"

Will was too concentrated on making sure his breathing remained steady and normal to really do much with Isha's question. By the time he realized it was aimed at him, Melia had already answered.

"It's reduced, by a lot."

"Hmm…a shame." Suddenly Isha pulled back, and Will nearly sagged with relief. "Surgery performed by someone who knew what they were doing could have saved your vision entirely. I knew I could have."

The doctor walked around his bed again, picking up his clipboard while Will tried not to let those words hurt him too much. He'd gone into Valor Summit knowing he could have lost his life there. That had been one of the most harrowing, terrifying moments of his life, and he was lucky that Crescent had managed to put him back together at all.

"But that is neither here nor there," Isha continued, scribbling something down on his noteboard as he walked away again. "I shall give you three a moment alone, I need to discuss something with a…colleague of mine. I will be just a few minutes."

Then, doctor Isha was gone, and Will blew out a frustrated sigh that threatened to turn into another scream.

"This might be me, but I don't like this doctor," Erin pointed out.

Melia gave Will's hand one final, reassuring squeeze, then let him go. "It was Pidgeot who came to get us," Melia said. "And…and Froslass who…who pointed the way."

"Just call a spade a spade," Erin said. "We passed several dead bodies on our way in, Will. Your Froslass had rearranged them like a macabre dollhouse. Did…" she paused a moment, her voice softening. "Did you order that?"

"Erin!" Melia gasped.

Did you order that?

As if he were that type of person. Was that who Erin thought he was, now?

"Course not," he replied. "I was too busy being buried alive to give any orders."

With a sharp intake of air, Melia leapt to her feet. "Oh please don't make jokes like that. It was horrible enough when we had to dig you out…" she wrapped her arms around her waist. "I can't imagine."

It sure hadn't been fun.

"When - " The rest of his words turned into a pained, dry coughing fit. His throat felt like sandpaper and his ribs hurt.

"Don't move, I'll get some water," Melia said, her long, golden hair billowing after her as she turned on the spot and left.

Erin watched her go while Will struggled to renew his lease on oxygen. When he had, he wiped his mouth with his sleeve and found Erin watching him intently.

"You do not seem to be very alarmed by that," she said, nodding at his new lack of arm. "In fact, you seem oddly calm."

"...I'm still alive, and I can still fight," Will said stiffly, taking great care to keep shoving down the blackness screaming within his chest.

Erin glanced at the door that Melia had closed behind her, then leaned in a bit closer. "That is a very odd priority to have."

"It's the priority we need," Will said through clenched teeth. "We've been through hell, and there's no end in sight. I promised I'd protect her, no matter what. So I…I will…keep doing that."

"No matter what…" Erin softly repeated. "Even after losing your arm?"

Will tried not to wince when he heard her speak those words. They hit him hard, and jostled something loose inside of him that he really, really didn't want to have loosened. "She needs me to be solid," he said, thinking of Adam and Val, of Crawli and Melia's father. "I can't afford to fall apart because…because…because when things go wrong again, she depends on me. So I have to be solid."

"How long are you going to keep that facade up?" Erin asked, her voice cold and deadly serious.

Will didn't meet her eyes. He kept his gaze locked on the bandaged stump of his left arm, letting her words bounce around inside of his head. When he was confident he knew what she meant, he raised his head and looked her directly in her eyes. "For as long as I have to," he answered. "Because I can. Because Melia deserves someone who does that."

"And that is you?" Erin continued, and Will couldn't for the life of him discern what she was getting at.

So, he did the next best thing. He laughed. It was a short, barking laugh, filled with bitterness and pain. "Nobody's left. There's no one else left anymore, Erin. It should have been…should have been her parents, her family, her oldest friends, but they're all gone. They took everything from her already. It's just me now."

Erin leaned back in her seat, still fixing him with that odd, almost sceptical look. "Melia could have lost you today as well. You could have died. Then, she would have been truly alone. Did you think about that?"

Distantly. Vaguely. He looked death in the eyes every single time he did battle with Team Xen. Dying was always an option where these people were concerned, just like him dying had always been a secondary concern at best. It wasn't that he didn't value his life - at least, he liked to think he did - it was just that the price for failure had always been so much worse than his own death.

"I did," he said, but his voice was small and brittle and he didn't understand why that was. "And I thought…if I had a chance to…undo the petrifications, fix what happened to our friends or even…stop Team Xen from taking more, that would have been worth it."

Erin's eyes had an intensity to them, as if they could pierce through his words and get straight to the thoughts he was trying to put together. "I see. One more question. You said, you were going to keep doing this, because Melia needs someone she can lean on. What happens if you can't do that anymore?"

Will shook his head, not wanting to even think about that. "That won't happen."

"If that happens, " Erin insisted. "Who will you lean on?"

He stared at her for several seconds before he was able to process what she said. "I…" Why was that question so difficult for him? If, for some reason. he couldn't be keep going on then…he could depend on Tesla and Amber, right?

…but they were all the way back in Terajuma and he didn't want them anywhere near this mess in GDC.

Adam -

Adam was gone.

So were Val and Aelita. So were Saki and Braixen and…and Venam, too. Even if he could find a way to unpetrify Venam and get her back…he didn't think he could depend on her again. After what he'd almost done to Kanon, he…he…

Who could he lean on? Who had he leaned on?

Erin sighed when he continued to stare blankly at her, at a loss for words. "I see."

Then, Melia came back into the room again, and she had a bottle of water for him. "Crazy that the doctors didn't even leave you with some water, huh?" She unscrewed the cap for him. "Here, you must be parched."

He was. He drank half the bottle, then let Melia take it out of his hands…well, hand. "Thank you," he said. "Am I...is…" He swallowed a lump in this throat and had to force out the rest of the words. "How bad is…are there any other injuries?"

"No," Melia said, and though she tried to hide it, Will heard the sob in her voice regardless. She turned it into a half-laugh, half-gasp, but it was there. "No, this is it and it's bad enough. There'll probably be…you know, bruises and stuff, again. Your clothes are all banged up as well, so you'll need new ones…"

Will glanced up at the ceiling. Gone, your arm is gone, it's gone. "How long was I out?"

"A few hours," Erin said. "It's a bit past eight in the evening. "They did their surgery about…half an hour after we brought you in."

"You carried me to the hospital?" Will said quietly.

"Not quite," Melia said. "Once Froslass broke that ice so we could get you out, you started bleeding again. We brought you to the emergency responders and they did the immediate first aid. Then, they brought you to the hospital, while we kept an eye out."

Erin stretched her arms and yawned. "Speaking of keeping an eye out…visiting hours are almost over and I still haven't found Aelita yet. The city isn't getting safer, so…"

"We understand," Melia said. "Thank you, Erin."

Erin simply shrugged. "Don't see what for. I didn't do much special."

"You crawled through a collapsed skyscraper with me."

"You had that creepy Froslass."

"It's not the same! You were there, Erin. So…thank you!"

"You're welcome, then."

Will watched the exchange, wondering what kind of things the two girls had seen in there. They had risked their lives…for him? He had no reason to think that Erin was lying about what Froslass had done. He just hoped it hadn't been too bad.

"Bye, Erin! We'll let you know if we happen to find Aelita, too!"

Then, the white-haired young woman was gone, leaving Will and Melia alone in the hospital room. When she'd seen Erin out, everything about Melia changed. Her shoulders slumped and when she sank back in her seat, she leaned forward to bury her head in her hands, sucking in a breath. "This was far, far too close," she said. "Will…why did you do this? Why…after everything that happened, why did you do this alone?"

The anguish in her voice gave him pause.

"Melia…"

She jerked her hands away from her face and to his horror, Will saw she was crying. "You scared me so, so much Will! I thought I'd lost you! I thought that…" The tone of her voice changed into something hurt and soft. "I thought I'd lost you too."

"I - "

"You promised!" She snapped. "You promised you'd talk to me if something happened and instead, you set off on your own and…and look what happened!"

Will dropped his gaze to the bandaged stump of his elbow. He felt his face burn with shame.

"You had horrible nights, you've been running yourself ragged ever since we came to the city, and then you decided to assault a Xen base all on your own?" Melia said, her voice gaining a pleading edge to it. "Why don't you value - why did you do that?"

"Venam and I got into a fight, right before she disappeared," Will admitted. "Before she…the last things we said to each other were horrible and after…after what happened at the penthouse last night I couldn't…" He forced his eyes up, forced himself to look into those large, questioning eyes. He tried again. "If I had a chance at making things right, finding a solution then…" His words faltered when he saw Melia bring her hands up to her face again.

"Will…" she breathed.

"I just wanted to set something right," he forced the words out.

The weight of Melia's hands on his arm was a soft, yet heavy thing. She was silent for a full minute she said, "You and Venam fought before she left? Before you and Rhodea went to address the terrorist threat at Somnium Mall?"

Will nodded.

"...so when we found…a-after you visited us in the hospital, you spent the rest of the day searching?" Melia asked.

Not knowing what else to say, he nodded again.

"I…Erin and Kanon told me what happened," she continued. "About…about what happened when Kanon tried to wake you up."

"I know, a-and I'm so, so sorry, b-but that's not an excuse, an-and it won't happen again," Will stammered out. Though he couldn't bring himself to even look at Melia, he still felt her eyes on him. "I'll move - I'll find a different place to sleep - "

"No," Melia sharply said, tightening her hold on his arm as she pulled herself towards him. "Will, that…that is NOT the solution - you can't leave me! You - you can't!"

"Okay," Will said. "Okay, Melia I…I would never leave you, I told you I wouldn't, but I hurt Kanon. I…I could have…"

"We can handle it," Melia said, her tone fierce. Her grip on his arm tightened, her thumbs rubbing little circles against his bicep. "That's…that's what you said, right? We'll make it, right?"

Will didn't miss the hint of desperation in her voice. The thought of returning to that penthouse where things could go wrong all over again horrified him, but the image of leaving Melia on her own, all on her own, was just impossible to stomach. "We'll make it," he said. "I just…if something like…like that night happens again I…I don't want to hurt anyone again, Melia," he whispered.

Melia dropped her head on top of his arm. "We'll figure something out. You're not in this alone, Will. Please. Just scale back. Slow down."

Slowly, Will rested his forehead against hers. "I don't have much of a choice anymore. I'll be slowing down regardless."

She threw her arms around him and Will bit back a cry of pain as his chest flared in protest. "We'll figure that out, too. Like the doctor said, we can…put in a request for a prosthetic. Even if it takes a while…even if it takes a long while…we can make it work."

"Yes," Will muttered, closing his eyes as he leaned against her as much as he could, relishing in her closeness. "We always do."

~~~~~~~(V)~~~~~~~

The phone rang and everybody jumped.

"Rhodea!" Kanon called out.

"On it!"

Huey watched Rhodea with bated breath as she hurried over and picked up the phone, before clenching it between her ear and her shoulder like only true businesspeople could. She plucked a post-it note from the table. She slapped it against the wooden frame and quickly began penning stuff down.

"Yeah," she said. "Uh-huh. Yeah, I got your message, was kinda hoping for more details now. Just "surgery" wasn't a lot to go off of. I…Ah, great. And Erin? Back to the search huh. So how bad is the - " Kanon looked up from his work when Rhodea nearly dropped the phone. She muttered a few bad words under her breath as she fumbled with the phone for a moment, nearly jerking its receiver off the table by its cord. She managed to catch it, however. "His what?" She yelled into the phone.

"Oh no," Kanon said.

Rhodea sat up straighter as her expression became a very shocked one. "How did that happen?" She said with a strangled voice.

"What happened?" Kanon asked.

Rhodea held up a hand to silence him. "...Oh my God, that poor soul…wait, you're coming to the Penthouse TODAY?!"

Huey gasped. The Plan. This meant that he could put The Plan into motion! "Flareon," he whispered. "Come here! Flareon, come buddy!"

"That doesn't sound remotely responsible," Rhodea continued. "No, I don't know - I mean, I guess? If the doctors said so…do you have - his clothes too?! What happened? Uh…" Her eyes flicked to Huey real quick. "Yeah, both of them. We got spare clothes, don't you - Melia, listen, listen to me girl, everything you two need, I can getcha. Okay? It's fine. I have the connections, we'll make it work."

"This is starting to really disconcert me," Kanon pointed out.

If being disconcerted meant being concerned, then yeah, so was Huey! "Yeah, me too."

"Okay Melia, you two head on back to the penthouse. Bring him home. We'll get stuff sorted out over here. Yeah…uh-huh. Alright, see you soon!" Rhodea put down the phone, then sighed. She dragged her hands across her face, whipped her dreads back over her shoulder and then got to her feet. "Okay guys, I have good news and some bad news."

"Is Will okay?" Kanon asked evenly. "Melia found him, didn't she? Is he alright?"

Rhodea smiled, but Huey saw that it was the same kind of smile she used to reassure him about Rune. "Okay, so, Melia's bringing Will back from the hospital today."

Huey leapt to his feet. Finally, some good news! "Do we put up the banner? We put up the banner right?"

"Yes, Huey," Rhodea said with a little smile. "Just…there is bad news, too."

"What happened? He got injured, didn't he?" Kanon said. "How bad is the damage?"

…damage? But if Will could get back home after some surgery that meant all the damage was healed now, didn't it? He'd be fine now, wouldn't he? "Ah, Rhodea? Damage?" Huey laughed nervously. Everything about Will was hard steel and toughness, he'd bounce back from things right away. "There's no...he's okay, right? Please tell me he's okay?"

Rhodea didn't smile now. "Melia said that Will got into a…into a really huge fight with some of the people we think are connected to the petrifications. He followed them to their hideout in the industrial park, but things got really out of hand."

Huey wrung his hands nervously. What did that mean?

"The people…?" Kanon asked.

Rhodea gave him a nod that Huey almost, almost missed. "Yeah."

"Damnit," Kanon said, suddenly looking angry. He jumped to his feet and paced across the room. "How bad is the damage?" He asked again, before stopping all of a sudden. "Wait, was it that building that collapsed yesterday? That was the industrial zone, right?"

"A building collapsed?" Huey gasped. A moment later, Flareon jumped onto his lap, and he was so soft and as amazingly warm as always. Huey wrapped his arms around his trusty friend and rubbed his cheek against Flareon's forehead.

But the others didn't respond to him! "It was," Rhodea said. "Last I heard, rescue workers are still searching the rubble for survivors."

At that point, Kanon, Huey and even Flareon turned to look at the gaping hole in Rhodea's wall, where the construction workers had only just finished hammering the opening shut with lots of plywood and tarp. If Will hadn't thought to send out his Pidgeot to come get help…

Rhodea took a deep breath. "Will lost his left arm in the fight."

There was a moment of silence where both guys stared at her in pure horror.

"His…he lost it?" Huey stammered. "Wait, what - "

"Damnit," Kanon spat. "Those bastards!" He started pacing again, while Huey slowly realized just what Rhodea meant. "I should have been there…he should have taken someone with him."

"His arm?" Huey shouted, which startled Flareon, which made him feel even worse. "Aww, sorry buddy," he quickly said. "How…but…are you saying that someone cut his arm off?" He asked, feeling sick and horrible at the mere thought of that. "Agh, oh that's horrible!"

"Can they reattach it?" Kanon asked, as if that was a thing that people just regularly did!

Huey glanced at his own arm. He tried to imagine not having it. Just…suddenly not having two arms anymore.

He wouldn't be able to effectively hug Flareon, or tie his shoes, or pick up stuff for school -

"Even if they manage to salvage his arm, the wound might not be clean enough for a reattachment," Rhodea replied as if that was a thing that regular people just regularly did! "Melia said they're going to inform about a possible prosthetic fit."

Huey felt his stomach turn. "Is that an artificial arm? It is, right?"

"Was it them?" Kanon said. "Did Melia tell if he found something?"

"She didn't say anything of the kind, no. But…at the very, very least, he managed to put a stop to someone's operation here in the city."

"At a not inconsiderable cost," Kanon quietly said. "So that was the surgery she mentioned yesterday…I…I do not like to say this, but I am starting to really loathe this city right now." He paused, then swiftly added, "I am sorry, I did mean to offend."

"You didn't," Rhodea gently said. "GDC's been treating you guys so dirty. Once we've wiped it clean and solved the petrification…"

"His arm will still be gone," Kanon sighed.

"GDC is the city of innovation and brilliance," Rhodea said and Huey could hear the pride in her voice. "We'll go knock on Blakeory Co's door and they'll slap together a wicked prosthetic, Kanon. Don't you worry."

"You'll pardon me for worrying nonetheless…"

"Who are these people Will fought anyway?" Huey asked.

Rhodea and Kanon exchanged an uneasy glance and alright, that was not cool!

"You're better off not knowing, Huey," Rhodea said with a little shake of her head.

"But they might be the ones who petrified Talon and Venam and took Will's arm!" Huey insisted. "We should tell the police!"

"Huey…uhm…we don't have any evidence," Kanon said slowly. "What Will did wasn't exactly legal and - "

"What Will did was go in where the bad guys were and fight them so hard that their building exploded!" Huey hotly said. "And now, he's gonna need a prost…a…a prosthetic and we can't even finish what he did?"

"Huey," Rhodea gently said. "It doesn't work like that."

"It should!" Huey insisted. If other people had done what Will had done, they might have…they might have found Rune already!

If he had done what Will had done - been courageous and strong enough on his own - he might have found Rune by now.

"Oh Huey…we are doing everything we can to help, you know we are," Rhodea said. She walked over towards him and placed a hand on the crown of his head. Then, she ruffled his hair, and Huey struggled to maintain a defiant look. "But right now, Will is hurt, and he's going to need our help, and he'll need your help as well."

"M-Mine?" Huey stammered.

"Yeah," Rhodea said. "Let's focus on the little things for now, okay?"

"So…do we put up the banner now?"

Rhodea laughed. "We can put up the banner. Be careful about - "

No problem, he knew how to be careful!

Huey was on his feet and running in seconds. Flareon hopped off the couch and ran after him. Together, they raced by their newest blond friends, who came peeking out of their room.

"Heyguysgottahangupsomestuff!" He told them as Flareon and he raced towards the supply closet. There, he pulled out the banner he'd picked up just a few hours ago.

A lot of stuff was happening really quickly these days. From the day Rune disappeared, the city had started feeling bad. Meaner. Colder. That only got worse when Talon got turned to stone, which really, really hurt Lavender and made that cold feeling grow even worse.

So few people tried to do anything about it, and it was as if the people who did do things, either didn't really care, or didn't know how to do those things.

And the city grew colder and worse as the days passed.

"Got it!" Huey whooped as he snatched the paper banner from the closet, the one he'd bought from the general store when they first heard Melia and Erin had brought Will to the hospital.

But then, the others arrived in GDC.

The cool guys from Gearen City. Venam, Melia and Will. These outsiders who had never even set foot in the region's capital were going to try and make things better! Within hours, they'd gone to work, and they didn't let the city's cold vastness get to them.

Huey and Flareon bounded up the stairs, his trusted friend clutching a roll of duct tape in his mouth, and they went to work.

"Yeah, right there Flareon!"

The literal first thing Will did even before finding that vital clue in Talon's house was to kick the butts of the jerks who were bothering Lavender. Then he found a vital clue, fought off this weird home-invader person on his own, found the other vital clue and fought Lavender's strongest Pokemon on its own turf and won!

And then, when everybody else had been too exhausted to do anything else, Will had gone down into the evil base of another underground gang, kicked their butts and found a completely new clue that could have helped. Melia, Venam and him had done more in two days than the police department had done in weeks and they did it all on their own.

But now, the bad guys had petrified Venam too and Lavender had gotten hurt and he just didn't get why the others did not do more.

Together, Huey and Flareon began taking their banner into place, hanging it in such a way that visitors could see it the second they entered Rhodea's penthouse.

As they did that, Alice and Allen wandered into the living room as well. Rhodea and Kanon helped to clean things up together.

"Rhodea! It's up!" Huey proudly declared, taking a moment to gaze up at his work.

Rhodea walked up to him and glanced up at the banner. "Wow, you managed to pick the perfect spot," she said.

"I only had to use half a roll of tape!" Huey said happily.

He knew that there were many things he simply didn't get, so many different ways in which he was of no use to them. He wasn't smart like Lavender or successful like Rhodea or even good at battling like Will, Melia and Venam were.

But he didn't think that mattered. What mattered, was that these people were nice to him and that they could help him get Rune back. The city had shown that it didn't care to give her back, but like that, the others had shown that they didn't care about the city. Will hadn't cared when he set out to kick people's butts, even if it got him hurt. Melia hadn't cared when she went to get him back, no matter what happened.

Huey liked to think they might be on to something.

"Get well soon," Kanon read aloud, staring up at the banner Huey had managed to tape in place. "When did you have time to get this?"

"Yesterday, the moment I heard Melia and Erin got Will to the hospital," Huey proudly replied.

"I…I see."

"I wanted to cross out the "e" and make it "got well soon" but then I heard about the actual injury and now I'm glad that I didn't," Huey explained.

Finally, after two hours that stretched on foreeeeever, the door to the penthouse swung open and Will and Melia were there. Despite having vowed NOT to take even a single PEEK at Will's arm, Huey caught his eyes instantly flickering towards Will's left arm.

Considering Will had fought so hard that he collapsed an entire building, he didn't look that bad. He'd donned a black jacket that seemed one size too big for him, and one sleeve dangled limply by his side. Huey saw that he wore his arm in a sling underneath that jacket, and if he hadn't known that the underarm was gone, he'd have simply assumed that he'd broken it.

Huey tore his eyes off of Will's arm and threw them everywhere else. Nobody would be catching HIM looking at stuff that would make people feel bad!

Aside from some cuts and scrapes, Will looked fine-ish. Sort of. He glanced around the penthouse with a neutral, guarded look, before his eyes landed on something behind Huey and his eyebrows furrowed.

Melia had put herself to Will's very wounded left side. She had her arm around his waist, resting her hand on his hip as they walked through the door together. She had her hair tied back in that fluffy ponytail again, tied with a frilly white cloth tie that had two ends sticking out of it.

While Will completely missed the banner that hung perhaps three feet above his head, opting instead to look down at the floor as if he were afraid he'd trip and fall or something, Melia did spot it. "Hey guys," she said, before her silver eyes drifted up towards the banner. "Get well soon," she read, and when she smiled it was all radiant and warm and Huey knew he'd done well. "That's so sweet. Thank you so much!"

Huey pumped his fist.

"Welcome back, trooper," Rhodea said, putting one hand on her hip as she regarded Melia and Will. "You gave us one hell of a scare! How are you feeling?"

Will didn't immediately reply. He continued dragging his eyes across the room, still wearing that slightly frowny, slightly-tired expression.

So Melia gave him a little tug at his hip with her hand, and she looked up at him, something expecting in her eyes.

Will blinked a couple of times, gave the barest shake of his head and then said, "I'm…" He halted, and Huey saw in real time how Will went through several emotional stages, his face drawn and unhappy. "I have been better," he then admitted, the words falling heavily from his lips. "And…I'm sorry about the wall…" he worked his jaw, his body tense, and Melia inched closer towards him, pressing herself against his side with a gentle softness.

It…reminded Huey of the way Rune used to reassure him every time he felt anxious or sad or down or…or scared.

"It's fine, I got insurance against random Pokemon attacks," Rhodea said with a wink. "We're all so glad you made it out alive, Will. Come on, sit down."

They did. Will and Melia sat down on the couch together, Huey noted as he plopped down onto a chair himself.

Will glanced over at Huey, then met Kanon's eyes and began, "Kanon, I'm so so - "

"Will, it's fine," Kanon said. "Don't worry about that. Of all the things to worry about, it's not that."

Huh?

"But - "

Rhodea cut him off. "So! Clothing time. I see you managed to find some new clothes at the hospital?"

What was that about?

"Yeah," Melia said, and she pressed her knee against Will's. "When Erin and I found him, his clothes were in tatters, again - "

"Again?" A confused Huey muttered. This happened often?

" - so I headed down to one of those shops at the hospital and bought a new set for appearance sake," Melia said. She looked Will over again. "It's definitely a stopgap method, but we'll get you new clothes."

"I can't wait," Will said.

Melia leaned against him again, giving him a full-bodied nudge. "Don't be like that. We'll go together. It could be fun."

When Will looked over at her, his tired, worn features softened, and he smiled, actually smiled like a guy who hadn't just lost his arm when he made a building explode.

Had there been blood? Huey bet that there would have been blood. Was that why he needed new clothes? Was that the tatters Melia meant?

Aaaah! It was horrible and he felt squeamish even thinking about it! How could Will be this calm?!

"Okay, before we start ordering food and tending to the logistics of the situation, I'm really, really curious how you got to this point, my guy," Rhodea said. She crossed one arm over the other, rested her chin on the base of her hand and eyed him. "After you - ah, you disappeared early in the morning and then basically dropped off the grid until the afternoon."

"I went searching," Will said. "Team - t-the…there's a presence of other hostile groups in the city. One of them has been stalking us ever since we came into the city. I tailed them to that building…but things got out of hand."

"Got out of hand?" Rhodea said, raising her dark eyebrows at him. "Got out of hand? Will, you were ground zero for a skyscraper exploding on top of you!"

"I noticed," Will dryly said. "I thought those guys knew what caused Venam to be - a-and Talon, too, to be petrified. "They didn't. It was a dead end."

"Not entirely," Kanon said. "You have learned that they now operate in GDC as well, didn't you? You learned where they had their base, and you even learned some of their tactics as you fought them."

"Maybe…" Will replied, but he didn't look very convinced.

"Let's get our priorities in order, okay?" Rhodea said chipperly. "Will, you are going to be taking things easy for a while, so we can figure some stuff out."

"It's fine," Will said, clearly not agreeing with Rhodea. "I can still do things."

"You can, but you're not going to," Melia said. "At the very, very least, you are going to take things easy today."

Will looked at her again, and it really looked like he was about to protest.

But then Melia glared at him, hard, and that led to Will not protesting.

Huey softly whistled. That meant something, he was sure of it.

"Erin and I had to dig you out of several thousand tons of skyscraper," she gently but firmly reminded him. "Most people don't bounce back from that at all. You still have a whole program of rehabilitation and physiotherapeutic exercises to receive from the hospital. Until then, you are going to take it easy."

If someone had told Huey that he was going to have to take things easy, he'd take that as a perfect opportunity to sleep in, play video games and watch movies. That only made sense!

So why did Will look so troubled to hear that? "For how long?" He asked.

Melia raised a slender eyebrow. "For as long as I say."

And Will, headstrong and stubborn, didn't have anything to say to that. Huey was pretty sure Melia noticed that, too, because the smile she gave was a bit too heavy on the smirk side of things.

Rhodea shared an appreciative look with Kanon, who merely shrugged. "Your bag with your stuff is still upstairs," Kanon then informed them. "In case you need anything."

"What I need, is a shower," Will grumbled, resting his head against the couch.

"Then go take one," Rhodea offered. The bathroom upstairs is fancier than the one downstairs, you know?"

"You have two bathrooms?" Melia gasped.

Rhodea winked. "Sure do. That's the benefit of my position, you know? I had one installed with enough room for multiple people, just in case it was ever necessary. You could even draw yourself up a bath, if you want."

"A bath?" Will asked, as if the idea was completely alien to him.

"In the bathtub," Huey helpfully supplied.

Rhodea snorted. "Thanks Huey. Yeah, a bath. I got some oils that can promote muscle relaxation and "tissue regeneration" according to the cover, something about faster recuperation, but I never tried that. Seemed too farfetched, but hey! You never know."

"...I think a shower is fine," Will said. He started getting back to his feet, but then he winced and halted, and his expression got sort of angry for a moment before it flickered to annoyance, then blankness, in the span of a second. He finished getting up regardless. "Do you mind if I…?"

"On your own? Is that wise?" Rhodea asked.

"It's just a shower," Will muttered.

Melia stood up as well. "I'll tag along, just in case."

"You don't…you don't have to, if you don't - "

"I know," Melia said, and she took his hand, intertwining her fingers with his. "But I want to."

…Melia was offering to help him draw a bath! That was so nice of her!

Will's face turned red. "If you don't mind…please?" he murmured.

"Of course," Melia reassured him.

He was blushing, Will was blushing and Huey gasped when he realized why

Melia was offering to help him get ready to draw a bath!

But Will might have some problems taking off his shoes, now that he only had one arm to use, which…

Oh.

OH.

Now Huey felt sad again.

"If you need assistance, you know where to find us," Kanon said. "I can imagine everything will be different from here on out, but we're always there to help."

Melia and Will hadn't even made it three steps to the stairs before the doorbell suddenly rang and they both froze in their tracks.

"Who's that?" Kanon asked.

Melia slid her free hand into her pocket.

"I dunno," Rhodea replied.

Will stepped towards the door, glared at the knob, and then cautiously asked, "Who is it?"

The voice on the other side replied after a few seconds of ominous silence.

Then…

"It's…it's Aelita."