Chapter 42 – What happened to Sylvia
"So to sum up… Veronica isn't really Veronica anymore – she's merged with a collective consciousness of Shuppets that have warped her mind." Celio summarised to the room. "And to add to that, the so-called Catalyst that can allow a human control over the elements we've been after this whole time hasn't been a rock at all but is actually Veronica's daughter herself – who she now has captive on an island in the Orange Archipelago which we can't get to because all commercial planes and boats are down. Is that about right?"
Erika, Alex and Adam nodded.
"Well that certainly complicates things." Celio said in a rare moment of averting his gaze from his computer screen.
"It's bloody depressin' is what it is." Blaine grunted, smoking away on a cigar by the window, reading through Moon's journal. "Isaac was a damned fool to do that to himself – and to that poor girl."
A moment of silence and contemplative thought descended upon the lab. Upon hearing of the chaos, Celio had hopped on the Bullet Train and made for Pallet Town. Thanks to a good word put in by Sabrina and Erika, the Oak Laboratory building was now the group's temporary base of operations. Attempting to understand the severity of the situation, Oak had cleared his main lab of his staff: a large, open-plan room with a large screen in the centre surrounded by blinding white computers stations and two glass walls on opposing sides, leading out to the Pallet fields behind.
"All I want to know is – how do we get past the Shuppets?" Asked Adam, leaning against a metal support beam. "If they're the ones that are doing all this and puppeting people like Petrel then maybe my mother is still in there... If we can stop them, this whole thing will be over."
"Professor, this cannot have been a one-off event – please, are you able to give us any more information?" Erika asked.
Professor Samuel Oak sat at one of his work desks with his hands resting on his lap. Famous throughout the world for his research that led to the development of the pokedex, the Professor was beginning to show signs of age. His hair had begun to grey and his movements had started to soften but his mind was still as strong as the tree from which he inherited his name.
"While it's true that Pokemon-human relationships is my area of research, I'm afraid my knowledge is limited on the subject. I can't say that I've ever heard of such an occurrence taking place."
"Alex, what about Felina?" Adam asked, knowing full-well the answer he was going to get.
"No… that won't work. Her specialty is regional differences in Pokemon; she wouldn't be any help either."
"As it happens, there are very few people who specialise in Ghost-types at all; there is just a lot we don't yet know about them." The Professor added.
"But there are people who know though?" Alex asked.
"Well, yes but-" Oak began.
"-So let's call one and talk to them! There must be someone in that phone of yours Erika."
"I suppose I could try Morty but he's over in Johto." Erika said, attempting to find a contact in her phone and chuckling. "He's probably still asleep and not exactly the most reliable. Although I'm sure we're forgetting someone..."
The Professor ambled around the room in thought. "A Ghost specialist." He kept repeating. "The closest one would be…" He mused, until stopping abruptly, the colour draining from his face.
Erika smiled, realising the same thing. "Call her." She said, holding her phone out in the direction of the Lab's namesake.
"I-I will not." He protested nervously as he gripped his lab coat.
"Call her." Erika repeated.
"The kid's right, Sam." Blaine added, shutting the journal. "We're out of our depth here: we need 'er. This is bigger than your petty feud."
Oak's face became indignant in a matter of seconds. "Silly feud? Of all people, Franklin! I fell in love with her and she ripped my heart out because she believed that I was a weak Trainer. That's hardly a petty feud."
Blaine laughed hoarsely, coughing on his cigar. "Come off it! I've seen the way you two flirt by throwin' insults back and forth – just do it."
Erika gestured with her phone once more, more insistently. "Call. Her."
Oak paused for a moment and walked toward the phone, huffing, taking it from the gym leader. "Fine." He grunted, pressing the call button.
"Who are you talking about?" Alex turned in his chair to ask Blaine.
"The one and only Agatha, formerly of the Indigo Four."
Alex remembered that name. Back in Vermillion City he'd heard a news report that she had decided to step down from one of the biggest pokemon training roles in the region. Aside from that, he hadn't any idea what she was doing now.
"The old gal is held up in the Vermillion Gym now in the next town over. She's as cold as death but if there's something to be known about Ghost types – she's your girl." Blaine continued.
Oak continued to pace around the lab with the phone to his ear, the dialling tone echoing out into the immediate vicinity. Celio had a mischievous grin plastered across his face and coughed, attempting to get the others' attention. He winked and pressed a key on his keyboard and the screen that towered above them lit up. Suddenly the whole room could hear the dialling tone clear as day but Oak remained oblivious, staring out of the window to the hills behind the group.
All of a sudden the screen came to life as the dialling tone ceased. The image of a small, aged woman with pure white, shoulder-length hair appeared; if her scorn was anything to go by, she didn't look like a woman to be trifled with.
"H…hello?" Oak said, unsure if anyone was on the other end of the phone.
"Not even going to greet me face to face then?" Agatha's sharp voice cut through the room.
Oak attempted to hide the look of confusion his face was clearly showing. "How did you – We're on the telephone!"
"We're on Facechat you incompetent old fool."
Oak moved the phone away from his face and looked at it to see a blank screen. In his perplexity, he tapped the screen, much to the amusement of Blaine, Celio and Erika.
"Samuel - over here!" She barked from the screen. Oak jumped and dropped the phone, realising what was happening. For a moment the room were in a state of hysterics, laughing so hard that their sides hurt. For Erika, Alex and Adam, it was a warm, cleansing feeling to be able to laugh in the middle of what they'd been through. Oak stood indignant, not finding the situation the slightest bit funny.
"Then to what do I owe the displeasure?" Agatha asked as the laughing subsided. "I'm assuming it must be something important, given everything that's been happening recently."
"We need your help, Ma'am." Adam said, rising to his feet.
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"You're sure?"
"It happened at Silph, then again at Fuschia. She's the Pearl, I'm sure of it." Naoko whispered to Lanette.
The ponytailed girl sighed and continued her work, tinkering with the inside of the machine in front of her aggressively. There was near silence in the room for a few seconds: Gideon was deep in thought across the other side of the machine and the only signs of motion were the occasional gust of wind from outside, the dripping from the cracks in the ceiling and the bouncing of a ball against the wall from Proton who was keeping watch by the exit.
Since being left to work an hour ago, Naoko had been feeling less and less attached to Lanette, as if a distance had suddenly formed between them. It seemed like the more Naoko tried, the further away Lanette became.
Handing her a wrench, Naoko held it tight, refusing to let go.
"What?" Lanette asked sharply.
"Something's wrong – why are you being so distant?"
Lanette let go of the wrench and sighed once again, wiping her hands on her overalls. "I just… I don't know how you could do that to those people. You called them your friends."
Naoko was taken aback. She knew deep inside her that these questions were coming but she'd shut away that part of herself, not wanting to feel the guilt of giving up the girl that had saved her life just to save her own yet again. She just didn't expect the question to arrive so soon.
"I needed to see you." She said.
"At the expense of someone else?!" She whispered sharply. "That's a load bouffalant and you know it. That's never how we play it! We had enough crap happen to us before all this that you should know better."
"But –"
"Look!" Lanette cried, gesturing above them. "You've done that, and don't you dare say again that it was for me because I would never put my needs over those of other people."
Naoko looked above the machine to see a large metal circular frame and shackled in the centre was April, her body still limp from her encounter with the Shuppets.
Immediately Naoko felt her instincts kicking in to go in on the defensive and couldn't fight them.
"Hey pigtails, I didn't even know if you were alive or dead – you just dropped off the face of the planet after sending me a letter with that bloody necklace in. Who does that?! I thought –" Naoko paused, realising that she was getting herself worked up too much and lowered her voice back to a whisper. "I thought that I meant more to you than that."
Lanette guffawed. "You think I had a bloody choice in my own kidnapping? What you did goes way beyond me going missing. From what you told me, that girl up there has a brother, a friend – so that makes three lives that you've ruined just to get here with… what, no escape plan? Well thanks Naoko, thanks a lot."
Naoko became speechless – as much as she felt like biting back, she had nothing to say. Nothing to absolve her of her sins and reckless decisions. She just looked at Lanette with glassy, vulnerable eyes and all she wanted to explain was that even though she was with people, the truth was that she had felt incredibly alone. She had missed her best friend, her companion, more than she could express and just… couldn't find the words.
Getting nothing back from Naoko, she snatched the wrench away and continued working. "I thought you had come for me, somehow known what had happened and found me but… not like this."
Lanette rose to her feet and placed the wrench back in the box next to Naoko and took off her gloves. "I mean… What would Dillan say?"
Naoko froze; Lanette's words piercing her chest like an icy dagger. Through all of this, through everything, Lanette had been here – a prisoner of Veronica's. She hadn't seen the things she'd seen… She didn't know that Dillan had died on the SS Anne.
"Lanette…"
"Well it doesn't matter anyway." Lanette scoffed under her breath as she input a string of code into Gideon's device. "When we finish this godforsaken machine, they'll kill us, or if we try to escape, they kill us – either way we're dead."
"QUIET!" Gideon bellowed from the other side of the console.
Lanette shot the mad scientist daggers with her eyes before returning to her work adapting the machine. Clutching the side of his chest, pain stretched across Gideon from its sudden use; Veronica had not been forgiving in dealing out his punishment for his earlier comments. "…Gideon is thinking."
The scientist had drawn a complex diamond on a scrap of paper, with one of the Gems at each corner and the words fire, water, grass and normal scrawled next to them. The word "Pearl" was written in the middle and from each of the Gems, more lines had been drawn connecting them to others and to spots near the centre with the rest of the pokemon types dotted sporadically at each intersection.
Using his pen, he was beginning to cross out the resulting elements that had any affinity with the Ruby that they had lost including fire and steel but was struggling to find himself certain of the results that he would produce. Gideon wasn't used to ambiguity or to failure. Ever since what happened to Sylvia, he'd been obsessed with knowledge and certainty, so much so that he refused to perform an experiment if he did not know what the outcome were to be.
Unfortunately for him, he knew that he had mere minutes until Veronica wanted results, and she was going to get them one way or another. According to his data, it should still work without one of the Gems but the process would be incomplete. But it would be enough to appease her for a while. The prospect of succeeding where no one had ever done so before excited Gideon and sent electricity through his body, but doing so under house arrest was so demeaning that the sensation didn't last long.
"Problem with the help?" Proton smiled, appearing over Gideon's shoulder.
The mad scientist scoffed, "It is none of your concern."
Proton lackidaisily attempted to read Gideon's jottings but the scientist slammed it face down on the console next to him, choosing instead to stare out Proton with fire in his wild eyes. Taking the hint, the Rocket held up his arms in surrender and backed away. Gideon grunted and ran his hands through his frayed hair. It had been a while since he had even stepped out of Moon's lab and he decided a brief change of scenery could give him the clarity he needed. Proton's eyes tracked Gideon and he moved out of the exit and subsequently slithered behind him like a glorified guard dog.
Silence swept across the room; only after a minute or so did the sound of the wind and the waves outside penetrate it. Lanette continued to stoically work on the machine and Naoko stood there, replaying their conversation over and over in her head as well as the choices she had made to get here.
Without realising, she found herself staring up at April's lifeless body. Lanette wasn't wrong – Naoko couldn't deny that she had a large part to play in her current situation. She felt like had to make it right... but would anything ever be enough? The look on Erika's face when she offered a trade was a painful enough reminder: a mix of devastation, betrayal and shock. Nothing was going to make that right again.
But she had to try.
Naoko took a quick glance at the open doorway on the other side of the lab and saw nothing but leaves swaying in the night time breeze. No doubt there were still eyes on the exit but for now the coast was clear. Slowly and nonchalantly, she paced toward the sheet of paper that Gideon had left on the console, making sure to step over Lanette who was now working inside the machine itself.
Carefully, she turned the sheet over and deciphered the scribbles. After a few extended moments, Naoko smiled and looked up to April suspended above her.
"I've got you, girl."
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"We think of ghosts as pokemon but there is much more to it than that: in as many ways as they are one and the same, they are completely different." Agatha explained from behind a screen.
"How do you mean?" Adam asked, leaning forward.
"People forget that the word Pokemon has monster written right in there, boy. Ghost pokemon are spirits, rightly so, but they are often fuelled by negative emotions like pain and suffering. They are wild, feral and manipulative creatures that are even more dangerous when in a group.
I dealt with something similar to this where the ghosts acted in such a manner once before, right here in Kanto. There was a young girl, some pretty little thing from Saffron City, and her parents threw away her plush doll, as they do when children grow. Little did they know that the girl was not ready to lose it and would pine and pine for her teddy to return.
It was too late but unbeknownst to them, the doll had been home to a spirit that resented being thrown like garbage – a banette. It's rage attracted other ghosts and soon it became incredibly powerful, commanding a fleet of ghastly like it was nothing. The Banette used the ghastly to possess the girl and her family and if someone hadn't spotted
it when they did and contacted me, lord only knows what would have happened."
"She's pretty full of herself." Alex leaned over and whispered to Blaine.
"Heh." The gym leader chuckled. "With good reason. I'll tell you one thing lad – you don't wanna mess with her."
Meanwhile, Adam's gaze locked with Erika's from across the room, as if they both were coming to the same conclusion at once.
"So what you're saying is… there could be a pokemon behind this? Behind the shuppets, behind Veronica?" Erika asked.
Agatha paused, stopping herself from speaking before she had even begun. Choosing her words carefully, she looked directly into the camera.
"These pokemon, as you, young man, quite rightly have observed with your Shuppet, feed on that source of negative emotion. It is a kind of self-sustaining food but like any well will run dry sooner or later. If what you have told me is true then it seems as if a similar thing may well be happening here."
"Then we can stop it." Adam declared. "All we have to do is unattach the bond between this pokemon and my mum and everything will be okay again – just like Petrel and that girl."
Adam felt a throbbing in his chest. He hadn't called that husk of Veronica Moon 'mum' since he'd seen her twisted form but something inside of him knew, deep down, that he wanted her back. He needed if only for a minute, to be able to speak to her again, to be held by her and to be told that everything was going to be alright. He'd been robbed of 1000 more of those opportunities the night the Rockets appeared on Cleopatra but he had locked that piece of himself away in order to be strong for April.
Agatha sighed. Her iron visage softening slightly. "You misunderstand me, boy. The girl was the main source of pain – the font at the centre – we were able to save those in her family attached to her but she…"
Swallowing, she continued.
"Sylvia Gideon was already gone."
