Inyssa took another sip of her chamomile tea, and as she flicked her tongue inside her mouth trying in vain to taste the absent flavor, she thought to herself that this was getting quite old. Not that she had a problem with helping others when they needed her, but having to carry and take care of two exhausted and famished people in the space of a couple hours was a bit absurd.

"…that's why I collapsed on the floor." Lucas finished telling his story, his hands trying to extract warmth from a cup of hot chocolate. "And then... well, you know the rest."

Barry's eyes were glued to him as he told his story, hands grabbing his knees. "The part with the horde of Psyducks was really cool."

She took another sip, mostly out of habit than anything else, and debated whether to scold or praise Lucas. She decided to go with half and half.

"It's good that you're finally stepping out of Rowan's shadow." She leaned back against the cushy leather sofa, touching shoulders with Barry. "Though I can't say crossing route 208 and part of Mt. Coronet without a proper team or supplies was a good idea."

Lucas looked down to his cup, a faint blush on his cheeks.

"You can't make me feel bad for my decision." He tried to put some strength into his voice, but ended up making it break. "You were right; I have to study Pokemon on my own if I want to make a name for myself."

She opened her mouth to reply but felt Barry's elbow lightly tap her ribs. He knit his eyebrows and shot her a look of Don't make fun of him. She pouted back and took the cup to her lips once again.

"Hey man, that's great!" Barry reached to the other side of the small table and gave the boy a couple pats on the shoulder. "It's cool to see you break out of your shell, you know? So what if you kinda almost died a couple times? I'm sure the professor would be proud."

Lucas crossed his arms unconsciously, hugging himself, and showed them a smile that made something jump inside the cold, uncaring void that was her chest. She raised the cup to her mouth to hide the red on her cheeks and gave Barry a side glance. Judging by his expression, she figured the boy's charm had worked on him too.

He shouldn't be allowed to be that adorable, she protested to herself. There's just no justice.

"T-thank you! I'll try my best!" He nodded energetically, lowering his mug to the table and reaching for something inside his backpack. "I already got so much information on Psyduck! I can't wait to show the professor what I found out about their migration process."

He placed a small laptop on top of his knees, the same one she'd seen back in Sandgem. An idea formed at the edge of Inyssa's mind, slightly out of reach.

"That's… that's okay, bud." Barry raised both hands, forming a half smile. "No offense but I don't think I'd understand half of it."

She clicked her tongue, foot slowly tapping the floor. What was she thinking about before? Something about that computer and Lucas…

"Oh… yes, sorry." He nodded nervously, closing the laptop with care. "I'm sure you already have all the information you could need in your Pokédex…"

A light turned on inside Inyssa's mind, and her eyes opened wide. She could almost swear she felt one of her Pokeballs twitch a bit. Trying to appear casual, she looked around, making sure no one was eavesdropping on them. While the Pokemon Center was packed with a fair number of trainers none of them were close enough to hear anything they were saying, especially with so many conversations going on around them already.

She leaned forward, eyebrows knit together, and left her cup at the table.

"Lucas…" she said, trying to sound casual. "How much information would you say you have in that thing compared to the Pokédex?"

She felt Barry's inquisitive eyes on her. She simply took her index finger to her lips, and pointed with her eyes to her belt.

"Huh? Oh, well…" Lucas grabbed his chin. "A tad more, I guess? I have access to research papers and notes from trainers across the region."

"From other trainers?" Barry asked. "What do you mean?"

Lucas was about to answer when Inyssa cut him off.

"He means other Pokédex Holders, you dingus," she said, mostly affectionately. "If a trainer notices a new Pokemon behavior or trait that hasn't been documented, they can add it to the database."

"Well, technically yes," Lucas said. "That data has to be verified first by a specialist, and if it's deemed to be correct then it'll be added to the new versions of the Pokédex." He raised his index finger and smiled proudly, as if he were giving a lecture. "And I have access to all those data points, whether they've been verified or not. The professor trusted me with this information."

"Hey, take pride in whatever you can get," Inyssa said impatiently. "But listen, I need you to look something up for me, think you could do that?"

"Of course! It's the least I can do for your help. What do you want to know?"

"I need information on a certain Pokemon," she whispered. "Look up the words red, ghost and electric."

Something shook inside one of her Pokeballs, and she could swear she felt a jolt of electricity hitting her hip.

"No results on the official records," the boy said after a few seconds of searching. "Not even a mention of it…"

She sat back, arms crossed, and unconsciously scratched the inside of her arm. Barry's expression seemed to say: Yeah, kinda figured.

And after all the trouble she'd went to just to make Lucas warm up to her. Sure, that wasn't her initial plan, but it certainly would've been a nice compensation for her charitable actions. Her eyes moved once more to the Pokeball where Hao rested, and she bit the inside of her lip. Now the only lead they had lay with that old man from Team Galactic.

"Well..." she sighed. "Guess it can't be h…"

"Wait!" Lucas interrupted her, his big almond eyes widening. "There's one mention of it in the rejected data folder."

She felt a spark running through her body, completely unrelated to the previous one.

"It's an email. Here, let me read it for you." He cleared his throat in preparation, and started reading the text with a serious tone that would've made her chuckle if the situation were different. "Greetings, professor Rowan. I apologize for contacting you without any prior notice, but as of now I can't rely on the Association to hold on to this information. I hope you remember me from the day you gave me my Charmander, my name is S…"

He stuttered the end of the word, so that Inyssa didn't catch it, so suddenly he almost choked on it. He slowly looked up to meet her eyes, a hint of fear behind them, and didn't say anything else. Inyssa blinked a couple times, confused. What the hell was wrong with him? Why'd he stop out of nowhere? Why would reading a trainer's name cause that kind of react-?

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Realization hit her like a hammer, and for a moment she felt like she couldn't breathe. Of course, of fucking course it had to be that. Barry's eyes opened wide as well; he had probably arrived at the same conclusion.

Well, that explained why Lucas suddenly seemed scared of her. Last time she'd heard that name in his presence, her reaction had been... more exaggerated than it should have been. She closed her eyes for a few moments and breathed deeply, attempting to calm the storm that had formed inside her chest. She opened her mouth to speak, and her voice came a lot calmer than she'd expected.

"I'm okay," she told him, tone emotionless. "Keep going."

He looked at Barry, who shot him a look of Go on, she'll probably not want to kill you this time. Or maybe she was reading too much into his expression, who knows.

"My name is… Shadi Dawn." He pronounced the name carefully. "As for the contents of this report, I wanted to inform you that I might have discovered a new species of Pokemon. As you might know, deep in Eterna forest lies an old chateau which has been abandoned for decades. I was training in the vicinity of the forest when I noticed something strange in one of the windows of the mansion, so I went in. Inside I encountered a few oddities not worth mentioning here, but most importantly I ran across a very powerful creature. It was gaseous in form, and its appearance was that of a red bolt with blue eyes, its body brimming with electricity…"

Barry let out a small gasp of excitement, but Inyssa was too concentrated on Lucas' words to pay any attention to it. And while she felt a strange warmth at hearing her sister's words again, a stray thought appeared in her mind: Wow, gaseous? Its body brimming? She really did always talk like a nerd.

"…unfortunately, I was not able to catch this Pokemon, as it ran away the moment I gained the upper hand," Lucas continued . "I've been camping inside this abandoned house for almost a week now, and though I find myself enjoying its antiquated commodities, I'm afraid I haven't run into the ghost Pokemon since. I will have to leave this place in a few days when I finish taking care of business, and I hope we can meet again in Sandgem Town by then. I will show you some sketches I drew of this strange creature and we can discuss how to collect more information on it. I apologize again for bothering you, professor. Sincerely yours, Shadi."

He stopped reading, pausing to take a deep breath, and looked up at her expectantly. She simply stared at the small table at her feet, her mind storming with questions. Her body leaned forward, and she raised one hand to her face, massaging her eyelids and letting out a small sigh.

"When was this message sent?" she asked.

"Uh… hold on…" Lucas' eyes moved down to his computer. "More than two years ago."

Inyssa bit one of her fingers, enough to make it hurt. Two years ago. After she challenged the Champion and lost, but before she disappeared. Somewhere in the middle of her months of training, and possibly a few weeks after she saw her for the last time, back in that cold morning in Twinleaf.

"Thanks," she said, fingers over her mouth, nails digging into her cheek. "That's all I needed."

Lucas' gaze moved from Inyssa to Barry, and then back to her. Worry formed a wrinkly, adorable line on his forehead.

"Well, If I can help you with anything else…"

"I'll be sure to let you know," she smiled. "Now, you should really get all that dust and dirt off your clothes and maybe take a bath and a nap. I'm sure you need it after what you've been through."

"Yeah, we even booked in a room for you!" Barry said enthusiastically. "Trust me, those beds are comfier than falling asleep on top of an Altaria's wings."

"T-thank you so much!" Lucas got up and bowed to the point his hat almost fell to the floor. "I'll be heading for Pastoria City as soon as I recover; I was assigned to study the Great Marsh and the Pokemon that live in it."

"Don't forget to buy food," she reminded him. "And try to train your Pokemon whenever you can; you'll need them for protection."

"We'll swing by Pastoria at some point to fight the Gym Leader," Barry added. "So we'll see you again for sure. Now go get some rest, man."

Lucas nodded, and for a few seconds stood there with a look that told her he was debating whether to hug them or not. In the end he decided to air on the side of caution and simply headed upstairs toward his room.

Inyssa grabbed her cup from the table and drank what was left of the tea. Cold, tasteless, and not enough to dissolve the knot formed in her throat. She applied more force to her fingers, briefly considering either breaking the mug in her hands or throwing it across the room. One option could end up with her hand covered in cuts, the other would attract unwanted attention from the rest of the trainers in the lobby.

She clicked her tongue, trying to focus on anything else other than her thoughts. Was she breathing? Yes, but it felt like she needed more air than usual. She hadn't blinked in a few seconds and she felt a bothersome sting in her eyes. The tip of her fingers were red from grabbing onto the cup so strongly. Maybe if she just…

"Niss." Barry's voice brought her back to reality, and she turned to him. His lips were stretched, pale. "Are you okay? We can go somewhere else if you want to."

She shook her head, perhaps too quickly, and put one of her hands on his shoulder. It felt real, unlike everything else around her. She closed her eyes and tried to control her breathing, tried to tell her stupid heart to stop beating so hard because fuck no, she was not going to have a panic attack with so many people around.

Collect your thoughts, put them in order, she told herself. Just like Sarah taught you.

"Why was she in Eterna Forest?" Her voice came out slightly more high pitched than she wished. "What was she doing there?"

"Didn't she say she was training?" replied Barry, still observing her with caution.

"Barry, we've been there," she said, frustration clinging to her voice. "And we got through it with just our second stage starters. Her Pokemon were as strong as those of an Elite Four; she would gain nothing from training in that place."

His fingers started tapping on the couch's arm as his expression turned to one of concentration. She'd only seen him that contemplative a handful of times.

"She also said she was investigating something. She spent an entire week there."

She nodded weakly. Maybe she ran into the little girl Barry saw? The one she decided to interpret as just being an illusion created by that ghost Pokemon because seriously, she was not ready to think about the other possibility it entailed.

"Do you think she was the Big Sis that little girl mentioned?" Barry asked, quicker on the uptake than she expected. "Since Metchi said that wasn't her."

"Metchi could've lied," she said, "but… yeah, that's also a possibility."

"What are you gonna do?"

"Talk to Rowan as soon as I get the chance. If they really met after she sent him that email then he might know something about… this thing." She took the Pokeball out of her belt, examining it closely.

She also hoped he would have any kind of lead or clue about her sister's whereabouts. It was a small chance, but she was not ready to let that small flame of hope die just yet. There had to be something hidden within all this; some kind of connection. The ghost Pokemon, her sister, Team Galactic, Mars… too many coincidences to just write them off.

She imagined what Shadi would've told her: People are good at finding patterns where there are none.

Great, and now the knot in her throat was back. She couldn't think properly in that state, she had to expel some energy somehow.

Her gaze went to the other side of the room and moved between the rest of the young people sharing the lobby with them. All seemed to be around their age, sitting together in groups of two or more. Some ate their food while discussing their adventure, others sat around the gigantic plasma television arguing over what movie to pick, and a few of them were with their… significant others, so to speak. She ignored those the fastest.

She felt eyes in her back, and when she turned around she noticed one of them looking away, trying to casually make it look like he wasn't staring. He looked around twenty, dark skin and short black hair combed stylishly. Next to him sat a girl quite a bit taller and with a more muscular complexion, her long red hair tied in a ponytail. She wore a green tank top and had a black hoodie tied around her waist. Hanging from her back was a wooden sword covered in bandages; a bokken, she was pretty sure it was called. The spark in her eyes sent shivers down her spine.

They were the only two who looked like respectable trainers, and she had to stop herself from walking to their table and challenging them then and there.

"I need to fight something." The words left her mouth before she had time to process them.

"You mean like…" Barry looked at her, concerned.

"A Pokemon battle," she clarified. "But I'm guessing it'd be rude to challenge people when they're trying to eat."

"Yeah…" He nodded nervously, "maybe a bit."

She considered her options for about half a second before getting up from the couch.

"Let's go to the gym."

"Oh boy," Barry muttered under his breath. "Come on Niss, we just got here. I thought we could stay for a few d…"

"We're not going to challenge the Gym Leader." She grabbed the sleeve of his shirt and pulled him up. "We'll fight her students and get a feel of what's waiting for us in there."

Barry formed a smile, the kind that lit his eyes like fire.

"I can get behind that," he said, punching his left palm with his right fist. "Whoever defeats more people gets another point."

"You're on."