~~~ Chapter 40 - Extract ~~~

"Good morning, Dawn." Her nurse spoke as he entered her Jubilife hospital room. She raised her arms, waving them at the man. He was a couple of years older than her, in his mid-twenties. He smiled, his teeth in perfect alignment. He had long, black hair, not unlike her own slate-blue. She waved him in, pressing the button to raise her hospital bed and sit her up.

"One last checkup and today will be your last day," Nathan said, the nurse staring down at his tablet through slim glasses outlined with tasteful black rims. As much as she enjoyed Nathan's company, she was eager to get back out there. She'd sent the messages to Looker the previous night. The man seemed to clue into everything that was going on in multiple regions at once.

Organizations and conspiracies are a web, they'd come to learn. Galactic group had relations to the finally-uprooted Rocket organization. All that was left of Giovanni's legacy was a Johto facility Cyrus had funded from defunct members of Giovanni's old science crew. She couldn't say exactly when, but if Dawn knew of the operation, Silver and Lance were going to be all over it, and soon.

Dawn smiled at the nurse, who was waiting patiently for her to come from her reverie. "Sorry, I've had a lot on my mind," she said.

Nathan returned the smile. "So you must have. It's certainly been all over the news the last few days. You should turn on the TV and watch it," he said. "If you want a distraction, anyway. Apparently there's a bit about a dancing leavanny out in Unova. My wife was telling me about it last night. It's supposed to be a super cute story."

"Haha," Dawn said, raising her hand to pull her hair back behind her ear. She couldn't tell if she was blushing or not. "Maybe later today, when I'm out of the hospital," she said. The nurse had neglected to mention that particular detail until then. She didn't have quite enough time to ruminate on that, as the nurse immediately launched into the routine that had been theirs for the last few days since the Mount Coronet incident.

"All right then!" Nurse Nathan said. "Time for your last check. Deep breath!" And so they went through the various checks for distortion poisoning—checking to ensure your inner ears and general abilities were within their baseline. She'd lasted a lot longer in the distortion than she should have. They said she was incredibly lucky.

And Dawn was lucky.

But she'd trusted her alakazam to help her out the last stairwell after her empoleon, Pip, had taken down the mega absol. The galactic member had let her go, apparently aware of her condition, choosing instead to stay behind in that room, smashing as many of the red crystals on the walls as they could. No one, not even Looker, had asked her much about the fight yet.

When the checks were over, the nurse spoke, "it looks like you're all recovered! Your MRI and other deeper scans came back fine. The doctors all recommend that you. *ahem*. Avoid strenuous activity, fields of distortion, ghosts, psychics, magnetic fields, et cetera. For at least three weeks. But as far as we can tell, you're fine. You're free to leave."

"Thank you," she said, giving her a courtesy-bow for the medical care and advice. Unfortunately for the doctors, Dawn wasn't exactly ready to let the galactic expedition sit and fester for three-four weeks. Alone in her room again, she changed out of her hospital gown into her casual clothes, which were just a regular tank and a pair of loose sweatpants she kept in her bag when she was out traveling and wasn't trying to impress anyone.

Back out in the Jubilife sun, she'd opened her bag—oh. Right. Barry was taking care of her pokemon while she was sick. She pulled her phone, and called him. She took a stop by the local shop, picking up a cup of boba tea. Sipping it down outside in the shade of an umbrella in the midmorning sun, Barry appeared at their local meet-up spot with both Looker and her alakazam.

"Awe, you didn't get any for me," Barry said, Looker taking his seat at their little table. She rolled her eyes in annoyance as Barry went inside to get him and Looker their own cuppas. Barry knew the deal. Ever since they'd picked up Professor Rowan's pokemon by the lakeside, the last person who lost was the one to buy the drinks.

It'd been more than four years since then, and she nor her team had lost to the kid yet. She pulled out a bag of small candies, tossing them up in the air, her alakazam's eyes glowing. As they all coalesced into a stream, flowing into the psychic pokemon's mouth piece by piece as she chewed.

Dawn smiled when her pokemon gave her one of its spoons. She popped the lid completely off, stirring the beads of sugar, scooping them out one by one.

"That's quite the trick," Looker said. "Don't think I'll ever get used to seeing an alakazam give up one of their spoons."

She winked at him, smug in flaunting it in public. Pokemon emotions don't translate one-for-one to other pokemon, but by the stares they got from some of the smarter pokemon in the city, particularly when a lucario or gardevoir passed by, she couldn't help but feel her alakazam's own sense of pride. "Do you have a relationship like this with YOUR trainer?" She imagined it gloating.

"Looker, is something on my face?" Barry asked, handing the chuckling detective an iced coffee. "Dawn, are you laughing at me again?"

"No, now why would I do that?" Dawn said, playing coy. "My mom always taught me it was poor form to make fun of people in second and third."

"Oh my gosh, not this again!" Barry said. "Look, I saved your life multiple times now, you know that!"

It took a moment for her to consider exactly what he was saying. Her expression shifted as she considered his words. As much as her pride didn't want to, he was right, despite being both annoying and less "distracted" by the goings-on of team galactic except when they got in his way on his nuclear path toward gym badges, Barry actually did come in clutch with heals on the worst of days.

There were stories that percolated online about how brutal the Kanto circuit was, trainers ambushing others right as they exited the lightless Mount Moon. Barry, on the other hand, just wanted to test whether he was really the strongest or not.

Looker, for his part, had pulled out a couple pieces of papers, fully ignoring their banter, "We have no confirmed bodies," he said. "I've got a few informants across various regions, members of our agency have polled and interviewed the usual spots. Cyrus is probably dead."

Dawn's stomach sank. Probably wasn't good enough. The man needed to be in prison, or confirmed dead. The moment Looker had said that, her mind was made up.

She hadn't even said anything, but Barry already ground his teeth.

"Dawn, no. You can't—" when she glared at him, Barry fell silent. By this point, he knew better.

They had played a fun game as distant friends, but she'd never actually cared for her rival's opinions. The guy had rushed headfirst, and then when she tried to rush in, all of a sudden Barry would develop a sense of caution. And well, there might have been a bit of truth to it. She'd known she was rushing into a distortion zone, and hadn't brought a mask with her, nor had she stopped to pick a mask up. But she'd made it out fine. She tossed her alakazam another set of mini-treats, these ones locked in a puzzle which released treats each time it got unlocked, before the code would change again.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Dawn stirred her boba with her alakazam's spoon, ruminating over the events over the last few months, using her other hand to flip Looker's coded debriefing card. It wasn't the most secure system, in that if there were prying eyes or pictures taken, it could be decoded in a couple days without the ciphers, but usually Looker kept the really sensitive stuff to himself and his cohorts.

She looked the detective in the eyes, then gave the spoon back to alakazam, before finishing the last of her delicious tea. People said the effects of the alakazam spoon on what you ate was just a myth, and if it really did work the way it was said, it was "just" placebo. But she didn't care, if it made everything you scooped it with taste great, does it really matter?

The detective frowned under her stare, before glancing at the TV of some purple shoes and the unovan bug, before smiling.

"Let's take a walk into the woods," Looker said, eyeing the various masses of people and pokemon passing back and forth on the street. Finally, Dawn thought, sighing. Barry was fidgeting as the three walked out into the park trail, before she had her alakazam teleport them to their real debriefing spot.

Taking a sip of his coffee, Looker pulled out his briefcase. "We have a member of our team down there with Lyra."

"The Lyra? Like Kanto and Johto champion?" Barry asked. Looker just smiled.

"Yes."

"What's she doing in Unova?" Dawn asked. "No one's had her whereabouts since she put Silver in jail and pushed Red off the mountain." Silver was out by now, of course, and Lance was back as Kanto champion again. That had been literally years ago, and Giovanni's son was doing good work across both Johto and Hoenn. Looker just shrugged.

"She wants to be an Archaeologist," he said. "She's an Unovan native, but her mom was born in Johto. No one down there actually knows who she was." Dawn nodded. She was growing in popularity too. In fact, she'd been lucky no one on the street had accosted either her or Barry, asking for autographs. Neither Dawn nor Barry had beat Cynthia yet. Dawn didn't feel like she had an answer for that damn garchomp.

"At any rate," Looker continued, "the reason why I say we don't think Cyrus is dead, is that he's supposed to have a killswitch device on him." In the open, dense mountain air, the detective lit up a cigar. "The device supposedly pings out to a remote server somewhere in his company's offices, and one of his techies had said that so long as he was living, the money was to be wired to an offshore account in Unova. We haven't traced where that money's going, or why yet. But we've laid some lightly-irradiated bills trying to trace where the physical money ends up, as well as some blackhats working to trace the digital lines down."

"Neither Barry nor I can help with that," Dawn said, taking a step away from the smoke, sitting down on the grass, leaving her alakazam out. The high-level psychic's presence was more than enough to ward off even the most aggressive pokemon that lived in the area. She poked at her belt, pulling up Pip's pokeball. Barry had known she was getting out of the hospital today, and had already loaded them up.

Dawn clicked the ball, releasing Pip. She'd not seen him since he defied the mega absol. The six foot tall pokemon towered over her, before noticing she was in front of him, flopping on top of Dawn, in the only way an oversized penguin can show their affection. He'd been in shambles by the time the galactic grunt decided it wasn't worth pursuing her or the rest of her team.

For that, she was glad. Even a moment's delay, and the doctors were sure the damage would have killed her, if not caused her an extra week in the hospital or possibly permanent damage.

"I've got an informant up north, who says they saw Cyrus' commanders and what's left of the more… dedicated grunts who'd followed the man around, but weren't on the mountain. We're monitoring their movements, but we don't have anything we can act on for at least another couple days." Looker said, ignoring Dawn's reunion with her penguin, smoking his cigar.

"So we think Cyrus is alive, even if it's in the distortion world?" Barry asked. "And he's running his commanders from Giratina's domain?" Barry puzzled out.

Dawn managed to push Pip off, tossing the penguin a treat from her bag. She'd sent for several bags while in the hospital. Pip deserved it, though occasionally she wondered how Pip's power had scaled so high in the midst of a mega evolution. Mega's weren't just evolutions that scaled from being bonded.

Megas tended to only come out when you were fighting against an impossible threat with an overwhelming advantage. She shivered—the absol had already been in mega evolution form when the grunt had burst into the room. But the doctors said she was probably already coming down with the symptoms by that point.

"Cyrus is alive. I'm sure of it." Dawn said, drawing Barry and Looker's attention. "It could be a busted device, but the man's way too smart to just die from distortion poisoning. You did say he had a mask, right? What if this had been his plan? Get Giratina's attention and get pulled into the distortion world? Isn't the distortion world where souls are purified?" she asked while giving Pip some pats.

"That's one understanding of the myth. Among many." Looker said.

"I really can't believe this," Barry said. "I saw the man get pulled into the flotsam and jetsam of distortion."

"Did you see where the red chains went?" Looker asked. "Or the piles of equipment the crew had pulled up to the top of the mountain?" The detective pulled out a sheet of paper from his jacket. "They'd carried enough refills and supplies to last their entire thirty-person team three days inside the ruins. Giratina's portals pulled all their oxygen supplies and a fourth of the food and water that had been carted all the way up. You know I've already done the numbers, Barry. It is improbable that Giratina's either adopted Cyrus or doing Cyrus' will. Yet the man could still be alive. It's only been a few days."

Unfortunately for Dawn, she had already passed out by the time Giratina had shown up. The mountain entrance had sat at twenty-thousand feet. Spear Pillar, at the very top, had been at thirty-three thousand feet. She hadn't been cognizant by the end to even eat a nutri-bar to help her muscles heal from the hike. There was more than one reason the mountain hadn't been breached. And it wasn't just because of the magnezones and magneton that infested the mountainside while it wasn't spewing the ambrosia of the ghosts.

Barry just shrugged at Looker's answer. The impulsive guy's face turned, defeated.

"That's enough for me," Dawn said. "But how do we get in there? It's not like anyone has hoopa or members of the creation trio on speed-dial, and I'm pretty sure any actual holes into the distortion world would already be documented."

Looker smirked. "That's what we're working on right now, Dawn. Do you remember seeing a Leavanny at the mountain that day?"

"Don't think so," Dawn said. She'd blown right past the front guards, not really observing her surroundings. Looker pulled out a pair of small photos, tossing them to her.

"Apparently a leavanny, an unovan-native species, was at Mount Coronet that day."

Okay? She thought. "I mean, there were Galarian ghosts in the s—" a leavanny with a particular skirt. One that she'd seen briefly, if momentarily, on the television at the coffee shop not a half-hour ago.

"I am SO lost in this," Barry said, pulling out a pokeball of his own. "In fact, I'm just gonna take my card and go after Mars and Jupiter. Dawn, take care of yourself. Looker, keep in touch. The next time you see me Dawn, Cynthia will be bumped down to the Elite Four."

Looker just waved as Barry ran off, throwing out the pokeball and taking flight. Dawn didn't even acknowledge his departure. It had taken literal years to convince him that Cyrus was going to be a problem, and now she didn't want to deal with whatever… that mess was. Happy to have Barry gone, she gave Pip and then Alakazam both chin rubs.

"So, Looker. What's the plan?" Dawn asked, switching between the picture of "Leah, the dancing Leavanny" and a picture of what looked to be an un-evolved giratina, pilfered from an unovan pokecenter.

Looker glanced over, looking at her alakazam. "Well, Dawn. We need some information from a bug. And as you're probably aware, it's a bit difficult to question them." He pulled a breath of his cigarette, puffing one out in a donut-like shape. Dawn looked at her alakazam. It had only been about a week or so since the day on the mountain. She was confident they could extract the needed information. She smiled.

"We'll need to practice on some other leavanny first. How much time do we have?"

This time, it was Looker who smiled. "How long does it take for a kid with no badges to beat a multi-region champion?"