“You guys realize this is a bad idea,” I said half-heartedly as I followed Luca, Florence, and our assorted Pokemon to a large building that Luca had chosen as a starting place. I kept dragging my feet, so I had fallen behind everyone else.

Luca glanced back at me and shrugged. “If you think so, you can go back to the camp,” he said casually.

Florence shook her head and grinned back at me, swinging the bag of poke balls we had planned to use for target practice over her shoulder. “Monroe just likes to complain. Besides, I bet he is afraid to go back by himself.”

“Am not,” I said, lying. “Anyway, if you guys are so curious, you should at least wait until tomorrow, when it’s light out. How are we supposed to see anything without a lantern?”

I had already given up on the idea of talking the others down from exploring, and I was now trying to help them make rational decisions instead. After all, I was kind of interested in what the ruins would contain; most of the land was off-limits to tourists in my era, so I had only gotten to see one carefully corded-off building when I’d visited before. But if I was planning things, I would much prefer to check out the ruins in the middle of the day, with safety equipment and maybe an adult around to provide backup.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t having much luck. “We will all be too busy tomorrow,” Florence replied. “General Finnegan wants us to begin shortly after dawn, remember?”

“And you do not need to worry about being able to see,” Luca added as he hopped over a rock. “My partner has a solution for that!”

“Swine!” his Piloswine added, scrambling over the same rock behind him.

“Okay, but – well, doesn’t this place feel weird to you?” I asked, grasping desperately for something that would make the others pause. And surprisingly, the question worked. Luca stopped just outside the entrance to the building with his head tilted to the side, and Florence frowned.

“I suppose there is something strange in the air,” Florence said, peering around herself. “It almost feels like being near the shrine in the Forest of Ilex.”

“It feels like visiting one of the Towers to me, but different,” Luca added conversationally. Then he shrugged and grinned. “All the more reason to find out what is making us feel that way!”

I smacked my forehead with the palm of my hand. Why was I the only person with a sense of self-preservation?

S̵̟̺̽͋m̶͖̣͗͊è̸̹l̵͍͈̀̇l̸͓̠͆͒s̷̖̽̆ ̶̱͈͗ o̴̝̚l̶͕̑̽d̵̹͐̕, Pausso added. D̵̦͂̚͜a̴̞̎̓n̶̖͠g̷͕̖̍e̶͇̞̍̇ṙ̵̨̝o̴͇̍u̶͍̇̈́s̴̰͑̉ͅ.̴̗̃ ̸̠͘ Į̴̭͐̈n̶͍͙̅ṫ̷̈́͜e̵̠͂̄ŕ̸͇ẻ̶̻s̵͍̍̇t̷̞̠̑͐ȋ̴̦̗n̶̼̍ͅg̷̮͑.

“You’re as bad as the others,” I muttered to him as I fished around in my pouch for a persim berry. If I was going to participate in this madness, I at least wanted to be prepared for anything.

Before we went into the run-down building, Luca knelt down next to his Piloswine and scratched her behind the ear. “Your turn to shine, buddy,” he said with an easy smile. “Ready for your special move?”

“Pil!” the Piloswine replied. Luca got up and backed away, and she stared hard at the air right in front of her nose. Slowly, a globe of light formed in the air in front of her, shining bright enough to illuminate the area all around us. “Swiiiiine,” she said in a drawn-out tone, and the globe grew larger and larger; then, suddenly, it split into five separate globes that zoomed up into the air to bob around her, spreading their light even further.

“Woah,” I said, impressed. I slowly reached out to touch one of the globes of light that floated near me.

“Don’t!” Luca snapped. I froze in place. “That is actually an attack that my partner is holding at the ready. If you touch it, it will go off.”

I gulped and quickly drew my hand back, ignoring the faint sense of amusement that filtered through my bond with Pausso.

“This is not like any majū attack I have seen,” Florence said, sounding intrigued. “What is it?”

Luca rubbed the back of his head and grinned sheepishly. “It is kind of a clan secret? Well, I suppose I can tell you the name – we call it Hidden Power. Most majū can learn it, but it has to be taught by another trainer and their partner. Your majū will not figure it out naturally, most likely.” The boy laid a finger alongside his nose and smirked. “But my partner has done a lot more with it than the others. No one else can hold onto the light for a long time like she can!”

“Swine,” the Piloswine said happily, and her voice only sounded a little strained from maintaining the move.

“That is settled, so let us go inside!” Luca said. Then he turned right around and walked into the building with Piloswine at his side. Florence and Hoppip followed after him, and I tagged along in the back with Pausso, not wanting to lose the light that Piloswine’s attack provided.

I had expected the inside of the building to be as decayed as the rest of the ruins, but it was in surprisingly good shape. Sure, the tiles on the walls and floor were broken here and there, but I could still make out a faint pattern of colors on the ground. Strange shapes that looked like old-fashioned letters ran in a long line on the walls right under the ceiling, and there were murals depicting odd creatures that might be ancient Pokemon underneath.

Luca let out a long, low whistle as he turned around in a circle, taking in every detail of the room. He murmured something to his Pokemon as he moved to examine the walls more closely. My eyes were drawn more to the shadowy corners in the back, though. Had something moved there? I couldn’t tell; the Hidden Power lights weren’t close enough.

“Look at this,” Florence said, her voice hushed. She had walked up to the middle of the room where a large slab of rock stood tall. It was covered in intricate etchings, but the focal point was an inset square in the center of the slab. Next to the square was a small cubby carved into the slab that held a handful of tiles with strange lines etched into them. I peered closely at the inset square and saw that it was lined with internal ridges. On a hunch, I picked up one of the tiles and placed it in the top left corner of the empty square. It clicked into place, fitting perfectly.

“There are more lines here,” Florence whispered, pointing to another panel slightly to the right of the inset square.

I looked over at where she was pointing. “Uh, that’s just words, Florence.”

Florence blinked; then she blushed so strongly that I could see it clearly, even in the half-light cast by Piloswine’s move. Wait. Did Florence not know how to read?

“It’s a pretty weird font, though, I can see why you got confused,” I said hurriedly, deciding not to push her on something she clearly felt uncomfortable about. “Let’s see… ‘This flying creature attacked its prey with saw-like fangs.’” I took a step back, blanching. “That is –“

“- amazing,” Florence interrupted before I could say ‘terrifying’. Her embarrassment already forgotten, she looked around the room with new excitement. “Do you think that an example might be here?”

“I sure hope not, or we’re dead,” I muttered.

She rolled her eyes. “I meant a picture. I am well aware that we would be the prey if we met something like that in person.”

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“Yeah, and you’ve had such a great sense of self-preservation in the past,” I replied. Florence stuck her tongue out at me.

We both then turned to look at the carvings on the slab of stone more carefully. Now that I was paying more attention, some of them looked a little like human beings, and others looked like rough approximations of Pokemon. In one spot I saw a Pidgey (or was it a Spearow?); in another, a Wooper; in yet another, a Spinarak. But there were other carvings interspersed between the people and Pokemon as well, some that looked like Pokemon (though not any species I’d ever heard of), some that looked nothing like Pokemon at all.

“Zee, drow!” Pausso suddenly said, and a wave of excitement washed through our bond. I looked up to see that he had been examining the back of the stone slab, and now he was waving at me to come join him. I shrugged and circled the stone to look at the back, then peered closely at the figure he was pointing at.

Ṁ̷̚ͅe̷̜̣̐͂!̶̠͋ he thought, and a distinct feeling of pride came with the words. I grinned; yes, that was definitely a carving of a Drowzee.

“Hop hoppip!” Florence’s Hoppip added in. The Pokemon had been sitting off to the side before, watching the Hidden Power lights float overhead and otherwise looking bored. Now he ran over to the stone slab and started looking it over himself. I bit back a laugh at his excitement – I didn’t need a translation to guess that he wanted to see if his species appeared on the slab as well.

We spent another few minutes looking over the slab for a Pokemon with saw-like fangs, with no luck. Just as I was starting to get bored, Luca interrupted our work. “Over here!” he called from the back of the room. “You might want to see this!”

I went over to join him with the others right behind me. I kept half an eye on the still-shadowy corners as I moved, but otherwise I was feeling a bit better about the situation as a whole. We had explored the room for several minutes without anything jumping out to attack us, so maybe we’d be fine after all.

“Look, look,” Luca said, excited. “There is a panel right here with strange figures on it, and they are similar to the figures up above!”

I looked at the panel he had pointed out. It was in a spot on the wall that was oddly bare, not covered in decoration like most of the room. There was only a single rectangular panel with five letter-like figures carved into it. I peered up at the top of the wall. Yes, the figures on the panel did look similar to the shapes that ran in a line above the murals.

“I think some of the figures might be the same, actually,” Florence said, squinting up at the shapes far above us. “Trainer Luca, can you ask your partner to move one of the lights higher up?”

“Good idea,” Luca said, and he nodded at Piloswine. She snorted in agreement, then focused on the air in front of her. One of the globes of light that had been slowly drifting around the room levitated upwards, illuminating the shapes in the upper-left corner of the room. My eyes widened as I saw that one of the shapes was exactly the same as the first figure on the panel, and seen from a different perspective, it looked a lot like the letter L.

Then the light drifted up a bit too high. It bumped into the L-shape and flared brightly, letting off sparks; then it disappeared entirely.

“Uh oh,” Luca said in a quiet voice. He was looking at his Piloswine, so I looked at her too. She was now flaring her nostrils and shaking slightly. A quick glance at the other Hidden Power lights showed that they were all shaking too. Then, suddenly, they zoomed up into the same corner that the first light had disappeared into, setting off their own sparks before disappearing and leaving us in total darkness.

No – not total darkness. Because as soon as the lights flickered out, something moved in the upper corner of the room. To my horror, a large, white eye opened and stared down at all of us.

“We should go,” Florence said in a very tiny voice right next to me.

Around the edges of the room more eyes flicked open in a ragged line that bordered the ceiling.

“We should go now,” I agreed, my own voice strained. Then I tried taking a step forward. That was apparently the wrong thing to do, because an angry cacophony filled the air.

A feeling of panic slammed through my bond with Pausso as some of the eyes started descending towards us through the dark. I carefully stepped backwards and pressed my back against the wall, but it didn’t make any difference; the eyes continued slowly floating down, getting closer all the time.

One of the eyes – the one in the front – began glowing with a bright blue aura. That made it possible to see that it wasn’t just an eye; it was the shape we had seen before, the one that looked like the letter L. The shape let out a low droning sound like “Lelelelelele” as it descended, and its single eye just stared in a way that felt horrible.

I wanted that eye to blink or close, to stop staring in that unending way. And that gave me an idea. I gently touched Pausso’s shoulder, ignoring how he jumped slightly at the contact. “Try Hypnosis,” I said, my voice just a murmur.

“Zee,” he replied, his voice shaky. I couldn’t see him move, but I saw the result. A blue stream of light, darker than the aura that surrounded the L-shape, flew up into the air to pass over the eyes. And it worked, sort of. Some of the eyes blinked drowsily, and some retreated back up into the air. But many of the eyes continued drifting downwards, and the one in the front narrowed slightly, as if it was glaring at us.

“Well, I’m out of ideas,” I muttered to the others. “Should we just run for it?”

“Yes,” Luca agreed quickly, breathing in and out fast.

“Wait, let me return Hoppip first,” Florence said. There was a fumbling sound, then a bright pulse of light as Hoppip reverted to his energy form after Florence touched a poke ball to his head. “Alright. Three – two – one – now!”

I broke into a scrambling run with Pausso right by my side. Almost immediately I tripped over the uneven tiles on the ground, but I was able to crouch into the fall and stay on my feet.

Unfortunately, our sudden movement sped up the reactions of the eyes. They started zooming down and around the room a lot faster, and many more of them began glowing with the same bright aura that the first one had, though there were many different colors, not just the original light blue. They also had a wide range of shapes – one that looked like an N caught my eye, as well as another that looked like a T. It would have been fascinating if they weren’t absolutely terrifying.

By the time we reached the stone slab in the middle of the building a veritable whirlwind of the strange eye-creatures swirled around us, blocking the way out of the room. I hunched down next to the slab, pulling Pausso down next to me, then looked around to see if the others had made it. Now that all the strange creatures were lighting up they cast some ambient light into the room, so I could at least see that Florence, Luca, and Piloswine had also made it to the center of the room and were huddling down with us.

“Sssssss,” one of the eyes hissed as it broke out of the cloud of creatures to zoom towards us. I didn’t even need to say anything; Pausso immediately hit it with a Confusion attack, forcing the eye back into the cloud.

“Maybe Powder Spread?” Luca suggested. I turned towards him to ask what he was talking about, only to realize he was actually talking to his Pokemon. His Piloswine took in a deep breath, then blew it out, and her breath was a frosty cloud that billowed up to surround the eyes. Several of them became rimmed with frost, and those ones shuddered and left the crowd, either sinking to the ground or zooming back up to the walls. But there were many others that shook off the frosty particles and kept whirling through the air, moving faster and faster now. After a few moments I could barely even make out individual figures, even though they were all glowing brightly now. There were only whirling lines of light that surrounded us.

Suddenly, a burst of red light shot out of the whirlwind and slammed into Piloswine. Luca’s Pokemon grunted and staggered backwards, but she stayed on her feet. Then several more beams of light shot out of the crowd in quick succession; a pink light hit Florence, a purple beam connected with Pausso, and an orange light collided with me. It felt like being kicked in the shin, but somehow all over my body. I gasped and ducked down further, barely avoiding another beam of light. I could see the others now moving around awkwardly too, trying to dodge attacks themselves, but there wasn’t enough room for us to keep avoiding the beams of light for long.

“Hold on – this is Hidden Power! They are using my clan’s move!” Luca said, disbelief tinging his voice.

“Then these things must be majū,” Florence said, gasping for air as another beam of light hit her arm. “That means we can capture them!”

I stared at her, alarmed, and took another attack directly in the gut as a result (this one felt like stepping outside with only pajamas on in the middle of a blizzard). I shivered violently before replying. “Why would we want to –“

“It might make them stop attacking us! Do not argue, just try it!” Florence thrust her arm into the sack of poke balls she’d been carrying this whole time and started pulling out the balls, tossing one to me, one to Luca, and keeping one for herself. “Now!”

I had just been hit by another Hidden Power attack (this one felt like small insects were crawling all over my body under my clothes, which was awful), so I didn’t say anything about how capturing one of the eye-creatures sounded like a terrible idea. Instead, I just threw the ball. Florence and Luca threw their own balls next to me.

The ball Luca threw hit one of the figures near the bottom of the swarm, but at a bad angle; it fell to the ground without activating. My poke ball actually worked, to my shock. Sure, it hit the creature I was aiming for on the wrong part of the ball, but as it fell down the button smacked against one of the eye-figures and sucked it in. Florence’s ball disappeared into the whirlwind; I couldn’t tell whether it actually captured one of the Pokemon or not.

As soon as the eye-creature disappeared into the ball I had thrown, the whirlwind of figures jolted to a halt. All the eyes moved to stare directly at the poke ball which had landed on the ground and was now shaking madly.

“Run for it!” Luca yelled, and I scrambled to my feet and made a dash for the exit as quickly as I could, turning my back on the shaking poke ball. The glowing figures now hovered motionless in the air throughout the room, which meant we could actually dodge around and under them without getting attacked. In mere moments I had made it all the way to the entrance and back outside.

I kept running until I had put a decent bit of distance between myself and the building. Then I turned around, half-expecting to see that the angry horde of Pokemon had followed us out. But the sky was empty.

Somehow, we had successfully escaped.