N felt like he was in a dream.
The world around him seemed hazy, indistinct. Not in the sense that his vision was impaired, but more that his mind was struggling to perceive it in… a way that was difficult to describe.
The ground was solid. The sky was blue. The cityscape before him seemed perfectly normal, and yet, when he tried to focus his eyes on a large group of people off to the side, he found that there was a dull throb in his head and his attention drifted right past them.
Part of him felt that he was missing something, that he was forgetting something important. Like that feeling when you walk into a room only to realize you’re not sure why you entered in the first place. Maybe he would remember eventually. He’d just stop thinking about it for now, wait for it to come to him.
Instead, he could focus on what was before him. Lucian was here, for some reason. Why would he be dreaming about Lucian? Or, no, this wasn’t a dream, was it? He was just… he just couldn’t remember something, that was all… What had he been thinking about?
There was a pulse of light.
N felt like he was in a dream.
The world around him seemed indistinct, hazy. Not in the sense that it was blurry in any way, but more that he was struggling to… think about things? It was difficult to describe.
The sky was blue. The ground was solid. The buildings in front of him seemed perfectly normal, and yet, when he tried to focus on some sort of contraption flying into the sky, he felt a migraine coming on and his eyes were drawn elsewhere.
Part of him felt that there was something important he was missing. Like that feeling in a dream where you were running late to something, only to realize as soon as you walked through the door that you weren’t wearing any pants. He just wished he could wake up, and brush that feeling aside.
But instead, he should probably focus on what didn’t feel dreamlike. Lucian was here, for some reason. Why had Lucian shown up? He had been… he and Mime Jr. had been checking out the meteorite field, right?
There was a pulse of light.
N felt like–
The world seemed darker, for just a moment, and a shiver ran down his spine, snapping him out of his daze.
It was disorienting, though. Why did he feel so off? Why was Lucian here? His heart was beating pretty quickly, he sort of felt afraid for some reason…
Had he hit his head on something? Was this a concussion? He let his eyes wander, finding it odd that Ash was on the floor, everyone else unmoving except for–
Mime– no, Mimikyu fell off of his shoulder, and N barely had his faculties in order enough to catch his friend before he could hit the ground.
Mimikyu was unconscious, his cute little disguise limp in N’s hands.
What was going on? He hadn’t seen Mimikyu like this since the incident with the Gallade back in Nimbasa.
A sigh caught his attention, and he looked up at Lucian. The man had some blend of emotions on his face that N couldn’t decipher. He shared a look with his Gallade, before speaking to N. “Are you feeling alright? It looks like whatever that Team Rocket group did has everyone in quite a daze.”
It hit him all at once.
Stumbling on the fight between the Rockets and Galactics, getting involved on the wrong side at Mimikyu’s behest, The interruption by everyone here, Lucian questioning them, giving out a command…
Ash had said something about messing with their memories, and then N’s mind had grown fuzzy.
This was bad.
He’d been worried about Lucian from the start, knowing what Psychic types were capable of, but for him to go this far? Messing with not only his memories, but the memories of a Gym Leader and Officer Jenny as well? And that was assuming that all they’d done was alter a few memories. If they had gone probing, digging up secrets, then all of Plasma could be at risk! It was too soon, they hadn’t built up a proper base of power, all of their plans would be–
“N?” Lucian probed again. “Are you feeling alright?”
The Elite Four member didn’t appear particularly worried about the fact that N had just been witness to what was no doubt an illegal act. There was some tension in him, though, as if he were waiting for something.
N quickly tried to piece together the puzzle in his head, before Lucian decided there were better ways to deal with him than polite questioning.
Nobody else was out of the weird trance-like state yet, Mimikyu was limp in his arms, and Lucian seemed slightly off put, his attention solely on N.
That must mean… had Mimikyu broken him out of it? But Lucian… he’d been acting weird around Mimikyu this whole time, and now…
Lucian didn’t realize that his memory alteration had failed on N. Though acting on his own to catch Mimikyu must have made him a bit suspicious of something not having gone to plan… Maybe if he played along…
“Just a bit disoriented,” N replied. He needed to draw Lucian’s attention off of him, before he could pick up on his failure. “I’m more worried about these two, though, why did they collapse?” He gestured to Ash and Mimikyu.
Lucian paused.
The eyes of his Psychics pulsed with power.
Everyone around him started to move and react once more, Dawn stumbling into N’s side.
“Ugh, my head…” He heard her mumble as she tried to right herself.
Before anyone could start questioning their confusion, Lucian spoke up. “It seems that Team Rocket’s attack did more of a number on you all than I thought. Officer Jenny, Maylene, can I trust the two of you to ensure everyone gets looked at by medical professionals? I need to hurry after those criminals if I wish to catch them.”
Maylene looked lost, but snapped to attention in a panic. “Of course, sir! Just leave it to me!” She set about helping Ash stand back up.
“Team Rocket did this..?” Ash looked the most confused of the group.
“Thank you, Maylene,” Lucian gave her a small smile before he and his team vanished in a flash of light, Teleported away in an instant.
Officer Jenny shook her head. “Right, let’s get you kids to the Pokemon Center right away!”
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“...and you’re certain that none of you know what happened? Even if you could just give me a description of the move used, it would go a long way,” Nurse Joy pleaded with them.
The group shared a concerned look. Try as they might, however, not one of them could recall exactly what had happened.
None except for N, that is, and he wasn’t about to reveal anything until he could piece it all together himself. Coming out and accusing one of the most powerful people in the League of something like this wasn’t a claim that you could make without substantial evidence. Not if you wanted to be taken seriously.
Nurse Joy sighed. “Well, apart from your apparent issues recalling the event properly, I can’t find anything of note.” She flipped through some documents on a clipboard, her eyes scanning the pages. “As it stands, I can only assume that you were all hit with a Confuse Ray or something similar. There have been many documented cases of trainers getting hit with a stray Confuse Ray and having memory issues…” Her eyes swept over the group once more, concern clear, “...just not with so many people forgetting the same time frame at once.”
“Did any of their team even know Confuse Ray…?” Ash muttered, looking deep in thought.
Given what she was working with, N couldn’t blame Nurse Joy for the unsatisfying answer. But did they really have no way to detect… well, whatever Lucian had done to them? It was clearly a rare technique, given that N had never even heard of such a thing happening, but a Nurse Joy of all people should be able to pick up on something… or so he had thought.
“What about the Pokemon, though?” Maylene asked. “The one that collapsed?”
Nurse Joy nodded to N. “Your Pokemon should be fine, young man. In fact, why don’t we go and check on him together, if the rest of you have no other questions…?”
“No, thank you for your help, Nurse Joy.” Brock smiled at her, but surprisingly didn’t dive into his usual shenanigans with women he had just met.
Nurse Joy bid them all a good day, and led him to a room in the back of the Pokemon Center where Mimikyu was still out cold, laying back on a small bed.
“Am I correct in assuming that you’re the one all of my sisters and cousins have been talking about recently? I’ll admit I was thrown off by your Mimikyu’s appearance when you all arrived, though he’s even more adorable than I imagined.”
“I… yes?” N wasn’t sure what to make of her suddenly striking up casual conversation like this.
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“It’s odd, you know,” Nurse Joy continued as she inspected his friend’s unaware form. “Even though I know that I’m being enchanted, I can’t help but want to just snuggle up with him, just squishing him between my arms until he pops!”
N blinked. “Wait, what?” Maybe he needed to just get Mimikyu out of here. He stepped forward to scoop up his friend, but Nurse Joy held out an arm to stop him.
“Relax. I can control myself. Rather, it’s odd that you seem to be experiencing the effects of enchantment to a lesser degree. Perhaps you’ve become desensitized after extended exposure? Dark and Ghost type specialists seem to have their bodies adapt to constant corruptive presence, so maybe…” She sighed. “I suppose it doesn’t matter.”
N wasn’t a fan of her calling the presence of certain Pokemon corruptive, but he trusted the Joys enough to hope that she was going somewhere with this. “And what exactly is wrong with him? He was the only one to have a reaction like this.”
She hummed. “I think a large part of it is simple exhaustion, having pushed himself too hard for too long, but there is one concerning matter.” She pressed a few buttons on the monitor to the side of the bed, but N didn’t have the medical nor technical knowledge to have any clue what she had done.
“Assuming that my equipment isn’t faulty, which, mind you, is a possibility given that it isn’t configured to deal with Fairy types specifically,” she explained, “Mimikyu isn’t emitting any sort of Ghost type presence at all.”
She framed that as a bad thing, which only confused N. “Doesn’t that just mean he’s gotten better at controlling it? Your family has told me that Ghost types get better at preventing terror from leaking out as he gets more practice using moves that harness it.”
She nodded along. “Yes, that’s correct, however there’s a difference between having control over it, preventing it from leaking out, and not having any to leak out at all. Or at least having so little that what does leak out isn’t detectable. A Ghost type shouldn’t be completely devoid of any ghostly energy, even if they’ve used it to the point of collapse.”
N looked over his deflated friend, thinking over the nurse’s words. “What exactly does that mean, then? Going forward, I mean.”
“Well, ideally we’d know what caused this so you could avoid it in the future. Has anything similar to this happened in the past?”
The world had seemed darker, for just a moment, and he’d felt a shiver down his spine as Mimikyu snapped him out of Lucian’s trance.
N thought back to the first time a Psychic had tried to do something to Mimikyu’s mind. The pitch blackness, the absolutely horrifying terror, the feeling of imminent death. The way that Mimikyu had to be knocked out immediately, at least according to Cynthia and her Lucario. He thought back to the times Mimikyu had overexerted himself, diminishing his size until he couldn’t go on anymore, utterly exhausted. “I’ve never seen something quite like this, but I’ve seen him work himself to exhaustion before, and there was a time he went a bit wild and had to be knocked out…”
“When you say he went a bit wild, what exactly do you mean by that?” She pressed further.
It wasn’t like the Joy family was untrustworthy, and the League already knew, so N answered. “It was like… like when he leaks terror, but turned up to 11. Everything went black and I was too scared to even move.” N sighed. “I suppose it’s not really relevant, is it? He was knocked out to prevent it from going any further, that time, he didn’t knock himself out, and the small bit of fear I felt this time was nowhere near that level…” He just couldn’t get the comparison out of his head, seeing his friend in his current state, even if the disguise that Mimikyu donned was now different.
“...unless it was a matter of available power?” Joy seemed to mutter to herself. “It would be undocumented, but a total drainage might… no, but how would it refill…”
“Nurse Joy?” N interrupted her mumbling.
Her pink hair went bouncing as she startled. “Oh! Sorry about that, it’s just been a good while since I had to do much theory work. I think Mimikyu should wake up just fine, but he doesn’t seem to be recuperating his Ghost type energy at any rate that I’m able to pick up on. I’ve heard of a case where something analogous happened to an Electric type, they were able to fix it by having other Electric types donate some of their charge, but for a ghost… Which way are you heading when you leave Veilstone?”
“We’ll be taking route 214 next.”
She nodded along, moving over to a desktop computer against the wall and typing away. “Well if that’s the case you’ll miss out on some expertise, but you should be able to get results faster, less travel time….” He watched as she pulled up a digital map of Sinnoh, zooming in on the area south of Veilstone. “Are you at all familiar with Sendoff Spring?”
N thought it over for a moment, but came up blank. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of it.”
Pointing to an area of the map to the right of the route proper, she indicated a small blue area that N assumed was meant to represent the spring in question. “The area is rife with wild Ghost types. I would recommend against trying to enter Turnback Cave,” N idly wondered what the cave had done to earn a name like that, “but even if you just go past the Spring Path, you should be able to find a good number of Dusclops, especially if you’re up late.”
She turned back to give him a serious look. “Now, it is my hope that Mimikyu will make a full recovery on his own, and I’ll be sure to get him a proper healing treatment and some berries to help his energy reserves, but if by the time you reach this part of route 214 you find that he hasn’t recovered… I would very much recommend that you pay it a visit. The local ghosts should be able to help him out.”
N sighed. This journey really was just full of detours, wasn’t it? “I see. Thank you very much, Nurse Joy.”
Oh well. It’s not like Lucas would mind a chance to explore something off the beaten trail.
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Dawn tried and failed to squash down her nervousness as N walked back into the lobby of the Pokemon Center.
Talking with Ash and Brock for a short while had been an awkward affair, but luckily Ash seemed too distracted to care for much conversation, and Brock and Pikachu had pulled him away, wishing Dawn good luck with her contests as they left.
With N, though, she felt like she needed to talk to him.
Even if she didn’t know what to talk about in the slightest.
“Dawn?” He looked surprised. “You’re still here?”
She let out a quick, fake laugh. “Yep! I, um,” she quickly thought up a lie. No, a half-truth? “--wanted to make sure Mime Jr. was doing okay….”
…hang on a minute. Since when did N have a Mime Jr.? No, it was… he had a Mimikyu, not a…
N rolled his eyes. “Don’t get me started on that. Mimikyu made such a fuss about getting a new disguise, but his old one was getting pretty worn out and gross. He’ll be back to a Pikachu once we hit Pastoria, but for now…” He trailed off. “Anyways, he’s… alright, I guess. Just resting, for now. Nurse Joy doesn't seem too concerned about his condition.”
Something about the way he said that rang false.
She smiled. “No need to worry, then?”
So did her own words.
“Yeah, he’ll be fine.”
An awkward silence ensued.
“So… how have your contests been going? Or have you not participated in any recently? I haven’t exactly been keeping up with any sort of news lately…” N tried to salvage the conversation.
She internally cringed, but kept a smile on her face. “Oh, you know, about the same as it has been. No major developments, but steady progress is what’s important, right?”
But as awkward and stilted as this felt, as much as the small white lies piled up as they continued, something about this felt right.
It really was too bad that travelling with him was such a scary prospect.
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“...and that concludes our report.”
There was quiet in the room, only soft whispers breaking the silence as the Shadow Triad knelt before the Seven Sages.
Eventually, someone spoke up. “If this Galactic believes themselves capable of toppling the League, should we not leave them be and see how far they go?”
“Nay, we should crush them silently, before the League starts turning over old logs, wondering what else may be hidden.”
“Impossible, we do not yet have the power to take control of Unova, let alone meddle in the affairs of another region.”
“But if we are discovered, would we not want those who uncover us to tremble? To fear upsetting us?”
“Do not become overconfident. Look at what is left of the Rockets in Indigo after they made too much noise. They’re a shell of their former selves. Not to mention how pathetic Magma and Aqua turned out to be…”
“They were able to awaken great things, do not look upon our competition so lightly. Especially considering what lurks in Sinnoh.”
Their voices heard, the rest of the Sages waited patiently for Ghetsis to speak.
“We must not draw attention to ourselves until we are fully prepared. You are permitted to continue investigating, but only so far as you are able to while accompanying the King. Do not venture so far into enemy territory as you have in this instance.”
“Of course, Lord Ghetsis,” The Triad said as one.
“And on the topic of the King… how is he progressing? I trust that he is not totally defenseless, given that you have seen fit to leave him alone right outside of this Galactic base.”
“At the moment, he still only has the Mimikyu registered to him, though some progress has been made in terms of combat capability in that regard.”
“...good. He will need to be able to withstand the might of a Legendary Dragon, and if this… fairy aids him in that, it is all the better. Tell me of this Mimikyu’s capabilities. I want to know everything possible about it.”
“At once, Lord Ghetsis. To begin with, Mimikyu has shown a propensity for…”
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Cynthia massaged her temple as she sorted through some paperwork. The League had many resources, and she had many people she could outsource her workload to, but there was no escaping this mess when you were involved in any sort of bureaucracy. Especially with all of the problems that had been cropping up lately.
So when there was a knock at her office door, she was eager to brush the monotonous task off to the side. “Enter.’
Lucian walked inside, the expression on his face not at all what she had been hoping for after this particular outing.
“Did it really go that badly? Wake said she was making good progress.” Granted, that a Gym Leader needed some assistance in getting up to par at all was an issue, but Cynthia hadn’t seen a problem with giving her some time to get up to snuff. Cynthia really hoped that Lucian hadn’t been too hard on the poor girl, especially when he’d gone out of his way to request that he be the one to appraise her in the first place.
Lucian frowned. “I’m afraid Maylene’s appraisal had to be put on hold. I ran into an issue upon my arrival.”
Cynthia quirked a brow. “What sort of issue prevents you of all people from seeing your duties through?”
“Team Rocket decided to make a nuisance of themselves in Veilstone.” She could hear his teeth grinding together. “They managed to escape.”
“The same group that’s been gallivanting around Sinnoh until now?” They hadn’t been much of an issue until now, and Cynthia had put the investigation into them on the back burner. In a way, their presence had been a boon, given their help in covering up the mess in Alamos. Letting them think that they had fooled her with those disguises had damaged her ego a bit, but needs must when you’re Champion.
“Indeed.” Lucian nodded. “It is my opinion that they should be designated as a priority target going forward.”
Cynthia’s eyes widened. “A priority target? Them? What exactly did they do?”
“I suppose I can just give you the full report right now… When I arrived in Veilstone for Maylene’s evaluation, I stumbled upon…”