Chapter 1: Cold As She Wakes
Summary:
Liko goes missing after a chance encounter with Spinel, and the Rising Volt Tacklers search for her.
Chapter Text
Liko smiled as she made her way through the streets of Levincia, Sprigatito cradled close to her chest. Her Rotom phone floated in the air just beside her, and she followed its instructions gladly. As if by a miracle, she had found out about the Spicy Herba Mystica being sold at a shop in Levincia, and she just had to go and get it. Murdock would be beyond happy to finally have some, especially after their previous search and shopping trip to find this specific herb had been a bust. It would be the perfect surprise for him as the Brave Olivine took off for yet another flight.
"Murdock will be so happy about this!" Liko told Sprigatito, and the cat meowed excitedly in her grasp. Liko rounded a corner as per the directions on her phone, and the Rotom trailed after her. "Just through here!"
But when Liko turned the corner, she saw... Nothing. She walked forward slowly, a frown starting to develop across her lips. Maybe the shop was just tucked into the back of the alley. The map had said it was just off the main street... But when she reached the back edge of the ally, Liko found nothing. There wasn't even the implication of a storefront that had once been there. A tall brick wall was her only company, and Liko stared up at it in confusion. "Huh? A dead end? But the shop was here on the map..."
Maybe she had just read the map wrong. She could go back out onto the street and check the immediate area for landmarks before trying to navigate herself again. Liko turned back toward the light--
And slammed straight into the chest of a man in a suit.
Liko fell to the concrete gracelessly, accidentally knocking her phone out of the air in the process. The face on the back of the Rotom contorted with pain, and it let out a few buzzes like static as it hit the ground. Liko rubbed at a new bruise forming from her fall, slowly looking up at the man she had hit.
"Excuse me. Are you okay?"
The man stood in between Liko and the afternoon sun, leaving much of the details of his silhouette shrouded in shadow. She could make out soft blue hair and a pair of glasses, both framing a concerned frown. The man extended his hand toward Liko, and she realized she was closer in height to his Umbreon than she was to him as long as she was on the ground.
Liko blinked a few times to try and reorient herself. "Oh... Yes. I'm fine." She turned toward her phone, reaching out to pick it up. Static continued to distort the screen, and Liko frowned down at it. Maybe she would be able to ask Dot to help her fix it. She had never met Dot face to face, but if she asked politely, then perhaps she would be able to recruit her for a favor.
Liko moved to push herself to her feet, but when she looked up from her phone, she realized another figure had appeared in the alleyway. It was a tan Pokémon with black patterns engraved into its tall head. Its eyes gleamed green, seeming to glow even in the darkness. The Pokémon's hands were outstretched toward her, and she noticed small orbs of red, yellow, and green on its palms. The orbs glowed in a cycle, spinning around from red to yellow to green over and over again. The lights then all went solid, fusing together in Liko's eyes as a single flare of white.
The glow grew overpowering, and then, everything went black.
~~~~~
"Liko isn't back yet?"
Roy stood between Friede, Mollie, Orla, and Murdock on the Brave Olivine's deck, Fuecoco in his arms. Since befriending and catching Wattrel, Roy had returned to the ship in preparation for takeoff. The technical issues the Rising Volt Tacklers had been having earlier in the day seemed to have entirely dissipated, and Dot had cleared them to leave as soon as everyone as back onboard. Roy had returned with a bright smile on his face and Wattrel's Pokéball in his hand, and he excitedly told everyone of his exploits of making a new friend and catching a second Pokémon.
That had led into yet another conversation, this time about Liko. Roy had expected her to have returned before him since her shopping trip couldn't have taken her any longer than it had taken him to bond with Wattrel, but when he returned, he learned he had beat her back. Friede, Mollie, Orla, and Murdock had been waiting for both Liko and Roy when the latter returned, so it was only natural they brought Liko up once they were sure Roy was ready to go.
"She said she was going shopping," Roy explained. He admittedly hadn't remembered most of the details around her impromptu trip; he had been too distracted with Wattrel at the time.
"From here, she'd have gone to either Artazon or Levincia," Murdock remarked.
"It shouldn't have taken her this long," Friede frowned, his eyes falling shut. He glanced over to Mollie and Orla after a beat of thought. "Any luck?"
Orla shook her head. Both she and Mollie had their Rotom phones in their hands, and they had been trying to contact Liko ever since Roy returned without her. "I've been trying to reach her, but so far, no luck," Orla replied.
"No location data either, for some reason," Mollie hummed, only barely managing to tear her eyes away from the screen long enough to shoot Friede a glance out of her periphery. A moment later, she was back to staring at her phone like she thought doing so might give her information about where Liko was even just a second or two sooner.
"Did her battery die?" Friede asked even though none of them had a way of answering it. As soon as he realized that, Friede stood up a little straighter and adopted his leader voice. "Alright. Let's split up and look for her."
The rest of the group nodded their agreement, but before they had the chance to disembark and start their search, Friede's phone began to ring. The Rotom buzzed its way out of his pocket and into the air just beside him. "Dot?" Friede asked when the ringing came to a stop. Roy's eyes widened. He had been on the Brave Olivine for a while now, but he still didn't know much about Dot, the ship's mysterious tech support. She liked to stay in her room more often than not, but she was aware of all of the details of what happened on the ship. Roy didn't know if he would ever get used to the idea of someone knowing everything about him without ever needing to look him in the eyes or be in the same room as him. Even now, Roy didn't know what she looked like on account of Friede's screen being turned to face him instead of the rest of the crew.
"Artazon sounds suspicious," Dot explained from the other end of the line, wasting no time in getting straight to the point. "I tried searching for sightings of a girl with a Sprigatito, and I found a bunch of reports from Artazon."
"That's incredible! You can find that online?" Murdock asked, taking a step toward the phone in shock.
"Dot, you keep gathering info aboard the ship," Friede instructed as he grabbed his phone out of the air.
"Got it," Dot said simply, and the call ended just as quickly as it had started.
Friede tucked his phone into his pocket and addressed the rest of the team. "Roy and I will go on ahead. We'll meet up in Artazon."
Everyone nodded their understanding, and Friede called upon Charizard. Captain Pikachu climbed atop Charizard's head while Friede mounted his back. Charizard picked up Roy and Fuecoco before taking off into the sky. In a matter of seconds, the two were out of view, and the rest of the Rising Volt Tacklers all moved to follow the pair out of the city. Roy normally loved the thrill of flying whether it be on Charizard or aboard the Brave Olivine... But he felt none of that excitement today. He knew Liko could handle herself, but dread brewed in his stomach regardless.
Please be okay, Liko... Please.
~~~~~
It was almost laughable how easy it had been.
After Spinel managed to locate the Explorers' target, it didn't take long to figure out how to get her alone. She had been on the search for an herb during a recent shopping trip, and if he baited her out by saying a shop had it, then she would come running. Liko hadn't thought anything of it, and she had rushed right into the trap with a smile on her face. She hadn't even suspected Spinel when they ran into one another. She was too trusting for her own good.
But it all worked in Spinel's favor, didn't it? If she was even a little less trusting, then he never would have gotten his hands on the pendant so effortlessly. Amethio had insisted on following the path of righteousness and honesty to get it, but he failed to understand that in times like these, cunning wit always prevailed. It had taken Spinel but a single afternoon to do something Amethio had failed at for weeks. How pathetic.
Spinel lifted the pendant up to the blue light of the screen in his portable office. He had been instructed to take the pendant back to the Explorers' headquarters as soon as he got it, but he wanted to conduct a few tests on it first. No one knew what the pendant did, and if Spinel was able to find out, then he would be three steps ahead of his peers. It wouldn't be hard to do either; Spinel was certain the pendant would reveal its secrets with just a bit of pressure.
In many ways, the energy it held was familiar. It reminded him of the power thrumming beneath the surface of a Terastal Orb, but there was something distinctly different about it all the same. The pendant was certainly a mystery, and he was determined to get to the bottom of it. Regardless of what Gibeon wanted it for, Spinel would understand it and every truth it had ever held.
Spinel looked over his shoulder at a door leading into a side room. He hadn't been planning on it initially, but he decided to take Liko along with the pendant after he found her. She was clearly important to the pendant if it had activated in her hands so many times. Spinel could have taken the pendant, but it would have all been for nothing if it turned out she was necessary to bring its power to life. She wouldn't fall for the same trick twice, and so, he removed the need to rely on a second act of deception. If she was ultimately unnecessary, then he could set her free, and she wouldn't have any idea of what had happened to her. If she was needed... Well, that was what thinking ahead was for.
Spinel tightened his grip on the strings of the pendant. His smile deepened, and a laugh reverberated low and echoing in his chest. How nice it was when everything fell into place.
~~~~~
Friede didn't understand what they were missing.
He and the rest of the Rising Volt Tacklers had searched through Artazon after hearing Dot's report, but even when they followed the results she sent to their phones, they came up short. In the four hours since they had started the search, they had found nothing. The group had reunited once two hours ago, but they hadn't been able to share anything new with one another. Roy had run off chasing his Wattrel after the bird caught sight of something shiny, but aside from that, nothing had changed. Liko was simply nowhere to be found.
The sun was starting to set by the time Friede reunited with Mollie, Orla, and Murdock again. His lungs were burning and desperate for a break, and he gave them the reprieve they sought as he leaned against a metal railing with a frustrated sigh. His Rotom phone levitated just over the edge, and Dot watched him silently, her face creased with concern. "We've looked up and down and haven't found her," Friede muttered. "Something's off here." Cap offered his agreement from his place on Friede's shoulder.
"We've looked everywhere," Mollie frowned bitterly. "Would Liko really head off somewhere on her own?"
Friede leaned more against the railing. "Could she have been kidnapped?"
"Kidnapped?!" Dot blurted out from the other end of the call. "If so, why were there so many sightings in Artazon...? Don't tell me... Is this info bogus?!"
"Could it have been the Explorers?" Mollie asked, fighting and failing to keep her tone even.
"Amethio and his goons would have faced us head-on," Friede said, turning around so his back was pressed against the railing.
"Do you have any other ideas?" Murdock questioned.
"Those Magneton gathered above the ship... One of them was acting on a trainer's orders," Friede went on as if that explained everything.
"What?!" Murdock sputtered.
"That's huge! Why didn't you tell us?!" Orla demanded.
"Sorry, did I forget to mention that?" Friede asked even though the answer was clear. Mollie, Orla, Murdock, and Cap all groaned in irritation. Friede ignored it in favor of continuing to speak. "Even in battle, the trainer didn't show themself, but they were probably behind the ship malfunctions and the signal issues."
"Right... Our Rotom phones didn't have any signal in Arboliva's forest either," Mollie recalled.
"A Magneton was hanging overhead then too," Friede frowned.
"The same trainer then," Orla concluded.
Friede nodded. "It looks like we've fallen into a trap laid by some unknown enemy."
"But who? Is it someone after the pendant?" Orla asked.
"We'll worry about that later," Friede told her, starting to walk away. "First, we need to find Liko."
~~~~~
Dot let out a strangled yell of frustration, her head falling into her hands. "Come on! How could I have made a mistake like that?! I should've authenticated it!" Even after hanging up on her call with Friede, she was sitting in front of her computer screens, Quaxly standing on the desk beside her. "Why didn't I think this through?!"
Quaxly quacked to pull Dot out of her spiral, and she looked up at him with a shaky breath. "You're right. This isn't like me." She went back to typing, her fingers flying across the keyboard at breakneck speeds. "But if something happened to Liko... I can't just sit around. I need real info, but how do I get it?"
All at once, the idea hit her, and Dot turned to see her Nidothing suit hanging from its hook on the opposite side of the room. If she put out a Nidothing video, then all of her viewers would want to help. If all went well, at least one of them would have had the information she was looking for... But she was going to need massive reach instantly. Her videos performed well, but if Dot really wanted to get to the bottom of this, then she needed a plan that would generate more buzz. She needed to go viral.
And she knew just the person.
Dot seized her phone out of the air and tapped away at the screen to place a call to Iono, the gym leader of Levincia. The two had been online friends for quite a while because of their common field of content creation, and they had talked a handful of times both in and out of the context of their work. Iono had been online for far longer than Dot, and she went viral with most of her videos. If there was ever a time to call in a favor, it was now, and Dot prayed with every fiber of her being that Iono picked up the phone. Iono was online more often than she was off the internet, right? Surely that meant she had to have her phone close by. Unless she was in a gym battle, she had to be available, right? "Please pick up, please pick up..." Dot repeated like it was a prayer.
But before she could say it a third time, the screen burst to life with pastel pink, pale blue, and electric yellow. "Hola-hello-bonjour! Iono here! What'cha need?"
"Iono!" Dot cried out, relief washing through her like a tidal wave. "I'm so glad you answered!"
"Ooh! Nidothing outside the suit! Long time no see!" Iono greeted, her smile growing impossibly wider and brighter. "You've really taken off since we last talked. Your popularity still doesn't hold a candle to mine, of course, but--"
"I have a favor to ask!" Dot burst in, unable to keep her nervous energy bottled up for any longer than she already had.
"What? What is it? Tell me, tell me!" Iono urged.
"I need your help! I'm looking for someone!" Dot exclaimed.
"Whaaaaa? Looking for someone?" Iono raised one hand to cover her mouth, but her fanged teeth still found a way to be visible around her oversized sleeve. "Y'know, I am a Gym Leader, so I'm a busy girl..."
"My IRL friend disappeared! I have to find her!" Dot cut in, not caring how rude it made her sound. A distant whisper in the back of her mind asked her if she had ever called Liko her friend before. She chose to not take the bait, already knowing it wouldn't lead her anywhere good. If she thought about her thoughts on Liko any more than was necessary, then she was only going to make herself feel worse, and Dot didn't want to entertain the idea of growing impossibly more anxious.
"Ooh! You made an IRL pal?!" Iono questioned, leaning in closer to her phone eagerly.
"Yeah," Dot replied, all of the air rushing out of her lungs at once. "A very precious friend." She felt heat begin to rise in her cheeks, but Dot ignored it with all the force she could muster. Now wasn't the time. She had to find Liko.
"Gotcha, gotcha! Readin' you like a book." Iono jumped back into a seat behind her and crossed her legs. "But just 'looking' isn't gonna hype anyone up."
"Right," Dot nodded. "So I've got an idea."
"An idea?!" Iono gasped. "Tell me all about it!"
~~~~~
So far, Spinel had found nothing.
In the handful of hours that had come and gone since he returned to his office, he had conducted numerous tests to try and draw the power of the pendant. He had hooked it up to a few machines to see if that would give him any new information. He put it under as much pressure physically as he could stand. He had even tried to jolt it with a few volts of electricity. Nothing seemed to be working, and short of completely destroying it, Spinel didn't think this was going to lead anywhere of note if he continued down this path.
But the pendant had activated when it was in the hands of the target. Spinel had replayed the video footage of the various times the pendant sparked to life, and each time, there was a common thread: Liko had been put in danger. The pendant seemed to only activate when she was in grave peril and needed to be saved from death. If Spinel's assumptions were correct, then the pendant only activated when it was absolutely necessary to save her specifically.
That was why he had taken her though. Spinel hadn't known for certain if she would be needed to activate the pendant's power at the time, but now, it was clear that she was crucial. So be it then. Spinel would do whatever he had to in order to activate the pendant, and if that meant putting Liko in danger, then he would do it. He couldn't kill her so long as she was such a crucial part of the Explorers' plans, but he could make her think she was going to die. That should be enough to activate the pendant.
There was only one way to find out.
Spinel's smile twisted with something sickeningly curious, and he started off toward the room where he was keeping the target.
~~~~~
"Everybody, are you ready?!"
Iono rose out of a large platform overlooking crowds gathered at the center of Levincia. A screen spanned the outside of the platform, and it reflected Iono's every movement, proof she was being recorded by an unseen camera in the area. All eyes were on Iono, and as the crowd cheered, she thrived off their excitement. "Electrowebbing your eyes! Whozat? It's Iono!" The crowd's shouts grew louder, and Iono spread her arms high above her head. "It's time for 'Whatchagot TV!' As for today's guest, I have a special surprise! So take it away!"
The screen stopped projecting Iono's image as the zoomed-in face of Nidothing appeared across it instead. "Yo-ssu! All you Pokémon trainers out there!" Nidothing cried out as she pulled back from the camera. "Y'all been groovin'? It's the one and only Nidothing!" Quaxly popped up just beside Nidothing, waving to the camera as well. The crowd's cheers only grew louder and happier.
The screen split itself in half, and Nidothing was pushed off to the left half of it. Iono took up the other side, and she turned to face the crowd with a bold grin. "Your attention, everyone! Me and Nidothing--a real dream team! And it's time to announce today's game! You're going to find our girl on the street!" The crowd clapped and cheered even louder, and Iono's cheeks burned from the strain her smile had on them. It did nothing discourage her from continuing to grin. "To put it simply, it's hide-and-seek. And since it's a collab today, a friend of Nidothing--one of her subscribers--will be doing the hiding!"
"The girl everyone's hunting for is... SprigatitoLove!" The images of Nidothing and Iono both faded away in favor of a profile picture rising up for the crowd to see. The image depicted Liko hidden behind Sprigatito. She was holding her partner up to block out her face, and Sprigatito stared ahead into the camera with the closest thing to a small smile a cat could muster.
"Coil your eyes wide and get to searchin'!" Iono cried out, raising one arm high above her head.
"Make sure you find SprigatitoLove for us!" Nidothing chimed in. "Whoever finds her will get a wonderful prize! Don't waste a moment!"
The crowd followed Nidothing's instructions immediately, and everyone dispersed to try and catch even a tiny glimpse of the one and only SprigatitoLove. "I'll be right back!" Nidothing cried out even though no one could see the costume around the image of SprigatitoLove's profile picture. "Keep searchin' while I'm out!"
With that, Nidothing hung up the call, and Iono clapped her hands over her head. "Get to it, everyone! There's not a second to lose! Find that fan!"
~~~~~
Dot let out a sigh as she clambered out of the Nidothing suit. She waddled over to her desk and typed away at the screen in search of any reports that would tell her where Liko was. To the people of Levincia and the rest of Paldea, this was just a goofy game about getting attention from Iono and Nidothing. To Dot, this was her only hope of figuring out where Liko had gone. She had to find a way to unravel the truth no matter how ill-prepared she felt. She had to do this. For Liko's sake, she needed to find her.
Dot dialed a call to Friede once she was near her desk, and he picked up immediately. "Any luck?"
"I set up a game in Levincia with Iono," Dot explained. "Everyone there is going to see if they can find her. So far, no one has spotted her, but I'm hoping they will soon enough."
"We've been looking around Artazon all day, and we haven't found anything," Friede sighed. "We might head over to Levincia since that's the other city in range. If we haven't seen her here, then she might be there."
"The reports were likely all forged in Artazon. It would be a fair guess to say she's actually in Levincia and has been this entire time," Dot said. "But before you go to Levincia, swing by the ship. I want to help you with the search."
Murdock appeared in frame over Friede's shoulder, his eyes wide as could be. "Y-You mean you want to--"
"I want to find Liko," Dot declared. Her heart was screaming in her chest at the mere implication of leaving her room to track Liko down, but she wasn't going to let that stop her now. Maybe the collaboration's viewers would expect her to reappear as Nidothing once the search was over, but if she had her phone, then she would at least be able to call in so long as she found somewhere private. Hopefully, that would be enough. Dot couldn't just sit there in her room while everyone else looked for Liko. She owed it to herself and her friend to do all in her power to bring her back.
Friend.
That was what Liko was to her, wasn't she? Dot didn't know much about Liko and had never seen her face-to-face, but she still believed Liko was her friend. Liko wanted to reach out to her in a way very few others ever had. Dot did all she could to make sure Liko was alright and had even worked to ensure she stayed on the Brave Olivine when she thought about leaving. Dot couldn't say she knew much about friendship, but she dared to believe Liko may have been her first friend.
Friede nodded from the other end of the line. "I'll be there soon. Get ready." The call hung up before Dot had the chance to respond, but she had little to say on the matter anyway. She was riding the high of saying she was going to leave her room for the search, and in a way, she needed to brace herself for all that was to come.
But she would be fine. She had to be. Liko needed her right now, and Dot could set her shyness aside if it meant finding her friend again.
Friend.
The word haunted Dot as she made her way out of her room and onto the deck of the ship with Quaxly at her side. If she had not been so terrified, she may have smiled at the thought of it. Instead, it only made the unshed tears in her eyes feel heavier.
Liko would come back soon. Dot was sure of it.
She needed Liko to come back soon.
~~~~~
Spinel had found nothing.
It was beyond frustrating just how much time he had put into trying to learn more about the pendant only to come up short each time. His tests had all ended in failure, and the pendant hadn't so much as offered him a spark of its light. He had put it under pressure with hopes that it would do something to defend itself. He had tried pairing it with a Terastal Orb to see if it would spark to life when reacting to something similar. He had even shocked it with electricity to try and bring its defender out of its hiding place. None of it worked, and the pendant remained every bit as simple and unassuming as it had been when Spinel first took it off the target.
In all past cases of the pendant activating itself, it had done so to defend Liko. The longer Spinel went on without finding any results, the surer of himself he was. Liko was necessary to activate the pendant's power, and Spinel needed to bring her into this if he was going to see what the pendant could do. He was glad he had brought her along when he took the pendant; it would have been such a hassle to go out and find her again to bring her back here.
Spinel set the pendant down in the open box he had picked out for it. "Come, Umbreon." If he was going to need Liko in order to activate the pendant, then he was more than happy to use her. So long as she was useful, Spinel was fine with doing what was necessary. If the pendant activated to save Liko from life-threatening danger, then Spinel would simply have to manufacture that danger.
He would have his answers by midnight. He was sure of it.
~~~~~
Dot was already waiting for Friede when he arrived on the deck of the Brave Olivine. She had her hands shoved in her pockets in a tense imitation of calm, but Friede knew better than to fall for it. Dot was beyond stressed, and it was taking too much of her energy to keep herself even somewhat composed.
Friede cast Dot a sideways smile even though he knew the circumstances did not call for it. Then again, out of place humor had always been his brand. "Wasn't it a pain to go outside?"
"It is a pain, yeah," Dot confirmed, pulling her hands out of her pockets. "But I want to look for Liko too. I can't let them get away with tricking me... And my friends."
"I understand how you feel... But we're up against a Pokémon trainer. You'll need a partner if there's a battle," Friede reminded her.
"A partner..." Dot repeated, looking down at her slippers with a frown.
A small quack pulled both Dot and Friede's attention to another part of the deck. Quaxly was standing there and looking up at Dot with a determined gleam in his eyes. He brushed his wings across the blue tuft atop his head, and Dot relaxed into a smile. "Quaxly!"
Friede couldn't help but smile. He had expected this outcome for quite some time. Quaxly was simply too close with Dot to turn down the offer of becoming her partner. Even so, it was sweet to see them finally come together for the first time. "Looks like you're all set," Friede grinned. Dot and Quaxly stepped forward into Charizard's grasp, and the draconic Pokémon took hold of them with a roar of agreement. Once everyone was secure, Friede directed Charizard into the air. "Now let's go!"
~~~~~
She knew nothing.
When she opened her eyes, it had been to muted darkness and a ceiling she did not recognize. A man stood in the doorway of the room, his celadon blue hair framing a smile that felt far more sinister than words could define. The world had succumbed to flashes of red, yellow, and green before going white again, and her memory was plunged into nothingness.
When she next came to, she was standing in a large, cavernous room. Her eyes strained to make out the details of the place she had found herself in, but she did not try as hard as she should have. Effort felt distant, slipping through her fingers like sand she would never truly have the chance to grasp. There was no reason or logic anymore; there was only the darkness, and the darkness was numbing.
She heard the cry of some Pokémon across the room before an attack soared through the air. It was aimed straight for her, and even as her instincts of self-preservation told her to move, she could not muster the care to do it actively. When her body moved, it was on its own and not because she had instructed it to. She saw some reflection of green and blue shine across something around her neck, but the details were unclear and muddied. Everything felt like it was.
She should have cared more about the danger she knew she was in. She should have felt afraid when the attacks from that unknown Pokémon surged toward her. She should have wanted to preserve her safety and her life, and yet, her mind could not pull together the strength. Nothing felt like it mattered. It never could.
Some distant whisper in the back of her mind told her that she did not know who she was. She never would again, though she could not say for certain why she was so sure of it. The darkness was comforting in a strange way, numbing out the fears that would have shriveled and screamed beneath the light of day. In the shadows, she was nothing, and it was comforting in a way she could not hope to define.
The man with the muted teal hair stood off to the side as the Pokémon attacked her. His smile had tilted overboard to become a frown as he watched her. He was disappointed, and for a reason she couldn't describe, the thought sent a dull heat raging against the confines of her hollow chest. He wanted something, and she could not give it. She could not decipher if she wanted to help him or if she feared him, but her body trembled regardless. He knew he was scaring and hurting her... As much as he could hurt or scare someone who felt so deeply empty. He did not care in the slightest though. Nothing mattered aside from what he sought, and she was not giving it. She was failing him.
She did not cry when something like steel glinted near his pocket. She did not scream or flinch when he drew nearer. Her body demanded that she do something, but her mind could not find the wherewithal to care. Nothing felt like it mattered, and she was not going to try and make it matter either.
There in the darkness, she was as safe as she could have been.
So some eternity later when the red, yellow, and green consumed her sight, she was afraid for a fraction of a breath before the numbness and the white dulled that too.
~~~~~
Dot didn't understand why this wasn't working.
Since she had been picked up by Friede, she had been scrambling all over Levincia looking for Liko. The collaboration game with Iono was drumming up a lot of buzz, but it didn't feel like enough. No one had any clues or hints as to where she could find Liko, and the desperate frustration was beginning to tear Dot apart. Liko couldn't have gone anywhere outside of Levincia or Artazon. Any other city was simply too far for her to go that far by foot. The Rising Volt Tacklers had already searched Artazon for hours, and all of the reports had turned up false. She had to be there in Levincia.
Dot's mind kept straying back to what Friede had said back in Artazon. He had proposed the idea that Liko had been kidnapped, and while Dot had reacted extremely and negatively at the time, she knew there was a chance he was right. Liko wasn't the type to just wander off, and she wouldn't have gone dark and stopped responding to phone messages on top of that. There must have been something else going on. Amethio had tried to kidnap her back at her school, hadn't he? The other Explorers could have tried to come after her once Amethio pulled out and stopped trying. The Explorers had a history of trying to go after Liko, so it wasn't inconceivable that they could have been behind this.
No... No, she couldn't think like that. Dot couldn't let herself think like that. She had to find Liko no matter how hard it turned out to be. The Explorers could do all they wanted, but Dot was going to bring Liko home.
And when she did, she was finally going to see her friend face-to-face for the first time.
The word friend continued to echo relentlessly through Dot's head as she darted through the streets of Levincia. She and Roy were looking together while Friede searched from the air. There were no reports of anyone finding or seeing Liko though, and it left a horrible pit in Dot's stomach that refused to be filled. It didn't matter how many times she told herself they were going to be fine; she simply couldn't believe it.
Friend friend friend friend friend--
Dot's mind found merciful silence as she rounded a corner into an alleyway. She looked around frantically for any signs of Liko, but she saw nothing. She was on the verge of moving on when a glint of red caught her eye. Dot paused and crouched down to find a Rotom phone had been left on the ground. Its screen was consumed by static and noise, but that wasn't what caught Dot's attention. Instead, it was the small notch in the top right corner of the phone. Liko had mentioned to Roy once that her phone had been damaged slightly during one of their battles with the Explorers. Dot had seen the dent for herself when watching the occupants of the Brave Olivine through the various cameras on the ship, and she would have known it anywhere.
"Do you think she's--"
Dot blocked out the voice that sounded both like and unlike hers and began to tinker with the phone. Her fingers were shaking, but through some miracle, she managed to get the device on again. Dot quickly navigated to the settings, and just as she had expected, she was met with Liko's name and smiling picture.
No.
Dot's lips wrenched apart in a dreadful, miserable scream, and her free hand moved to grasp at her scalp. Liko's phone was in a dark alley, alone and abandoned, and Liko was nowhere to be found. There was only one explanation for that.
Roy reached out for Dot's shoulder, and she didn't pull away. Instead, she just clenched her teeth together and ignored the tears streaking down her face onto the screen of Liko's phone.
It was a kidnapping.
Her friend had been kidnapped.
~~~~~
Roy wished he knew what to do.
He had been doing his best to keep his spirits up after he found himself in Levincia and caught up with the search for Liko, but it was much easier said than done. His mind was racing with a million and one fears he could only hope turned out to be unproven... But he already knew it wasn't going to be that simple. Liko's phone being found in the alley was proof.
Dot had gone eerily silent ever since she found the phone, and she gripped it with a fury unlike anything Roy had ever seen before. Roy wanted to say something to ease the stress and tension in the air between them, but no words seemed sufficient. Not even a song from Fuecoco would get through to Dot when she was like this, and he knew it.
Roy did his best to distract himself by searching for Liko down every street and around every corner, but finding nothing only made the chaos rattling around in his stomach worse. Amethio had tried to kidnap Liko back when she first met Roy, and Amethio would have succeeded if not for a lucky spark of light from Liko's pendant. The Explorers were not above criminal activity if it meant accomplishing their goals. Maybe their threats of kidnapping had finally boiled over into true triumph this time.
Each time Roy thought of that, his mind dragged itself back to the conversation he had last shared with Liko. He had been the last one to see her, hadn't he? She had said she wanted to go and buy something for Murdock, and Roy... Roy had been so distracted with Wattrel that he hadn't given her a second glance when she darted off. If he had paid a bit more attention to what she was doing, then maybe he would have been able to go with her. She wouldn't have been taken if he had been there with her, right? She would be fine if he had been there with her, right?
Roy shook his head in a failed effort to force the thought out of his head. Thinking about all the ways this could go wrong would do him no good, and he knew it. Liko could have still been out there, and Roy was going to do everything in his power to find her. It didn't matter how long it took; he would track her down. He had to. They would bring her back home.
Roy didn't know what he would do if they failed.
~~~~~
The search was going just as well in Levincia as it had in Artazon.
All members of the Rising Volt Tacklers save for Ludlow had arrived in Levincia by now, and they were searching on the ground just like everyone who had been allured by the thought of a personal meeting with Iono and Nidothing. Even though half the city was searching for Liko, no one had any records of where she could have been. Friede had called to check in with all of them at least twice now, but they never had any new information for him. If they knew something, they would have reached out to say it.
A call from Dot drew Friede's attention to his phone, and he answered it before going back to looking at the ground below. He was still riding atop Charizard, hoping a view from the air would increase his chances of finding Liko, but so far, he had seen no more luck than the rest of his team. "What's going on, Dot?" Friede asked, yelling above the roar of the wind around him.
"We found Liko's phone," Dot replied, and Friede felt his blood run cold. "It was an alley, but I didn't see any signs of her there. I don't know what happened, but... She's not where her phone was dropped."
The kidnapping theory rocketed to the forefront of Friede's mind, but he did his best to ignore its screeches. "Any ideas on where she could have gone after she dropped it?" Friede asked, though they all knew a lot more would have had to happen than Liko simply 'dropping' her phone. Rotom phones could fly, and if Liko's hadn't gone after her, then...
"No ideas yet," Dot answered, rasping for breath in between each word. All this running around was a lot more work and effort than she had expected, but she couldn't let herself stop when Liko's safety depended on continuing to push forward. "I... I'm going to call Iono. There's something else I need to do."
Dot hung up the call before Friede had the chance to ask what it was, and he let out a heavy sigh. He trusted Dot to do what she had to in order to set this right, but he couldn't help his ever-present fear of what could have happened beyond his reach. No matter how he looked at it, he was certain something bad had happened to Liko, and he could only hope he would be able to bail her out of it just as he had in the past.
He didn't even want to imagine what would happen if he fell short.
~~~~~
Nidothing's voice boomed throughout the streets of Levincia. No image accompanied her words, but the people in the city all stopped anyway to hear what she had to say. "Yo-ssu, Pokèmon trainers! I have an update to our little game of hide-and-seek! Since no one has found SprigatitoLove just yet, I'm here to add a little something extra to the game! Whoever can find SprigatitoLove will receive a cash prize! Yes, that's right! On top of a meet and greet, I'll offer money to the person who finds her! You had better keep on searchin'! Something big is waiting for whoever wins our game!"
The announcement faded away just as quickly as it had been made, and the clamor and excitement in the streets only raised in intensity. Those who had been uninterested in the search before gladly jumped into action now, and soon enough, nearly every eye in Levincia was searching for a trace of the black-haired girl behind the SprigatitoLove account. The only thing that could make a viral sensation bigger was an even greater prize, and Nidothing had been happy to provide just that.
Dot let out a sigh as she finished speaking into her phone. She leaned back against the building behind her, and the structure seemed to be the only thing keeping her upright anymore. She hoped this would be enough to get people interested in helping her to find Liko. Dot had a bit of money to toss around because of her work as Nidothing, and hopefully, that would act as a fine enough prize for this impromptu game of hers. Maybe she was jumping the gun and pulling out the extra boost in momentum a bit too early. She knew she could be impatient, and she had been aware of it for years.
But she couldn't bring herself to care. If impatience and recklessness was what would bring Liko home, then Dot would be impatient and reckless every day for the rest of her life. She knew the idea of a cash prize only made her game more suspicious, and she was fully aware there was a chance people could see this for the desperate hunt it truly was, but none of that mattered. No price was too high if it would bring Liko back. No disgrace was too great if it would give Dot her friend back.
Friend.
Roy rounded the corner and stood in front of Dot with a muted frown on his face. If he had any comments to make about Dot being Nidothing, he chose to not voice them, instead watching her for a long, silent moment. Dot didn't rise to the bait of looking into his eyes, knowing it was only going to make her spiral all over again. She had done that more than enough already.
Instead, Dot let out a thin breath through her nose. "Let's keep going," she told Roy. He didn't comment on the stark contrast between her voice as Nidothing and her voice as Dot. He simply followed after her when she took off again, Fuecoco and Quaxly hot on his heels.
They were going to find her. They had to.
~~~~~
Spinel was getting closer. He could feel it.
Over the course of the last few hours, he had been trying to push harder to learn more about the pendant. Some would call the tests he was performing drastic and violent... But it would all be worth it if he was able to get to the bottom of this mystery. He was closer than anyone else ever had been. The truth would be in his hands soon enough.
The pendant seemed to be able to tell the difference between the danger he was putting the target in now compared to the risk she had faced in the heat of an actual battle. Her body was enough to get her out of the way, and since her life wasn't on the line as long as her instincts held true, the pendant had not yet activated. Spinel knew he was on the right track though. He was going to find a way to activate the pendant, and the power contained within it would burst forth when he did.
Until then, Spinel knew he had hit the wall. Liko had seemed off ever since she woke up, and after barely avoiding the maw of danger once again, her legs gave out beneath her. Spinel sighed and shook his head, and he approached her with Beheeyem at his back. The tan Pokémon raised its hands, and lights of red, yellow, and green flashed in Liko's eyes before she went slack again. Spinel sighed once he was certain her consciousness had faded away, and he stared down at her limp form for a long while. He couldn't let her go just yet, not when he was so close to the truth.
The night was getting late though, and Spinel's frustration was starting to morph into exhaustion. He would have to take Liko back to the Explorers' base and pick up with the next part of his search for the truth in the morning. The base wasn't too far from there, and he would be able to get there soon if he left now. Spinel could figure out how to take care of her on the way.
Though he couldn't help thinking about the numbness that had risen in her eyes since he began to conduct his tests. Her mind was far from being present in her body now. Spinel had erased a few people's memories over the years, but he had never gone beyond that. He had used Beheeyem's power once and then pulled back. Beheeyem had been necessary a handful of times during the experiments tonight though, and Liko seemed less like a person and more like an empty husk. Any memories that she could have still held were long gone now, and she was a perfectly blank slate.
Spinel paused and looked down at Liko once again. If she had no memories of her past or who she had been before all of this, then perhaps this was something he would be able to take advantage of. Maybe he could capitalize on her lack of knowledge about the world. With her memories gone, she had no reason to distrust the Explorers. With her personal experiences erased, she was a perfect piece of clay to be molded as Spinel so chose.
He would never need to worry about her trying to escape or get in contact with her old friends if he gave her something new to replace that past. She was in a perfect position to be changed completely. All of this would have been easier if Liko had simply gone along with the Explorers when they first entered her life. Perhaps this was the perfect chance to make up for lost time. Liko could join the Explorers now, and she would be in the perfect position to help Spinel draw out the power of the pendant and to open the path to Gibeon's goal.
Spinel chuckled into the dark silence around him. This plan would suit his goals perfectly... And he couldn't wait to put it into motion.
It was time for the Explorers to gain a new member, and he knew everyone would be beyond excited to meet her.
~~~~~
Nothing.
Dot had lost track of how long she had been searching for Liko. They all had. The search had truly started in the afternoon, but over ten hours had passed since then. It was well after midnight now, and exhaustion was starting to take hold of Dot's mind and body. She was normally fine with staying up all through the night, but she could only do that if she was in her room and able to apply her energy as she chose. Running all over Levincia was a different story, and she could feel herself hitting the wall.
The Rising Volt Tacklers had come together after they all searched through different sections of the city at least three times each. Friede guided Charizard to land at the center of the gathered group, and he glanced around at his crew. "Any luck?" he asked. He knew long before he received a response that the answer was going to be no. If anything had changed, he would have already heard about it ages ago.
"I can't believe this," Dot muttered, her fingers clenching together into fists. "Liko was taken, and... And..." She didn't know what she was going to say after that, but she cut herself off with a frustrated yell, and she pressed one hand against her face to try and stem her tears. It didn't work, but she at least appreciated the rest of the Rising Volt Tacklers for not saying anything about it.
Mollie hesitated before she let out a heavy sigh that seemed to make her entire body shake. She seemed so much more frail tonight than she ever had been before. "Maybe we should go back to the ship," she suggested slowly. "We've been at this for hours, and we've had no luck. We can start looking around again tomorrow."
"No!" Dot protested. "What if we're just missing something? If we wait for an entire night, then it could be too late for us to find her again! We have to keep looking! We have to find her, and--"
"Dot, I understand why you're so stressed," Murdock cut in, pressing a hand to his niece's shoulder. "But you can't keep going on like this. None of us can. We need to take a break and keep looking when we're not about to collapse from exhaustion."
Dot wanted to argue against him, to push back until she was able to find Liko and bring her home, but she already knew it was futile. She didn't want to admit it, but Murdock was right. They were all on the verge of losing their grips, and they wouldn't be able to search effectively for Liko if they kept on like this. They needed to stop, and they had to hope with all they had that it wouldn't keep them from being able to save Liko at all.
"All of Levincia is searching for Liko now too," Orla pointed out. "They could find her overnight while we're asleep. We could wake up to good news. The game is going to keep going after we turn in. That's the appeal of it, isn't it?"
"We're not giving up," Friede assured Dot before she could imply it. "We're going to keep looking tomorrow, and we won't stop until we find Liko. It might not be easy, but we're going to do it. I promise."
Dot pressed her lips together as she fell silent, and she forced herself to nod around the knot that had risen in the back of her throat. She wasn't going to give up no matter what happened. She would find Liko. If it didn't happen tonight, then she would find a way to make it happen the next day.
She had to. They all had to.
~~~~~
Dot barely remembered the trip back to the Brave Olivine. The world blurred by around her, and her exhaustion settled in quickly and brutally in her bones. Soon enough, she felt every bit as dead on her feet as the rest of the crew, though she had no idea how she would be able to convince herself to sleep. Resting felt impossible as long as Liko was still missing.
Dot collapsed onto her bed as soon as she arrived back in her room, her body giving out beneath her the instant it was put under any sort of pressure. She heard herself scream before she registered she was doing it, and she only fell silent when Quaxly settled down on the pillow beside her. The duck offered her a soft quack of solidarity, but it didn't feel like enough. Nothing felt like enough.
They had failed. They had looked all day and well into the night, but they hadn't found Liko. There weren't even any traces of her aside from her phone, and Dot hadn't found anything helpful on it either. Liko was just gone. It was like she had vanished into thin air...
But Dot knew that wasn't what had happened. There was only one way all of this could have happened, and she knew it even if she didn't want to admit it. Liko had been kidnapped, and if Dot had to guess, the Explorers had been behind it. Who else would have wanted to go after her? The Explorers had already been tampering with the internet on the ship. Who was to say they weren't going to make the situation worse by outright taking her? They weren't above kidnapping, and Amethio had proven it time and again. It didn't matter how much Dot tried to deny it; she knew Liko had been kidnapped, and there was nothing she could do about it.
Dot hoped with every fiber of her being that Orla was right. All of Levincia was searching, and there were likely people beyond the city's limits who were trying to find Liko too. At least one of them must have succeeded in figuring out where she went. For all she knew, Dot would wake up to find that Liko had been recovered.
But when Dot was honest with herself, she already knew that wasn't going to happen. She didn't even know why she bothered to hope for it.
Friend friend friend.
~~~~~
Amethio hadn't been back to the Explorers' base ever since he was taken off the mission to retrieve the pendant. As far as he was concerned, his best option was to pursue the black Rayquaza and hope it brought him the glory he needed to restore his reputation in the eyes of his grandfather. If he could capture such a powerful Pokémon, then he would get everything back. He knew he could do it. All he had to do was find out where it was and then see it brought to heel.
Zirc and Onia were typing away on their computers within the sumbarine base they had made their own over the course of the last few weeks. They were doing all they could to track down the black Rayquaza, and they had brought a number of successful reports to Amethio too. They had always gotten there too late to actually catch more than a glimpse of it, but Amethio was sure they would find it soon. If they kept searching, they had to find it.
The ding of a notification noise pulled Amethio out of his thoughts where he was standing near Onia's computer. She clicked on the message and gasped at the sight of it. "Amethio, sir!" she called out even though he was just a few paces away. "It's a message from the Explorers' headquarters!"
Amethio closed the distance to stand behind her seat in a matter of seconds. He looked over her shoulder at the message. It was a brief one, but it sent a shiver sprinting up and down his spine anyway:
'Return to the base. You have a new assignment.'
The message had been sent by Hamber, and Amethio knew he wouldn't have said something like that without a reason. He thought it was crucial for Amethio to return as soon as possible... But why? What new mission could have been more pressing than finding the black Rayquaza?
And yet, Hamber had asked for him specifically. That had to mean something. Perhaps Amethio was being given a new chance to take the pendant... Or perhaps there was something else waiting for him far beyond what he could have ever expected. Amethio was almost tempted to ignore it and keep searching for the black Rayquaza, but he knew he wouldn't get away with it. If he was wanted at the base for this new mission, then he would have to return for it.
Amethio let out a thin sigh through his nostrils. "Start back toward the base."
"Sir!" Zirc and Onia chorused before they got to work. Amethio stepped away from Onia's seat with a frown on his face. Something must have prompted Hamber to request his presence back at the base... But Amethio had an awful feeling about it. This wouldn't happen out of nowhere, so the situation must have changed. Spinel was the new head of the mission to acquire the pendant, and that didn't bode well for anyone. Could he have been up to something? Was that what this was about? Would Amethio ever even know what Spinel was trying to do nowadays? Did he even want to know?
There was only one way for him to find out.
The submarine changed directions, and it took off through the blue in the direction of the Explorers' base.
Notes:
And there's the first chapter! Whew!
I'm very happy to finally have this out after all this time. I've been planning out this fic since June or July, and I can't wait to finally start releasing it. I love the way this chapter turned out, and I hope you all enjoyed it too.
All chapters of this fic are going to have lyrics from various songs by the band Ok Goodnight. Because I am nothing if not walking Ok Goodnight propaganda. The fic is titled after their song "Free Fall," and the chapter title here is the opening lyric of the song. Everybody listen to Ok Goodnight. "Free Fall" is the song of the fic. I love it.
My favorite scene in this chapter was definitely the one with Liko's dissociation episode. That's the one without any specific names for the narrator. I don't know if I would say I had fun writing it since Liko is deeply miserable, but I'm very proud of how it turned out. Liko deserves so much better than all of this. Don't worry, sweetheart. I'll get you out of there. Eventually. It'll just take a while. Sorry about that.
Speaking of Liko, I want to take a second to talk about the relationships tagged on this story. Romance isn't going to be the focus or anything, but Liko and Dot will be gay eventually. Writing a Horizons fic without Likodot feels illegal to me. I can't do it. So I won't do it. They'll kiss eventually. It'll take a while for them to make it through all of the angst and pain waiting for them, but they'll reach it in the end.
This chapter is very long, but I don't have all that much to say about it. There's a lot of canon content in here adapted to fit the AU, but that won't be true going forward, so if you like hearing me talk, you'll find a lot of that in future chapters. For now, the main thing I have to say is that I want to hit Spinel with hammers. I hate him from the bottom of my heart. What a piece of human trash.
Next time, we'll pick up with Amethio and see what everything is like on the Explorer side of things. Until then, I hope you all enjoyed this chapter. Feedback is appreciated as always. Have a great day, everyone!
-Digital
Chapter 2: A Bitter Ice Corrodes the Gold
Summary:
The Rising Volt Tacklers continue to search for Liko as Opal awakens into her new life.
Chapter Text
Amethio did not know what to expect.
After he was taken off the mission to retrieve the pendant, Amethio had opted instead to focus his attention on tracking and capturing the black Rayquaza. The Rayquaza was going to be every bit as helpful in the Explorers' plans as the pendant would be, and Amethio was determined to prove it. He was going to catch it, and he was going to prove himself in the eyes of everyone who had ever doubted him.
Amethio could not say he was happy with having to set all of that aside in order to go back to the base to hear about his new mission. What mission could be so important that it would take him away from going after the black Rayquaza? Amethio was under the impression that was of the utmost importance... But clearly not. He did his best to push the thought from his mind though. He needed to hear what all of this was about. Everything else could wait.
Zirc and Onia had to wait in the hallway just outside when Amethio stepped into the meeting room. The rest of the Explorers' administration team was standing in the shadows as well. Onyx stood every bit as straight as he could with his eternally hunched posture. Agate was as apathetic as ever and didn't even spare Amethio a glance when he walked in. Coral was the only one with the confidence to shift back and forth on the spot, her hands tucked up behind her head. Hamber nodded at Amethio when he entered, but Amethio barely noticed it.
Instead, his vision was locked on Spinel. Amethio felt something ugly like rage well up in his stomach at the sight of Spinel. He had never liked Spinel much for a wide variety of reasons, but something about the look on his face today struck a nerve Amethio hadn't realized he needed to worry for in the first place. Spinel had done something. Amethio was sure of it even if he did not have the words or the context to put the pieces together just yet.
Amethio tore his gaze away from Spinel to stare ahead at where his grandfather sat in the shadows of the meeting room. Gibeon's mere presence was enough to send ice spiraling down Amethio's spine, but he did his best to not let it show on his face. "You summoned me back here for a mission, yes?" Amethio asked. He knew there was a chance he would be accused of being impatient or rude for speaking up unprompted, but he couldn't bring himself to care. If it would help him to get to the bottom of this even a little bit sooner, then he would do it.
The shadows around Gibeon's face shifted to show he had nodded. "Yes. From now on, you will be looking after someone here in the base. I believe you are already acquainted with our target, Liko."
The ice in Amethio's spine spread to every corner of his body, and his fingers seemed to tingle from adrenaline and paranoia. "What?" he managed to ask around the mass of lead in the pit of his chest. "Liko is here? How is that possible?"
"You have me to thank for it," Spinel replied, and Amethio whirled to face him. Spinel's smile was every bit as unreadable and frustrating as always, and Amethio had to fight to keep from snapping at him over it. "I took her when I got my hands on the pendant yesterday afternoon. Right now, she is asleep in one of the spare rooms in the base. I imagine she will wake soon."
"But how did you do that?" Amethio pressed. "How were you able to get around the group guarding her?"
Spinel laughed, the sound soft yet resonating. "I have my ways," he answered breezily, and Amethio knew that meant he had no intention of being honest about how it had happened. "I conducted a few tests on both her and the pendant after I took her, but the pendant has not activated in all this time." Spinel shook his head as Amethio sputtered for the words to ask for more information. "It was laughably easy. I do not see how you could have failed at it so spectacularly when it took me just one afternoon."
Amethio clamped his jaw shut before he had the chance to say anything that would result in a punishment. Spinel had done something bad in order to get his hands on Liko. Amethio didn't know what it was, but he knew enough to have a horrible feeling about it. Amethio could only hope he would be able to hear the truth behind this sooner rather than later.
"Amethio," Gibeon cut in, and Amethio looked up around the knot that was steadily forming at the back of his throat. "Your mission from now on is to look after her and ensure she remains under our control. Her memories have been erased, but you need to make sure the mind control holds strong from now on. The story you are to tell her is that she is a member of the Explorers by the name of Opal. She lost her memories in an unexpected incident, and now, you are looking after her as she recovers. She is to stay in the base as much as possible, and if she has to leave, you will go with her. Do everything you must to keep her from remembering anything... And make sure the pendant stays in her hands. One day, its power will be unleashed, and we will be the ones to benefit from it."
Amethio nodded, though he was barely aware of his body moving. None of this felt real, but he knew it had to be. Spinel had done something to erase Liko's memories. That was how he was able to take her. Spinel must have tampered with her mind somehow so that she didn't fight him when he tried to take her. Amethio was sure there was more to it than that, but he knew he likely wouldn't be able to learn anything else now. Gibeon had said his piece, and Spinel enjoyed keeping people in the dark when he could. Amethio's only option now was to go along with it and hope he found something that would help him get to the bottom of this soon.
"Alright," Amethio finally agreed. "I'll do it."
"Good," was all Gibeon said in response. "You are dismissed." Gibeon disappeared from view in the blink of an eye, and Amethio stared at the spot where he last had been for a long moment. He hadn't known what to expect from this mission, but he certainly hadn't imagined it would be something like this.
Amethio only moved when he felt Hamber stop to watch him from a few steps away. Amethio let out a thin breath and made his way out of the room. Zirc and Onia were still waiting out in the hallway, and Amethio had to fight to keep himself from blinking rapidly due to the stark change in lighting from the meeting room to the corridor. Both Zirc and Onia turned to him, their conversation dying away on their lips, but Amethio didn't give them the chance to ask about what had just happened. "We're staying here," Amethio said simply. "Come on. We have a job to do."
Amethio started off in the direction of the spare rooms, his face still set in a solemn frown. Zirc and Onia exchanged a single glance before trailing after him. They were beyond curious about what had happened in the meeting room, but they said nothing. The truth would come to light soon enough, they were sure. It had to.
~~~~~
The light was overpowering.
She opened her eyes slowly, and the light invaded her vision so suddenly that it made each of her senses feel like they were under attack. She blinked rapidly to try and adjust her vision to the light, but it only halfway worked, and she wanted to shrivel back into the darkness and wait until she was ready to face the world. Everything felt like it was simply too much right now. Nothing was happening around her, but it was still too much happening far too fast.
She could feel something soft just beside her, and she directed her vision to her right. She was laying on a bed of some kind, and a small green cat was curled up on the mattress beside her. The cat was slowly waking up, groggy and careful but still leaning against her. The girl's face relaxed into a smile as she recognized the cat as Sprigatito. She loved Sprigatito. Something about the cat felt familiar, but she couldn't quite put a finger on how or why...
And then she realized that she couldn't remember anything else either.
The panic should have hit her hard and fast. She should have been terrified to know that she didn't remember anything about how she had gotten there or what had happened to her... But she couldn't seem to bring herself to care. Everything was overwhelming, but the world was numbed out too, and it was hard to process anything as long as her chest was this tight. She blinked down at the green cat beside her, and Sprigatito butted her head up against the girl's hand in a bid to calm her. The girl wanted to smile, but she couldn't find the strength to make her facial muscles move. Instead, she simply stroked at Sprigatito's head, and the cat purred against her palm. The vibrations were soft and gentle, and the sensation was almost enough to bring the girl back to the world of sterile white and silver she had found herself in.
Almost.
The door opened slowly, like the person on the other side was afraid of what would happen when they stepped inside. The girl looked up carefully, and caution bloomed throughout her nerves to tell her to be careful. Her body was trying to fight even though her mind couldn't find the strength to put that paranoia into action. There was a boy not too much older than her standing in the entryway of the room. His hair was split down the center, half of it white and the other half black. His hair was ever so slightly wavy, and one rogue curl dared to rest in front of his piercing purple eyes. He was dressed formally, but he didn't seem to fit the environment around them as well as he should have. Something about him was almost apprehensive, and the girl couldn't help staring at him in a desperate bid to pull context from the recesses of her frozen mind and onto the tip of her tongue.
The boy seemed shocked when he saw her awake, and for a fraction of a second, he froze. "You're awake," he said bluntly, and she was distantly aware of her body nodding without her mind's active participation or permission. "How are you doing?"
The question sent a knot rocketing from the pit of her stomach up to the back of her throat, and the girl froze as she stared at him. She didn't know how she was doing. She didn't remember enough of anything to figure out who she was or what was supposed to be going on around her. She didn't even know her own name... But she knew who Sprigatito was. Somehow, that felt like it was enough.
"I... I don't know," the girl found herself saying. Her voice barely sounded like her own, and she had to wonder if this was all some cosmic mistake on the part of some higher power that may or may not have existed. This wasn't her body. It wasn't supposed to be her life. She wasn't supposed to be there. She didn't know where she was meant to be, but she could say that this wasn't right. Her very existence felt wrong, and the dread boiled over like water in a kettle that had been screeching for as long as it had been forged.
The boy hesitated for a long moment, and the girl noticed a pair of figures fall into place behind him. Neither the man nor the woman stepped into the room, instead watching as the boy pulled the door shut behind himself and left his companions out in the hallway. "My name is Amethio," he started, testing the weight of his words with a dread that the girl could never hope to define. "Do you know who you are?"
The girl shook her head. The knot in the back of her throat grew greater and stronger, and she feared was going to be sick. How could a person just not know who they were? That should have been impossible... But if it was impossible, then why was it her life? Everything that had happened before she stepped into that eerie white room was blank. She didn't know if she had even stepped inside at all. Maybe someone had brought her there. She wouldn't have known the difference anyway. She doubted she would have remembered any of it regardless of what the truth was.
The boy--Amethio--nodded slowly, and the girl wondered if the weight of the world was trying to press down on his shoulders alone. She did not know what grudge the universe may have held, but she could see that he felt it. "I see," Amethio started. He seemed tempted to take a step toward her, but he held back at the last moment and glued his shoes to the spot near the door. "Allow me to fill you in then. Your name is Opal, and you are a member of an organization by the name of the Explorers. You are here at the base right now."
Opal... That was who she was. The girl nodded slowly, sparing a glance down at her upturned palms. Opal was her name. The name fit her, she thought, though she didn't feel much like a shining jewel right now. If anything, she felt like a gem that had been lost in the dirt, discarded and left to erode by the weight of time. Still, she liked it. She liked having an identity regardless of how limited it was.
Opal. That was her. She was alright.
"There was... An incident recently," Amethio continued to explain, though he took a bit too long to choose his words. He seemed to have rehearsed this conversation, but when he finally started to have it, he couldn't call upon his practice at all. The world had abandoned him, and Opal couldn't help but feel as if it had abandoned her too. "You were severely hurt and lost most of your memories. We managed to find you and bring you back so we could look after you as you recovered. You were with the Explorers for a short while before you lost your memories, though I suppose you don't remember any of that now."
"No... I don't remember it," Opal confirmed. She offered Amethio a small smile. Something about him felt familiar too, and the danger and fear flaring in her heart had started to calm. She was terrified of all she had lost, and she had no idea how she was meant to recover her memories... But she knew she would be fine as long as Amethio was there. If he was near her, she would be safe. "Thank you for your help, Amethio. I appreciate it."
Amethio's shoulders grew stiff for the span of a breath before he manually forced himself to relax. "You're... You're welcome." He shifted uncomfortably beneath her gaze and attention, clearing his throat in an attempt to shatter the tension. "I should give you a tour of the base. I imagine you do not remember much of it after losing your memories."
Opal shook her head. She wanted to say she remembered, but the truth of all that had happened to her was just out of reach. She didn't know how she had lost her memories, much less the person she had been before every piece of her history was stolen from beneath her feet. She was going to need quite some time to recover from this new change in her life, and she could only hope she was ready for it.
Amethio opened the door once again, and Opal slowly moved to push herself off the bed. Her legs felt like they were made of jelly, shaking and refusing to hold strong for longer than a few seconds. Why did it feel like she had been run over by a herd of wild Pokémon? She didn't feel any notable bruises, and she certainly couldn't see anything wrong with her body. Granted, she was wearing a white and gray uniform similar to the one Amethio had on, but she still felt like she would have noticed it if she had sustained such notable injuries. This ache felt like it came from deep within her body somehow, and she had no idea how she was meant to face such a thing. Why did everything hurt so much? What was she missing?
Sprigatito let out a soft meow beside her, and Opal smiled before drawing the cat Pokémon into her arms. She couldn't say for certain who Sprigatito was to her specifically, but she theorized the small cat had been her partner before all of this. Sprigatito felt comfortable to her in a way that nothing else did these days, and Opal was glad to have at least someone there who could calm her down in a moment of such terror and strife. Amethio's help meant a lot to her as well, but Sprigatito... There was something so special about the cat in her grasp, and Opal doubted she would ever truly feel secure as long as she was away from Sprigatito.
With the help of Sprigatito's reassurance, Opal managed to rise to her feet in full, and she forced herself to stand up a bit straighter. She realized a bit belatedly that her hair had been pinned back in a small ponytail at the base of her neck, and when she reached to brush a few loose threads away from her face, the weight of it hit her all at once. She didn't even know what she looked like. She had forgotten so much that she wouldn't have even recognized her own reflection if she saw it in a mirror. Just what had happened for everything to abandon her all at once? What had she done to lose herself so completely?
Amethio seemed considerably less bothered by all of this than she was, and Opal wished she could have put a finger on what was going on inside of his head. His eyes were unreadable, and if she had to guess, she would have said that he knew something... But Opal wasn't sure she even wanted to press him into telling her what he was thinking. If he knew about the incident, then that had to mean it was something bad. Why else would he hold out on telling her what had happened for her to lose her memories? Opal was just going to have to sit with the heaviness of her circumstances until the moment was right. She saw little other choice.
Out in the hallway, Opal was met with the silhouettes of two more figures. She realized they were the man and woman Amethio had left behind when he came inside to greet her. The woman's hair was a shiny blue edging toward gray. The man's hair was largely brown and shaven close to his head, but a chunk of blonde stuck out at the top of his head. Amethio glanced over his shoulder at them, and the man and woman both stood to attention. "Opal, I want you to meet Zirc and Onia," he said. "They are my... Coworkers, I suppose you could say."
Onia stood up a little bit straighter when Opal looked at her, almost like she was afraid of something that could happen if she let her guard down too much around the young girl. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Miss Opal!" Onia greeted, her voice a bit too loud for Opal's liking. It took every ounce of strength in her body to not flinch away at the noise.
"We are here for whatever you need us for!" Zirc added, and once again, he was a little bit too enthusiastic. They seemed happy to be able to serve Amethio, and that excitement was extending to Opal now too. She wished she knew what to make of it, but the fact of the matter was that she didn't understand them anywhere near as much as she would have liked. She knew they were expecting her to say something, but she couldn't wrestle the words together, so she nodded wordlessly instead.
"Let's start the tour," Amethio said, his gaze focused on the end of the hallway off to his right. "We have a lot of ground to cover." He started to walk away a moment later, and Zirc and Onia both followed in his path without missing a beat.
Opal stared after them a moment, willing her legs to find the strength to keep moving. She didn't know why she felt so thoroughly horrible, but she hated it more than anything. She wouldn't be able to get anything done if she let her dread get the better of her... But she didn't know how she was meant to function without feeling like it was eating her alive. Everything was just too much, and her body was screaming at her for reasons she couldn't ever hope to define.
But she was fine. The Explorers were going to look after her. They had been taking care of her before she lost her memories too, hadn't they? That meant they had to be trustworthy. She would be safe as long as they were there with her. Amethio was there to make sure she didn't lose her memories again after what had happened the first time. He would protect her. They would all protect her.
Opal shook all throughout her tour of the base anyway.
~~~~~
Nothing felt familiar in the slightest.
Opal couldn't say she had expected anything else. Amethio had insisted it was important that she 'reacquaint herself' with the base, but Opal didn't feel like she recognized it at all. Her amnesia was so complete that she didn't know anything about what she was seeing, and it terrified her. What could have happened for her mind to erase her history so perfectly? Why did it feel like everything she had ever been had slipped through her fingers before she even knew she needed to hold onto it?
Zirc and Onia were doing their best to make the tour a bit more comfortable for her. Opal appreciated it even if she couldn't find the words to thank them. Zirc and Onia were serious about their dedication to Amethio, but they were fine with offering Opal with a few jokes to lighten the mood. Opal never really laughed, instead only offering them a ghost of a smile. She hoped that didn't discourage them. She really did appreciate what they were doing, but she didn't know how she was meant to express it.
She had to wonder if all of her emotions had abandoned her right along with her memories.
By the time the tour was finished, Opal felt like she would be able to get used to being there at the base. It would take some time, but she was willing to do what she had to in order to adjust. She would need Amethio, Zirc, or Onia there to guide her for a while, but everything would be fine soon enough. Besides, she wouldn't have much of a choice but to get used to all of this. She was going to be staying in the base while she recovered from the incident that had taken her memories. It wouldn't be right of her to leave if it would only put her in danger. Amethio probably wouldn't have let her walk away now anyway.
The tour had also seen Opal introducing herself to a few of the administrators of the Explorers found throughout the base. Her own name felt foreign and wrong to her tongue, and she had to practice it in the silence to make sure she was giving it the weight it deserved. No one else seemed to notice her strange behavior though. A pink-haired girl named Coral had simply offered a comment about how she seemed out of her element, though she didn't elaborate before she received a nudge from Onyx, a tall man beside her. Agate had said nothing save for a brief greeting, and she was gone just as quickly as she had appeared. There were others in the organization that Liko hadn't seen during her tour, but she was sure she would meet them all when the time was right.
"There you are. I was wondering when I would be able to see her again."
Opal's room was in sight when she heard a new set of footsteps behind her. She turned slowly at the sound of the voice of an older man. Well, he was older than her if nothing else, though she couldn't quite put a finger on how old he was. For some reason, dread started to mount in her chest, and she wondered if she was meant to be there at all.
The wrong feeling only continued to grow when she fully looked at the man who had spoken. He was tall with dusty blue hair. His face was set in an eternal smile, though it didn't feel anywhere near as genuine as it should have. Opal blinked at him a few times, trying to pull any sense of reason she could from his face, but she came up short each time.
Amethio's shoulders stiffened, but he fought his way back to regular posture. "Ah... I suppose I never had the chance to introduce you," he said, something like apprehension in his voice. "Opal, this is Spinel. And Spinel, this is..."
"I am fully aware of who she is," Spinel assured Amethio, and his smile seemed to deepen in a way that sent shudders racing through Opal's stomach and heart. "She may have lost her memories, but I still remember. I am glad to see you are alright after all that happened."
Spinel reached out to put a hand on Opal's shoulder, but she yanked herself out of his range before he could touch her. Spinel's fingers hesitated for what felt like an eternity, and Opal felt her heart screaming in her ears even as his lips moved like he was going to apologize. "Jumpy, isn't she?" Spinel said instead, and Opal wondered if he even knew how to apologize. It wouldn't have surprised her if the answer was no, but she had no idea why she was so sure of it. She knew all of these people from before she had lost her memories. Everyone had told her that. Even so, there was something about Spinel... Something that she simply couldn't put a finger on describing. All of this was wrong, and she had no idea why she didn't understand it.
Spinel's face softened when he noticed the panic in Opal's eyes, but he still didn't give her the space she so desperately needed. "Are you alright?" he questioned next. "You have no reason to be afraid."
Opal's body moved before she could tell it to stay still, and she retreated behind Amethio with as much speed as her hazy mind could offer her. She knew she was shaking like a leaf in a thunderstorm, but she couldn't bring herself to care. She didn't know what had happened between her and Spinel for her to fear him so greatly, but she knew that she had to get as far away from him as possible. She couldn't be there. She couldn't be around him, not right now, not ever.
Amethio stuck one arm out to block Spinel from reaching Opal. "Give her space, Spinel," Amethio asserted, his voice much more forceful now than it had been all day. He looked over his shoulder at Opal, and she stared up at him with something she hoped was pleading in her eyes. She had no reason to fear Spinel, or if nothing else, she had no reason she could remember. But she couldn't stay there. She had to get out. She had to run as far away as she could even if it meant abandoning the Explorers' base and any safety she may have had in the building that had once been her home.
After a few seconds more of silent studying, Amethio started toward Opal's room. "You seem tired," he commented, though Opal could think of a few other words aside from 'tired' that would have been more accurate to her circumstances. "Let's get you back to your room." He cast a glare over his shoulder at Spinel, and the blue-haired man simply smiled back at him, completely unbothered by what had happened. Once again, Opal was confident that Spinel did not know how to apologize, and even if he could, he would not have done it for her of all people.
"Good luck," Spinel called after Amethio and Opal, and when the door closed behind Onia, Opal finally felt herself breathe again. The door would keep her safe from Spinel. She didn't know why she was so afraid of him, but her body seemed to remember something that her mind did not. She had no idea how that was possible, but Opal trusted it. She had no other choice at this point.
Opal practically collapsed onto her bed, all of the air rushing out of her lungs like she had been punched in the stomach. She was being irrational. She had to be. She couldn't just react that way to someone who was meant to help her. Spinel was on her side. He was a member of the Explorers too, and she had no reason to push him away. He wouldn't have done anything to her. They were on the same side.
But maybe he had been there during the incident where she lost her memories. He wasn't the culprit, but if he had been there and unable to save her, then maybe her body would have made a negative association. That would make sense. It didn't fully explain away her paranoia, but it was a small justification, and right now, it was Opal's lifeline, the only thing keeping her from tumbling her off the edge of her mind and into some dark abyss she did not know but feared deeply regardless.
Amethio stared at Opal for a long moment, something stormy and uncertain playing across his features. He shoved it as far down as he could stand before turning toward the door. "I'm going to speak with Hamber about what has happened," Amethio said vaguely. "Zirc, Onia, please stay with her and make sure she is alright. I'll be back soon."
Opal watched Amethio go, feeling something in her chest go tight at the thought of losing him. No, she wasn't losing him. He would be back. She simply had to be patient. Zirc and Onia were kind too. They had done their best to cheer her up when they noticed her unease during the tour. She would be fine with them.
She would be fine with anyone but Spinel.
Uncomfortable silence bloomed between Opal, Zirc, and Onia. Opal wanted to say something to break it, but she couldn't find the words. The other two seemed to feel the same way, and the quiet was only shattered when Zirc dug his hand into his pocket to fish out his phone. "Do you want to watch anything?" he asked. Opal stared at the phone, realizing a bit too late that she didn't have a Rotom phone of her own. Zirc seemed to realize that was on her mind too, and he floundered for a few seconds before explaining. "T-The others said it was best if you didn't have one since it could remind you of something before you're ready to remember what happened. You can watch something on my phone though."
Zirc navigated his way to the videos app on his phone, and Opal watched his fingers move with a frown. She supposed Zirc's logic made sense. If she had unrestricted access to the online world, then there was a chance she would stumble into something that would hurt her. Spinel had already hurt her without meaning to, and Opal didn't trust herself enough to be able to handle something that might spark an old memory. Maybe it would be better if she focused on trying to pull herself out of the darkness for a while. The rest of the details could wait until she was ready to face them.
"Hold on," Opal cut in, surprising even herself when she spoke. "Who's that?"
Zirc's finger was hesitating in the air just above a video showing a person in a pale blue suit that resembled a Nidorina. A Quaxly was also featured in the thumbnail, his eyes bright with excitement for the topic his friend was set to discuss. "Oh, them?" Zirc asked, seeming shocked by her choice. "That's Nidothing. They do informative Pokémon videos." After a moment's silence, his expression shifted in an indescribable way. "Do you want to watch one?"
Opal nodded. "Please."
Zirc clicked on the video, and his Rotom phone rotated so it was horizontal and hanging in the air just in front of Opal. Zirc and Onia both sat down on either side of her, taking care to not crowd her but wanting to see the screen too. Opal barely noticed them, too busy staring at the rising figure of Nidothing to care.
"Yo-ssu, all you Pokémon trainers! It's Nidothing back with another video!" Nidothing posed with one arm high above their head, and Opal felt her shoulders starting to relax. "What's that? You don't know what a Pokémon trainer is? A Pokémon trainer is someone who raises Pokémon and battles with them in competition! We all know the one thing every Pokémon trainer wants to be more than anything ever: a Pokémon champion!"
Opal felt herself begin to smile. Something about Nidothing felt cozy and familiar. Maybe she had been a fan of Nidothing before she lost her memories. She would have been able to watch videos whenever she wanted if she had her phone before the incident... And somehow, Opal knew Nidothing had been a source of comfort for her prior to the accident. She felt safe as long as she was watching Nidothing's goofy antics play out across the screen.
Onia seemed to notice it too, and she looked down at Opal with a strangely stilted smile. "Are you having fun?"
Opal nodded with a hum of confirmation. "I really like Nidothing's videos." After a moment passed in silence, Opal allowed herself a vulnerable smile, but she didn't look up at Zirc or Onia out of fear that Nidothing would be gone when she next went to turn her attention toward the screen. "After this one... Do you think we can watch another?"
Zirc blinked for a few frantic seconds, trying and failing to find the words he so desperately needed. Eventually, he settled on nodding. "Yeah... We can watch as many as you like."
Opal watched Nidothing videos with Zirc and Onia until Zirc's phone ran out of battery. Even after he left to go charge it, she found Nidothing's voice echoing in her mind. Opal smiled into the silence, closing her eyes to let the images play out against the backs of her eyelids.
Yo-ssu, all you Pokémon trainers!
Maybe if she focused hard enough, Opal would be able to figure out what kind of Pokémon trainer she had once been too.
~~~~~
As soon as they woke up, Dot checked the internet for any signs of Liko.
They hadn't slept well the night before, too frantic and wired to rest for longer than a few hours at a time. They were certain the same applied to the other members of the Rising Volt Tacklers. They were doing their best to hide it, but Dot knew they were all worried in the same way they were. As long as Liko was still missing, their anxiety would continue, and Dot could only hope they were able to find a solution to it soon.
Dot had only been able to sleep because they knew there were people still looking for Liko while they were resting. The collaboration with Iono had generated a lot of buzz, and they were certain it was going to lead to the truth... But it hadn't done so yet. People had been looking all night, and it wasn't just in Levincia anymore. People all across Paldea were looking, and a few dedicated viewers had even picked up with looking in other regions too. Everyone wanted to be the one who claimed the prize of a meet and greet with Nidothing and the prize money to go with it. No one had found any luck just yet, but their determination lived on.
Dot just wished they could say the same for themself. They let out a frustrated yell and grabbed at their temples with angry claws. Someone should have found Liko by now. Even if she was kidnapped, there must have been at least one witness... So why had no one found her? Why had an entire night come and gone without so much of a clue as to where she had gone? Why couldn't someone--anyone--just come out and say that they had figured out where she was now?!
"Any luck?"
Dot screeched at the sound of Friede's voice from behind them, and they whirled around to see him standing in the doorway of their room. Friede wasn't the only one there either; all of the Rising Volt Tacklers were there, and Roy was fighting his way to the front so he could see what Dot was up to. Dot stared at all of them for a long moment, hesitating before letting out a hefty sigh. "Not yet," they muttered. "No one has found anything else. There aren't even any traces of her out there." Dot looked back to the screen of their computer before swinging their chair around and pushing to their feet. "We have to get out there and keep looking."
"I have another suggestion for you," Friede cut in before Dot had the chance to shove their way out of their room. "If you still don't know where Liko is, then it might be worth looking into the Explorers' base. They must have a center of operations around here somewhere, and it wouldn't shock me if they took Liko back there. I can't think of anyone else who would want to take Liko, so we may as well take this directly to them so long as there's a chance they could be responsible."
Dot's teeth clamped down on their bottom lip. They didn't want to have to admit it, but Friede had a point. The Explorers were bound to be the ones behind this if Liko had truly been kidnapped. Dot was going to have to find a way to track them back to their base and then use that to bring Liko home. It wasn't going to be easy, especially with all the fake reports flying around, but they had to try. It was their only option at this point, and it would remain that way for a long time.
"I wish I could say I was surprised that the Explorers resorted to kidnapping," Mollie muttered under her breath. "That was what they tried before we showed up to save her from her school the first time. It's not out of the question that they would do it again, but..."
"I wish they hadn't done it," Orla finished for her, and Mollie nodded. Orla shook her head and backed away from the doorway. It gave Dot a little bit more space, and they were suddenly aware of how claustrophobic they felt with everyone watching them from the entryway of their room. "Do you think you'll be able to look for any information about where the Explorers are now, Dot?"
"I'll try," Dot replied, but deep down, their hopes weren't high in the slightest. The Explorers had managed to keep a lot of their operations a secret up to this point, and Dot was willing to bet that they had extra high security around their base. Even if Dot was able to find it, there was no guarantee that the Rising Volt Tacklers would be able to get inside to find Liko and bring her back. There were going to be a lot of strong battlers in the base, and Friede was the strongest trainer the Rising Volt Tacklers had. Mollie, Orla, and Murdock could all fight if it came to that, but they weren't anywhere near as strong as Friede was with Charizard and Cap. They couldn't rely on a single fighter to be enough to help them find Liko and bring her back home. That would put too much pressure on Friede's shoulders, and it wouldn't work no matter how dot looked at it.
But they didn't say any of this. Instead, Dot simply looked back to their computer and let out another sigh. There was no point in dancing around the point as long as there was something they could do to make sure this ended as well as possible. They were going to do everything in their power to find out where the Explorers' base was, and from there, they would try to bring Liko back. They had failed to find her the day before, but they weren't going to let that shortcoming hold them back forever. They had to keep pushing and fighting, and Dot was willing to do anything if it would help Liko to return.
Something like bile rose up in the back of Dot's throat, but they swallowed it down before they had the chance to say anything that would hurt them more than the events of the last day already had.
~~~~~
Amethio didn't like any of this.
He hadn't known what to expect when he was called back to the Explorers' base for a mission. He especially hadn't expected he would find his way into the position of looking after Liko of all people. Amethio didn't know much of what Spinel had done in order to bring her into the fold of the Explorers, but he was certain he didn't want to know at this point. It was all too much, and Amethio's mind had been racing ever since he saw her at the heart of this catastrophe.
Amethio's thoughts kept straying back to the look on her face when she saw Spinel for the first time. Spinel was the one who had taken her and then brought her back to the base, but when she saw him, she didn't recognize him. Instead, she was struck with something deep and complete: her own raw terror. Amethio had no idea what could have happened for Liko to still be paranoid around him after having her memories erased, but he had a horrible feeling about it. Just what had Spinel done? Where was all of it going to lead when Amethio finally got to the bottom of it?
Though Amethio supposed he shouldn't have been thinking of Liko in the terms of Liko anymore. She was Opal now. Something about her was fundamentally different now compared to what Amethio was used to from her. Liko had been quiet but strong, always smiling and doing what she could to help others even if it put her in danger. Opal, on the other hand... She was simply quiet, looking at the world through detached and almost numb eyes. She was solemn in a way Liko had not been, and if Amethio didn't know better, he would have said they were two different people. Whatever Spinel had done had created a notable divide between the Liko of the past and the Opal of the present, and Amethio had no idea what he was meant to make of any of it.
But he wasn't supposed to have any opinions on this at all, was he? Amethio was there to earn the favor of his grandfather once again. He had failed in his mission to get the pendant and bring it back to the base, so now, he was being put on a new job to try and earn the trust of his coworkers. Amethio's job was not to ask questions; he was there to look after Opal and make sure she and the pendant both stayed under the control of the Explorers. Amethio was clueless as to how all of this had happened or how it was going to spiral when pressed, but he had to do as he was told. That was his duty, and he was not going to let himself fail Gibeon once again.
That unfortunately wasn't enough to stop Amethio from having his reservations though. The more he thought about what Spinel could have done to put Opal in her current situation, the worse he felt. It was clear that something bad had happened between them, but Amethio hadn't been told any of the details, and he was certain that was on purpose. No one wanted to risk telling him the truth in case it caused problems for them later on. That left Amethio to sit in his paranoia and confusion as to why Opal had reacted so strongly to seeing Spinel again. He felt like the truth was close enough for him to touch, but it was obscured by thick mist, and all he could do was reach for it blindly and hope he grabbed onto something valuable.
Deep down, Amethio knew he wouldn't reach his goal without guidance, so he pressed his lips shut and just kept walking.
Mercifully, it didn't take Amethio long to find Hamber. The older man was just leaving the audience chamber where Gibeon was located, so Amethio could only assume he had just finished a meeting with the head of the Explorers. "Hamber," Amethio greeted, doing his best to ignore the tension rising in his chest. He could already feel that he was going to struggle to explain himself now that he was actually there and getting ready to tell Hamber everything that had happened with Spinel. Amethio simply hoped that he would be able to push through it long enough to make sense of all of this.
Hamber paused at the sound of his name, and he looked up at Amethio with the same neutral expression he always wore. He seemed tempted to call out Amethio's name, but he stopped when he noticed the stoic set of the younger boy's face. "What happened?" Hamber asked instead.
Amethio hesitated for a moment, trying to find the words that would make sense of all of this before he gave up entirely. "It's about Spinel and... Opal," Amethio replied. The sound of her name was unfamiliar and strange on his tongue, bringing with it a weight that he didn't think would ever quite leave him alone. "The two of them ran into each other earlier, and she... I don't know if I would say that she remembered anything, but she definitely had a reaction. She pulled away from him and tried to hide. She didn't seem to know why she was doing it, but she knows that something happened between her and Spinel."
Hamber hummed vacantly, and he barely seemed shocked by Amethio's words. For a long moment, Amethio thought Hamber was never going to say anything else, and he was halfway tempted to walk away and go back to Opal's side. "Keep them apart," Hamber eventually instructed. "If he is putting her in a position like that, then it must mean that he is close to reminding her of something. We cannot let that happen. Do whatever you must in order to keep them separated. I'll tell Master Gibeon about this development and pass on the instruction to Spinel as well."
Amethio nodded, though if he was being honest with himself, he didn't think he was going to be able to keep Spinel away from Opal forever. If Spinel wanted to cause problems--and he always did--then he was going to find a way to be near Opal. Amethio hoped he would be able to fix this, but he knew it wouldn't be quite so simple to set it right. If nothing else, he would try. In a perfect world, that would be enough.
It was a shame Amethio already knew this world was far from perfect.
"Understood," Amethio replied when he finally mustered up the strength to speak. He started off through the hallway once again, off to return to Opal, Zirc, and Onia. She was bound to be back in her room recovering from her brush with Spinel. Amethio didn't know what that recovery would mean for the future or the present, but he knew what his orders were. He would hold true to them to the end.
And he hoped with everything he had that Spinel was willing to go along with it too.
~~~~~
Roy didn't know what to do.
He had never been the best at handling serious circumstances. He was fully aware of it, but it had never quite bothered him before then. What reason did Roy have to worry about dark subjects when he had only known his home island for so many years? Even after joining the Rising Volt Tacklers, Roy had made the most of a bad situation. The Explorers may have been after him and the rest of his friends, but Roy was determined to keep fighting with a smile on his face. He would push through it. He wouldn't let anyone stop him from seeing all the world had to offer and eventually making peace with the black Rayquaza.
Roy's determination was doing nothing for him now though. After leaving Dot's room behind, Roy had returned to his own room and started to pace the length of it. He wanted to get out there and search for Liko, but he didn't know where he was meant to start. Going out on his own could have put him in danger the same way it had put Liko at risk. The Explorers hadn't shown any signs of wanting to go after Roy, but he knew there was a chance they would target him too. He couldn't risk going off alone when it would only scare the rest of the Rising Volt Tacklers, but he needed to do at least something to set all of this right. How could he be expected to just wait around when something horrible could have been happening to Liko at that very moment?
Roy couldn't help the frustrated yell that built up in the back of his throat, and he raised his hands to cradle at his temples. He had been the last one to see Liko before she disappeared. He wished he had listened for more details of what she was going to do. He wished he had given her a second glance when she turned to go and find that herb for Murdock. Roy knew realistically that it wasn't his fault that Liko was gone, but that did little to stop the ugly guilt clawing its way up through his stomach and into the back of his throat. Why did everything have to end this way? Why couldn't they just find Liko? Why did the Explorers want to take her in the first place?
Wattrel and Fuecoco were both watching Roy pace the length of the room. Neither one of them knew what they were meant to do to cheer up their friend, and Roy didn't know what he would have asked for them to do either. He couldn't stop thinking about Liko, and he doubted that was going to change any time soon. He just wanted her to come back home safe, but there was no guarantee such a thing would happen or that it was even possible anymore.
"I should have done something," Roy found himself saying. He had no way of knowing this was how it was going to end when Liko first left, but hindsight was critical and scathing, and it overwhelmed any sense Roy may have had left after the day before. "I should have been there for her. I should have been there to make sure she was alright. I knew there were people who wanted to go after her, but I never thought..."
Roy paused for a long moment, and he let out a slow sigh. He wasn't going to be able to fix any of this by hating everything he had not known to do when this began... But if that was true, then why was he feeling so rampantly guilty over the way it had all ended? He had no way of knowing this was how it was going to end when he first noticed Liko was gone. None of them could have known... But Roy still wished there was something he could have done to see all of it ended.
"I should have been there," Roy muttered, hating the ugly, scathing feeling of hot guilt crawling out of his stomach and into the rest of his body. "I know there was nothing I could have done since I didn't know, but... I wish I could have been there."
Outside of Roy's door, Orla paused at the sound of his voice. She had been going on rounds throughout the ship to try and keep herself distracted from everything that was happening. If she was focused on business, then maybe she wouldn't start to spiral thinking about what could have happened to Liko... But Orla knew she should have known better than to think it would be that easy. If she was going to be able to escape this unscathed, then she would have a long time ago. Her dread and guilt were going to haunt her for as long as Liko was still gone. It wasn't going to vanish until after Liko had been brought back home and returned to the Rising Volt Tacklers safely.
Orla paused for a moment outside of Roy's door, halfway tempted to say something to try and pull him out of his self-deprecation spiral... But the words refused to come. Orla didn't know what she would have said even if she was given the chance to speak. None of this was his fault, but Roy already knew that. Orla didn't know what would reassure him at this point. The only easy solution to this problem was to simply bring Liko home, but that wouldn't be happening for a while yet, not until someone was able to figure out where she had gone.
Orla shook her head and let out a silent breath. She was going to go out and keep looking. Dot hadn't found any leads after the night came and went, but Orla knew there had to be at least something out there that would indicate where Liko had gone off to. If Liko was taken, then Orla would do everything in her power to find her and bring her back.
Roy didn't notice it when Orla passed by his room, and he didn't notice it when she left either. Instead, he simply sat down on his bed and let his hands come up to cradle his head. When had everything gone so wrong?
And more importantly, why did it feel like nothing was ever going to be able to fix it?
~~~~~
Amethio's shoulders remained tense throughout his entire journey back to Opal's room at the base. His conversation with Hamber was still weighing heavily on him... Though the interaction with Spinel was the far greater evil for Amethio to fight through. He still didn't know any of the details of what had happened between Spinel and Opal, but if her reaction was anything to go off, it hadn't been anything good. What good interaction would have ended with her memory being completely wiped?
Amethio paused in the doorway of her room, finding that he had accidentally left the door cracked when he walked away earlier. Opal was sitting on her bed now, looking at Zirc's phone as it played a Nidothing video. Amethio didn't watch Nidothing himself, but he knew Zirc was a huge fan and had even gotten Onia into watching with him. Opal seemed to be enjoying herself as she watched the videos, and the stiffness in her posture from her earlier encounter with Spinel was gone now. Somehow, the videos were helping her to relax, and Amethio could only hope they maintained that power going forward.
Amethio let out a silent breath so as to not draw any attention to himself. He didn't know how he was meant to feel about any of this, but he knew what he had to do. This mission was not being given to him simply for the sake of it; this was the way for him to earn his grandfather's trust again. The Explorers were counting on him to succeed, and Amethio was going to do anything and everything he had to in order to show them that they were making the right choice by placing their faith in him. If that meant looking after Opal as she adjusted to her new life, then so be it.
Even so, Amethio felt a pang of guilt tugging at the back corner of his mind. Was any of this right? He didn't know what Spinel had done to erase Opal's memories, but it must have been bad. Amethio knew his actions in the Explorers were unpopular with those outside the organization, but he liked to think he had at least some degree of honesty and honor. He had only attacked Liko after she made it clear that she would not be coming with him quietly. He had chosen peace first unless he was given no choice but to resort to violence.
Spinel, on the other hand... Spinel was cunning, but his schemes were dangerous and prone to hurting others in the name of his ambition. When Amethio looked at Opal, he had to wonder just what had happened between the two of them to spark a reaction like the one she had earlier in the day. It must have been horrible, but the details were out of Amethio's reach. He could only hope he got to the bottom of it one day.
But would any of it even matter? Amethio was doing what the Explorers asked of him, and that was the most important thing for him to do. If he disagreed with Spinel's methods, then that was his choice, but it was hardly something that would stop all that he knew needed to be done. Their goals would not change simply because Amethio disliked the ways in which Spinel acted. His best course of action was to simply carry out his mission. He would earn the trust of the organization once again, and he would be ready to walk with them toward the future they all sought.
All of this was going to be fine. Amethio certainly didn't feel that way right now, but he was sure he would know they were fine eventually. He just needed to be patient for a little while longer. In the meantime, he had a job to do, and that meant looking after Opal. She would be fine with the Explorers. Amethio would keep her away from Spinel, and he would have nothing to worry about aside from studying the pendant to see if it activated.
Somehow, the teal light of the jewel around Opal's neck was far more ominous today than it ever had been in the past.
Notes:
And so arrives chapter two!
I have a few more notes to add to this one. First and foremost, now that this is applicable, I can mention the names I'm using throughout this fic. For the most part, I'm using dub names because I tend to enjoy the dub names more. There are a few characters where I prefer the sub names (specifically Onyx/Sidian and Agate/Chalce), so I'm using sub names for those specific characters. Cases like that are pretty rare though since a lot of the names are the same, or in the rare case that they are different, I prefer dub. I just wanted to throw it out there since Onyx and Agate were mentioned in this chapter.
As for the rest of the chapter... Amethio time! This one featured a lot of Amethio content, and I'm very excited for that. Amethio and Opal are going to have a wonderful dynamic when I get around to writing it in more detail, and I'm beyond hyped to show it off. They're my friends. Amethio doesn't know it yet, but he'll get there.
Okay. Let's address the elephant in the room... Opal. I'm treating her a bit differently from Liko on purpose for reasons that will become apparent once we hit the second arc of this fic. That's going to take a while since arc one is projected to be about 20 chapters, but I've got plans for this. Characters will use Liko or Opal depending on what is more applicable to them at any given moment, but right now, she is referring to herself as Opal. I know this is probably a bit strange and unorthodox, but I'm going to ask you all to trust me with where I'm going here.
Next time, we're going to press on with the story, and we're going to see Friede have a very important but miserable conversation. Until then, I hope you all enjoyed this chapter. Feedback is appreciated as always. Have a nice day, everyone!
-Digital
Chapter 3: In Cages Lies Unfold
Summary:
Amethio helps Opal settle into her amnesiac life as Friede and the Rising Volt Tacklers grieve Liko's disappearance.
Chapter Text
Dot didn't understand how she could have found so little.
Over the course of the last few days, Dot had been dedicating her all to trying to find Liko. She searched through every report about a girl with a Sprigatito, including those she knew had been forged in the name of letting the person responsible for all of this get away. Dot was desperate to find anything that would lead her even a little bit closer to the truth, but in the end, she came up completely short. It didn't matter how much time she spent on this; it was clearly not going to lead her anywhere, and Dot had no idea how she was supposed to make that change.
Dot let out a heavy sigh as she slouched over her desk. She hadn't slept much lately either, too wired and wound up to bother. She didn't want to waste even a single precious moment as long as there was a chance Liko would be found overnight... But at this point, Dot knew she may as well have not bothered. She didn't want to admit it to herself, but she knew that Liko had been kidnapped. This was not simply a matter of disappearance. If it was, then Dot would have found Liko ages ago, but she had not. Someone had taken Liko deliberately, and now, they were doing everything in their power to make sure she was kept as far away from the Rising Volt Tacklers as possible.
Dot did her best to blink away the tears rising in her eyes, but she knew she wasn't going to be able to stem them forever. She hadn't let herself cry since this all began. Dot knew most people thought of her as cold and apathetic, but that couldn't be farther from the truth. In all honesty, Dot was an emotional person. She didn't know how to express it, but her feelings were strong and raging, pressing against her ribcage in search of any escape they could get their grubby little fingers on. Dot wanted to let them go too, but she had no idea where she was meant to start. Everything just felt like it was too much, and Dot had no clue what she could do to change that.
If nothing else, Dot could say with certainty that all of this had become a lot more to chew than she had ever expected. She had to split her time now between two separate searches to varying degrees of success. On one hand, Dot needed to figure out where Liko had gone, and she put most of her attention to seeing if she could track her missing friend down. On another monitor, Dot looked for any sightings of people in uniforms similar to those worn by Amethio, Zirc, and Onia. There must have been other Explorers out there, and they had clearly done something to Liko.
Technically, Dot had no evidence to back up her assumptions that the Explorers were behind this. Even so, she knew it deep in the pit of her stomach. All of the Rising Volt Tacklers knew it. Who else could be behind this but the Explorers? Liko had been targeted on purpose, and the fake reports made it clear. Just any old kidnapper wouldn't put that much effort into throwing the Rising Volt Tacklers off their trail. This had been done intentionally, and Dot knew it had to be the Explorers.
Even so, Dot was certain it was not Amethio behind all of this. Amethio was too direct with his approaches in situations like these. If he wanted something, then he would come right out and aim for it without shame or regret. The person behind this must have been another member of the Explorers, but it definitely was not Amethio. Dot didn't know what that was supposed to mean for her or the rest of the Rising Volt Tacklers, but she could say with certainty that she had a horrible feeling about it.
Dot forced herself to look back up at the screens. She couldn't let herself grow demoralized just yet. If Liko was with the Explorers, then she had to still be alive. They wouldn't let something bad happen to her as long as she had something they wanted: the power of the pendant. That was the reason they had gone after her so many times before, and Dot was sure it was the motivation for this attack too. Dot could only hope she would be able to step up and see all of this stopped before they could do anything too severe to hurt Liko. She never would have been able to forgive herself if something bad happened when she was too far away to be able to help.
Beside Dot, Quaxly was looking up at the computer screens with a small frown of his own. Dot hadn't even realized that ducks could frown until all of this happened, but now, she knew the truth firsthand. Quaxly was worried about Liko too, but beyond that, he was worried about Dot. If finding Liko was the best way to bring Dot out of her hazy spirals, then that was what Quaxly was going to dedicate himself to.
Dot was glad to have Quaxly there by her side. She hadn't ever thought of him as a partner until the night the search began, but now, she was happy for it. She couldn't have asked for a better partner, and she was glad she had finally seen what he had so clearly been hoping for constantly for far longer than he had let on. Dot wanted to celebrate her accomplishments of finding a partner and finally becoming a proper Pokémon trainer, but she couldn't do it as long as Liko was still gone. It would have felt wrong to enjoy herself too much when she had no way of knowing for sure if Liko was safe or would ever be able to come back to the Brave Olivine.
No. She couldn't think like that. Dot knew what she was searching for, and she was going to keep looking for everything she could in order to get to the bottom of this. Liko had to still be out there, and Dot was going to find her no matter what. She would give it her all if that was what it took. She had her search parameters set up, and it was just a matter of time before one of them started to feed her information that would help her with the rest of the search. She was looking for Liko, but she also had the information necessary to find the other members of the Explorers. All she had to do was be patient.
If only patience was enough to bring Liko back.
~~~~~
Friede didn't think of himself as a nervous person.
In fact, Friede's favorite approach when facing a problem was to simply rush into it and ask questions later. His raw determination and charisma rarely failed him, and if he approached an issue with enough force and a wide enough smile, then he would get to the bottom of it. Friede knew others thought of him as reckless and absurd at times, but he didn't care. He knew what it took to solve a problem, and even if others didn't know what to do, then he was happy to take the first step. Initiative was important, and Friede had never let anyone take that advantage away from him.
Now though, Friede was left to wonder if he had ever been this anxious. He didn't like to sit and stew in his negativity, and he had learned that about himself years ago. Nothing he said or did seemed to stop that nervousness from boiling over and getting everywhere now though. Friede shouldn't have had to be there, and yet, it was necessary in a way that nothing else he had done previously could ever hope to be. He had to tell them, but he had no idea where to begin.
But there was no holding this off forever, was there? It didn't matter how little he wanted to do this; Friede knew what had to be done. He may as well just get it over with as soon as possible. That was the only way he would be able to set this right and move forward. Despite his nerves, Friede finally forced himself to raise his hand and knock against the front door.
Alex was the one who answered after a dulled call of "coming!" echoed from within the home. Friede struggled to keep himself composed, suddenly missing the familiar presence of Charizard there by his side. Cap didn't feel like enough. Friede knew he had his partner there by his side, but he was going to have to say this on his own. He had no idea how he would be able to choke the words out, but he had no other choice.
Alex opened the door with a smile on his face, though it quickly morphed to shock at the sight of Friede. "What are you doing here, Friede?" he asked, his eyes going wide. "I would have thought you would have left Paldea already."
Friede found himself flinching at that. He was already caught by surprise, and it was only going to get worse the longer this wore on. "I really need to talk to you," Friede told Alex. "Is Lucca here?"
"She is," Alex confirmed, taking a step out of the doorway and gesturing for Friede to follow him. "She just got back from a few hours of research at the library. You came at the perfect time." Alex turned his head into one of the adjoining rooms as he guided Friede over to the couches in the living room. "Lucca! We have company!"
Friede sat down stiffly on the couch, hoping his nervous energy didn't show too clearly even though he knew that ship had sailed ages ago. Cap settled down beside him, remaining uncharacteristically silent as he waited for Lucca and Alex to arrive. Friede watched as Lucca came around a corner and approached the couch with a smile on her face. "Hey, Friede," Lucca greeted. "What brings you here? I thought you'd be on your way out of Paldea by now."
"That was the plan," Friede confessed. "But... Something changed."
Lucca arched an eyebrow. "What changed? Is something wrong?"
Friede felt his blood rushing through his ears with every beat of his heart. He had never been the type to back down in the face of a challenge, but he wanted to bury this as deep as it could go now. He was exhausted already, and he hadn't even started to explain himself. "It's about Liko," Friede found himself saying. "A few days ago, our ship was stalled and couldn't take off due to interference in our internet connection. While we were stuck, Liko went on a shopping trip by herself, and... And she never came back."
The entire room seemed to freeze, and Friede found himself wondering if he had ever seen Lucca in such a picturesque image of perfect shock. "What?" Alex asked from beside her, forcing himself to smile even as anxiety started to well up in the cavern of his chest. "What do you mean?"
Friede swallowed against the knot that had risen at the back of his throat. "She went to find something on her own, but... It was a trap. We don't know for sure who did it, but..." Friede's words failed him at the most crucial moment, and everything he had tried to rehearse for this agonizing conversation vanished in the blink of an eye. "She's gone."
For a long moment, the room was perfectly silent and still. Even Fidough was frozen from his place on the floor beside Alex's feet. Lucca's eyes were wide, and her lips were slightly parted as she stared blankly at Friede. Tears started to spring to life in her eyes, and they streamed emotionlessly down her cheeks.
"We're searching for her right now," Friede found himself saying, unable to keep his tongue in check for even a moment longer. "We won't let whoever did this get away with it, and we're going to bring her home no matter what. I'm going to find her, but I... I thought you had a right to know."
Lucca didn't move as she let out a silent sob, her blue eyes gleaming with a deluge of sadness Friede didn't think he had ever seen from her. He had known Lucca for many years, and he had thought he knew most of what there was to know about her... But nothing could have prepared him for this. It was too much. Everything was too much. Friede didn't know if he would ever be able to fix it again.
Alex's reaction somehow shocked Friede even more, and he clenched his fingers into trembling fists. "It was the pendant, wasn't it?" Alex snarled, barely managing to restrain his rage. "That was why they wanted to take her before, wasn't it?"
"I don't know for certain, but it looks very likely," Friede admitted. "It was probably one of the Explorers, but it's not one we know. The people we were dealing with would always handle things head-on, but that's not what happened."
"Of course it was the pendant!" Alex burst out, his yell echoing throughout the entire home. Fidough jolted beside Alex's feet, frozen in a moment of anxious consideration. Fidough couldn't decide if he wanted to console Alex however he could or run from the source of the noise, and the inconclusive choice manifested in Fidough remaining perfectly still. "It all comes down to the pendant! We should have known it was too dangerous to leave it with her after she was first attacked over it! How could it be worth any of this?!"
"I don't know what they want with it," Friede confessed, and all of a sudden, he felt as if he knew nothing at all about the situation in which he found himself. He didn't know if understanding the Explorers' logic would have made it any easier either. It was just too much, and the anxiety Friede had been trying to push through was suffocating enough to feel like it was going to kill. "But we're doing everything we can to find her and bring her home. Someone took advantage of her, but we're going to find her."
"You had better!" Alex shouted. "I should have known that pendant was trouble after Diana wanted to give it to her! If it had already caused her trouble, then it shouldn't have been put in the hands of a child to begin with!"
Cap nudged at Friede's hand, and Friede realized he had tightened his fingers into fists that were making his entire body seem to shake like he had been caught in an earthquake. "I'm not going to ask for your forgiveness. I don't expect it either. You wanted me and the rest of my crew to look after her and make sure she stayed safe, and we failed," Friede said even as his words felt so painfully inadequate that he wanted to melt into liquid rage and grief. "I'm going to do everything I can in order to find her and bring her back. If you want me to return her home after all of this, then I'll do it. I would do anything to find Liko, and I hope that I'll be able to make this right one day. I won't give up." Friede almost said that they could count on him, but he knew that wasn't true. If they could truly count on him, then Liko never would have been taken in the first place.
Alex had wrapped an arm around Lucca's shoulders, pulling his wife in close. Lucca still hadn't moved since hearing the news, staring at the ground with wide, vacant eyes. Alex spoke in her place, something like enmity sparking up in his eyes. "You had better," he muttered crossly. He was unable to hold his tears back now, and they were flowing like rivers down his cheeks.
Friede nodded, unable to decide if he should continue to look into Alex's eyes or stare at the ground so he had an excuse to not watch him cry. He supposed it didn't matter much at the end of the day. He was going to stay for as long as he could in order to help Lucca and Alex feel better. It felt like the least he could do for them after all he had already put them through. Until Friede could find Liko and bring her back home, he had to step up however he could. It was his failures that had gotten them in this position in the first place.
Friede could only hope he would be able to make up for it one day. He did not expect forgiveness, but he would fight with all he had to set this right. It was the least he could do.
Friede didn't know when he felt tears start to rise to his eyes, but they refused to stop once they began to push free of the confines of his lashes.
~~~~~
To say Amethio had little experience in interacting with others his age was an understatement.
He had been raised in the Explorers because of his grandfather's position within the organization. Gibeon was the leader of the group, and that meant Amethio had been meant to grow up in it. Amethio knew his upbringing had been unorthodox, a far cry from what he had come to expect was normal for the rest of the world. Still, he wouldn't have given it up for anything. This was necessary for the good of his organization, and he knew that. Amethio was willing to do what he had to in order to set this right.
However, his lack of experience with others his age was starting to come back to bite him now. In the few days since Opal had been brought to the base, Amethio had been looking over her just as he had been instructed... And he had realized that he was not equipped for this in the slightest. Opal spent most of her days staring off into some distance Amethio couldn't see, and trying to snap her out of it never seemed to work. She had a million different things on her mind, but no amount of persuasion would ever convince her to talk about any of them. Amethio understood why; she had been put in a very difficult situation after losing her memories. He likely would have reacted with the same distant numbness if it had been him.
Unfortunately, understanding Opal's circumstances did little to make any of this any easier. Amethio had tried a few times to make conversation with her, but she was very quiet and didn't like to talk most of the time. Opal didn't seem to dislike him or anything, but she never spoke out about her feelings if she was not spoken to first. Some dark part of Amethio's mind wondered if that was part of what had happened between her and Spinel, but he always shoved the thought back where it had come from before it had the chance to take true root in his head. Opal was simply quiet. Liko had been quiet too, hadn't she?
Though Opal didn't seem to act all that much like Liko. Opal was quiet in a way that made her seem almost... Hollow at times. Liko had been somewhat shy and awkward, and Amethio had picked up on that during their limited interactions with one another. She wanted to see the best in the world and the people in it. Opal, on the other hand, didn't seem to look for much of anything in the people around her. She was alive, but she didn't seem to acknowledge it much more than was absolutely necessary.
Amethio knew one thing for certain: he wouldn't be able to sit back and watch this for too much longer. He liked to think he was good at handling circumstances others would not feel equipped to face, but none of that seemed to matter when it came to Opal. She was too quiet for Amethio to know what to do with her. Everything about Opal was different from what Amethio would have expected to find in her, and it bothered him. He needed to find a way to reach out to her sooner rather than later. Sitting in the silence was growing to be too much for Amethio. He had never been particularly uncomfortable with the quiet until now, but he couldn't stop thinking about it once he realized how unhappy he was.
Amethio had grown used to entertaining himself when he was a child. Hamber was able to help him pass the time every once in a while, but for the most part, Amethio had to worry about finding things to do on his own. He hadn't needed to do that since he started being sent out on missions, but he still remembered the basics of it. Amethio had enjoyed reading when he had the time, and he wrote in a journal sometimes too. Maybe that would be enough to keep Opal occupied and entertained. It certainly beat looking at her and having to see that strangely defeated glaze in her eyes.
Zirc and Onia had spent a lot of time over the last few days trying to reach out to Opal and make her feel better. They showed her videos from that one online personality. Nidothing, wasn't it? Amethio had only heard a few videos, and only pieces at that, but he knew Opal enjoyed the videos. Still, Zirc and Onia couldn't keep loaning Opal their Rotom phones, especially since Opal wasn't allowed to have unrestricted access to the internet. She needed to be supervised, and it wasn't right to ask Zirc and Onia to spend all their time looking over her. Opal needed something else to do, and as long as Amethio's job was to look after her, he had to step up and help her how he could.
Amethio took some time to dig through his old things, and he eventually struck gold. There were a few notepads he hadn't ever written in, and he gathered them alongside an old set of colored pencils. He didn't have many books anymore, but he hoped at least a few of them would catch Opal's eye. Amethio piled everything together into a box and started off for Opal's room, hoping this conversation was at least a bit less awkward and stilted than their past interactions had been.
As was to be expected, Opal was sitting on her bed and watching a Nidothing video with Zirc and Onia. They enjoyed watching videos together even though Opal never really said much aside from a request to watch another. Zirc and Onia were slowly starting to relax around her, though Amethio knew they were concerned about how to conduct themselves near her. Hopefully, that would get easier to face with time. Amethio was certainly hoping so. He didn't know if he would have been able to sit in his discomfort for too much longer than he already had.
Knocking while holding a box of books and art supplies was, to put it simply, incredibly clunky and challenging. On the other side of the door, Zirc heard the noise and got to his feet to see who was at the door. When he opened it and saw Amethio, Zirc let out a strangled noise in the back of his throat and moved to help Amethio take the box inside. Amethio wished Zirc had reacted with a bit more dignity, though he supposed he couldn't say he was surprised by that response. This was probably the only time Zirc had ever seen Amethio carrying something so unwieldy.
Opal and Onia stopped watching the Nidothing video on Zirc's phone when they heard the commotion, and Onia reached one hand out to pause the video. Opal stared at Amethio for a long moment, her eyes perplexing and haunting. "What is all of this?" Opal asked softly.
Amethio and Zirc set the box down on the ground just beside the desk Opal had been given in the corner of her room. Amethio rose to his full height, brushing a few threads of black hair away from his face. "It's for you," Amethio explained. "You need something else to do to pass the time here, don't you?"
Opal's eyes widened as if she hadn't realized Amethio had noticed her showing weakness at all. "I... I suppose so," Opal relented. "I didn't realize you were thinking about me that way."
"It's my job to take care of you, isn't it?" Amethio asked, and a voice in the back of his mind whispered just how ridiculous all of this was. The last few days hadn't made it any easier to swallow the bitter pill of being put on guard duty for someone who had been his enemy so recently. The idea of 'taking care of' someone he had to fight not long ago still caught him by surprise, and Amethio doubted that would ever change. "I grew up here in the base, and I know the best ways to pass the time."
Amethio distracted himself with pulling out the contents of the box so he didn't have to look Opal in the eyes for a second longer. "I got you a few notebooks and some colored pencils," he explained. "I have a few books too, though there aren't many of them. I hope they will suffice for now."
"Thank you," Opal said, her gaze every bit as unflinching now as it had been when Amethio first met her. He didn't rise to the bait of returning it, already knowing how much that would sting. After a moment of silence, Opal adjusted her position on the bed, worrying away at a thread at the hem of her uniform's jacket. "If I wanted more books... Would I be able to leave the base to get them?"
There was the question. Amethio had known it was coming. Opal had been told that she would have to stay in the base for her own protection, but there was only so much Amethio would be able to tell her to keep her there. Opal wanted to leave, and Amethio couldn't blame her. When he was a child, he had wanted to leave the base and see what the world had to offer too. In a way, Opal was not unlike his child self. She was starting over fresh with no memories of the world, and in Amethio's mind, that felt like being a kid again... Though this tasted like blood on the back of his tongue in a way childhood had not.
"I..." Amethio started, clenching his fingers into fists and then releasing them. "I would have to clear it with my superiors before I let you leave." Opal slouched over slightly, and Amethio found himself scrambling to improve her mood in a way he knew was out of character for him. "You have to stay here for your safety. You're still recovering from what happened to you, and if you leave before you're ready, then..."
"Bad things could happen," Opal finished for him, and Amethio nodded. They had gone through this routine a few times in the last few days, and yet, Opal always found herself asking again anyway. For reasons that Amethio couldn't pin down, he always found himself patient in the face of her increasingly desperate inquiries. Opal sighed and decided to abandon the thread she had been staring at. "But I can't stay hidden away here forever."
There was something Amethio could agree with. No matter what the other administrators said, Amethio knew it was impossible to keep Opal in the base forever. Sooner or later, she would have to leave, and Amethio would have to be there with her. Perhaps he would be able to shift the situation so it fell in his favor. He certainly hoped so, though there was only one way to find out.
Amethio closed his eyes, pressing his lips together into a thin line. "I'll speak with my superiors," he said simply. "I will tell you what they say. I can make no promises that they will let you leave, but..."
Opal shook her head. "Thank you for trying." She pushed herself to her feet and began to sort through the art supplies resting on the desk. She cast Amethio a smile as she picked up a sketchbook. "Thank you for all of this too."
Amethio stared at Opal for what felt like forever, unable to avoid the trap of her sapphire eyes for a moment longer. She looked so different from Liko in a bunch of tiny ways he wouldn't ever be able to map. Her smile was kind though, and Amethio found himself wondering if there could have been a world where Liko didn't run from him when they met. For some reason, the thought was like poison at the back of his throat, and it took every ounce of restraint in his body to not lose himself to the tides of sickness. "Don't thank me yet," Amethio told her. "I haven't done much to deserve it."
Amethio turned toward the door, and he could hear Opal's frown seeping into her voice even when his back was turned. "I don't think that's true," she corrected. "You rescued me, didn't you?"
The poison in Amethio's throat redoubled its efforts to destroy him, and he swallowed it back even as Spinel's smile flashed in his eyes. "I suppose so."
~~~~~
To say Dot was desperate would have been a glaring understatement.
Over the course of the last few days, she had spent every waking minute at her desk. For a short while, she had thought that perhaps food, while bothersome at times, was something worth entertaining. Liko's sandwich picnic had gone a long way in improving her thoughts on food, but none of that mattered as long as Liko was missing. Any time Dot spent eating or making meals for herself was time she wasn't searching, and she couldn't afford to waste even a moment. Instead, she settled on her regular vitamins and let that be enough even though it really didn't feel sufficient. She doubted it ever would.
But none of that would matter if she could just bring Liko back home. None of this would really mean much as long as Liko was still missing, and Dot was fine with putting her health on the line if it would bring her friend back. She didn't know if she felt entirely comfortable with using the word friend for Liko after how much it had haunted her earlier in the week, but it felt like all Dot could offer. It was insufficient, but it was the only thing Dot could think to grab onto, and that had to be enough.
A knock at the door would have pulled Dot out of her thoughts in any other circumstances, but now, all it did was prompt her to groan in irritation. "What do you want?" she barked to the person on the other side. Didn't they know that knocking was just going to distract her from her work? Didn't they want her to get Liko back?
"Sorry, Dot," came Roy's voice from the other side of the door. She could hear him shriveling away from her volume, and she would have winced if she had the thought to remember how harshly she could come off. "I just wanted to talk."
"I need to keep working," Dot declared, not even looking over at the door in favor of continuing to click away at the keyboard before her. Quaxly was sitting on the desk just beside her hands, and he quacked to try and get her to shift her focus. Dot didn't spare him a glance either, continuing to glare daggers through the screen before her. If she was distracted for even a moment, then she would risk missing something. Liko could have appeared at any moment, and Dot was going to find her as soon as she could.
"Oh." Roy went silent, and Dot knew he was shifting uncomfortably in a way that had never fit him in the slightest. "Could I come in and talk to you?"
"No," Dot replied automatically. She would have loved to have the company, the reminder that she was not the only one living in a world without Liko, but she knew it would only distract her. She had to keep searching, and any moments spent not looking at the screen searching for clues was a moment wasted. "I have to find Liko. I have to."
The space outside the door remained quiet for a long moment more, and Dot heard Roy let out a tiny breath of a sigh. "Alright. I'll talk to you another time." A few moments later, his footsteps grew distant as he vanished around the corner and back in the direction of his own room.
Dot wished she had been kinder to Roy, but she couldn't seem to find a way to divide her energy in a way that wouldn't rip her apart. She wanted to be friends with him, but right now... Friendship felt like a dangerous gamble, and Dot didn't know if she would be able to lose the game again. She had already lost one friend, and she couldn't face watching another slip between her fingers. How could she feel okay about any of this? How could she open up a second time when the first stretch of her hand had led to such ruin?
Dot continued to click away at the keyboard, the noise soft but grounding in the face of every terror that wanted to rip her apart. Quaxly tried to get her attention once again, but Dot gave him little more than a glance that lasted for a breath of a second. "I have to keep looking," Dot murmured. She didn't know what she would have done if she let herself think about something else. Having Roy around would have been nice, but Dot knew it would have stung to remember what the rest of the world had to offer her too. She couldn't let her guard down. She didn't know if she would be able to pry herself up again if she let her walls crumble. Dot was pushing her limits already, and she didn't know if she would be able to keep on like this for too much longer. Talking to Roy or anyone else would only shorten her timer of remaining energy.
But Dot knew there was much more to it than that. Of course she knew that. She was terrified of having to acknowledge just how afraid she was. If she was working, then she was doing something productive with her dread instead of letting it sit and churn in her stomach. She couldn't let her attention slip. Not now. Ideally, not ever.
Quaxly tried to yell for Dot's attention once again, but Dot didn't look at him again. She had to keep herself focused. She would get to the bottom of all that had happened with Liko. She had to.
Her mind was too full for its own good, and Dot doubted she would ever be able to fix that on her own. Not until Liko came back.
~~~~~
Roy had never liked being alone.
The first time he experienced true loneliness was shortly after his parents boarded their ship and went out to see new adventures on the horizon. Roy stood on the beach long after the boat disappeared from view, waving at nothing like he thought it would give him the companionship he needed so badly. He hadn't realized just how suffocating isolation could be until it felt like his closest friend.
Roy didn't think he would ever be able to express his relief when Liko and the rest of the Rising Volt Tacklers arrived on his island. He felt like he would have a new path to the future, something he could reach for and love more than anything. Roy loved the feeling of being part of something greater than himself. He was at his best when he was surrounded by friends he would be able to love and cherish, and with the Rising Volt Tacklers, Roy knew he would never be alone again. He was off on an adventure to see the rest of the world and all it had to show him, and he had friendship there to guide him through it all.
But that wasn't the case anymore, was it?
Ever since Liko had gone missing, Roy had noticed a shift in the way the Rising Volt Tacklers behaved. All of them were changing, and it was happening too quickly for Roy to keep up with it. He wanted nothing more than to be surrounded by those he cared for most, but the rest of the Brave Olivine's crew seemed to feel differently. They were isolating themselves more than ever before, each lost in their own world so they didn't have to look up at the reality stretching before them. Roy wanted to be with them, but he knew they all sought their own company as they grappled with the consequences of the misery they had stumbled into. He didn't know how to close that distance, and all of a sudden, the vast skies around the Brave Olivine felt every bit as empty and isolating as the endless seas between Roy and his parents.
Roy had thought the adventure would be fun and exciting... But it was dangerous. He wished he had seen it sooner. Liko had been in danger from the start, and the rest of the Rising Volt Tacklers had followed her descent into something foreign yet perilous. The adventure was not all fun and games, and Liko's disappearance was proof. There had always been danger waiting around every corner, and Roy hadn't realized it until it was too late to stop.
As Roy sat down on his bed beside Fuecoco, he felt his chest go tight. Somehow, the greatest danger of all felt like the isolation that had closed in around him. Sky or sea, it was always the same, and it burned at his chest and threatened to destroy his soul along with it.
~~~~~
Mollie wasn't used to this.
She had never been the best with kids. When it came to healing Pokémon, she worked efficiently and quietly, a stark contrast from the friendliness of all of her fellow nurses. She had always been a bit of an odd duck, and her inability to interact with children felt like just another symptom of her issues with settling into her work. Mollie knew she should have been a bit kinder with the children who came through Pokémon Centers seeking help for their partners, but she didn't know how to turn her bluntness off. It felt like she simply couldn't do it.
That had all been before Liko and Roy arrived. Somehow, Mollie felt like she was in a better place now than she ever had been in the past, and she knew she would be able to connect with them in a way she hadn't thought possible. Maybe it was because Liko and Roy were on the older side as far as kids were concerned. Maybe Mollie had simply settled into herself after she arrived on the Brave Olivine. She couldn't say for sure. All she really knew was that she would have done anything to make sure those two kids stayed safe and out of trouble.
And then just as quickly as she had appeared, Liko vanished, and Mollie felt a part of her start to crumble too.
In all honesty, Mollie didn't know what she was doing. She had taken to wandering throughout the Brave Olivine after she gave the Pokémon their third check-up for the day. She knew they hadn't sustained any new injuries after how many times she had looked them all over, but she searched for something to do anyway. It felt like all she could really do with herself. If she was looking at the Pokémon, then she was doing something other than drowning in her own terror over what had happened to Liko. That was worth far more than she could ever hope to put into words.
But as long as there was no point in making sure the Pokémon were alright, Mollie decided she was going to do something else with her time. She found herself walking through the airship before coming to a stop just outside of Liko's room. Mollie felt a knot in the back of her throat rise to prominence, but she didn't let it win out. She was tempted to knock just in case she somehow heard Liko's voice from the other side, but she knew that was pointless. She shook off all of her dread, at least as much as she could, and forced herself to twist the knob and walk inside.
Liko's room was exactly as she had left it, and if Mollie didn't know better, she would have said that it looked like she had just gone out for the afternoon. The blankets were still slightly askew from where Liko had neglected to make them, and her pillow had an indent from where Sprigatito had taken a nap in the sunlight that streamed in through the window. It was a picturesque scene, and Mollie didn't think she had ever hated anything quite like this.
Mollie wasn't going to let Liko's space grow dusty and unkempt though. She owed it to her to make sure her room was in the best condition it could have been for when she returned. Mollie crossed the room toward the bed, starting to straighten out the covers as much as she could without disturbing what Liko had left behind. The blankets still smelled a bit like Liko too, and Mollie hadn't even realized there was a distinct smell to Liko until it was all she had left of her.
Mollie wasn't sure of when she stopped making the bed and instead let one hand come up to cradle at her forehead. Time bled around her in an apathetic haze, and it only cleared up when she heard footsteps outside the door. Mollie would recognize Murdock's heavy pace from anywhere, but she didn't look up at him. Murdock didn't wait for her to. "Mollie?" he asked. She could tell by his tone that he wanted to know why she was in there, but he didn't bother with posing the inquiry. Instead, he opted for something else. "Do you want to talk about it?"
"No." Mollie's response was immediate, and she pried her eyes open again. She looked up at the window, finding a few flakes of dust had settled across the glass. She was going to have to clean that up. She couldn't let anything about Liko's room fall to ruin. It had to be ready for when Liko came back. Mollie couldn't say if she needed that more for her own sake or if it was really all for Liko, but she didn't want to know either. She already knew she wasn't going to like the answer.
Murdock stared at Mollie for a long moment, but he didn't press her again. "If that ever changes," he started carefully, "you know where to find me." With that, he started off down the hallway again. Mollie didn't turn to look at him, but she saw the reflection in the window change with his departure.
Mollie sighed heavily and shook her head. She should have talked about it. She knew that. She was much more familiar with physical wounds, but she knew a thing or two about psychological harm too, and she knew that bottling things up only made them worse. She would be better off if she told everyone exactly what was going through her head... But she didn't even know where to start. How bitterly miserable it all was. Mollie knew she had to talk, but she couldn't find the words she needed for any of it.
And what was the point of talking if she had nothing to say?
~~~~~
Friede quickly decided he hated having to break bad news to people.
Even after he left behind Lucca and Alex's home to return to the Brave Olivine, Friede's entire body felt heavy. Maybe it was the weight of his failures coming home to roost in his chest. He had never been a man to regret much of anything, but he couldn't help it now. Seeing Lucca, the teacher he had admired for so many years, cry silently and numbly had shattered something in him. Friede was sure that same part of himself would only break again when he finally saw Liko again.
Hours had come and gone since Friede set out on his mission, and he couldn't decide if it had been too long or not long enough. All he really knew was that the sun had changed its position in the sky notably, and the light of the dusk splattered across Friede's cheeks. He hoped the rest of his crew had handled the day well enough without him there. He wanted to stay with them, but he knew he had to go speak with Lucca and Alex too.
Friede let out a bitter sigh and shook his head. He could check on the rest of the crew now that he was back. He hoped at least one of them would be willing to talk to him about what he had missed that day. Everyone had been talking less since Liko went missing, not that Friede could say he was surprised by that. They were all lost in their thoughts in some way or another, and Friede missed the excitable noise of his family more than ever now.
Deep down, he knew it was because the source of the joy was gone, but if Friede admitted that, then he would crumble, and he had done more than enough of that already.
Not long after Friede arrived back on the airship, he caught a glimpse of activity out of the corner of his eye. He turned to investigate the source of the disturbance, and he saw orange flash through a hallway before vanishing again. Friede knew without needing to check that it was Orla, but he found himself following after her anyway. "Orla?" he called out. "What are you--"
Orla had disappeared entirely by the time Friede arrived at the spot where he had last seen her, and he let out a heavy sigh at the realization. He couldn't say he was surprised by this. Orla tended to double down on her workload whenever she was particularly stressed. Keeping the entire airship up and running was a lot of work for one person, especially with the requests others kept heaping on her shoulders. Friede was fully aware of that, but he had never quite known how to handle it. He wanted to be able to help her, but according to Orla, he would only make the situation worse and never really fix anything. That left her to press on with her work like nothing had happened at all, and Friede could only stare after her.
There was something different about Orla today, and Friede could see it through the tiny shifts of her posture. He hadn't seen her for long, but Friede still knew her very well. The two had been friends for well over a decade, and they had gone to school together as children. In the years they had spent together, Friede had come to know her perfectly well... And that was one of many reasons why seeing her this out of sorts caught him by surprise. He felt like there should have been something for him to do to make this simpler for her, but he doubted she would let him help no matter what he said or did. Orla wanted to have something else to focus on when she was in a bad place mentally so she didn't have to think about what was bothering her. It was hardly the best coping mechanism, but Friede couldn't say he had much of a way to protest it. After all, his way of handling pressure was to simply bowl the problem over, and that was an issue for a lot of reasons.
Friede let out a heavy sigh and shook his head. If he wouldn't be able to get through to Orla, then he was best off just going to another part of the ship to think about something else. Maybe he would be able to go out and search for Liko for another few hours before the sun disappeared entirely. Friede doubted it would really help much if she truly had been kidnapped--which Friede was certain she had been--but it felt like all he could really do. Why would he not try to help Liko when he knew there was something he could do to bring her back? It didn't matter that he knew this wasn't going to do anyone any good. If Liko had been kidnapped, then the person who had taken her wouldn't give her up simply because Friede was searching.
But if he was looking around for her, then that would at least give him something to do. Friede had never been the type to sit and stew in his helplessness, and the events of the day had only proven that to him tenfold. He had to get out there and do something. He didn't care if it wound up being pointless and helped no one in the long run. At least he would be able to say that he had tried. Somehow, that was worth its weight in gold to him.
Friede never made it to his room. Instead, he called Charizard out and took to the skies. While he was high above Paldea, he glared down at the ground below, begging his eyes to catch a glimpse of that familiar combination of black and blue.
Somehow, Friede already knew he would find nothing, and he wished he hadn't gotten his hopes up in the first place.
~~~~~
Amethio didn't take long to trace his way to the audience chamber where Gibeon and Hamber were both waiting for him. He hadn't told them that he wanted to meet with them to talk about Liko, but they weren't shocked when he arrived either. Their previous conversation fell still and silent when they heard Amethio approaching, not that he was trying to listen in to begin with. He knew better than to make that mistake, especially when he had so much on the line in this conversation. He had to make a good impression.
"Amethio," Gibeon called out as Amethio pulled the door shut behind him. "What do you need?"
Amethio straightened his posture out an extra bit more, hoping it would help him when it came time to make his case. Realistically, he knew that would not be the case, but he could hope. "Opal would like to know if she can leave the base," Amethio explained. "She is growing restless here."
Hamber turned to face Amethio, and the creases around his eyes seemed to multiply. "We cannot risk letting her out. She could remember something she is not meant to."
"But the pendant is more likely to activate if she leaves," Amethio pressed. That was his saving grace throughout this conversation: the pendant and the power it held. Gibeon wanted the pendant to activate more than anything, but he couldn't expect it to spark to life as long as Opal was hidden away from the world. Perhaps Amethio was truly asking about this because he wanted to help Opal, but he couldn't let anyone know that. It was a risk he simply couldn't afford to take. "We are more likely to learn the truth behind it if we give it a reason to activate."
The air went tense for a long moment, and Amethio had to fight to remain still beneath the squirming pressure pushing down on him from all directions. Hamber let out a slow breath as he looked up at Gibeon, already knowing what the response was going to be. "Alright," Hamber relented. "But you must stay with her and ensure her memories do not return. We cannot take that risk."
Amethio nodded, but before he had the chance to speak up, Gibeon broke the silence first. "Stay with her and make sure she remembers nothing," Gibeon reiterated. "The Rising Volt Tacklers will likely try to get in your way if you take her out of the base. In order to keep her identity a secret, you have one other thing to do."
Amethio pressed his shoulders back a bit more, ignoring the way the muscles across his spine burned from scathing compliance. "Anything."
Gibeon's eyes narrowed. "Good." He glanced over to Hamber, but Amethio knew better than to think he could relax simply because Gibeon was not staring only at him anymore. "Show it to him."
Hamber nodded. "Of course."
~~~~~
Opal had been stroking at Sprigatito's back ever since Amethio left her room behind. She hated having to admit it, but she was anxious about what he was going to say when he returned. He was off to ask if she would be allowed to leave, but Opal almost didn't want to hear the answer. After all, she already knew no one would want to let her walk away, and she didn't know if she would be able to stand having to sit by and watch as her wanderlust was killed right in front of her.
Sprigatito made it easier though. The cat was curled up beside her, tired and full after being fed countless treats by Onia. For reasons Opal couldn't quite put a finger on, Onia was very attached to Sprigatito, and in a way, her love far outshone anything Opal could express. Opal didn't like that at all. She wanted to be able to express how much she cared about Sprigatito, but she couldn't seem to figure out how she was meant to do it. The words failed her just as her fingers did, and all she could do was pet her partner's head and hope she understood in silence what Opal's voice could not say.
Opal was going to have to start training to battle soon. She didn't know much about Pokémon battles on account of her missing memories, but she could tell Sprigatito was getting restless. If nothing else, Opal wanted to learn how to handle herself in a fight so she could give Sprigatito an outlet for the tension in her body. After all the cat had done to help calm her, it was the least Opal could do for her in return. Until she knew where to start though, Opal was content to simply stroke her partner and hope that felt like enough.
Someone knocked on the door, and Opal looked up. "It's me," came Amethio's voice from the other side.
"Come in," Opal said, sitting up a little bit straighter.
Amethio had one hand pressed behind his back when he entered the room, and his face was set in something stoic. "I spoke with my superiors," Amethio began, and Opal felt her heart soar with a treacherous hope she knew she could not indulge in too much. "They agreed to let you leave the base soon."
Opal couldn't stop the smile that exploded across her features, and she pushed herself to her feet. "Really?"
Amethio nodded, pulling the door closed behind him. "But they have a few conditions," he said before she had the chance to get too excited. "First and foremost, you are to stay by my side no matter what. You have already lost your memories once, and no one wants to put you in danger a second time."
Opal nodded. That was agreeable enough. She didn't know if she wanted to be left alone out in the world anyway. Her thoughts were overwhelming enough when she was left with them in her bedroom, and she didn't want to imagine how much worse it could have gotten if she was allowed to wander on her own. "I can do that."
"You're also to bring your pendant with you," Amethio went on. "It will keep you safe in the case of an emergency. I hope it will never be necessary, but as long as there are those who wish to hurt you, then you must keep it with you to protect you. When we are out though, you should hide it. Some people may want to steal it because of the value it holds."
Opal's fingers drifted to the pendant around her neck. She had been hiding it beneath her uniform up to this point because of how valuable it was, but she yearned for its cool touch now. The pendant would protect her if something bad happened. Somehow, Opal knew this was true even when it felt like there was so little else she could truly believe in. She was safe. The pendant would make sure of it even if the rest of the world was intent on hurting her however it could.
"And lastly..." Amethio pulled his hand out from behind his back. "You have to wear this."
Opal's gaze dropped to the white mask in Amethio's hands, her eyes going wide. The mask was lovely, resembling the face covering Meowscarada wore. In that way, Opal would match Sprigatito even though her partner was nowhere near being fully evolved. There were flowers carved into the mask too, each of them more beautiful than the last. Some voice in the back of her head told her the flowers were forget-me-nots. How ironic that she would be hiding her face with something that begged her to not forget. It seemed like all she was good at these days.
"It's... Beautiful," Opal whispered. She took the mask from Amethio's hands, and she raised it to her face with trembling fingers. She turned to face the nearby mirror as she slid it on. The world shifted slightly as she put it on, but Opal adjusted to her new field of vision fairly quickly. Somehow, this felt right. She was at her best when she was wearing this mask, and she had no idea how else she was meant to describe it.
Amethio came to stand behind Opal as she looked at her own reflection. The mask's shape pulled her hair back in a way that hid the blue underside of it from view. At a glance, most people would think her hair was only black. Opal thought that was for the best. She didn't think she would have looked good with the blue at all. It was simply wrong for her. The blue felt too real for her, and right now, Opal didn't know what she was meant to find real and what was a product of her distorted reality. She could only hope she found her answers soon.
"It... It looks nice on you," Amethio said, though there was something stilted about his tone that made Opal doubt he actually felt that way. Amethio didn't give her the chance to press it though, instead looking back toward the door before he could catch her eye. "I'll return with more information in the next few days. When we have permission to leave the base, then I'll come to tell you right away."
Opal smiled, and she almost took the mask off, but she thought better of it at the last second. "Thank you, Amethio."
Amethio once again refused to look Opal in the eyes, instead using the door as a barricade for his gaze and his heart. "You're welcome," he murmured, but Opal didn't believe he meant it at all.
She didn't know how much of this she meant either, and she didn't think she wanted to know either.
Notes:
New chapter time! Yay!
I really like the way this one turned out. I know a lot of the attention lately has been on Liko and everything going on with her, but there are a lot of others in this story, and I wanted to explore them too. The other name for this chapter is "The Rising Volt Tacklers Cope Very Poorly." I think it's very accurate.
The most exciting part of this chapter to me was definitely the scene of Opal receiving her mask. I wanted to give her a mask from the start of this story, and she finally has it now. This chapter also marks the solidification of Opal's design, something I have been very excited for this for a long time. I love Opal forever. She's so special.
I've got a couple of miscellaneous things to cover on this chapter too. First off, I've been participating in 60 Minute Likodot for the last few weeks, and last week, I wrote a piece about "Free Fall"! It's set very far ahead in the timeline of the AU, but if you want to check it out, then it's under the name of "no sweeter safety" on my page.
I also want to take this chance to address an important question I've gotten many times over the course of this story's development. Lots of people have been asking if they can make art of this story. My answer is absolutely! I love that my story has touched people enough for them to want to make art of it, and it's such an honor as a writer. If you want to make art, then feel free. If you do though, tag me through social media! If you want me to, then I would be happy to link the art in one of the chapters of the story too. I love artists, and I wanted to clear the air about that since it has come up many times, especially in the Likodot Discord server.
On that note, I have a few links to fanart to share! Thank you to the wonderful and incredible Kiki terashards for drawing Opal art! You can find links to the pieces here and here!! Also, my partner has done some more "Free Fall" art lately for 60 Minute Likodot, and you can find those pieces here and here! Any and all fanart that is posted on Tumblr specifically will be reblogged to my account under the tag of "Pokemon Horizons Free Fall," so if you make art on Tumblr, tag me so I can put it under the tag! Even if it's on other social media, tag me and I'll repost it!
Okay, that should be it from me this time! Next time, we're going to dive into our first fight of the story. Until then, I hope you all enjoyed this chapter. Feedback is appreciated as always. Have a nice day, everyone!
-Digital
Chapter 4: Rain Freezes On Her Heavy Feathers
Summary:
Amethio takes Opal out of the base for the first time, and Dot gets a tip about public activity from the Explorers.
Chapter Text
Opal sat at her desk with a frown on her face and a pencil in her hand. One of the notebooks Amethio gave her was open to a page near the front, and she was writing in it to the best of her ability. Her muscle memory hadn't been damaged when she lost her memories, so she could still write well enough, but she struggled a lot more than she expected with figuring out what she was meant to write.
Opal had figured initially that she would just write about her daily life around the base, but in all honesty, not much had happened. She had sketched out Sprigatito a few times, but the highlights of her days were when Zirc and Onia came by to let her watch Nidothing videos. Amethio was a nice presence too, and Opal was getting better at drawing people so she could commit all of the details of his features to memory. She didn't want to forget anything ever again, and she would have done anything to make sure she didn't lose her memories a second time.
This led to Opal deciding to write out everything she knew about herself. None of the Explorers were particularly interested in her uncovering her memories, and they weren't pushing for it anywhere near as much as Opal would have expected. If anything, they thought it was fine that she didn't remember her history. They insisted it was safer for her to not remember if the incident had truly been as terrible as her amnesia implied. There must have been some reason for Opal's mind erasing all she had ever known, and she doubted it was anything good.
But she couldn't help her burning curiosity. Once it started to eat away at her, she couldn't suppress it. Opal wanted to know what had happened to her. She would have done anything to unravel who she was and what she was meant to do. If writing everything she knew about her life would help her to get to the bottom of what she had lost, then she would do it a thousand times over.
Unfortunately, writing everything she knew was much easier said than done when she didn't know much in the first place. Opal paused in her thinking and decided to read over everything she had already written down. She had done this at least four times already, but it wouldn't hurt to go in for a fifth read:
'My name is Opal.
I am a member of the Explorers.
I lost my memories in a horrific incident, and no one will tell me what happened.
Sprigatito is my partner. I feel safest around her.
My bodyguard is named Amethio. His subordinates, Zirc and Onia, are my friends. Onia likes Sprigatito and gives her a lot of treats. Zirc shows me his favorite videos online. Amethio wants to keep me safe. He gave me this notebook to help me feel better.
I feel uneasy around Spinel.
I am not allowed to leave the base for my safety. If I leave, I have to wear my mask.
I need to wear my pendant at all times. It protects me. It will keep me safe if I get hurt again.'
That was where Opal was hitting a snag in her writing. She knew exactly why it was such a problem for her too; she didn't know how she was supposed to feel at ease at all when her pendant hadn't protected her the first time she got hurt. Maybe it would be easier to swallow the bitter pill of her amnesia if she knew her pendant had been there to keep her safe when she lost her memories initially... But it hadn't helped her at all. The pendant was supposed to be magical, and it was meant to save her from any danger that crossed her path... But if that was the case, then why had she lost her memories at all? Why couldn't she remember anything? Why was no one helping her to uncover everything that she had lost?
Sprigatito meowed from her place near Opal's feet, and Opal found herself smiling as she scooped the kitten up into her hands. Sprigatito stared back at Opal as the black-haired girl looked into her eyes with a smile. Sprigatito stretched her paws out, pressing them against Opal's cheeks, and Opal found herself laughing. Sprigatito knew just how to cheer her up when she got caught up in her own thoughts like this. It was nice to know she would never be alone as long as Sprigatito was there to help her through the aftermath of her amnesia.
Opal pulled Sprigatito in close to her chest, and the cat settled down in her grasp and started to purr. Opal stroked at the top of Sprigatito's chest, her smile growing bittersweet. She had no idea what she was meant to do to in order to regain her memories, but as long as she was with Sprigatito, she felt like everything would be alright. This felt familiar to her in a way, and Opal had to wonder just how many times she had cradled Sprigatito in her arms before her memories abandoned her so suddenly and brutally.
In many ways, Sprigatito was the only constant Opal had in her life. She was the only grounding point between Opal's past life and the one she had found herself in after she lost her memories. Sometimes, Opal found herself wondering if she even had a life to remember before her mind erased itself and faded away. She didn't remember anything about it if that was the case. The only detail that seemed to matter was that she had Sprigatito there for her. Opal wished that was enough to force her memories out of hiding and back into the forefront of her mind. It would have made everything much simpler if that was all it took.
A knock on the door pulled Opal out of her thoughts, and she glanced up with wide eyes. She had an immediate instinct to hide everything she was doing, and she nudged her notebook shut the best she could without disturbing Sprigatito's resting spot within her arms. Sprigatito didn't seem to mind and only made herself more comfortable in Opal's grasp.
"Opal?"
"Come in, Amethio," Opal called out once she was certain her limited knowledge had been hidden from the world. She didn't know how Amethio would have reacted to hearing that she was trying to figure out what she had forgotten, but she didn't want to push it either. He would find out when the time was right, and Opal knew the time most certainly was not right at the moment.
Amethio opened the door carefully, and Opal found herself studying him in the few seconds between his arrival and his next words. Amethio carried himself carefully, like he was always trying to hide something, though Opal wasn't sure if it was a conscious choice or not. A lot of people in the base thought of Amethio as unreadable and difficult to understand. Opal felt like she understood him though. It wasn't something she could put into words, but when she looked at him, she knew everything she could have ever wanted to know about him. They were the same, and Opal wished she could figure out what part of her mind had insisted that they were connected in the first place.
"I come with good news," Amethio went on. He looked down at Opal's pendant, seemingly finding it a much more fitting subject for eye contact than Opal. That was another thing she had learned about him; he struggled to meet her gaze, though she had no idea why. She didn't think she was intimidating, but Amethio most certainly did. "You have been given permission to leave the base today."
Opal's face lit up, and she was on her feet in an instant. "Really?"
Amethio nodded. "However, there are a few conditions you have to follow," he began. Zirc and Onia filed into the room just behind him, and Opal looked at them for a moment before setting her gaze back on Amethio. "You will need to stay with me, Zirc, and Onia the entire time we are outside. You will also have to wear both your mask and your pendant to ensure you are kept safe."
"I'll do it," Opal nodded eagerly. She reached for her mask where it was sitting on the desk near her notebook, and she slipped it onto her face easily. She was still getting used to the foreign sensation of the mask across her skin, but she didn't mind it as much as she would have expected. Perhaps she was fine with it because she knew it was her saving grace. If she had her mask, then she would be able to leave the base. If this was what it took for her to be allowed to leave, then she would agree to it a thousand times over.
Amethio watched Opal for a long moment before he nodded. "Good." He clearly had something else on his mind, but he didn't let his thoughts reach his tongue as he turned toward the door. "You said you wanted to buy more books to read, didn't you?"
"I was hoping we could, yes," Opal confirmed. She scooped Sprigatito into her arms, and Sprigatito meowed affectionately at the touch. "Do you think that would be alright?"
"It is," Amethio nodded. "I have a bookstore selected for us, and it isn't too far from here. We should be able to get there and back to the base without too many issues."
"Alright," Opal agreed. After a moment's silence, she cast Amethio a shy smile around her mask. "Thank you for doing all of this, Amethio. I really appreciate it."
Amethio's shoulders stiffened ever so slightly. If Opal wasn't looking for the difference, she wouldn't have seen it. "I... I'm glad I was able to help," he said, turning away before Opal had the chance to call him on seeming evasive. "We should get going. We wouldn't want to be stuck here if someone changes their mind about letting you leave the base."
"Of course," Opal nodded eagerly. "Let's go."
Opal followed Amethio, Zirc, and Onia out of her room and out into the hallway. She couldn't tear her smile from her lips even as she passed by the more serious members of the Explorers. She didn't care enough to school her expression into composure. She was finally being given the chance to leave, and Opal wasn't going to dull her excitement no matter what. She had been hoping for this chance ever since she began to reorient herself in the base, and she was looking forward to seeing what would be waiting for her beyond the walls of the Explorers' center of operations.
But at the same time, Opal was a bit anxious about what she would find too. She didn't know what had happened for her to lose her memories, and for all she knew, her amnesia could have been caused by someone from outside the base. If she left the base, then she could have been putting herself in danger. Opal wouldn't know the truth of what had happened to her until it was too late for her to go back to hiding away from all she had endured. That was the reason the Explorers were doing what they could to keep the truth out of her grasp. They wanted to protect her.
But Opal couldn't sit around the base forever. She couldn't waste away in the darkness for the rest of her life. There had to come a point where she reclaimed her place in the world, and Opal was going to do it now. As long as Amethio was there, she would be safe. He wouldn't let anything happen to her. Opal had her mask and her pendant to protect her too, and she knew she would be fine as long as she held them both dearly.
Opal may have been afraid, but she was excited all the same. The outside world was finally within her grasp... And Opal would have done anything to bring its glory to her fingertips once more.
Out of Opal's line of sight, Spinel stood in silence, and when he saw her, he smiled before retreating into the darkness.
~~~~~
Dot's fingers flew across the keyboard on her desk, and she ducked her head off to the right to take a sip of her water before getting back to work. She had set up everything in her room so she didn't need to waste much time searching for any necessities or otherwise looking away from her computer's monitors. One of the smaller optimizations to Dot's workspace came in the form of her water. She had a straw sticking out of the top of the cup at the perfect angle to leave it in reach of her lips when she needed a sip. That way, she had no reason to stop as she searched for Liko however she could.
Over the course of the last few days, Dot had been doing as Friede suggested and searching however she could for any signs of Liko. Tracking the Explorers' base was proving much harder than she had expected. She should have seen this coming. The Explorers knew how to keep themselves hidden, and that wasn't going to change simply because Dot was trying to find them. If anything, they were less likely to be trackable now that they were trying to keep Liko away from the Rising Volt Tacklers.
"Do you think we should take a break soon?"
Dot let out a sigh at the sound of Nidothing's voice. She hadn't been paying much attention to their words over the course of the last few days. As far as Dot was concerned, finding Liko and bringing her back home was far more important than any suggestions that she look after her health. Dot would be fine, but for all she knew, Liko would not be. Dot couldn't stop until she knew for certain Liko was safe, and right now, nothing was certain. She had to keep pushing. She knew she did.
Over the course of the last few years, Dot had come to understand many things about her mind. Perhaps the most important was that she was not alone in it. Around the time she started to make videos online, Dot had found that voices spoke to her both in the silence and in the noise. The voice sounded a lot like hers, but it was different, instead matching the cadence she adopted when she performed as Nidothing before the camera. Soon enough, it seemed like there was a stark difference between Dot and Nidothing. She had thought she was simply good at playing the character, but the truth made itself clear soon enough.
Nidothing was not simply a character Dot portrayed online; Nidothing was a separate entity, and they lived on within Dot's mind. The two shared a common life, switching back and forth as needed. Dot was in control most of the time, but Nidothing appeared when it came to film a video. Nidothing was always there though, offering their input on Dot's life and everything she was doing with it.
Nidothing had been almost entirely kept from taking control of their body within the last few days though. Dot was so determined and focused on finding Liko that she hadn't given Nidothing much of a chance to assert her control or opinions. Dot couldn't afford any distractions from inside or outside of her mind, and so, Nidothing was given no chances to show themself. Dot felt bad about having to keep Nidothing on such a tight leash, but she couldn't imagine giving up her search for even a few minutes. She had to keep pushing. She had to be getting close.
Then again, Dot had been telling herself that every minute for the last week. It was hard to believe it had already been that long since Liko went missing, but it was the truth. If she kept repeating enough that she was on the verge of something big, then maybe she would start to believe it. Maybe that would be enough to finally change something in her miserable circumstances. Dot doubted it, but she wasn't going to stop now. She didn't know how to stop, and Dot was convinced that was the best option of those presented to her.
If she was being honest with herself, she didn't know what she was going to do if she stopped this. Dot felt like she had to keep pushing because she didn't know what she was going to do if she lost her grip. If she backed away for even a moment, would she be able to get herself together again? Would she be able to get herself back together if she fell away from her rhythm? Dot didn't know, and she wasn't going to let herself find out either. If she could keep pushing, then she was going to do it. She owed it to herself, the rest of the Rising Volt Tacklers, and to Liko. Especially to Liko.
Dot was going to find her. She had to. It didn't matter how long it took her. She would do it, and she would make sure Liko was never taken away from her eve again.
~~~~~
Opal hadn't realized how much she yearned for sunlight until she was out in it once again. She couldn't hold her grin back once the light began to splash across her cheeks. The Explorers' base was built very strictly, and the only way to get any contact with natural light was to leave. Since Opal hadn't been allowed to do that until today, she had been left yearning for the sensation of familiar warmth she knew she was not allowed to have. She was glad to know that her circumstances were finally turning around though. If she was allowed to leave today, then maybe she would be allowed to leave in the future too.
Amethio had selected a small bookstore for them to check out for the day, and Opal couldn't wait to see what all it had to offer her. She couldn't remember if she was much of a reader before she lost her memories, but there was no better way to figure out other than to look around and see if anything struck her fancy. If Opal had enjoyed reading before the incident, then she didn't click with the same kinds of books Amethio had once read. She had tried her best to get into them, but she couldn't seem to do it as she had hoped. Opal needed something she had chosen for herself, and the best way to find something like that was to go out and find it herself.
Zirc and Onia remained close as Amethio and Opal arrived in front of the bookstore. Amethio's shoulders were tense, though Opal couldn't say she was surprised. He had a lot to do if he wanted to make sure she stayed safe. None of the Explorers would be happy if they knew something bad had happened to Opal on his watch, and Amethio refused to take the chance. Even if it was partially a matter of duty, Opal was glad to have him there. She felt safest when he was present. He didn't entirely know how to navigate talking to her, but Opal didn't need to talk to him to feel understood. Amethio seemed to get her in a way that went far beyond words, and she was glad for that. She didn't think she would have settled into the base again anywhere near as quickly if not for Amethio being there to guide her through it.
"Alright," Amethio started. "You can look around and find a few books. I don't want to hang over your shoulder, so I'll watch you from a short distance away. If you need anything, then all you need to do is say something. The same applies to Zirc and Onia."
Opal nodded. "Of course." After a moment more of silence, Opal felt her smile softening. "Thank you for doing all of this for me, Amethio. I know you didn't have to ask if I could leave, but you did it anyway. I really appreciate it. I'm glad to be out of the base now."
Amethio stared at Opal for a long moment, something like shock rising in his deep purple eyes. He brushed the emotion away as quickly as he could, distracting himself instead by pushing a few threads of white hair behind his ear. "I grew up in the base too. I know how isolating it can be to have to spend all your time there with no contact with the outside world," Amethio told her instead of offering her a true response to her praise. "I didn't want that for you if there was something I could do to prevent it."
"But you didn't have to do it. I appreciate that you did it even though it wasn't necessary." Opal pressed her hands to her chest, and they clasped at her pendant where it was hiding beneath the shirt of her uniform. "I don't know what I would do without you, Amethio. Thank you for being here for me."
Amethio cleared his throat and tore his gaze away from Opal. She had to wonder if he had ever learned how to say the words 'you're welcome' or if he had always been too embarrassed to reciprocate with something like that. "Go on and look around for the books you want," Amethio instructed. "I'll be here if you need me. I'll get you a few books. Just bring them back to me once you're finished looking around."
"Thank you, Amethio." Opal nodded, and she turned to face the door of the bookshop. Somehow, this felt like a major step for her. She had been plunged into a life she did not recognize nor remember, but she knew she was going to be alright. Opal was going to survive this trip out of the base, and she would prove to everyone else that she was able to leave. Maybe one day she would be allowed to go out on her own. Maybe she would be able to recover her memories and finally return to an old life like the one she was certain she had known before all of this started.
But Opal knew she was getting ahead of herself. She did her best to focus on the present instead of the future, and she pushed the bookstore's door open. A small bell above it rang, and Opal found herself looking up at it for a long moment. She heard the bookkeeper call out a greeting to her, but Opal didn't respond to it verbally, instead simply offering the man a hum as she walked inside. She must have looked disoriented in a thousand little ways. Opal felt like a newborn Deerling stumbling around for the first time, but she did her best to not let it show on her face. She was there to shop for books. How strange could she really be?
Opal was immediately hit with the enormity of this mundane task, and it felt like a tidal wave to the chest. She was out of the base for the first time since she lost her memories, and she was looking around for books to read. Amethio had offered to get her a few, but Opal didn't know how to feel about any of it. Was she pushing for too much? Was she asking too much of him? Was she even meant to be there at all?
Opal did her best to silence her dread, and she walked over to a section of children's books. She had outgrown picture books years ago if her age was anything close to what she suspected, but she found herself drawn to them. Maybe there was something hidden in the shelves that would have struck her as familiar. There was only one way to find out, she supposed. Opal pressed a smile onto her lips behind her mask and reached out for the books. She was fine. Nothing was wrong, and it never would be again.
She just had to find a way to make herself believe it.
~~~~~
Dot ducked her head to the side to take another sip of her drink before turning her attention back to the screen before her. Quaxly was awake on the desk next to her, staring at the monitors with the same intense fire as Dot. They were really acting more and more like partners these days, though Dot didn't think Quaxly liked it as much as Dot did. He was tired of her pushing herself too hard, and he wanted her to be willing to do something else even if it was only for a while.
But Dot couldn't let up now. She had to keep pushing. They were getting closer to the truth. They had to be. If she could just keep herself focused for a little bit longer, then everything would fall into place. It needed to.
Ping!
A small notification buzz from her computer pulled Dot's attention in a slightly different direction. She looked down to see a message had come through to the program she was using to search for information about the Explorers. She had set up a search system for anything that resembled the uniforms of the Explorers. If someone wearing that familiar shade of gray set foot out in the world, then Dot would be the first to know about it.
Dot clicked on the message, and she expanded it so it covered her entire screen. The headline of the message was simple: 'Uniforms spotted in Paldean city.' Beneath that, Dot could read more detailed text, and she realized this tip had been written by a person rather than a machine:
'Four people wearing the gray uniforms you are searching for were spotted entering a bookstore. Here is the address. Good luck on your search.'
Dot's heart began to pound in her ears. She didn't even care to double check if the information was true or not. She should have learned her lesson in trusting something that couldn't be verified, but she didn't care right now. She had been missing in any tips to speak of for ages, and even if this turned out to be false, she didn't care. She had to investigate it. If this was a hint at what she thought it was, then she could use it.
Dot nearly knocked her chair over in her haste to get to her feet. Quaxly looked up at her with wide, curious eyes, and she scooped him into her grasp in an instant. "Come on," Dot said. She snapped a picture of the address with her Rotom phone before darting off toward the door. "We have to tell the others!" Quaxly quacked in her arms, and Dot found herself smiling deliriously as she shoved her way out of her room and into the hallway outside.
Realistically, Dot knew there was a chance all of this would turn out to be a waste of time. She was unfortunately no stranger to false reports, and the last few days had proven that to her and then some. Even so, she had to keep pushing and keep fighting. If there was even a tiny chance this somehow led her back to Liko, then she was going to get to the bottom of it. Dot wasn't going to give up the search for anything. She didn't have time to authenticate this clue. She had to get over there and see if it was true or not for herself.
Though Dot had no idea why any of the Explorers would want anything to do with a bookstore of all places. It felt hilariously random, though Dot wasn't in much of a place to complain at the moment. If this was going to get her closer to Liko, then she would investigate it a thousand times over. She would find out what all of this meant, and if all went according to plan, then this would be the first step of her finding a way to bring Liko home.
Dot couldn't say she had much of a plan at the moment, but she didn't think that mattered. She was going to find out who the people at the bookstore were, and she was going to force them to tell her where the Explorers' base was. After that, the Rising Volt Tacklers could... Well, they could figure something out. They probably weren't strong enough to just storm the base, but they could find another way to figure out where Liko was and then bring her home.
Besides, the details didn't matter right now. Dot could figure out a more detailed plan when the moment was right. For now, she had to keep moving. She was going to figure out what was going on, and everything would finally fall into place as it had always been meant to. This was just the beginning, and it would lead her back to Liko in the end.
Hope was a dangerous thing, and it was bright enough to burn at Dot's body inside and out... But she couldn't even bring herself to care. Hope may have been risky, but it was all she had left, and Dot wasn't going to let it go now.
~~~~~
Opal ran her fingers across all the covers on one of the shorter shelves in the picture book section. She could feel something stirring in the back of her mind. Maybe she had been in a place like this before. Perhaps she had traveled to a bookstore to see what stories were on display prior to the incident that stole her memories. She was so close to dislodging one of her memories free that she could almost taste it... But the images refused to resurface in full. It was like a wall was keeping them out of her grasp, and all Opal could do was hope it cleared up soon.
In the meantime, Opal found herself eyeing one particular picture book. Static began to build behind her eyes, rapidly spreading to the rest of her head. She had seen this book somewhere before. It must have been before she lost her memories. Opal pulled the book from the shelf, and the tension in her head only multiplied upon itself. Soon, she felt like she was losing her balance and falling eternally forward even though she knew she was still. The bookstore was not moving, and neither was she, but...
"'The Ancient Adventurer,'" Opal read aloud, brushing her fingers across the title. Had she owned this book as a child? She must have... Everything about the book felt familiar, but she couldn't figure out why. This book hadn't been in the stack Amethio gave her back at the base. If she had been with the Explorers forever, then surely she would have seen it with one of them. If she hadn't bought it, then...
"Is something the matter, Opal?" Amethio asked as he fell into place beside her. He had seemingly realized she was distracted and came over to investigate. His presence was grounding and reassuring just beside her, but Opal didn't look up at him. Instead, her fingers seemed to move on their own as they flipped not to the first page but to the inside of the back cover.
There was a picture of a man there. His hair was black, and he had thin round glasses around his eyes. He smiled brightly at the camera, and Opal found herself staring into his gaze. She... She knew him from somewhere. She didn't know how she was so sure of it, but she knew that she was. She had seen this man somewhere before. They had met before. Opal didn't know where she would have met a children's book author, but she was sure that she knew him. His name was Alex, wasn't it?
That thought was only confirmed when Opal's gaze slid to the right to his name. It truly was Alex... But how could she have known that? She swore she hadn't known it before she read it for herself. There must have been some explanation for it. This man... Alex must have had something to do with her life before she lost her memories. Maybe it was something as mundane as a book she had read, but if that was all it was, then why did she have a headache just looking at him? Why did it feel like every instinct in her body was fighting her into silence as she stared into his paper gaze?
"Opal?" Amethio asked again, placing a hand on her shoulder. She expected that to be enough to clear up the haze in her mind, but it did very little to help her. She was still disoriented and dizzy when she looked up at him, and Amethio seemed to be the only certainty in a world full of doubt and terror. "What's wrong?"
Opal tried to find the words to explain herself, but she couldn't do it. It was as if she had forgotten how to speak right when she needed it most, and all she could do was look up at him. She had known Alex at one point, and she had no idea how. Before she joined the Explorers, she had read this book before. Or maybe it was after she had joined... No. She knew it had to be before then. She wasn't sure of how, but she was sure of it just as she was sure of her own heartbeat in her chest.
But was she really certain of anything at all? Nothing felt real anymore, like Opal had been dipped in freezing water and left to fend for herself beneath the weight of the chill. She wasn't supposed to be there. None of this was right. She belonged to the Explorers' base. She belonged to the darkness she knew nothing but shadow and it would surround her for the rest of time it would be there until she died and she was going to--
The front door of the bookstore slammed open, and the bell just above it jingled brutally loudly. Opal snapped out of her trance all at once, and the static in her head subsided. She was distantly aware of Amethio taking the book out of her hands and placing it back on the shelf. Opal didn't even bother to fight back. She doubted she would have had the strength even if she was present in her body enough to retort.
"There you are!"
The sound of a man's voice echoed in Opal's head, and she blinked rapidly to drag herself back into her body. She looked up to see a yellow figure had appeared in the doorway of the bookstore, but she couldn't bring her eyes to focus on him. Maybe it was because she was still disoriented by the book she had found. Opal couldn't say for sure. All she was really confident in was the feeling of Amethio's hand on her shoulder. It was her anchor, her lifeline, and Opal didn't know what would have happened if she lost it.
The man in yellow searched the store for only a few seconds before he caught a glimpse of Amethio. Zirc and Onia, who were standing in the far corner of the store, immediately took off running between the shelves to reach him, but the man in yellow was faster than them. He arrived just in front of Amethio, and Opal realized that her guardian had come to stand in front of her. Opal shriveled behind him, and her mind warned her that to look at the man in yellow would be to doom herself to a loss unlike any other. Even in her haze, Opal knew better than to break those rules, and Amethio knew it too.
"I need you to answer a few questions for me, Amethio," the man in yellow demanded, and Opal heard more footsteps rushing in after him from the entrance of the store. "You have to know where she is. So tell me... Where did Liko go?"
Liko. That name brought a fresh wave of a migraine to Opal's head, and she bit down on her bottom lip to ensure she didn't scream out in shock and pain. Why did the sound of that name hurt her? She had been right to step away from the man in yellow. All he brought was pain, and Opal found it sudden and inescapable.
Amethio gritted his teeth, but before he had the chance to speak, Opal heard a Pikachu growl from nearby. A blur of electricity flipped off the man in yellow's shoulder, and it slammed headfirst into a Skarmory that had been summoned by Zirc. The clash was fierce and sudden, exploding outward with enough light to consume Opal's vision in an instant.
Amethio didn't wait for Opal's vision to recover before he grabbed her wrist and took off running. He charted a course for the back room of the bookstore, and Opal was vaguely aware of him asking the shopkeep if there was another entrance they could use to escape. The bookkeeper nodded and gestured in the right direction, and Amethio continued to run, Opal hot on his heels.
"What's going on?" Opal asked, only realizing how terrified she was after she heard her voice shaking. "Who are those people? What do they want from you?"
Amethio hesitated for a long moment, weighing every potential response and all the damage he felt it could go. When he finally responded, it began with a thin exhale through his nose. "Bad people," Amethio said simply, though Opal could hear a million tiny strings attached to those two simple words. "We have to get out of here. After we get out through the back entrance, we're getting on Corviknight and flying away."
Opal wanted to protest and say that she hadn't been able to find any books she liked... But she knew now was not the time. If Amethio was worried about this, then she had a reason to be too. Opal nodded as Amethio pushed open the back door and arrived in the sunlight. The glow of day was so bright that it sent Opal into another dizzy spell, but Amethio didn't leave her scrambling for long. He summoned Corviknight and hopped aboard, pulling Opal up behind him. Sprigatito hopped onto Corviknight's back just between them, bracing herself against Opal's abdomen. "We're going to be fine," Amethio told her. "I promise."
Opal nodded, wrapping her arms around his waist and burying her face in her shoulder. She wanted to go back home and sleep until she forgot about all of this. It was too much in more ways than she could ever hope to count. She didn't belong there. She had to stay in the base where it was safe. She had to make sure no one ever had the chance to hurt her again.
Opal felt tears rise to her eyes, but she didn't move her mask to wipe them away. Instead, she simply buried her face a little bit deeper into Amethio's shoulder and let the wind tear her every uncertainty away from her skin.
~~~~~
When the light from Cap's Volt Tackle died down and faded, Friede pulled his hand away from his eyes. He glanced around for any signs of Amethio, but he was met with nothing. He couldn't see anything that indicated who his strange companion had been either. It wasn't anyone Friede recognized, but he knew they had been wearing a green mask. He wished he had gotten a better look at them, but it was too late now.
Zirc and Onia were the only ones left, and Zirc's Skarmory was flying dangerously close to Friede and Cap. The rest of the Rising Volt Tacklers were gathered near the entrance of the bookstore. Dot was checking the location on their phone as they had been ever since breaking the news that the Explorers had been spotted. Someone had seen people in the familiar gray uniform of the Explorers near this bookshop, and when the Rising Volt Tacklers arrived, they saw just how right that rumor had been. Amethio had been there with Zirc, Onia, and... Whoever that other person was supposed to be.
"If you're going to fight, then take it outside!" came the loud voice of the bookkeeper. He had hidden behind the counter at the back of the store, and Friede could see his shaking fingers where they were braced on the far edge of the wood.
Friede cracked a smile even though he didn't feel much like grinning as long as Amethio had gotten away. "Fine by me." He ran for the door, and the rest of his crew followed suit. Zirc and Onia, who were the farthest from the door, were left as the last ones who spilled out onto the street.
Luckily, the street was fairly empty at this time of day, so Friede had no reason to worry about anyone coming out and ending up caught in the crossfire. He summoned Charizard, and behind him, Orla readied Metagross while Roy and Dot prepared Fuecoco and Quaxly. Zirc called for Skarmory to retreat, replacing him instead with Rhydon. Onia summoned Golduck, declaring the odds as five Pokémon against two.
"You know why we're here, don't you?" Friede asked of Zirc and Onia. His eyes narrowed into a glare, and he could feel the resentment from the rest of his crew growing stronger behind him too. "The Explorers are the ones responsible for Liko's disappearance, aren't they? Where is she?"
"We're not telling you anything!" Zirc countered, and that was all Friede needed to hear. If the Explorers had nothing to do with Liko's kidnapping, then Zirc would have simply denied it. The fact that he deflected and changed the topic instead told Friede everything he needed to know. They had been on the right track all along, and Liko was with them.
"That's your mistake then," Orla snarled, revealing a rage unlike anything Friede had seen from her in years. "Metagross, use Metal Claw!"
Metagross rushed forward to swipe at Rhydon, and while the gray Pokémon tried to defend itself, it fell massively short. The swing from Metagross was brutal and overpowering, and Rhydon was sent skidding back through the street. Massive grooves were left behind where Rhydon had slid, and the dinosaur Pokémon snarled in pain and irritation as it looked up at Metagross.
"If you don't want to tell us on your own, then we'll just make you tell us," Mollie promised. She had not summoned Chansey to the fight since Chansey would have done little to help in an open fight like this, but she was ready to do it at a moment's notice. Until then, her rage would more than make up for her lack of fighting power. "Tell us where Liko is. We'll leave you be if you answer that."
Onia didn't bother with answering Mollie's demands, instead pointing ahead at Charizard. "Golduck, use Water Pulse!"
A massive jet of water burst forth from the gem on Golduck's head, but before it could make contact, Friede clenched his fingers into a fist. "Charizard, Flamethrower!" The fire from Charizard's attack clashed fiercely with the water Golduck had summoned, and the elements fought for dominance, but neither won out in the end. Instead, the water and fire were both reduced to steam that billowed thickly in the air for a few seconds before spiraling up to the sky.
"You're keeping Liko somewhere! I know you are!" Dot shouted next, stepping forward by a few paces but not enough to interfere with the battle at hand. "Where is she?! Answer us!"
Onia snarled at the group for a split second before pulling herself up to her full posture. "We know where she is, but you don't get to know that," she announced. "You would be best off forgetting about all of this! It'll certainly save you a lot of trouble!"
"We're not going to abandon our friend just because you tell us to!" Roy yelled. "Tell us where Liko is! If you won't tell us yourselves, then we'll make you tell us!"
Zirc dug his heels into the ground and shook his head. "As if! Rhydon, use Rock Smash!"
Rhydon jumped into the air once and then twice, and rocks shot up from the ground beneath its feet. It swung at the rocks, sending fragments of stone flying toward the Rising Volt Tacklers. Charizard and Metagross rushed forward to destroy as much of the debris as possible, but a few pieces managed to get past them. Fuecoco and Quaxly both jumped up to smash the remaining fragments, protecting their partners. Roy and Dot offered their Pokémon grateful smiles but didn't have the time to do much more.
While they were distracted, Golduck had let out another Water Pulse, leaving a column of water rushing toward them. Fuecoco reacted first, summoning flames to evaporate the fluid before it could hit Charizard. Quaxly rushed forward next, and Dot pointed at Rhydon. "Use Water Gun!" Dot instructed, and Quaxly was more than happy to follow the order. Quaxly spat out a column of water, thoroughly soaking Rhydon from head to toe while pushing it back by a few paces. Rhydon was left staggered but still upright, though it was clear that just one or two more strong hits would be enough to take him, and by extension Zirc, out of the battle.
"Use Thunder Punch!" Cap followed up next, sending out a blast of electricity at Rhydon at Friede's command. The attack itself did little to hurt Rhydon on account of the poor matchup, but it kept Rhydon distracted just long enough for Quaxly and Dot to ready another attack. When Quaxly's Water Gun struck home a second time, Rhydon was sent crashing into the ground. Zirc brought his partner back to his Pokéball a moment later, snarling under his breath at just how quickly the tides had turned against him.
Golduck was left as the only combatant on Zirc and Onia's side of the fight due to Rhydon's need to retreat. Onia staggered back by a step, but she barely had the chance to come up with a plan in the face of her difficult odds. Friede pointed at Golduck, and Cap reacted accordingly. "Use Volt Tackle!" Friede yelled, and Cap gladly followed the instruction. Cap slammed into Golduck, sending electricity scattering through the air around him. Golduck yelped in pain before its eyes began to fall shut from exhaustion after the fight. By the time Cap had returned to Friede's side, Golduck had been recalled back into its Pokéball by Onia.
Zirc looked ready to continue the fight for as long as he had to, and his fingers were clenched into tight fists from rage at the way things had been going. Before he had the chance to push the point though, Onia placed a hand on his shoulder. "There's no point in staying here," she pointed out. "They already got away. It's time for us to join them and get out of here for ourselves."
Zirc considered Onia's words for a moment before nodding. As much as he didn't want to have to admit it, she had a point. They had managed to hold off the Rising Volt Tacklers just long enough for Amethio and Opal to escape, and that was what they had been going for. Now, all that remained was for them to catch up with their leader and get away from the scene of the fight as soon as possible.
Zirc and Onia both called out their Skarmory before clambering onto their backs. "Skarmory, use Whirlwind!" the pair yelled in unison. As the Skarmory took off and rushed into the sky, the birds kicked up massive gusts of wind to distract the Rising Volt Tacklers for a few seconds. The intense winds were enough to force them all to throw their hands up over their heads, and that was the only cue Zirc and Onia needed to get out of there.
By the time the tempest finally cleared, both Zirc and Onia were nowhere to be seen. Friede glanced around in search of any tiny traces that would tell him where they had gone, but he came up short. Roy looked around the street, cupping his hands around his mouth. "Hey!" Roy yelled out. "Come back here!"
"No!" Dot screamed in frustration. "They got away!" A million other thoughts raced through their mind in the moments that followed, but they did their best to shove all of it down to ensure they didn't snap at the other Rising Volt Tacklers. Dot pressed their face into their hands and shook their head, fighting to keep their composure. "That was supposed to be the end of it. If they had just told us where Liko was, then..."
"It's not over just yet," Friede assured Dot and the rest of the crew. "We learned something very valuable from that fight: we were right about the Explorers being behind what happened to Liko. We may not know where she is specifically, but we know that we're on the right track. They were the ones responsible for her disappearance."
"Then I'll just have to keep searching more," Dot muttered, forcing themself to calm down even as their rage threatened to swallow them whole. "If we were able to find them here today, then that means I'll be able to find them again too. They have to have a base near here. I can't imagine they would be in the area for any other reason."
"I don't understand why they would want to go to a bookstore though," Murdock admitted, pressing one hand to his temples. "It seems a bit too... I don't know... Mundane for the Explorers."
"I was wondering the same thing," Mollie confessed with a frown. "If they wanted books, then surely there are better ways of going about getting them. As it stands though... It just feels weird."
"I wonder about the person who was with Amethio," Orla commented. "I didn't get a good look at them, but there was someone wearing green with him in the bookstore. They ran off with him when we arrived though."
"I don't know who it could be either," Dot sighed. "I don't know much about the other members of the Explorers, but I can tell you that I haven't found any details about them in my own searching. They're very secretive. If I had found any information about them, then I would have shared it already."
Friede tilted his face up to the sky, and a soft breeze blew through his hair. "We learned something today," he concluded. "We just have to keep pushing so we can make sure this is the end of it."
Dot nodded and stared down at their Rotom phone. The lead they had been chasing was long gone now, and disappointment flared deep in the pit of their stomach. It wasn't supposed to end this way. This should have been it. They should have found Liko then and there, but they had fallen short.
Dot was just going to have to keep trying. They would find Liko sooner or later. They would make sure of it no matter what it took. They wouldn't let Liko slip away without a fight. It didn't matter how many times they fought with the Explorers. Dot would bring Liko home, and none of them would be able to stop her.
~~~~~
Opal didn't know how she would ever find a way to calm down.
Her mind had been buzzing with static ever since she fled the scene of the battle with Amethio. Everything felt like it was too much, and her head had been crammed full of cotton. Her thoughts were both dulled and racing, but she couldn't find a way to bring sense to any of them. None of this was right. She hadn't been meant to be there. She shouldn't have seen anyone out on that trip.
Opal had tried and failed countless times now to make sense of all that had happened. The book she picked up had the face of someone she had known before she lost her memories. The people who showed up to start a fight with Amethio were familiar to her in a way too. She was deeply afraid of everything she had learned that day. The memories were close enough for her to touch them, but she couldn't dislodge any of it to make sense of what had happened. She was so close, but she just couldn't find the strength to do it. She didn't know how she ever could.
Amethio looked notably disheveled too, and his white and black hair had fallen in messy threads to frame his face. Opal didn't think he had ever looked this stressed around her. He hadn't said much of anything since they got in the air aside from an occasional reassurance that everything was going to be alright. Opal wished she could bring herself to believe it. Nothing felt okay anymore.
Opal found herself understanding in too much detail just why she had been told to stay in the base for so long. She never should have gone outside. She must have invited this trouble upon herself by leaving. Opal didn't know how she would have done that, but she couldn't think of any other explanation. She should have known that she had to hide for her own safety. Why had she tried to fight it? She should have known better. Why hadn't she known better?
The base blurred together into an apathetic haze that surrounded Opal on all sides. The sterile white and silver felt overwhelming in a way it had no right to be, and her mind was spinning with enough force to nearly send her crashing to the ground. She couldn't stand any of this. She wanted to hide in the darkness until all of this was over... But the darkness wasn't going to help her, was it? It couldn't have, but--
"There you are. I was wondering when you would be returning."
Opal couldn't tell if the sound of Spinel's voice jolted electricity through her veins or if it made the cotton in her head worse. Perhaps it was some miserable blend of both. She had to fight to not clamp her hands over her ears as she turned to find him approaching her. Amethio had told her that she needed to stay away from Spinel for her own safety. He was causing adverse reactions, so he had been instructed to avoid her... And yet, there he was.
"What do you want?" Amethio asked, his voice not openly hostile but still edging on something dark. "I need to get Opal back to her room." Behind him, Opal found herself curling up within his shadows. She needed to get away from Spinel as soon as possible. Nothing about him was right. Nothing about any of this was right, and Opal couldn't stand sitting there in her own dread for a moment longer.
"I heard of your... Unfortunate encounter while you were out. Such a shame," Spinel sighed with a shake of her head. "I do hope this doesn't cause any problems for you going forward. It would be tragic if Opal was not allowed to leave the base again because of this."
Opal felt her heart skip a beat. She hated herself for going outside and bringing all of this upon herself, but she hated the idea of not being allowed to leave even more. How was she supposed to live her life if she was trapped there in the base forever? She couldn't leave, but she couldn't stand to stay either. It was all too much. Everything was too much.
"If that's all you have to say, then we need to get going," Amethio reiterated. He guided one hand to the small of Opal's back, and she couldn't decide if she wanted to press closer to his touch or shrivel away from it. "Come on, Opal."
Amethio and Opal only made it three steps away before Spinel spoke again. "I have something I know Opal will want to hear about," Spinel called out, and Opal slowly turned to face him. She didn't want to hear anything he had to say, not as long as he scared her this much, but her curiosity would not let her run. She still couldn't bring herself to meet his gaze, instead finding a stray thread on the sleeve of his uniform far more interesting. "A strange group went after you today, yes?"
Despite herself, Opal nodded slowly. A part of her mind wanted to know how Spinel had managed to hear about that, but she supposed it didn't matter. Somehow, Spinel would always have a way of getting to the bottom of whatever he wanted to know. Opal didn't understand it, but she didn't have to either. As long as he stayed away from her, everything would be fine.
Spinel let out a small hum before casting Opal a smile she could hear before she had the strength to see it. "They are the Rising Volt Tacklers," Spinel began to explain. "They are enemies of the Explorers, and we have fought them on many occasions. They felt familiar to you, didn't they? I'm sure of it." Once again, Opal nodded, and she finally found herself looking up to meet Spinel's gaze. His eyes were shining in a way she could not describe, but she knew it struck her to the core like a stab to the chest. "After all, they were the ones responsible for the loss of your memories."
Opal's entire world froze, and ice spread thick and heavy through her entire body. She didn't even move when Spinel offered her his well wishes and breezed away down the hallway. Beside her, Amethio was frozen too, staring at the spot where Spinel had last been with a strange tension in his shoulders. There was rage boiling beneath the surface of his features, but he didn't dare to let it fly free. He couldn't do it now. There would be no point as long as Spinel was gone.
Opal stared down at the floor, and her hands slowly rose into her field of vision. Was that true? Had the group from that day really been the reason she lost her memories? Spinel wouldn't have said it unless it was true. It didn't matter that he had been told to avoid her. He must have been telling the truth. He wouldn't have risked breaking the rules to talk to her unless it was important, and... And that was perhaps the most important piece of information Opal could have ever received.
The Rising Volt Tacklers were the reason behind her amnesia. She had been right to believe that she had run into them at one point... And they were the ones who had done something to erase her memories. Opal didn't know for sure what they could have done or how it happened, but none of it mattered. The Rising Volt Tacklers were the key to her missing memories. They were her enemies, and they had wiped away her history in the incident that ended her life as she knew it.
"Opal, come on," Amethio suddenly whispered, and he began to guide Opal toward her room. She knew her legs were moving as instructed, but she wasn't paying attention to it at all. She was too hot and too cold all at once, and her breath felt trapped in her lungs. She understood everything, and yet, it felt like she understood nothing.
Opal only let herself cry when she was certain she was safe, but it didn't mean much. After all, she would be in danger for as long as the Rising Volt Tacklers were still after her.
And she was certain they always would be.
Notes:
So there's the first fight scene. And, um... The everything else.
I've been really looking forward to this chapter since it marks the first encounter between Opal and the Rising Volt Tacklers. I'm very new to writing out Pokémon fights, and this chapter was the first one I've ever done. However, I've written Digimon fight scenes before, and I have a lot of fun with fights that aren't about monsters, so... I'll get the hang of it eventually. Shoutout to my partner, Cloud, for putting together a list of strengths and weaknesses for this fight. I couldn't have done it without you.
But enough about that. Let's talk about the real point of the chapter: the ending. Surprise! A lot of people have been saying that they want to fight me for what I've done over the course of the first three chapters. To that I say that you haven't seen anything yet. We've still got sixteen more chapters left of this arc, and it's all downhill from here. Only normal things are happening. I don't know if you could tell. Oops. Sorry for the emotional damage. You'll have even more reasons to fight me as the story goes on. I'll apologize for the Spinel scene though. That might have been uncalled for.
Next time, we'll jump into the aftermath of this chapter and all of its horrors. Until then, I hope you all enjoyed this chapter. Feedback is appreciated as always. Have a nice day, everyone!
-Digital
Chapter 5: As the Storm Begins
Summary:
Amethio tries to make Opal feel safe in the base after their close call with danger.
Chapter Text
Opal felt numb.
She stared up at the ceiling of her room, her face set in a seemingly permanent frown. Sprigatito was sitting on the mattress beside her, occasionally meowing to make sure Opal continued to stroke her hand across her back. To the untrained eye, it likely looked like Sprigatito simply loved attention a little too much. Opal knew though that Sprigatito was trying to keep her from getting too lost in her own thoughts. That was much easier said than done, but Sprigatito would do anything to keep her afloat, and right now, that meant keeping her distracted.
Opal had been feeling out of sorts ever since the battle two days prior. She had been excited to go outside and see what the world had to offer her... But now, she was too anxious to even think of leaving her room, much less the Explorers' base. Opal's thoughts kept reminding her of the man in the picture book who seemed so strangely familiar to her. From there, she thought about the people who had attacked her and Amethio. Spinel had called them the Rising Volt Tacklers, and they were the ones who had taken Opal's memories away from her.
Opal knew realistically that she shouldn't have been thinking about it. Pushing her mind to surrender its memories of the Rising Volt Tacklers prematurely would only make her situation worse. Opal had forgotten everything for a reason. The mind did its best to ensure the body survived, and in some cases, that meant wiping away the memories of the past. Opal wasn't sure of what she had been through, but she knew it must have been horrific if she had forgotten all about it. She should have been running from the phantoms of the past...
But she found herself yearning to chase after them instead. It didn't matter how bad of an idea it was. All Opal could think about was what it would be like to figure out what had happened for her to lose her memories. There must have been a reason for all of this, and she needed to get to the bottom of it. What had the Rising Volt Tacklers done to completely wipe her thoughts and memories like that? It must have been a serious fight... But there was no damage on Opal's body if it had been a battle. When she woke up, she felt a pain deep in the aching caverns of her soul, but there was nothing there physically. How could such a thing be possible? How could she have lost so much but see no signs of it anywhere?
Opal let out a heavy sigh, and Sprigatito once again meowed to make sure she kept up her petting rhythm. Opal continued it after a moment's pause, her lips creased downward in a stern frown. She didn't understand any of this. She wanted to remember the past, but at the same time, she feared it more than anything. Opal didn't know what was going to happen when she finally figured out what had happened to her and why it had all faded away from her, but she knew she had to reach it sooner or later. She couldn't let this be the end. If there was a past for her to uncover, then she had to do it.
But she couldn't do that without leaving the base, and Opal couldn't think of a worse idea right now. It was leaving the base that had led to her losing her memories. She was sure of it... But the thought didn't sit right in her brain. It was as if she was trying to force herself to believe it. What other choice did she have? Others knew much more about her now than she ever could, and Opal was simply going to have to live with that. She was trapped by her lack of knowledge about her circumstances, and that was going to remain true for a long time to come. She was going to have to leave in order to remember the past, but she couldn't bring herself to leave because she knew where it was going to lead. No matter how she looked at it, Opal was trapped, and she didn't think she would ever be able to put into words just how much she hated it.
A knock at the door snapped Opal out of her thoughts, and she found herself shooting upright in her bed. She sat up, and Sprigatito meowed angrily when Opal pushed her sideways with her thigh in her haste. "Sorry, Sprigatito," Opal whispered, scooping the cat into her arms and stroking at the top of her head in the hope that it would be compensation for the disturbance. "Who is it?"
"Amethio."
"Come in," Opal smiled. She found her gaze catching on the notebook on her desk on the other side of the room. Opal had been trying to find the strength to read over the truths she had outlined for herself before the trip to the bookstore, but she could never seem to do it. Opal felt like she was wasting the resources Amethio had gathered for her, and that guilt only grew worse when he came to pay her a visit. Would he be upset if he knew that she couldn't bring herself to touch her notebook out of paranoia that it would hurt her somehow? Would he be disappointed that she was struggling so much to do something as simple as sit up in her bed?
Amethio didn't seem upset at all as he entered the room though. His expression was perfectly level, and he wore the same slight frown he always did. Opal knew he wasn't angry with her though; that was simply the way he looked. Opal had been told she looked the same way by Onia, and she had no room to judge Amethio when she felt like she was a lost puppy chasing after his shadow. "Good morning, Opal," Amethio greeted as he pulled the door shut behind him. "Did you sleep well?"
"I slept fine," Opal replied even though that wasn't entirely true. She kept snapping awake from her dreams, something like a memory on the tip of her tongue but fading away before she could put it to words. The flashes were bizarre and incomprehensible, and Opal could never find a way to make sense of them even if she was lucky enough to remember. It was like that battle against the Rising Volt Tacklers had started to pull a few pieces of the wall holding back her memories loose. Opal couldn't decide if she wanted to rebuild the barricade or knock it all down, but her mind wasn't giving her much of a choice in its stubborn alliance with silence.
"Good," Amethio said simply, though Opal got the feeling he didn't entirely believe her. He wasn't looking her in the eyes when he spoke to her. He rarely ever seemed to bother with it. Opal didn't understand why. It almost felt like he was afraid of her, but she didn't know how to put a finger on the reason behind it. Why would Amethio fear her? If anything, she should have been afraid of him. He was her superior, and it was only right for her to fear her commander enough to respect him and fall in line at his orders, yes?
A few moments more passed in uncomfortable silence, and Opal realized that he had nothing more to say. Amethio was a man of few words in general, and Opal had come to appreciate it over the course of their time together. He never spoke up unless he had something productive to say, and given how much Opal struggled with voicing her own thoughts, she was glad for it. She felt Amethio understood her in a way few others did, but he never seemed to give her the room to understand him in return.
Opal wanted to give Amethio the space he needed to work through his quiet uncertainty, but as the silence dragged on, she knew she wouldn't be able to do it. She had been trying to be patient in the last few days as she unraveled everything that had happened during her trip out of the base, but there was only so much time she could spend waiting. She had to do something to get to the bottom of all of this, and there was only one person she could ask about it.
"Amethio?" Opal started, and Amethio seemed to jolt out of his thoughts. He didn't even seem to realize he had lost his grip on reality until after Opal called him on it, and she felt her chest grow tight at the sight. "Those people we fought against... The Rising Volt Tacklers... Are they really the ones who were responsible for me losing my memories?"
Amethio seemed to grow paler at her words, and Opal had to wonder if it was actually true or if it was a trick of the light. Amethio was pale most of the time, but there was something different about it now that made her feel like she was going to be sick. Amethio didn't seem to know how to respond to her question, and Opal had to wonder if he even knew. As far as she could tell, he had been out on missions before she lost her memory, and he was called back to the base to look after her. He hadn't even been around when she lost everything. It would make sense if he didn't know...
But that was all the more reason for her to trust Spinel, wasn't it? If Amethio hadn't been around but Spinel had been, then Opal should have felt right placing her faith in his words. Spinel wouldn't have said it unless it was true. What reason did he have to lie to her? They were on the same side. Spinel had told Opal what happened for her to lose her memories and her history, and in return, she had responded by suspecting him of something horrible. How could she stand to look at herself in the mirror knowing what she was dreading each time she was around him?
"Spinel wouldn't have said it unless it was true, I suppose," Opal finally settled on saying when she realized Amethio wouldn't be rising to answer her question directly. "I don't know how I feel about him, but he has no reason to lie to me. Everything has to be fine."
Another blanket of awkward silence fell between them, and Amethio's fingers found the hem of his shirt. He hadn't been much of a fidgety person when Opal first met him, but he seemed to have picked up on the habit from the time he spent with her. Opal wished she knew how she was meant to feel about that. "I don't mean to intrude if you don't want to talk about this, but..." Amethio started, forcing himself to look up and meet Opal's gaze. "Why exactly do you feel so anxious around Spinel?"
There was the question. Opal shouldn't have been shocked to hear it, and yet, her chest went tight anyway like the very implication of her fear was something she shouldn't have ever acknowledged. He was supposed to be a safe person for her. They were part of the same organization, and that meant they were on the same side... But if that was all true, then why did Opal feel so strange around him? She wished she could figure out why, and she couldn't blame Amethio for wondering. It was a question she had found herself posing internally many times in the last few weeks, but it never seemed to give her the information she sought.
"I... I don't know," Opal admitted with a heavy sigh. "I feel like I'm being ridiculous whenever I run away from him, but... I don't know. It's like there's something deep in my body that wants me to get as far away from him as I can. Something about him just unsettles me. I don't know what it is." After a few seconds of thought, Opal offered Amethio a weak smile. "Maybe it could be because he was there when he lost my memories. I mean, he must have been, right? How else would he know that enemy group was responsible for me losing my memories?"
Amethio didn't have a response to that, not that Opal had expected him to. She didn't want to push him too hard when he had already done so much for her. If he needed a bit more time to sit with that theory, then she was willing to give it to him. "I must admit that it... Unsettles me how you respond to him," Amethio admitted. "I'm not entirely fond of Spinel either, but your reactions... They're different from anything I've ever seen."
Opal felt her eyes go wide. Somehow, his words struck a nerve deep in her body, and it seemed to send shockwaves throughout every muscle that fled from Spinel when he appeared before her. "I... I don't know what's wrong with me," Opal murmured softly. "I feel like something about him is off, but that doesn't make any sense. We're on the same side. I shouldn't feel so stressed by just having to be around him, but... When I see him, I just feel worse about everything."
Amethio hummed distantly, and his eyes narrowed into slits with something like rage. Opal found herself looking away out of shame. She didn't know how to respond when Amethio's anger appeared on the rare occasions when he was open enough with her for her to see it. He was a stoic person most of the time, and Opal had never known how to handle it when that changed for even a few seconds. She felt like she was seeing something private, intruding on a scene that never should have been hers to witness. It didn't matter that Amethio's anger seemed to grow strongest when it came to Spinel for some reason. It was something they had in common, and yet, it filled Opal with dread. Something that could have been a source of camaraderie instead made her want to bury her head into her pillow and wish she never had to think about Spinel, the Rising Volt Tacklers, or going outside of the base ever again. It was just too much.
"I'm sorry for the way our last outing went," Amethio suddenly said, and Opal's shame evaporated all at once, leaving her skin feeling sizzling just beneath the surface. "I know you were excited about being able to get a few books for yourself, but that... That didn't go the way we were hoping."
"That's not your fault though," Opal pointed out. "It was because of the people who attacked us that everything went wrong. I... I appreciate all you did for me to let me leave the base at all. I know it was hard to talk your superiors into letting us leave, but I'm glad you did. I wish it could have gone better, but..." Opal wanted to say that she was glad to just have been able to spend time with him, but she didn't know if she could call herself honest when she said that. She would have vastly preferred to be able to spend time with Amethio in a way that didn't make her head feel like it was going to burn her alive. Her trip out of the base had been all she wanted after she arrived in Amethio's care, and yet, it was a spectacular failure that she would dread for the rest of her days.
"I wish it had gone better too," Amethio admitted. He hesitated for a long moment before he sat down on the bed. He still refused to look up and meet her gaze directly, and something tense in Opal's chest wondered if he would ever be strong enough to look her in the eyes. She wondered if it was her own weakness keeping him from it. Somehow, she doubted she would know the difference either way.
Opal hummed once more, and Sprigatito meowed loudly to get her attention again. Opal hadn't realized just how dysregulated she had become until after Sprigatito tried to goad her into stroking her head again. Opal offered the cat a small smile and went back to petting her. There was no point in thinking about leaving the base again. Opal was still reeling from the sting of what had happened, and she would be for a while to come. At least there were things she could enjoy from the comfort of the base. Sprigatito would be there for her no matter what, and Opal wasn't going to let herself lose sight of the joy that came with her partner.
Even so, Opal knew that her dread around leaving the base was not going to be permanent. One day, she was going to want to leave again. She couldn't stay in one place and expect that to be enough to satisfy her even if she really wanted it to be. Opal wished she could be happy in the base and never worry about leaving again, but she knew better than that. She was always going to want something more. She was always going to want to break out of her shell and reach for something out of her range. One day, Opal would want to leave the base and see the world again. She couldn't contain her wanderlust through paranoia alone no matter how much she wanted that to be the case. She could only hope it went better this time than it had before. She didn't know if she would be able to swallow another bitter pill of disappointment.
"Maybe we can try something else," Amethio suddenly suggested, and Opal remembered with a muted wince that they had been in the middle of a conversation. "Going out to let you search for books yourself may have failed, but... We can look online to see if a book catches your attention. I can go out and pick them up for you. That way, you won't have to leave again."
Opal felt relief rush through her body all at once, catching her by such great surprise that it made all of her nerves tingle and then numb in a matter of seconds. "I would like that," Opal admitted softly. She hadn't even been able to look at any of the books that would have been interesting to her before she was caught up in the battle. Everything had happened far too quickly. Opal had gotten distracted by the single kids book she found, but she wouldn't have to worry about that if Amethio was there to guide her away from anything that could have hurt her.
Opal couldn't help feeling like she was betraying herself though. She really did want to find the courage to leave the base one day. She knew she was going to need to walk away eventually and find a new place for herself, but... She wasn't ready just yet. She was still terrified, and the wound of her battle against the Rising Volt Tacklers was still fresh. One day, she would be ready, but that day was not today. There was no shame in taking it easy until she was prepared to leave the base behind. Amethio would be there to help her in the meantime.
"Then let's get looking." Amethio pulled up his Rotom phone, and the device floated in the air in between them. Opal got up from the desk and sat down next to Amethio on the bed. She continued to pet at Sprigatito's head even after she repositioned herself. She was safe. She would be for as long as she stayed there in the base.
And even after she had to leave, Opal knew she would be protected then too. Amethio would be there for her, and he wouldn't let anything bad happen to her. As long as they were together, they would be alright. Opal was sure of it.
Something in the back of her head buzzed with static, but Opal didn't try to dislodge the memory from its wall. Instead, she smiled and looked at the books scrolling across the screen of Amethio's phone. She was fine, and she was going to continue being fine too. She had to.
~~~~~
Roy hated feeling restless.
He had always been aware that he had too much energy and not enough to do with it. On the island, he had been able to solve that problem by darting around from activity to activity, doing anything and everything he could to get his mind off the tension that was always stirring just beneath the surface of his skin. Roy wanted to do things rather than sitting in the silence. He was desperate to find something to fill every minute of his day, and he hadn't known to call it desperation until he was given a chance to leave the island behind.
Journeying on the Brave Olivine had gone a long way to help Roy to come to terms with the haze embedded in his blood and bones. There was always something to do on the airship, and he never had to wait long to find something new and exciting. This life was meant for him. Adventuring was the perfect solution to every problem Roy hadn't even realized he had. Travel was his life now, and he couldn't have asked for a better path to follow.
But now that Liko was gone... Roy found himself feeling that same old static beneath his skin, but something about it felt sinister. It wasn't something that could be solved by him jumping headfirst into the newest activity that caught his eye. Instead, he was forced to sit with the dread and the anxiety over what had happened to Liko. Nothing he could do now was productive. Nothing he could do now felt like it was enough. The world was full of excitement and adventure, but it was full of danger and risk just the same. Roy wished he had woken up to that before it was too late for him to save his friend.
Today, Roy decided to try and get rid of his rattling energy by pacing around the ship. He wanted to do something that would get his mind off his fear around Liko's disappearance, but nothing seemed to work. Roy had thought the pain would dull when time passed him by, but the battle against Zirc and Onia had only made it worse. They had come so close to finding the truth, but it had just barely slipped out of their grasp when Zirc and Onia followed Amethio's lead to escape.
All Roy could really say for certain at this point was that the Explorers were behind Liko's disappearance. He had suspected as much going into the last battle, but his suspicions had been proven correct through Zirc and Onia's words. Liko was with the Explorers, and she was... Somewhere. The Rising Volt Tacklers' best option at this point was to try and find their base and see if they could find Liko there. Roy didn't know where the base was going to be specifically, but it felt like the only option for tracking Liko down and bringing her home.
Roy wished not for the first time and certainly not for the last that he knew how to do things like this. Dot was spending practically every waking minute trying to find Liko in some way or another, and Roy didn't know how he was supposed to help her. At this point, he was starting to wonder if anyone was able to help her at all when she was doing so much to push everybody on the ship away. Roy had tried to knock on her door a few times, but he could never seem to get through to her the way he would have wanted.
So today, Roy took to wandering around the airship, hoping that something would miraculously happen to make the search easier. Maybe he would get lucky and figure out where Liko was without needing to become an overnight technology genius to track down the base. Maybe there would a breakthrough while he was pacing around the Brave Olivine searching for something to do. Maybe he would be able to do something to help assuage the fears of the adults on the ship... And if he was really lucky, maybe he would be able to calm his own nerves too.
Roy had been doing his best to not get too caught up in games of blame or accusation. He didn't want to lose his grip... But it felt like all he was able to do anymore. Roy wished he had been smarter and had known to not leave Liko on her own the day she went looking for that spice. He should have stood by her and gone with her. Roy was glad he had caught Wattrel, but he wished he had encouraged her to stay with him until he was able to go with her. Maybe none of this would have happened if Liko just had someone else by her side. Surely whoever had taken her wouldn't have been able to overwhelm them both if they had been together, right?
Roy came to a stop near the front of the ship. Ludlow was sitting on the edge of the Brave Olivine with his fishing rod in hand and Quagsire just beside him. Roy hesitated for a long moment, unsure as to if he should approach the old man or leave him be. Fuecoco looked up at Roy, waiting to see what he would do first before he chose to act.
"Seeking company?"
Ludlow's voice snapped Roy out of his thoughts, and he bit down on his bottom lip to try and restrain the yell that wanted to push its way out of his mouth. Roy only halfway succeeded in stifling the noise, and he winced when he realized how embarrassing the noise he had just made was. Roy wasn't prone to bouts of shame, but these days, it snuck up on him in ways he had never thought possible. "I... I guess," Roy found himself saying even though he didn't have an answer. He didn't know if being around others would have helped or made him feel worse at this point. Then again, there was a lot Roy didn't know anymore, and he had no idea how he was meant to understand any of it either.
Ludlow hummed, but he didn't look at Roy over his shoulder. Instead, he cast his line out once again, and Roy found himself frowning at the sight. Something about Ludlow seemed... Sad. Roy had never really been able to get a good read on Ludlow, but he could still see enough to know that Ludlow was struggling with this just as much as the rest of the Rising Volt Tacklers were. Ludlow had chosen to isolate himself in his grief, but that didn't make it any less real than what the rest of the airship's crew members were feeling.
Roy found himself approaching Ludlow a moment later, and he settled down on the edge of the ship not far from the old man. Quagsire made a small noise of approval before sitting down for himself. Roy looked out at the vast sea near the edge of Paldea, a frown on his face. The view had been the same ever since Liko went missing. No one wanted to leave the area and risk abandoning her when staying could have been the only way they could find her... But for all they knew, there was no point in staying around here anymore. For all they knew, Liko could have been far from Paldea by now, and they wouldn't know it until they found the strength to leave. Roy couldn't blame the others for deciding to stay, but it filled him with an uncomfortable dread that sat in his chest like lead.
"Oftentimes, we do not realize how precious something is to us until it is long gone," Ludlow said, and Roy looked over at him carefully. "The true value of that which we love only reveals itself to us in its scarcity."
Roy's chest tightened even more, and he hadn't even thought such a thing was possible. Ludlow wasn't wrong. Roy hadn't realized just how much he missed or valued Liko until she was gone. He had gone on this journey because she was there to help him take the first step. It hadn't been Friede or Fuecoco who gave Roy the chance to see that something greater existed out there for him; Liko had guided him to the light, and now, he was left to follow that path on his own.
Roy pulled his legs up to his chest, hugging them like that would be enough to melt the frigid misery in his heart. "Do you miss Liko too?" he asked, his voice muffled by his knees.
Ludlow adjusted his grip on his fishing rod ever so slightly. "I have been on this ship for a long time," Ludlow started in lieu of a true answer. "And in all my time here... I have not seen a light quite like the one you and Liko brought. It has been a long time since the spark of adventure found a new home here. We will all chase that light for as long as it takes to bring it back."
Roy felt tears rise to his eyes, and Fuecoco leaned against his side. Roy wrapped an arm around his partner, forcing himself to breathe through tidal waves of grief that slammed into his heart with all the grace and tact of a hurricane. "I'm going to do what I can to bring her back," Roy announced, unsure of if he was talking more to himself or Ludlow. "No matter what it takes or how long I have to wait, I'm going to make sure she comes back home again. I promise."
"I know," Ludlow responded simply, and Roy could have sworn he heard a new tinge of exhaustion to his voice that he had never noticed before. Ludlow pulled his fishing rod back before casting the line out once again, and his entire body seemed to collapse beneath the weight of the motion. "I know you will."
~~~~~
There were a lot of interesting books out there.
Opal hadn't realized just how overwhelming it was to search for a few books that sounded interesting until after she started to look through the massive lists online. Somehow, it had felt less overwhelming when she was there in person. Now, Opal was being hit with all sorts of information all at once, and she didn't know how to sift through it effectively. If nothing else, she could say this search was going well. She had already found a few books she thought sounded interesting, and Amethio had agreed to buy them for her. He was seemingly directing her away from the author of the picture books that had caused her to spiral during their trip out. Opal appreciated it. She hated feeling like she was losing control, and that was all she could think when she saw the picture of that strange man in the book.
Opal had been doing her best to not think about him, but there was only so much she could do to direct herself away from it. One way or another, he always came up again, and Opal found her curiosity trying to snap her body in half. She knew that man from somewhere. Alex was his name, wasn't it? She knew that in a way she couldn't ever put to words. It felt like it was embedded in her heart deeply, the words somehow vastly more important than her lack of memories. She had known him before she lost everything. She would still know him now if not for everything slipping between her fingers.
It had been the Rising Volt Tacklers who did all of this to her. That was what Spinel had said. He had no reason to lie to her... Right? That was what Opal kept telling herself if nothing else. Something about the Rising Volt Tacklers struck her strangely, but she didn't know what to do with it. The best way she could describe it was that when she thought about them, it created heat and pressure in the back of her head. Maybe it was because her mind was fighting to keep them away. If they were truly responsible for the loss of her memories, then she would want to stay away from them. Her body seemed to remember even when her mind forgot, and it was determined to keep her as far away from the Rising Volt Tacklers as possible.
And yet, Opal found herself strangely drawn to them too for reasons she couldn't put a finger on. It was a strange type of attraction, a magnet constantly pulling her in the direction of the man in the yellow jacket and his infectious smile. Opal hadn't managed to get a good look at anyone else involved with the group, but she knew there were others. When she pushed her mind, she could almost see their silhouettes. The strangest part though was that Opal didn't think she was afraid of them the way she should have been. She was interested in learning more about them, but it didn't have much to do with the fear she should have felt. Opal felt like she was missing something, and the details were impossible for her to make sense of. Everything was just too much, and the books on Amethio's phone were somehow the least overwhelming thing on her mind at the moment.
It wasn't just books on the screen though. The margins had come to display advertisements for other products, and Opal found herself staring at them just as much as the book covers. There were ads for all sorts of things, but the one she was most focused on created new tension in the back of her mind. She didn't bother to interrogate why that was before she pointed at it. "What's that?"
Amethio paused in his scrolling, and he looked at what Opal had gestured to. "This?" He clicked on it, and a new tab opened on his phone. It showed a plush toy of a Sprigatito. It was smaller than the real thing, but something about it was intriguing to Opal in more ways than she could hope to count. Her body felt like it was pulling out of her reach as she yearned to push her fingers through the screen to feel that soft texture of plush beneath her palm. She knew what it was going to feel like. She wasn't sure of how she knew, but she knew it in the same way she knew Alex's name without needing to read his author's biography in that picture book she found.
Opal nodded distantly, though she wasn't paying much attention to what her body was doing anymore. "I... I want it," she whispered. She didn't know why she was so focused on something like this. She had a real Sprigatito sitting there on her lap. Why would she want a plush imitation when the real thing was there with her no matter what? And yet, Opal knew she needed this extra bit of comfort. In a world that felt foreign and impossible to understand, Opal knew the plush would bring her a sense of safety she needed now more than ever before.
Amethio seemed shocked by Opal expressing so openly that she wanted something. She hadn't even done that with the books she decided she was interested in buying. Amethio stared at her for a long moment, but Opal didn't look up at him in return. Instead, her fingers seemed to chase the memory of something she couldn't quite recall. She had a toy like that at one point. It felt distant, like it had been true years ago, but Opal couldn't bring herself to mind it. This was a tether to her past even if she didn't know any details beyond that. Somehow, that was more important than anything else could ever hope to be.
"I really want it," Opal found herself saying. She finally tore her gaze away from the plush to look up at Amethio. She knew she must have looked pathetic, pleading and soft as she was, but she couldn't find the strength she needed to fix it. "If that's okay."
Amethio blinked a few times, shocked at Opal's open display of yearning. She hadn't expressed a deep urge of wanting in all the time that had come and gone since her return to the base. Even her desire to leave the base and see the outside world felt like it was nothing compared to the gleam in her eyes now. Amethio seemed to recognize the weight of her request, and he nodded. "Alright," he agreed, the word coming out thick and heavy. "Do you want to look for some other books now?"
Right. That was what they had been doing. Opal felt like the search for books was strangely distant now. She wanted to bring it into focus, but she didn't know how she was meant to do it. She had grown distracted when she started thinking about Alex and then the Rising Volt Tacklers, and she had forgotten what she was supposed to be doing before she saw the Sprigatito plush. Everything felt faraway now, like she was reaching up to a sky she would never be able to touch for herself. Had her head always felt this full? Was the sensation of cotton fused with static simply meant to be her default for the rest of time?
"Opal?"
Amethio's hand came down on Opal's shoulder, and she jolted to look up at him. Something about his purple eyes felt foreign to her, and she wondered if she had ever gotten a good look at Amethio quite like this. He was struggling in ways he couldn't seem to put to words, and Opal found herself relating. They were both fragile in their own ways, weren't they? Amethio did his best to hide it, but Opal seemed like she could never find a way to mask it. None of that seemed to matter though there in the silence of her room. Opal simply knew that no one would ever understand her quite like Amethio did, and that felt like enough even when the world around her was too much.
Still, Opal felt like her head was full of something buzzing, like a million tiny bugs had filled her skull and refused to give her the space she needed to think or speak. She should have been stronger than this. She hadn't been exposed to anything terrifying, so why did every nerve in her body feel like it was standing to attention? Beyond that, why did it feel like she wouldn't have been able to do anything even with this sudden surge of adrenaline? None of it made any sense. It was just too much.
"I'm... I'm alright," Opal forced herself to say, but she couldn't quite the find the words she knew she needed to speak. She was acting out of obligation, not because she was telling her body what she wanted it to do. Everything was too much, but it was too distant for her to be able to make sense of it at the same time. Her nerves were tingling, but it wasn't for an excess of presence. She wasn't in that room anymore. She felt like she was wandering somewhere else, like her soul had left her body behind. She wondered if Amethio could feel her lack of soul there. It seemed like he was the only one who would ever be able to figure it out.
"Good," Amethio said next, though he didn't seem to believe that she was truly fine. His grip on her shoulder tightened ever so slightly, and it seemed to call her lost spirit back into a place where soul met flesh. She blinked a few times, and while it did a little bit to dispel the headache pounding in the distant recesses of her mind, she still felt far off somehow.
"Let's get back to looking at the books," Amethio suggested, pulling his hand away from her shoulder once he saw the light start to return to her eyes. "You want more, don't you?"
"Yes... I do," Opal confirmed, and the motion of her head nodding was enough to ground her once again. She didn't know why her mind seemed to want to run away and leave the rest of the world behind at a moment's notice. Why couldn't she ever focus the way she needed to? Why did it feel like she failed at everything she tried?
Opal did her best to fend off those thoughts of resentment for herself, instead focusing on the books that Amethio was showing on the screen of his phone. Opal's eyes focused in full, and she was back to being overwhelmed by the covers and titles. It was the way she liked it. She didn't know what the dissonance between her heart and head was meant to mean, but she didn't want to push it either. It was hard to acknowledge, and more importantly, it was dangerous in a way she couldn't put to words.
Opal lost track off time as she watched Amethio scroll through books. She picked out a few other titles that caught her eye, most of them in the adventure genre. She wanted to learn about characters who were exploring the world for the first time. Maybe hearing of their tales and journeys would be enough to convince her to take her own first step. She had failed on her initial attempt to leave the base behind, but maybe that would change next time. She was going to take the first step one of these days, and it wouldn't end in catastrophe. She just needed to believe it.
Opal had a collection of six books total by the time another knock came at the door of her room. She turned to see who it was, and something like fear flared in her chest at the thought that it could have been Spinel. He wasn't wrong for wanting to talk to her. If anything, it would make sense that he wanted to visit her. He was one of the other Explorers. He wanted to keep her safe. Why wouldn't he? She shouldn't have been afraid of him, and yet, she was. What kind of Explorer was she if she was terrified to the point of shattering just from having to look at one of her comrades?
"Opal, it's alright."
Amethio's voice cut through Opal's thoughts like a knife, and she looked over at him to find that he was considerably more relaxed than she was. "Come in," Amethio called to the door, and Opal blinked to remind herself of where she was. She had no evidence Spinel was there. She was in her room, and Amethio was there. Even if Spinel came inside, she would be alright as long as Amethio was by her side. He would protect her. That was his job, wasn't it?
Opal's fears quickly proved themselves to be for nothing when the door opened to reveal Zirc and Onia. Amethio must have recognized the sound of their footsteps from the other side of the door. He would know Zirc and Onia better than anyone... And Opal's first instinct had been to fear that they were Spinel. She didn't understand why she was like this. She would have given anything to not be, but her body refused to follow her commands. Nothing went the way she wanted it to.
"I hope we're not interrupting anything," Onia said first, looking at Opal with something like concern in her eyes. "Are you alright?"
"I'm fine," Opal answered almost robotically. Slowly but surely, she began to occupy her limbs again. The weight pressing down on the back of her head alleviated itself, and Opal found herself wondering when stress began to feel like hands looped around her neck to choke her. "Did you need something?"
"We just wanted to show you a few Nidothing videos," Zirc replied, holding up his phone for her to see. "I know you've been down ever since the fight happened when we went to that bookstore, so... We thought we could cheer you up."
Opal felt warmth bloom in her chest once more, and she smiled with enough brightness to chase away the darkness that had closed in around her. "I'd like that," she told them. It had been a few days since she was last able to enjoy Nidothing videos fully, but she hoped this would be the first step to her finally feeling better again. She glanced over at Amethio, a small frown tainting her smile for a flicker of a second. "Unless you needed something else from me?"
"No, not at all," Amethio responded, shaking his head and pushing himself to his feet. "You can watch videos for the rest of the afternoon. I have some business to take care of around the base anyway." Amethio started toward the door, though he turned to look over his shoulder at Zirc and Onia. "Make sure nothing happens to her, alright? You don't have to let anyone else in here unless she wants them in."
Opal knew who Amethio was referring to without even needing to ask. The vaguest mention of Spinel sent shivers through her body, and she fought to keep herself as still as possible. Even if Amethio left, she would be safe as long as Zirc and Onia were there. They wanted to look after her just as Amethio did. It went deeper than even just them being Amethio's comrades and wanting to work toward the same goal of defending her that he did. They were Opal's friends, and they weren't going to leave her to face the storm alone.
"Thank you," Opal said even though she knew Amethio hadn't been directly speaking to her. When she realized that could have come off as pathetic or pleading, she forced a smile onto her lips. "Good luck."
Amethio didn't look at Opal directly, instead nodding at the floor and pulling the door shut behind him. Opal found herself yearning to follow him even though she knew better than to think it was a good idea. She was still sensitive after everything that had happened to her recently, and she didn't want to risk pushing herself beyond the point of what she would be able to stand. She was safest in her room. The rest of the base even felt dangerous all of a sudden, and Opal knew exactly why that was... Even if she also knew she was helplessly selfish for thinking so little of Spinel.
Opal knew her lack of confidence wasn't going to last forever though. One of these days, she would want to push her way out into the world around her again. She had no idea when that time was going to come, but she knew better than to think she would be able to escape it. Maybe she would feel ready to face the onslaught to come when the moment finally arrived. Opal wasn't sure, but she wasn't sure of much of anything anymore. Only time would be able to say for sure. She was just glad she was a patient person.
"Alright," Zirc suddenly said, and Opal remembered a bit too late that she hadn't been left alone with her thoughts. "What video do you want to watch?"
Opal looked to the screen of Zirc's phone, humming to herself as she tried to remember which videos she had seen and which she was not yet familiar with. In the end, she pointed to a video about Pokémon type matchups. "How about that one?"
Zirc nodded firmly, reaching out one finger to tap at the screen. "You've got it," he replied. The screen buffered for a split second before the video appeared across it, and Zirc was quick to bring it up to full screen. He and Onia sat on either side of Opal, giving her the best view of the video.
Onia's fingers drifted down to Sprigatito, and she began to tickle at the space just beneath the cat Pokémon's chin. Opal stroked at the top of her partner's head with a muted smile of her own. This moment felt so plain, and it was perfect to her. She hadn't realized just how much she needed peace like this until it closed in around her. This was what she was meant for. The world didn't need to be a source of conflict as long as she was willing to push for something better, and she knew she deserved it.
Nidothing's voice droned on in the background, and Opal gladly focused on it instead of the static mounting behind her eyes. She was safe. She was protected. She wouldn't ever be left on her own again. Regardless of what the future held, Opal knew she would be able to face it as long as she had her friends by her side.
There was nothing the Rising Volt Tacklers could do to hurt her as long as the Explorers had her back... And Opal knew they always would.
~~~~~
Amethio's discomfort with Opal hadn't gotten any easier to stomach since he started to look after her.
He knew he couldn't afford to let the truth of his uncertainty show openly when he was around her. That would only lead to her growing suspicious of him and all the Explorers were meant to stand for... But Amethio couldn't help the way he never had the strength to meet her eyes. Opal was perceptive, and if she thought about her circumstances for too long, then she was going to start figuring out what was going on. She was going to get to the bottom of this sooner or later. Amethio was sure of it.
Amethio knew just as well that his job was to make sure Opal didn't uncover anything she wasn't ready for... And at the moment, there were a lot of things she wasn't sure of. But how could Amethio ever hope to keep Opal away from the truth when she was always on the verge of something significant? How could he keep her from uncovering something when he didn't know what triggered her bouts of zoning out? What was the common thread that undercut all of her episodes of dissociation? Surely Amethio couldn't be expected to take care of all of her triggers when he didn't know what had happened for her to end up this way in the first place.
No... He was expected to stay on top of it. That was the real test of all of this. Amethio wasn't being asked to do this just for the sake of it. He was there because he was being tested. Amethio was proving his loyalty to the Explorers by doing something that would help him to regain the trust of those around him. The work of looking after Opal wasn't supposed to be easy. It was supposed to be something he did to prove that they were right to place their faith in him. Amethio was going to have to find a way to handle it. That was his job. Complaining about it wouldn't change his circumstances.
Knowing what was necessary in this situation did nothing to chase away the dread that thrived in his stomach when he thought about all that was happening around him though. Amethio couldn't help but worry about Opal when he turned to find her blue eyes vacant and hollow. There was supposed to be a person in there, but she didn't look alive much these days. Maybe it was the sting of the previous battle... But if Amethio was being honest with himself, he knew the emptiness had started the instant she was brought into the fold as an Explorer.
Amethio wasn't sure if it was an instinct to protect, his burning curiosity, or something else that drove him to search the base for any signs of Spinel. His mind felt like it was on fire though, and whenever he blinked, he remembered the soft smiles Opal cast him. She didn't know a damn thing about her circumstances, and Amethio felt like he didn't know enough either. There was only one person who would be able to tell him the truth though, and Amethio was going to find him no matter what it took.
When Amethio finally found Spinel, he came to a stop at the other end of the hallway. Spinel was speaking with Agate in hushed tones, and Amethio had to strain to make the words out. He didn't want to interrupt the conversation and risk scaring one of them off. For all he knew, this could have been the break he was looking for regarding information about what had happened to Opal.
Unfortunately, that wasn't what they were talking about at all. Agate had an ancient Pokéball in her hands, and she rolled it over absentmindedly with her fingers. "Arboliva refuses to come out," Agate explained. "I suspect the girl is the only one who will be able to coax her out into the world."
"Of course," Spinel murmured with a disappointed shake of his head. Amethio felt his chest go tight at their nonchalance. They had to be talking about Liko. Amethio must have made a noise in his shock at hearing them speak of her since a moment later, Spinel turned to face him. "I didn't realize we had a little eavesdropper. I thought you had more dignity than that, Amethio."
Like you're the person to tell others about dignity, Amethio forced himself to not say. It would only make his and Opal's situation worse, and they were in a precarious enough position as it was. "What are you talking about?" Amethio asked instead, walking over to the pair with a frown. He gestured to the ancient Pokéball in Agate's hands. "What is that?"
"An ancient Pokéball," Agate explained simply. "It was found on the girl when she was brought back to the base. Our information says it contains the Arboliva she persuaded to join her in a forest a few weeks ago. Arboliva refuses to come out of the ball though."
"We'll simply have to solve that problem another time," Spinel hummed. Agate took that as her cue to leave, and in an instant, she rounded a corner leading deeper into the base and vanished. Spinel turned to look at Amethio next, his eyes narrowing in something like determination. "So why are you here?"
"I want to know what you did to her," Amethio replied instantly. "Why did you lie about the reason for Opal's memory loss? It had nothing to do with the Rising Volt Tacklers. I know that much."
"But you really don't know much about what happened, do you?" Spinel challenged, and Amethio's lips clamped shut all at once. "That's what I thought. Also, it's bold of you to come in here accusing me of doing something to her when you really have no evidence to prove it."
"I..." Amethio forced himself to trail off at that, and his fingers clenched tighter where they were already bound to fists at his sides. Spinel was right about that much he supposed, though he didn't want to have to admit it at all. "I suppose so."
"Besides, you have no reason to object to this," Spinel went on. His voice was rolling and smooth in a way that almost frightened Amethio. When Spinel leaned in a bit closer, Amethio had to fight his body to not turn and run for reasons he couldn't ever hope to define. "This will make your job much easier. She thinks that our enemies are now hers. That will make it much easier to control her going forward. If we are going to fight the Rising Volt Tacklers anyway, then we may as well make her into another fighter for our side of the war."
"But..." Amethio shook his head. "The Rising Volt Tacklers weren't the ones who took her memories away. She was fighting with them before all of this."
"Then tell me, Amethio," Spinel challenged, his gaze piercing daggers through every fear Amethio had ever tried to hide. "Just how did she lose her memories? Do you have any theories? More importantly, do you have any proof to back those theories up?"
Amethio let out a thin hiss through his nose, but he didn't offer any verbal confirmation to Spinel's taunts. He didn't know a thing, and that was just what Spinel was counting on. There was nothing Amethio could say or do right now to press him into telling the truth. Amethio may have known that Spinel did it, but he may as well have known nothing at all as long as Spinel was so intent on pushing him away. Amethio's only option was to stand back and watch, waiting for the moment when Spinel's guard dropped enough for him to strike.
And unfortunately, he already knew he would be waiting a very long time for that to happen.
"That is exactly what I thought," Spinel said with a low chuckle. He started to walk past Amethio, only pausing just before their shoulders would have slammed into one another. "I would advise that you be careful with your words going forward. We couldn't have her getting any... Wrong ideas."
Spinel didn't hold back in hitting his shoulder against Amethio on his way out, and he guided his course deeper into the base after Agate. A small part of Amethio's mind told him that Spinel was off to experiment more on Arboliva to see if he would be able to tease the truth out of the Pokéball. Amethio was almost tempted to follow, but he didn't bother. Spinel wasn't going to be telling him anything right now, and he had no choice but to stand there on his own in the silence.
Amethio's fists were shaking with poorly-restrained rage now, but he didn't do anything to try and calm himself. Spinel had done something, and he was practically teasing Amethio with the truth. It was dangling just in front of him, but Amethio had no way of reaching out to grasp it for himself. Of course he had no resolution to this. Spinel wasn't going to reveal anything before he was ready, and as far as Amethio was concerned, he never would be ready to bring out the truth behind something so grotesque and horrible.
Amethio wished he knew what to do about this. He wanted to think the Explorers were doing the right thing. He had always been taught that they were going down the path of the righteous. Everything would have been easier if others simply complied with their vision... But it was seeming less and less like that was true now. Amethio had wanted the pendant before, but he hadn't ever meant to do something like this. He wanted to take the pendant off Liko, but he didn't want to kidnap her and... And...
What had Spinel done? Amethio wasn't entirely sure. He should have been grateful for it. This was helping the Explorers, wasn't it? And yet... Amethio found himself wondering just why Opal's eyes looked haunted in a way that Liko's never had. He was missing something, and the only way for him to unravel the truth behind all of this was to attack it at the source. Spinel was the guardian of the truth, and Amethio was going to find a way to get it out of him one of these days.
No matter how long it took or how hard it was, Amethio would understand one day. He would make sure of it.
Notes:
We're officially 25% of the way through the first arc! Time flies when you're having fun, doesn't it?
I really like the way this chapter turned out. My goal for this miniature arc of sorts is to do all I can to deepen the relationship between Opal and Amethio. I think there's a lot of intrigue to be found between the two of them, and I'm excited to lean into it however I can. They're getting much closer now, and it's very sweet to see. I love their bond so much, and I can't wait to show it off in full.
I don't have as much to say about this chapter as I would have expected. I guess I can take this chance to confirm something I've been meaning to say for the last few chapters though. Dot uses she/they pronouns in this fic. I've been intending to say that for a while now, and I kept forgetting. Uh... Oops? At least you can get some confirmation now in a chapter where she does not appear. Better late than never, I guess.
Next time, we'll press on more and catch up with what the Rising Volt Tacklers are up to now. Until then, I hope you all enjoyed this chapter. Feedback is appreciated as always. Have a nice day, everyone!
-Digital
Chapter 6: To Bleed on Kingdoms Come
Summary:
An unexpected guest arrives at the Brave Olivine.
Notes:
Go support the original post!!
EDIT: Chapter was edited to fix a continuity error on 2/16/25. Tweaks are minor and do not impact the bulk of the chapter, so a full reread is not necessary.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Friede was getting really sick of this.
Over the last few weeks, he had been spending a lot of time off the ship looking around the nearby cities. He was closely acquainted with Artazon and Levincia in a way he never had been before, and he was starting to get tired of seeing the same locations over and over. He had left on his journey across the world because he wanted to escape mundane routine, but here he was, right back where he had started. In a way, it felt like the world was paying him back for failing to look after Liko. He had fallen short of protecting her, so now, he was going to have to fall short of everything he wanted to do with his life.
Friede knew that being out on the streets of Artazon and Levincia was vastly preferable to the alternative option though. His other choice was to stay on the Brave Olivine with the rest of the crew of the ship, and while he wanted to be around them... Friede knew none of them were in a great place to talk these days. He wanted to be the beacon of optimism for his friends to look to, but he knew he was failing at that miserably. Friede felt like he couldn't even pretend to be there for them anymore. Everything just felt like it was a poor imitation of the truth, and Friede didn't know what to do about any of it.
The Brave Olivine hadn't stayed in one spot for this long in ages. Their stop was only growing longer with each passing day, and Friede knew he hadn't ever stayed in one place for this long since he took over as the second-in-command of the ship. Friede yearned for the open sky and the taste of adventure, but he knew he couldn't get it yet. After all, Liko had wanted the same thing, and as long as she was still missing, Friede had to do something to reach out for her. She wasn't going to find herself, and Friede wasn't going to give up on her either.
Even with his stir craziness driving him up the wall, Friede couldn't stand the idea of leaving the area and potentially abandoning Liko. They had already run into a few of the Explorers in the area, and that had to be a good sign. If they had found Amethio, Zirc, and Onia not far from there, then that meant the Explorers' base must have been in the area. Dot was searching for it all day every day, and while she hadn't had any major breakthroughs yet, Friede was sure he was close.
He just didn't know if she was actually close or if he was simply telling himself that to feel better about what was going on. Friede wanted to think that he had a plan, that he would be able to pull through all of this, but his hope was fading through his fingertips quickly. No one was as hopeful or positive as he would have liked, and Friede didn't know if there was a way for him to set that right. He doubted anything would fix this save for Liko coming back, and she wasn't going to magically reappear on his own. He would simply have to search for her instead, and Friede hoped more than anything that his efforts finally bore fruit soon.
Friede knew he wasn't the only one who was growing desperate either. All of the Rising Volt Tacklers were struggling in ways they wouldn't put to words. It was getting rarer and rarer for Friede to see Orla. She was normally kept busy with repairs to the ship, but she didn't need to do any repairs right now since the ship hadn't taken to the sky in so long. Instead, Orla was taking care of unnecessary upgrades just for the sake of having something to do. Anyone could see that she was pushing herself in ways she never had before, but she wouldn't listen to those who told her to take breaks. Friede knew her well, and he knew exactly what she was trying to do. If she was focused on her work, then that meant she wasn't lost in her thoughts. If she had something else to do, then she wasn't going to have the ability to think about Liko and all that had happened since she vanished. It was hardly healthy, but Friede couldn't really chastise Orla for it. After all, he had been spending nearly every waking minute of his own life looking for Liko too, and he knew it was a distraction for him the same way fixing the ship was a distraction for Orla.
The others weren't coping too much better. Friede hadn't spoken much with Ludlow lately, but he was fully aware that Ludlow's usually vague and cryptic suggestions had grown darker recently. It was difficult to describe, but Friede could sense a deep sadness had settled around Ludlow too.
Mollie's worse mood was more obvious, but she was hiding it to the best of her ability too. Mollie spent nearly every second she could checking the Pokémon for any injuries even though she knew there was nothing to see. When she wasn't in her infirmary checking her stock for the third or fourth times in a day, Mollie would go to Liko's room and keep it tidy. No one had asked her why she did it, and Friede knew it was because they were afraid of the answer she was going to give them. That was certainly why he hadn't asked about it. He doubted Mollie would have had the words to explain it either.
Murdock was in much the same position, struggling to balance his grief with seeming strong for the sake of his niece. Murdock kept thinking about how Liko was a child and shouldn't have had to deal with this, and Friede heard him muttering about it when the chef thought no one was around. Friede wished there was something he could do to cheer him up, but he didn't know where to start. If he did, then he would have tried something ages ago.
Dot was perhaps the most obvious when it came to her struggles. She had been a hermit for a long time, but she never left her room these days, only darting out to grab an occasional refill on her water before returning to her computer. Dot snapped at anyone who tried to coax her out of her room, and there was more venom in her voice now than ever before. Friede hadn't ever been particularly close with Dot, but this was unsettling to him in more ways than he could describe aloud.
Even Roy was struggling with everything going on. Roy had always been the most upbeat member of the crew, bringing light to everyone's darkest days, but that was long gone now. Roy was trying to keep his spirits high, but it was clear just by looking at him that he was losing the steam to keep on like this. Roy was trying, but there wasn't much he could do now. The world felt like it was crashing down around them, and the Rising Volt Tacklers had no idea how to find a way to keep it afloat.
Friede landed on the ground just outside the ship, directing Charizard toward the earth. Friede and Cap dismounted, and Charizard began the shuffle toward the Brave Olivine. The sun was setting now after a long day of searching and an equally long day of finding nothing. Friede wanted to be frustrated with the failure, but he was too exhausted to care. This day of failing was the same as every other day of failing, and there was no point in hating himself for it when tomorrow would likely be the same too.
Murdock was standing on the outside of the ship when Friede arrived. Under normal circumstances, Friede knew Murdock would have been enjoying something sweet as he looked out over the sea below, but Murdock didn't do that as much these days. He struggled to eat when he got too caught up in his thoughts about where Liko had gone and how greatly the crew was suffering for it. It seemed like no one had the same energy to eat these days, and meals were spent either alone or in silence.
Murdock perked up when he saw Friede even though they both knew this conversation was going to end in disappointment. "Friede," Murdock greeted, and Friede returned the favor with a nod. "Another day of searching, huh? How did it go?"
"Just as badly as every other day," Friede replied. He came to stand just beside Murdock at the edge of the deck, leaning his forearms against the railing. Murdock followed suit, and for a long while, the two men just stared at the Paldean sea stretching all around them. Friede would have given everything to see what was on the other side of that pristine cerulean, but he couldn't abandon Liko. He couldn't leave her behind, but he especially couldn't walk away after he had promised to Alex and Lucca that he would find her. It was the least he could do after failing to keep her safe before.
Friede traced one finger along the edge of the railing, a frown on his face. He hadn't realized just how much weight was sitting on his shoulders until he took a moment to breathe. Then again, he supposed he had been running from that pain ever since Liko first went missing. It was easier to drown himself in work that came with searching for her, and Friede certainly didn't want to think about everything that could have happened if he stopped for even a moment. If he gave himself the chance to think, then he would end up remembering just how horribly Liko could have been suffering at that very moment. Perhaps it was selfish to say that it was too much for him to bear, but Friede did his best to not think about it when he could. It felt like all he could do for himself, and he wasn't even sure if he deserved that scrap of peace.
"None of this is right."
Friede looked over to Murdock slowly, but Murdock didn't return the favor. Instead, he leaned down so his head was close to touching his arms where they were braced atop the railing. "I keep thinking about how wrong all of this is. I know that's not going to bring Liko back or fix any of this, but... I still can't believe all of this happened. Liko is just a kid. She never should have been put through something like this, but especially not at her age. The Explorers are evil for doing this."
"We were supposed to keep her safe," Friede muttered, hoping his resentment came off directed more at himself than Murdock. After all, the job had been directed at him first, and the rest of the crew had fallen into line after he received the order from Lucca. "It was our job to keep her safe and make sure the Explorers didn't hurt her. We should have known they weren't above being underhanded. They were willing to kidnap her before, and we forgot that they were going to try again eventually."
"I don't want to fear the worst, but it's hard not to," Murdock sighed. "My mind keeps jumping to the worst possible conclusion since... Since that's what I would do if Dot was the one in danger instead of Liko. They're the same age, and neither one of them should have ever been forced to do this."
"I'm worried about Dot too," Friede admitted. "I mean, I'm worried about everyone right now, but Dot... She barely came out of her room before. Now, she's even firmer about staying in there unless she thinks that coming out is going to make it easier for us to find Liko."
"I can't stop thinking about her," Murdock confessed. "I know she's worried just like the rest of us, but I wish she would take better care of herself. She won't be able to help anyone if she's burning herself at both ends, but it seems like all she wants to do right now. It was hard enough coaxing her out of her room before all of this, but now... Nothing matters to her but bringing Liko back. I feel the same way, but... I wish there was something I could do to make this easier for her. Anything at all."
Friede nodded, wishing he could find the words needed to continue the conversation. Everything was just too much these days, and he had no idea if that was ever going to change... Not unless Liko came back. Even after Liko returned, Friede knew better than to think everything would return to normal immediately. Of course not. With a pain like this, it was going to take time for the Rising Volt Tacklers to recover, and there was no guarantee they would ever be able to bounce back.
After all, they still didn't know what had happened to Liko or where she was. The Explorers had done something to her, but what could it have been? Friede knew he was terrified of the thought, but he couldn't figure out much of anything else. What would happen when Liko was found again? Would she even be allowed to travel with the Rising Volt Tacklers again? Or would her parents want her to come back home where she would be safest? Friede had already messed up in protecting her once. Who was to say he would be depended on to look after her again?
"I wish there was something we could do to fix this," Murdock suddenly muttered with a shake of his head. "How can we fix this as long as Liko is missing? But how are we supposed to find her when we have no leads and nowhere to look? We know the Explorers must have done it, but everything beyond that is a mystery, and... I have no idea where to start."
Uncomfortable silence fell between the two men, and both of them looked out at the ocean all around them. They wanted to take to the skies and the seas again, but they couldn't do it without Liko. Nothing was the same without her around, and it never would be again until the day she returned.
"I'm not going to give up," Friede announced, and Murdock looked over at him with a heavy frown. "One day, we're going to find a way to bring Liko back. We can't give up hope now. Liko is counting on us to bring her back. All of us need her back too. Liko wouldn't give up on any of us, so we can't give up on her either."
"I wish that was all it took to rally everyone's spirits again," Murdock admitted. "It seems like no one wants anything to do with anything but the search these days... Assuming they can even find the energy for that. Days have gone by since I last saw Orla, and Mollie won't talk to anyone."
Friede sighed, wishing there was something he could say to protest that. Murdock was right in saying that the entire crew was struggling these days, and no one knew how they were meant to raise morale again. Friede was going to keep fighting for as long as he could though. If the rest of his crew couldn't have hope, then he would have more than enough to go around. It was a poor way to keep himself held together, but Friede didn't know if he had much left anymore.
A streak of color flashed in Friede's periphery, and he immediately sunk into a defensive stance. Would the Explorers attack upfront like this? But that hadn't looked like an attack. It had seemed like movement, but Friede didn't recognize those colors as belonging to any of the Explorers he knew... Not that he knew many of them. It was just Amethio, Zirc, Onia, and that strange masked figure.
Friede's panic quickly calmed when he turned to see a woman sitting atop an Arcanine had landed on the deck behind him. The woman was on the older side, but more importantly, she looked a lot like Liko and Lucca. The outer layer of her hair was black, but the inside was blue. The colors were duller than they were on Liko and Lucca, most likely because of her age, but Friede would still recognize the pattern from anywhere.
The woman swung her leg over the side of Arcanine and landed on the deck beside her partner. She let out a sigh once she was on the ground, raising one hand to stroke at Arcanine's head. "You must be Friede," the woman began. "The captain of the Brave Olivine."
Beside Friede, Cap let out a frustrated noise. Friede offered a laugh that grated against the back of his throat. "Something like that. Who are you?"
"Diana," the woman replied. "Lucca's mother... And Liko's grandmother."
Friede felt his blood run cold. He had known just by looking at the woman--Diana, he now knew--that she had to be related to Lucca and Liko. Friede should have suspected that Diana would come by one of these days. She was the one who had given Liko the pendant in the first place, and if the pendant had been responsible for such grief, then she would want to follow up on it. Diana would want to help with the search when she learned that the pendant was the reason Liko had gone missing.
"You... You were the one who gave Liko the pendant," Murdock realized, every bit as stunned statuesque as Friede was just beside him. "She told us it was a gift from her grandmother, and I... I'm willing to assume that you're the grandmother she was telling us about."
Diana nodded, and her expression grew dark and stormy. "If I had known the pendant was going to cause this much trouble, then I never would have given it to her," she began. "I knew there were people interested in taking it, but I didn't think they would resort to something like kidnapping... I shouldn't have ever given it to Liko."
"None of us could have known they were going to go this far," Friede told her, though he doubted his words would do much of anything to reassure her. "The Explorers were the ones who made this choice, and we... We just have to find her now."
"The Explorers did this?" Diana echoed, her eyes going wide. Friede nodded, and Diana pressed one hand to her chin in thought. "I'm not surprised they stirred up trouble with it... They wanted it badly and even came to ask me for it. By then, I had already passed it off to Liko as a present for school. I thought the Explorers would be able to take no for an answer, but it seems not."
Rage rose in the pit of Friede's stomach, and all of a sudden, he found himself wanting to scream. If Diana had known the Explorers wanted the pendant, then why hadn't she bothered to reach out to Liko to try and retract the gift? She didn't seem to be aware of the true nature of the danger the pendant brought, or if nothing else, she wasn't aware of it at the time, but she should have been more careful. She should have at least tried to take it back instead of leaving it in the hands of someone who would have been much more vulnerable. If she found out how dangerous the Explorers were after she gave Liko the pendant, then why hadn't she tried to take it back? If Diana had never given Liko the pendant, then maybe none of this would have happened in the first place. If she had been smarter about taking it off Liko's hands, then maybe Liko would still be safe now.
Unfortunately, pointing fingers wasn't going to help anyone right now. Friede could hate everything and everyone involved with this situation all he wanted, but it wasn't going to bring Liko back. His only option there was to search for her and hope it was enough to return her to her home. It wasn't pretty or the solution he would have liked, but Friede had given up his chance to choose how this all ended the instant he failed Liko by not looking after her the way she needed him to.
"I shouldn't have given her the pendant," Diana went on with a shake of her head. "I should have been smarter about it. I should have taken it back when I realized how much trouble it would cause." Diana's fingers clenched into a fist where they were tangled in Arcanine's mane, and when she looked up at Friede and Murdock again, there was a fire in her eyes that reminded Friede a little bit too much of Liko. "The least I can do now is search for her and try to bring her home. If I can't go back in time and stop myself from giving her the pendant, then I'll help her now and take the pendant back when we manage to bring her back."
A voice in the back of Friede's head wondered how Diana could be so sure that Liko would come back at all. He had been doing his best to not give fully into his pessimism, but it was much easier said than done. For all he knew, they wouldn't ever find Liko again, and everyone who had ever known her would have to live with the guilt and the grief of not doing enough to protect her. Friede looked for Liko with every second he could find because he had no idea what he would do if he let his guard down long enough to really think that this was pointless.
But Friede didn't let him voice any of that. He wouldn't invite that negativity into the world even though he knew superstitions like that would help no one right now. Instead, Friede nodded and started toward the inside of the ship. "How about you come inside and talk with the crew?" Friede suggested. "You seem to know a lot more about this than we do. We'd appreciate being filled in on anything we don't know yet."
Diana nodded, and Arcanine let out a bark of agreement. "Alright. Let's go."
Friede led both Murdock and Diana into the dining room of the ship. He sent out a message to the crew on the way asking for them to all come together to talk to her. Friede included that Diana was there in his text so he could make sure they all came. He doubted people like Dot or Orla would show up unless they knew this meeting was to talk about Liko. No one had been in much of a talking mood lately, but perhaps that would change if they knew what the conversation was going to be about. If there was even the chance Diana was able to fill them in on what was going on, then they would flock there like moths to a flame.
And right now, the only beacon any of them wanted to fly toward was one that would tell them where Liko had gone and how they could rescue her and rectify their darkest and deepest failures.
~~~~~
'Liko's grandmother is here. She wants to talk to us about the search. Come to the dining room as soon as you can.'
As soon as Roy saw the message from Friede, he shot up in his bed with a gasp. He had been taking a few minutes to rest before he got back to training with Fuecoco and Wattrel. It was hard to do training when they didn't have anyone to battle, but that wasn't going to stop them. For all they knew, they were going to need to fight the next time they saw the Explorers so they could rescue Liko. Roy wanted to be ready for that, but he also knew his Pokémon needed a break before they kept on with training.
Roy knew they doubly needed a break because of the tension between Fuecoco and Wattrel. Roy had been doing his best to help them to get along lately, but he knew it was going to take some time before Wattrel fully got used to having Fuecoco around. Wattrel still had occasional bouts of irritation with Fuecoco, but things were improving ever so slightly. Roy couldn't help but get tired of having to keep Wattrel from lashing out at Fuecoco though, so when the moment came to take a break, he wound up enjoying it for all it was worth.
None of that mattered now though. Liko's grandmother was on the ship, and according to Friede, she could have had helpful information about where to find Liko... Or so Roy was hoping. Technically, Friede's message hadn't said anything about Liko's grandmother actually knowing something that could help them, but Roy was choosing to stay optimistic. This could have been the big break they were all waiting for, and Roy wasn't going to let it go to waste.
Roy was on his feet in an instant, and he slipped into his shoes before darting out into the hallway. Fuecoco and Wattrel both followed him, but Roy paused before he could rush the rest of the way to the dining room. The message from Friede had been a text message instead of an audio call, and that meant there was a chance someone could miss seeing it. Roy didn't want anyone on the ship to miss an important meeting like this just because they hadn't been looking at their phone at the time.
Perhaps he was selfish for it, but Roy couldn't help wanting to see the crew of the ship in one place again. It had been ages since they were last all in a room together. Liko going missing had made it harder for all of them to stomach the idea of spending time in the same space because they knew she was not going to be there. Still, Roy wanted to keep everyone together as much as he could. It felt wrong to think that all of them were drifting apart when Liko wasn't there. This should have been the main time for them to support each other, but no one else seemed to feel the same way. If this was the best way for them to all come together, then Roy was fine with it. He knew he needed it, and he was sure the others did as well.
Roy made his way through the Brave Olivine in the direction of Dot's bedroom. If anyone was going to focus too much on other things and miss the message, it was bound to be Dot. Roy hadn't ever seen Dot out of her room much, and the first time he ever saw her in person had been during the initial search for Liko. Even so, it was like she was trying to keep herself holed up in her room in a way she hadn't been before. Roy didn't know how to put a finger on the difference, but he knew there was something off about Dot's behavior now that hadn't been there before. It was because Liko had disappeared and Dot was missing her, but Roy hated to think about it that way. Everything just stung in general, and thinking about it made it worse.
Roy stayed outside of Dot's room for a few moments, waiting to see if she would see the text message and then emerge on her own. Roy could hear her typing away at her computer's keyboard, so she was still working and had to be in there. Even so, there was no indication that she had seen what Friede said. Roy finally decided to knock, and the typing paused before picking right back up again a moment later. "Hey, Dot," Roy began. He hoped Dot didn't snap at him as she had in the past. He was trying to help, and he didn't want her to think he was just trying to get in her way. "Did you see the message from Friede?"
The typing stopped entirely, and Roy heard shuffling from the other side of the door. Quaxly let out a quack, no doubt trying to communicate with Dot. A few seconds more passed in silence before Dot let out a sigh. "I did... But I don't know if this is going to work," Dot told him. "Are we sure she has information that could help us?"
"I'm not sure," Roy admitted. "But she might know more than the rest of us do. Friede wouldn't want us all to come together and talk to her without a reason, right?"
On the other side of the door, Dot stared at her computer screens for a few uncertain seconds. She wanted to keep working so she could see if anything would come of this... But before she had the chance to turn Roy down and continue focusing, a voice echoed from within her mind. "You should take a break," Nidothing told her. "You've been at this for hours. You're going to fry your brain if you keep on like this."
Dot wanted to argue that she was just fine and that there was nothing to worry about, but she knew that was wrong. She was starting to hit the wall, and her frustration was growing worse than usual as she sat there in the same spot staring at the same screens and the same failed search for hours on end. For all she knew, talking to Liko's grandmother could have been the break she needed. It would give her something else to do other than just stare at her computer screen, and it would also guide her in the right direction to find Liko if all went well.
"Alright," Dot finally agreed. She pushed herself to her feet, and opened the door to her room. Quaxly followed after her with a proud gleam in his eyes. Dot leaned down and scooped Quaxly up into her arms, and he gladly chased her touch. Roy was sure Quaxly was doing it so he could cheer up Dot in his own way. Dot seemed aware of it too, but she didn't acknowledge it as she scratched quietly at the top of Quaxly's head. "Let's get going."
The journey to the common room of the Brave Olivine was a short one, but Roy felt like it was much longer than it had any right to be. He resisted the urge to look at Dot out of the corner of his eye with each step he took, but it was much easier said than done. He knew a lot was on her mind, but Roy had no idea how he was meant to get her to talk about any of it. Dot had decided a while ago that she didn't want to engage with anything that could possibly distract her from bringing Liko back. Roy knew there was a chance he would be included in something like that, and so, he didn't know how to reach out to her.
That wasn't him saying he didn't want to though. In fact, Roy would have done just about anything to close the distance between himself and Dot. She was struggling with all of this, and Roy knew that he was too. The best way for them to push through it was to work together... Or so Roy was telling himself. He had no idea if Dot would actually want to do that, but he wanted to find a way to reach out to her regardless. Maybe it was just to make himself feel better, but Roy couldn't bring himself to care. He may have been selfish for it, but Roy wanted to do what he could to set this right. Dot deserved that much, and Roy hoped that he did too.
If Roy was being honest, sitting in the silence of his room was starting to eat him alive. He wanted to do something to help find Liko, but he didn't know where to start. The recent searching had been a fine enough distraction, he supposed, but it didn't ever feel like enough. How could it? For all Roy knew, there could have been no point to looking around on the city streets for Liko at all. If the Explorers really had her, then they weren't going to let her out of their sight long enough for the Rising Volt Tacklers to find her. They would want to keep her behind closed doors and out of sight. There wasn't much of a point in looking around on the streets or in public as long as they weren't going to give anyone the chance to find her. Roy tried however he could, but he knew it wasn't enough. It never could be as long as people out there were trying to keep him away from Liko deliberately.
Roy knew he had to do something though. He owed it to Liko and the rest of the Rising Volt Tacklers to do something more to reach out for her. Roy had been the last one to see Liko before she went missing, and the guilt of that continued to haunt him each time he closed his eyes. If he had been smart enough to not leave Liko alone, then he could have stopped this. He could have been there when the Explorers struck to take her. Roy had failed Liko and the rest of the crew in more ways than he could ever hope to count. The least he could do was put in the effort to try and find Liko when it felt like no one else still had the confidence. Roy needed to keep pushing, and if all went well, talking with Liko's grandmother would give him the information he needed to finally reach out and bring her home.
The rest of the Rising Volt Tacklers were all gathered in the common area by the time Roy and Dot arrived. Roy didn't think he had seen everyone in the same space like this since the battle against the Explorers, and they had split up soon after it was over because of how poorly it had gone. Facing off against Zirc and Onia was fine enough, but it didn't do much for them other than confirm their suspicions that the Explorers had taken Liko. There was still a lot they had to do if they wanted to bring Liko back, and they had to stay focused to do it. Unfortunately, everyone seemed to focus best when they were on their own. Roy didn't like sitting alone, but he knew there was nothing he could do to get everybody back together when they didn't want to be in the same room right now.
Roy found himself pausing as he looked over all of the Rising Volt Tacklers where they were sitting around the table at the center of the room. Friede seemed the most optimistic of the group, not that this was a departure from anything Roy wasn't already used to. Murdock seemed to have a bit of hope in his eyes, and Roy was sure it had been spurred on by Liko's grandmother arriving. Mollie and Orla were in much less positive moods. Mollie was staring at the ground with her arms crossed over her chest and hatred brewing in her irises. Orla was muttering under her breath about being pulled away from her repairs, though Roy didn't know if she was really that upset about it. If being pulled away from her work on the ship meant finding Liko, then surely Orla had nothing to complain about... Though Roy suspected Orla was really more upset about being forced to acknowledge the brutal reality of the situation instead of continuing to sit in the darkness and the silence to think about it on her own.
Ludlow was sitting just beside the woman who Roy didn't recognize, but he could easily assume she was Liko's grandmother. "So," Ludlow greeted as Roy and Dot took their seats around the table. "You are Liko's grandmother, yes?"
The woman with black and blue hair nodded, and beside her, an Arcanine settled into place. "My name is Diana. Liko is my granddaughter, and I... I heard about what happened to her," Diana began. She was clearly at a loss for words just as much as the rest of the Brave Olivine's crew. Roy got the feeling that no one knew how to talk about something like this, and he couldn't blame them in the slightest. He didn't know where to find his own words or deep rage on the subject, and he was forced to face the situation's darkness again and again each morning.
"Do you have any leads that you think could help us?" Orla asked, finally snapping out of her own thoughts long enough to meet Diana's gaze. "Friede made it sound like you knew something we could use to our advantage."
"I know a little bit," Diana began. "I heard from Friede that you all have had a few run-ins with a group known as the Explorers. I'm curious... Just what do all of you know about them?"
"They're the ones responsible for Liko's disappearance," Dot replied immediately. "We fought against them a few times. They wanted to get their hands on Liko and the pendant, but we were able to fight them off each time. When we had our most recent encounter with them, they confirmed that Liko was in their hands, but they wouldn't tell us where she was or what they had done with her."
Diana nodded along, her eyes growing dark and overcast. "I see... Somehow, I'm not surprised to hear you say that. The Explorers came to speak with me a few months ago as well. They wanted the pendant, but by that point, I had passed already it down to Liko. I refused to tell them where it was, and I was hoping they would be willing to let that be the end of it. Instead, it seems like they have chosen to make this a far greater issue by taking Liko."
"You knew?" Orla bit back, and Roy saw Friede wince. "You knew the pendant had a chance of putting her in danger, but you left it with her anyway?"
"I didn't know they were going to go this far for it," Diana said carefully, refusing to raise her voice in the face of Orla's wrath. After all, she absolutely deserved this anger, and she knew it.
"Did you think they were just going to stop after you said you weren't going to point them to it?" Mollie questioned, her voice frighteningly even. Roy couldn't tell if she was upset, angry, or somewhere in between. Mollie's eyes were hard, but nothing else seemed to inform anything about what her mental state could have been.
"I didn't know what they were going to do, but they didn't start an open battle when they came to me to ask for the pendant," Diana explained. "I thought that was enough of a sign that they weren't going to cause other problems... But I was wrong. If I had known it was going to lead to them hurting Liko, then I would have done something to stop them or take the pendant back, but..."
"There's nothing we can do about it now," Murdock finished for her, and heaviness collapsed in the air once again. Roy wanted to let out a heavy sigh, but he couldn't find the strength he needed to make his chest move to breathe openly. "What do you think we should do now?"
"Do you know where the Explorers' base is?" Dot asked, leaning over the table eagerly. Roy couldn't tell if Dot was angry with Diana or not, but he figured this was her way of redirecting any rampaging emotions she could have had. If she was aiming to get more information, then she wouldn't be thinking about how angry she was with Diana, with the Explorers, with the world for failing Liko.
"I'm afraid not," Diana answered with a shake of her head. "They came to me to ask if I would give them the pendant, and when I said no, they tried to intimidate me into it. By then, I had already passed it off to Liko so she had something special before she started school. I didn't think they were going to chase after her to get their hands on it. If I had known, then..."
"There's no point in regretting what's already done," Friede told Diana, though Roy suspected that was his way of tempering the rage of the rest of the crew more than anything else. Everyone was beyond enraged with the thought that Diana could have known this was going to happen and had done nothing. If they voiced how they were really feeling, then this conversation would end with a massive argument and nothing productive to speak of. Friede was happy to direct everyone down the right path though, and Roy was glad for it. He didn't know if he would have been able to handle just sitting there and hearing everyone yell.
Even after Friede essentially convinced everyone to go quiet and back down from their open rage, Roy could feel the tension all around him. Orla sat back in her seat, her arms crossed over her chest and her face set in a scowl. Mollie wasn't meeting anyone's eyes, not that Roy really expected that from her anymore. Dot clenched her fingers into fists to keep from doing something drastic and loud, and Murdock forced himself to breathe. Roy didn't know how any of them were able to calm down even if it was only slightly. He wasn't going to snap at Diana for her failures, but he felt like his chest was tight enough to keep him from breathing. Everything just felt like it was too much, and Roy had no idea how that was ever going to change. It certainly didn't feel like the shift was coming any time soon.
"How about you stay with us for the night?" Friede suddenly offered, and Roy looked up at him once again. "We have a guest room, and you can take it over for the night... Unless you have somewhere to be right now."
Diana hesitated, and she pressed her eyes shut with enough force to make the skin around them crease and crinkle. "I was going to go out and look for Liko, but I suppose there's not much point in looking around at this hour. I wouldn't make it far, and you've already searched this immediate area, haven't you?" Diana looked up to assess the reactions of the other Rising Volt Tacklers, but no one rose to the bait to give her a response. In the end, Diana relaxed into her seat, giving up on any ideas she may have had of leaving. "I suppose I can stay for the night, but when the morning comes... I'm going to hit the road again."
"Where are you going to look for Liko next?" Roy asked, feeling something like hope rise in his chest. Maybe they just needed to widen the scope of their search. Maybe they should have been checking other places aside from just the immediate area near Artazon and Levincia. It hadn't helped them yet, and for all they knew, it wasn't going to help them any time soon either. "Maybe we could come with you."
"I'm not sure," Diana confessed. "I was going to see wherever the winds took me, and I was going to hope I was able to learn more about Liko and where she is now... Maybe I'll be able to glean a bit of information about the Explorers too."
"Do you know anything else about them?" Dot pressed. "Did they really come to you peacefully to take the pendant before all of this began?"
"They did... But I haven't seen them in ages. They were being led by someone who I once went on adventures with, but we haven't seen one another in a long time. Him coming for the pendant was the first time I crossed paths with him in years," Diana said. "I don't know why he's working with the Explorers now or what happened for him to stray so far from his other path, but I suppose there's not much point in wondering about it now. He has something to do with this, so I'm going to see what I can do to get to the bottom of it."
"And we appreciate the help," Friede nodded. "We can use all the extra help we can get our hands on... Anything that will get us closer to finding Liko." He looked to the rest of the crew to see if they would nod along with him or otherwise validate his words, but barely anyone seemed to notice that he was addressing them. Roy was the only one who openly responded, and he nodded even though the motion felt like it was too much for his body to bear all of a sudden.
Roy couldn't believe all of this had happened. He had thought when he first arrived on the Brave Olivine that everyone there was so close with one another. It felt perfect to him, and all he had wanted was to reach out and become one of them. Now though... Roy didn't know how he was meant to close the distance that had appeared between them. They were supposed to be a crew and a team, but they couldn't seem to see themselves that way now that Liko was gone. They could have leaned on one another through this time of pain and hardship, but instead, it seemed like none of them could stand to look at one another.
Not for the first time and certainly not for the last, Roy wanted Liko to come home.
And he wanted his crew to feel happy again no matter how impossible it felt now.
~~~~~
After the meeting ended, the Rising Volt Tacklers split up for the night. Dot shuffled back toward their room, a heavy frown on their face. They wanted to be angry with Diana for not doing more to look after Liko. If Diana had known the Explorers had the chance of going after Liko to hurt her, then she should have done something more to look after her. Diana should have taken the pendant back when she realized the Explorers wanted it so badly. Dot was enraged with the idea that someone could have done something to stop all of this before it started, but they knew there was nothing they could do about it now. What was done was done, and Dot didn't want to sit with their anger any more than they already had.
If anything, that conversation had sparked something new in Dot. They could have sat around and let their anger consume them, but they couldn't do that as long as there was potentially something they could do to help the people they cared for. There had to be a way to look for Liko while putting all of this upset to good use. Dot just needed to figure out what it was going to be.
Right now, Dot felt like the best way to reach Liko was to catch her attention somehow. She had been taken by the Explorers, but maybe there would be a way to get her to try to escape. Dot didn't know what the situation was like around Liko's disappearance, but they couldn't just sit there worrying about the logistics of it. They had to do something, and right now, the only thing that would quell their nerves was getting off their butt and working toward a goal that might be able to save Liko.
Dot closed the door to their room behind them, and they looked around with a frown. They paused when they struck gold at the sight of the Nidothing suit. "Hold on a moment..." Dot crossed the room toward the suit, and a smile broke out across their face. "That's it!"
Back when Liko first went missing, the way Dot had started to search for her had been through Nidothing. They could do the same right now if they wanted to. What better way was there to drum up more buzz around Liko than to make videos that would hopefully get her attention from wherever she was being held? Dot had been tacking on reminders at the end of all of their videos to say that the search for SprigatitoLove was still on, but there hadn't been any updates on it in a while. The last shift in the data had been the day of the battle with the Explorers outside that one bookstore... But that was all about to change. Dot was sure of it. They were going to prove to the world that they could find Liko. If using the Nidothing suit was the best way to start them down the right path, then Dot would do it again and again as many times as they had to.
Dot darted over to their laptop and pulled up a tab of notes they had written about upcoming video ideas. They knew what they wanted to make videos on in the near future. They could mention the search for Liko during the video itself instead of just tacking on a small reminder at the end. If Dot could weave it in a bit more, then... Then maybe that would be enough to remind Liko that Dot was still searching for her.
Dot didn't know if any of this was logical. In fact, there was a nonzero chance that all of this would be for nothing. Could they even guarantee that Liko would have internet access wherever she was being kept? All of this would mean nothing if Dot tried to drum up buzz but wasn't able to reach Liko at the end of it... But Dot wasn't going to give up just because the situation looked like it was going to become difficult. They had made it this far, and they were going to keep fighting to bring Liko back. They had to.
"Do you wanna start recording tonight?"
Nidothing's voice jolted Dot out of their thoughts, and Dot yelped loudly. They only remembered to clap a hand over their mouth after Quaxly startled from the sudden noise. Dot forgot sometimes that Quaxly couldn't hear the communication with Nidothing within their mind, and it caught them by surprise every once in a while. "I... Yeah," Dot said with a slow nod. "I think we should. The sooner we can get a few videos out there that might catch Liko's attention, the better off we're going to be."
"Then let's get started!" Nidothing forced their body to look back at the list of video ideas, humming as they read through everything written there. Dot could feel their control starting to slip away, but that was alright. They were going to need their headmate's help if they were to get to the bottom of all of this. If Dot and Nidothing worked together, then they would be able to find Liko. Dot was sure of it.
They didn't know what they were going to do without that certainty. Maybe it would be the final blow they could take... But there was no time to consider it now. Dot and Nidothing had a script to start working on. They could start filming, and if their adrenaline rush lasted too much later into the night, then they would be able to get the video done within the next few days. The more videos there were, the more chances Dot would have to get Liko's attention.
Maybe it would all end up being for nothing. Dot couldn't say for certain, but they didn't think it mattered right now anyway. They just wanted to be able to help Liko, and if this was how it was going to start, then so be it.
If it was for Liko, Dot would do anything.
~~~~~
Orla was somehow in a worse mood now than she had been before Diana arrived, and she hadn't even thought that was possible.
She didn't know what she had expected from the conversation with Liko's grandmother. Orla had thought about not going, but the chance of hearing something that would help her to learn more about what had happened to Liko was too tempting for her to ignore. Now, she wished she hadn't gone at all. She should have known it wasn't going to lead anywhere. If Diana knew where Liko was, then she would have saved her on her own instead of wasting time by going to the Rising Volt Tacklers to talk about it. There was no point in the conversation that had happened.
Or at the very least, that was how Orla felt. She normally wasn't this temperamental, but it felt like her anger had been building on itself ever since Liko went missing. Her rage was always there, buzzing around just beneath her skin, and Orla didn't know how to silence it anymore. She was tired of sitting with all her hatred, but she couldn't get rid of it no matter how hard she tried. Nothing seemed to work the way it needed to, and Orla was getting sick of it.
She knew realistically that she should have tried to sleep. If she was able to get a bit of rest, then maybe she would be able to calm the tempest in her heart and mind. Perhaps all she needed was a chance to lay all of her troubles aside and allow herself to decompress... But it felt impossible, and so, Orla decided there wasn't much of a point in trying. If she tried to sleep, then she would just end up tossing and turning all night anyway. She hadn't slept well ever since Liko went missing, and Orla didn't think that was going to change tonight. Why would it? If anything, Orla was more upset than usual tonight, and given how angry she had been ever since Liko's disappearance, that was certainly saying something.
There was only one way for Orla to handle all of this constant aggression: she had to get out of her own head and start thinking about something else as soon as possible. Maybe she would end up staying up for half the night working on repairs to the ship. As long as it kept her from thinking too hard about what was going on, she was fine with that. Maybe Orla would end up going until her exhaustion forced her to crash. Anything would be fine if it kept her from thinking.
Orla hadn't needed to do as many repairs on the ship recently. It came with the territory of the ship having not taken off for quite some time. How could any problems come up if the ship was staying in the same place? Even so, Orla had taken care of everything that was necessary along with a few bonus fixes that Friede had suggested to her months ago. Orla was nowhere close to working through her entire to-do list and backlog, but that was just the way she wanted it. If she ran out of things to do, then she would run the risk of having a thought. She couldn't have that.
As Orla picked up her toolbox and started toward the underbelly of the ship, she let out a bitter sigh. She didn't know where Liko was, but she hoped with everything she had that she would alright. Orla didn't know if she would be able to handle learning that Liko had gotten hurt.
Though it was much too late for that now... And Orla knew she was partially to blame for it all.
~~~~~
Sprigatito was sound asleep just beside Opal's head. The grass cat had curled up for the night, and her body was shifting from her gentle breathing. Opal was staring at her partner with wide eyes, occasionally reaching over to pet her. Sprigatito didn't stir from slumber though, instead simply pressing up into Opal's grasp in sleep. Even when she was unconscious, Sprigatito liked to have Opal around.
Opal had to wonder if perhaps her partner would be able to lead her to the truth about her memories. On late nights like these, Opal couldn't help thinking about everything she had lost. She had forgotten everything from her past, and she didn't know if she would ever be able to find it again. Maybe Sprigatito would be able to help her. If Opal couldn't even help herself, then maybe her partner would be able to guide her down the right path.
But if Sprigatito could do that, then surely she would have shown signs of it ages ago. Instead, Opal was left thinking that Sprigatito knew just as much as her, which was to say nothing at all. They were both clueless about everything that had happened. In that way, it was like Sprigatito had amnesia right along with Opal. They were two peas in a Metapod, and it was going to stay that way for a long time to come.
Opal sighed and turned over so she was staring at the dark ceiling above. Her room was pitch black, and Opal felt something buzzing at the back of her mind at the thought. She didn't like the darkness much. It was difficult to say if it was a new paranoia or if it had been created by whatever caused her memories to abandon her so suddenly. She wasn't sure, and she didn't know if anyone would be able to answer the question for her either.
Even if they did know the truth, then they had no reason to tell her. Opal knew she was being kept from the past for a reason. She had forgotten it because she could not stand to remember it. Her mind and body were both trying to protect her, and Opal couldn't betray them simply because she was curious. The rest of the Explorers were looking out for her by keeping the truth hidden. Opal should have been grateful for that. Instead, she found herself staring into the darkness with a burning desire to simply know what had happened.
Opal knew she had other things to think about. She should have been worried about what happened when she went out with Amethio. She should have been too afraid to ever think about leaving the base again. How could she think she was ready to recover her memories of what had happened to her if she couldn't even go outside without nearly falling apart? Opal was weak, and she knew it. She should have been focused on making a new life for herself. The Explorers had rescued her, and they were giving her a second chance. They were being patient with her even after she lost her memories. Opal needed to pay that kindness back in return even if it felt impossible to pull herself out of the haze that surrounded her.
Regardless of what Opal tried to do to suppress her curiosity though, she knew it was going to return with a vengeance each time she thought about it. She wanted to know. She needed to know. Maybe one day she would come to regret pushing her mind until it revealed all of its secrets, but that was a question she could worry about answering after she had what she was looking for. Opal needed to find a way to get to the bottom of everything she had endured. She couldn't let her missing memories be the end. If there was a truth out there waiting for her, then she was going to find it.
Opal forced her eyes shut, ignoring the way the darkness of her eyelids made her mind come to life with new static. She was fine, and she needed to start treating herself with the care she required. Opal felt weak and foolish, but she wouldn't make any progress as long as she was afraid. One of these days, she would have to face her past. She couldn't run from it forever. She couldn't run from the world forever either.
No matter how absurd it may have sounded, Opal needed the world and her memories... And yet, those were the two things she feared most all the same.
Notes:
Another chapter in the books, pun fully intended!
I thought we were long overdue for a chapter that almost entirely focused on the Rising Volt Tacklers. Opal showed up for a bit at the end, but this chapter wasn't really about her. Maybe it's because of that that this chapter ends up being one of the tamest in the entire story. I think this says something about the plot we've got building here. Oops.
As for the sections with the Rising Volt Tacklers, I think it makes sense that everyone would be mad at Diana for what happened. They didn't have as much of a reason to be upset with her in the show since Liko ended up being fine, but here... Yeah, that all goes out the window. Everyone is upset with just about everyone else right now, and I can't blame them at all. It's an awful situation they've found themselves in, and it's only going to get worse over the course of the next few chapters.
Before I wrap things up, I want to also touch on a question I've gotten a few times elsewhere: where to support me on other platforms. I previously had my Twitter linked exclusively at the end of this story, but I decided to add my Tumblr and BlueSky as well, especially since I'm posting on those a lot more nowadays. I'm not super active, but I will be posting chapter announcements (and my 60 Minute Likodot one shot announcements) to both places. My accounts are digitaldreams0801 on both Tumblr and BlueSky and then _digitaldreams on Twitter if you haven't already followed me there.
Next time, we'll go back to Opal for a bit of bonding time between her and Amethio. Until then, I hope you all enjoyed this chapter. Feedback is appreciated as always. Have a nice day, everyone!
-Digital
Chapter 7: Fear Races Through Her Mind
Summary:
Opal reaches out to Amethio to try and get to know him not as a guard but a friend.
Chapter Text
Opal knew she was selfish.
It was one of the only things she seemed to know about herself. When she read through her notebook each morning and wrote down new things she had come to uncover, Opal always found herself resisting the urge to add another repetition of her selfishness to the list. She had said it at least four times now, but it never seemed to sink in the way that it needed to. She was selfish, but just saying that and chastising herself for it wouldn't make it stop. It never did, and she hated it.
Opal knew she should have been happy with her current position. She should have been happy to have a place where she could belong. She should have been happy with being safe and kept from anything that could have placed her in danger. As long as she was in the base, she was alright. She would be alright. There were people there to take care of her, and they were being kind to her even when Opal felt she couldn't offer anything in return.
And yet, all Opal wanted was to see the sun.
She had grown used to the sterile white walls and fluorescent lights of the Explorers' base, but it was never enough for her when she thought about the splash of sunlight across her cheeks. She was pale, and it felt like her face was losing color too. Being forced to stay in the base for so long was taking its toll on her. Opal should have been fine with that. She should have been too afraid to leave the base again. She knew that would have been logical.
But fear wasn't enough to hold her back. Opal selfishly wanted to push the limits of what she was allowed to do. She wanted to ask Amethio if he could request permission from his superiors for her to leave the base. Opal would have done just about anything to step outside even if it was just for a minutes. She knew it was self-destructive to want something beyond the walls of the base. Leaving last time had led to her nearly crumbling because of the battle she found herself in... But if that was true, then why wasn't it enough to keep her there? Why couldn't she just force herself back into her hole like nothing had happened? Why was she still yearning for something she knew she did not deserve to have?
Opal looked at the pages of her notebook, reading over everything she knew once again. She had learned a few new things since she first started working on it. The main new addition to the list was that the Rising Volt Tacklers were her enemies and the ones responsible for her missing memories. Opal read that note over a lot, waiting for it to click in her mind in a way that felt like it was honest. Instead, she always doubted it and then hated herself for thinking there was even the slightest chance that it wasn't true. Spinel wouldn't lie to her. Amethio wouldn't help him lie to her. The Explorers cared about her. They wanted her to stay safe, and she couldn't do that if she left the base.
Opal flipped to the next available page of her notebook and began to draw what she remembered from the day outside the base. She focused on the street just outside the bookstore. There was no way her simple pencils would be able to capture the way the light had glistened off the sidewalk or the glitter of hope that had put a filter of love over each and every leaf on the trees she passed by. Still, Opal found herself wanting to try. She selfishly wanted to reach that beauty once again. She did not deserve it for doing so much to push back against the people who were protecting her, but Opal still wanted it more than anything. Her yearning was so deep it made her ache, and Opal wanted it to stop... But at the same time, she wanted it to consume her. There was nothing like wanting something, and Opal wanted more than anything.
Opal was going to have to leave the base sooner or later. She couldn't expect to be cooped up in the base forever... Or at least, that was what she was telling herself to feel better about her thoughts on the subject. If she treated her departure from the base like an inevitability, then maybe she wasn't as selfish as she thought. Opal was going to have to leave to recover her memories. She wasn't going to be able to hide for the rest of time. No one could keep her away from the world forever. She was going to have to face it sooner or later.
Opal paused in her drawing and looked down at the picture she had started to etch into the page. It wasn't detailed enough, but she didn't know if she would be able to pull the image of the street directly from her mind. She hadn't been there for long enough to commit every little detail to memory as much as she hated to admit it. She needed something more. She needed to see the sun again even if it led to her complete downfall.
Opal was selfish, and yet, she couldn't bring herself to be anything else.
A knock came at the door when Opal was halfway through her drawing, and she turned to see who it was. There was no point in really investigating it though; Opal already knew exactly who it was going to be. Over the course of the last few weeks, Opal had come to recognize all of the patterns of footfall from the major members of the Explorers she talked to. Opal could even pick out Hamber and Agate from a crowd even though she didn't know them well enough to say she could recognize them in any other way.
Amethio's footsteps were kind and soft. It was like he was trying to keep from being heard, but the louder steps of Zirc and Onia always made sure he was noticed before he could use the element of surprise to his advantage. Opal took comfort in the noise of Zirc and Onia, but she also loved the lack of sound Amethio made. She felt she was a lot like him. They were mirror images in a sense, and Opal wished selfishly that Amethio was able to see her in the same way. She cared about him, but sometimes, she had to wonder if there was something stopping him from doing the same in return.
"Come in," Opal told Amethio before he had the chance to say that it was him there to speak with her. Amethio pushed the door open slowly, and Opal saw that he was alone. She had been able to pick that out from the lack of noise surrounding his footsteps, but it was still strange to see him without Zirc and Onia flanking him on either side. It seemed like they were always together. Maybe Amethio was more comfortable talking to Opal as long as he knew he had other witnesses there to see what he was doing. Opal couldn't say for sure. There were a lot of things about Amethio she couldn't say for sure.
Amethio pulled the door shut behind himself slowly. He took in a measured breath like he had to remind himself how to do it before looking up at Opal. He still refused to meet her gaze, but Opal had learned to stop expecting it. Her selfishness reared its head once more, and Opal yearned for him to feel strong enough to look her in the eyes for once. "How are you doing today?" Amethio asked carefully.
"I'm feeling alright," Opal replied. She sat up a little bit straighter, holding Sprigatito tightly to her chest. The cat Pokémon meowed drowsily, shocked to be pulled out of her slumber so suddenly. "I wanted to ask you though... Do you think I would be able to go outside again soon? Would it be alright for me to leave the base soon?"
Amethio's eyes widened, and it took him a few seconds too long to correct his expression back into neutrality. "I... I didn't think you would want anything to do with the outside world," Amethio admitted. "After we got back last time, you were terrified and didn't seem to want to even think about it."
"That's true," Opal confirmed with a slow nod. "I was unsure about if I wanted to do it or not, but... I want to try and make a change for myself. I want to see what the rest of the world has to offer me. I'm afraid of what could happen if I do it, but I don't want to stay here hiding for the rest of my life either. I want to learn about who I was before I lost my memories. I can only do that if I leave the base."
Amethio's shoulders went tense, but he tried to hide it as just him suddenly caring more about his posture than he had a moment prior. "Don't you already know enough about who you were before?"
"I know that I was a member of the Explorers before I lost my memories, but I... I don't know much beyond that," Opal murmured. "I want to remember anything I can about what I was like before. I feel like I'm just... An empty shell of a person sometimes. I don't know enough about myself to feel human. I want that to change. I want to learn who I am when I have the chance to move past my fear. I want to know who Opal is for once."
Amethio nodded along, but there was still something stiff about him. Anxiety rose up in the back of Opal's throat like bile, but she choked it back down and kept talking. "I don't want this to make it seem like I'm ungrateful," Opal went on. "I'm very thankful for you and everything the Explorers have done for me since I was recovered and brought back here. I don't know where I would be if all of you hadn't been there to make sure I was alright... And I don't want to think about it either. Still, I feel like I have to figure out what else happened to me before. I can't spend the rest of my life not knowing who I was. Is that... Is that alright? Does that make sense?"
"It does," Amethio said, finally forcing his shoulders to relax, though it didn't seem smooth in the slightest. "I... I will say though that I won't be able to help you much with recovering your memories. I don't know what happened for you to lose your memories in the first place. Most people here are unaware of it. I'm not sure if you going outside is going to solve the problem the way you think it will. For all you know, it could just end up causing more issues later on."
"Maybe it will... But I can't sit here forever. I need to leave the base eventually," Opal pointed out. "I feel horrible just sitting around here all the time, but there's something else to it. I feel like I should be picking up more slack than I have been. I can't consider myself helpful to all of you if I'm not doing anything to help the Explorers as an organization. I know you all want me to stay safe while I'm still recovering from what happened to me, but I want to help with missions. I want to feel like I'm helping you. I feel like I have a debt to all of you that I haven't been able to pay back yet, and I want that to change. If that means leaving the base, then I'm willing to push through the fear. I swear."
Even as Opal spoke all of the words, she knew above all else that she was selfish. She could say all she wanted that this was about her wanting to make it up to the Explorers for being so kind to her. They were nice for looking out for her, but Opal knew this wasn't about paying back a debt or fulfilling their expectations. Opal wanted to leave the base because she yearned for the outside world. She chased the feeling of sunshine on her skin, and she would have done anything to get it.
Opal really was irredeemably selfish, and she didn't know if she would ever be able to fix it. She was even worse for not even trying. All she wanted was to leave, and she couldn't even stop that desire from taking control of her sometimes. What in the world was wrong with her?
Amethio stared at Opal for another long moment, studying every tiny detail of her face. Opal yearned to know what was going through his head, but Amethio didn't let anything slip. Instead, he let out a slow breath and nodded. "I'll speak with my superiors about it," he relented. "If you really want to leave, then I should be able to make some arrangements... Though it will likely be very different from how things were before."
Opal's face immediately burst into a wide grin. She could have started crying then and there, and she couldn't tell if it was because of her relief or the self-hatred she knew she deserved. "Thank you so much, Amethio," Opal beamed. "I don't know what I would do without you."
Amethio nodded uncomfortably before turning around to face the door. He reached for the knob, but as soon as his back was to Opal, his face grew dark and stormy. Tension knotted up between his eyes, and something like guilt blossomed in his irises. Opal could only see a bit of it since Amethio hadn't hid it as well as he had thought, but it was enough to earn her concern.
"Hold on a moment," Opal found herself saying, and Amethio went still where he was still holding the doorknob. Opal didn't know where she was going with this, but she couldn't stop herself from talking. It felt like all she could do. "Is... Is something wrong, Amethio?"
"Wrong?" Amethio echoed, his voice distorting with shock. He turned to face Opal once again, and for a moment, his defenses dropped enough for them to look one another in the eyes. Amethio's fear was clear as could be, and he was too slow to hide it. Opal had already seen more than enough. "Wrong how?"
"You seem... Stiff around me," Opal began to say. "You've been anxious to talk to me for a long time now. I can tell. You want to hide it from me, but... I can see it. I don't want you to feel so tense to the point that you don't feel comfortable with talking to me. If there's something I can do to help you, then I want to try. That's what friends do for each other, right?"
Once again, a storm of emotions flew through Amethio's eyes faster than Opal knew how to identify them. She felt she understood the conflict of him better on one hand, but on the other, she feared she didn't know much of anything about him at all. Amethio finally settled on tearing his gaze away from Opal to stare at Sprigatito instead. The cat Pokémon had curled up once again to sleep, meaning Amethio wasn't at risk of being looked in the eyes in return if he watched her instead of Opal.
Amethio clenched his fingers into tight fists, fighting to keep himself composed in the face of Opal's overwhelming kindness. He didn't understand how she could be so nice to him... Though he supposed it was largely because she didn't know a thing about what had really happened to her. Amethio wasn't fully aware of what had happened for her to lose her memories either, but he could figure out easily enough that the Explorers must have had something to do with it. If nothing else, Amethio knew the Rising Volt Tacklers had nothing to do with her loss of memories. Spinel had lied about it, and everyone else was expected to keep up the lie.
Amethio hadn't ever thought he would be faced with a moral problem like this. He thought everything would be easier if Liko simply complied when he first asked her to come with him back to the Explorers' base, and he admittedly had been alright with the idea of taking her by force if he had to... But something about all of this just felt wrong to him. Maybe he had been alright with taking Liko without her permission, but he hadn't been willing to erase everything that had once made her who she was.
If Amethio was honest, he thought Opal had started out as something of a blank slate. She didn't know who she was, and even her old muscle memories from being Liko didn't seem to do much to guide her now. If Opal still had the self-preservation skills that she had once shown as Liko, then she wouldn't have been so willing to work with him. If it had been Liko sitting in front of him instead of Opal, then she would have been glaring at him and asking how he could do such horrible things. Opal, however, simply smiled at him without a care in the world. She didn't know what Amethio had or hadn't done to her, and even if she had... Amethio didn't know what that would have meant for her.
It felt like Spinel had entirely erased Liko when he created Opal. That made sense, Amethio supposed, but it felt wrong to think about at the same time. Could a person truly be reset and then start over from square one? How had Spinel done it? Did Amethio even want to know? How much of Opal's life would change if she realized the truth? Would she want anything to do with Amethio after that?
Amethio knew he was selfish to think about not wanting her to leave. He knew he was horrible for thinking that he yearned for her to stay. He hadn't ever been around others his age when he was growing up in the base. He had been on his own, and Amethio had told himself that he vastly preferred just spending time with adults to fill the void in his chest that came with being on his own as a child. Now that Opal was there though... Amethio knew he had a responsibility to look after her. This was a mission meant to restore his reputation within the Explorers, and he wouldn't go anywhere unless he was willing to take care of her as he had been told to do. Opal was a job, and Amethio couldn't forget it.
But Amethio felt like he wanted to know Opal all the same. He hadn't realized just how desperate he was for connection until a warm smile appeared to numb the ice that had grown around his heart. Amethio hadn't ever thought twice about reaching out to others because he had accepted that simply wasn't ever going to be his life. If not for Opal being there, it still wouldn't be his life now. Opal was refreshing in a world that had been the same for as long as Amethio could remember. She felt safe to him in a way that very few others did, and he had no idea how he was meant to put it to words.
And yet, it was that lack of understanding that made it impossible for him to truly feel safe around her. Whether he liked it or not, Opal was not there for the sake of filling the lonely hole in his heart. She was there because she had been abducted. All of her memories had been wiped, and Amethio still didn't know why. Spinel wasn't going to tell him either. It was something Amethio was going to have to find out on his own, and he already knew it wasn't going to go well. Spinel seemed to enjoy messing with Amethio just for the sake of it, and that wasn't about to change regardless of how desperate Amethio became.
Amethio had always been told that the Explorers were acting in the name of the greater good. Gibeon had a goal, and the Explorers were there to help him see it through. Amethio was helping his grandfather. His loyalty to his family was strong, and he was willing to do what he had to in order to make sure he saw it all through to the end... But now, Amethio had to wonder if he truly was doing the right thing. Maybe the Rising Volt Tacklers were more than just thorns in his side and obstacles in his goals. Maybe they were better people than he had ever thought to realize. They had to be better than him if they were willing to be honest with Liko instead of lying to Opal about the fact that she had always been there in the organization.
Amethio didn't know how he was meant to handle Opal. Each time he looked at her, he found himself attacked by some deep sense of guilt he couldn't seem to fight away. She shouldn't have been there. Even if Amethio had kidnapped her all that time ago and forced her to hand over the pendant, he wouldn't have done all of this. He wouldn't have erased her memories of who she had once been and forced her to collaborate with people she had thought of as her enemies. This solution certainly made her more compliant, but she didn't feel like Liko at all. Opal was completely different...
But she was terrifying. Opal's eyes were far too honest to have been through everything Amethio could only assume she had been put through. What horrific history was she hiding? What had happened for her memories to be purged from her mind so completely that her past could be rewritten without her knowledge? She didn't know a thing about herself, and yet, she was willing to treat him with kindness. Liko hadn't even done that when they first met. She was afraid of him, but Opal never had been. She smiled even in the face of danger, and Amethio had once been the greatest danger she could have ever imagined... Well, the greatest danger Liko had ever known. There was a line between them, and Amethio was beginning to think he was never going to get the chance to apologize to Liko for what he had done. Not as long as Opal was there.
For all Amethio knew, all of this could have been fine. He could have been worried over nothing. Gibeon had to approve everything that happened within the Explorers, and he wouldn't have approved of something that would be too severe or bad. Hamber would have frowned upon whatever Spinel did if it crossed a line too. Amethio was getting anxious about nothing. He had to be. Gibeon had a plan in mind, and Amethio needed to trust it. He didn't like the feeling he got when he thought about what had happened to Opal for too long, but Amethio was going to be fine. He was sure of it. He just had to trust that the leaders of the Explorers knew what they were doing when they guided the organization in a specific direction.
Even as Amethio tried to convince himself of this though, his fears pushed him in a different direction. Opal's reactions to Spinel were concerning at best and explosive at worst, and she didn't seem to know a thing about why she was doing it. Amethio didn't know why she was acting the way she did either. He knew there had to be a reason for it. She wouldn't have reacted the way she had without some logic guiding her, but... Amethio didn't know how to get to the bottom of it. He was too afraid to entertain the point if he was being honest with himself. It was pathetic to be so anxious about something like that, but he couldn't escape it.
"I..." That was right. Opal had asked him a question, but Amethio hadn't responded to it. Instead, he let his anxiety get the better of him, and he had stared off into the distance while waiting for some miraculous answer to come to him and give him the words he needed to ease her fears. Opal wanted to know why Amethio reacted so poorly around her, and he wanted to be able to help her... But he didn't know how he was meant to go about doing either one of those things. He was beginning to fear he would never be able to get to the bottom of this new anxiety that had sunk into her heart and mind. If nothing else, he wouldn't be able to unravel it as long as he still understood so little about her situation.
"I don't know how to help you," Amethio finally settled on saying. "I don't know what happened for you to lose your memories. I never have known. I wish there was something more I could do to help you feel better about all of this, but I have no idea of where to start. It bothers me that there's not something more I can do to help you." That wasn't entirely the truth, but Amethio knew he wasn't going to be able to say much more.
Opal's face softened into a small smile. "You don't need to worry about that," she told him. "I appreciate that you've been willing to help me in any way. I know you might feel like you're not doing enough, but... You've been taking care of me. I wouldn't be here if you hadn't been there to look after me. I would probably be in a lot more danger now if you hadn't helped me."
Amethio's chest went tight. It was like Opal knew exactly what to say to make him feel the most miserable at any given moment... But she didn't know anything. That was the point. She had no idea who she was or what she had walked into, and Amethio wasn't going to be the person to tell her either. "I... I haven't done enough for you to thank me for it," Amethio told her with a firm shake of his head. "You shouldn't be so kind to me. I haven't done much of anything for you, Opal."
She blinked at him for a long moment, and something like grief rose in her eyes. "I don't want you to be mean to yourself," Opal murmured. "I mean it when I say you've done a lot to help me, Amethio. You might not see it, but I can. I wouldn't have made it this far if you hadn't been there to guide my path. I just wish you would let me help you too. That's what friends are supposed to do for each other, right? You can't do so much for me and then expect me to not want to do anything for you in return."
Amethio's lips pressed together in a thin line. Maybe that was what friends were meant to do for one another, but he certainly didn't feel like a friend to Opal. He didn't know what had happened for her to be put in the position she had come to know as her own, and Amethio didn't think he would be able to help her either. Opal thought the world of him, but Amethio knew there was much more to it than met the eye. She shouldn't have given him even a moment of her time. If she was still with the Rising Volt Tacklers, then she would have gone on fearing him for quite a while longer, and she would have been right to do it.
"I'm afraid there's nothing much you can do for me right now," Amethio told her. He wasn't sure of what he was trying to communicate or how he wanted to get it across, but he didn't bother with pushing himself for the details. Instead, he took a step back toward the door of Opal's room. "I should go and speak with my superiors to see if I can organize a trip out of the base for you. I know you said you wanted to go again."
Opal nodded slowly, watching as Amethio left. He didn't look her in the eyes, but he didn't have to bother either. He already knew exactly what she was feeling and how much it was going to hurt him to have to acknowledge. Opal was thinking about how much she thought he had done for her... But it wasn't noble enough for Amethio to deserve even a bit of her kindness. She was not the same person she once had been, and Amethio... He had been one of the reasons for her recent pain. Something had happened to change her completely, and he couldn't even look her in the eyes and say that he knew there was a shift in her personality. She couldn't know the truth. His loyalty to the Explorers dictated that he stay quiet for as long as he could, and Amethio had no idea how he was meant to do it.
Amethio only remembered how to breathe again when he stepped out into the hallway outside of Opal's room. The air around him was tense, and he felt like he was going to collapse then and there if he thought too hard about what he had been forced to do. Opal deserved better than to have to listen to him talk about things like this. She deserved better than everything she had been given if he was honest with himself.
"Is something the matter?"
Amethio bit back a swear at the sound of Spinel's voice, and he looked up to see the older man leaning against the opposite wall in the corridor with a smile. Spinel's smirks always drove Amethio up the wall. It felt like Spinel was hiding something each time he grinned at Amethio. He knew much more than Amethio could ever hope to, and his greatest pride came from rubbing it in Amethio's face.
And in many ways, Spinel was right about knowing more than Amethio did. Amethio didn't even know where to begin when it came to working through what Opal had been through, but Spinel knew it effortlessly. Spinel had been the one who brought Opal back to the base in the first place. Spinel was the only one who knew the full story, and he was more than happy to cover it up by lying about the Rising Volt Tacklers or frightening Opal into compliance.
Amethio had never liked Spinel much, but he hadn't ever thought too much of it. Spinel was frustrating, but Amethio was at least willing to admit that he did his work well. Spinel had horrible methods of getting results at times, but he was fighting in the name of the Explorers and their greater good at the end of the day. None of Amethio's past reassurances seemed to be able to calm him down when he thought about Opal though. How could Spinel rationalize something like that? It was a line too far in Amethio's eyes, and he didn't know how Spinel didn't feel the same way. Then again, Amethio didn't know much of anything about what Spinel felt, and he doubted he would be able to get to the bottom of it any time soon. If Spinel was going to tell him the truth by now, then he would have ages ago.
"You were speaking with Opal just now, weren't you?" Spinel asked, and Amethio bit down on the inside of his lip. Spinel hadn't just arrived at all; he had been listening in, and he only stepped away when he realized Amethio was coming out of Opal's room. "It sounded like you were having a tense conversation in there."
Amethio's fingers tightened into fists. He wouldn't rise to the bait as Spinel wanted him to. Spinel didn't need to know a thing about his relationship with Opal. Looking after her was Amethio's mission, not Spinel's, and Amethio owed it to her to make sure she was kept as safe as possible. If that meant avoiding Spinel, then so be it. He was more than fine with directing her down the opposite path as necessary.
"I need to ask you something," Amethio found himself saying, fighting to keep his rage as restrained as possible. "You were the one who brought Opal here to the base. Just how did she lose her memories? I doubt something like that could have happened naturally."
Spinel let out a low laugh, the sound rumbling around in his chest uncomfortably. Amethio once again felt his nerves set themselves alight, but Spinel didn't do anything to close the distance between them yet. "You want to know just how Opal came to be Opal, hm?" Spinel hummed. Amethio nodded, though the motion was slight and stilted. "I'm afraid that's not something I can share with you. That's a secret that is meant to stay between myself, Gibeon, and Opal herself. Why don't you ask her what happened?"
"She doesn't know what happened," Amethio pressed. "You erased her memories of whatever incident caused all of this. You must have had something to do with this."
"I erased her memories?" Spinel echoed. "That's a bold accusation, Amethio. I would have thought you would know better than to throw around claims like that, especially with no evidence. If I really did 'erase' her memories as you claim, then you should at least have the decency to give a bit of proof. I doubt anyone will react well to hearing that you told me I was a horrific criminal without a moment to prove my innocence."
Amethio pressed his lips together into a thin line. He didn't have any evidence that Spinel had done something deliberately to erase Opal's memories, but he was willing to guess that something bad had happened between them. People didn't just lose all of their memories out of the blue. Something traumatic had caused all of this. Amethio was sure of it.
But Spinel's reaction caught him by surprise. Amethio hadn't originally meant for it to be an accusation that Spinel had erased Opal's memories deliberately... But the way Spinel had responded to it made him think that perhaps there was something more there than met the eye. Could it have been possible for Spinel to do something that would deliberately erase the past from Opal's head? Amethio didn't know how someone would go about doing something like that, but he supposed it had never been his question to ask. If Spinel was able to do it, then that would explain everything in some way or another.
"Opal doesn't remember what happened before she came here. Something like that wouldn't happen just by chance," Amethio forced himself to say. "Something must have happened for her memories to be pushed out of her head. She doesn't even remember the name she once used. There must be a reason for it. I'm sure of it."
"And you think that reason is me?" Spinel challenged. "That's a bold claim to make, especially since we both know you don't have any proof to back it up. If you want to say that I did something so horrible, then you had better find some evidence... But you'll find that if someone wants to erase the memory of something from the past, then it is easier than you think."
Amethio let out a thin breath through his nose. He should have known that Spinel would have gotten rid of all the proof. If there was evidence for Amethio to find, then he would have stumbled upon it ages ago, but that simply wasn't the case. Spinel was fighting to make sure all of this stayed out of Amethio's reach... But why? Was it just a matter of mocking him? Did Spinel want to make it seem like he had more power over Amethio than he actually did?
Or had Amethio actually struck gold when he said Spinel had done something to erase Opal's memories? It could have been truer than he thought. It had just been an idea at first, a slip of the tongue, but now... Amethio was starting to think it was true. Why else would Spinel respond in the way he had? Though Amethio supposed it could have been just another trick. Spinel wasn't exactly against using deception in the name of keeping his secrets. Amethio could have fallen victim to it again and not even realized it was happening.
"I think you'll find that the difference between us is great," Spinel said next, leaning in close so he could whisper to Amethio while maintaining enough distance to prove he was taller than the younger boy. "I am willing to do many things you are not, and that is what separates us. You have to make up for failing the Explorers time and again... It would be best if you were simply quiet and did as you were told. Perhaps that would keep you from losing your grip so many times. You have much to make up for because you were not willing to make the difficult decisions I was."
"By difficult decisions, do you mean going against morality entirely?" Amethio found himself challenging, and Spinel pulled away from him to straighten out to his full height. "What happened to Opal is indicative of something horrible you did. I can see that much even if you won't share any of the details with me."
Spinel laughed, the sound low and ominous. The noise made Amethio want to rip his ears off, but he didn't let any indications of his fear slip past his frown. "You are bold to throw around so many accusations without any evidence, Amethio... But that boldness will not be enough to save you." Spinel turned on his heel, offering a haphazard and careless wave over his shoulder at Amethio. "If you want to say that I did something horrible, then you had best come to me with proof next time. You won't be able to get away with anything if you just say that I did something without any reasoning to back it up."
Amethio's fingers tightened into fists, and while he tried to restrain the angry snarl that built up in the back of his throat, he was unable to hold it back entirely. He hated everything Spinel was saying, but he knew there was nothing he could do to change the situation. Amethio would have done just about anything to understand what Spinel was playing at, but he knew Spinel wasn't going to reveal even a single thing before he was ready. Amethio had his back pressed against the wall, and Spinel wouldn't let him go.
Out of everyone in the Explorers, Amethio had to say without a shadow of a doubt that he liked Spinel the least. Spinel was the only one who openly tipped into the territory of Amethio outright disliking or even hating him. Amethio believed the Explorers were acting in the best interests of the world, but it was hard to commit to a thought like that when it seemed like Spinel was always pushing the limits of what could be considered moral. Spinel was happy to get up to all sorts of trouble as long as he thought it would benefit him. Amethio had known it for years, but it never quite got easier to stomach. Spinel was horrible through and through, but nobody else seemed to see it. Amethio had to wonder sometimes if he was losing his mind. Spinel was a terrible person, and he cared little for the morality that others would have insisted he follow, but he got results for the organization. Was that all anybody else cared about?
"You wanted to help Opal leave the base again, didn't you?" Spinel asked, and Amethio felt his eyes go wide. He realized a bit too late that he had let some information slip without meaning to, but Spinel didn't give him the chance to take it back. Instead, Spinel offered him yet another low laugh. "If you want that, then you can leave it in my hands. I'm sure I'll be able to find a solution that will benefit everyone involved."
Amethio's eyes went so wide they felt like they were going to pop right out of his skull. The way Spinel was talking about it made it seem like he was going to help Amethio, but they both knew it was going to be a bit more complicated than that. If Spinel was really interested in helping Amethio, then he wouldn't have been listening in on his conversations with Opal. If Spinel really wanted to help Amethio, then he would have been honest from the start about whatever he did to tamper with her memories. This was personal for Spinel, and there was something he was hoping to gain out of letting Opal leave the base.
But what in the world could Spinel have gotten out of this? He hadn't even been there during the fight that broke out the last time Opal was allowed to leave the base. Spinel had smiled about it from the shadows after the battle was over, but he wasn't there at all. Amethio knew Spinel was always up to something more than he wanted the world to believe, but this... It bothered him in a way he couldn't put to words.
Deep in the pit of his stomach, Amethio felt something almost defensive flare at the thought of what Spinel could have done with this situation. Spinel was trying to get involved because he thought there was something he could stand to gain. That was the only explanation Amethio could think of pulling together... But what did Spinel want from this? It made no sense. Spinel had been told to stay away from Opal for as long as he possibly could because of the bad reaction she had to him. Why would Spinel help Opal to leave the base if he wasn't even supposed to see her for longer than a few seconds at the time?
"You don't need to give me that look," Spinel hummed, and Amethio realized that his mind had been racing enough to make it seem like an hour had gone by. It had only been a few seconds though, and Spinel was still giving him the same frustrating smile as always. "I can take care of this. All you have to do is trust me. I'll make sure Master Gibeon gives her the permission she needs to leave the base... Something I doubt you'll be able to do as long as you keep failing him."
Amethio was on the verge of shouting after Spinel, but he never got the chance. Spinel walked away a moment later, vanishing around a corner and leaving Amethio behind. Amethio stared after him for a few more fuming seconds before he forced out a slow, heavy breath. He hated all of this more than he could ever hope to put to words. Just what was Spinel trying to get out of Opal? Why did he want her to leave the base? Why had he been listening in on Amethio's conversation with her? Spinel wasn't even supposed to be around her, so why did he keep pushing the limits of his permissions? Was it just to make her miserable? Was it to sabotage Amethio? What in the world was his gambit?
Amethio didn't realize just how dazed he was until he stumbled back in the direction of Opal's door. He was giving himself a headache from thinking about all of this. He opened the door without even remembering to knock, and he found Opal sitting on her bed and reading through one of the books he had given her the week before. "Amethio," Opal greeted, her eyes wide and her face tainted by shock. "What are you doing back so soon? I thought you were going to talk to your superiors about letting me leave the base."
Amethio blinked rapidly to remind himself of where he was and what was going on. That was right. He had been supposed to find Gibeon to talk to him about letting Opal leave... But he had forgotten all about that the instant Spinel showed up and blocked his path. "I... I didn't get the chance," Amethio said in the place of a true explanation. "I'm sorry."
Opal stared at Amethio for a few seconds before closing the book on her lap. "What's wrong, Amethio?"
For a long moment, all Amethio could do was stare back at her, his eyes wide as he sputtered in shock. "I... Uh..." He shook his head, shrugging in a way he hoped didn't look jerky and clunky. He was fully aware it did anyway. "Nothing is wrong. You don't need to worry about it."
"I'm already worrying about it," Opal pressed. "You don't need to push me away, Amethio. I want to be able to help you the same way you've helped me up to this point. You've done so much to make me feel safe and comfortable here at the base. The least I can do in return is make sure you feel safe around me too."
Amethio blinked a few times, trying to force his lips to move and failing in every way he could have imagined. It would have been wrong for him to impose on Opal like that. She was there against her will, and she didn't even know it. If she knew the truth, then she never would have looked at him with such kindness in her eyes. It would have been wrong for him to ask for her care when he knew it would not be honest.
But something about Opal was just too much for Amethio to bear. He wanted to be able to trust her. She was perhaps the first ever teenager who Amethio had been able to speak with like they were on equal terms. The ground was skewed, but it was the closest Amethio had ever come, and it was all he wanted. He was selfish for it, a monster by any other name, but he couldn't seem to beat that miserable part of himself back into the cave where he knew it belonged.
"I feel safe around you, you know," Opal said, and Amethio was left to wonder how much time had faded away while he was distracted with trying to find a way to turn her down politely. "I don't feel that way with most of the others here at the base. I really feel like I can trust you with anything, and I want you to feel like you can do the same in return." Opal paused for a long moment, squaring her shoulders and pressing her lips together into a thin frown. "I don't know what happened when I lost my memories or anything that took place before I woke up here, but I... I hope that I'll be able to move forward despite it. You feel safe to me in a way that no one else here does. I know I can trust you, Amethio, and I... I would be honored if you felt safe enough around me to open up to me in return."
Amethio once again felt like he was going to die. None of this was right, and he knew it in a way he would never be able to put to words... But he wanted to feel like he could reach out to her. Maybe he was horrible for wanting it, but Amethio yearned to grow closer with Opal. Maybe this was what he had needed all along. He just hadn't been willing or able to see it.
It wasn't right though. Amethio could say that without a shadow of a doubt. It didn't matter how much he wanted to reach out to Opal since he knew it was wrong of him to want to be around her. She didn't know who she was, and Amethio may as well have been taking advantage of that. He certainly knew the rest of the Explorers were exploiting her in that way. Amethio didn't want to add himself to the long list of people who were mistreating her, but something about Opal just pulled him in. He wanted to reach out to her. He wanted to be her friend more than anything. Maybe he deserved to be punished for it, but Amethio couldn't bring himself to care.
A knot had risen in the back of his throat since Opal last spoke, and Amethio fought to swallow around it. "I... I didn't realize you thought so highly of me," Amethio confessed. "I thought you would feel safer around Zirc or Onia. They've spent far more time with you because of those videos you all seem to like so much."
Opal shook her head. "I enjoy their company, and I'm never going to turn them down if they want to spend time with me. Still... Something about you just feels special to me, Amethio. I want to get to know you better. I like being around you, and if you're willing to open up to me, then I would be happy to talk to you. I know you're anxious about it, but you don't have to be. I'm here to listen to you. I just... I want you to feel like you can do that."
"I haven't done as much as you think," Amethio tried to argue even though he knew the point was flimsy. More importantly, he knew that wasn't going to be enough to persuade Opal in any way. "You think I'm looking after you, but I... I'm not doing it for noble reasons."
"You can say all you want that you don't think you deserve to be around me, but I want to be around you," Opal insisted. "You can have your reservations, but I'm not going to let them stop me. I want to be there for you the same way you've been there for me, Amethio. I wouldn't have made it this far without your help. Please... Give me the chance to see past your walls. Let me be there for you. I can't help you unless you're willing to talk to me. I know you can do it. I just... I want you to try. For the both of us."
Amethio's throat felt impossibly tight now, and he was sure he was going to stop breathing then and there if he thought too hard about what he was hearing her say. Opal's words were charged in far more ways than she could ever hope to put to words, and yet, Amethio wanted to rush right toward them. He was terrified of what any degree of closeness with Opal could bring, but it was all he had ever wanted at the same time. Maybe this was where he was meant to be at the end of the day. Maybe he was supposed to feel safe enough to talk to her. He was terrified of it, but that wasn't a reason to run away, was it?
"I..." Amethio felt his shoulders relax long before his heart did, and he already knew his decision had been made. No matter how much he tried to hold back, he wouldn't be able to keep himself from reaching out to Opal forever. This was inevitable, and Amethio wanted it as soon as possible. He needed her friendship more than anything, and if she was offering it, then who was Amethio to turn her down? "I don't know how you lost your memories, but I'm worried about what it could mean. I've been trying to see if I can unravel the truth around it recently, but I've come up short no matter where I look."
"I'm worried about it too," Opal confessed. "Even when I'm not actively thinking about it, I feel like it's always there just out of the reach of my thoughts. I'm so close to figuring something out about myself. I can feel it. There's just... It feels like there's a wall that keeps me from ever getting to the truth. It's terrifying, but I want to find out what all of it means one of these days. I want to know who I once was, and I... I would be happy to have you by my side as I try to figure out what it could all mean."
Amethio nodded, slowly at first and then picking up steam after a few seconds came and went. He felt horribly guilty standing there and knowing more than he was letting on, but he was honest in at least some ways. He didn't know how Opal lost her memories, and he hoped she would be able to find the truth. The others in the Explorers would likely be resistant to it, but Amethio couldn't bring himself to object to it for himself. He wanted to know the truth, and if that put their mission at risk, then perhaps it deserved to be put in jeopardy.
Amethio knew he was selfish for wanting to be able to help Opal. She had been through a lot though, and he wanted to stand by her. Maybe he was betraying the Explorers and all they had ever stood for, but Amethio wanted to make sure she was alright. Maybe he would be declared a traitor for yearning to be there for her, but that was a problem he could solve another time. Right now, Amethio's mission was to make sure Opal was kept safe within the base and even beyond its limits. He would remain loyal to that purpose while helping her as much as he could. It was his duty.
But even beyond that, it was what Amethio wanted to do. He was edging closer and closer to treachery as he thought about it more, but he wouldn't change his mind on it at all. This was where he belonged, and only time would be able to tell him if that assessment was a mistake. He could work through that when the moment was right, but for now, he was happy with where he was, and he wouldn't go back on it.
"I'll be here for you no matter what," Amethio vowed. He offered Opal a small smile, and even though it burned at his cheeks, Amethio was happy to share it with her. "If you need anything, then you only need to ask."
"In that case..." Opal's smile shifted from resolute to shy, and a light dusting of pink spread across her cheeks. "I want to learn more about you. I mean, all your time with me has been spent focusing on me. I know your job is to look after me, but I want to get to know you better too. That's what friends do for each other, right?"
Something about Opal's tone was uncertain. She wanted to hear it from Amethio if he thought that was what friends did because she didn't know. Her memories had been stolen from her enough to keep her from knowing for sure what friends were supposed to do. Amethio wasn't any more knowledgeable on what friends were meant to do for each other than she was, but he thought that was right. If nothing else, he felt like that was right from what he had read and heard as an outsider to friendship throughout his childhood.
"Yes," Amethio finally settled on saying. "I... I suppose it is." He paused for a long moment, pushing the stray thread of white hair away from his eyes. "I can't say I'm a particularly interesting person though. There are probably better people to talk to in the base about this."
"But I just told you that I wanted to get to know you better," Opal argued. "That means doing more than just helping me to recover my memories. I want you to be here for me as my friend, Amethio. That means getting to know you the way friends would know each other."
Amethio certainly couldn't argue with that. Opal didn't know much about friendship, but she was at least more confident in her conclusions than Amethio would have been in his. If she thought this was what friends did, then Amethio was willing to trust her. Maybe she had retained a bit of knowledge about it from before her memories had been wiped. Maybe she had a bit more muscle memory than he thought.
But she didn't have many friends, did she? At the very least, she didn't seem to have many friends before she met the Rising Volt Tacklers. That was what Amethio had read about her in her file before he was sent on the mission to go and find her at Indigo Academy. Maybe Opal and Amethio were every bit as clueless as one another. Maybe it was alright that they were both starting from square one. Maybe this was one journey they would be able to share together. It was a far cry from what Amethio had expected from their time together, but he wouldn't have complained about it in the slightest.
"So... Tell me everything." Opal adjusted herself on her bed, and she moved over to give Amethio the space to sit down next to her. She hauled Sprigatito into her lap before patting the mattress beside her. "You grew up here in the base, right? I don't think many others here did that. You must know a lot about the Explorers. What was it like to grow up here? What kind of missions did you go on before you met me? How... How did I come to join the organization? If you know, that is. I can't expect you to know anything like that, but..."
Amethio's throat constricted on itself, and he shook his head in a bid to fend off the tension. "I don't know how you joined the Explorers," he admitted. "But I can tell you about my childhood here in the base. I've been here for a long time, and I... I'm the only one who grew up here. All of the others were recruited after they had grown old enough to choose to join the organization themselves. I was born into it because my grandfather is the head of the order."
Opal smiled at him, and her eyes glittered like the brightest of sapphires. "Then what was that like? I bet your experiences were different from everyone else's because of that."
Amethio nodded. "Yes... They were." It felt wrong to sit there and listen to Opal ask him such genuine questions. She didn't know who she was to him or what he had done to frighten her once upon a time. He hadn't even realized he regretted pushing her so far until she was met with this innocent refraction of who she had been when they first met. Opal knew nothing of what Liko had been through. She knew nothing of what Amethio had done to her.
But Amethio couldn't turn away. Maybe he was selfish for wanting this, but he got the feeling Opal thought of herself as selfish too. Perhaps selfishness was something meant to be shared among friends. Their dynamic could barely be called equal and balanced, but it was all Amethio wanted. He felt safer sitting in Opal's room and looking at her unknowing smile than he did anywhere else in the base. If this was selfishness, then Amethio would choose to be selfish every day of the week.
Amethio cleared his throat and nodded. "My grandfather, Gibeon, was the founder of the Explorers many years ago..."
Notes:
And there's the dedicated Opal and Amethio bonding chapter!
I really like their dynamic. Like... Really like it. I wanted it to be a focal point of this story when I first started writing it, and I was excited to dedicate an entire chapter to it. They both have their reservations around each other for a variety of reasons, but they still want to be there together. They still want to be friends. Opal yearns for the connection Amethio can bring her, and Amethio feels the same way. It's really sweet, and I love it.
I loved the parallel between them about both of them thinking of themselves as selfish for wanting friendship. It's so mundane, but they don't know anything different, so they think it's a horrible crime with a high price to be paid. It's sweet that they're able to connect over it though. There are a lot of lines to be drawn between them, and just... I love them. They've got such a good friendship, and it's only going to get better from here. Amethio is finally opening up to Opal, and she's more than ready to listen to him in return. It's just adorable.
Next time, we've got another action-packed chapter with our second battle of the story. Oh, boy. Until then, I hope you all enjoyed this chapter. Feedback is appreciated as always. Have a nice day, everyone!
-Digital
Chapter 8: She's Overrun With Tears
Summary:
Amethio and Opal are given another assignment to pursue the Rising Volt Tacklers.
Chapter Text
Opal couldn't believe this was happening.
She walked as rigidly as she could, pressing her shoulders together in a show she hoped resembled composure. Her throat felt like it was going to tighten and close up on her entirely, but she did her best to keep herself focused. She was going to be alright. Everything was going to be fine. Opal wasn't entirely sure of how much she believed that, but she had to keep saying it. She was going to collapse in on herself if she let her faith slip for even a few seconds at once.
Beside Opal, Amethio was every bit as tense. His face was set in the same stoic frown he always showed to the rest of the world. There wasn't even the slightest trace of all the time they had spent together behind closed doors. Opal and Amethio had been bonding a lot over the last few days, but that didn't seem to mean much now. They were both beyond anxious about what was to come, and asking them to calm down was pointless. There was simply too much for them to balance, and they knew it better than they wanted to admit.
For the first time since her arrival at the Explorers' base, Opal had been called into a meeting with the head of the organization. Gibeon had summoned her, Amethio, and the other leaders of the Explorers to speak with him. Apparently, Amethio's request that Opal be allowed to leave the base had made its way back to Gibeon even without Amethio speaking to him directly. Now, Gibeon wanted to talk to them directly about what they were hoping to do when they left the base.
To say Opal was nervous was a grave understatement. She had heard Gibeon's name many times over the course of the last few weeks, but she never thought she would have a reason to go and speak with him directly. If the head of the Explorers didn't want to speak with her after what had happened to her, then Opal wasn't going to push him into it. She was a bit anxious about the idea that he was breaking his silence now though. Had something happened to prompt this? Was he upset with her somehow? Would she even know it before it was too late for her to fix the situation she had found herself in?
"You're going to be fine," Amethio whispered to her, and Opal turned to look at him with a frown. She couldn't tell if Amethio actually believed the words he was saying, but she certainly hoped he did. She didn't know what she would do if she lost her grip when there was something so important waiting for her right around the corner. "I'm sure everything will be alright."
Opal nodded before forcing herself to look ahead again. Of course she was going to be fine. Gibeon was meant to be on her side. He was her ally, not her enemy. What reason would he have to hate her after everything she had done to help him? Well, Opal supposed, she hadn't been that helpful overall. Of course she hadn't been helpful. She had been kept in the base most of the time, and the only time that pattern was broken, she wound up caught in the middle of a battle. Maybe Gibeon was upset with her after all. Opal didn't know him, but she was confident he knew more than enough about her. Why else would he want to talk to her under circumstances like this?
Opal's heart wanted to sink into her feet and then even further into the ground by the time she arrived in front of the door to the Explorers' meeting room. Amethio knocked, and when he was told to enter, he walked inside. Opal followed closely behind, trying to not look like she was hiding in his shadow even though she knew that was exactly what she was doing.
There were others from the Explorers already gathered inside at their designated stations. Opal recognized Hamber near the center of the room, and Coral and Onyx were beside him to the left. Agate stood on Hamber's other side. Spinel was standing on the other side of Coral, marking his position on the exact opposite side of the room from where Opal would be standing. That was right. She wasn't supposed to have anything to do with Spinel right now or ever. He was dangerous to her, or so she had been told many times before, and she had to keep her distance. Opal felt awful at the mere thought of having to stay away from him, but she supposed there wasn't much she could do to change it now.
Opal fell into her position beside Amethio, hoping she didn't look as nervous as she felt. She looked ahead when Amethio did, and her gaze fell on the vague silhouette stretching high before her. Gibeon was out of view for the most part. Opal could see an outline that implied his presence, but even that was enough to make her heart start to race in her chest. Being there felt wrong. She didn't deserve to stand in the presence of someone who was so important to the Explorers. What was she really able to do when faced with someone like this? She was nothing compared to him.
Gibeon did not immediately speak once everyone was settled in. His gaze seemed to catch on Opal, and she clenched her fingers into fists at her sides. She was alright. There was nothing for her to be afraid of... Or so she kept telling herself. Opal couldn't shake the feeling that Gibeon was staring right at her. He was searching for something in her face. Opal could feel it. She didn't know what he would have wanted to look for, but she knew she was unsettled by it. Gibeon seemed to know more about her than she even knew about herself. Opal had come to expect that since she lost her memories, but it still surprised her. Just what was he thinking? Why couldn't she unravel the truth behind it?
And more importantly, did she even want to find the truth waiting for her at the end of this path?
"Amethio," Gibeon finally greeted when he managed to tear his eyes away from Opal. "I understand you wished to leave the base with Opal soon. Is that correct?"
Amethio stood up a little straighter before nodding. "Yes, that is accurate. I believe it would be best if she left the base to see what else the world has to offer. She will be able to help us with missions sooner if she grows used to the outside world."
Gibeon hummed, not entirely satisfied with that answer, though Opal couldn't even begin to figure out why he didn't like it. "I see." Silence fell heavy and suffocating over Opal for the next few seconds. She was beginning to fear Gibeon was going to dismiss her and reject her request, but he didn't give her the time to let terror sink in. "Then you have a mission. You two are to target the Rising Volt Tacklers. They have been digging too deep into the business of the Explorers as of late."
Opal's eyes went wide. The Rising Volt Tacklers... That was the group responsible for her memory loss. That was what Spinel had told her, and she had no reason to doubt him. That group had been the reason for her losing so much of herself so completely... And now, Opal was going to have to face them again. She should have known something like this was coming eventually, but she was still shocked to hear Gibeon instruct her to go after them so calmly when she didn't feel calm at all.
Amethio was every bit as shocked, and he had to restrain himself to ensure he didn't step forward and earn too much attention. "Are you certain that is a good idea?"
"You had best not doubt your orders," Hamber cautioned, and Amethio clamped his jaw shut in silence. "If this is what you have been told to do, then it is what you should do."
"I..." A million thoughts streaked through Amethio's head, but he didn't allow himself to voice any of them. After fighting more wars than he could ever express in words, he bowed his head in apology. "My apologies. I will stand by Opal in carrying out this mission."
"Good," Gibeon said, his voice booming all too loudly through the room. Suddenly, Opal felt trapped in a way she couldn't put to words despite having more than enough space to breathe. She yearned to take Amethio's hand in her own, to feel safe just by standing beside him, but Opal didn't close the distance. Instead, she pressed her hands together in front of her to simulate the feeling of not being alone. She shouldn't have been shocked when it didn't work, but it stung at her heart anyway. "You are dismissed."
Opal finally felt herself breathe again when the silhouette of Gibeon vanished just as quickly as it had appeared. If she had to guess, she would have said that Gibeon would be hosting another meeting with the higher-ranking members of the Explorers after Opal left. She wasn't supposed to be there, and she could feel it deep in her aching chest. She was too relieved to be offended. She wanted to get as far as she could from the meeting room even if it made her look horribly rude.
"Good luck," Spinel called out, craning his head back so he was able to see Opal around all of the people standing in between them. "You're certainly going to need it if this battle goes south."
Opal felt fear rush cold and sudden through her veins. Before she had the chance to express it though, Coral let out a frustrated sigh. "Why do they get to go out?" she asked loudly. "It's been too long since I was last sent out on a mission. What makes them so special?"
"Master Gibeon has a reason for everything he instructs of us," Agate said, her voice frighteningly even in the face of the noise all around her. "We must simply follow orders and wait to see where it leads us."
Opal didn't stick around to hear the rest of the conversation. Hamber opened the door to the meeting room, and Opal took that as her cue to start stumbling away. The light of the hallway was disorienting and bright, and it nearly sent Opal crashing to the ground. She didn't understand any of this. Why was she being sent on a mission to fight the Rising Volt Tacklers? They were the ones responsible for her memory loss. Facing them could have been dangerous for her, and it could have pushed some of her memories free if she wasn't careful.
Opal was distantly aware of Amethio coming to stand just beside her, and that was the only cue she needed to start speaking. "I don't understand," Opal choked out. "Why am I being sent out on a mission like this? The last time I saw the Rising Volt Tacklers, they..." She wanted to say that they had caused a severe negative reaction both inside and outside of her head, but Opal couldn't say if she knew that was true. She had started to spiral long before the Rising Volt Tacklers showed up. Their attack just made it worse, and Opal was still feeling overwhelmed by it all this time later.
"I'm not entirely sure," Amethio admitted with a shake of his head. "But I have no doubt there is a reason for this. You wouldn't be sent out on a job like this without the others thinking it was for the best."
"But..." Opal wanted to argue that she didn't think any of this was a good idea. She had been thinking about leaving the base, but she had been under the impression that it would only be under safe circumstances. She supposed there wasn't really anything safe about her situation, but going off to face the Rising Volt Tacklers directly... That was a risk unlike anything Opal was used to. It was too much for her to think about, much less to actually have to face.
"Spinel said he was going to talk to the other administrators about helping you to leave the base as soon as possible," Amethio remarked. "I ran into him in the hallway the other day. I suppose this is what he decided to do with that... Though I don't understand what could have motivated something like this either."
Opal nodded slowly. She didn't like the idea that Spinel had been the one to plan all of this. She still felt so horrible around him. Opal knew she was too harsh to him, but she couldn't seem to convince her brain to change its mind. Spinel was dangerous to her, or so her mind wanted to tell her. Why was Spinel such a threat in her mind? Opal wasn't sure, but she knew that she had an awful feeling about him encouraging her to go and face the ones who had caused her amnesia in the first place.
Just saying the name of that group--the Rising Volt Tacklers--felt wrong. It made something in the back of her head itch, and the uncomfortable sensation spread throughout her skull like it was trying to take her over completely. She knew more about that group than she had thought. She must have known a lot before she lost her memories. Opal didn't know what the encounter with them had entailed, but she knew it must have been bad. Why else would her mind be fighting her so hard when she thought about them for longer than a few seconds?
"We should go get ready for the mission," Amethio suggested. He started back toward Opal's room, but when she didn't move immediately, he paused. Amethio turned to face Opal, and he offered her a small, fragile smile. "Maybe we can get Sprigatito something while we're out. I'm sure she would enjoy it."
Sprigatito meowed excitedly from her place beside Opal. The cat's noises pulled Opal's attention to the floor, and Opal scooped her partner up into her arms. "I know she'd love that," Opal beamed. If she was being honest though, she would love it just as much. Sprigatito deserved to be pampered, especially since she wasn't allowed to leave the base either. Opal could tell her partner was growing stir crazy from having to stay indoors all the time. Of course a Grass type Pokémon would get tired of having to stay away from plants due to the instructions of humans. Leaving the base would be good for her. Opal wasn't the only one who was going to enjoy it.
And Opal was determined to find a way to enjoy it. She was worried about where all of this was going to lead, but she knew it would be alright. She had made it this far, and she was going to make the most of it. Maybe she would have to face the people who had taken her memories, but that was a concern for another time. Opal had been thinking about leaving the base ever since she last returned, and she knew it would be nice. She was determined to have as much fun as she could. The threat of danger lurked around the corner, but Opal refused to let her paranoia keep her from enjoying life. She deserved better.
She wished she knew how to make herself believe it as much as she wanted to.
~~~~~
Dot really hoped at least part of this was working.
Over the last few days, they had been working overtime on their videos as Nidothing. Every moment that wasn't spent eating or sleeping was spent working on the videos so that Dot could get as many of them out as soon as possible. Even when Dot was forced to take a break to eat, they were thinking about it. They had to speed up their video production process after being forced to pause it back when Liko went missing. If they weren't making any progress in finding her on their own, then Dot was just going to have to try something else.
Dot knew that their audience with their Nidothing videos wasn't there to hear them talk about their missing friend. Even so, Dot couldn't bring themself to care. Their audience had been loyal to them before, and they needed everyone to hold true to that promise for a little while longer. If anyone would be able to help them find Liko, then Dot had to try and reach them. For a while, they had been tacking on brief explanations at the end of their videos to say that the search for SprigatitoLove was still on, and there was a prize for whoever managed to find her. Now, Dot just had to add a bit more intensity to it. All new videos would lay on the pressure to try and get at least one person to come forward with information. There had to be somebody out there who would reveal the truth.
Dot knew the Explorers probably weren't going to do anything on their own. If Liko truly was with the Explorers--which it was seeming like she was--then Dot was going to have to get a bit creative to get past them. They were fine with that though. The Explorers couldn't have been perfect in looking after Liko. There must have been someone who knew something outside of the organization. Maybe Dot's videos would inspire confidence in someone to get them to come forward. It was all they could really ask for at this point, and they were going to keep pushing for it with everything they had.
Dot dragged one of their newly-completed videos into the uploader online, and they sat back in their seat while they waited for the video to finish processing. While they were waiting though, there was something else they could do: search their comments and messages for any hints about what had happened to Liko. They had done a few videos with the ending message about SprigatitoLove, and surely at least one person would have had to come forward with something by now... Or so Dot was hoping. They had been thinking that for ages, but it never seemed to lead where they were hoping it would. Maybe they were getting impatient. It was difficult to say for sure, and Dot didn't think they cared enough to figure out how they were actually meant to handle all of this. Nothing about this situation was normal, and Dot was fine to push a bit more than they would have otherwise to accommodate for it.
Dot spent the entire time the video was processing searching for any signs of something new. They shouldn't have been surprised when they came up short and found nothing of note. Of course there was nothing new. They checked for anything new every time they woke up in the morning, and if there hadn't been anything new that morning, then there probably wasn't anything around the middle of the morning either. It was frustrating, but it was true whether Dot wanted to admit it or not.
As long as they weren't having any luck in the video department though, Dot was going to have to do something else. They were filled with anxious energy now, and they had to find a way to get it out of their body. If they just sat with it, then they were going to end up in an even worse mood, and Dot really didn't want to push the limits of that any harder than they already had.
Dot swung their legs over the side of their seat and pushed themself to their feet. They scooped Quaxly into their arm on their way toward the door, and he gladly settled into place in their grasp. "Alright, Quaxly," Dot murmured. "Let's go see if we can find her." Dot already knew it wasn't going to be that simple. If Liko was going to be found by just searching the streets, then she would have been already. Still, Dot couldn't just sit there, and this felt like the only thing they could do now. If it was even slightly productive, then Dot was fine with committing to it. That felt like all they had left.
Dot knew that Murdock wasn't going to like it if they went out on their own though. He had been trying to hide the full weight of his fears from Dot, but he didn't exactly succeed in it most of the time. Murdock was afraid of the possibility that Dot could have been taken next even though they both knew there was no reason for the Explorers to go after Dot. The Explorers had been targeting Liko for a while before they decided to strike, so that made sense. Dot hadn't ever been on their radar though. They were probably safe from anything bad that could have happened... Or so Dot was trying to tell themself. They couldn't give in and let their fears control them. Murdock's paranoia was a lot to handle sometimes, and Dot wasn't in the mood to hear him ramble to them about safety. Dot knew all about safety and what it meant to be in a bad situation. It was practically all they had been able to think about over the course of the last few weeks since Liko's disappearance.
Dot had been planning to slip out of the airship before anyone else could see them, but they failed just before they could reach the exit of the Brave Olivine. The person they ran into wasn't Murdock though. Instead, it was Roy. He was speaking with Fuecoco and Wattrel, though Dot couldn't quite make out the exact words he was speaking. Dot had heard that Fuecoco and Wattrel didn't get along as well as they could have, and Roy was no doubt trying to play mediator for yet another argument that had broken out between the two Pokémon. Dot was glad Roy had the patience to look after something like that right now. Dot probably could have lost their mind if they had to focus on something as petty as Wattrel's jealousy when they were already forced to think about so much to do with Liko's disappearance.
Roy heard Dot coming when he finally managed to convince Wattrel to calm down, and he let out a sigh as he turned to face them. He smiled at the sight of her, and he waved one arm high above his head even though there was no way he hadn't already gotten their attention. "Hey, Dot!" Roy called out. Roy wasted no time in darting over to Dot, sliding against the ground to stop his sprint just beside them. "What are you up to?"
"I'm going out to search for Liko," Dot explained. "I don't know how much it's going to help, but I can't just stand around here and do nothing. If there's something I can do, then I have to try."
"Can I come with you?" Roy pressed, his eyes going wide. "I've been training with Wattrel and Fuecoco all day, but I get the feeling they could use a break." He snuck in a glance at his two Pokémon, and Dot noticed that Wattrel was glaring at Fuecoco. Granted, Wattrel's default state seemed to be glaring at Fuecoco, but it was still understandable why Roy wanted to take this cue to take a break.
Dot nodded after only a moment. "Alright." They didn't know Roy all that well, but there was no harm in having someone else around. Besides, if Roy was with Dot, then that would give something else for Dot to focus on than just the self-hatred that had fed their every thought since Liko went missing. Roy liked to talk, and while it could be overwhelming, it would be a perfect way for Dot to get their head out of everything they were most afraid of.
"Thanks, Dot," Roy smiled, and Dot wondered how he could grin so widely when something awful was unfolding around them. Dot wanted to hide in their room all day every day, and the only thing that motivated them to leave was the knowledge that Liko needed them. They couldn't be asked to leave their room for most things, but Liko... Liko was different. Liko was special. Liko was everything, and she...
And she was gone.
Dot fought the thought away the best they could, squaring their shoulders and trying to focus. "We're going to Levincia," they explained. They didn't think any other clues or details would have come to light since they were last in the area of Levincia, but Dot had to do something. If it would get them out of their own head, then it would be worth it.
"You've got it," Roy nodded. He gestured for Wattrel and Fuecoco to follow him, and the two Pokémon gladly separated to trail after him. If nothing else, Wattrel pulled away from Fuecoco to fly a short distance above Roy, and Fuecoco waddled along at the same slow pace he always did.
Dot squeezed Quaxly where the small duck was perched in their arms. They really hoped all of this would amount to something. Dot didn't know if it would, but this was the only thing they could place their faith in anymore. Only time would be able to say for sure if it led anywhere, but Dot had to hope.
If not for hope, then all of them would fall apart entirely, and Dot knew that was the one thing they couldn't allow to happen.
~~~~~
Opal didn't know why they were being told to do this.
She and Amethio had left the Explorers' base behind at Gibeon's instruction, and now, they were in Levincia. Their mission involved them targeting the Brave Olivine, the Rising Volt Tacklers' airship. Their job was to make sure it stayed grounded and didn't stand a chance of flying any time soon. The ship was supposedly docked somewhere just outside the city, and Opal and Amethio were going to have to find it.
Opal didn't think that destroying the Brave Olivine--or even just damaging it--was going to be possible for her at all. Opal's only partner Pokémon was a Sprigatito, and even if the grass cat had the mightiest Leafage in all of Paldea, it wasn't going to be enough to destroy a massive airship. Not even Ceruledge would be able to deal significant damage to the airship, and Amethio's partner was far stronger than Sprigatito.
Opal was suddenly overly aware of the fact that she hadn't received any formal training about how to fight. If she had, it had been long before she lost her memories. Opal hadn't been taught how to fight after she was brought back to the Explorers, and she didn't know how she was supposed to handle herself in a fight like this. Everything was just too much. It made her head hurt, and trying to push her mind in the direction of the Brave Olivine airship specifically only made her migraine worse.
That was another thing Opal had learned: her headaches could be vicious, and they were striking hardest right now. When she thought too hard about everything with the Rising Volt Tacklers, Opal felt like the world was going to cave in around her. The world seemed to spin, and she couldn't bring it to concentration and focus no matter how hard she tried. Everything was too much...
But Opal couldn't let it overwhelm her. She had to stand up tall and keep herself focused. She was there on a mission, and she had to see it through for the sake of the Explorers. This was a test. She knew it had to be. Opal couldn't fail after everything the Explorers had done for the greater good of the organization that had given her a second chance. Opal had made it this far, and she couldn't let her fear hold her back now.
"Are you nervous?"
Opal looked over to find Amethio standing beside her, his face set in stony determination just as hers was. Her view of him was slightly pinched because of her mask narrowing her field of vision, but Opal could see him well enough. "A little," Opal admitted. "I don't know how we're supposed to ground an entire airship. We would need an absolutely massive Pokémon if we were going to deal significant damage to it."
"We don't necessarily have to destroy the airship as a whole," Amethio pointed out. "It might be more effective to push in another direction to make sure it stays grounded for as long as possible. We could hit a particularly weak point, or we could distract them in another way. There are multiple methods to keep the airship from taking off, and that includes keeping the Rising Volt Tacklers busy in other ways."
Opal nodded her understanding, but the anxiety in her chest refused to fade. "It still feels strange to me," she murmured. "I don't have any combat training. What do they think I'm going to be able to do?"
Amethio remained quiet for a long moment before he shook his head stiffly. "It's a test," he told her. "The administrators want to know if we're going to fail the mission they have set out for us or not. We need to prove our worth. We can't let them down."
Opal felt her own stubborn determination refine itself in her heart. She was anxious and unsure of what all of this was going to lead to, but she would be alright. She would find a way to end all of this alongside Amethio. "You're right," Opal agreed. She took in a slow breath before letting it out again, the air brushing against the lower segments of her mask. "Let's go. We'll have to look around the city if we're going to find them and keep them from taking off. We can't fail now."
Amethio nodded, though his eyes still seemed distant and glazed over. He and Opal were growing closer, and he finally felt comfortable enough to talk to her about his issues, but there was still a slight wall between them. Amethio was her protector, and in times like these, it felt like he was taking it a bit too seriously. Opal was glad he was there, but she hoped she could close that distance between them soon.
But there was no time to think about it now. Opal let out a slow breath and followed Amethio through the streets of Levincia. If this mission was a test, then she was going to make the most of it and prove herself to the Explorers. Opal couldn't fail the group that had given her a second chance. She couldn't fail Amethio either.
If that meant facing the Rising Volt Tacklers, then so be it. Opal couldn't back down now.
Even if her head ached like she was being hit with a hammer whenever she thought about it.
~~~~~
Roy didn't know why he expected anything to change today.
He had wanted to go out and search for Liko in Levincia out of the hope that maybe something would finally change and help him to bring her back home. If Dot was going out, then Roy was happy to join her. They needed to work together if they were going to find Liko, and Roy was more than happy to contribute however he could.
Still, it was getting harder for Roy to keep his hopes high. He wanted to think that all they really needed was one little nudge in the right direction to find Liko and bring her back... But if that little nudge hadn't happened yet, then what were the chances that it was ever going to happen? If the Explorers had Liko with them, then they were going to want to keep her hidden from the Rising Volt Tacklers. They had to know that Liko was going to fight to escape if she saw them again. Of course she wouldn't be allowed to roam the world on her own. That would lead to her wanting to make her way back to the Brave Olivine again. Liko had to be kept somewhere secret where she wouldn't be able to escape.
Roy wasn't going to give up on searching. He had to keep trying with everything he had. Liko needed him to keep searching for as long as he could. She wouldn't be brought back if Roy gave up entirely on finding her. Roy didn't know how much looking around Levincia for the tenth time was going to help with that, but it was all he could do. He needed to help her, and if she didn't know that it was help, then...
"Hey, you two!"
Friede's voice cut through Roy's thoughts, and he looked up to see Friede sitting atop Charizard. Friede had taken the leading position in the active part of the search, going out nearly every day to see if he could find something new to lead Liko back to the airship. He hadn't been successful yet, but that never stopped him from pushing. His optimism was everything Roy thought he needed to be, and Roy wished he wasn't struggling so much to emulate it.
Dot wasted no time in getting right to the point as Friede settled down on the ground beside the two teens. "Any luck?" Dot asked, her frown intense.
For a split second, Roy thought that maybe Friede would nod. Maybe this would be the moment everything fell into place the way it should have from the start. Maybe this was the beginning of the end of this time of despair. Maybe this was the moment Liko would return and finally find her way back home.
But Roy's hopes amounted to nothing just as he had known they would. Friede shook his head. "Nothing yet." Yet was the crucial word there. If they kept saying yet, then it made it feel inevitable that Liko would come back home. This was temporary, and it would come to an end when Liko was found and guided to the Brave Olivine once more. "How about you two?"
"We only just started," Dot replied, and Roy wondered just how much time had gone by. He felt like it had been an eternity, though he knew realistically that it hadn't even been a full afternoon. Everything about the world seemed to slow down with Liko gone, and Roy resented it more than he could ever put to words. "So we haven't found anything yet."
Friede hummed, and while he didn't say he was disappointed openly, Roy could see it clear as could be across his face. "We'll just have to keep looking," Friede concluded. "If you find anything, then you shouldn't investigate it on your own. You can call me or the others for help. I'm sure they'd be happy to come and help if you called for them."
Roy nodded, though he wasn't as sure. He thought the others would be more than happy to help, yes, but he was anxious about what it would mean to pull them out of the Brave Olivine and into the rest of the world. They had all been struggling for a long time, and Roy wished he knew what he could do to help them. Everything was just too much, and Roy didn't know how he could find stability in the face of it all.
Friede took off a moment later, and Roy watched him disappear into the sky and around the towering figure of another building. Dot nudged Roy in the side when she realized just how dazed he looked, and Roy turned to face her in an instant. "Come on," Dot encouraged. "We should keep searching."
Roy nodded, and he trailed off after Dot with a muted frown. He didn't know if any of this was going to amount to anything, but he had to try and push for something to change. If this would get him out of his head and focused on finding Liko, then he was going to do it. He owed it to Liko and everyone else who was suffering now.
If Roy was able to find her, then maybe he would be able to alleviate the guilt in his chest. Roy doubted it would be that simple, but it was the only salvation he could think of reaching for, so he had to reach for it. That was all he felt he had left.
~~~~~
Opal couldn't help but stare at them.
Three people had gathered in one of the streets of Levincia: two teens and a man wearing yellow. She recognized the man in yellow as the one she had seen during the battle outside the bookstore. Back then, he had been little more than a blur out of the corner of her eye, but Opal still knew him well. He was dangerous, and Spinel had told her that plainly.
He was the leader of the Rising Volt Tacklers, Opal knew instinctively. He was the one responsible for the group that had erased her memories. That man was partially involved with Opal's current despair and grief.
Amethio's eyes narrowed with tension at the sight of the man in yellow and the two teens beside him. "Three of them are here in the city," Amethio murmured. "It would be simpler if we had Zirc and Onia here with us, but..." Zirc and Onia had been sent out on another mission that would keep them away from Amethio's side right when Amethio and Opal needed them now. It almost felt too perfect in how frustrating it was. Opal and Amethio were going to have to handle the Rising Volt Tacklers on their own, and Zirc and Onia would not be there to help them through it.
Though if Opal was being honest, she wasn't all that worried about Amethio in this fight. He would be able to handle any challenges that came his direction. He was a powerful combatant, and Ceruledge was strong enough to face the Rising Volt Tacklers without any issues. The problem was going to come from keeping Opal safe during the battle. She was nowhere near as strong as him, and she knew that she was going to struggle if she had to fight alongside Sprigatito. Her partner had a stronger Leafage than average, or so she had been told a handful of times, but what was that going to do in a fight like this? The man in yellow from the Rising Volt Tacklers was strong, and he would be a difficult opponent. That didn't even begin to factor in the other two who were with him. Opal was going to put herself and Amethio at a distinct disadvantage. What was the point of her even being there if she was only going to hold him back in the long run?
No... She couldn't think like that. Opal had been assigned to this mission because she had to prove herself to the Explorers, and she wasn't going to back down simply because the battle was going to be challenging. She was there for a reason, and Opal refused to let anyone down. Even if she was dead weight, Opal was going to fight however she could. She would make herself useful in whatever little ways she could. It wasn't going to be easy, but that was fine with her. She would be fine. She had to be.
The man in yellow was long gone by the time Opal pulled herself out of her thoughts, and she focused on the remaining two teens at the center of the street. Her head hurt when she looked at them, but her eyes concentrated a bit more on the boy out of the two. His hair was dark with a tuft of red that peered out beneath his hat at the front. Opal couldn't help but feel like he was familiar to her somehow. Had the two of them met at some point before she lost her memories?
No... There was more to it than that. Opal would have had to have met the Rising Volt Tacklers before she lost her memories. They were the reason she had lost everything to begin with. When she looked at the boy with red hair though, Opal felt like there was much more to the situation. She hadn't just met him once or twice. The two of them had known each other, and if she had to guess, it would have been in a deep and important way.
Why would that be the case though? How could Opal have such a deep connection to the people who had been responsible for her losing her memories? Why in the world was there so much pressure in the back of her mind when she thought about them? She was missing out on something. Opal was sure of that much... But the rest of the details refused to come to the surface. She reached for them through a thick ichor of gray, but it wasn't enough. Nothing ever felt like enough. She was failing in every way she could have ever imagined, and all she could do was sit there and let her guilt and misery wash over her.
Opal only snapped out of her thoughts when she heard a quacking noise from nearby. She blinked back into awareness to see that the blue and white duck Pokémon in the teen girl's arms in the street had jumped to the ground. The Pokémon--Quaxly, Opal's mind supplied--was quacking very loudly to try and get the attention of the two teens. It took Opal an extra moment to realize that Quaxly was trying to shout for attention because of her. Quaxly had spotted her and Amethio watching them, and he was not happy about it in the slightest.
"I suppose that takes stealth out of the equation," Amethio murmured. He reached for Ceruledge's Pokéball, but he didn't toss his partner out just yet. Instead, he glanced down at Opal, his eyes narrowed with determination. "Stay out of the battle for as long as you can. I don't want you to put yourself in any unnecessary danger."
Opal wanted to protest the point, but she didn't get the chance to even muster her words together. Amethio had already stepped away from the corner they had been hiding behind, and Opal was left reaching one fumbling hand after his back. The teens in the street looked at Amethio with rage in their hearts and their eyes, and Opal's chest went tight. The Rising Volt Tacklers didn't like Amethio at all. She supposed that made sense in a way. What reason did any one of them have to like one another when they were supposed to be enemies? Their history ran deep, or so Opal had been told. She was fooling herself if she thought there was even the slightest chance she would be met warmly in a fight like this.
"Amethio!" the boy with red hair called out, and Opal found herself hiding behind the corner a little bit more. She wasn't sure if anyone had noticed she was there yet, but she didn't want to know either. She was going to be alright if she just stayed there and waited for Amethio to give her the signal to fight. Opal wouldn't stay out of the battle permanently, but she was going to be patient until it was the right time for her to jump in. "Where's Liko? You have her with the rest of the Explorers, don't you?"
Liko?
Opal blinked once and then twice, but the grounding motion didn't seem to do enough to drag her back into her body. That name... It felt familiar to her in a way that nothing else could ever compare to. She tried to repeat the name, but her tongue suddenly felt like cotton. Every piece of her body felt like it was on fire, as if someone had spread gas across her skin and then grabbed a lighter. But why would she have a reaction like that? She didn't think she had ever heard of the name Liko before...
But clearly she must have. There was no other reason she would be having a reaction like this to someone just saying a name. Liko had once meant something to her, but Opal couldn't even begin to describe what it could have indicated. The world felt like it was too much for her to bear. Her head had started to pound, and Opal found herself grabbing at it. She didn't even feel it when she began to dig her fingernails into her temples. The pain did nothing to pull her back into her own skin. Nothing could save her now, and she hated it more than anything.
Nearby, the battle against the Rising Volt Tacklers began, and Opal barely even noticed. All she could focus on was the foreign echo of the name Liko in her mind. Nothing else would ever matter quite as much, and Opal hated it deeply.
~~~~~
Roy really shouldn't have been surprised to see Amethio.
Out of all the Explorers, Amethio had always been the greatest obstacle to the Rising Volt Tacklers. That had been true even before Roy joined up with the rest of the crew on the Brave Olivine. It remained true now too, and Roy hated it more than anything. He only took a moment to jump into action, his rage taking him over even though he knew he should have at least tried to stay calm. "Amethio! Where's Liko? You have her with the rest of the Explorers, don't you?"
Amethio did not rise to the bait, instead wearing the same neutral expression as always. "That is none of your concern," he said simply as Ceruledge fell into place just beside him. "I would ask that you stop this and stay out of the Explorers' way going forward. It will make things much simpler for you."
"As if we'd stop when we know that you have Liko!" Dot fired back. She threw one arm forward in a grand flourish, and Quaxly responded accordingly. "Quaxly, use Water Gun!"
Quaxly was more than happy to respond to Dot's command, sending out a thin stream of water at Ceruledge. The deep indigo Pokémon sunk into a defensive stance to turn the attack back, throwing up his blades to try and deflect it. Even so, the water struck its target, and Ceruledge looked back at Amethio to see if it was alright with him to take this battle to its natural conclusion. Amethio nodded, and Ceruledge immediately prepared for the battle to come.
Roy didn't give Ceruledge the chance to attack first though, instead, pointing ahead with a glare in his eyes. "Fuecoco, use Ember!" The small red Pokémon responded accordingly, sending out a blast of fire that struck Ceruledge in the chest. The attack did little damage, but it kept Ceruledge distracted long enough for Roy to reach for his Rotom phone. He quickly sent out a distress message to Friede, knowing that it would be best if he had reinforcements coming his direction. Roy had been getting stronger through his regular training sessions with Wattrel and Fuecoco, but he knew that he still stood very little chance against Amethio. Dot had very little combat experience too, even less than Roy, and Roy wasn't about to take any chances when this could have been their best chance to learn about what had happened to Liko.
Amethio's eyes narrowed at Roy and Dot, and he took a step back so he was out of the direct line of fire. "Ceruledge, use Psycho Cut." He didn't seem all that focused on Roy and Dot, instead distracted with something over his shoulder. Roy didn't get the chance to figure out what it was before the attack from Ceruledge came barreling toward him.
"Dodge it!" Roy exclaimed, and Dot gave a similar command a short distance away. Fuecoco and Quaxly both dove out of the way of the coming attacks, leaving Ceruledge's blast to slam into the sidewalk beneath them. The people in the immediate area had scattered by now, desperate to get out of the way of the battle that had broken out between Amethio, Roy, and Dot.
"Why are you here?" Dot demanded. "What did you do with Liko?"
Amethio once again did not respond, instead letting his eyes fall shut. There was a strange tension behind his eyes, and he shook his head. "Ceruledge, use Psycho Cut." Amethio's partner dove into action at that command, and Dot and Roy were forced to tell their Pokémon to get out of the way once more.
"Get away from it!" Roy cried out, and Fuecoco moved to swerve out of the way... But speed had never been Fuecoco's strong suit, and it showed clearly with Ceruledge's attack streaking through the air toward him. Fuecoco barely managed to avoid the full force of the attack, but he still wound up being clipped in the side by the slash from Ceruledge.
Quaxly managed to avoid the attack, but that just left him in the perfect position to be targeted by Ceruledge's next attack. Ceruledge ran after Quaxly directly, slashing his blades down to catch the duck in the chest. Quaxly cried out in pain and was sent sprawling back from the hit. He hit the ground hard, left to groan as he tried to push himself to his feet.
"Quaxly!" Dot yelled, but the duck Pokémon refused to be taken out of the battle just yet. Quaxly pushed himself back up as much as he could, but his body was shaking from the hit he had sustained, and he was clearly straining with the force of the hit.
Fuecoco had managed to recover as much as he could by now, and Roy pointed ahead at Ceruledge. "Fuecoco, use Stomping Tantrum!" Fuecoco reacted immediately, stomping and jumping on the spot to create jagged stones of the ground beneath his feet. Daggers of rock soared toward Ceruledge, ready to tear him apart--
"Ceruledge, stop it!" Amethio instructed, and Ceruledge slashed his blades across the stones to shatter them. As soon as the rocks had been destroyed, Ceruledge rushed forward once again, moving to strike at Fuecoco.
Before Roy could tell his partner to avoid the attack, a flash of red entered his periphery, and Charizard deflected the attack from Ceruledge. Charizard reared his head back and sent out a blast of flames, and Ceruledge was forced on the defensive to keep from being consumed by the fire entirely.
Friede quickly dismounted from Charizard before he traded his active Pokémon out to be Cap. Charizard retreated into his Pokéball, and Cap landed on the ground with a glare in his eyes. "Are you alright?" Friede asked of Roy and Dot. "I'm glad I didn't make it too far away before you sent that message."
"We're alright," Roy assured Friede. He turned his attention back to Amethio, clenching his fingers into angry fists. "And it would go even better if Amethio told us what was going on with Liko!"
"I have nothing to say to you," Amethio told him simply. He was looking over his shoulder again at something waiting in the shadows, but Amethio tore his gaze away from the subject of his attention as soon as he was able to. "Ceruledge, use Night Slash!"
"Pikachu, use Thunderbolt!" Friede countered, and a streak of yellow lightning soared through the air toward Ceruledge's attack. The two blasts clashed fiercely in the air before exploding against one another, destroying the other hit before it could reach its target.
After the dust had cleared, Dot snarled under her breath. To say she was frustrated with the lack of progress and the lack of information about Liko was an understatement, and it was finally starting to boil over. "Quaxly, use Water Gun!" she instructed, and her partner gladly followed her command. A stream of water shot through the air, slamming into Ceruledge's chest. Since Ceruledge was still distracted by the attack Friede had sent out, he was sent sliding backward across the pavement.
Roy was ready to use this to turn the tides of the fight, and he pointed ahead at Ceruledge. "Fuecoco, use Stomping Tantrum!" Once again, Fuecoco gladly followed the instructions Roy had set out for him, jumping and stomping against the ground to create rocks that gladly rushed toward Ceruledge. Once again, Ceruledge was too distracted with the previous attack to turn the blow away, leading to the indigo Pokémon being struck directly in the chest by the daggers of stone.
Ceruledge staggered backward from the force of the attack, fighting to maintain his posture to the best of his ability. Amethio was fighting to keep his expression even across the field. He had thought this battle would be a relatively painless affair, but Friede was always intent on throwing a wrench in his plans. Roy and Dot were one thing, but Friede was another matter entirely, and Amethio could see his grip on the battle starting to slip.
But that would not last for long.
~~~~~
Opal had done little other than watch the battle unfold from the shadows. She was trying to keep herself hidden to make sure she didn't force Amethio to protect her. Opal was nowhere near strong enough to participate in a fight like this, and she was fully aware of it. The best she could do was bail him out of any trouble that may have come up, and now... Opal knew that was exactly what she needed to do.
The two other teens involved with the fight managed to put Ceruledge on his back foot through effective attacks, leaving Amethio at a clear disadvantage. Opal stood up in an instant, ignoring the way her heart raced in her chest and threatened to smother every bit of self-confidence she had ever forced herself to pull together. She wasn't going to let this be the end. Amethio couldn't lose as long as there was something she could do about it. Opal knew she wasn't the best at battling, but she had an idea, and she hoped with everything she had that it worked.
"Sprigatito, use Leafage!" Opal commanded, unsure of how loud her voice was because of the noisy racing of her heart in her own ears. She pointed ahead, and Sprigatito responded accordingly, letting out a loud meow and then releasing a barrage of leaves that streaked through the air.
The Leafage was every bit as impressive as Opal had been told it would be. She had heard many times that her partner's Leafage was stronger than average, and she could see it clear as could be now. The leaves from the attack spread out throughout the street, creating a massive fog that kept anyone from being able to see what was going on around them. Opal forced herself to push through it, darting over to Amethio's side. She grabbed at his wrist once she was close enough to do so, and she began to pull him away from the battle. "Come on!"
Amethio let Opal pull him backward, and when they were out of the range of the Leafage, he traded out Ceruledge for Corviknight as his active Pokémon. Opal wasted no time in hopping on Corviknight behind him, pulling Sprigatito up into her arms to make sure the cat was protected during their escape. Amethio directed the bird Pokémon to take off through the skies a moment later, leaving behind the battle as little more than a memory.
Opal knew she should have kept her eyes focused on the path ahead, but she couldn't help sneaking in a glance over her shoulder at the fighters on the ground. The Leafage was starting to clear, and she could see all three of the enemy combatants--the Rising Volt Tacklers--staring up at her in return. Opal could have sworn she locked eyes with one of them, but a strong wave of pain through her skull forced her to look away. She couldn't push her luck in looking at them too much after everything they had done to her. She knew that well. She needed to focus on the road ahead. She would be fine if she just kept her eyes on the future.
If only Opal could bring herself to believe that.
~~~~~
Friede swiped his arms wildly through the air in an attempt to clear away the Leafage that had filled the air. He hadn't even heard the command for a Pokémon to attack. He hadn't seen anybody or their partner Pokémon in the area. The only person who Friede had seen throughout the battle had been Amethio, and he was clearly long gone.
Friede looked up at the sky overhead, and he saw Amethio had taken to the sky alongside someone else. The other silhouette was unfamiliar to Friede, but he found himself staring after the unknown person anyway. Something about them felt off to him, but it was difficult to put a finger on why.
"Hey," Roy suddenly said, but Friede still did not tear his gaze away from the sky overhead. "That other person who was with Amethio... Do you think that was the same person who was with him during the battle at the bookstore?"
"It could have been," Dot commented with a frown. "But it's hard to say for sure. We didn't really get a good look at them during this fight or during the other one. All I can really say is that their clothing was a weird teal color."
Friede hummed at that, forcing himself to nod around the sudden dread that had come to rest in the center of his chest. "I hope it doesn't mean anything too bad," he admitted even though he was certain that ship had already more than sailed. This had to indicate something serious. Amethio had never attacked with anyone but Zirc and Onia in the past, but this person was very clearly not either one of them. It was someone else entirely, and Friede had no idea who it could have been or what any of it could have meant.
"We didn't learn anything new during this fight either," Roy sighed in disappointment. "I was really hoping this battle would be the one where we finally figured out what happened to Liko, but I guess that was asking for a little bit too much." He continued to look up at the sky overhead until well after Amethio had disappeared alongside his mysterious new partner in combat. Roy shook his head and turned to go back down the street in the opposite direction. "But I guess there's nothing we can do about it now. We should go back to the ship and see if any of the others have had luck in learning more."
Friede nodded, but he already knew that there would be no new information waiting for them at the end of this path. They would return to the Brave Olivine only to learn nothing about what had happened that day. The rest of the group would have found nothing that could help them, instead having spent the bulk of the day isolated and trying to not fall apart... But at this point, that ship had sailed and disappeared well beyond the horizon. They were all losing it, and this fight was just a symptom of the greater disease.
Friede wasn't going to let this be the end though. Liko was with the Explorers, and regardless of what it took, he was going to bring her back home. If he had to fight Amethio a million times over in order to do it, then he was willing to commit to that.
If it meant bringing Liko back, no price was too low for any of them.
Notes:
And there's the second battle in the books! Woohoo!
I don't have all that much to say about this chapter honestly. I'm still getting the hang of Pokémon battles since they're so different from every other kind of fight I've written up to this point. The last time I wrote something even remotely similar was during my Digimon Tri rewrite which was a long time ago, so this is a bit outside my comfort zone. I'm working on it though, and I hope to deliver on some great battles over the next few months too.
Aside from the fight though, there's not much to say about this chapter. I'm happy with how it turned out overall even though it took a bit more time to write because of the different battle system here compared to my normal stuff. I hope you all had fun with it too.
Next time, we'll press on with another story chapter. Until then, I hope you all enjoyed this chapter. Feedback is appreciated as always. Have a nice day, everyone!
-Digital
Chapter 9: An Escape is Drawing Near
Summary:
Opal begins to train so she can become a full member of the Explorers.
Chapter Text
All things considered, Opal thought she was handling this far better than she had expected to.
When she was first told she would be going out on a mission, she had been anxious about it. She wanted to prove herself and her worth to the Explorers, but she didn't know if she would be strong enough to actually do that. She didn't want anyone to think that she was deadweight who shouldn't be around. She would have done just about anything to prove that she had a right to be there, and Opal meant that from the bottom of her heart.
She had feared that her reaction to the battle was going to be every bit as bad to the first one she had seen. Then again, Opal supposed that hadn't really been her responding to the battle as much as it was her responding to other circumstances that made her life miserable. She had been disoriented during the fight at the bookstore because she saw that strange children's book that caught her by surprise and left her feeling dizzy. If not for that, then she would have been fine.
And this fight had proven that and then some. Opal couldn't say she was entirely happy with how she had handled herself since she hung back throughout most of the battle and let Amethio do the heavy lifting, but she was in a better place now than she had been previously. That had to be a victory in its own right. Opal didn't need to fear battles ruining her completely. As long as she wasn't exposed to something that would make her mind feel like it was trying to explode, she was going to be fine.
Opal still wished she had been able to do a little bit more though. The mission had been a test, and Opal was fully aware of that, but she felt like she had failed it. She could have done more to help Amethio during the battle, but she had failed at it because of how much was going on. Opal really didn't know all that much about combat, and even though she wanted to learn more, she knew she was going to need a bit more time before she was able to stand on her own in a future battle.
After the fight ended, Amethio took Opal back to the Explorers' base. It was hard to really say for sure if they had succeeded in their mission of distracting the Rising Volt Tacklers and keeping them in one spot for a while. They hadn't been able to go after the airship, but Amethio and Opal had succeeded in getting their minds off any ideas of travel for the afternoon. Maybe they would choose to stay in the area after the battle they had seen. That was the best outcome Opal could have asked for right now, though she supposed only time would be able to tell if that was actually what was going to happen.
Once she arrived at the base, Opal was taken to a meeting with Gibeon. Amethio was there by her side, and he thankfully handled as much of the talking as he was able to. They explained what happened--or rather, Amethio did while Opal nodded along every once in a while to prove that he was telling the truth--to Gibeon. Throughout the meeting, Gibeon was largely silent, listening along and not saying much. Opal only really felt like he talked when he was ready to dismiss them, and just like that, Opal and Amethio were sent back out into the rest of the base.
They decided to go back to Opal's room after the meeting. Hamber and Agate were supposed to come by soon to talk to them about what had happened during the battle and to assign them another mission... At least in theory. Opal didn't know if she was going to be given another mission after what had happened. She liked to think she was helping however she could, but it didn't feel like she was doing enough. Opal's fingers rubbed up against one another anxiously as she tried to keep herself composed. She had done everything she could, and she could only hope it would end up being enough in the eyes of the world.
Opal was only able to keep herself quiet for so long though, and she let out a sigh once she was seated on her bed. "I'm sorry for not being able to do more for you during the battle," she told Amethio. "I really wish I could have helped you out, but I just... I don't know enough about combat to be able to do much in a situation like this."
Amethio shook his head. "You have nothing to apologize for. We haven't been giving you much of a chance to improve your battling skills. I can only imagine Sprigatito is getting rusty because of the recovery period we've granted you too," he remarked. His gaze dropped to the cat Pokémon where she was sitting in Opal's arms, and Sprigatito meowed when she realized she was being talked about.
Opal wanted to believe that Amethio was right. Realistically, she knew that he had to be. Opal didn't know all that much about combat, and it was going to take her a while to find her footing with something she was so unfamiliar with. Opal wasn't sure if she had been much of a battler before she lost her memories, but if she had battled, then she certainly hadn't been all that good at it. There was no time to change that quite like the present, Opal supposed, but she didn't know where she was supposed to start.
Opal decided to redirect her attention to petting at Sprigatito's head in an attempt to calm herself down. She wouldn't be able to make any progress as long as she was just tearing herself up for not being able to perform as well as she would have liked. Opal had done her best, and she was still learning. Amethio wouldn't have said that if he didn't mean it. She just needed a bit of time and practice, and she would be able to handle herself in a fight in no time. Opal could be patient long enough for her skills to catch up with where she needed to be.
Still, Opal didn't know where to start when it came to learning how to battle. It seemed to come so naturally and easily to everyone else, but she was struggling to keep up in any tiny way she could. Opal knew that everyone learned at their own pace and that there was no point in holding it against herself if she struggled with things like this... But it was hard to not hate herself for not being able to do more. The Explorers had given her a chance by protecting her until she was able to find herself again. She was still struggling to figure out who she had been before she lost her memories, and the Explorers were there to watch over her through it all. In return, Opal was struggling to handle any basic task she was given. What kind of thanks was she showing? How was she able to consider herself helpful at all when it seemed like she was failing at everything?
Sprigatito seemed to be able to sense that Opal was losing her confidence, and she began to rub against Opal's stomach with her head. Opal smiled and continued to pet her partner's head before stroking down her back too. Sprigatito was always there when she started to overthink things, and Opal found that having her partner around helped to pull her out of her spirals when they began to happen. She wouldn't have been able to calm down on her own, and Opal was glad Sprigatito was willing to be there for her when she needed it most. Opal felt silly for needing outside help for things like this too, but she knew there was nothing she could do to change it by just hating herself. People didn't change through hatred. Opal had to give herself the grace everyone else seemed more than fine with supplying to her. She may not have felt deserving of that peace, but Opal knew it was the only way for her to grow. She just had to be patient. Everything would work out the way it was meant to with time.
A knock at the door a moment later pulled Opal out of her thoughts. Her chest was suddenly tight, and she knew without needing to ask that it was not Zirc or Onia on the other side of the door. She knew their footfall patterns, and that didn't sound like either one of them. Amethio was the first one to move while Opal was too stunned to even think of standing, and he pulled the door open to reveal--
"Hamber," Amethio greeted, his voice soft and his eyes wide. Amethio bowed his head in respect as he took a step back and off to the side so as to not get in the way of his superior. Opal couldn't figure out if she should have stood or stayed seated, instead freezing up on the bed. She hadn't ever spoken with Hamber personally like this. Usually, all messages that had to be sent to her were filtered through Amethio first since he was in better contact with the other members of the Explorers. Opal was glad for that. She hadn't realized just how nervous she got at the idea of talking to the other Explorers until she was faced with Hamber.
"I come with a message from Master Gibeon," Hamber began. "He is aware of everything that happened during the previous battle, and he found Opal's performance to be lacking."
Opal's chest tightened. She had known that was coming. She had backed down the instant she was faced with any real danger, and Amethio had to do the heavy lifting for her. Opal had only really done enough to create a distraction for them to escape, and that wasn't worth all that much when their mission hadn't been to distract the enemy. They were supposed to deal significant damage to the Rising Volt Tacklers and their morale, and Opal had failed at that spectacularly. She should have known a reprimand was in order. It was the only way something like this could have ended.
"To that end, Master Gibeon has decided that Opal is to undergo intense combat training so that she can be brought out on missions in the future. The first session of training is set to start as soon as possible so that she is able to handle herself in a future battle." Even now, Hamber wasn't directly speaking to Opal. He was talking in general terms, and the fact that Opal was there to hear him refer to her through the lens of such distance was a coincidence more than anything else.
Opal nodded, relief washing over her all at once. She could have burst into tears from her joy to have not been punished for her failures. She had really thought she was in for at least a bit of reprimanding, but instead, she was just being given the chance to try again. She wasn't going to let it go either. "I... Thank you so much," Opal said, unable to hold back a relieved laugh that pushed its way out of the back of her throat. She knew it was entirely unprofessional and not something she could do a second time though, so she swallowed down any future noises with a shake of her head. "I honestly feared you were going to want to punish me for not doing a good enough job in the battle. I wouldn't blame you for that at all. I didn't do much of anything, and..." Opal trailed off when Sprigatito meowed in her arms again, and Opal realized her nerves were getting the better of her. She wasn't being punished. That was a good thing. She could sit with that happiness instead of letting it do anything to hurt her.
"Master Gibeon believes this is the best course of action. We would like for you to be able to fight one day, and the best way to make sure you are able to take to the battlefield is to train you as soon as possible," Hamber said, finally addressing Opal directly. "You will be released into other missions once you are ready. Other members of the Explorers will help to train you until you are prepared to handle major battles on your own."
Opal nodded, her throat stiff but refusing to let that stop her. "Thank you so much. I promise I won't let you down." She bowed her head much like how Amethio had a few seconds prior. It didn't feel like enough to express her relief and dedication though. Opal should have been on her knees thanking everyone for not punishing her for falling so short during the previous battle. Instead, she was being given a slap on the wrist and the resources she needed to improve. It was wonderful, and Opal had no idea if she would ever stop thanking the Explorers for their grace.
Hamber didn't seem particularly bothered by Opal's gratitude, and if he noticed the desperation in her eyes, he chose to not comment on it. Instead, he nodded to both her and Amethio before starting to make his way out of the room. Opal still felt like she was on the verge of tears, and she rubbed at her eyes with the sides of her hands once she was certain Hamber wasn't going to come back and see her doing anything too embarrassing. "I... I can't believe I'm being given another chance," Opal murmured to Amethio. "I really thought..."
Amethio shook his head. "The Explorers are strict, but I like to think the organization is far from being unreasonable. You need more guidance in learning how to fight, and the superiors here are more than happy to give you that chance." There was something almost hesitant about his tone, but he shoved it back into the jar it belonged in a moment later. "I would be happy to help you train as well. I did not want to push you too hard before you were ready after you woke up, but... I think now is as good a time as any for me to offer to help you to get stronger."
"I would really appreciate that," Opal smiled. This wouldn't just be a chance for her to train and improve her skills in combat. She would also be able to talk with Amethio and get to know him a bit better. They had grown closer over the course of the last few days, but Opal still yearned for something a little bit more. Maybe all they needed was the right excuse to spend time together, and if Amethio was training Opal, then she would have all the time she could have wanted to talk to him. They could be friends in the ways they both needed to be. It was an intoxicating thought, and somehow, that was even more thrilling than the relief that came with not being issued a severe punishment for her failures in the last battle.
Amethio still seemed somewhat distant after he spoke those words though, and Opal could see it in his eyes. He had started to hide less around her, but there were still moments where he obscured his true feelings, and this was certainly one of them. The corners of Opal's lips tilted overboard into a frown. "What's wrong?"
Amethio seemed surprised that Opal was calling him out on it. He seemed to remember a moment later that he had agreed to be more honest with her going forward, but it came a bit later than Opal would have liked. "I... I don't know if this is the best idea," Amethio finally confessed. "You froze up during the battle, and I'm not sure if forcing you to push yourself any harder than you already have is going to help much. It's dangerous to throw you into combat when there's a chance that you could freeze and not be able to fight back."
Opal shook her head, clenching her fingers into tight fists that dyed her knuckles white. "I need to do what I can to help," she insisted. "I'm going to be fine. I just need a bit of guidance in the right direction. You're right. It could be dangerous if I can't learn how to get stronger... So I'm just going to have to grow as strong as I possibly can. I'm going to give it my all. You and the rest of the Explorers are giving me a massive chance. You saved me after I lost my memories. The least I can do is try to make this worthwhile for you. I promise you that saving me wasn't a mistake. I'm going to give it my all to prove that."
Amethio's eyes grew distant and glassy, and Opal could see that he was far from her bedroom for a few echoing seconds. Amethio pressed his eyes shut, and a moment later, he shoved all of that fear back into the pit of his stomach were it belonged. "I understand," he settled on saying. He knew he wouldn't be able to protest the point because he knew Opal was following in his lead. Amethio had expressed his dedication to the Explorers many times before, and he believed from the bottom of his heart that it was the best choice he could have possibly made. He wanted to protect the Explorers and the wellbeing of the organization, and he was willing to push himself beyond his limits to reach that goal. What right did he have to turn Opal down when she was doing the same thing as him? She had learned from the best, and there was no one she would have rather followed in the footsteps of these days.
Amethio let out a slow breath, forcing himself to concentrate despite the distance that had risen across his eyes. "We should go to the training room," he suggested. "I can only assume Hamber meant that he wanted you to start training as soon as possible. I'm sure at least someone is there waiting for you. It would be best if we didn't keep them waiting." He turned toward the door, opening it for Opal but not turning to face her properly. She walked through the door with a nod of thanks in his direction, wishing he was willing to meet her eyes. Even though they had talked everything out, he still didn't seem to trust her as much as he could have. There was always something else on his mind, and Opal could see it. She wanted to know everything about Amethio more than anything, but he seemed to fear that more than anything. It was a strange push and pull, and Opal yearned for it to end even though she knew there was little she could do to stop it.
Amethio remained silent all throughout the journey to the training room. Opal trailed behind him by a few steps, going back and forth between hiding in his shadow and standing tall and proud on her own. Her heartbeat in her ears was stiflingly loud, and Opal wanted to ask Amethio for something to break through the cacophony of noise. Maybe it was a selfish request to make, but Opal knew that she was nothing if not selfish. Amethio had every right to keep his secrets if he so chose, and Opal couldn't force him to talk about something before he was ready. Opal couldn't hate him or anyone else in the Explorers for wanting to hide things from her. They had that choice to make, and Opal was in no position to pressure them one way or another.
But no one made Opal feel safe quite like Amethio. They understood each other more than anything, and even as they were getting closer, it felt like he was still trying to push her away. Opal was chasing after him everywhere he went, and yet, Amethio pushed one hand out to make sure she was never able to properly touch his heart. Opal wasn't going to give up on him or everything he had done for her. He may have wanted her to, but Opal refused to back down. It was the least she could do for him. He deserved all the care she could give to him, and Opal wanted to press it into his hands regardless of if he wanted it or not.
The distant sound of voices pulled Opal out of her thoughts, and her mind gladly left behind the loud beating of her heart the instant she was given the chance. Her ear pulled itself out of her chest to focus instead on the clamor of conversation. Opal couldn't make out the words being spoken, but she could still recognize the voices. One of them belonged to Coral, and she was the loudest person in the room by far. The other voice was a low rumble, and Opal could only assume it was Onyx. She couldn't think of anyone else who it could have been. Opal knew Coral's rampant energy could be overwhelming to a lot of the Explorers, but Onyx was always there by her side, though Opal couldn't say for certain if it was because of the commands of his superiors or something more. Opal only really knew the two of them from her periphery anyway... But maybe this would be the night to change all that.
When the doors slid open, Opal found that her assessment of the situation had been proven correct but also slightly wrong. Coral and Onyx were there just as she had expected, but a third party stood between them. Agate had given up entirely on playing the mediator to Coral's antics and Onyx's quiet murmurs, instead simply crossing her arms and staring at the space directly between them. Agate only spoke up when she noticed Opal and Amethio had entered the room. "Opal, Amethio," Agate greeted, her voice every bit as even as always. "I see Hamber told you of your jobs for the day."
Opal stood up as straight as she could, pulling Sprigatito closer to her chest. If her arms had been free, she would have pressed them by her sides to imitate the same pose Amethio used whenever his superiors spoke to him. He was the only example Opal had, and he was the perfect one to follow in every circumstance too. "Yes," Opal confirmed with a nod. "I was told to come here for a training session."
"You will be battling Onyx and then Coral," Agate said. Coral opened her mouth like she was going to protest and ask why she had to go second, but Agate silenced her with a piercing glance in her direction. Coral pressed her lips together into a thin line that quickly progressed into an angry frown. Agate didn't acknowledge it for any longer than was absolutely necessary and turned back to Opal a moment later. "Do everything you can to beat them both. I will be giving you advice to improve your skills."
"Of course," Opal nodded. She was beyond anxious about what was going to come, but she refused to let her fears hold her back now. She had fought to make it this far, and Opal was going to keep pushing to prove her worth to the Explorers. They had done so much for her, and Opal was ready to do what she could to pay it all back. Maybe it was too late for it to be anything of value, but she was willing to try anyway.
"You're going to be too easy," Coral complained even as she started to make her way off to the side of the training area so Onyx and Opal could begin their first match. "You don't know anything about fighting, and you'll go down in a few seconds."
Opal pressed her shoulders back in a show of confidence she didn't entirely believe in. She didn't know if she was ever going to trust her own skills the way she would have liked, but she didn't need to. She was willing to falsify it until she was able to make it real. "I won't disappoint you," Opal vowed. "I'm going to give it my all. If I'm not a battler worthy of your time today, then I'll do my best to make sure you're given a challenge one of these days. I'm going to keep fighting so I can get as strong as possible."
Coral seemed shocked by the earnest belief in Opal's eyes and she let out a sigh as she tucked her arms up behind her head. "Fine then. Do what you can to prove it. I'm not going to make this easy for you when it's my turn to fight. So get to it and start getting stronger already."
Opal nodded and turned her attention back to Onyx. He had called out his Garganacl, and both trainer and Pokémon were ready for the battle to come. Opal set Sprigatito down on the ground, and the grass cat sunk into an offensive position immediately. Opal didn't know much of what she was doing, but she trusted that she would be able to get stronger with a bit of pushing. She wasn't going to let her skills flicker and fade away before she had the chance to push forward and grow as powerful as possible. None of this would go to waste. Opal wasn't going to let it.
Agate held one hand out, her expression even. "Ready... Set... Battle!" She pulled her arm up high, signifying the beginning of the match.
Despite her fears, Opal found herself smiling. She was ready for this, and if she wasn't as ready as she thought, then she would find a way to make sure she was prepared soon enough. She would be worthy of the Explorers regardless of how long it took her to reach that point. She couldn't give up now. Too much was riding on her shoulders, and Opal wouldn't make anyone else carry the weight for her ever again.
~~~~~
Opal was better at battling than Amethio had expected.
She had certainly improved since their first few encounters together, though he supposed that was to be expected. Liko had been given a few weeks on the Brave Olivine before she was taken back to the Explorers, and in that time, she had clearly done her best to continue growing as strong as possible. Amethio was glad to see that she was not as weak as she once had been when he first met her, but at the same time, something about watching her battle was unsettling to him. He couldn't quite put a finger on how or why it left him feeling so strange, but he stared at her with a small frown as she fought with Onyx anyway.
Opal was already improving just from her and Sprigatito's battle against Onyx and Garganacl. It was going to take some time before they were able to grow strong enough to stand as an equal to Amethio and Ceruledge, but Amethio knew Opal was going to get there sooner or later. The gleam in her eyes told him that she would not be bested simply because she did not believe in herself yet. One of these days, she would have the faith she needed to stand by his side, and Amethio couldn't wait to see what it would mean for them both.
Opal and Onyx didn't just stop after their first match. Onyx won the initial battle, but Agate declared that Opal was going to need to do more than just a single match a day with Coral and Onyx if she was going to get stronger. The best solution was for her to keep pushing for as long as she could. Sprigatito had been defeated once, but she wasn't out of the equation just yet. Onyx was going to keep fighting Opal for a while longer, and once Agate thought he had taught Opal everything he could for the day, then Coral would tap in and take his place.
Amethio stood by and watched the training session for as long as he could stand, though if he was being honest, he didn't like the idea of any of it. From the moment he met Opal, Amethio felt as if there was something strange and off-putting about her. She was not Liko, but Opal didn't truly have an identity of her own at the time either. Since then, Opal had really come into her own.
But it wasn't the path Amethio knew she would have followed under any other circumstances. Liko never would have stood with the Explorers. She never would have walked away from the rest of her friends to join them. Opal's entire identity now was shaped around the debt she felt she had to fulfill to those who had given her a second chance at life, but she didn't realize that they had been the ones to take away her first chance in the first place. Opal wasn't supposed to be there. She belonged with the Rising Volt Tacklers aboard the Brave Olivine whether she realized it or not.
Amethio eventually found he couldn't bear standing there and watching, so he left the training room with a call over his shoulder that he had other business he needed to attend to. He caught a passing glimpse of Opal's disappointed look, but he didn't give her a second glance. He just had to get out of there. Standing by and watching the training match was too much, and Amethio had seen more than enough to know it well.
Amethio wasn't entirely sure of what he was going to do after he walked away, but he knew he had to get out of there before his thoughts started to tear him apart and betray him even more than they already had. He realized after he had left the training room that he hadn't spoken with Zirc or Onia about the mission they had been sent out on at the same time as Amethio's last outing with Opal. Maybe he could catch up with them about what had happened while they were on their own. It wasn't going to get Amethio's head away from all of this, but it would distract him for at least a few minutes, and that was what he wanted most.
Amethio felt worse and worse about everything going on the more he thought about it. He didn't want to think the Explorers were doing something horrifically wrong, but the more he thought about it, the clearer it felt that they were doing just that. Amethio had wanted Liko to come with him of her own free will, and from there, they could use the pendant for the sake of the Explorers. Amethio worried sometimes that there wasn't much of a difference between what he had hoped to do and what Spinel had done, but...
No, that wasn't the case at all. Amethio had been giving Liko a choice. He wanted her to be given the chance to decide on how she wanted to join him specifically. Amethio was still laying the pressure on her, and he was fully aware of that, but it was... It was different. Amethio had never thought he would erase her memories to make sure she fell in line. He had never thought something like that was possible in the first place, but he certainly wasn't indulging the thought even if there was a chance he could do that. Liko was a person of her own, and she deserved to have all the dignity that came with that. Others in the Explorers seemed to disagree, but Amethio knew he had done the right thing by not forcing her before she was ready.
But she wasn't ready now, was she? Amethio was doing as he was told and looking after her to make sure she didn't end up in any significant danger, but was he really helping her at all? He was doubting it. Opal could say all she wanted that Amethio had saved her and changed the course of her life, but it wasn't that simple. If Amethio had really saved her, then he would have made sure she wasn't put in a situation that would hurt her so deeply. If he had really saved her, then he wouldn't be keeping her there when he knew she would have been happier with the Rising Volt Tacklers.
Amethio did his best to silence his thoughts by the time he caught up with Zirc and Onia, but his mind remained far louder than it had any right to be. They were taking care of the supplies they had been tasked with picking up during their previous mission. The Explorers were a large organization, and every once in a while, they needed a bit more help than usual to make sure they got the supplies they needed to keep everything moving forward. Zirc and Onia had been chosen this time... Though Amethio had to wonder if perhaps there was something more to why they had been dictated to be the ones to pick everything up that time. They had been taken away from Amethio and Opal during a very important mission, and Amethio had been so caught up in everything else going on that he hadn't even been able to talk to them about everything that had happened.
Zirc lifted a box and set it down where it belonged in the supply room, letting out a heavy sigh. He had clearly been at this for a while, and Onia had been as well. She was struggling with a far smaller box, but the size of it was awkward and unwieldy. Amethio approached Onia and helped her to position the box where it belonged. Onia cast Amethio a smile. "Thank you for the help." She seemed a bit sheepish about the fact that she had needed it in the first place, but Amethio was more than happy to do what he could for them both. He knew they had already done more than enough for him already.
"It's nothing," Amethio assured her with a shake of his head. He glanced back and forth between Zirc and Onia for a moment, waiting to see if either one of them had something to say to him immediately. When neither one of them broke the silence, he let out a slow breath to ground himself. "How did your mission end up going?"
"Well enough," Zirc replied, but Amethio could tell by the slight stilted quality to his tone that there had been a bit more to it than just the mission going well. If that was all there was to consider, then Zirc wouldn't have seemed so uncomfortable. "We wish we could have been there for your mission with Opal though. How did that go, by the way? Were you able to do what you were told to do?"
Amethio hesitated for a few seconds, sucking in air between his front teeth. He could certainly say that they had done what they were told, but it hadn't been anywhere near as successful as he would have liked. That was probably part of the point of it all though. The Explorers and their leadership were trying to test Opal to see what she was able to do in a fight, and they had learned that she needed a bit more training before she would be able to handle missions on her own. Amethio had been given at least some training before he was sent out into the world. Opal, however, had been given no chances. The Explorers knew she was new to combat. Why hadn't they bothered to give her anything to help her get ready for her new jobs? It was like they were setting her up to fail...
And if Amethio was being honest, he wouldn't have been shocked if at least someone had wanted her to fall short of the organization's expectations. Spinel in particular was more than happy to put Opal in unfortunate situations for some reason or another. It must have been some kind of power trip for him, but Amethio hated it deeply. He wanted nothing to do with Spinel, and he wished there was something he could do to help Opal to escape him for even a short while.
"It... It went well enough," Amethio finally settled on saying. "Opal has been given orders to train with other members of the Explorers as much as possible. She has a lot to learn, and once she has grown strong enough, she'll be given the chance to go out on missions on her own."
As soon as Amethio said it out loud, he wished he hadn't given the idea any ground to stand on. He didn't want Opal to go out on her own. It was Amethio's job to protect her, so he would probably be ordered to stand by her, but... But what if the Explorers' leadership decided that Opal needed to go out on her own? It wouldn't shock Amethio, but he still hated the idea. He had to follow orders, but he didn't want to have to go along with what he was told if it would come at Opal's expense... Though it was a bit late for him to worry about hurting her now. He had started doing that ages ago, and he knew it far better than he wanted to have to admit.
"I don't think she's ready for that yet," Zirc said, and Amethio wondered if perhaps Zirc had felt the same flare of panic at his words that Amethio had. Even though Amethio had been the one to say it, he wished he never had to even acknowledge something like that. "She's still just learning how to fight. I can't imagine she has made much progress since she came here."
Amethio nodded. He hadn't known Liko to be much of a battler at all. She fought with him a few times, but it was clear that she was inexperienced, and she didn't know how to even begin to catch up with him. Amethio felt almost bad about facing her now that he looked back on it. Sprigatito had a very powerful Leafage, but there was only so much that could do to carry Liko in a fight. Maybe Opal would turn out to be stronger. Maybe Opal would have an advantage because of the training she was going to receive.
Amethio felt strange when he thought about it that way though. When he thought about Liko, he couldn't help but feel that she was an entirely separate entity from Opal. He couldn't tell for certain if that was a logical choice or not. Maybe it was his way of trying to alleviate his guilt. If he thought of Opal as completely different from Liko, then maybe he wouldn't feel like he wanted to rot when he looked into their eyes. Liko would never stand by his side willingly. Opal would, but for all he knew, that would fall apart the instant she found out the truth. How much did Opal and Liko have in common? How different were they from one another?
Would either one of them ever want a thing to do with Amethio after learning the truth of what he had done?
"I wish we could have been there with you on your mission," Onia went on, entirely unaware of the crisis rushing through Amethio's head. "Spinel was the one who told us we had to go out and get supplies, but... It feels like he was trying to get us to leave you and Opal behind. I wonder if he was hoping to chase us off before we could join you on your most recent assignment to go after the Rising Volt Tacklers."
Amethio's throat grew impossibly tighter. He wouldn't have been surprised at all to hear that Spinel had done this deliberately. Spinel was not above hurting or intimidating others to get what he wanted, and the fact that Opal existed at all was proof. Who was to say he wasn't the one pulling the strings behind Zirc and Onia being called out for another mission? Amethio knew how horrible Spinel could be, and he hated that he wasn't denying the idea once he was faced with it.
"I was thinking the same thing," Zirc admitted. "Why did we have to go out and get those supplies? Why did he want us to do it when there are a bunch of other people who would have worked just fine? None of them would have wanted much to do with your mission with Opal. I think he was trying to keep us away from you."
"I... I think that could make sense," Amethio confessed softly. He had no evidence to back up his assertions, so he wouldn't be able to convince anyone that Spinel had acted maliciously, but... It made a bit too much sense for Amethio to ignore it completely. Spinel would never dare to admit it when he was up to something that could have gone against the wishes of others, but Amethio knew he had other plans. If Spinel truly had no plans, then he wouldn't have tried to get involved. Spinel was the one who had brought Opal back to the base in the first place, and now, he was trying to get other people away from her. It may have only been one case, but that was one too many times for Amethio to feel comfortable with anything Spinel could have been potentially planning.
Not for the first time and most likely not for the last either, Amethio wondered what had happened for Opal to end up with the Explorers. Spinel had brought her there, and he had done something to her memories in order to do it, but... How was that possible? How was any of it possible? Amethio didn't think there was a way for someone to simply purge the memories of another person. Pokémon could cause temporary confusion, but that was not what had happened to Opal at all. If she was just confused, then she would have snapped out of it weeks ago. Instead, she was still there, and no one understood what had happened to her now any more than they had understood when she was first brought back to the base.
"Do you think he wants to get her alone?" Onia asked when she noticed the pained strain to Amethio's face. "Spinel could have tried to get us away so that you could go on the mission with Opal alone. If that's the case, then... Do you think there's something he wants to do with Opal when none of us are around?"
"If he wanted to get her alone, then he could do that," Amethio argued. Spinel had been told ages ago to stay as far away from Opal as possible. He frightened her, and that distress could have caused her memories to start to fall free of the vault he had sealed them away in. Spinel should have kept his distance from her, but he never seemed to actually stay away for long. He was always there, watching out of the corner of his eye. It was like he wanted to frighten Opal, and he was happy to go to any lengths in order to get a reaction out of her.
"But he wants to do something with her either way," Zirc concluded. He tried a few times to come up with an idea of what that something could have been, but he fell short each time. They simply didn't have enough information, and they weren't going to find the evidence they sought. Spinel was a calculating man, and he knew how to cover up the details of everything he was doing. He wanted to keep all of this buried until the moment was right, and by then, it would probably be too late to actually stop his plans.
Amethio had originally left the training room because he felt like he couldn't stand to look at Opal for any longer. Now, he found himself starting toward the door of the supply room so he could go back to her side. "I'm going to check on her." Spinel wasn't there. He had no reason to be there. And yet, Amethio couldn't shake the paranoia that something could have happened to her when he wasn't there to look after her. This wasn't just about a job anymore. Amethio had been assigned to look after Opal to earn the trust of the Explorers again... But this was about more than just regaining the faith of his peers. Amethio wanted to protect her, and the thought that he could fail made fear burn hot and bright in his chest.
Spinel was planning something. Amethio was sure of it. He didn't know what would happen when he got to the bottom of this, but he would find a way to make sense of it. Amethio was determined to keep Opal safe from Spinel no matter what it took.
And if that happened to put him in conflict with the Explorers... Amethio would do what he had to.
~~~~~
Roy knew he didn't know much about the world.
It came with the territory of his upbringing, he supposed. He had grown up on a single island, meaning he was isolated and pulled away from everything he could have wanted to reach out for beyond his home's boundaries. Roy went out into the wilderness and explored as much as he could, but there was still a lot he didn't know. Joining the Rising Volt Tacklers had been his chance to reach out for adventure, but it was also a way for him to learn more about both himself and the world around him.
Since then, Roy felt he had come to learn a lot about himself and the rest of the crew of the Brave Olivine. Roy knew he was getting closer to becoming a true Pokémon trainer, and if he kept pushing, then he was going to grow stronger. He would be able to stand tall, and he would use that power he claimed to find and catch the black Rayquaza. No one had ever said the journey would be easy, but Roy knew he could do it. He was growing each and every day, and he was going beyond the limitations of what he had ever thought possible for him to do.
And yet, despite all of that growth, Roy knew he didn't know all that much at the end of the day. Right now, the thing that haunted him most was the way the battle against Amethio had ended. Roy had thought that going after Amethio was the perfect way to hear the truth behind what had happened to Liko. He thought he would be able to press the truth out of Amethio so that he could get one step closer to finding Liko and bringing her home.
But instead, Roy found himself confused about what had happened when the fight came to a close. A sudden flood of a Leafage had burst onto the street, and Amethio took advantage of that distraction to flee from the scene. No one knew where it had come from or who had caused it, but they had to get to the bottom of it as soon as possible. The Explorers must have had something else--or rather, someone else--who had gone with Amethio before the battle began that day. The Rising Volt Tacklers knew nothing about who it was though, and they were forced to play catch-up in order to get to the bottom of an all-new mystery.
"I don't get it," Roy repeated for at least the fourth time within the last twenty minutes. "I didn't think there was going to be anyone with Amethio in this battle. They were hiding throughout the entire fight, and they just attacked right when we were getting close to winning."
"I haven't heard anything about the Explorers having a Pokémon that could use a massive attack like that either," Dot frowned, one hand pressed against their chin with a heavy frown. "I've been trying to learn everything I can about all the people who are seen roaming the streets wearing the uniform of the Explorers, but... I haven't heard about anyone who would have a partner that could use a Grass attack. I don't even know the names of most of them, but I can say that this is new for them."
"It..." Roy swallowed dryly, and his chest grew tense enough to make him feel like he was going to die for a split second. "It kind of reminded me of the Leafages Liko's Sprigatito was able to use."
That made the air fall silent, and Roy knew he was not the only one who had thought about it that way. Of course they had noticed it. The day Liko arrived on the Brave Olivine, her Sprigatito used a massive Leafage to protect her, and it had knocked the Explorers off their game in the blink of an eye. Roy had heard about it even though he hadn't been there to see it. He had seen Sprigatito's Leafage in action for himself, and he knew that attack was far from falling within the boundaries of ordinary. Liko's Sprigatito was something special, and her power eclipsed the strength that most other Grass Pokémon could use at her level.
But that wasn't possible. None of it was possible. Liko couldn't have been there at the scene of the fight. The figure that had been with Amethio wasn't Liko. Roy hadn't gotten a great look at them, but he knew it was the same figure that Amethio had run away with during the battle outside the bookstore. Their hair was black, but their face had been obscured by something Roy couldn't quite see. He assumed it was some kind of mask, but the other details were difficult to make out in the chaos of the moment. Roy wished he could have known to look as closely as possible at the battle so that he would be able to find the truth behind that other person.
Even if Roy had seen something more though, Roy knew it wasn't Liko. If Liko had been there, then she would have come back to the Rising Volt Tacklers. She wouldn't want to help Amethio escape from the battlefield. She would have wanted to go back to the group that had protected her and cared for her after she was sent on the run by Amethio's attack. Liko had no reason to help Amethio at all after what he had done. Amethio had tried to kidnap her. Why would she stand by him? There was no reason for it.
No matter how many times Roy tried to reassure himself of that though, he couldn't bring himself to believe it. There was something far greater at play than he ever could have imagined, and he felt like he was just starting to see the scope of it. What if that had been Liko? It didn't feel real, but the thought kept pressing back into Roy's mind, refusing to leave him alone.
"I'm going to keep digging however I can," Dot declared. "I don't know who that was, but there has to be at least something out there that can tell us more about who they are. I'll tell you all what's going on as soon as I'm able to figure it out."
"The Explorers must be recruiting new members then," Friede frowned, but Roy knew he was afraid that was an understatement just as much as both teens before him did. "We're clearly dealing with more than just Amethio and his flunkeys these days. There has to be someone else new here."
"I've gotten a bit of information about others who wear the Explorers' uniforms, but I haven't seen anyone who would fit the description of the person we've seen," Dot said. They turned their Rotom phone around, and the screen depicted a few poor-quality photos of others wearing the Explorers' uniform. One of them had muted blue hair and carried himself confidently. Another had pink hair tied up in ponytails, and she was accompanied by a tall yet slouching man with a piercing gaze that shone through even with the pixelation of the pictures. It was difficult to pick out any information about any of them, but it was clear as could be that none of them fit the description of the figure that had fled from the most recent battle with Amethio. It was a terrifying thought, and yet, it was something Roy knew they all needed to bear in mind. They were up against far more than they could have ever imagined, and they would need time to handle what was happening and find a way to tackle the issues that came with it.
"I don't like the idea of there being new members to the Explorers now," Roy admitted softly. He didn't know why the concept filled him with such deep dread, but once he started to think about it, he couldn't seem to shake the thought away. The Explorers were his enemy, and Roy was fully aware of that. Still, the idea that they were getting new members to join their team... Roy couldn't say how they were recruiting new members, but he knew that they must have been promising something big in order to get others to fall in line. The Explorers were terrifying, but they were using something to make sure they could get more people to join their ranks. That idea was scary in its own way too.
And above all else, Roy found himself wondering if these new members would be able to stomach knowing what had happened to Liko. The Explorers had kidnapped her, and even if they wouldn't talk about where they were keeping her, that much was clear. Liko could have been going through any sort of pain at that very moment, and anyone new who joined the Explorers would have no idea what they had signed up for or what their loyalty was going to cause.
Though Roy supposed there was always the chance that these new figures were not new recruits to the Explorers. They could have been in the organization for a long time, and if that was the case, then that would cause its own fair share of problems. The Explorers knew how to hide their members, and if not for Dot seeking them out however they could, the Rising Volt Tacklers never would have known just how many enemies they were going to have to deal with. Roy hated it more than anything, and he struggled to face the dread that rose up in the pit of his stomach when he thought about it for too long at a time.
"I don't either," Friede admitted. "But that's all the more reason for us to see this through." His gaze turned to Dot. "Keep doing everything you can to learn more about the Explorers. The rest of us will help with the search however we can too. We're going to get to the bottom of this and bring Liko home. We may not just be dealing with Amethio and his minions anymore, but that's not going to stop us now. We cant let it stop us."
Roy nodded along with Dot. He wanted to be able to do something of value for the search, but he didn't know where to start. Each time he tried to think about it, his mind went right back to that strange Leafage. He knew realistically that it couldn't have had anything to do with Liko. There was no way it could have been involved with her. And yet... Roy couldn't shake the feeling that there was something more to this than met the eye.
But that was impossible. Roy just had to sit in that impossibility long enough for him to start believing it. He could do that. He knew he could. Roy didn't know what had happened to Liko, but he knew that Leafage couldn't have come from her or her Sprigatito. She would never do something like that.
She wouldn't... Right?
~~~~~
The training session was reaching its end by the time Amethio arrived back in the room. Coral was fiercely battling against Opal, and Amethio could already see improvements in the way Opal carried herself. She had been a timid battler previously, and she had proved it as recently as the last attack against the Rising Volt Tacklers. Now though, Opal was finding a way to stand up straight, handling every situation that came her way with all the grace she could muster. She still had a long way to go, but she was determined to give it her all. Nothing was going to tear her down now.
And it was that very determination that frightened Amethio more than it had any right to. Opal was sure that she was doing what was right, and she had no idea of the truth that lurked in the shadows. She didn't know that she wasn't supposed to be there and had never belonged with the Explorers. Amethio could have told her the truth then and there, and yet, he couldn't bring himself to do it. He didn't know where he would have even started. He was supposed to be standing by the Explorers no matter what, and taking care of Opal was meant to be a test of his loyalty... But if all of that was true, then why was he struggling to think of looking her in the eyes? Why couldn't he seem to think about her for longer than a few seconds without feeling like his guilt was going to suffocate him?
Agate declared the training session over, and Opal backed away from the match to look over at Amethio. Her eyes were shining with the promise of something bright and beautiful, and Amethio had to fight to keep from looking away. Opal always seemed to find a way to burn him. She was darker than Liko had been, but that did not say much when Liko always seemed to be full of such light. Amethio had only ever known her as an enemy, but even he knew of just how important she was when she smiled.
And there he was, betraying everything she had ever thought she knew about herself.
"I'm getting better," Opal smiled. There was sweat beading across her forehead, and Sprigatito looked exhausted in her arms, but that didn't seem to matter. There was a determination unlike any other bursting free of Opal's skin, making every piece of her glow beneath the artificial lighting of the training room. "I'm going to keep improving too. I'll be the best battler I can be soon... And we can go on missions together. I'll be able to help out this time."
Amethio almost wanted to tell Opal that he didn't want her help. He wanted to turn her away, to think that it would be best if she hated him for being honest rather than liking him for lying through his teeth. And yet, that gravitational pull of her sunny smile was too much for him to escape. He felt he belonged there even if he did not deserve it. He wanted to be by her side. He wanted to have a friend for once... Though he didn't know if friendship could ever be edged with this much dishonesty.
Instead of saying any of that though, Amethio simply nodded. "Good," he managed to choke out, the word coming out as a strained wheeze. "I'm glad."
Notes:
Another chapter in the books! Woohoo!
All chapters in this first arc really make me feel sick to think about, but this one... Oh, it's something special. Absolutely sickening. Poor Opal. She really has no idea what she has found herself caught up in. If nothing else, Amethio seems to be making progress and becoming a better person than he has been in the past. He might be struggling, but he's getting there, and that has to count for something, right?
And... The Rising Volt Tacklers. They have no way of knowing for sure that the attack from that last battle was from Liko, but they're still starting to fear it. Things are so bad for them too. It only gets worse from here, and it has to get a lot worse before it starts to get better, but I can't wait to show you all how it plays out. I've got a lot of good stuff planned. It'll be great.
Before we leave off this time, I want to highlight this fan art by Coral Reef! Go send the artist your love! I absolutely adore this!
Next time, we'll reach the halfway point of this first arc at long last! Until then, I hope you all enjoyed this chapter. Feedback is appreciated as always. Have a nice day, everyone!
-Digital
Chapter 10: Rage Seems to Fill Her Heart With Fire
Summary:
Opal continues to train as Amethio doubts his loyalties.
Chapter Text
Opal was exhausted.
She let out a heavy sigh as she arrived back in her room, and she practically collapsed onto her bed. Her muscles were burning from the weight of the day, but despite that, she found herself feeling strangely alive. She may have been tired, but it was a good kind of tired. Opal felt alive in a way she hadn't anticipated, like she had needed a little push in the right direction to finally feel like everything was worthwhile. She hadn't even noticed that she was seeking something like that until it happened, and despite her exhaustion, she found herself smiling.
Over the course of the last week, Opal had been dedicating nearly every waking minute to training and bonding with Sprigatito. She needed to be as strong as possible if she was going to be of use to the Explorers, and Opal wasn't letting anyone or anything get in the way of her seeing this through. She was going to do everything in her power to gain the strength of will she needed to stand by the rest of her allies in the battles to come. It wasn't easy, but as far as Opal was concerned, the most important things in life never were easy. Still, it was worth it for the sake of doing what she knew was right by the organization that had given her a new chance in life.
Sprigatito had fallen asleep in Opal's arms on the journey back to her room, so Opal gingerly set her partner down on the pillow just beside her. Sprigatito continued to snore away without so much as a peek at the outside world, and Opal smiled as she began to stroke her partner's back. Sprigatito had been growing stronger right along with her. Sprigatito had been doing a lot of the heavy lifting in their battles on account of being a Pokémon, in fact, and she was handling herself admirably well. Opal still had yet to truly win a battle against one of the other Explorers when they stopped holding back against her, but she was fine with that. She still felt like she was making tangible progress.
Her muscles could certainly feel it too. After an intense day of training like this, Opal found that she went to her room feeling like every part of her body was burning. Still, it was a comforting kind of burn. It told her that she was doing her best. If she kept pushing like this, then she would be more than strong enough to consider herself a true member of the Explorers in no time. She wasn't going to be dead weight forever. Opal would give everything she had to make sure she was able to stand up for herself one of these days. It didn't matter how long it took or how many days she went back to her room completely drained from what she had done in the training room. It would all be worth it in the end. Opal was sure of it.
When she wasn't directly training with Sprigatito, Opal was taking her time to hone her skills in other ways. She read about type matchings, meaning that she would be able to remember what was effective against what in the heat of a battle. She read about strategies too, finding that a lot of Amethio's old books talked about the tactics needed to win a Pokémon battle. Opal took notes however she could, even asking her opponents how they handled fights when they weren't training with her. She had set aside an entirely separate notebook from her regular journal to keep notes on what she had to do in a battle, and Opal reread everything she wrote each night before she went to sleep. That way, she could make sure that it was going to stick and then help her when she needed it most.
All of the Explorers Opal knew had come to help her out with her training in some way or another. Coral and Onyx seemed to be coming around to her, at least slightly. Coral was still loud and abrasive, but she wasn't objecting as openly to having to train with Opal as she once had. Onyx, on the other hand, congratulated Opal when she managed to pull off a difficult maneuver during a battle. Agate nodded her approval from time to time even though Opal hadn't ever directly battled her. Even Hamber was chiming in every once in a while, stepping away from Gibeon's side to give Opal a few tips that could help her in a rematch with the other Explorers.
Opal didn't think she had ever felt quite this appreciated before. She knew that appreciation was probably a poor way of putting it, but that was the best choice of phrasing she could think of for the time being. Opal loved knowing that there were so many people willing to help her to get stronger. Opal didn't need to be in all of this by herself. She was going to make something of herself, and she would have the help of the people around her to do it. Amethio, Zirc, and Onia weren't the only ones in her corner anymore; it felt like most of the Explorers were willing to help her too. Opal felt at home in a way she hadn't felt in ages, and she adored it.
Well... She almost felt at home.
There was one exception to that rule, and unfortunately, it was one that haunted Opal consistently. Spinel was the only member of the Explorers save for Gibeon who hadn't helped Opal out with improving her skills. Opal was glad for that since being around him always gave her a headache. She felt guilty for saying that she was happy to avoid him, but it remained true. Opal really didn't want to be around him, and Spinel's presence seemed to haunt her thoughts even when he was not around her.
Still, there was one positive to all of this. Spinel hadn't been around anywhere near as much recently as he once had been, meaning Opal was left largely to her own devices. She had gone days without so much as seeing him, and each night, Opal hoped with everything she had that she would be lucky enough to not see him again the next day either. Things had been oddly quiet on the Spinel front recently, and Opal was not complaining in the slightest. She hoped this streak kept up for as long as possible. The less she had to be around him, the better.
As a whole, Opal felt she was at her best. She was feeling better now than she ever had during her previous time in the Explorers. Opal didn't feel like she was just a burden the others were going to have to pick up after. She was getting closer to being able to handle herself in a real fight. Opal could almost taste it. She knew her freedom was within reach in a way it hadn't been in ages, and Opal ached for it with every fiber of her pained muscles.
Freedom as a concept continued to insist upon Opal's attention, and she found herself thinking about it more than usual. Battling felt like freedom to her in a strange way. She hadn't ever imagined she would think of combat of all things in such a positive light, but Opal loved her new circumstances. If she could learn how to fight, then she would be able to defend herself if she left the base. That meant she might be able to advocate for being given the chance to leave the base on her own from time to time. Maybe she could go out alone without needing to get permission first.
Opal couldn't help but smile at the thought of it. She was grateful to the Explorers for doing so much to take care of her in her desperate hour of need, but Opal yearned to leave the base behind all the same. Maybe she was selfish for it... But Opal felt better about performing selfish acts so long as she could back it up with actual worth in a fight. She and Sprigatito were both getting stronger and more confident as time went on. Sprigatito had once seemed to struggle with using Leafage in battles, but these days, she did it easily and gladly. Sprigatito had been fighting to reach the top too, and Opal couldn't have asked for a better companion.
For the first time since she lost her memories, Opal felt like she truly belonged somewhere. She didn't know what she would have said prior to her amnesia, but now, Opal was sure that she belonged with the Explorers. They had done a lot to take care of her, but Opal was doing everything she could to return the favor by giving her all to battles they needed her to participate in too. Opal wasn't just there because the Explorers had been kind enough to give her a place to belong. She was earning her position by standing up as tall as she could and giving every battle her all. Opal had earned her place among the ranks of the Explorers, and she wasn't going to let anybody take that away from her.
A knock at the door drew Opal out of her thoughts, and she shot up in an instant. She had been too unfocused to think of checking to see if she heard anyone's footsteps approaching her door. Opal felt a sudden spike of anxiety claw its way into her chest at the thought that it could have been Spinel without her even realizing it. Had she lost her grip enough to not even notice it when he came to speak with her? Opal's dry spell of not seeing him for a while could only go on for so long, and he could be there to end it then and there. What would she do if Spinel was just waiting for her to leave her room so they could talk about something miserable that would make her feel worse than she felt she deserved?
"Opal? It's just us."
Amethio's voice snapped Opal out of all of her paranoia in the blink of an eye. Of course Spinel wasn't there to talk to her. When was the last time Spinel had come to her room to speak with her? His knocking probably didn't sound as kind or gentle as Amethio's did anyway. Opal should have known to at least be able to identify Amethio. Maybe she was farther from reality than she had thought. Maybe her progress wasn't as genuine as she had been trying to convince herself.
Opal swung her feet off the side of her bed, ignoring the way her muscles protested her desire to stand. She pulled the door open to find Amethio standing in the hallway alongside Zirc and Onia. Opal grinned at all three of them, beyond glad to have been given the chance to see Zirc and Onia specifically. She didn't seem to see them anywhere near as much anymore, and Opal missed being able to see them whenever she wanted. Unfortunately, her strict training routine dictated that she spend more time with Coral and Onyx than with Zirc and Onia, and Opal knew better than to protest it.
"We heard today's training session went well," Zirc began as he stepped into the room. Onia seemed like she was going to close the door, but she instead made a beeline for Sprigatito, forcing Zirc to do it in her place. "You're making good progress, aren't you? Congratulations."
Opal practically glowed from the kind words. "Thank you. I'm giving it my all so I can get as strong as possible as soon as possible. I want to be able to join you and the rest of the Explorers out on missions. I want to be able to go out and..." Opal trailed off at that, realizing too late that she had said more than she intended. She shook her head to dismiss the thought. "Sprigatito and I are both giving it everything we have."
"Of course this cutie is doing a good job!" Onia cooed. She had come to crouch just beside Opal's bed so she was able to examine Sprigatito at her new eye level. Sprigatito was still sound asleep from the exertion of the various training battles throughout the day. She didn't even peek at Onia with one eye when Onia began to stroke at the top of her head. "It would be impossible for Sprigatito to not do a good job!"
Opal returned to her bed and sat down on the mattress next to Sprigatito. She joined in on petting her partner's head a moment later. "What brings the three of you here?" she questioned, looking back and forth between Amethio, Zirc and Onia. "Did something happen?"
Zirc raised his phone up for Opal to see it. "We wanted to watch a few Nidothing videos with you," he explained. "New ones have been coming out for the last few days, but we haven't had time to show you with all the training you've been doing. We figured the best option was to try and catch you before you took a nap."
Opal's eyes lit up, and she nodded eagerly. "That sounds amazing!" She scooped Sprigatito into her lap, giving more room on either side for Zirc and Onia to sit down. Zirc directed his Rotom phone to one of the newest Nidothing videos, and Opal grinned as he grew closer to his destination with each tap. Opal had completely forgotten that she had fallen behind on Nidothing content with everything else she had been busy with lately. Opal loved Nidothing, of course, but recently, she had been a bit preoccupied with trying to prove herself to the rest of the Explorers.
Opal really couldn't have asked for a better way to end off the day. She had done everything in her power to get stronger during the day's training session, and she felt like she was getting closer to really making something of herself. Soon enough, she and Sprigatito would be able to win a match against Coral or Onyx. Once they were able to win in a fight, then they could go out whenever they wanted.
Or so Opal was hoping. She technically didn't have any confirmation that something like that would be possible, but that didn't stop her from dreaming about it. If she could prove that she was able to handle herself, then hopefully she would be able to go out of the base whenever she wanted. Opal knew it would be hard to persuade her superiors to let her do that when leaving the base in the past had led to her losing her memories... But Opal couldn't let her past hold her back forever. She wanted to look to the future, and that meant proving that she was capable now. She may have failed in the past, but she wasn't going to fall short this time.
Amethio sat down on the bed beside Onia, and she scooted over as much as she could to make room for him. It was a tight squeeze having all four of them sitting on the mattress, but Opal couldn't bring herself to mind. Amethio didn't join them in watching Nidothing videos all that often, and if he was sitting down, then that meant he was probably going to want to watch at least a little bit with them. And there Opal was thinking things couldn't get any better just a few seconds prior.
Zirc stared at Amethio in muted shock for a long moment after he sat down on the bed. "I... I didn't think you'd want to watch with us," Zirc admitted, though he did his best to stow his surprise when Amethio didn't respond to it immediately. "I didn't think this was the kind of thing you would enjoy."
"Opal has been giving everything she has to her training recently. I think this is the least I can do to repay that favor," Amethio said, his eyes never leaving the floating screen of Zirc's Rotom phone. "What is the topic of the video you want to watch?"
Opal felt her chest grow light and airy. Amethio was there because he wanted to congratulate her on all the hard work she had been putting in recently. She really couldn't ask for a better outcome to all of this. Amethio didn't have to do this, but there he was anyway simply because he wanted to spend time with Opal and make her happy. Opal hadn't been able to spend as much time as usual with Amethio because of her recent training, but she felt like that was alright. If they could still hold onto moments like these, then Opal was more than happy to consider this a victory.
"I was thinking we could watch a video talking about legendary Pokémon," Zirc said as he clicked on one of the newest Nidothing videos. "There's a lot of interesting stuff to talk about with legendary Pokémon, and I don't know how Nidothing is going to go over all of it in one video."
"I heard it was supposed to be a series," Onia chimed in. "They're going to talk about different legendary Pokémon associated with different regions across a series of videos. That way, every region will end up being included at some point or another."
Opal nodded, and she looked back to the screen to find that the specific video Zirc had clicked on was going to start with the legendary Pokémon of Kanto. For reasons Opal couldn't describe, that brought her deep joy. She wanted to learn more about the legendary Pokémon within Kanto, and she hadn't even realized she yearned to uncover more information until she saw the video title. Maybe this was always where she was meant to be. Maybe Nidothing videos were made for her in a way she never could have imagined.
In the introductory part of the video, Nidothing confirmed the same thing that Onia had said a few moments prior. This video was going to be the first in a series that went through each region of the world and discussed its legendary Pokémon in detail. Nidothing would be talking about notable sightings, what the Pokémon have been known to enjoy, and any contact they have had with humans in the past. The videos were going to be filled to the brim with information, and Opal couldn't wait to see what they wound up leading her to.
"But before we go any further, I want to get your eyes on something else important to me," Nidothing said after the introduction of the video came to an end. "A few weeks ago, I hosted a collaborative event with Iono in Levincia, and we were trying to find a special fan of my channel. Since then, there have been a few other announcements about it, but we're still looking for that fan! I need to know if any of you guys have seen the one and only SprigatitoLove, otherwise known as Liko--"
The video abruptly went quiet as Zirc lashed out with one hand to turn the phone off. Opal blinked at the black screen for a few seconds, something in the back of her head feeling like it was trying to stir. She felt like her brain had been swirled around by a thin stick, and while the disturbance was small, it was still very much present and already feeling like it was trying to eat her alive. Opal wanted to find the words to explain why she suddenly felt so odd, but nothing seemed sufficient to describe it aloud. Her tongue felt like it was too big for her mouth all of a sudden, and her ears were buzzing like a bunch of Bug Pokémon had settled down inside of them.
"What was that about?" Amethio asked, arching an eyebrow at Zirc. He leaned forward across the row of people in between himself and Zirc. "Is something the matter?"
"Ah... Maybe we shouldn't be watching the new videos after all!" Zirc exclaimed, his voice feeling too loud for the confined space of Opal's room. She hadn't ever been bothered by the sound of his voice, but it was too much for her right now, and Opal felt like she was going to lose her grip on everything if she wasn't careful. "I should be watching these ahead of time to make sure they're okay for us to watch as a group. I wouldn't want you to see anything that isn't good for you."
Opal was barely paying attention to what Zirc said though, instead staring emptily at the space where his phone had been. Zirc had taken it back and pressed it against his chest like that would take back the disturbance that it had brought to the room, but Opal didn't follow it with her eyes. Instead, her mind felt like it was both moving too slowly for her and much too fast. The video had said the same name that she had heard during the battle against the Rising Volt Tacklers. They had asked about someone named Liko, and now, Nidothing was mentioning Liko too.
"Liko..." Opal whispered, the name feeling strangely familiar to her tongue. She didn't know why it felt like something she should have known, but she knew that Liko was something she had once heard many times before. It had been before she lost her memory, though the rest of the details were out of her reach. She was trying to find the truth through a thick layer of water, and Opal didn't know if she would ever be able to breathe underwater long enough to uncover what she was meant to be searching for.
"Sorry about that, Opal," Onia went on, clearly trying to cover for everything that had happened right along with Zirc. "You probably didn't need to hear about that with how much you've been doing lately. We can check the videos next time to make sure they don't do anything to freak you out."
Opal nodded along distantly, but she knew there was much more to it than that. The name Liko didn't just scare her. It felt like it had once meant the world to her... But how could that be the case? Surely a name couldn't hold such significance, especially when it was a name that she didn't know anything about. Opal found herself disoriented whenever she heard someone talk about Liko, but that didn't explain anything about why she was reacting the way she was. There must have been an explanation for all of this, but she didn't know where to start when it came to uncovering what it was.
Zirc pushed himself to his feet, and Opal tried to force herself to concentrate despite the uncertainty that had rushed in around her. "I... I should go and take care of this," Zirc said, not bothering to elaborate on what he was referring to or what it could have meant specifically. "I didn't mean for you to have to see that. I'll just... I'll make sure this doesn't happen again. You've got nothing to worry about." Zirc didn't wait for Opal to respond or otherwise ask him to stay, instead darting toward the door of the room and vanishing into the hallway outside.
Onia got to her feet next, and she let out an anxious laugh that Opal thought didn't fit her at all. "Everything will be fine! You have nothing to worry about!" She bowed her head awkwardly, waiting for a handful of seconds for something to happen. When Opal didn't speak or move, Onia tried to explain herself, but her words refused to come the way she wanted them to. In the end, Onia just nodded at Opal and decided to retreat from the room to follow in Zirc's footsteps.
With Zirc and Onia stopped, Opal was left with only Amethio and her thoughts. She wanted to stay grounded in the moment and to focus on the fact that Amethio was by her side, but she simply couldn't do it. Nothing seemed to happen the way she wanted it to. Opal had been doing such a good job of keeping her life in order, but it had all fallen apart in the span of an instant. How pathetic was she? Opal couldn't even keep her head cool and composed when she heard a name that should have meant nothing to her. What was her problem?
But the name must have meant something, didn't it? Opal wouldn't have responded in the way she had if the name didn't hold some kind of weight that she was meant to consider. She knew that she was supposed to know something about Liko. Nobody had shown her a picture of what this girl looked like, but Opal was certain they had once known one another. Her amnesia had been strong, but it had not been complete, and now, the memory of the phantom known as Liko was trying to burst free and control her fully.
"I'm sorry," Amethio said, and Opal tried to pull herself back together to the best of her ability. It was a failing effort, but she gave it everything she had anyway. "I didn't mean for that to happen. If I had known the video was going to bring Liko up, then..." Amethio winced when he realized that he had said the name again, and he gave up on talking. Instead, Amethio stared down at his lap and clenched his fingers together tightly. There was nothing he could say that would make any of this easier, and he was fully aware of it.
Opal's mind was moving slowly as she tried to put the pieces together. Her questions were rapid and powerful, but she was processing them at half speed if even that. Liko wasn't just a name the Rising Volt Tacklers spoke. It was a name that meant something of value to Nidothing too. Opal hadn't imagined Nidothing of all people would be tied up in this mess too. It seemed inescapable. Everyone seemed like they knew more about Opal's life than her. Everyone seemed like they knew the truth of Liko but her, and they were desperate to keep the truth away from Opal however they could.
Opal wasn't going to let that be the end of it though. She had to find a way to understand who Liko was. The idea terrified her more than anything, but she was going to do what she could do pull the truth out of it. Liko was important to her even if she didn't know the truth of why. Other people knew though, and Opal was desperate to learn what she could from them. If the other Explorers knew, then Opal would press the truth from them. She had to.
Amethio spoke before Opal had the chance to find the words for herself. "Are you alright?" he asked, his voice soft and restless.
"Who is Liko?" Opal questioned half a second later, her voice layering with his. For a long moment, neither one of them spoke, instead simply slowly turning to look one another in the eyes. Opal couldn't read the thoughts racing behind Amethio's soft violet eyes, and Amethio couldn't seem to pull truth from Opal's gleaming sapphires either. Nothing seemed to exist except for the two of them, and the world wouldn't have mattered even if it did exist around them.
Amethio's movements were careful but not practiced when the weight of Opal's words sunk in. He went stiff and quiet, forcing himself to look away from Opal with something like guilt in his eyes. Opal had seen him look guilty around her many times in the past, but it never quite got easier to face. She thought he was getting better about trusting her with what was going on in his head. She thought he was opening up to her about the fears that consumed him when the darkness closed in. None of that seemed to matter now though. Opal knew that he would not be telling her who Liko was without a fight, though she couldn't tell if it was fear, stubbornness, or conformity that guided his decision.
When Amethio took a bit too long to respond, Opal let out a sigh and decided to fill the silence for herself. "I've been wondering about her ever since the name came up in the last battle," Opal admitted. "I've been focused on my training, so I haven't been able to ask about her extensively, but... The Rising Volt Tacklers were wondering about her. They brought her up during the fight. They wouldn't do that without a reason. I... I want to know who Liko is and why she's so important. So tell me, Amethio... Who is Liko?"
Once again, Amethio did not respond. He processed every word Opal spoke very slowly, feeling the weight of the letters collapse upon his shoulders like they were going to crush him to death. Amethio tried to keep himself held together though, and the best way to do that was to not look up to meet Opal's gaze. He would come undone if he dared to do something so risky, and they both knew it well. Opal wished Amethio would trust her enough to talk about something so heavy and terrifying. Amethio wished he was able to trust himself enough to not drag Opal into ruin along with him.
Opal did not try to fill the silence again, and Amethio knew that she would not try to come up with excuses for the quiet a second time. She had explained herself enough, and all that remained was for her to wait until Amethio was willing to speak up and answer the question he had been fighting for so long to keep at bay.
Amethio let out a slow breath like he was trying to hold off on having to answer the question for as long as possible. "Liko is... She used to be a member of the Rising Volt Tacklers, but she no longer is," he explained, but the words were still too vague for Opal. Her eyes begged him to continue, and Amethio forced himself to continue. "The Rising Volt Tacklers lost contact with her a while ago, and they have been operating under the assumption that the Explorers had something to do with what happened to her. They have been pursuing us ever since then so they can try to press us into revealing the truth."
Opal nodded along slowly, her chest tight. Liko had been a member of the Rising Volt Tacklers, but she was gone now. Something had happened to her. The way Amethio was talking about her was hilariously vague, and Opal had to wonder if he knew more than he was trying to let on. When Amethio didn't explain himself more, Opal decided to push him again. "What did happen to her?" Opal questioned. "She wasn't taken by the Explorers. None of us would take her. I'm sure of that. So what happened to her?"
Amethio remained quiet for an eternity once again, testing his words but never quite finding the satisfaction with them that he was looking for. "I... I don't know," he finally choked out. "No one knows what happened to her, at least not specifically."
Opal frowned heavily and nodded once more. Liko had gone missing in the midst of some strange incident or another, and she was gone now. The Rising Volt Tacklers didn't know what had happened for her to end up taken away from them, but they were determined to blame the Explorers for it. Opal didn't know the details of what had happened to Liko, but she could at least conclude that the Rising Volt Tacklers were wrongfully assigning blame to the Explorers. They had no proof to back up their accusations against the Explorers, but they were still determined to blame them for what had happened to Liko. It was no wonder the Explorers kept talking about how much of a pain the Rising Volt Tacklers could be. They were accusing the Explorers of something they didn't do by saying they must have been involved with the disappearance of one of their friends.
Amethio pushed himself to his feet suddenly, and Opal stared up at him with wide eyes. "I should go and check on Zirc and Onia," he declared. Opal could have sworn she heard his voice wavering slightly, but he didn't give her the chance to call him on it or even confirm her suspicions. "Stay here and rest." He didn't tell Opal to entirely forget about Liko and the question she had asked, but she knew that was what he was thinking. She would be better off if she simply forgot about all of this and went back to not knowing a thing about who Liko is.
Opal stared helplessly as Amethio made his way to the door and then slipped out of the room. Opal listened closely for the sound of Amethio's footsteps as they grew softer and then faded from her ears entirely. Opal collapsed backward onto her bed as soon as she knew he would not be returning, and she let out a heavy sigh that made her entire body shake. Everything felt like it was too much all of a sudden. Her nerves felt like they had been lit on fire, and Opal was left to try and rush around to put out the pyres before they could consume her.
Opal pressed one hand against her chest, finding that her heart had started to race at some point when she wasn't paying attention. She forced her eyes shut, begging sleep to take hold of her and calm the terror racing through her. Opal didn't understand why she was reacting like this. She should have been fine. Hearing about Liko shouldn't have sparked a reaction like this. Opal didn't know a thing about who Liko was. She didn't even know what Liko was supposed to look like.
Then why did Opal feel like she was going to fall apart if she learned anything else about Liko? Her head was aching with a threat and a warning. Opal understood it even if she didn't put it to words. Her mind was warning her that if she tried to learn more about Liko, then she would pay the price, and her head would probably hurt for the rest of the day if not even longer. Liko was dangerous, and Opal knew it even though she felt she didn't know much of anything else about her life.
She had been doing so well. Opal had been feeling on top of the world because of the progress she had been making at becoming a stronger fighter. She felt like nothing could tear her down once she started to look up to the sky with a smile on her face... But everything came crashing down before she had the chance to protest it. Spinel hadn't even been the one to ruin this. It had been Opal and her own curiosity, and she knew it was still going to sting more than anything had any right to.
Opal suddenly felt exhausted, like her body was turning on her for committing the crime of curiosity. She shouldn't have been wondering about things out of her control, and her body was proving it. Opal didn't even bother to fight back against her steadily fading consciousness. She would be at peace if she was asleep. Maybe she would wake up with her heart rate back to a normal speed that didn't feel ready to tear her apart. It was probably a vain hope, but Opal was willing to pin everything she had on it anyway.
Opal dreamed of shining blue eyes and the gleam of her pendant. She did not recognize her reflection, and she wondered if it was ever meant to be hers to begin with. She did not think she even wanted to know the answer.
~~~~~
Amethio knew he had made a mistake.
He should have stayed with Opal when she began to struggle under the weight of hearing Liko's name. Instead, Amethio forced himself to his feet and ran. He wished he had been strong enough to withstand Opal's curiosity, but he simply couldn't do it. All of the guilt Amethio had been fighting to outrun caught up with him in the blink of an eye, and Amethio knew he had to run and try to hide it as soon as possible. He couldn't let his anxiety leave a wide enough gap in his defenses for Opal to ask for more information. Amethio would never be able to bury the truth again once it came out, so he needed to flee before that video had the chance to make everything fall apart.
He couldn't hold it against Zirc and Onia that things had ended the way they had. Neither one of them could have known that Nidothing was going to talk about Liko. Amethio didn't know what the full story was there, but he was going to ask them about it as soon as he was able to catch up with them. He hoped they had at least a bit of information to shine a light on this. Amethio felt like he didn't know anything about any of this.
The only thing he was really sure of was that he had messed up. All of them had messed up because it gave Opal the chance to get a little bit closer to the truth. The video had nearly unveiled every ugly thing they had ever been told to hide. Amethio hadn't realized Nidothing was going to say Liko's name specifically in the video. How could any of them have seen something like that coming? Amethio didn't even realize that Nidothing knew Liko personally.
Amethio had been hoping he would be able to go just one afternoon without his guilt eating him alive, but now that it had started consuming him in full, he couldn't seem to escape it. Amethio couldn't help thinking back to the look of confusion and fear in Opal's eyes when she asked him who Liko was. He was lying through his teeth to her, and Opal didn't even question it. She didn't have enough evidence to question it, as a matter of fact. She didn't realize just how deep all of this ran, and if the Explorers had their way, she would never find out either.
Amethio hated that he had to keep so much secret from her. Opal had been through more than enough at Spinel's hands, but that didn't seem to be enough in the eyes of the world. Opal was getting closer and closer to striking gold and finding a truth that had been meant to stay hidden from her for the rest of time. Opal had been with the Explorers for a few weeks now, but none of it seemed to matter all that much. If the truth came out before the time was right, then Opal would... She would...
Amethio didn't know what she was going to do. He just didn't know what to think of any of this. If Opal found out the truth, she would undoubtedly be upset with the Explorers... But would she leave? Amethio wanted to think that she belonged with the Rising Volt Tacklers, and that was what he had told himself leading up to that point, but he couldn't help the fear that maybe she would want to stay with the Explorers. He should have been glad to think that could have been the case. Opal was the first friend Amethio had ever really had, and he wanted to stay with her no matter what.
But it was terrifying to think that she could hear the truth of what had happened to her and want to stay. Amethio barely wanted to be around her when he thought about what she had endured leading up to that point. He didn't know what he would do if Opal decided that she wanted to stand by him even after what he had done. He didn't know how he would cope if Opal declared that she wanted to remain with the Explorers even though they had been responsible for so much of her pain.
"Are you alright?"
Onia's voice pulled Amethio out of his thoughts, and he realized that he had been staring at the ground for far longer than he had meant to. Amethio blinked his way back to reality, his chest tight as could be. "I... I'm fine," Amethio replied instinctively, but he knew better than to actually believe it. How could he be fine? How could any of this be alright? Amethio knew nothing was going to be fine until he could tell Opal the truth. It didn't matter that they were acting in the best interests of the Explorers. Amethio certainly didn't feel like it was helping anyone. All of a sudden, the Explorers and everything they had been working toward mattered much less than the secrets that came with Opal's presence in their ranks.
It would have been one thing if Amethio knew what had happened for Opal to end up as a member of the Explorers in the first place. Instead, he understood none of it aside from the fact that Spinel had been the one to bring her back. Spinel had found her when it took Amethio multiple days and multiple failed attempts to come up short. How had he gotten her there with them in a single afternoon? How had he managed to wipe her memories? What was he even hoping to accomplish by repeatedly breaking the rules that had been set out for him by Hamber, Gibeon, and everyone else high up in the Explorers?
Amethio wanted to get to the bottom of all of this. Maybe he was betraying the Explorers by yearning for such a thing, but he found himself determined to unravel the truth in any way he possibly could have. Opal deserved the truth behind what had happened to her. The Explorers may not have wanted him to find out what had brought her there, but Amethio most certainly did. Opal deserved that much. The walls around the secret were already starting to come loose, and Amethio wasn't going to let this all fall apart on its own. If there was something he could do, then he had to at least try it, especially now that Opal was getting closer to learning more about who she had once been.
Amethio wished Liko's name had never come up. He knew it was always a matter of time, especially with how Opal kept getting pushed in the direction of the Rising Volt Tacklers, but it still hurt to think about. It felt like some sick joke that Opal was constantly being nudged toward the truth of her past, but her mind was keeping her from actually finding out what was going on. If Opal had never found out who Liko was, then it would have all been simpler, but that simply was not meant to be. It felt like there was too much happening for Amethio to ever think of controlling it, and Opal was getting closer and closer to the truth that would have sent all of this crashing to the ground.
"What are you going to do now?" Zirc asked with a frown on his face. "Onia and I can do as much as possible to make sure that she doesn't hear Liko's name again in a Nidothing video. We'll find a way to make it work without her getting too suspicious... But what about you?"
Amethio straightened his posture out as much as he could even though he felt like he was setting every nerve in his body on fire in the process. "I'm going to do what I can to set this right," Amethio replied simply. "I'm going to do my best by Opal. She deserves that much." It was clear that Opal had no one on her side aside from Amethio, Zirc, and Onia. Amethio knew what it was like to be isolated from the world and unable to do anything about it. He had hated that aspect of his childhood more than anything. The least he could do was try to lessen the weight that had been put on Opal's shoulders. They were friends, and friends did what they could to take care of each other.
But could Amethio really be considered Opal's friend after everything that had happened? He was willingly lying to her about anything and everything for the sake of keeping the secrets of the Explorers. That was not something a friend should have done, or so Amethio assumed based on his outside perspective on friendship. Perhaps Amethio was simply lying to himself and acting like he was a better person than he really was. How good or noble could he have really been when all he seemed to know how to do was lie?
No... Amethio was going to set this right. He didn't know how he was going to do it or where he was going to start, but he had to try. Opal deserved better than she had been given, and Amethio would prove it however he could. He was going to help her... Even if it earned him the ire of the Explorers.
Somehow, the Explorers felt less important than Opal, and Amethio wished he knew how he was meant to feel about that.
~~~~~
Roy couldn't stand another minute of it.
Ever since the most recent battle against Amethio, Roy had been desperate to do something with himself even if he didn't know what it was going to be. He wanted to train with Fuecoco and Wattrel as much as he could. Roy got the feeling his Pokémon knew he was distracted though. They were finally getting along better, and Roy was glad for that, but he felt like his Pokémon were worried about him and not giving their all to their training. It made sense, but that didn't mean Roy had to like it. In fact, he would have freely said that he didn't like being reminded of his current shortcomings at all.
Roy wanted to find any distraction he could around the ship, but he couldn't seem to do it. His mind kept going back to that Leafage from the battle against Amethio. Roy wanted to tell himself that he was overreacting and that everything was fine... But he knew he wouldn't be able to believe it until he was able to get to the bottom of it for himself. Roy wouldn't be able to consider all of this safe and taken care of until he knew for sure that the Leafage hadn't come from Liko's Sprigatito. That Leafage had always been something special, far stronger than it had any right to be, and Roy couldn't stop thinking about it. He didn't know how it would have even been possible for that to be Liko, but the thought wouldn't stop nagging at him. He needed to do something to get himself out of his own head, but he didn't know where to start.
So he found himself wandering over to the door of Dot's room, and he hesitated for a moment before rapping his knuckles against the steel. "Dot?" he questioned into the silence. There was no guarantee Dot would even answer. Her sleeping patterns had become even more erratic since the battle against Amethio in Levincia, and Dot was already prone to outbursts of frustration when she felt like she wasn't getting close to the truth behind what had happened to Liko. For all Roy knew, he could end up annoying her even more and pushing her over the edge.
"What is it?" Dot called out, putting all of Roy's fears to rest. She sounded tense, but it wasn't any more tense than she usually sounded when it came to the search. Dot had a lot on her mind these days, but she didn't seem even more upset than normal. That was a good sign. Maybe that meant Roy would be able to spend the afternoon by her side and both of them would come away from it feeling better about themselves.
"Can I come in?" Roy asked next. He heard a hum of approval from the other side of the door, and Roy took that as his cue to walk inside. Fuecoco waddled in after him, always happy to have the company.
Dot was sitting at her desk and looking at her various monitors with a frown on her face. She didn't seem like she had been getting much sleep recently, not that it particularly shocked Roy to know that. Dot had been tearing herself apart in the name of finding Liko for quite some time now, and it made sense that she would be distracted even now. Roy did his best to not make his worry too apparent as he approached her, not wanting to hit a sleep-deprived nerve and accidentally upset her. "How has the search been going?" Roy asked.
Dot sighed and let one hand come up to cradle at her forehead. "Bad." The screens before her were all showing pictures from the battle against Amethio, or more specifically, the vague outlines of the figure that had helped him to escape when the fight turned against him. It was difficult to pick out any details about the person because of how much they had tried to stay hidden up until the crucial moment where they revealed themself. Dot had managed to get a few pictures from security cameras on the streets of Levincia, but none of them had a clear shot of the person who had helped Amethio to run. None of them told her whether or not the trainer was partnered with a Sprigatito that had used a Leafage far too big for its own good.
Roy nodded and slowly eased himself into a seated position on the floor. "I think you're doing a good job," he said. He hoped it didn't just come off as him trying to cheer her up and nothing else; Roy genuinely thought that Dot was making good progress. None of them would have even come close to finding Liko without her. Dot was still struggling, but she was doing more than any of them. She was spending every second of every day trying to find a solution to the problem of Liko's disappearance. Roy knew that Dot was running herself ragged for the sake of their friend, and while he would have liked to be able to pull that burden off her shoulders, he knew it was pointless. Dot was simply too dedicated, sometimes to her own detriment. The best thing Roy could do for her was stand by her and try to support her however he could. After all, he probably would have done the same things as Dot if he had been in a position to pull more of his weight around the search.
Dot paused for a long moment at Roy's words, looking down at him in shock. He could see her eyes wide as could be through the thick layer of hair that normally covered them, and for a split second, the two stared at one another quietly. Dot tried to find the words to thank him, but she failed three times over before finally finding success. "Thanks," she managed to murmur, though the word came out slightly distorted on account of her exhaustion. Dot turned to look back at the screens of her computer a moment later, and she typed away at the keyboard to fill the silence with something other than her own thoughts. Dot was easily embarrassed, it seemed, and Roy complimenting her genuinely was the easiest way to get her caught up in her own thoughts.
Roy was halfway tempted to say something else as Dot continued to work away at her computer, but he didn't know where he would even start with striking up a conversation. Somehow, the silence felt valuable in its own way. They were both struggling with Liko's disappearance, but they were making the most of it together. They were fighting with everything they had to bring their friend home, and they knew how the other was feeling better than anyone. Times had been difficult recently, but if nothing else, Roy could say that one bit of good had come from it. He and Dot had managed to become better friends, and that was a very significant step up from the way things had been before.
He just wished Liko could have been there to see it.
Roy couldn't seem to find the words to fill the silence around him and Dot, so he eventually gave up on it entirely. Instead, he settled on watching Dot tap away at her keyboard with a frown on her face. Her determination was clear, and Roy couldn't help but admire it. He wished he had the same skills with technology that Dot did. If he knew what he was doing when it came to computers, then maybe he would have been able to contribute a bit more to the search. Maybe he would be able to do more than train on his own since none of the other Rising Volt Tacklers ever felt up to pushing the limits of their power with him. Roy was getting stronger as a fighter, but he didn't see the point of any of that as long as Liko was still gone. Unless he got strong enough to bring Liko back, none of it would matter.
"Are you worried?"
Dot's voice came to Roy suddenly, and he snapped out of his trance to look up at her. Dot didn't stare at Roy where he was sitting nearby though, her gaze never leaving the screen of her computer. "About the Leafage," Dot explained. "Do you think it could have something to do with Liko?"
"I..." Roy wanted to say no. He wanted to say that he thought it was simply someone new the Explorers had recruited who just so happened to have the same attacks as Sprigatito... But Roy knew better than that. He knew there had to be something more to all of this than met the eye. Liko's Sprigatito had a special Leafage, and it overpowered nearly every other attack of its nature. There was no way it could have come from anyone else... Right?
"I don't know," Roy finally settled on saying. "I don't want to think that it could have come from Liko and her Sprigatito, but... It feels familiar. You've seen the images of it before too, I'm sure. It's a really powerful attack. I've never seen anything like it, and I've seen a lot of Pokémon attack with Leafage back on the island. I don't know how the attack could be so strong if it doesn't have anything to do with Liko."
Dot paused in her typing to instead grab the mouse attached to her computer. She pulled up a handful of pictures, and Roy recognized them as camera footage from across the Brave Olivine. One of the images showed a Leafage overpowering a set of figures that had landed on the battle platform outside the airship. Roy could only assume that was from the same night Liko had joined the Rising Volt Tacklers back before they first met. The next image came from a training session between Roy and Liko. Even though Sprigatito was at a type disadvantage, she had still put up quite the fight against Fuecoco. That was in part because of her Leafage attack. It didn't matter as much that she didn't have a type advantage if the blow was strong enough to still stagger Fuecoco.
The last picture was from the battle against Amethio that had happened a few days ago. Roy looked back and forth between the images with a frown, finding himself comparing every tiny little detail between them to prove that they were the same. His excuses of the attack coming from a different Pokémon were becoming less and less honest, and Roy knew it. There had to be a connection even if he didn't know what it was.
"They look really similar," Dot said, still refusing to look away from her screen at Roy. "I didn't want to think it was the case, but... I've seen a lot of Leafage attacks from different battles too. None of them looked this similar. There has to be a reason all of these Leafages look the same."
"But that would mean Liko was fighting alongside the Explorers," Roy murmured, hating the words as soon as he spoke them. "She wouldn't do that to us. She's supposed to be here with us. She's... She's not an Explorer. She's a Rising Volt Tackler."
Dot didn't respond to Roy's words for a long moment, and Roy knew it was because she didn't know where she was meant to begin in coming up with a counterargument. By all logic, it didn't make sense to think that Liko was fighting with the Explorers... But that was what the evidence seemed to be pointing to. They knew Liko was with the Explorers, so maybe it wasn't as great of a stretch as they thought to imagine that Liko had been coerced into fighting alongside them.
Still, that didn't make sense either. If Liko had been forced into fighting alongside the Explorers, then surely all of that would fall apart the instant she saw the Rising Volt Tacklers. She would have no reason to comply with the Explorers when she knew her allies were there to help her. All Liko would need to do was cry out for help, and the Rising Volt Tacklers would rush to her aid. There was no way Liko would want to stand with the Explorers as long as there was another option for her to ally herself with the Rising Volt Tacklers.
Roy's head ached with grief and anxiety the longer he thought about it. He felt like he was tearing himself apart with the mere implication that Liko would help Amethio escape. Why would Liko help someone who had tried to kidnap her multiple times within the span of a week? Why would she go along with an organization that wanted to take her and her pendant for the sake of unknown nefarious goals? It didn't make any sense. None of it made any sense. Liko wouldn't do that. Roy knew Liko well enough to be certain that she wouldn't do that.
"We're going to bring her home," Roy murmured, not entirely recognizing the words he was speaking but not caring enough to stop himself either. "I don't know what it's going to take for us to find her, but I'm going to give it everything I've got."
Dot leaned back in her seat, pressing her spine against the chair as she looked up at the ceiling. "Liko wouldn't do something like that," she said softly, though Roy knew that she was trying to reassure herself more than she was trying to calm his nerves. If she said it enough, then maybe she would start to believe it. "There's no world where it would make sense for Liko to fight with the Explorers. There has to be another explanation. I'm sure it was just someone else who was involved with the fight. It must have been."
Roy nodded. "Yeah... It must have been." Even as he spoke the words, he found himself doubting it. Roy stared holes through the screen, trying to tell himself that the images depicted different attacks. If he repeated it enough, then maybe he would believe it too.
Deep down though, Roy already knew what he really believed.
Notes:
We're halfway through the first arc of the story! Woohoo!
I don't have all that much to say about this chapter admittedly. I'm happy with the way it turned out, but I don't have as much commentary as I expected. I guess the main reassurance I can give is that even though things are horrible right now, they will start to get better soon. Things will turn around eventually even if it takes a while for us to get there. We're halfway through the first act, and after that, things will improve! It has to get worse for this cast before it gets better, but it will get better. Soon. Eventually. We just have to be patient.
Next time, we'll kick off the back half of the first arc and get a step or two closer to the story turning around for the better. Until then, I hope you all enjoyed this chapter. Feedback is appreciated as always. Have a nice day, everyone!
-Digital
Chapter 11: As She Sings A Flame
Summary:
Roy and Dot reflect on Liko's disappearance as Zirc and Onia scramble to keep secrets from Opal.
Chapter Text
Amethio lingered by the edge of the training hall for a long moment, his face set in a heavy frown. Opal was preparing for yet another training session, this time with Onyx, and Amethio was there to drop her off. Amethio and Opal didn't get anywhere near as much time together these days because of all the training she and Sprigatito had been ordered to do, so Amethio had to take what he could get. That meant taking Opal to and from the training hall whenever the time was right for it, and Amethio was more than happy to do whatever he could to help her.
Amethio hadn't been given much time to help Opal with her combat skills. It seemed like there was always an excuse for Amethio to be pointed in another direction or to handle something else. He wanted to help her however he could, of course, but it was hard for Amethio to commit to it when he knew he had orders forcing him to do something else. Amethio reassured her whenever she asked that he would be able to help her however he could in the future. He just had to reach a point where he was allowed to do what he could to pitch in and teach her how to fight.
Opal had gained a new confidence since she started undergoing her training. She had been quietly strong before, ready for anything with a small smile on her face and a worn glint in her eyes. These days though, Opal carried herself with a force that would not be toppled or questioned. She wasn't the strongest member of the Explorers, not by a long shot, but she was getting stronger. Amethio didn't think he had ever seen someone rise through the ranks of the organization so quickly before. Her destiny was in her own hands, and she couldn't have asked for anything better.
It left a strange feeling in the pit of Amethio's stomach that he couldn't quite put to words though. On one hand, he was glad that Opal had been given a new sense of freedom so she could make her life her own for the first time. On the other, Amethio dreaded what he knew all of this was going to build up to. Opal was being used for something she never would have agreed to if she had all of her memories. She was getting stronger, but she didn't know everything she was working toward had been chosen for her. Opal hadn't been given a path to select for herself; it had been set out for her, and her only choice was to follow along with it.
Amethio lingered by the edge of the hall as Hamber commanded that Opal and Onyx begin the battle. As soon as Opal called out for Sprigatito to use Leafage, Amethio turned on his heel and started toward the door. He could have stayed to see all the progress she was making, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. Looking at Opal in a situation like this felt horrible to him. She shouldn't have been there. She didn't belong with the Explorers at all, and she didn't even know it. Opal thought she was finally finding a place to belong where she could help the people who had given her a new start and a new path to tread... But Amethio knew that nothing would ever be farther from the truth. She didn't know anything, and Amethio wanted to reveal it all to her, but he doubted he would ever find the words to explain it.
Amethio rubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands, willing himself to focus. He had been struggling to sleep recently, and each night seemed to come and go only after a hard-won battle to finally shut his eyes and turn off his consciousness. Amethio couldn't seem to calm his mind the way he knew he had to. He had never struggled this much with sleeping before, and he hated that this had come to be his new reality. Amethio couldn't focus on anything when he was struggling to sleep at night, and his waking hours were starting to suffer accordingly.
Amethio didn't like having to admit it, but he knew exactly where all of this strife was coming from. He couldn't sleep well because he was thinking about Opal. She shouldn't have been there, and each time Amethio remembered it, he felt worse about himself and his situation. Amethio wondered what it would be like to tell her the truth about who she had been and everything she had once wanted to be. He wondered if she would want anything to do with him after he admitted the role he played in the mess that had become her life. Deep down, Amethio felt he already knew the answer, and it was one of many reasons that he found himself staying quiet.
Amethio should have been happy for her. He should have been excited right along with her that she was training and getting stronger so she could help out more with the Explorers and their cause. Amethio had wanted nothing more than to help the Explorers for as long as he could remember, and he should have been glad to stand up and do what he could for the organization. Instead, it struck her as deeply worrying. Opal's eyes were shining with light excitement and fiery determination, but it wasn't enough. That shine should have been directed somewhere else. That light never should have been Amethio's to see.
Each time Amethio closed his eyes, whether it be to blink or to try and force his mind to sleep, he was met with the deep blue ocean of Opal's irises. Everything about her was right, and Amethio wanted to spend time with Opal more than anything... But at the same time, everything about her was wrong in a a completely opposite direction. Opal was a light in Amethio's life, but she shouldn't have been there by his side at all. Opal belonged with the Rising Volt Tacklers, or rather, Liko did. Liko should have never known what it was like to be an Explorer. She wasn't meant to be there.
Amethio couldn't say for certain when his mind had started to change on Opal and her position in the world, but he couldn't cram his thoughts back into the tiny box they had once belonged in. When she first arrived, Amethio was willing to ignore his instincts and say that she was there for a good reason. He had a bad feeling about what had happened for her memories to be purged from her mind, but Amethio was fine with pushing that aside. Now that he had gotten to know Opal though... Amethio couldn't stop thinking about her and everything she shouldn't have ever had to do. She was on his mind at every second of the day, and Amethio couldn't figure out what he was meant to do about it. He wanted to set Opal free, but he selfishly wanted to stay by her side through it all too. He wanted to stay loyal to the Explorers as he had been all his life, but he wanted to stay loyal to Opal too.
Amethio had never doubted the Explorers like this before. In fact, he had never doubted the Explorers at all, much less to the point of losing sleep and strength. The Explorers had always been a constant in Amethio's life, and even before he was old enough to stand with the rest of the organization, he knew he was acting in the name of its greater good. The Explorers were Amethio's future, and he wanted to do anything he could to help them and their cause. He had no reason to doubt anything any of them said or did because they were his place to belong. Amethio was happy to go along with what he was told because he thought it would help.
But recently, Amethio found that his shining image of the Explorers was rusting and going sour. If the Explorers were truly acting in the name of what was good and righteous, then why did no one seem to care about what happened to Opal? Did anyone know the truth about the tragedy that had caused her to lose her memories? Or was everyone too caught up in other things to even bother with caring? Spinel had the truth at his fingertips, and he could have revealed it if the right people put pressure on him, but that never seemed to happen.
Amethio didn't understand how everyone could just go about their days like everything was fine. He didn't get how Opal could be put in such a horrible position only for it to seem like nobody cared about it at all. She was going through something horrible, and nobody seemed to bother with even giving her a second glance as she tried to push through it. Amethio wanted to be able to help her, but he didn't know all that much in the grand scheme of things. The people who could have shared the truth with Opal were keeping it from her, and they didn't seem to have any regrets about it. In fact, Spinel seemed happy to rub it in the faces of all those he met because he had a power that no one could take away from him. Amethio wanted to punch Spinel in the face for it, but he knew that wasn't going to help anyone. Opal needed concrete answers, and Amethio was determined to find them one way or another. Maybe it would be a hard, long road that he would regret once he reached its end. Still, he was trying, and that was more than he could say for most of the others in the base.
Amethio knew that getting caught up in his own head was perhaps the worst thing he could have done though, so he instead planned to talk with Zirc and Onia about all of this. They may not have had a perfect solution to his problem, but Amethio was hoping that they would at least be able to direct his thoughts in a positive or productive direction. Amethio could get lost in his own fears fairly easily, but Zirc and Onia were much less focused on internal strife. If anyone could help him to pull himself back to reality, it would be the two of them.
Amethio finally found them in a computer room of the base. Zirc was sitting at one of the computers, and his face was tense with a stress that had clearly been haunting him for at least the last hour if not even longer. Onia was standing behind him, one hand pressed against the back of the chair. She looked less stressed and more frustrated than anything. "There has to be some easier way of doing this," Onia was saying, so caught up in guiding Zirc through whatever was bothering him that she didn't even realize Amethio had arrived in the room. "They wouldn't just make a program like this and then make it impossible for anyone to use well."
"What are you talking about?" Amethio questioned, arching an eyebrow in confusion. Both Zirc and Onia jolted at the sound of his voice, and they adjusted their postures in their seats to turn and look at him. Amethio didn't have the explanation he was looking for though, so he continued to watch them with a critical frown on his face. "What are you doing in here anyway?"
"We were..." Zirc thought about if he wanted to go into it or not, but when he noticed the look on Amethio's face, he gave up on trying to hide it with a hefty sigh. "We were wondering if we would be able to edit Nidothing's videos to just not include the sections that talked about you know who. Opal would be sad if we just couldn't show her any other videos after that, so we're doing our best to compromise. The program we downloaded to try and fix it though... It's not working the way it should."
"It's really weird," Onia remarked, her face stained with a frown. "I didn't think Nidothing would have anything to do with... Opal before she went missing. Instead, it seems like all of Nidothing's videos are bringing her up now."
"There was a collaboration event with Iono a while ago where Nidothing tried to find her too," Zirc added. "I don't know why something like that would happen though. Nidothing somehow knew that Liko had gone missing the same day she was taken. They wouldn't have done the massive collaboration in Levincia if they didn't know what happened to her, but I don't know how that's possible. What does Nidothing have to do with all of this?"
"I don't understand it either," Onia sighed with a shake of her head. "It makes no sense. Nidothing should have nothing to do with this... But I guess there's not much we can do to change it now. Nidothing keeps bringing it up, and Opal is going to start asking questions if she realizes that we're going to have to skip around those sections. So we just want to edit around it. That way, there will be new videos that don't have those segments at all, and Opal won't have to ask any questions. She won't even know about what's going on."
"Or she wouldn't be able to if this program would work," Zirc muttered. He scanned his mouse across the screen, trying to search for some tool that would solve the problem at hand. He couldn't seem to find it though, and Zirc let out a frustrated sigh when he realized it would not be so simple. Zirc grabbed his Rotom phone and began to type out a question into a search engine. He clearly didn't know a thing about how to use this program, and he was operating only on the hints he could get from the internet to figure out what to do next.
Amethio stood perfectly still for a long moment, blinking at both Zirc and Onia and desperately trying to figure out how he was meant to respond to something like that. In the end, he decided that he probably wasn't going to find any information that would make this easier to face, so he simply shook his head. "I hope you're able to find what you're looking for soon," Amethio said, the words coming out painfully underwhelming. If he was being honest, Amethio had been expecting them to be there for a much more serious reason.
Though Amethio supposed that making sure Opal didn't learn the truth about who she was could be considered serious business. Opal had been put in all sorts of awful positions recently, and at least one of them was going to expose the secret of the Explorers if they weren't careful to keep it buried. Zirc and Onia knew that if Opal was simply pulled away from all Nidothing videos out of the blue, then she was going to get suspicious about it, and they were right in saying that she was going to ask questions. Still, Amethio didn't know why they were willing to go to all the effort of editing the videos instead of just rewatching old ones. That would probably only bring up more questions on Opal's end, Amethio supposed, but that didn't mean he understood any of this. If anything, the fact that Zirc and Onia were going so far with something that was clearly making them struggle so deeply only confused him.
Onia stood up a bit straighter at Amethio's words, clearly trying to cover for her and Zirc's shared embarrassment over not being able to make the program worked as they had planned. "What brings you in here, Sir?" Onia asked. "You wanted to talk to us about something, I'm sure."
Amethio nodded, though he didn't know where to start when it came to explaining what he wanted to tell them. He was worried about everything going on with Opal, but that didn't even begin to encompass everything that had been racing through his head recently. He wanted to tell her the truth, but he didn't think he would be allowed to do such a thing. Amethio was going to have to get to the bottom of the mystery behind her missing memories long before he was able to reveal the truth to her, and he had no idea where to start when it came to figuring something like that out. At this rate, it felt like it was going to take a miracle, a dream, and everything in between if he was going to learn what really happened to Liko the day Spinel forced her to become Opal.
"Opal is in a training session right now with Coral, Hamber, and Onyx," Amethio explained. It was hardly a perfect transition, but if it would get him out of his head, then he was willing to take it. "So I thought we could take this chance to... Discuss a few things without being overheard." Amethio felt almost guilty when he said it. There were all sorts of things he wasn't able to talk about around Opal, and she didn't even know it. She deserved better than the position she had been put in, and Amethio felt it more and more deeply with each passing day and each passing lie.
Zirc and Onia both exchanged nervous glances at that, neither one of them sure at all about what he was trying to imply. "What are you thinking about specifically?" Onia asked, choosing each word slowly like she thought it could blow up in her face.
Amethio tried to find the words for a few moments, but he couldn't seem to bring his concerns to reality yet. He eventually gave up on trying to plan out what he was saying and just sighed instead. "Do you feel bad about the lies we have had to tell Opal?" The question was far blunter than he would have liked, but it felt like the only way he could phrase something like this. The idea had been haunting him late into the night, but he didn't want to color Zirc or Onia's responses to his concerns. He wanted their opinions without any bias, and that meant holding back on discussing his insomniac struggles.
Once again, Zirc and Onia looked at one another out of the vain hope that the other would be able to explain their way out of this situation. "What has you asking this?" Zirc finally settled on asking. "There's a reason for you bringing this up. What are you thinking?"
Amethio pressed his eyes shut with enough force to make stars explode against his eyelids. "I'm worried about her, and... I feel like we're crossing a line." Amethio shook his head. "No, I think we crossed that line a long time ago. We don't know what happened for her to lose her memories, but I can say without a shadow of a doubt that it must have been something bad. I don't want to keep it from her for any longer than we already have, but I don't know where to start when it comes to telling her the truth."
"I don't know if she'll even want to hear it if we can figure out what happened," Onia said. "Opal has come to enjoy being here in the Explorers, and she might not want to listen to anything that could paint the organization in a bad light."
"I'm afraid of that too," Amethio agreed, though if he was being honest with himself, he was afraid of what might happen if the truth came out for his own sake too. He was afraid of Opal growing disillusioned with the Explorers, but Amethio was far more terrified of what would happen if he was forced to face the idea that perhaps this group he had always idealized and idolized was twisted and distorted. What would Amethio do if he was forced to face a reality he wasn't ready to hear about? Deep down, he already knew what it would point to. He would choose Opal over the Explorers for reasons he would feel guilty over for the rest of his life. Opal would be the first domino to fall, but she would not be the last, and Amethio knew he would be the next to crumble if she lost her faith in the organization.
"We were supposed to get our hands on the pendant, but this feels like it goes a lot deeper than that," Zirc went on. "We were told to bring the pendant back here because the Explorers needed it, but... We weren't told to kidnap her."
"Even when we got the original mission, we were just trying to get the pendant. We thought that taking her for a short while would be enough," Onia chimed in. "If she was with us for a short while, then she would give us the pendant, and after that, she could go back to her regular life. It wasn't supposed to go this far."
"And we certainly weren't planning on wiping her memories for the sake of making her go along with what we wanted," Zirc agreed. "Spinel went really far for some reason or another, and I don't understand any of it. Why would he go over the edge to bring her back here?"
"It must have been to learn about the pendant, but we don't really know all that much about the pendant, do we?" Onia questioned. "We know about as much about it now as we did before she came to join the Explorers. It hasn't done anything that the Explorers could use. We don't know why anyone wants it or what it could be used for. It honestly feels like all of this could just be... For nothing somehow."
Amethio's chest went tight. He didn't want to say it out loud, but he knew Onia had a point. Opal had been with the Explorers for a while, and the pendant hadn't activated once. None of them knew a thing about the pendant or the power it was hiding, and they wouldn't be able to draw its strength out easily either. If the pendant was going to spark to life, then it would have done so by now. Amethio hadn't seen even a trace of the light that had protected Liko during the initial battle at her school. One could argue that Opal simply hadn't been given a chance to draw out the power of the pendant, but Amethio knew better than that. There was nothing any of them could do to activate the pendant, and it was the reason she was there at all. She shouldn't have been there. She didn't belong there.
What was the point of any of this? Opal had been brought back to the Explorers' base so they could study her pendant, but nothing had come from that. She was being put through all sorts of misery because Spinel kept trying to insert himself into her life, and Opal was forced to pick up the pieces of it all. Opal had changed everything about herself in order to fit the agenda of the Explorers, and she didn't even know it. What was the point of something that had so greatly hurt her? Was there ever a purpose to begin with? Amethio couldn't even reassure himself that all of this was in the name of the Explorers and their greater goals. Opal hadn't done anything, and there had been no notable developments since she joined the organization. She was simply stuck there, a caged bird who was trapped in its confines for the sake of being looked at and nothing else.
Amethio knew that even if there was something more to be found from Opal though, he wouldn't have wanted anything to do with it. His mission had been to get the pendant, and he was confident that had been the goal of Spinel too. Instead, Spinel had outright kidnapped her. He could have just taken the pendant and left. What was the point of the extra cruelty? Did Spinel even need an extra reason to be cruel? Amethio had never liked him for a wide variety of reasons, and this was one of them. Spinel was being horrible for the sake of it, and Amethio didn't think he would ever be able to understand.
There was one thing he knew though. He had to get to the bottom of the secret around what had caused her to lose her memories. There must have been a reason for that, and Amethio was going to find it. Maybe it would end with him being named as a traitor to the Explorers, but at this point, Amethio would rather be a traitor than go along with their horrible decisions for any longer than he already had. Opal deserved better than that. If nothing else, he had to do this for her sake.
Get ready, Spinel, Amethio thought, his eyes growing dark. I'm going to find out what you're hiding, and when I do... Everything is going to change.
~~~~~
Dot's fingers flew across the keyboard of her computer as she typed out every piece of information she had gathered recently. Granted, that wasn't all that much information, but it was all she could think to do right now. She wanted to do something to help with the search for Liko, and if there was no new information, then she could go over what she already had. Maybe she would find something hidden in between the words that would point her in the right direction. Dot sincerely doubted it since she probably would have found whatever she was looking for ages ago if that was the case, but she was still willing to hold out a little bit of hope.
It wasn't as if Dot could do anything else at the moment anyway. Roy was sitting in her room with Fuecoco, and Dot wasn't going to edit videos when he was there to talk to her. It would have felt wrong to break the silence with the outburst of noise that was Nidothing's voice. In a strange way, Dot felt almost shy about the idea of having to share something like that with Roy. She preferred to share her videos with the world once she was certain they were done. She liked to feel like she was in control of what she put on display, and if she let Roy listen in on the progress of her most recent video, then that control would start to evaporate. There was far too little that Dot could control these days, and she wanted to feel like she had everything in line. If that meant only letting people see her finished videos, then so be it. If it helped her to feel even a little bit better about everything going on, then she was willing to take it.
Roy had taken to spending time with Dot a lot more than usual recently. When he wasn't out training on the main deck of the ship, he was there in Dot's room. They didn't say much, but they didn't have to. Both of them already knew what the other was thinking. It was hard to think about much of anything else when there was so much baggage hanging in the air around them regarding Liko's disappearance. They wanted her back more than anything, and if they sat together, then maybe they would feel a little bit better about everything going on. If they were together, then they would not succumb to the demons of the dark thoughts that tried to creep in when they were alone.
In more ways than Dot could count, it was strange. When it came to Liko and Roy, she hadn't ever thought she would become friends with either one of them because of how overwhelming they could be. That didn't mean she didn't want to. In fact, Dot had yearned for connection even before she had the words to describe it. She wanted to make friends and feel like a normal kid for once, but she simply didn't know how. Liko seemed to know how to handle her jagged edges though, so when Dot began to open up to the idea of making a friend, she thought it would be Liko first. If she was introduced to Roy from there, then she would be fine with that, but Liko was the main person Dot had her eyes on.
Now, Liko was gone, and Dot had never even been able to see her face to face. She knew what Liko looked like, but all Liko had to know of her was a voice that had shouted from the other side of a closed door. Roy and Dot never would have bonded like this if not for Liko's disappearance, and Dot knew it well. She was glad he was there, but it also made her yearn for what could have been in some other life. She was sure she would have grown close with Roy in time, but it wouldn't have happened like this. Nothing should have happened like this to begin with, and the more Dot thought about it like that, the worse she felt.
So she dedicated every waking minute into trying to find her. When Dot wasn't going over new information or leads around the Explorers, she was editing new videos to try and get Liko's attention. Deep down, she feared they were both pointless ventures, but she didn't let herself stop. Those two attempts to find Liko hadn't worked in the past, but Dot couldn't be certain they would never work. She just had to keep her head up and her eyes trained on the future. Something was going to have to give soon. She just had to have faith.
"Dot?"
Dot stopped typing for only a moment before she got back to it. She should have looked away from her screen to see what Roy wanted to talk to her about, but she couldn't bring herself to do it. For all Dot knew, stopping the search for even a moment could be the difference between finding Liko and missing her entirely. She had to keep looking no matter what. Nothing was going to get better if she didn't keep pushing herself, and she knew it well. "What is it?"
Roy hesitated for a few seconds, seemingly waiting to see if Dot would turn to face him. When she did not, he let out a heavy sigh and shook his head. "I just... I want to know... Do you really think we're going to find Liko?"
That was enough to make Dot stop typing fully, and she turned to face him with wide eyes. "What are you talking about? Of course we're going to find her. We have to." Even as she spoke the words, Dot felt doubt rear its ugly head inside of her chest. She had been doing her best to avoid the depth of her dread, but she should have known she wouldn't be able to get away from it forever. Of course Roy was having doubts. It was a miracle more of the Rising Volt Tacklers weren't doubting that any of this was possible after all the time they had already spent on searching only to find nothing.
Dot hadn't really let herself consider the potential of what would happen if they didn't find Liko because she already knew she wouldn't be able to handle it. She couldn't let herself think like that because once she started, she knew she wouldn't be able to snap out of it again. Dot may have felt like she was running on nothing but empty fumes, but she had to try and keep fighting. She had to keep searching and keep her hopes high for as long as possible. Liko wouldn't come back if Dot was afraid of everything all the time. Liko would only come back if Dot fought hard enough to bring her back to the Rising Volt Tacklers. She had to keep going. She couldn't let herself stop for even a moment.
"I'm not trying to sound pessimistic or anything," Roy began, holding up his hands in defense. Still, that gesture did nothing to stop the fear that had already settled in the air between the two. "It's just that... I don't know. I'm really worried about her. We've been looking for so long already, and we still haven't found anything. I'm starting to feel like we're just never going to find her. If we were going to track her down, then I feel like we would have by now, but... We've just found nothing. I don't know how long I can keep hoping when we don't even have a clue that could point us in the right direction."
Silence stood tall and proud between Roy and Dot, and Dot wished she knew how to break it. Roy's fears were certainly valid, and she would have been lying if she said that she hadn't had very similar thoughts over the course of the last few weeks. Dot had never let herself linger on them, but the fear remained even as she tried to push it away. She had seen the statistics of the people who went missing and then were never found again. She knew that the odds were stacked against them. She felt like she knew it better than anyone. Dot liked to live her life in the arms of assurance and certainty, and she didn't know what to do when the numbers that governed the world were working against her.
"I... I don't know," Dot choked out, but she shoved the words back into the corner of her mind she felt they belonged in a moment later. "We can't afford to give up now. It doesn't matter how long we're searching for. We have to keep fighting. She's still out there. I know she has to be. We're going to find the answers we need. We're going to find a way to bring her home."
Dot forced herself to look back at her computer at that, and when she began to type, it was with much more force than she was used to. The clicking of her keys was much louder than normal, and Dot thought that was just the way it should have been. If she was focused on the noise, then that meant she wasn't losing herself to the tempest of fear trying to escape from her ribcage. If she was focused on doing something that would help people, then that meant she wasn't thinking about all the horrible things that could have been happening to Liko at that very moment when she wasn't there to see it.
Roy hummed his acknowledgement of Dot's words, and he pulled his legs up to his chest for a tight embrace. For a long moment, he sat perfectly still like that, clearly wanting to say something but unable to find the words he was searching for. In the end, he only spoke up when he decided that planning out what he would say would help no one. "I feel like it's all my fault," Roy blurted out. "That Liko went missing."
Once again, Dot paused. Her fingers itched to do something, anything, but she knew that now was not the time. She may not have had much experience with socializing with others, but she knew that Roy needed her right now even if she didn't know how to help him fully. "What do you mean?"
"I... I feel like I should have been there to stop all of this," Roy went on. "She was with me before she went out to buy that spice she found online. She was with me right before she went missing. I was the last person to see her and know that she was alright, and I didn't... I didn't do anything. I know I couldn't have known that all of this was going to happen, but I feel like I should have at least asked her to wait for me. I could have gone with her after I caught Wattrel. I should have been there to make sure that she was alright, but... No one was there. I didn't know what was happening until it was too late, and now... She's gone."
Roy's eyes had fully fogged up with tears by the time he finished speaking, and he buried his face in the space between his knees. "It feels like we've done everything we can to find her, and we still haven't figured out where she is. We know that the Explorers did something to her, but nothing else has come out in all this time. They're doing such a good job of hiding her, and... I don't know if she'll even feel like Liko when we find her again. We've already been at this for weeks, and we've been doing the same thing over and over. We're probably looking in all the wrong places, and... I don't know how much more of this I can stand. I feel like I can't do this anymore."
Dot stared at Roy with wide eyes for a long moment once he was done. He didn't say what he was thinking about doing if all of this fell through, but Dot could sense it easily enough. Roy felt like it was his fault that Liko had gone missing, and he didn't think he deserved to be on this adventure if he had done something as horrible as fail his friend during her hour of desperate need. It didn't matter that he couldn't have realistically known what was going to happen to Liko that day. Roy was still going to resent himself for everything he could have never understood, and Dot didn't know if she would ever be able to find the words to convince him otherwise.
She still had to try though, so she let out a slow sigh and stared down at the space just between her and Roy. "It's not your fault," she assured him. "It's no one's fault that things happened the way that they did. We couldn't have known the Explorers were going to go this far. You couldn't have known that she was going to end up being taken like that. You couldn't have known that she was going to be preyed on when she went out to buy that spice. It's not right for you to point all the blame at yourself."
"But how are we any different from her grandmother?" Roy challenged, and Dot felt her shoulders go stiff. "All of us were wondering how she could have just left the pendant with Liko when she knew that it could have been dangerous. If she knew that something was wrong, then she should have tried to take it back... But we should have been more careful too. If we knew the Explorers were willing to go so far to get the pendant, then we should have tried to make sure Liko was kept safe from them. We can't say that it's all on her for not looking after Liko. All of us should have done something more to look after her too, and... And..."
Roy cut himself off with a loud sniffle, and Dot looked up to find him rubbing at his eyes with the heels of his hands. "I wish we could have done more for her," he choked out, the words strained on account of his tears. Fuecoco leaned against Roy to try and pull him out of his thoughts, but Roy barely seemed to notice. It was only after Fuecoco butted his head against Roy's arm that the boy finally responded. It wasn't enough to convince him to stop crying, but he pulled Fuecoco in for a tight embrace, clinging to his partner like he was all he had left. It wouldn't have shocked Dot in the slightest if that was actually the way he felt too.
Dot reached one hand out toward Roy, knowing she had to say something but not knowing where she was supposed to start with consoling him. She was new to all of this friendship stuff, and Dot knew that she had a bad habit of putting her foot in her mouth when she was forced to handle a delicate situation. For example, she had practically shouted at Liko and Roy through her door when they were just trying to be her friend. Even though she felt bad for it afterwards, Dot knew that there was a strong chance she had hurt them then. Her words were clumsy when they could not be scripted, and Dot knew that what Roy needed right now was someone who would be able to meet him in the emotional ditch he had fallen into.
What Roy needed right now was the delicate touch that Dot felt only Liko would be able to provide. Liko always seemed to know what to say in situations like this. Sure, she fumbled with her words a little bit, but she had at least a general idea of what she wanted to get across, and she certainly found more success with it than Dot ever had. Liko would be able to cheer Roy up. Liko would be able to pull him out of his thoughts. Liko knew what it was like to feel trapped beneath the weight of negativity because she had to pry herself out of that darkness so many times before. Dot didn't know how she was meant to reassure Roy that everything would be alright, but Liko... If Liko had been there, then...
Dot didn't realize she had stared to cry too until after she had to sniffle to stem the flow of her tears. She looked down at her palms and found them splashed with salty fluid. Maybe all of this was hitting her harder than she thought. She had wanted to say that she was able to handle all of it, that she would be able to give everything she had to finding Liko and returning everything to normal... But Dot didn't know if she would even be able to get through a full sentence without falling apart. She had been outrunning this crash for longer than she could ever hope to put to words, and it felt like it was all for nothing.
"I should have been there to help her," Roy continued, burying his face into Fuecoco's head so he wouldn't have to acknowledge just how much he was crying. "I should have asked her to hold on for a few minutes while I finished things with Wattrel. She shouldn't have gone off on her own. That's the reason all of this happened, and... We all could have been more careful. We all should have looked after her. If we had been a little bit smarter, then... Then Liko would still be here with us."
Dot couldn't hold back her tears any longer, and she felt them explode from her eyes before streaming down her cheeks. She watched water drip from her chin onto her palms, and Dot knew she should have tried to say at least something to make the silence easier to bear, but she couldn't find the words. She didn't know if she would ever be able to either. As much as she hated to admit it, she felt very similarly to how Roy did. The Explorers were the ones who had taken Liko, but it was hard to think about that and not blame the Rising Volt Tacklers too. Their job had been to look after her and make sure she was kept safe, and yet... And yet...
Dot hadn't known how to respond to Diana when she said that she knew the Explorers were after the pendant. At the time, Dot had wanted to fume and scream at her that she should have at least tried to take the pendant back before all of this could spiral out of control. Diana should have reached out to Liko and said that she couldn't keep the pendant since it would put her in danger. That was what all of the Rising Volt Tacklers had thought at the time. Dot could see it on all of their faces.
But at the end of the day, they hadn't done their part to protect Liko either. If they really wanted to keep her safe, then they should have done something more to keep her safe. They should have made sure she didn't go anywhere on her own. They could have helped her if they had just kept their eyes on the mission they had been given. Leaving her alone could lead to the Explorers coming after her. That had been the case at her school, and it was the case now too.
Deep down, Dot felt like she had always known this. She had always known that the truth of the situation was far uglier and scarier than she wanted to acknowledge. She knew that she had a far greater part in this than she wanted to admit. If she had been honest with herself, then she would have accepted ages ago that she should have stepped up, left her room, and tried to help Liko. If she had been more proactive back then, then maybe none of this would be happening now.
Dot pressed her face into her hands, her breathing shaky and tattered. Her words were weak and continued to fail her with each second that passed in enraged apathy, and she gave up on trying to form something from them. In the back of her mind, she felt Nidothing grow closer, their hands outstretched to try and console her--
But Dot didn't give them the chance to speak either. "I'm going to find her," Dot muttered, the words feeling like the only thing she had to believe in. The promise didn't hold much weight when she didn't have the actions necessary to back it up, but she didn't care. She would dig her nails in as much as she could and then claw and scrape her way back to the truth. Liko would not be left to suffer on her own. Dot wouldn't abandon her like that.
Dot didn't say that she felt like finding Liko was the only salvation she could ever think of grasping for herself. They had all failed to look after Liko back when she was first taken, but Dot wasn't going to let that be the end of it. They all could have done more, and Dot was going to prove it. No matter how long it took or how hard the fight became, she would bring Liko back. She would defeat the Explorers even if she had to prove herself as a trainer all on her own.
Roy didn't say anything in response to Dot, but he didn't have to. She knew what Roy was thinking anyway. He was hoping with everything he had that she turned out to be right, but he didn't dare to agree with her belief in herself just yet. He needed to see results before he could reach out and let that truth become his too.
Soon, they would reach for the truth. Dot didn't know how she was going to prove herself to the world, but she would figure something out. She had to.
Please be safe, Liko, Dot begged in the silence even though she couldn't form the words with her lips and tongue. I don't know what I'm going to do if something happens to you.
~~~~~
After a few long hours of training, Opal was dismissed from the session by a waved hand from Hamber. She and Sprigatito had given their all against Coral and Onyx, and they were slowly but surely getting closer to being able to best them in a fight. Opal knew it was going to take a little while longer, but she was proud that she was making progress. Each day felt like she was taking a grand step toward something shining, and Opal was determined to see it through no matter how much work it took or how long she had to wait.
As per usual though, the training session was absolutely exhausting. Opal was happy with the work she was doing, and she was proud of herself and everything she knew she would be able to do with this in the future. She was going to enjoy crashing into her bed and resting until she was able to pull strength back into her muscles. All she had to do before that was make her way back to her bedroom so that she could collapse fully.
Opal wanted to find and talk to Amethio before she did that though. He hadn't ever stuck around for long when Opal started her training sessions, though she didn't know why he was so hesitant to remain by her side in situations like that. Opal wondered sometimes if he just didn't want to spend time with her and if this was his excuse for slipping away to do something else. It was a paranoid thought, and she knew it was, but it refused to leave her alone. Amethio was one of her friends, or so she thought, but he still wasn't ever there during the moments she wanted his presence most. Opal hadn't sparred against him once because he always found an excuse to leave the training hall and do something else in the base. Was she really that difficult to be around? Did she make him that miserable without realizing it?
Opal tried to fight the fear away with everything she had to varying degrees of success. Amethio had told her before that they were friends, or at least the closest they could be to friends with so much weight hanging over their heads, and Opal wanted to believe that. Still, it was hard to listen to his words when it felt like his actions were doing so much to contradict them. Opal was going to try and keep herself focused though. She just had to talk to Amethio. Surely everything would be fine when they saw each other face to face, right?
He had been acting strangely ever since the Nidothing incident too. Opal had been doing her best to not think about it, but it was like an itch she couldn't scratch. Nidothing knew about Liko the same way the Rising Volt Tacklers did, and she was trying to find her... But why? None of it felt like it made any sense. Opal didn't know if any part of this was going to come into clarity either. She wanted to know who Liko was, but she wasn't supposed to even consider the thought of that strange girl from the past. How could she get to the bottom of this when no one wanted her to understand?
Opal rounded a corner and nearly collided with the chest of someone taller than her, and she let out a yelp as she staggered away. A hand reached out to stabilize her, and it fell onto her shoulder as a show of comfort. "Opal! Are you alright?"
Opal immediately regretted searching for Amethio when she recognized the voice of the one she had almost run into. "I'm fine, Spinel," she murmured, refusing to look up into his shining pink eyes. She didn't know what would happen if she succumbed to the temptation, but she didn't want to find out either. Opal wanted to swerve around him and keep walking in the direction of her room. She wanted to either speak with Amethio or just go into her room and collapse into bed. Regardless, she wanted to get as far away from Spinel as possible and leave him in the past.
Spinel, however, had other opinions, and he offered her a smile that seemed laced with brutality that she couldn't ever hope to describe. "I heard that you have been undergoing a lot of training recently. I know you've been making significant progress too. Congratulations. That's something you should be proud of," Spinel smiled, though his grin remained twisted in a way that Opal couldn't quite describe. Just looking at him made nausea bubble up in the pit of her stomach, and she had to swallow dryly to try and push it back down where it had come from. "You've been taking up a lot of time with your training. I've heard all about it from Agate, Coral, and Onyx. I wish there was something I could do to join you and help you to improve other than watch from the side and listen."
Opal felt a primal fear like nothing else rise in the pit of her stomach. Spinel had been watching her training sessions? She knew she shouldn't have been shocked by that. If anything, it would have been more surprising if he decided he didn't want to watch her improve. He was a member of the Explorers, so it was natural that he would take an interest in making sure she managed her training well... But it still bothered her. Opal hadn't been bothered by getting to know Coral and Onyx through her training, and she didn't mind even occasionally embarrassing herself in front of Hamber or Agate either. With Spinel though, Opal wanted to run and hide. She wanted to never think of fighting again on the off chance it might have done something to make him want to get closer to her.
As soon as the thought came to mind though, Opal regretted it. She didn't know what her problem was. She had been with the Explorers for a long time now. She should have known by now that Spinel wasn't out to get her. If he was, then they wouldn't be on the same side. She was safe with him... But if that was true, then why did it feel like her mind was fighting her each time she thought it? Why did her body want to tear itself apart the instant she caught a glimpse of him? Why did Opal want to forget all about searching for Amethio and just go back to her room to hide until Spinel was nothing but an idea in her heart?
"I... I'll be alright," Opal forced herself to say. "I'm sure I'll be strong enough to handle myself soon enough. You have nothing to worry about." Please don't worry about me. If you're worried about me, then you'll be closer to me. Don't worry about me. I'm not your responsibility. Please don't make me your responsibility.
Spinel let out a laugh at that, and she had to wonder if he was aware of just how terrified she was. She didn't know if he would care even if he did know. "I'm very curious to see where your strength is going to lead you. If your improvement is anywhere near as rapid as I have seen in my limited time spent watching over you, then I am sure you will make the Explorers very proud very soon."
Opal wanted to stand up taller and say that she was glad to hear it. She wanted to be proud of the compliment and use it as a reason that she should be allowed to leave the base on her own in the future. If it had been anyone else giving her that compliment, then that was just what she would have done. Instead, Opal wanted to dig herself a hole and hide in it for the next week. She couldn't tell if she was being dramatic or if this was actually true, but she felt like there was always something more to the words Spinel spoke. He didn't feel entirely honest, and Opal hated herself for seeing so little in him. She hated herself for doubting him when she knew he should have wanted nothing but the best for her. He was saying that he wanted the best for her, and she still couldn't believe it. What was her problem?
"Thank you," Opal managed to choke out. Her desperation was too much for her to bear now, and she completely gave up on her mission of finding Amethio and talking to him about the day's training session. She wanted to go back to her room and try to calm herself down. Maybe she would have the energy to seek Amethio out later. Maybe she wouldn't have that strength. She didn't know, and she didn't entirely think she cared either.
Opal started to hurriedly make her way down the corridor, but Spinel's voice carried even after her. "I wonder where all of this new strength will take you... And I wonder if that pendant around your neck will be enough to keep you safe from the path ahead." Opal froze, and her hand soared up to her neck to grab at her pendant just to make sure it was still there. She had been told it would protect her if anything bad happened, but she didn't feel like it had looked after her at all. The pendant wasn't responding to her desperation to run away from Spinel, after all. What could it do if it refused to keep her safe from him? Spinel noticed the tension in her shoulders, and he let out a low laugh that rumbled around in his chest. "Good luck, Opal."
Opal didn't look over her shoulder to see if Spinel had left her alone. Instead, she simply walked down the hallway as quickly as she could without breaking into a sprint. She couldn't stay anywhere that even had the implication of Spinel. Her room would be safe. He wouldn't dare to go there when he had been told to stay away from her in the past. If he was caught there, then he would get in a lot of trouble, or so Opal was hoping. She needed that to be the case. She didn't know what she would do if she was wrong and the idea that he should stay away from her was nothing but a formality. She couldn't even entertain the thought.
As soon as Opal was in her room, she pressed the door shut with her back. She fumbled for the lock, twisting it into place and then collapsing onto her bed. The lock wouldn't be enough to protect her from anyone who really wanted to get into her room desperately, but it was just enough of a layer of security to remind her that she was alright, or if nothing else, she was as safe as she could have been. She would be fine. She had to be.
Opal turned so she was staring up at the ceiling. Her chest was tight, and she could feel bile rising up the back of her throat. She didn't know why she was so averse to spending time with Spinel. They should have been allies. They were both members of the Explorers, and they wanted the best for their organization. Opal couldn't even stand to look him in the eyes, but she knew she was going to have to get over that sooner or later. It was her problem. It was a personal flaw and one that she had to overcome as soon as possible.
Even when Opal reminded herself that he was not there, she couldn't seem to escape the implication of his eyes in every trace of pink throughout the room. Her fingers drifted up to her pendant once again, and she gripped it as tightly as she could without cutting off circulation to any part of her hand. It was there to keep her safe. She could only hope it did not fail her when she needed it most.
And yet, Opal couldn't shake the deep, horrible feeling that it already had.
Notes:
And that's the first chapter of the back half of act one! Woohoo!
This chapter is the last one before things get really intense. Chapter twelve is a big one, so this chapter is kind of quiet before the storm. I really like the way it turned out. My favorite part is the scene between Roy and Dot. We don't get to see enough of their dynamic in my eyes, so I had to lean into it as much as possible here. These two have been through so much, but at least they have each other to make it a little bit easier to bear. I adore them.
I'm really excited to show you all what's going to happen next, so I'm going to keep this author's note short so I can start working on chapter twelve. Next time, we'll hit the real turning point of act one, and it's going to be a big one. Until then, I hope you all enjoyed this chapter. Feedback is appreciated as always. Have a nice day, everyone!
-Digital
Chapter 12: That Burns Her Prison Gates
Summary:
In an instant, everything changes.
Chapter Text
Opal really felt like she was getting somewhere now.
It had been two weeks since her last mission outside of the base and just as long since she was told to begin her intense training sessions. Each day felt both overwhelmingly long and blissfully short for reasons she didn't know if she would ever quite be able to put into words. Opal had to train for most of the day, fighting against any of the Explorers she was assigned to, and then she spent the rest of the day with Sprigatito bonding and recovering from all the hard work they were doing. Sprigatito was doing a lot of the heavy lifting with combat, but Opal felt like she was doing a lot too. She was more in tune with her partner than ever before, and Sprigatito's energy spent seemed to feel like hers too. Opal wondered if this was what it meant to be partners with a Pokémon. Each time she closed her eyes, she imagined Sprigatito there by her side, and there was nowhere in the world Opal would have rather been.
Well... Almost nowhere in the world.
With all of her training, Opal had been busy in more ways than she could ever hope to count. She was forced to fight for most of the day, and the rest of the day was spent bouncing back from that. She hadn't been able to spend all that much time with Amethio, Zirc, and Onia unless she was tasked to spar with them. Even so, Opal hadn't ever been told to face off against Amethio for reasons she didn't understand. It was like someone was trying to keep them from fighting. Opal didn't know what the logic was behind that, but she supposed she had nothing to complain about. She would be able to put even more of her skills on display whenever she and Amethio had to fight either against each other or side by side in another fight. She would prove herself, and Amethio would be proud of her. She could already see it in her mind's eyes, and Opal found the thought far more comforting than she felt she had any right to.
Opal got up on day fifteen of her training ready to face the world and whatever could have been waiting for her in the day's sparring session. She looked down at Sprigatito's sleeping form and cast the cat a determined smile. "Are you ready to keep getting stronger today, Sprigatito?" Opal asked. Sprigatito woke up slowly, stretching out and yawning along the way. Once a few seconds had passed, Sprigatito looked up at Opal and meowed, clearly proving her resolve was every bit as strong as her partner's was. Opal smiled and scooped Sprigatito up into her arms. She was ready for this. They were going to keep pushing ever higher, and soon enough, they would be among the best fighters in the Explorers. They had made it that far, and Opal knew they could go beyond their current strength too.
A knock at the door pulled Opal out of her thoughts, and she looked up upon recognizing it as belonging to Amethio. "Opal, are you awake?" he asked. "We've been asked to go in for a meeting with the other administrators."
Opal's heart skipped a beat. "I'll be out in a minute!" She wouldn't be going into the training wing for another set of sparring sessions, it seemed. She only ever seemed to be summoned to the meeting room for one thing though, and that was so she could be told about a mission that would take her outside the base. The mere thought thrilled her more than she knew how to define, so she gave up on trying and darted for the door with Sprigatito still nestled in her arms.
Amethio was waiting for her out in the corridor, and he nodded at her once she pulled the door closed behind her. "Thank you for coming out here so quickly," he said. "I'm afraid I don't know what this is about, but if I had to guess, I would say that we are being given another mission."
"I'm looking forward to it," Opal told him. She hadn't been given anywhere near as much time to yearn for the outside world ever since she had to start her training, but that didn't mean she wasn't thinking about it. In fact, she knew that she was thinking about it every bit as much as she normally did. Her thoughts were simply compressed into a shorter timeframe to accommodate for how few spare moments she had on hand these days. "I'm not going to let anyone down this time. I promise."
Amethio hummed, no doubt thinking back to their previous mission. They had succeeded in stalling the Rising Volt Tacklers, but other than that, their fight had been an objective failure. Amethio and Opal hadn't talked about it much, but as far as Opal could tell, it felt like some kind of test. Granted, she didn't know what a mission like that would have been testing her on or what the point of any of it was, but she supposed it wasn't really her job to know. She had been tasked with helping out the Explorers in any way she could, and that meant doing as she was told. She could do that. She would do it for this mission too. She had to.
The rest of the administrators were already in the meeting room when Opal and Amethio arrived. Spinel was positioned at the far end of the room as per usual, and Opal ducked her head at the sight of him. She knew that his eyes were following her into the room, but she didn't let herself acknowledge it. She was being sent out on another mission, and that was cause for celebration. The last thing she wanted was for her anxieties around Spinel to ruin this for her. She had a right to enjoy herself even if he hated it.
Much to Opal's shock, the person who stood at the far end of the meeting room was not the hologram of Gibeon. Instead, it was Hamber. He had one hand pressed in front of his torso while the other fell behind in the image of perfect service. Even when Gibeon was not watching, Hamber was following in his footsteps and doing what his leader would have wanted of him.
"Thank you all for coming here," Hamber began. "Most of you are being sent on a new mission today. Coral, Onyx, Amethio, and Opal... You all will be following the Rising Volt Tacklers and trying to learn more about them. They are still pushing too deeply into the business of the Explorers, and that cannot be allowed to continue. Your job is to scout them out and see what you can find through observation."
"So we're not supposed to fight?" Coral asked with an exasperated huff. "What's the point of any of this? We can't just follow them and not do anything else! What in the world is that supposed to do for us?"
"This is what Master Gibeon has asked of us," Hamber replied, and Coral let out an irritated puff of air but otherwise did not protest the point. She already knew there wasn't much she could do when she was forced to face Gibeon's orders. "You are to work together and learn as much as you can. After you have uncovered what you feel is a sufficient amount of information, you will return here and share what you have learned."
"But we should at least be allowed to fight them a little bit, right?" Coral pressed. "I don't want to go on a mission that's just babysitting. This is going to be so boring if we can't fight anyone!"
"We will do what you ask of us," Amethio cut in, doing his best to interrupt Coral before she had the chance to go off on too long of a tangent about how little she liked the current plan for the fight. "Thank you for your instructions." He turned to Opal, finding that she was still struggling to keep her focus while not looking at Spinel directly. "Come on, Opal. We should prepare for the fight."
Opal snapped out of her thoughts when Amethio spoke, and she nodded. "Yes... You're right. We'll give the battle everything we have." She didn't spare any more of her breath for pleasantries before she darted after Amethio and left the room entirely. Hamber was quick to follow after them, leaving Coral and Onyx alone with Spinel. As was to be expected, Spinel was staring after Opal and Amethio like he thought he would be able to pull them back if he watched for long enough.
Coral continued to groan and complain long after Amethio and Opal had vanished from view though. "What is all of this for? Are we babysitting them because they're not able to handle things like this on their own? Isn't that what their training is for?" Coral went on. "I'm all for going on a mission, but what's the point of any of it if we're just supposed to sit back and watch? This is going to be so boring!"
Spinel let out a low laugh as he started to walk toward the door. "I think it will be more exciting than you think. You know what they say... You should never judge a battle by its mission details."
Coral looked up at Spinel with a confused frown, blinking once and then twice. "What do you mean?"
Spinel chuckled once again and shook his head. "You have nothing to worry about. Everything will make sense in time." He disappeared from the meeting room soon afterward, leaving Coral and Onyx alone in the silence. The two exchanged a single glance before they gave up on trying to decipher his words. If there was a chance this battle was going to turn into something interesting and exciting, then they had a bunch of preparing that needed to be done too.
Only time would be able to see if Hamber or Spinel's assumptions about the battle were correct, and Coral knew which one she secretly hoped for.
~~~~~
Dot took a brief break in between editing sections of the current Nidothing video to pick up a juice box on her desk and squeeze the rest of the life out of it. She was holding off on going to the kitchen to get another drink after running out of both her juice and water. Maybe she would be able to convince Shuckle to come and stay with her in her room. She felt more productive when she didn't have to go anywhere, and it felt like the one thing that was holding her back most these days was the ridiculous limitation of her body. If she could find a way to get around that, then maybe--
Her computer dinged as a new notification came in, and Dot put her juice box down. She navigated her mouse over to open it up, and she found that it was an anonymous message. Her heart jolted with excitement and anticipation. She remembered one of the last times she got an anonymous tip like this. It was back when there was a battle against the Explorers at the bookstore. Someone had sent her a message saying that they knew what the Explorers were planning. Dot had always been curious about the warning's origins, but they didn't know if there was a point in investigating it. She was too glad to have the information she needed to even care about pushing the point too much. Regardless, that was the past, and this was now. Dot clicked on the message and began to read it to herself:
'The Explorers will be moving again soon. There is set to be a battle near your location. They are targeting you and the rest of your group. It would be best if you set up your defenses so you are ready to greet them. They will not back down without a fight. Good luck.'
Dot's chest both sang with relief and went tight with fear. She was glad to know that the Explorers were getting closer and that she would be able to fight them to try and get more information about Liko out of them... But she was considerably less happy about the fact that the Explorers were after the Rising Volt Tacklers specifically. That had to be what this message was referring to. The Explorers and the Rising Volt Tacklers had been enemies for quite some time, and Dot knew it well, but she hadn't thought it would manifest quite like this.
Dot didn't have any time to complain though, and she was on her feet in an instant. She had to get the rest of the Rising Volt Tacklers ready so that they would be able to prepare for the battle. If the Explorers really were targeting them, then that meant they had to be ready. Dot wasn't going to let the Explorers get the best of them after everything else they had already done. Maybe it was petty, but Dot was willing to do anything and everything in her power to take care of her friends. They needed to get Liko back, and they wouldn't be able to do that if a battle like this happened to divide them.
"Come on, Quaxly," Dot told her partner, and the duck stood to attention immediately. "We have to let the others know about what's going on." It could have been faster to just send a text message out, but Dot knew that some of them had grown awful at responding to messages over the course of the last few weeks. Orla in particular was happy to do anything but look at her phone as she chased whatever distractions she could get her hands on, and Dot wasn't going to run the risk of Orla not being ready for a fight like this when it could be so important.
Dot barely made it outside of the hallway leading to her room before she collided with Roy. She jolted in shock at the sight of him, and Roy cast her a small smile. "Hey, Dot! It's nice to see you out of your room." He was covered in sweat, and when Fuecoco made a noise of agreement, Dot realized that the Fire Pokémon was too. She hadn't even realized it was possible for a Fire Pokémon to sweat, though she supposed that wasn't the point. The fact that they were this disheveled was proof that they had been training again. That was practically the only reason Roy ever left Dot's room these days anyway. If it wasn't training, then it was because he was asleep. Aside from that, he was sitting dutifully in her room keeping her company as she worked out a plan to find Liko and bring her home.
"There's a reason for it," Dot explained hurriedly. "I got another anonymous message saying that the Explorers are planning something. Apparently they're going to be targeting us directly soon. We have to get ready to meet them in battle. I'm not going to let them get the best of us. If we can win this fight, then we should be able to force them to tell us more about Liko." That was her hope if nothing else. It wasn't as if success in a fight had been enough to convince the Explorers to loosen their lips in the past, but what was Dot supposed to do if she lost track of her hope at a time like this?
Roy's eyes went wide. "Seriously?!" He clenched his fingers together into a tight fist. "Then let's go! We don't have any time to lose!"
Dot nodded and followed him through the halls of the airship, ignoring the way her chest burned from the sudden burst of exertion. Roy kept an eye on her all throughout the ship, and she could tell he had something else on his mind. She was on the verge of asking him to just say it when he beat her to it. "Do you think there's something strange about that message?" Roy asked. "I know this isn't the first time you've gotten one of these, but... Does it worry you at all that you've gotten weird hints like this?"
"I feel weird about it too, but the last hint helped, so I don't see any other choice but to go along with it for now," Dot answered. She had her fair share of suspicions and curiosities around the message she had received before the battle at the bookstore... But she didn't have time to push any of them right now. She had to get everyone ready for a fight. If the Explorers were really coming, then she needed to be prepared. They all did. "We have to get ready. We can think about everything else after we've done our part to fight off the Explorers."
That was something Roy could agree with, so even though he had his anxieties about it, he didn't voice them. Instead, the two pulled away from one another so they could get the rest of the Rising Volt Tacklers up to speed while covering as much ground as possible. Roy waved at Dot as he took off down another hallway, and Dot waved after him before going in the opposite direction.
Dot didn't know what to expect from any of this. She would have been lying if she said she was entirely fine with the idea of what was to come... But she was going to find a way to make the most of it. She had to. The message she had received must have been there for a reason, and Dot was going to be ready for it no matter what it was. If the Explorers were really coming to attack the airship, then she was going to give the battle against them her all.
The Explorers didn't know what they were up against. Most of them had never fought against Friede before, or so Dot could assume based on the number of members the organization she had uncovered in her research. Friede was an amazing battler, and Roy was getting stronger with each passing day. This fight wasn't going to end without a fight, and Dot was going to give it her all too. It might have been a bit much compared to what she was used to, but she would find a way to pull her weight.
If it would bring her any closer to finding Liko, then it would be worth it. She knew it had to be.
~~~~~
The airship was huge.
Opal had heard before her last mission that she was supposed to stop the Rising Volt Tacklers however she could, and at the time, she had been under the impression that meant keeping them from being able to fly in their ship. She hadn't been able to do much to reach that goal in the end, and Opal hadn't even seen the airship for herself. Now that she was in front of it though, all she could do was stare. She hadn't thought anything could be that big, much less something that was supposed to fly.
Beyond that, Opal felt herself getting a headache the longer she looked at the airship. She hadn't expected it, but once the pain started to creep in on the corners of her skull, it refused to leave her alone. She felt like she should have known more about it than she did, and... It bothered her that her mind wasn't giving her any information. At the same time though, Opal felt like it was safer this way. She didn't know for sure what to expect of this thread, but she had a bad feeling about it. What if the secrets of her memories weren't things she was meant to understand just yet? She wouldn't know that for sure until after it was too late for her to back off. The airship was intriguing to her, but if it was hurting her, then that meant she wasn't supposed to focus on it. She needed to listen to her body, and that meant leaving the airship alone as much as she could while still having to fight in the same general area as it.
"Imagine what we could do to that thing!" Coral murmured as she looked up at the airship. "It would be so easy to send it falling right out of the sky! Just get me and Glalie on the case, and we'll--"
"We were not told to destroy the ship," Onyx told her, his voice even in comparison to the overtly expressive Coral. "We were just told to come here and watch the Rising Volt Tacklers. If we destroy the ship, then--"
"Who cares what could happen if we do something we're not supposed to?" Coral complained, but Opal knew that she wasn't going to push the limits of their situation any more than she had to. Coral may have been reckless, and she loved a good fight more than anything, but she wasn't going to do something that could have landed her in too much trouble. She still valued her position in the Explorers a little bit, and if she broke too many rules, then she would lose all of that. "I hate having to just watch people. Where's the fun in that? They can't even fight back!"
"Ideally, we won't have to fight at all," Amethio said, narrowing his eyes up at the airship. There was something tense about his posture, and he refused to look Opal in the eyes. She knew they had grown closer with one another, but it still felt like he was holding back on her sometimes, and it unsettled her in a way she couldn't put to words. They were friends, but sometimes, it seemed like he didn't trust her at all. She wanted to ask him about it, but she knew now was hardly the time. There was too much on the line, and she needed to be patient. "We were simply told to watch."
Coral rolled her eyes with a dramatic groan. "What are we even supposed to learn about them from watching them? If they're really causing problems for us, then that's not something we're going to learn just by staring at them. They're not going to do anything helpful while we're stalking them."
"We're here to find out if they have other special Pokémon," Amethio explained. "We have Arboliva, a member of a special set of Pokémon the Rising Volt Tacklers seem to have pursued in the past. Right now, our goal is to find out if they have found any others since then."
Opal nodded, her eyes never leaving the Brave Olivine airship. She could see people moving around on the deck of the ship, but she couldn't quite make out any details about what they were doing or what they were hoping to accomplish. Her head was pounding though, and she couldn't seem to push the pain back where it belonged. Her head simply seemed to want to rip itself apart, and all she could do was sit there and let it pound on without a thought.
"You should stay near the back if a battle breaks out, Opal," Amethio told her. "I'm hoping they won't notice that we're here at all, but if they do, then you should stay out of the way. It would be safer for you that way."
Opal wanted to protest and say that she was able to handle herself in a fight too. She had been training for the sake of being able to take to the battlefield during a situation like this... But she couldn't bring herself to say the words. With her head aching like this, Opal didn't want to do anything, so she just nodded along. In a perfect world, there would be no battle, and she would have nothing to worry about in the first place. She just had to sit back there and watch.
Opal could do that. Of course she could do that. She would be fine. She took in a slow breath and forced it out with a nod. "Alright." The word sounded distant, echoing in her head and refusing to truly settle down anywhere. She was even farther from reality than she thought, and Opal could only hope that changed sooner rather than later. She didn't like feeling like she was so far away from everything.
She was going to be fine though. No matter what, she was going to find a way to push through this. The battle wouldn't happen, and even if it did, she would be fine standing back and letting the others handle it. Her head was hurting, but she didn't have to let that pain be the end of things for her. She had survived worse things than this. She had been preparing herself for ages so that she would be able to take all of this on.
Opal forced herself to try and smile even though she knew no one was watching her in the first place. She was going to be okay. Even if it didn't feel like that now, she knew it was bound to be true. It had to be.
~~~~~
On the deck of the Brave Olivine, the Rising Volt Tacklers were rushing around and trying to prepare for the potential battle with the Explorers. Dot and Roy had rounded everyone up to try and get them ready for the fight, and now, almost all of them were standing on the deck of the ship. Ludlow was with the Pokémon on one of the lower levels of the ship to make sure they were all taken care of and weren't frightened too much by the fight. That left Friede to command the crew alongside Cap up on the main deck, and he took to the job easily once it was placed in his hands.
It was strange to think that the entire crew was gathered in one place for the first time in ages. If Friede recalled correctly, the last time they had all been in one spot like this had been when Diana visited the ship. Diana had left the very next day though, so they hadn't all been together for too long. Since then, Diana hadn't sent any messages or updates back to them, so Friede could only assume that she hadn't yet had any luck in searching for Liko. Friede was always keeping his ears open just in case he heard something new though. He was desperate to learn anything he could, and he was hoping that Diana's extra bit of information about the Explorers would help her to uncover something deep and important.
Friede couldn't help but fear though that it wasn't going to be quite so simple. He and the rest of the Rising Volt Tacklers had been looking for Liko for ages now, and they hadn't found anything. The only real change that had come to their lives since Liko went missing was that they were all now much less comfortable with spending time with each other. Liko had been a light in all of their lives, and they didn't realize just how brightly she shone until after she was gone. Friede liked to think he was handling the situation about as well as he could have been, but he still struggled to find the words to convince the rest of the crew to feel safe enough to speak up. Even now that they were preparing for the fight, everyone seemed lost in their own thoughts, unsure of how they were meant to start a conversation and giving up before they could even try to commit to something more than mere greetings.
Friede could feel someone watching him as he arrived at the edge of the ship, and he looked out at the surrounding area for any signs of something changing on the horizon. The ship hadn't moved from its current spot, so Friede had come to know the scenery very well. As a result, it didn't take him all that long to notice it when something was out of the ordinary. He could see a few glimpses of movement not far away, and he noticed that one of the signs of change was a strange cast of purple light. Friede would know the glow of Ceruledge and his armor from anywhere after the many battles the Rising Volt Tacklers had shared with Amethio. There was no one else it could have been, and that was proof enough to Friede that all of the suspicions and fears that Dot had expressed earlier on were true.
"They're here," Friede declared, and the rest of the Rising Volt Tacklers fell into place around him. They had already called out their Pokémon even though none of them were as experienced in battle as he was. Friede was going to need their help regardless though if he was going to win this fight. He was a strong trainer, but he wouldn't be able to handle the entire battle completely on his own if they wanted to even come close to forcing the Explorers to tell them what had happened to Liko. "Is everyone ready?"
Friede didn't hear any objections, and that was good enough for him. He pointed out toward the sign of the chaos, and Charizard followed his commands without hesitation. Charizard unleashed a blast of fire at the hiding spot Amethio and the rest of the Explorers had chosen, sending sparks of flame all around the area. Friede could hear yells of shock in the distance, and he watched as Charizard adjusted his posture slightly in the air so that he would be ready for whatever attacks may have come his way next.
Friede could see four people standing behind the rock, and there were four Pokémon with them too, though two of them had only just been called out. Friede narrowed his eyes. "You know, if you want to start a fight, the best way to do it is to come out and face your opponents head on. There are some things you just can't get from sitting back and staring."
Amethio shook his head, though there was something tense about his expression. He hadn't expected this to turn into a fight, and that was clear... Though no one could say for sure why he was so confident that this hadn't been meant to be a battle. He didn't leave much room or time for them to speculate it either. "If you want a fight, then so be it." He shared only a single glance with Ceruledge before the Pokémon charged forward.
Charizard was already ready for Ceruledge's approach, and Friede let out a small scoff. If this was the way the Explorers wanted to play it, then he was more than fine with that. He could take on Amethio, and the rest of the crew could focus on the other Pokémon that had been summoned to the field. Friede was sure they would be able to do all of that together. All he had to do was take care of Amethio and maybe even goad him into revealing more information about what had happened to Liko.
Friede didn't know how Dot had known that this battle was coming, but he supposed it didn't matter. Now that the fight was upon them, there was only one way to see it through... And Friede wasn't going to back down for anything.
~~~~~
Coral was the first to step out of hiding after Amethio went off to fight against the man in yellow, and Opal found herself shocked by her confidence. She shouldn't have been since Coral was always so sure of herself regardless of the circumstances, but Opal couldn't help staring. "This is going to be a lot of fun!" Coral beamed, her smile wide and wild. "I knew things would get a lot more interesting once the fight started!"
"We weren't supposed to fight them at all," Onyx muttered, his voice just barely above a mumble. Coral didn't seem to care though, and she pointed Glalie toward the airship while calling out for her partner to attack. Onyx sighed and then pointed ahead for Garganacl to follow his instructions.
Opal knew she should have joined the battle right away, but she found herself hanging back so she could get the lay of the land. There were a lot of players on the field, and this was certainly nothing like the training battles she had grown used to in the arena of the Explorers' base. She wasn't fighting an opponent one on one. In fact, Opal wasn't entirely sure if she would even need to fight at all. Coral, Onyx, and Amethio were all highly capable on their own, and they may have been able to handle this without her aid.
Still, there were a lot more members of the Rising Volt Tacklers than there were Explorers. Opal could make out four silhouettes that belonged to adults, and there were two others who seemed to be closer to her age. The details were muddled and difficult to make out from this far away, but Opal was still straining to learn anything she could.
Coral and Onyx both took the fight onto the main part of the ship. Amethio was handling the man in yellow, and the two seemed like they were on even ground with one another. Opal glanced around carefully, glad to find that no one was watching her. She began to creep closer to the airship so she could get a better view of the fight between Coral, Onyx, and the three adults they were facing off against.
One of them wore her hair in a ponytail, and she had a Metagross by her side. Another was a tall man with an Alcremie standing in front of him. The third of the trio was a woman with pink hair whose partner was a Chansey. Glalie and Garganacl clearly had much more experience in combat than any of their three partners. Opal could already tell that this battle wasn't going to end well for the Rising Volt Tacklers. They may have had the advantage of numbers, but Coral and Onyx were more than capable of taking on enemies that hadn't ever really trained their partners for combat.
Opal heard the echo of Coral's voice though not the words she was speaking, but she didn't think she really needed to hear it directly. She watched as Coral thrust a finger forward, and Glalie responded by unleashing a barrage of icy power upon the three Pokémon. Chansey tried to heal her allies, but Garganacl struck quickly enough to keep her from committing to the healing move fully. Alcremie and Metagross were both staggered by the attack. Coral and Onyx didn't give either one of them the chance they needed to recover, directing their partners to continue their forward momentum.
As Opal watched the battle unfold, she felt her head continue to pound. She wasn't supposed to be there. She was tired of being locked in this dreadful cycle of wanting to leave the base only to find that her body was fighting her whenever she tried. She wasn't supposed to be seeing any of this. She didn't belong anywhere near there. Opal wanted to be of use to the organization that had done so much for her, but she didn't know where to start. She couldn't even watch this battle unfold without feeling like her skin was trying to flee from the rest of her body.
Opal felt like she recognized the people who were standing on the deck. She felt like she should have known their names, but she couldn't seem to pull them into focus. Maybe she was reading too much into what others had told her about the Rising Volt Tacklers being her enemies, but she couldn't shake the feeling that she was supposed to know these people. The thought made her nauseous, and the entire world felt like it was spinning around her. She was the only one left still in an unfolding blossom of chaos, and she stood no chance of maintaining her composure.
Sprigatito let out a firm meow from her place in Opal's arms, and Opal looked down to see her partner looking up at the battle with a determined gleam in her eyes. "You... You want to join the fight, don't you?" Opal murmured even though she already knew the answer. Sprigatito had a strong spirit, and Opal had learned that more times than she could ever hope to count during their training sessions. If Sprigatito wanted to join this battle, then that meant Opal was going to have to follow her lead.
But Opal didn't know where to start. Her training matches were one thing, but they were nowhere close to an actual fight. She was used to controlled environments where her opponent would always stop if she told them that she had done enough training for the day. Here, in the middle of an actual fight, Opal could count on nothing and no one but herself. If she failed to take care of herself and her partner, then that could be the end for both of them. Spinel had told Opal that the Rising Volt Tacklers were responsible for the loss of her memories. Who was to say they wouldn't play dirty? They could have stopped fighting when they realized that she was unable to continue, but it had been humans who took her memories from her, not Pokémon, or so Spinel had told her. The Rising Volt Tacklers would not grant her any mercy, and she would only be thrusting herself into danger if she dared to stand against them.
On the deck of the ship, the two teens Opal's age stepped up to help the adults who were struggling to face off with Coral and Onyx. Opal had expected them to not do much of interest or value, but much to her surprise, she couldn't have possibly been further from the truth. An Ember was enough to distract Glalie, and the Quaxly partnered with the teen girl helped to turn Garganacl's overpowering advantage into something a bit less certain. They were Opal's age, but they were still far better at battling than she had expected. Then again, Opal supposed that she couldn't really underestimate them. She knew how strong Amethio was, and he was around her age too. She couldn't expect others to be useless during a battle simply because they were young.
Coral let out a yell of frustration that Opal could hear even all the way from her hiding spot. That was all she needed to hear to know that she had to do something to help the Explorers to win this fight. She wouldn't be able to learn anything from a real battle if she wasn't willing to rush in and face her problems like this head-on. Her job was to look after the Explorers, and she was going to do that however she could. That started with proving her worth during this battle. She could do this. She had done this before... Well, she had done it during training matches, but surely there were at least a few similarities to be found between her sparring sessions with the other Explorers and a real battle against actual enemies, right? That was all she could really rely on at this point whether she liked it or not.
Opal pointed ahead, and Sprigatito stood to attention. "Sprigatito, use Leafage!" Opal exclaimed. Her partner gladly followed her command, unleashing a massive barrage of green magic into the air. The leaves tore at the deck of the ship, sending anyone involved with the battle into a quick retreat. Even though the Leafage wasn't particularly effective against all of the Pokémon on the field for the fight, it had taken them by enough surprise to force them to step back and reconsider their current decisions. That was all Opal really needed at the moment, and she was more than fine to take advantage of it.
So she rushed onto the deck of the ship with Sprigatito at her side. Opal could feel her head pounding with more warnings than she could ever hope to put to words, but she didn't let any of them hold her back. This was what she was meant to do. She was a member of the Explorers, and it was her job to look after her allies and make sure they were all kept safe. They deserved to be protected, and Opal would prove it herself if she had to. She was one of them, and she wasn't going to sit and rot away in her prison for the rest of time. She needed to step up, and now was the perfect moment to do it.
Opal settled down in between Coral and Onyx on the deck of the ship, and by the time the chaos from the Leafage had died down entirely, Opal was ready. Sprigatito was every bit as prepared, meowing by her side to make sure she stayed focused even in the heat of an intense battle like this. Opal's heart was racing in her chest, but she was more than fine with that. This was where she was meant to be, and she knew it.
Nothing was going to stop her now. She wasn't going to let anything stop her.
~~~~~
"Sprigatito, use Leafage!"
Roy hadn't thought he would ever hear those words again with the way the recent investigation and search for Liko had been going... But the instant he heard that rallying cry, Roy froze. He searched around desperately for any signs of Liko, any proof that she was actually there and he wasn't just hearing things, but he couldn't see her through the thick haze of the Leafage. It was simply too thick, and Roy had to cover his eyes and mouth in order to keep it from suffocating him. Whoever had cast off that attack hadn't been targeting anyone in particular. It had just been a massive blast for the sake of a distraction, and the fact that it was so unfocused was proof.
By the time the dust settled and the chaos cleared, Roy realized another combatant had entered the field. Her hair was a dark color, and it was pinned out of her face by a mask patterned with some flower he couldn't put a name to. The girl wore a similar uniform to that of the Explorers, but something about it felt a bit more elaborate than what Roy could see on the other two Explorers standing on either side of her. She was different from them, and Roy felt it even though he wasn't sure of how he was meant to express it.
Roy's heart was screaming in his chest the longer he looked at her. She didn't belong there, and he knew it. When Roy looked beyond the mask at those shining blue eyes of her... He really felt like it could have been... But that wasn't possible. Liko would never dare to fight alongside the Explorers. She wouldn't ever want to fight against the Rising Volt Tacklers. Why would she willingly side with the people who had done so much to hurt her? There wasn't an ounce of remorse on her face either. That couldn't have been Liko...
But if that wasn't Liko, then why did Roy feel like he recognized her so perfectly? Why did her sapphire eyes draw him in so completely? Why did Roy feel like he had shared smiles with this girl over training sessions against Cap? Why did he feel like she was the one who had sparked him to go on this journey in the first place? If this wasn't Liko, then... Then why did Roy feel like this?
The girl didn't give Roy any time to recover from his sudden shock. She commanded her Sprigatito to use Leafage, and Roy was so distracted that he didn't get the chance to give the order to Fuecoco to get out of the way. Fuecoco let out a yelp of pain as he was forced backward. The attack didn't hit anywhere near as hard as it could have because of a type disadvantage working against Sprigatito, but it was enough to take him by surprise. Nearby, Quaxly was hit by the attack considerably harder, and Roy realized that Dot had also been too caught up in her own thoughts to tell her partner to flee.
In just a single minute, this girl had managed to change the outcome of the fight completely. She was dangerous, and Roy could see it clearly... But even as he acknowledged this risk, he felt like he was being consumed by a grief that wanted to rip him apart. He wanted to walk toward her with his arms spread wide in cautious optimism. He wanted all of this to just be over.
Roy knew he should have targeted Sprigatito since she was the least experienced Pokémon on the field. In the end though, he couldn't quite bring himself to give the order. Instead, he pointed at Glalie. "Fuecoco, use Ember!" Fuecoco followed his order, and he unleashed all of the grief he had been building up over the last few weeks straight into a waiting Glalie's face, and the Ice type Pokémon was sent crashing to the ground in an instant. Roy smiled at the peak of his victory, but--
~~~~~
The fight was not over yet.
Opal could feel Coral's rage even before she turned to face her, and she found the pink-haired Explorer trembling with her fingers clenched into fists. "Glalie!" Coral cried out sharply, and Opal immediately recognized that tone. It was the one that Coral always used when she was forced onto her back foot during a battle, and it was a very strong indicator that she was going to brute force her way to the end of the fight. "Let's finish this! Use Self-Destruct!"
Opal tried to turn and flee, but she didn't get the chance. Glalie was simply too close to her, and she knew she wasn't going to make it. Fear unlike anything else forced its way up through the back of her throat, and her entire body burned. Soon enough, she knew that pain would spread to the outside of her body too. This was going to be where it all ended for her. She could feel it. She was going to die.
Glalie burst out into a wild explosion, and Opal threw up her arms in anticipation of the impact--
But it never came.
Opal heard a gentle noise like something twinkling, and it overpowered the brutality of the explosion echoing all around her. She looked up to see that her vision had been cleared, and her mask had been knocked off by the wind kicked up by Glalie's explosion... But Glalie's attack had not hit her directly. Instead, the mask was the only thing that had been cast aside.
Opal was floating at the center of an orb of brilliant blue, teal, and green light. The sphere had protected her from the worst consequences of the explosion, and Opal knew she was safe. Her fear slowly began to die down, and then it faded away entirely. She was alright. She knew she was alright, and it was all thanks to...
At the center of the sphere, Opal could see the silhouette of what appeared to be a small Pokémon. It looked like a tiny turtle made of crystals, and Opal found herself reaching out for it. The turtle looked up at her with shining eyes and a love unlike anything Opal had ever known. She didn't know if she was breathing anymore, but she didn't think it mattered. She was exactly where she was meant to be, and this strange Pokémon in front of her could feel it too.
The turtle looked at Opal for a long moment, letting out a high-pitched cry and something that almost looked like a smile. A second later, all of the light surrounding Opal and keeping her suspended in the air began to retreat back toward the Pokémon. The turtle's shape shrunk and then disappeared entirely, replaced instead with Opal's pendant. It had fallen off her neck during the explosion... No, that wasn't right. It had pulled away from her willingly. The Pokémon inside of it had chosen to act in the name of protecting her. It wanted to keep her safe from the blast Coral had created. It was there to keep her safe.
Just as Opal had been told, her pendant had protected her in the moment she needed it most. She hadn't known if she could believe it after she lost her memories. It felt like the pendant should have done something to keep her safe from the incident that tore her mind apart... But none of that seemed to matter. Opal had been kept safe during her most desperate moment. This was where she belonged, and her pendant was proof of it.
Opal's feet touched the ground slowly and gingerly. Her legs barely managed to hold up her weight, desperate to buckle and leave her as nothing but a heap of limbs. Opal's body shook as she reached for her pendant and stared at it. She could see her reflection slightly distorted in the gem's surface, and her heart was racing in her ears. She... She had experienced that before. It felt like a lifetime ago now, and Opal couldn't bring the memories of it to the surface, but she knew that this was not the first time her pendant had protected her. It had not helped her to maintain her memories, but it had still kept her safe.
And today, it was the only thing she could have ever wanted or needed.
~~~~~
Dot had never seen anything like it.
She had seen video footage of Liko's pendant activating a few times back when Liko was still on the Brave Olivine... But she hadn't ever witnessed it in person. Dot had almost feared she would never get the chance to see it either because of Liko's disappearance. She thought that was simply something she was doomed to never experience, and while she wouldn't have said that she made her peace with it, she had been willing to let that truth settle in her chest for however long it needed to.
That was up until the Glalie on the field used Self-Destruct. In an instant, everything came crashing down. The blue light that exploded from that strange girl with the Sprigatito was immediate, and somewhere in the chaos, her mask was knocked to the side. Her hair fell freely around her neck, free of its confines for the first time in ages. The girl looked at the strange turtle Pokémon sharing the chaos with her, and Dot... Dot felt her world both begin again and end all in an instant.
Dot remained frozen alongside the rest of the Rising Volt Tacklers as the light of the pendant faded. The girl at the center of the sphere fell to the ground, staring down at the pendant in her hands in shock. She barely seemed to remember that she was in the middle of a battle. It wasn't as if anyone would have ever dared to attack her right now. Even Friede and Amethio had stopped their fight to turn and stare at the source of that cerulean glow.
Dot's body moved on its own, and she took a shaking step toward-- "Liko?" Dot whispered, barely believing that she was speaking that name at all. When she received no response, Dot stepped forward once again. Tears were rising to her eyes all at once, and they threatened to tear her limb from limb. It was the sweetest pain she had ever endured. "Liko?!"
The girl--Liko--looked up from the pendant with wide, wild eyes. Her face was unnaturally pale, and she staggered away from Dot as her breathing grew short and raspy. There was something like recognition in her eyes, terrifying in every way imaginable, but she didn't allow herself to say anything about it. Instead, she clutched her pendant tighter to her chest, and her breathing grew ever faster. She was barely getting any air by now, but nothing could have convinced her to calm down. Not anymore. Nothing would ever be the same again, and she knew it bitterly well.
"Liko..." Roy began, reaching one hand out toward her. "What's going on? What happened? Are you--"
Liko stared at both Roy and Dot for a few scathing seconds before she could no longer take it. Her breathing was too fast to be doing anything but hurt her, and her body moved on its own around its own terror. Liko scooped up her fallen mask from the ground and took off running toward Amethio. He was stunned where he was standing beside Ceruledge and Corviknight. Liko clambered onto Corviknight's back, and Amethio followed her lead. With one powerful beat of the bird's wings, the two had taken off into the sky.
"Liko!" Dot screamed, stretching one hand up after them. She sprinted to the edge of the ship even though she already knew she would be too late. When Liko did not turn back, Dot whirled to face Friede. "Get on Charizard now! We have to go after her!"
However, Charizard was very clearly in no condition to be flying. He had taken quite the battering during the battle against Amethio, and it seemed to be trying for Charizard to even lift his head to look at Dot. As soon as she realized this, Dot let out a frustrated yell, her hands coming up to cradle at her head. This couldn't be happening. None of it could be real. It had to be some twisted nightmare, a sickening image that would flicker and fade if she dragged herself back into her body. Liko couldn't be with the Explorers. She... She was supposed to be there with the Rising Volt Tacklers, and... And...
The other two Explorers from the battle had fled by the time Dot felt Roy step up beside her. "Did... Did I really see that?" Roy whispered, barely seeming to believe his own words. "Was that... Was that Liko?"
Dot wanted to say no more than anything in the world. She wanted to tell Roy that he was mistaken and that he had seen wrong... But if he had seen wrong, then so had everyone else. "Yes... It was," Dot whispered. She didn't realize she was crying until ugly, horrible tears had sprung to life in her eyes. She wanted to scream until all of this tension in her chest was gone, but it would do nothing for her. The only thing that would make her feel better now was getting Liko back, and...
And Liko didn't seem to want to come back. She had run off with the Explorers after her mask was knocked off. She had chosen to leave with Amethio. But why? It didn't make any sense. Liko had no reason to go with the people that had tried to kidnap her so many times before. When Dot realized that the Explorers had something to do with her disappearance, she had thought that meant Liko was being imprisoned somewhere. She thought that Liko was being kept against her will and forced to do what the Explorers asked of her.
But that couldn't have been further from the truth. Liko had joined them for some reason. Dot didn't know what it was, but she knew that the reasoning couldn't have been anything good. It would never be good enough to justify her standing with them after what they had done to her in the past. Dot wanted to grab her by the shoulders and remind her of that, but she didn't know if it would do anything.
Liko hadn't even seem to recognize her or the rest of the Rising Volt Tacklers when she saw them during the battle. There was no gleam of understanding in her eyes when she looked at them. There was just... Emptiness and fear. Was it possible that Liko didn't know what was going on? How could that even be real? It was a better explanation than her choosing to go with the Explorers of her own free will, but it still wasn't enough. Nothing could ever be enough.
Dot felt Roy wrap an arm around her shoulders, and she fell into his embrace immediately. She clutched at him tighter than she had any right to. She had never liked physical touch like this, but it was all she could ever need right now. She could feel the warm dampness of Roy's tears fall onto her cardigan, filtering through the fabric to rub at her shoulder. Dot didn't bother with fighting it. She just wanted to feel like things would be alright even if it was impossible after all that had happened that day.
Around Roy and Dot, the rest of the Rising Volt Tacklers were stunned into silence too. Friede was still staring up at the sky where Amethio and Liko had last been seen. If Charizard had been in even slightly better shape, he would have gone after them, but he knew Charizard wouldn't be able to fly as things were. His only choice was to be patient and hope that he got another opportunity to go after them and find Liko again.
Mollie and Orla were standing beside one another. Orla was the first to respond, clenching her fingers into a fist. "Damn it!" She seemed ready to punch something, but when there was nothing around for her to sink her knuckles into, she pressed one hand against her head and dug her nails into her temple instead. Mollie wanted to reassure her, but she didn't know where to start, too lost in her own silent grief to move at all.
Murdock wasn't doing much better. All he could think about was how terrifying this was. Liko hadn't just been captured. She had been turned against the Rising Volt Tacklers and forced to work for the same people that had driven her to ruin in the first place. Murdock hadn't known what to expect of the Explorers when they took Liko, but it certainly hadn't been this.
None of them could have imagined this would be the outcome. It was somehow worse than anything they could have ever imagined. Liko was still alive, but she didn't seem to recognize any of them. Liko was still alive, but she had been forced to fight against them multiple times. Liko was still alive, but she had been manipulated to betray everything she had ever stood for.
Dot's fury burned hot and endless in her chest, and she forced it to singe and destroy every ounce of grief in her body. She couldn't let her sadness control her. This fight was not over. She wasn't going to let it be over until she was able to find Liko and bring her back home... Find the real Liko, not this horrifying imitation that had been forced to take her place. That was not the Liko that Dot had fallen so deeply for, and she would fight however she had to in order to set this right.
But for the moment, Dot did not fight. She remained there in Roy's arms, crying until she had no tears left to shed. The world seemed to stop, and Dot wished that it would so that she had enough time to recover. She just wanted everything to end for a few moments so that she could remember how to breathe again.
She wondered how she would ever breathe again after seeing cerulean eyes not recognize any of her friends. Dot knew she would have to teach herself, but she would never know where to start.
Notes:
So... That was a big one, wasn't it?
I told you that chapter twelve was a massive turning point, and I meant it. Everyone knows the truth now... Well, everyone but Opal. The Rising Volt Tacklers have realized that Liko isn't just a captive of the Explorers but one of them. What a miserable turn of events, huh?
With that said, writing this chapter was a lot of fun. This is a moment that I've been looking forward to since I came up with the concept for this story over six months ago, and I am so happy to finally have it in writing. This is the big shift of the first arc, and I'm sure you can see why. I really love the way it turned out, and... Gah. I just love this story so much.
Next time, we're going to follow this momentum into the aftermath of this horrible battle. Until then, I hope you all enjoyed this chapter. Feedback is appreciated as always. Have a nice day, everyone!
-Digital
Chapter 13: Take the Chances, Overcome
Summary:
The fallout from the previous battle rushes to greet everyone involved.
Chapter Text
Opal couldn't breathe.
The wind whipped all around her, tearing at her face and skin with far more brutality than it had any right to. Opal didn't acknowledge any of it, her eyes glassy as she stared out at the sky all around her. Amethio was guiding Corviknight back in the direction of the Explorers' base, and Opal was flying along just behind him. Her arms were wrapped fiercely around his body, trying to cling to him with every ounce of strength she had left. She was shaking, but Opal hoped that Amethio thought it was just the wind making her feel less sure of herself than usual.
The events of the battle replayed in her mind relentlessly, showing her images of things that she never should have had to see. She remembered the raw terror that had rushed through her when she realized she would not be able to retreat out of the way of Glalie's Self-Destruct in time. She remembered the sudden peace that had settled over her aching bones when she saw that she was safe in the bubble made by that strange Pokémon. She remembered the jarring anxiety that had started to rush through her body the instant she realized that her enemies had spoken that horrible name again. She remembered the strange texture of her mask as she crouched down to pick it up when she fled. She remembered the horrific nausea that had coursed through her blood the instant she realized that her world was crumbling.
Opal didn't understand any of this. She didn't want to acknowledge what was happening to her, desperate to bury her face in her pillow and pretend that none of this was real. It couldn't be real. She wasn't going to let it be real... But the world wasn't exactly asking for her permission anymore, was it? She was being pulled along for the sake of something far greater than herself, and the only choice she had left was to go along with it. This fate had been decided long before she ever realized she had a destiny at all, and she was left to dance across the stage with puppet strings controlled by a power higher than any she had ever been forced to acknowledge before.
Opal's mind kept showing her the worst part of the entire battle over and over. She couldn't stop staring at the hurt, terrified faces of the Rising Volt Tacklers. They all looked shocked to see her, but there was something more to it than that. They were suffering because they had caught a glimpse of her... But how was something like that possible? It didn't make any sense. Opal didn't... She didn't know them like that. They had been responsible for her amnesia, or so she had been told, but they had no reason to stare at her the way that they had.
No... That wasn't true at all. They absolutely did have a reason, and it was one that Opal never wanted to have to acknowledge or face again. They had spoken the name Liko when they saw her without her mask. It hadn't just been once either. They said it again and again and again, like Opal was the exact same as the friend that Amethio had told her they had lost. But that couldn't have been possible. Opal didn't know anything about Liko. She had heard the name thrown around in a million different ways, but that meant nothing. She wasn't supposed to know anything about this. She wasn't supposed to be involved with this either.
Opal wished that she had never left the base. She yearned to go back to the place she knew she was safest and hide herself there until all of this proved itself to be a bad dream. Opal should have known that she couldn't escape the base without something bad happening before. When had she ever been spared before? She was meant to be miserable every time she stepped outside. She should have known this. Why did she ever think she could stand on her own two feet outside of the base? She was doomed to be miserable every time she tried, and if it wasn't obvious before then, it certainly was after that battle.
When Opal forced the faces of the Rising Volt Tacklers into her mind, she found herself staggered in more ways than she could ever hope to count. She... She felt like she knew them. Their leader--the man in yellow--was named... Friede. She didn't know how she was certain of it, but she knew that to be true. The boy with brown and red hair partnered with the Fuecoco was Roy. She knew them, or at the very least, she had once upon a time. Opal didn't know if she qualified as knowing them anymore. She was almost too afraid to even pose the question and find out.
Opal buried her face into Amethio's back. She knew she was going to be torn apart for thinking something so treacherous, but she... She didn't think the Rising Volt Tacklers' only role in her life was erasing her memories. When she looked at them, Opal felt dread, but it didn't have much to do with fighting them. She was not afraid of facing them in a battle. She was afraid because she felt like she had been told to fear them, not because she actually did. Spinel's voice echoed in her mind whenever she tried to think about the Rising Volt Tacklers. They were the ones who had erased her memories...
But if that was the case, then why didn't she hate them? She should have wanted to scream and flee the instant she saw them, but instead... Opal felt like she had done something forbidden that day, but it wasn't what she had expected. She was going against the Explorers, but it was not in the way she would have anticipated. It was difficult to put a finger on any of it, but Opal knew this was different from her fears. The dread she felt when she looked at them was not hers. It was something that had been forced into her, like somebody had deliberately tried to make her fear them when she was not supposed to.
Opal didn't realize she was crying until a shaky sob tore its way free of her lips. It wasn't supposed to end that way... Or maybe that was exactly how it was supposed to end. She didn't know anymore, and she was too afraid to even entertain the idea of finding out. She just wanted all of this to stop. No matter what it took, Opal wanted to keep running so that she could escape this misery that had suddenly been made hers. She would hide for the rest of time if that was what it took for her to feel better. She would do as she was told and never even think about leaving the base again. She would forget about all of this if that was what would make it easier. She would do anything.
Even as Opal thought that though, the name Liko echoed in her mind, and she knew that it held far more significance to her than she ever could have imagined.
~~~~~
Amethio didn't think that battle could have gone any worse.
When the Explorers' base was at last in sight, he helped Opal off Corviknight. Her tears were staining the back of his shirt, but he couldn't bring himself to care. He held her hand gingerly, but Opal gripped it like she had never grabbed onto anything else before. Amethio called back Corviknight and began to slowly escort Opal through the halls of the base back to her room. She was on the verge of collapsing for a million different reasons, and Amethio wasn't going to let her push herself any further than she already had.
Amethio guided Opal back toward her room, and he opened the door for her slowly. "Rest," Amethio instructed once he was inside. Opal pulled away from him slowly, seemingly not trusting the integrity of her own legs. She managed to make it to her bed though, and she collapsed onto the mattress as soon as she was within its reach. "I'll be back soon. I promise."
Amethio didn't wait to see how Opal was going to respond, instead turning and leaving through the hallway. His heart was racing in his ears, and every fear that he had hoped would be mere paranoia felt like it was coming to life in his mind's eye. Opal was supposed to be kept as far away from the Rising Volt Tacklers as possible to ensure that she didn't remember anything. That hadn't been meant to be a battle at all, but it had turned into one after the Rising Volt Tacklers spotted them. It was almost like they had known to expect the Explorers. They wouldn't have all been gathered together on the deck of the ship otherwise. They had been prepared for this, and Amethio hated thinking about how that could have been possible.
Amethio had to report back to Hamber as soon as possible. That fight had gone horrifically poorly, and Amethio couldn't just sit there with his thoughts for any longer than he already had. Opal was never supposed to be put in a position where she could be uncovered like that, and yet, that was just what had happened. The Rising Volt Tacklers knew who Opal was to them now. Her mask had come off during the battle, and they all knew clear as could be that she was Liko. Her face could be hidden, and her name could be replaced, but they would never forget who she really was.
Opal didn't seem to have remembered anything when the Rising Volt Tacklers spoke her name. Amethio had no idea if that was a good thing or not, and at this point, he didn't even think he wanted to know the answer. Opal had been numb when she realized they were calling her Liko, and she gathered her mask and then moved to flee as soon as she was given the chance. The thought made Amethio sick to his stomach. She shouldn't have ever had to face the Rising Volt Tacklers like that at all. This entire battle felt like it had been set up somehow. The Rising Volt Tacklers were not supposed to be ready for a fight. The Explorers should have been able to observe them without any problems, and they should have gotten the information they were after. They didn't know if the Rising Volt Tacklers had any of the other Six Heroes at all though. They hadn't been able to learn enough just based on the brief encounter they had shared. The battle was perhaps the greatest failure that it possibly could have been, and Amethio hated it.
Amethio's thoughts only started to calm down when he finally found Hamber in the halls of the base. Amethio forced himself to breathe through the anxiety that threatened to rip him limb from limb, and he approached Hamber with as much measured grace as he could stand to use. "Hamber," Amethio started, and the older man turned to face him. Amethio didn't give him the chance to ask how the battle had gone though. "The Rising Volt Tacklers have figured out who Opal is and that she is fighting with us now. They came dangerously close to dislodging her memories during that battle. If we had stuck around for too much longer, then they could have revealed something before the right moment." There never would be a right moment for Opal to learn about who she had been, but Amethio didn't say that. It felt like too much to say in a time when he already felt like he was on the verge of collapsing and never being able to get up again.
"The pendant activated during the battle," Hamber began plainly, and Amethio stared in shock, unsure of how he had come to know something like that. "We had security systems in place to watch the battle in case it went sideways. We saw that the pendant activated again... It seems to do so when Opal is placed in grave danger. That is what brings it to life even though it is dormant at all other points. How intriguing."
Amethio nodded. He could have come to a conclusion like that for himself, but it bothered him how it was being talked about now. He couldn't just stop Hamber from referring to it a certain way, but Amethio found himself deeply unsettled by the choice of words. He had to fight to keep his composure even somewhat intact, and he forced himself to stand up a bit straighter. "We need to keep Opal in the base from now on," Amethio declared. "It's far too dangerous for us to let her go outside when she could be put in danger like that again. What if the Rising Volt Tacklers manage to reveal some of her memories in a future battle like the one that happened today? It would be incredibly bad for our current mission."
Hamber hummed in thought. "We will figure out what to do with Opal soon," he told Amethio, and Amethio felt his heart sink into his feet. The entire purpose of capturing Opal had been to study the pendant as much as possible to see what happened when it activated. The Explorers wanted to get their hands on the power contained within it, and they would do anything in the name of reaching that goal... And if they wanted to learn about the pendant, then they were going to have to be willing to take risks in regards to Opal's safety. They were going to have to put her in whatever danger was necessary so that they could uncover more information. She would not reveal anything as long as she was being kept in the base in perfect safety.
The thought made Amethio feel sick to his stomach. The battle had gone so overwhelmingly poorly. He couldn't imagine anyone ever thinking of something like that as a success... But clearly someone must have thought of it as a good thing. Hamber had to know that the Explorers would be putting Opal in danger in the future to see if they were able to pull any more information from what happened with the pendant when she was at risk. That was why he wasn't promising anything to Amethio like vowing to make sure she was kept out of the line of fire. It was not a promise he would ever be able to make, and he was fully aware of it.
Amethio couldn't help but think back to the battle. It felt like it had been set up somehow, and when he looked at it through that lens... It was easy to assume that perhaps someone had set it up to make sure that the pendant would activate. The Rising Volt Tacklers had already known that someone was coming their direction. They must have been alerted through some method or another that the Explorers would be coming to the ship. Amethio didn't know what had happened specifically, but he was able to assume that it was a sign of something horribly bad happening.
But he didn't know if it was a sign that something had gone wrong in the eyes of others. For all he knew, this was what someone else within the organization had wanted to happen from the very beginning. Amethio didn't know what he had walked into, but he was certain that it was far larger than anyone wanted him to acknowledge. This was a secret that Amethio was not meant to unravel, and yet... And yet...
Amethio let out a slow breath. "Thank you, Hamber." He turned on his heel, unsure of where he was going but knowing that he had to get as far away from the phantoms of the battle as possible. Opal needed his support back in her room, but Amethio couldn't return yet. He couldn't let slip that he thought there was someone who had taken advantage of all of this to hurt her.
If Amethio was honest with himself, he already knew who had started all of this. There was only one person who could have done it. There was only one person who had proven their willingness to make Opal miserable over the course of the last few weeks. Spinel must have done something. Amethio wasn't sure of what it was, but he knew that he had to try and seek the truth out. He couldn't let Spinel get away with everything he had already done. He had to find a way to stop this.
If it wasn't for Opal's sake, then it had to be for his... Amethio didn't deserve it, but it was all he could chase, and he needed it more than anything.
~~~~~
Opal should have been afraid.
She knew what fear felt like. It was one of the only things that seemed consistent in her life at the moment. She was terrified of leaving the base, but at the same time, she was terrified of not being allowed to leave. Opal wanted to make her life on her own terms, but she was afraid that her choices were going to be poor ones. It felt like she was always going to crash and burn, and her only choice was to watch as it all unfolded. She was an outsider on her own life, and she should have been afraid of it. She should have been terrified of where this was going to take her.
But right now... Opal found that she felt nothing. She was staring up at the ceiling of her bedroom at the Explorers' base, and nothing seemed to fuel her body. She was simply there, a puppet with cut strings left to watch as the world passed her by. She did not belong to anyone or anything, and she had been forgotten. It would have been easier if the world was willing to ignore her. Maybe that would give her the time she needed to make sense of her life without anybody else getting in the way.
Somehow though, Opal knew that nobody would be giving her the time or the peace she needed. She was going to be thrown from one tragedy to the next, and her only choice was to simply wait it out. She was trapped, and it didn't matter which prison she found herself in. She was always going to be stuck. She was always going to drown beneath the endless blue depths of her sadness and grief.
Opal barely registered it when Amethio left the room to go and talk to Hamber elsewhere in the base. She couldn't bring herself to bother with chasing after him. Opal wanted to be with him more than anything else, but she couldn't follow him when her body felt like it was trying to tear itself apart. Something had come undone that day during the battle, but it ran far deeper than anything that Opal could have ever imagined. She had done something forbidden, and everything that made up her body, mind, and soul was trying to pull her in a different direction.
The Rising Volt Tacklers... They were the ones who had taken her memories away from her. She had been told as much many times, and she had no reason to doubt what she was told. Why would she go against what the Explorers had told her about her history? They knew more about her past at the moment than she did. She had no choice but to listen to what they told her.
But if that was all the case, then why did the Rising Volt Tacklers feel like they were something more than just her enemies? Why did she feel something deep in the pit of her stomach when she looked at them? Why wasn't she afraid of them? Opal knew that she should have been terrified of the Rising Volt Tacklers, but she wasn't scared of them beyond what she had been told in passing. It felt like someone had given her the impression of fear, the idea of it, and expected it to take hold the same way as genuine terror. Opal should have hated them for tearing her memories away and leaving her to crumble beneath the weight of that agony... But she didn't hate them. Instead, Opal found herself drawn to them.
She kept thinking about the faces of all of the Rising Volt Tacklers when she truly saw them for the first time. She knew two of their names despite having never been told. They were Friede and Roy... And she knew who some of the others were too. The names appeared in the back of her mind even as she tried to fight them away. Mollie, Orla, Murdock... She knew them. Once upon a time, she had known them. She had known them well enough to be able to recall their names even when she struggled to remember any of the actual details about her own life.
And from the way they talked about her, it seemed like the Rising Volt Tacklers knew her too. They had called out her name when they saw her... No, that wasn't right. They had called her Liko, that strange name that had been sending Opal into the darkness of dissociation ever since she came to in the Explorers' base. Why would they call her that? That wasn't her name. Opal was Opal. She was not Liko. No one had told her much of anything about Liko though. Opal knew only as much as others had been willing to let her know, and it wasn't enough. None of it was ever enough. She didn't know anything about herself, and she didn't know Liko either.
But if she really didn't know Liko, then why was that the name the Rising Volt Tacklers had called out with when they saw her? Why had the mere mention of Liko been enough to make Opal turn tail and run? Why did she want to tear her heart apart in search for any understanding of what that name meant? Why did she want to stand in front of her mirror and call her reflection Liko? Would that make any of this make sense? It had to. It just had to.
The door opened, and Opal shot up in her bed, expecting it to be someone there to ruin her all over again... But it was only Amethio. Opal blinked. How long had she been staring off into space? She was glad there were no clocks in her room. She didn't know if she would have been able to stand finding out the answer. Opal wanted to say something, to do anything to even start to fill the silence that had fallen between them, but the words refused to come to her. It was like every piece of her mind and body were fighting her, refusing to give her the peace she so desperately craved.
Luckily for her, Amethio was more than happy to fill the silence first. "You will be staying here in the base until you recover from the events of today's battle," he began. Opal nodded dully, unable to decide if she was more relieved by his words or terrified by the fact that she had found herself in this situation at all. Amethio was desperate to fill the silence, and he crossed the room to sit beside her on the bed. "I will do everything in my power to look out for you from now on. You will not have to leave the base unless you want to."
For reasons Opal couldn't even begin to describe, that was the last hit her defenses could take. "I don't know what to do about any of this," she started to say, and Amethio watched her in muted curiosity. "I feel like there's something about this situation that I just don't understand. I feel sick to my stomach from the battle, and... The Rising Volt Tacklers... I know things about them. I know I do. Nobody has ever told me their names, but I know what they are anyway. I can name almost all of them. I shouldn't be able to do that. Why can't I remember anything about who I was before... But I can remember their names? They were the ones who..." Opal couldn't bring herself to finish that thought. She already knew that she wasn't going to want to hear it. She didn't know if the Rising Volt Tacklers were the ones that had taken her memories from her anymore. She wasn't sure of why she was so uncertain of it now after hearing about this for ages, but she couldn't bring herself to believe it.
Amethio remained perfectly silent as Opal rambled on, watching her like a statue that had once been human but had since had all of the life sucked out of it. "I... I want to know more about the Rising Volt Tacklers," Opal finally settled on saying. "I don't know who they are to me now or who they were to me before I lost my memories, but I know that I'm going to have to dig if I want to learn more about them. Amethio... Can you tell me anything about them? I have to know. I can't just sit here thinking about what they could have done to me if there's something I can do to learn more."
Amethio remained perfectly still as he watched Opal, and she already knew that his answer was going to be negative. When he moved again, it was to let out a heavy sigh that shook his entire body. "I... I'm afraid there's nothing I can tell you about them," he told her. "I have been given orders to not tell you anything that could inform you as to what their motives are or what they want from you."
Opal felt as if she had been stabbed by his words, but she did her best to keep her composure held together even a little bit. Of course Amethio had been told to not tell her about them. Why would he be allowed to talk to her about the people who had ruined her life? Opal wasn't supposed to remember. Her mind had purged itself of everything from her past because it was too bad for her to recall at all. She wasn't supposed to know any of this. Her only choice was to wait until her memories came back naturally. That was the only way she would be able to grasp anything about who she had once been.
But Opal didn't know if that was enough for her. She didn't know if she even wanted to remember who she had once been. Would there even be a point? Or would she learn about who she had been and end up driving herself into the ground in an all new way? There was no way of saying for certain until it happened, and by that point, she wouldn't be able to put the truth back where it had come from. She was simply going to have to face it, and Opal didn't know if she would ever be ready for that. She didn't know anything about her life anymore, and she was afraid that she never would again.
Opal didn't realize she had started to cry again until a sniffle made her entire body tremble. She knew that she should have been dignified even in the face of her own tears. Instead, Opal found herself turning so that she could angle her body toward Amethio. She practically collapsed into his grasp, and Amethio stared down at her in stunned silence. He slowly but surely wrapped his arms around her body, pulling her in close. It was hardly the most comfortable hug in the world, but it was everything Opal needed at the moment. It was all she could ever ask for when she felt like she was going to collapse into ruin in the blink of an eye.
Opal didn't understand anything about herself. She wanted to reach out for her notebook and read through the truths that she knew about her life... But she couldn't do it. She didn't want to see how little she knew. She didn't want to face the idea that perhaps some of that information was wrong. She just wanted to rot, to waste away until nothing but ash remained of who she had once been.
And for all she knew, there was already nothing but ash left of the person she had once been. It wasn't as if she would know it otherwise.
~~~~~
There was no possible way that battle could have ended worse.
Friede had been replaying it in his mind ever since the Explorers fled from the scene of the explosion. Even the Explorers partnered with the Glalie and Garganacl had run off despite not seeming like they wanted to leave at all. Amethio had been the first to go, but the others were quick to retreat right along with him when they realized the fight was already as good as lost.
But the Explorers felt like they meant nothing. They were enemies, and Friede wanted to go after them with everything he had, but... They were nothing when Friede thought about what he had seen in Liko. She wasn't going by that name anymore, at least as far as he could tell. She didn't seem to recognize it when she was referred to by that name, and she ran the instant there was any pressure placed on her shoulders. It was terrifying just how quickly she had run away, and Friede couldn't tear the look on her horrified face out of his head.
All of the Rising Volt Tacklers gathered together in the Brave Olivine's main meeting room after the fight ended. Ludlow had come to join them, and the Pokémon had all crammed into the room too. It was like they all knew how dire of a situation this was, and they wanted to do whatever they could to support the humans who had come to take such good care of them.
Friede didn't think the entire crew had been together like this since Diana visited the Brave Olivine. Back then, they had all fought off their rage at the idea that Diana had just let Liko keep the pendant after knowing how much danger it was going to put her in. If she had known, then she should have tried to take the pendant back so that the Explorers didn't go after her. She should have at least tried to be responsible in that way... But she hadn't been. She hadn't made any efforts to take the pendant back.
But Friede knew that he couldn't hold her irresponsibility against her unless he was willing to do the same for the rest of his crew. They should have done a better job of looking after Liko so that she was kept safe. It had been their job to keep her safe from the Explorers when it came to light that they were trying to chase after her. They all should have done more to make sure she was protected, and yet... They had failed.
They hadn't just failed. Liko had been taken by the Explorers and put against them. It was obvious now that Liko had been on the field during the last few battles against Amethio, and nobody had ever drawn attention to it. No one had realized that Liko was right there in their reach, and they hadn't seen it until after they were unable to ignore it for any longer. They should have known what was going on, and yet, they had not. Friede was going to hate himself for it for ages, and he was fully aware of it. He could only hope that he was able to set this right in some tiny way. Maybe it would not amount to much, but he had to try.
For a long time, the crew of the Brave Olivine was perfectly silent, unsure of where to start when it came to speaking up about what had happened. Friede knew he should have tried to say something to shatter the silence, but he couldn't do it. He stared down at the table in front of himself, clenching his fingers into fists. All of this was too much. He didn't know how he was meant to save Liko. None of them had even the slightest idea of what they were meant to do now. They were just... Stuck.
Orla was the first who spoke up, but before she forced the words out, she let out a soft snarl. "That was Liko, wasn't it?" she asked even though it was clear that it had been. There was no way it couldn't have been Liko. They had all seen her when her mask was knocked off, and they couldn't tear that image from their minds no matter how hard they tried. "The Explorers didn't just take her. They made her fight for them, and now, she... She is being put against us."
"But I don't know how that can be possible," Mollie pressed. "There's no reason that Liko would ever want to fight against us. She... She should be here with all of us. Why would she choose to side with the Explorers after everything they did to her? They were chasing after her for ages. She should want to be by our side instead of fighting alongside them."
"You're right. It doesn't make any sense," Murdock agreed. "But we know what we saw. There's no way that it wasn't Liko we saw during that battle. She was wearing the mask every other time we saw her, but when it fell off during the fight... That was her. I wouldn't know her anywhere. All of us would."
"She was wearing the mask so that we wouldn't recognize her before we were supposed to," Roy murmured. He was staring down at his lap, and all of the wind that normally flew through his sails was long gone. He looked like a shell of his regular self, and the mere sight made Friede feel like he had to tear something or someone apart. "She wasn't even supposed to be recognized during that battle. We weren't supposed to know that she was the one we were fighting against. The Explorers wanted to keep it a secret for as long as possible."
"It was always Sprigatito's Leafage," Dot chimed in next. There was a quiet rage to every word, and she was struggling to restrain it for longer than a few syllables at a time. "I should have known it. I looked back at the video footage of Liko and Sprigatito's past battles, but I thought it was some kind of coincidence. I didn't want to think that it could have been Liko's partner's attack, but..."
"No Leafage is that strong," Roy finished for her, and Dot nodded slowly. "I thought there was a chance it had been hers during that battle in the streets of Levincia, but I... I pushed the thought out of my head. I didn't want to admit that it could have been the truth. I still don't understand it. That shouldn't have happened. None of it should have happened."
"The Explorers must have done something to her for her to turn against us like that. She wouldn't make a choice like that unless she was being forced to do it," Friede pointed out. "I know for a fact that Liko has enough smarts in her head to not side with the people who had been chasing after her and trying to kidnap her for ages... So something must have happened."
"Do you think she could have been blackmailed into staying with them?" Orla asked with a frown. "If she thought that fighting with them was the only way to keep all of us safe, then I could see her doing it."
"But why would it be a matter of blackmail? If the Explorers were threatening her with all of us, then she would know that we can handle ourselves in a fight," Friede frowned. If nothing else, Friede could take care of himself in a battle, and he was more than capable of protecting the rest of the Rising Volt Tacklers too. He had proved that and then some during the last few battles against the Explorers on the Brave Olivine. Friede knew how to look after his crew, and Liko knew that. She had only thought to hand herself over when she thought that the battle was going to end in failure and that others were going to get hurt. Since then, Friede had more than proven himself a capable combatant. He was able to take care of everyone. There was no reason for Liko to think that the Explorers would be able to defeat the Rising Volt Tacklers. It just didn't make sense.
"She... She didn't seem to recognize us when she saw us at the end of that battle," Mollie commented slowly. "I don't know how something like that could be possible... Unless she has amnesia, but how could something like that have happened? Amnesia to that extent of forgetting so much is incredibly rare, and... I don't understand why the Explorers would want to do something like that to her."
Dot's rage finally boiled over, and she growled angrily as she slammed a clenched fist down onto the table of the meeting room. "I don't know what happened, but I'm going to get to the bottom of it," she declared. "Liko... Liko wouldn't do that to us. Something must have happened, and the Explorers must have done something to her. She didn't seem to recognize any of us during the fight, and that means she must have amnesia or something. She wouldn't just decide to betray us like that. She wouldn't even leave if she thought we were all in danger. We... We would find a way to stick it out together. She has to know that. She wouldn't do that to us. I know that she wouldn't." By the time Dot was finished speaking, she had lost all of her energy, and she was reduced to staring down at the table in front of her. Dot's eyes were not visible on account of her hair getting in the way, but it was clear that there were tears bubbling up to the surface. She couldn't hide that no matter how hard she tried, not that anyone would have expected her to in the first place.
The room remained quiet for a long while after Dot finished speaking, and Mollie pressed one hand up to her chin in thought. "I wonder if it would be possible for a Pokémon move to do all of this," she began. "I don't know if she would be able to move around the world at all, much less participate in a battle, if something really serious had happened to give her amnesia. Something like that only happens if the mind is given no other choice. If a Pokémon move did something to her though..."
"Then that would still be a horrible thing... Just in another direction," Orla finished for her, and Mollie nodded. Once again, the meeting room went silent, and any one of them could have heard a pin drop, but none of them moved enough to make that noise. "Something happened, and the Explorers don't care at all about what they put her through in order to reach this goal. They did something to hurt her, and they had to know that it would be hard for us to fight against her as things are."
"The Explorers have been using Liko against us for a while now. She only entered a fight properly today, but we saw her a few times before now," Friede frowned. "I wonder what they were telling her... She seemed shocked that she was being referred to by the name Liko at all, and that makes me think that they haven't even been honest with her about her name. If that's the case, then what else have they lied to her about?"
"I don't know, but I can say one thing... I can't let this go on for any longer than it already has," Murdock announced. "We don't know where the Explorers' base is, but we know that Liko is with them. That means that we're going to have to take the fight directly to them in order to get her back. I don't know about all of you, but I'm ready for it. I'm not going to let them stop us from helping her. She has been through more than enough, and if there's something I can do to rescue her and bring her home, then I have to try. I know the rest of you feel the same way. You have to."
"Of course we feel the same way," Roy agreed, nodding firmly. "I'll do everything I can to help find that base and then bring Liko back. I... I don't know if she's going to want to come with us after everything that happened, but I want her to know that I'm ready to help her. I want her to know that she'll be safer with us than she ever was with the Explorers."
"Then we'll do everything in our power to find her and bring her back," Friede concluded, and everyone in the room nodded. It was perhaps the first time they had all been on the same page since Liko disappeared. Liko truly was a force for good within the Rising Volt Tacklers, getting everyone together in a way that they hadn't ever thought possible for her arrival. They had all been good friends before Liko arrived, of course, but it was never anything like this. Liko had changed everything, and she wasn't even around to see the weight of her actions.
But she would be soon. Friede wasn't going to let the Explorers be the only ones who she knew. He would do everything he had to in order to bring her back. He had been hired to protect her, and even though he had failed at his initial mission, Friede was going to keep fighting. He would bring her home and prove to her that she didn't belong with the Explorers. She would have a home on the Brave Olivine with the Rising Volt Tacklers the same way she was always meant to. It didn't matter what the Explorers had done to her. The Rising Volt Tacklers would stand by her, and they would do everything they had to in order to make sure that she healed from the pain the Explorers had brought to her life.
Liko deserved better than all of this, and if the Explorers wouldn't show it, then the Rising Volt Tacklers would... Because they were the ones who were meant to express all of this from the start anyway.
~~~~~
Dot didn't think she had ever been this enraged before.
She had been upset a wide variety of times in the past, but it hadn't ever felt this hot and scathing. She felt like her rage was great enough to burn her, to singe all of her skin off and leave her as a husk of nothing but grief. Dot's emotions were strong, and she had always felt like they overwhelmed her at the worst moments. She didn't know how to express herself, but she wanted to get better. It was because of Liko that she wanted to get better.
And now... Dot wanted to pull everything apart for the sake of finding Liko. Dot knew that Liko wasn't going to recognize her specifically when they met again because they had never seen each other face to face before Liko went missing, but that didn't matter. Dot was willing to not be recognized if it meant that she could look Liko in the eyes and promise that she was safe. She was willing to put everything on the line for the sake of the friend that had never been given the true chance to know her. She would tear everything apart, including the world the Explorers had built around her, in order to find Liko and bring her home.
Dot was fuming when she made her way back to her room. She wanted to punch something. It would probably break her hand with how frail she could be, but she didn't care. It would all be worth it if she could just find one of the Explorers and tear them apart. Amethio, Zirc, Onia, one of the others from the battle on the ship... It didn't matter. Dot just knew that she was sick and tired of all of this. She wanted it to stop, and the only way to do that was to make sure that no one would ever be able to hurt Liko again. Dot had failed her before, but she would not fail her again, and she would find a way to win this battle one way or another.
Dot closed the door to her room and pressed her hands up to her temples to soothe a headache that hadn't gone away since the instant she saw Liko on the other side of the battlefield. How had everything gone so wrong? How could the world have fallen apart so completely in so little time? Dot wanted to be there for Liko however she could be, but she didn't know where to start as long as there was so much danger lurking around every corner. Liko needed support, and Dot... Dot hadn't been there to give it to her when she needed it most. Dot had failed her just like the rest of the Rising Volt Tacklers, and she had no choice but to face it now.
In Dot's search for information about the Explorers, she had managed to learn a little bit about the strange girl who was partnered with the Sprigatito... Well, it wasn't much, and it would be a stretch to say that Dot had learned much of anything, but she had at least managed to uncover her name. The girl went by the name of Opal, and it had come up during one of the security tapes that Dot had reviewed when she first began to suspect that something was amiss with Amethio's recent behavior. Amethio had said her name quietly, and that was all Dot needed to hear to start understanding her...
But she didn't understand Opal at all. She didn't understand Opal because she didn't understand how Liko could walk away from the Rising Volt Tacklers... No, that wasn't what had happened. Dot knew that Liko wouldn't just leave behind the crew of the Brave Olivine, much less for the sake of joining the enemies that had been pursuing her for so long. Liko knew when she was being put in danger, and the Explorers had done nothing but hurt her for ages. She knew better than to follow people who would have ruined her. She had to know better.
So something must have happened for her to have to betray the Rising Volt Tacklers. Something must have happened for her to feel like she had no other choice. She didn't seem to recognize any of her old friends when she saw them again. Dot hadn't expected Liko to recognize her specifically since the two of them had never met face to face, but she knew that at the very least, Liko should have known who people like Friede and Roy were. Liko was the reason that Roy was on the ship at all, and the two had become great friends over the course of their time together. Friede had recruited Liko onto the ship at all after being hired to rescue her by Lucca. There was no reason that Liko wouldn't have recognized them unless she was really being manipulated in ways that ran far deeper than Dot could have ever imagined.
Dot didn't know what the theory behind all of this was going to be, but she had an awful feeling that Mollie's thought about there being forced amnesia involved was right. It made her sick to her stomach. How could the Explorers care so little for Liko's health and safety that they put her in such grave danger? Dot supposed that was probably the point. The Explorers had been looking to take her away from the Rising Volt Tacklers for a while now to get their hands on her pendant. They had just decided to take matters into their own hands when it all started to fall apart, and when it became clear that Liko would not be doing anything with them willingly, then...
Dot pressed her eyes shut as she sat down in her desk chair with a heavy huff. She could still see the look on Liko's face inside of her mind whenever she thought about it. She didn't think that was acting. There was no reason for Liko to act around the Rising Volt Tacklers at all, but even beyond that, Dot knew that the surprise that had been written on Liko's face was far too genuine for it to have been falsified. Liko really hadn't known what was going on with her. She hadn't understood that she had been put in danger by the Explorers. She didn't remember the people who she was looking at. There was simply too much shock on her face for her to have recalled a thing about what brought her to the present moment. She didn't know any of them.
So the Explorers hadn't just captured Liko. They had wiped her personality and mind clean for the sake of imprinting something new. They had torn her apart, and they hadn't given it a second thought when they cast the old person she had been aside. They didn't care in the slightest for what they had done to her. They were fine with hurting her as much as they had to so long as they thought it would somehow benefit them. It made Dot sick, and she wished she knew where the Explorers' base was so that she could charge right up to them herself and show them that they had made a mistake in trying to mess with the Rising Volt Tacklers... That they had made a mistake in trying to mess with Dot and Liko.
Dot knew that she was thinking too much of her little time with Liko. They hadn't ever been given the chance to meet one another face to face. All Liko knew about Dot was the shape of her door, and now, she didn't even know that. Dot wanted to know Liko more than anything, and she had been pulling together her courage to finally face the world for the first time since she stepped aboard the Brave Olivine. She was trying to make sure that she could stand tall alongside Liko, Roy, and the rest of their friends... But none of it seemed to matter anymore. None of it mattered if the person who wanted to draw her out of her shell didn't even remember the sound of her voice. None of it mattered if Liko was never going to know who she had been ever again.
There was a strong chance that this amnesia would turn out to be permanent. Dot would have to do more research about it so that she could figure out if this was simply going to be Liko's new life or if there was some other chance for her... But she was afraid of what she was going to find. She already knew that she was going to hate it if it turned out that Liko was going to be stuck like this forever. Dot didn't know what she would do if she found that the Explorers had done so much damage that Liko would never be able to go back to the way she had been before. For all Dot knew, the healing process would consist of making new memories, and that terrified her more than anything. The old Liko was gone, and it was all the fault of the Explorers and their insistence on getting their hands on the pendant. Did the pendant truly matter enough for them to go so far and then tear apart the life of a girl who smiled brightly enough to be the sun all on her own? Did they care about anyone other than themselves.
No. The answer was always going to be no, and Dot had known it all along. The Explorers were willing to do anything for the pendant, and they had established that ages ago. Dot just wished that she had been smart enough to see their brutality for what it was. If she had just paid more attention and tried to help Liko, then none of this would have happened. If she had just been on her guard, then--
"Dot?"
Dot snapped out of her thoughts in an instant, resisting the urge to scream in shock. She turned to find that the door to her room was opened, and Murdock was standing there in the entryway. She hadn't even heard him come in, and Dot had the feeling that was the reason he had come in without getting her permission. Murdock knew her better than he wanted to admit, and that meant that he could feel it when she was spiraling and needed intervention. He was there because he was worried, and it was written all over his face.
And yet, that worry made Dot scathingly uncomfortable, and she struggled to maintain anything like composure as she looked up at him. Her throat was suddenly tight, refusing to give her the strength that she needed to speak. Murdock didn't need her to say anything though, and he started to walk into her room slowly. "I'm worried about you," Murdock began, stating the plain and obvious as a way to transition into something a bit darker. "I know all of this is hard, but you don't have to face it on your own. If you need anything from me, then all you have to do is--"
Dot's body moved on its own, and she recognized a bit too late that her actions were blurring heavily with what Nidothing wanted. She rushed into Murdock's arms, throwing her hands behind his back for a tight embrace. She had been hiding away in her room for ages, trying to look for Liko with every second she had in the day, but it wasn't enough. None of it had ever been enough. Dot had been pushing herself beyond her limits, and she was forced to acknowledge it now. Murdock had come there to see what he could do for her, but he hadn't realized that this was what Dot had needed more than anything else.
Dot started to cry long before she could even think of holding herself back. She had been all over the emotional spectrum in the last few weeks, fluctuating from rage to grief to rage again, and she hadn't been given much time to try and express it. Dot hadn't given herself the chance to try. She had to keep fighting and researching so that she could bring Liko home. If she stopped for even a moment longer than she had to, then she could end up missing something that would be crucial to find Liko. That logic had given her a sense of purpose.
But it had torn her apart too. There was only so much that she could do to find Liko when she was on the verge of crumbling entirely, and the weight felt like it was crushing her now. Dot wasn't meant for this. None of them were. Liko should have been there with them, but she was gone, and Dot... Dot had been telling herself that she would have to spend every minute she could trying to find her. But no one could keep going for that long without ever taking a moment to breathe. No one could drive themselves into the ground and expect to come out of it on the other side without something coming undone.
Dot hated crying in front of people. She hated crying in general, but it felt like all she could do now. The truth behind what had happened to Liko had snapped something in her, and all she wanted to do now was scream and cry and sob until all of this proved to be a bad dream... But it never would. It was going to be painful reality for as long as Dot was still on the other side of the battlefield from Liko. She wanted this to stop, but there was nothing she could do to fix it on her own. The Explorers were ruining everything, and all Dot could do was hope that she was able to set it right in a moment where their defenses fell.
Murdock was stunned and still, unable to believe that Dot was there in his arms for a long moment. When he finally moved again, he offered a sad smile and then wrapped his arms around Dot in return. "It's alright," he murmured, and Dot could hear his voice rumbling around in his chest where her cheek was pressed against it. "Let it all out."
Dot felt something beside her ankle, and she heard a soft quacking sound along with it. Quaxly had wrapped his wings around her lower leg, trying to comfort her however he could. He didn't know how to pull her out of the darkness on his own, so he was going to do whatever he could even if it was small. It was a reminder that Dot wasn't alone, something that she hadn't really let herself acknowledge since she began to dig this hole for herself.
In fact, Dot would say that none of the Rising Volt Tacklers had really admitted that they weren't in this on their own. They were trying to seem composed on their own, but they had put up walls and then refused to let anyone get past them. Dot and Roy spent a lot of time together, but it felt like there was still some boundary between them. There were some things simply too awful for them to talk about, but they feared those miseries anyway.
There was no reason to hold back anymore though. The Explorers had done something horrible, and the Rising Volt Tacklers were going to have to cope with it. If the Explorers could not be persuaded to stop all of this, then the Rising Volt Tacklers would have to find a way to hold firm in the face of their evils. It wouldn't be easy, but nothing worth doing ever was. If this situation was going to be simple to resolve, then it would have ended already, but it had not. It was still going, and it would be until Dot was able to find Liko and bring her back home.
Murdock pulled Dot in a little bit tighter, not caring at all for how many of her tears were staining and wetting the front of his shirt. Dot had always struggled with physical contact, but none of that seemed to matter anymore as Murdock rubbed soothing circles across her back. "It's going to be alright," he murmured. "Just let it all out."
Perhaps it was ill-advised, but Dot found herself believing him. It felt like all she could do. Maybe everything would be alright... She just had to keep fighting.
And this was one fight Dot was not going to let the Explorers win.
Notes:
This one is a gut punch, isn't it?
Chapter twelve may have been the big turning point of act one, but there's a lot of emotional stuff that's coming up, and I love writing it. You can't just have a massive event like the reveal of Opal's identity without an emotional moment to follow it up. I'm very happy with how it turned out, though it is still devastating to see play out. I think you can all see why I was so excited for the turn of the story so that we could get to this part.
I really like writing the reactions to heavy emotional moments, and that's going to be a lot of the meat of the next few chapters too. Something really significant has happened, and I think the characters deserve to react. Things have to get worse before they get better, I fear, though we are on our way to things getting better. We just have to hold on for seven more chapters, and this arc will be over... We're getting there. I promise.
I also want to apologize for how late this is going out. I had an all day school event yesterday on my college's campus. I was helping to host the annual drag show, and that took up my entire Friday. At least the chapter is here now, I suppose? I'm hoping future chapters won't be as late as this one was. Thank you all for being patient.
Next time, we'll continue with this spiral wherever it may lead. Until then, I hope you all enjoyed this chapter. Feedback is appreciated as always. Have a nice day, everyone!
-Digital
Chapter 14: Break Away
Summary:
Amethio tries to get to the bottom of Opal's missing memories.
Chapter Text
If Mollie had to use one word to describe how she was coping right now, it would have been 'poorly.'
When she caught a glimpse of Liko on the other end of the battlefield, she had thought that it all had to be fake somehow. It couldn't have possibly been real. Liko wouldn't decide to fight with the Explorers like that. She just wouldn't do it. Mollie knew her well enough to be sure of that. There had to be something else at play that was forcing her to fight with the enemy. Mollie wasn't sure of what it was, but she was smart enough to be able to figure out that something was going on.
Mollie couldn't stop thinking about it. Even after the Rising Volt Tacklers had their meeting and then split up for the night, Mollie's thoughts were locked on Liko's terrified expression. She didn't seem to remember the people who had once been thought of as her friends. Liko was too anxious to even think of approaching them, and that left the Rising Volt Tacklers to stare after her and hope that they were able to one day convince her to come back to their sides.
Mollie felt horrible about it in more ways than she could ever describe. So rather than try to put it all into words, she decided she was going to let her actions talk. When it came to situations like this, actions always felt like they were more valuable than words anyway. Her words were cheap, and they would not be enough to bring Liko back. Even if Mollie couldn't just go to the Explorers' base and force them to let her go, she could do something to make the transition back into the Rising Volt Tacklers a little bit easier for Liko.
Mollie had been taking care of Liko's room on the side whenever she could find the time. She felt awful going into Liko's bedroom when she wasn't there, but she wanted to keep it as put together as possible so that it would be ready for when Liko returned. Maybe it was Mollie's horrible way of coping with a situation that never should have happened. She couldn't say for sure, and at this point, she was too afraid to ask. All that mattered was that she wanted to do something to take care of Liko, and if going into her room to make sure it was ready for her return would assuage her anxieties, then so be it.
She had taken a brief break from helping to make sure the room was still fine because she hadn't known what to do with herself as her anxieties got worse. The more time that went by, the more afraid Mollie became of something going horribly wrong. She was terrified that with each passing day, their chances of finding Liko went down more and more. Mollie went into Liko's room whenever she could stand it, but some days, all it did was make her feel sick to her stomach. On days like that, she was careful to hold back and not push herself too far.
Now that the Rising Volt Tacklers knew where Liko was though, Mollie knew that she had to try and find her. She had to try and help her. There was hope now in a way that there hadn't been before. Mollie had been convincing herself that everything was alright even though she didn't have any concrete evidence, but now, she had proof that Liko was alive. She had proof that Liko would be able to come back home again.
And if Liko was going to go through something horrible, then the least Mollie could do was make the transition as comfortable and simple for her as possible. It was all she could really offer now. If that meant going into Liko's room and making sure it was ready for her, then so be it. Mollie would do anything to help her. It was all she could think to offer after she and the rest of the Rising Volt Tacklers had failed to save Liko from the Explorers the first time.
Liko's room was every bit as overwhelming that morning as it had been during every other visit Mollie paid to it. When Mollie stood in the center of the room and breathed deeply, she couldn't help but smell the vaguest traces of Liko that remained. Mollie was always careful to not spend too much time in there in case her scent overwrote the one that Liko had left behind. She couldn't stand the idea of doing something to hurt Liko, and that meant making sure her space was as safe for her as it could have been.
Mollie had been thinking constantly about the possibility of Liko's memories being tampered with by the Explorers. It was technically possible, though Mollie didn't know how they would have been able to do something like that with such precision. Amnesia was a dangerous thing, and Mollie knew that even though she was not a doctor meant for looking after humans. She still knew it well through her experiences with Pokémon. It was risky to try and ask the brain to forget anything, much less to do so on purpose. That was just what the Explorers had done though, wasn't it? They knew that they were going to need Liko on their side, and if that meant they had to force her to forget about every little thing she had ever experienced, then that was a price they were willing to pay. It was sickening, but Mollie knew that they had likely been planning this for at least a short while before they went after her.
Mollie didn't think she would ever stop being haunted by the look on Liko's face when she first saw the Rising Volt Tacklers again. Liko looked confused yet terrified, like she had never thought she would ever have to face them after... After something had gone wrong. Mollie wanted to reach out to her and assure her that everything was going to be alright, but she doubted that Liko would have remembered her in the first place. If Liko was going to run to the Rising Volt Tacklers and ask them to hold her and help her to find a home again, then she would have done it already. Instead, she had fled in the opposite direction, flying away from the scene of the battle with Amethio. She trusted someone who had tried to kidnap her numerous times more than the Rising Volt Tacklers. To say it was sickening was an understatement, and yet, sickening was the only word that would come to Mollie's mind when she pressed it for more.
Mollie began to organize all of the tiny things that had fallen out of place in Liko's room. She dusted off the shelves and the desk, adjusting the pillow slightly but still not erasing the indentations that had somehow remained in all this time since Liko was last there. Her hands began to shake at some point during the process, but Mollie forced herself to keep going. She had to do this for Liko. If she hadn't been able to protect Liko before, then she had to try and keep her space as clean and ready as possible. Liko was going to need the support when she got back.
And she had to come back. Mollie couldn't stand the thought of the Explorers winning this battle and controlling Liko for the rest of time. Mollie would give the battle her all if she thought it would bring Liko back to them even a little bit sooner. It was all she could do. She had failed before, but she wouldn't let herself fail again. None of them could fail again. They had done it too many times already.
Mollie didn't realize that tears had started to pull at her eyes and demand her attention until after they had already begun to fall. She let out a frustrated hiss under her breath, praying that would be enough to get herself under control. Now wasn't a time to be crying. The Explorers still had Liko, and Mollie was going to have to push harder and harder to track down their base and then bring her home. If the Explorers wouldn't let Liko go on their own, then the Rising Volt Tacklers would just have to attack and save her themselves.
Even as Mollie thought through that idea though, she couldn't shake the feeling that it wasn't going to work. For all she knew, they would never be able to rescue Liko because the Explorers had simply done too much damage already. They wouldn't know about it until after it was too late for them to set it right. They had already fallen short, and it was already too late. Who was to say that they would ever succeed again? Maybe they would be stuck in this cycle of failure forever. It barely would have shocked Mollie if that was the case.
"Mollie?"
With perhaps the worst timing in the world, Orla arrived in the entryway of Liko's room. Mollie hadn't seen much of Orla recently even though they had always been friends. Orla wanted to bury herself in her work to cope with the loss of Liko, and Mollie had taken to doing all the mundane chores she could around the ship for the same reason. It was rare for any of the Rising Volt Tacklers to cross paths like this these days, and Mollie had come to expect the silence. To say that she was shocked when it shattered would have been an understatement.
But Mollie knew that it was too late for her to feign composure. Orla had already seen her crying, and she wouldn't be able to hide it in time for all of this to be set right. Mollie didn't bother with rubbing at her tears when Orla saw her, instead just staring up and meeting the gaze of the ship's mechanic. Orla looked like she wanted to ask what Mollie was crying about, but there was no point in trying. They both already knew the answer anyway, and they were going to know it forever.
"I... I can't believe this," Mollie muttered, unable to stand the silence for even a moment longer. "The Explorers are manipulating her. They have to be. Liko wouldn't just decide to fight against us for no reason... But I don't... Could they have...?" She didn't even know what she was trying to say, but she was certain that Orla understood her. No one would be able to understand her quite like another member of the ship's crew who was grieving for Liko's disappearance in every way that she was too.
Orla entered the room slowly, pulling the door shut in her wake. Her fingers were clasped into fists, and they were tight enough for her entire arms to shake whenever she gave them the chance. "I despise all of them," Orla whispered, and Mollie wondered if she had ever seen or heard Orla looking this deeply angry. "The Explorers... I don't know how any of them can sleep at night knowing what they did to Liko. I don't think I even want to know. I just want to do anything in my power to tear them apart and make sure it never happens again."
"It shouldn't have happened in the first place," Mollie murmured crossly. "We should have been able to just stop them before it all went so wrong. The Explorers would have done anything to hurt Liko. We knew that. We should have taken better care of her."
"I can't believe they would go so far," Orla admitted. "Even though I knew that they were ruthless and willing to do anything to get their hands on the pendant, I... I thought that they would at least be kind enough to not do such horrible things to a child."
"But they wiped her memories. They must have. There's no way that she would choose to fight against us otherwise. There's no way that she would have looked confused when she saw us during that battle," Mollie finished for her. Saying it out loud only made her angrier. None of this should have ever happened. If the Rising Volt Tacklers had just looked after Liko, then she would still be there with them. She would still be safe. How could they have failed so completely even though this was supposed to be their first huge mission like this? What was their issue?
Orla wrapped her arms around Mollie in an instant, leaving barely any time for Mollie to react. Even if she had seen it coming, Mollie wouldn't have pulled away. She hadn't enjoyed an embrace like this in ages, and she couldn't even really say that she was enjoying it as it was happening because of the miserable circumstances surrounding it. Mollie let her head rest on Orla's shoulder, and Orla pulled her in ever tighter. Mollie felt her tears continue to fall, and she wished she didn't have to leave behind so many water stains on Orla's shoulder, but she couldn't bring herself to care much. After all, Orla was leaving behind tears on her own jacket too. It was the only thing either one of them could do when the world wanted to destroy them from so many angles.
"We're going to find a way to bring her back home," Orla vowed, and Mollie had to wonder if she actually believed it or if she was simply saying that out of the hope that it would eventually be enough to convince her that they would be alright. "I don't care how long it takes or how much effort we have to put in. I'm going to do everything I can to find Liko and bring her back here."
"I hope we're able to do it," Mollie said softly even though she knew that she wasn't going to take no for an answer here either. As long as there was something she could do, she knew she had to try. "I don't know what the Explorers have been saying to her, but we have to find a way to prove that all of it is a lie. She belongs here, and I... I'll do anything to bring her back."
"All of us will," Orla assured her. She pulled Mollie in tighter, and Mollie returned the favor seconds later. "This isn't going to be the end. I won't let it be the end."
Mollie nodded as best she could into Orla's shoulder even though the motion was stifled by just how close they were. That didn't matter though. Orla was right. One way or another, they were going to find a way to see this through and set it all right. They were going to find Liko, bring her back home, and finally show her the light that the Explorers had denied her for so long.
Mollie had fought like hell in order to make it that far, and she would fight like hell to make sure that Liko was returned to her side too. The Rising Volt Tacklers would be complete again soon, and Mollie didn't care how much work she had to do in order to prove it. The Explorers would pay for what they had done, and Mollie wouldn't regret a thing she had to do as long as she thought that it would bring Liko a little bit of a reprieve.
The Explorers would fall, and Mollie would see to it personally.
~~~~~
Amethio hadn't been able to stop thinking about Opal.
The night before, she had completely crumbled after arriving back in the base. She tried to keep herself held together in some vague way, but it quickly became clear that it was a failing effort. Instead, Opal collapsed into her bed, crying openly into the silence. She fell quiet and then still, having cried herself off to sleep. Amethio only left when he was certain that his presence would not be missed, and he went to his own bedroom to try and get a little bit of rest so he was ready for the following day.
Still, Amethio hadn't been able to focus on sleeping or anything similar. Each time he closed his eyes, he remembered the haunted fear that had risen to life on Opal's face when she was faced with the Rising Volt Tacklers. She never should have had to do that. She never should have had to see them. It felt like all of this had been orchestrated on purpose, like someone was hoping to make sure Opal had to look them in the eyes when all was said and done. The thought was nauseating, but it wasn't one Amethio could bring himself to push away. If there was a chance that this had all been done on purpose, then it was up to him to try and find the truth behind it.
So Amethio rose as early as he could stand when he realized that he wasn't going to be able to force his mind or body to sleep no matter how hard he tried. If the rest of the world wasn't going to be kind enough to simply give him the truth behind Opal, then he would find it on his own terms. There had to be at least a bit of proof out there that would point him in the right direction so long as he was willing to search for it, and Amethio was more than willing. Opal deserved this much, and if she couldn't see it, then Amethio was more than happy to prove it however he had to.
Amethio knew there was a strong chance that all of this was going to point him in a... Less than fortunate direction. For all he knew, this would be the start of his journey in a direction that ran opposite to the Explorers. The idea made him feel sick to his stomach. Amethio had been fighting for the organization for as long as he had been allowed. It was up to him to make a difference and set everything in the group right. If that meant that he would end up pushing against them, then so be it. All of it would be worth it if he was just able to find the truth behind what had happened to Opal and then get her out of there.
Amethio couldn't help but wonder when his loyalties had changed so completely. Once upon a time, he never would have been able to conceive of the thought that he would be willing to betray the Explorers like this. He would have thought that his destiny was set to be tied with theirs forever, and if he ever entertained the idea of leaving, then it was a mistake that he would quickly have to right... But Opal was different. Opal was a person, and she was there to be his friend too. She didn't know the truth behind what had happened to her, but she still found the strength to be so kind to him. Amethio didn't know how she did it, but he knew that the least he could do in return was try to give her the kindness that so many other people had gone out of their ways to deprive her of.
It was strange to think about in all sorts of ways. Amethio wanted to think that maybe his idea of leaving the Explorers to look after Opal was just a fleeting implication of something that he was too tired to interrogate... But the thought kept coming back to him. He couldn't seem to stop thinking about what it would be like if he decided that the Explorers were worth less to him than Opal. He couldn't shake the thought that she wasn't meant to be there at all, and if he had to run in order to get her out of there, then he would. It was a horrible train of thought to have, but Amethio couldn't outrun it no matter how fast he tried to go. This was where he was meant to be, and Amethio was simply going to have to sit in his discomfort even when it felt overpowering.
Amethio was going to have to take action if he wanted to get to the bottom of everything that had happened to Opal, and that started with seeing if anyone else knew anything. As tempting as it was to start with Spinel, Amethio knew that wasn't going to work well in the slightest. Spinel had already decided that he had nothing to say to or about Amethio that would help him. In fact, all Spinel seemed to think of Amethio was that he was a spoiled brat who needed to stay out of his way. It didn't matter that Spinel hadn't ever said those words directly; he had certainly implied them, and Amethio wasn't going to push his luck with something and someone that he knew was going to end in failure.
So instead, Amethio decided that he would go to the next best person: Agate. She had worked extensively with Spinel in the past, and the two seemed to have a mutual trust for one another that Amethio thought he would be able to press for information. If he just rubbed her in the wrong way, then maybe he could get her mask to slip just enough for her to reveal a bit of information that Spinel would not have. Amethio wasn't going to let either one of them keep their secrets forever as long as there was a chance they had something to do with the misfortune that had befallen Opal. It was all he could do.
Amethio found Agate standing in one of the many hallways of the Explorers' base. Her expression was as neutral as ever, not that Amethio had expected anything else. He had been working in the same area as Agate for years, but he had never been able to get through that mask of hers. She was always hiding something, and Amethio had thought ages ago that he stood no chance of convincing her to be honest with her true feelings and intentions.
But he wasn't going to let pessimism stop him today. If there was a chance that Agate would be able to help him, then he had to try. Amethio walked up to her with a frown on his lips, and Agate turned to face him with one on her own face too. "Agate, I want to talk to you," Amethio began. "I need to know... What do you know about everything that has been going on with Opal?"
At first, Agate said nothing, simply looking down at Amethio in something that he was certain would have looked like shock on anyone else. When it was Agate though, Amethio just found himself wondering what went through her head and why she was so firm about making sure that no one else figured it out. "Opal is here because she is helpful to the Explorers," Agate replied bluntly, and Amethio could tell that talking to her about this was going to be every bit as difficult as asking someone like Spinel. Agate didn't seem as openly hostile, but she knew how to hide things like this, and that made her just as hard to push through.
"But something happened for her to end up as one of us," Amethio pressed. "She was with the Rising Volt Tacklers, and she should still be with them. Something happened, and I want you to tell me what it is if you know it."
Agate considered Amethio's words for a moment before she shook her head. "This is one thing I would advise that you not try to get to the bottom of. You will not like the answer that is waiting for you at the end of this road," she told him. "If you do not already know the truth, then you can take that as proof that you simply are not meant to. Leave this be. You will be better off that way."
"But you can't expect me to let all of this just end without a fight," Amethio pushed. "Opal shouldn't be here. Something is going on with her. In order for her to join us, her memories had to be wiped. Someone did something to her. I'm sure it was Spinel, but I don't know what it was specifically. I need you to tell me... What happened to Opal? Did Spinel tell you anything?"
Agate shook head head, letting out a slow breath through her nose. "Spinel was the one who brought her back to the base, and by that point, her memories had already been erased. Whatever happened between them was long before any of us knew what to look for, and if you want to hear about it, then you will have to ask him."
"But the two of you have been working together for a long time," Amethio pointed out. He knew that Agate was trying to seem secretive, but he had seen her talking with Spinel more than any other member of the Explorers. Agate was a quiet, reserved woman, and she knew how to keep her secrets close to her chest. One of the only things Amethio knew about her even after all the time they had spent together was that she was close with Spinel, and that had to mean something in a situation where Spinel had been responsible for so much. "If you know anything about what happened with Opal, then--"
"If you want more information about what happened with Opal, then you will have to ask Spinel," Agate cut in with a shake of her head. "That is all I have to say on the subject, and I will ask you politely to leave it at that. I have nothing more to say to you. If you will excuse me..."
"I want to know what Spinel did," Amethio pushed once again. He could feel himself reaching the limits of what he would be able to get away with, but he was so desperate to learn the truth behind what had happened with Opal that he couldn't bring himself to care. "Something bad happened for her to be here. She shouldn't have come here as herself at all. She should be..." Amethio knew he should have said Liko's name next, but he couldn't bring himself to form the word and shook his head instead. "She shouldn't be here."
Agate's rage was only growing greater as the seconds passed by, and she fixed Amethio in place with a glare unlike anything he had ever seen from her before. "You should be glad that we were able to get the pendant after you failed to acquire it so many times," she cut in, almost demanding that he let this be the end of it. "The Explorers need the pendant, and now, we have it. If you are unhappy with the methods that were used in order to acquire it, then that is hardly my issue."
"Opal's memories were wiped in order for her to be here. She seems to be getting closer to unveiling the truth about who she was every single day, and no one is doing anything to stop that from happening. If she learns that she was never meant to be here, then we won't be able to keep her with us," Amethio went on, taking a step toward Agate. "What happened to Liko's memories? Why is she Opal now?"
Agate shook her head, and there was greater bitterness in her eyes now than there even had been a few seconds ago. Amethio wished he knew how to break through it to find whatever truths she had come to bury deep in the silence between them, but he already knew how Agate was going to respond before she did. "The only one who can answer questions like that is Spinel. If he has chosen to not tell you, then I can only assume that there is a reason for it. You can either ask him or no one at all. I am finished here. Leave me be."
Agate didn't wait to hear Amethio's response before she pushed past him and started off down another hallway. Amethio was tempted to go after her, but he already knew that it wasn't going to do anything for him. Agate had decided that she had nothing to say, and he wouldn't be able to persuade her to open up if he had already fallen short.
Amethio bit back a heavy sigh at the thought of having to go after Spinel again. He already knew there was nothing he could say or do to force Spinel to be honest with him. Spinel was a man of secrets, and he knew how to bury things when he wasn't in the mood to talk about or think about them. Spinel was more than happy to taunt everyone who he disliked with the truth by keeping it just out of their reach, and right now, there was no one he wanted to tease more than Amethio. He knew that Amethio was miserable when he thought about Opal and everything she had lost, and Spinel wanted to capitalize on that in any small way he could.
But Amethio refused to give up. Spinel may have wanted to let that be the end of it, but Amethio wasn't going to let him get away with this. He couldn't let Spinel win a battle like this when Opal still needed his help. If there was anything Amethio could do to find the truth, then he had to try. Opal had been through more than enough, and if Amethio didn't intervene, then she was only going to suffer more. He didn't know how else to help her than to find her memories and the truth that had sealed them away to begin with.
If Spinel wasn't going to talk either, then Amethio was going to have to find someone else to talk to. Hamber was a high-ranking member of the Explorers, and more importantly, he actually liked Amethio enough to be willing to entertain a long running conversation with him. There was no guarantee that this would lead to the truth, but Amethio knew that he at least had to try. If there was a chance that Hamber would give him what he sought, then it was worth investigating for at least a short while.
Amethio's mind felt like it was on fire from anxiety as he wandered through the base in search of Hamber. He wanted to find the answer that was waiting for him at the end of this more than anything so that he could just let all of this end already. He was getting tired the longer he thought about it... But more than that, Amethio felt like his guilt was trying to pull him apart. Amethio knew that the Explorers had not made the best of choices when they decided that they wanted to take Liko and then turn her into Opal, but it was enough to make him feel like he was dying when he thought about it too hard. Opal wasn't supposed to be there with them. Opal wasn't supposed to exist at all. In a perfect world, Spinel would have found a way to get his hands on the pendant without needing to go so far. Surely he knew that there would be consequences if he did something like this... But if that was the case, then why had he done it? Why had he been able to do something so awful and then get off entirely unpunished?
Amethio knew that if he said that he was concerned about what Spinel had done, there was a strong chance that he would find himself in trouble for it. Spinel was an important member of the Explorers, and as far as the rest of the organization was concerned, Spinel had succeeded in doing something that Amethio had failed at significantly. That was a reason for Spinel to celebrate his successes, and Amethio... Amethio was being swept up by the tide. He had fallen short, and now, that was his burden to bear. If he had just been a little bit smarter or stronger, then he would have been able to get the pendant without needing to resort to all of this. If Amethio had just been a better member of the Explorers, then...
Amethio shook his head. If he said that he was worried, then he would be hated for it. Spinel had gotten them results, and that was all anyone could bring themselves to care about... But there had to be at least one other person in the Explorers that knew Amethio felt something was wrong. There had to be at least one other person in the Explorers who felt that Spinel was doing something horrific. Amethio wasn't going to let all of this end simply because his resolve was not as strong as Spinel's brutality. He didn't care how long he had to fight or how deep he had to involve himself in this disaster. He wanted to help Opal however he could, and he was determined to do it.
Amethio's heart was racing in his ears by the time he finally found Hamber near the training area. Opal was supposed to have another few matches of sparring that day, but she hadn't shown up, or so Amethio had heard through the grapevine. He couldn't blame her at all. She had been too exhausted to even think of fighting after what she had been through the day before. If it had been him, Amethio knew that he wouldn't have wanted to entertain the idea of sparring once he was given the chance to rest. Right now, what Opal needed most was time to recuperate, and Amethio hoped more than anything that she took advantage of it once she was able to get her hands on it.
"Hamber," Amethio greeted, hating how distant his voice sounded to his own ears. He felt like he was doing something illegal, like by just asking the question of what had happened to Opal, he was going to destroy all of this. Amethio supposed that could have been the truth, and he simply wouldn't have known it until it was too late for him to fix. He couldn't back down now though. Opal deserved the truth, and at this point, Amethio was willing to put his reputation on the line enough to say that he thought he did too. He was a member of the Explorers and the original person who had been assigned to the mission to get the pendant. Surely he of all people had a right to understand what this meant. "We need to talk."
Hamber was as cool and composed as usual when he turned to face Amethio. He was still standing in his regular stance, one hand pressed in front of his torso and the other behind. Amethio didn't know how Hamber could stay so calm in the face of someone who was clearly unraveling at the seams, but he knew now was not the time to ask such a question. There was a far more important one that required his attention first. "Amethio," he greeted. "What is it you need? Is everything alright?"
"Opal," Amethio began. "I want to know what you know about what happened to her. She didn't just end up here by chance. Something happened for her memories to be erased, and I need to get to the bottom of it. I can't just let this be the end of it." I can't just let Spinel win this fight, Amethio didn't say, but he was certain Hamber understood it anyway. There were very few other members of the Explorers who had as significant of tension as Amethio and Spinel, and they all knew it.
Hamber remained quiet for a long time, considering his words like he thought they had the chance to destroy him if he stepped even slightly out of line. "We are fighting for the sake of the Explorers, and bringing the target back to the base was the best way to do that," Hamber replied evenly, but his words were so heavily deliberated before they were chosen that Amethio found himself struggling to believe it. "We have the pendant now, and that is good. We thought that there was a chance we would need her in order to activate it, and I believe it is for the best that we got her back here rather than take the chance on not needing her to be with us."
"But we're going against everything she ever would have wanted," Amethio protested. "She would never want to join the Explorers. You have to know that. How can we just go along with the idea that she... That she wants to be here? We know for a fact that she would never have agreed to come back with us if she had any choice over it."
"The Explorers needed the pendant, and there is a strong chance that we need her as well if we are to activate it. There would have been no point in taking the pendant alone and not doing anything to take her as well," Hamber said. It was a notable non-answer, like he was trying to say something along the lines of disagreement with Spinel's methods without letting himself voice the words aloud. "I believe it would be in your best interests to not ask too many questions about it. You never know who might be listening."
Amethio bit back a heavy, frustrated sigh. Hamber was right about that much, he supposed, even though he wished more than anything that was not the case. Spinel very easily could have been listening, but it wasn't just about him. Someone else could have been listening in too, and Amethio wouldn't have known it until it was too late for him to do anything about it. The thought made him want to tear everything he had ever known apart, though he supposed that he was close enough to that already without needing to drag anyone else into the massive web of lies he had found himself helping to weave.
Hamber started to walk past Amethio, and Amethio did not bother with pursuing him. Hamber's head tilted ever so slightly in Amethio's direction, and when he next spoke, his voice dropped to a whisper. "The Explorers did what they had to in order to get closer to their goal. She had no plans of cooperating with us, and we did what we had to. That is all there is to it. I would advise that you not read into it any deeper than that." With that, Hamber started down the hallway in full, leaving Amethio there in the silence.
Amethio wanted to be angry. He wanted to fume and rage and scream, but he couldn't bring himself to find the words. He was simply tired, and he wasn't sure if the battle or its aftermath was a greater factor in making him feel like he was being ripped apart from the inside out. He didn't know if it even mattered at all. The Explorers had already made their choice, and Amethio's only option from then on was to go along with what they had decided.
Or he could fight it.
But Amethio knew he wouldn't be able to fight all on his own. There was nothing he could say or do that would fix this as long as he was alone. Even with Zirc and Onia, there was simply too much pressed up against him. Amethio was stuck, and he was going to be for the rest of his life if this continued for too much longer. Opal was just a symptom of a much greater problem, and Amethio couldn't believe that it had taken him this long to see how deep the rot went.
The Explorers had been Amethio's entire life ever since he was old enough to even say the organization's name. He wanted to do what he could to help those who needed it most, and the best way to do that was to join the Explorers... Or so he had thought. Since then, Amethio had come to wonder if it was really that simple. There was something far darker than he ever could have imagined at play, and he had found himself an accomplice in it even though that was the last thing he ever asked for.
At this point, Amethio leaving the Explorers felt inevitable. He didn't want to think of it that way, of course, but it was all he could really imagine. If no one was willing to work with him or even tell him of what had happened for Opal to end up in her current state, then Amethio was going to have to take matters into his own hands. He hated the idea more than anything, but what other choice did he have? He could either stay with the organization he had been with his entire life or he could leave. He could either abandon every moral he had ever wanted to hold close to his chest or he could keep his heart intact and leave with the only people who he felt had ever understood him.
Either way, Amethio hoped that one day, he was able to tear the truth from Spinel's lips. He didn't care how much effort had to go into it. He wanted to find a way to see it through to the end. Opal deserved that much, and Amethio hoped that one day, he would be able to convince himself that he believed a care like that too.
But until then, he would think only of Opal. She was the only one who could have ever mattered to him anyway. What was the point in breaking that trend now?
~~~~~
Friede had a lot on his mind these days.
That had been true even before Liko went missing. Back when he was first hired to rescue her and then take her back home to Paldea, Friede had been thinking a lot about the spirit of adventure he saw in her eyes. He had thought that it would be a shame if she spent the rest of her days alone at home when she clearly wanted to be out exploring the world. He had wondered if there would be a way for her to start off on a new journey all on her own, and he had hoped that he would be able to be a part of that.
After Liko decided to stay, Friede continued to find himself thinking of her often. She really brought a light like nothing else to the Brave Olivine. Friede had always felt at home there with the rest of the crew, and they were more than happy to share their time with him too... But Liko brought out something new in all of them. It felt like the world had simply shifted, and it only continued to change once Roy was confirmed to be a member of the airship's crew too. Friede felt like he was at his happiest when he was considering the joy of those two kids. They really had changed everything, and Friede hoped that he would be able to repay that kindness back to them one day.
Now though, everything was so complicated. Liko had gone missing because of the Explorers, and Friede wished that he had been smart enough to think to look after her. She was in danger from the start, and he had known that... But if that was the case, then why hadn't he been smart enough to take care of her? Why had he thought that it was safe to let her wander all on his own? If he had just been a bit smarter, then none of this would have happened.
Friede knew where Liko was now. That should have made it easy for him to reach out and finally bring her back home. If he could just get through to her, just pierce the barrier that had come to settle over all her memories of the past and present, then Friede would be able to convince her to stop this. He knew he could do it... But he didn't know where to start. She had turned and fled the instant she was faced with the Rising Volt Tacklers. Friede didn't know if she would want to side with them again. He didn't know what the Explorers had done to her, but at this rate, he was beginning to fear that damage was going to prove to be permanent.
Friede knew what he needed to do next. Now that he had a bit more information about where Liko was, he would have to reach out to Lucca, Alex, and Diana. He didn't know how he would get in touch with Diana specifically since she was a free spirit and was notoriously difficult to locate even on a good day, but he had to try. He needed everyone to know what had happened to Liko out of the hope that maybe at least one of them would be able to help to find her. Liko's family had a right to know of what had happened. They were going to need to hear it eventually, and Friede would rather it be from his lips rather than force anyone else to tell the truth.
That didn't mean Friede wanted to talk about it though. In fact, he would have rather done just about anything else. He knew he had no choice in the matter however, and that was how he wound up wandering around the Brave Olivine, searching for anything or anyone that he thought would make this a little bit easier to explain. Friede knew he could be a bit clumsy with his words, and he had an awful habit of not telling people about important things until it was too late for them to be able to do anything about it. The last thing he wanted was to make a mistake like that with Lucca, Alex, and Diana. They had been through more than enough. If Friede was going to accidentally forget to tell people important information, then he wanted to take extra care to make sure this was one case where he didn't make a critical mistake like that.
Unfortunately for Friede, he couldn't find anyone to help him to come up with a way to break the news to them. He had been really hoping that he would be lucky enough to find Mollie or Orla. The two of them were much better at choosing their words than Friede was, and he would have appreciated their feedback. He would have even been willing to write up a script for all of this if they thought it would help him. However, they were nowhere to be seen. Friede should have expected this. It was hard to find any of the Rising Volt Tacklers these days. They all seemed to prefer their own company to spending time with each other. Being around one another did nothing but remind them of the fact that they were missing Liko. Their crew was down one member, and if they were all in the same room, they couldn't help but remember it.
Friede had almost given up on finding anyone when he caught a glimpse of another person near the front edge of the ship. Ludlow was sitting there alone, his fishing rod cast over the edge of the airship into the water below. Friede had never understood how Ludlow was able to fish from so high up in the air, but he supposed it didn't matter. Ludlow was another person on the Brave Olivine, and more importantly, he was better with his words than anyone else. Ludlow did not speak often, but when he did talk, he knew what to say in as little time as possible. He knew how to push people in the right direction when they didn't know what they were trying to communicate. For all of those reasons and more, he was the perfect person for Friede to talk to.
Friede approached Ludlow slowly at first, not wanting to startle him. When it became clear that Ludlow had figured out that he was there, Friede settled into a seated position a short distance away. "I hope you don't mind me joining you," Friede began.
"Not at all," Ludlow replied, and Friede could have sworn he could hear a bit of desperation in the older man's voice. Had he been waiting for someone to come and join him so that he had company for even a few minutes? Ludlow had been isolated every bit as much as the other members of the crew. Of course it was going to start wearing on him eventually. Friede made a mental note to check in on him as much as he could going forward. It would keep them both from getting lonely, and that had to count for something when no one seemed to be able to handle the weight of the world anymore.
Friede looked out at the water below the airship, and he frowned bitterly to himself. "You know about what happened with Liko during our last battle, right?" Friede asked. He already knew the answer; there was no way that Ludlow didn't know what happened. He hadn't been there for the battle himself, but he hadn't needed to be. Friede was fully aware that the news had spread like wildfire, and it would have been more shocking if Ludlow had somehow managed to dodge all of the whispers of the girl with the mask in the time since the fight.
Ludlow nodded, the motion disturbing the way his beard sat on his face ever so slightly. "I do."
Friede sighed, leaning back on his palms where they were pressed into the ground behind him. "I'm going to have to reach out to Lucca, Alex, and Diana soon. They have a right to know where Liko is now that we have an idea of where to find her. I don't know what I'm going to tell them, but I feel like they should hear about it as soon as possible."
Ludlow seemed to figure out what Friede was trying to imply quickly. "Would you like any help with finding a way to say it?"
"I..." Now that Friede was there next to Ludlow, he found himself wondering if he did want any help. Maybe this was something he was just going to have to figure out all on his own. He was the one who had been tasked with looking after Liko, after all, and that meant this was one battle he was going to have to win on his own terms... Or so he was thinking now. He couldn't drag others in to help him solve his problems. Friede had been one of the primary negligent parties that led to Liko being taken in the first place. It would have been wrong for him to neglect his duties now too.
Friede eventually shook his head, and he surrendered himself to everything he knew he was going to trip over himself trying to explain to his old teacher. "I'll figure something out when I reach out to Lucca," he finally decided. "I was the one tasked with looking after Liko, after all. I should be the one to tell her in my own words."
Ludlow hummed thoughtfully, though Friede couldn't tell if he agreed with the decision or not. It was hard to say what Ludlow was thinking in general, and today, he was every bit as difficult to read as he usually was. "We will bring her home," Ludlow declared after a few seconds passed in silence. "This will not be the end of our time with her. I am sure of it." He had reeled his line back in at some point while Friede was busy talking, and he punctuated his announcement by casting it back out into the ocean once again. It was proof as perfect as any to Friede that Ludlow had never been surer of anything before, and he was determined to see it through no matter what it took.
Friede was glad that Ludlow was so confident in it. If he was being honest, he struggled with feeling like this was going to end any positive way when push came to shove. Friede didn't know what to think of any of this, but after seeing the way Liko had reacted during that battle... He hated this. He hated it more than words could ever say. She hadn't remembered any of them or the kindness they had shown her. There was no guarantee that she would respond well at all when she saw the Rising Volt Tacklers again. She had already reacted poorly that first time, and it was only going to get worse from there.
But that was no reason to give up. Friede may have been terrified of where all of this was going to go, but he couldn't let that stop him. He had to keep fighting for as long as he could stand it. Liko deserved to have someone in her corner there to keep her safe, and Friede would find a way to bring her back. If he had to tear the Explorers apart with his own two hands, then it would all be worth doing. No price was too small if it would bring Liko back to the Rising Volt Tacklers.
"Yeah," Friede agreed, hating how distant his voice sounded to his own ears. "It can't be. I won't let it be."
Ludlow cast his line out once again, and Friede wondered if Liko would ever be able to enjoy this beautiful sight for herself.
~~~~~
Amethio felt useless.
All he had ever wanted was to be helpful to others. He wanted to do everything he could to take care of the people around him. They deserved all the kindness he could offer them, and the best thing Amethio could gift to others was productivity. He wanted to help however he could, and so, he dedicated every spare second he could to making sure that he was of use. What was the point in him being in the Explorers if he was unable to help those who needed his aid most?
Now, Amethio's attention had shifted in a new direction. He wanted to look after Opal. She needed his help more than anything else, and Amethio wasn't going to leave her to suffer on her own. If there was something he could do for her, then he had to try. He was determined to get to the bottom of this question that surrounded her lost memories. If he could cast light upon the darkness that had swallowed her mind, then he would consider all of this worth it. Amethio knew it would be dangerous for him, and it would no doubt put their friendship in danger, but he didn't care. If it would help her, then so be it. That was a price worth paying.
But nothing was helping. Amethio had figured out from his morning of investigating that there wasn't much of anything he could do to set this right. The only person who would be able to tell him the truth about what had happened to Opal when she lost her memories was Spinel, and he had no reason to tell him a thing. Spinel wanted to keep the secret close to his chest for as long as he could, and that meant Amethio was going to have to tear the truth out of his hands. He had to find a way to make sense of all of this, but he didn't know where to start. If Spinel wasn't going to say anything, then how could Amethio get to the bottom of this? If Agate and Hamber were insisting that Amethio keep his nose out of this, then how could he find the truth?
Amethio didn't know if anyone else truly knew the details of what Spinel had done to Liko in order to force her to become Opal. Spinel was the only one who had been there with her in the room where it happened. Amethio could try to pressure others into telling him what they knew, but it wouldn't be enough. Spinel had the truth in his hands, but he had made sure that no one would be able to catch him. He had purged Opal's mind of any and all information that could have helped her to get to the bottom of this mystery. Everything had been executed perfectly, and it made Amethio want to rip his hair out of his skull.
When Amethio arrived back at Opal's room, he knocked. He didn't bother with asking her if he could come in; she had told him once that she had memorized the footfalls of everyone in the base. She already knew who it was, and she was going to be fine to let him come in. Sure enough, Opal let out a hum from the other side of the door, the noise soft but still loud enough for Amethio to pick it out. With that, Amethio pushed his way into the room, and he pulled the door shut in his wake.
Opal was spread out on the bed, staring up at the ceiling with glassy eyes. The skin around her eyes was red from all the crying she had done the night before. She looked exhausted, like no amount of sleep would ever be enough for her to truly regain her composure. Opal barely seemed to realize Amethio was there even after he had arrived in the room. She had summoned him inside, but she didn't look up at him at all.
Amethio sat down on the edge of the bed, and Opal finally tilted her head in his direction. The motion was slow and lethargic, like she had to put too much effort into it. "What were you doing?" Opal asked, her voice hoarse and tired. She had cried far more in a single night than some people did in their entire lives. Even so, it still didn't seem to be enough to help her express everything that had threatened to tear her apart and then consume her following the previous battle.
Amethio wanted to tell her that he had been looking for the truth behind her lost memories. He wanted to say that he was trying to get to the bottom of everything that her mind had been convinced to make her forget. She deserved to know that he was trying to find the truth. Opal had been suffering so much ever since she arrived at the base. She could hide it behind soft smiles and stoic stares all she wanted, but Amethio knew the truth. She was falling apart, and the only saving grace she could think of was the truth behind her lost memories.
But Amethio couldn't bring himself to let her down. He hadn't found anything, and at this rate, he was beginning to doubt that he would find anything of note any time soon either. Amethio swallowed back his anxieties as he watched Sprigatito press her cheek up against Opal. On Opal's other side, she was clinging to the plush that he had bought for her. She thought the world of him, and he couldn't even give her an answer to a simple question of what had happened to her. What a failure he had proven himself to be.
Amethio swallowed back all of his anxiety, willing himself to seem more normal than he felt. "Nothing," he told her, not caring if she could see through his lie or not. "Nothing at all."
Notes:
Things remain so dire in this story. As per usual.
I know there's a lot of tension right now around Opal specifically, so I decided to put you all through a bit of misery by writing an entire chapter that focused on other people that are not her. We'll get back to Opal eventually, I can assure you, but for now... I don't know. Maybe I just enjoy putting my readers through misery. Okay, that is probably obvious. The fact that this story exists at all is kind of proof that I like making people miserable. Oops.
Things will get better eventually. I promise. Unfortunately, we still have six chapters left before things can start to look up as we enter the second arc. So with about a third of it left, we're going to get into heavy-hitting questions next time around. It's so bad out here. Smiley face.
So next time, we'll continue with the aftermath of the most terrifying battle yet. Until then, I hope you all enjoyed this chapter. Feedback is appreciated as always. Have a nice day, everyone!
-Digital
Chapter 15: The Sun Will Find And Lift You Off the Ground
Summary:
Friede catches up with Lucca and Alex as Opal grapples with the weight of the previous battle.
Chapter Text
All things considered, Dot knew about as much as they could have.
It wasn't much, and they would freely admit that when asked, but Dot was doing what they could to get to the bottom of this mystery. Liko had been pulled into the Explorers by something that was far beyond anyone's control, and Dot was going to figure out what it was so that they could reverse it. One way or another, Dot would bring Liko home. It didn't matter what the Explorers had done to her; Dot was going to rescue her, and nothing would stand in her way.
Dot had figured out a little bit more through requesting security camera footage from the various places where the Rising Volt Tacklers had faced off against the Explorers recently, and that had given her a few clearer images of the mystery girl by Amethio's side. Dot had already known for a fact that it was Liko, but somehow, when they looked at these pictures, the truth was uncomfortably present. They couldn't escape it no matter how hard they tried. That really was Liko, and she had somehow been manipulated into fighting alongside the Explorers. Dot didn't know what they had done to her, but they were going to get to the bottom of it one way or another.
Though Dot supposed that calling her 'Liko' wasn't entirely accurate at the moment. Their research had revealed that she was currently going by the name Opal. That was what the Explorers were calling her. It wasn't her name at all, and yet, it was the only one she knew with the way she had been treated. Dot shouldn't have been shocked to know that the Explorers were trying to hide her identity. If they declared that she was Opal instead of Liko, then that would be one more line of defense between them and the truth. Liko was someone familiar to herself, and she would be able to identify her own face in a mirror if she was told who she had once been... But if she was told that she was Opal, then that would be different. Her brain could be twisted and distorted in all sorts of horrible names, robbing her of the dignity of her identity. The Explorers wanted her to be easy to use, and so, they had erased Liko and then created someone else in her place altogether.
The thought of it was sickening to Dot in more ways than they could ever hope to count. Liko deserved better than all of this, but she especially deserved better than to have her identity taken away from her by the Explorers. Opal was a name that fit in with the scheme of the other names of the Explorers. All of their names were based on gemstones of some kind. Dot wasn't sure if those were the names they had chosen to go by or if they had all simply been coincidentally named after precious stones, but they supposed it didn't matter. Opal's name was not hers. It was one that had been pressed onto her by others who did not care to know who she was when that mask fell off. Opal was not supposed to be Liko's name. She was meant to be Liko, shining and happy, but instead, she was Opal, and Dot didn't know a thing about Opal.
Dot had been typing eagerly at her computer ever since they woke up that morning. They were getting close to something huge. They just had to be. The Explorers' base was somewhere in reach. It needed to be. If the Rising Volt Tacklers had to attack the base themselves in order to find Liko and bring her home, then they would do it. Dot was willing to take a break from their work in order to train with Roy so that they would be prepared for the battle. Very few members of the Rising Volt Tacklers were great in a fight, but Dot was certain they would all be willing to put in the effort to improve so long as they thought it would bring Liko home. No price was too small as long as it would save her.
Dot was admittedly a bit anxious about what Opal would say or do once all of this was over though. Would she even want to go back with the Rising Volt Tacklers? Dot wanted to believe that the answer was yes, but they simply didn't know. Something had clearly been done to tamper with Liko's memories. The fact that she didn't seem to recognize the Rising Volt Tacklers was proof of that. Dot didn't know what it could have been though. How could the Explorers just manipulate her memories like that? It shouldn't have been possible... And yet, it was the only explanation that made sense. Something else must have forced Opal to fight alongside the Explorers, and it was the same thing that had pulled Liko away from the Rising Volt Tacklers. Dot was going to get to the bottom of it no matter what it took. Liko was worth the risk, and Dot would jump over the edge every day if they thought it would bring them a bit closer to grabbing Liko's hand once more.
Roy was sitting on Dot's bed and watching them work quietly. This had come to be a routine between them given everything that had unfolded around them. They both struggled with figuring out what to do with themselves as long as the world was doing so much to keep them from reaching Liko. If they couldn't save their friend, then the only salvation they could turn to was found in each other. They would feel better if they were together, and so, each spare moment that Roy was not training was spent in Dot's room. Dot conducted their research quietly, and Roy enjoyed sitting in their presence. Roy was unused to this much silence, and yet, it was comforting in a way. He did not need to fear his thoughts betraying him so long as there was someone else around who could snap him out of it should he begin to spiral.
Dot pulled up a few more pictures of Opal, feeling their hands starting to get tired from the constant exertion. They leaned back in their seat, trying to pull clarity from the images they had picked up from security footage. None of the pictures were perfectly crisp, but they still got across the general impression of who Opal was supposed to be. Dot could hardly believe they hadn't caught on before Opal's mask fell off. It felt strikingly obvious now that Opal was Liko and had been the entire time. Dot hadn't considered it before because they couldn't believe the idea that Liko would want to fight against the Rising Volt Tacklers... Though at this point, they still didn't think it was a matter of Liko wanting to do anything. This was simply the path she had been forced down, and all anyone could do now was try to catch up with the weight of the world around them.
"I can't believe it took so long for us to figure it out," Dot muttered under their breath, unsure as to who they were even trying to talk to. "It's all so obvious now."
"You shouldn't feel bad for that," Roy said, leaning forward from his place on Dot's bed. "You couldn't have known that it was Liko. None of us could have. Until that mask fell off, we didn't know what was going on."
"Still..." Dot had looked at Liko on video footage countless times since she joined the crew of the Brave Olivine. That was the only way they knew her at all. Liko had never looked Dot in the eyes, and yet, Dot had dreamed of looking Liko in the eyes more times than they could ever hope to calculate. If Dot had figured out that Liko was the true identity of Opal sooner, then maybe she could have stopped things from spiraling out of control. Perhaps it was a vain hope, and yet, it was all that Dot could bring themself to think about in the midst of such a horrific crash. "I should have known from the instant that Leafage was used to cover for Amethio's escape. We don't know a single Pokémon with a Leafage that strong and distinct other than Sprigatito... Other than Liko's Sprigatito."
Roy hummed, and Dot knew that he was thinking much the same thing. He had wondered if perhaps the Leafage had something to do with Liko's partner too, but he never got the chance to chase after the answer before everything began to fall apart. None of them were able to uncover the truth before it was revealed by force. He had wondered if something was strange about the attack, and now, he had been proven right in every way he had been hoping would never happen. They were both trapped by their circumstances, and the only way they would be able to find any degree of freedom was by reaching out to Liko and proving that she belonged with them instead of the Explorers that had done so much to hurt her leading up to that point.
Roy swallowed nervously, and Dot paused in looking at her computer screen when they realized he was about to speak. "Do you think we're going to be able to bring Liko back?" he asked, his voice soft and breakable. Roy was normally loud and confident, speaking every word with a smile on his face. Now though, it seemed like even the gentlest of breezes would have stolen his concerns and sent them drifting off into the sky.
Dot turned to face Roy, their heartbeat growing faster in their chest. "What are you trying to say?" They didn't know what horrible blend of emotions was brewing in their stomach, but they knew that they hated it. Dot didn't want to be angry with Roy, and yet, it felt like all they could do as long as there was the chance he was implying they would never be able to find and rescue Liko with everything going on around them.
Roy didn't seem to notice how anxious Dot was at all, and he let out a sigh as he pulled his legs up toward his chest. "I just... I don't know what to do about bringing her back," he admitted. "We don't know what happened for her to end up working with the Explorers in the first place, and I'm scared that we won't be able to convince her to leave them behind and come back to us. She was clearly forced into it, but if she doesn't even remember us, then she might not be able to come back until we're able to break through her missing memories, and I... I'm scared that we won't be able to do that."
Dot would have been lying if they said they hadn't thought about that at all. In fact, the thought occurred to them far more often than it had any right to. They couldn't seem to escape the chance that Roy was right and they would never be able to find Liko. What would any of them do if they were trapped by their circumstances, unable to reach out and bring their friend home? How could any of them live with themselves if they knew where Liko was but couldn't figure out how to bring her back?
Still, Dot wasn't letting themself think about it if they could at all avoid it. They couldn't stand the thought of never being able to bring Liko home again. That was all the Rising Volt Tacklers had been fighting for over the course of the last few weeks, and Dot couldn't give up. None of them could. They needed Liko to be with them in order to find peace in their lives. No one would leave her behind. They couldn't do it. One way or another, they had to reach out for her and bring her home. It didn't matter if Liko didn't know who they were anymore. It didn't even matter if Liko was afraid of them because of what she had been told by the Explorers. The Rising Volt Tacklers had to keep trying. They had to.
"We can't think like that," Dot said, their voice soft and weak. "We have to find a way to bring Liko back. I don't care how long it takes or how much we have to fight. I'm going to make sure she ends up with us again."
"But..." Roy's voice snagged on itself, and Dot could hear the tears forming in his eyes long before they saw any proof of them. Roy raised his hands to rub at his eyes with the heels of his eyes, and his breathing went shaky and shallow. "I..." He tried and failed to start his sentence two times more before giving up on any attempts to seem dignified or composed. "I feel like all of this is my fault. I was the last one who saw her, and if I had just gone along with her or asked that she waited for me, then... Then maybe I could have stopped all of this. I should have been there with her. I should have paid attention when she said she was leaving. If I had known that it was going to be the last time I saw her, then I would have done more. I wish I had done more."
Dot stared at Roy through their hair for a long moment, watching as Fuecoco tried to reassure Roy by hugging him the best he could with his tiny, stubby arms. Quaxly let out a coo of sympathy, and Dot's heart went stiff again. Dot had thought about the same thing many times since Liko's disappearance. They had been a hermit the day that Liko vanished, only coming out of hiding when they were trying to search for their lost friend... Not that Dot was sure if Liko would even think of them as a friend since they had never met face to face. Dot had to wonder sometimes if perhaps everything would have ended differently if they had been by Liko's side. Could they have stopped her from being taken as long as they were there when she was attacked?
But no. The answer was always going to be no. Dot knew that it was. They swallowed around the knot in the back of their throat before forcing themself to breathe. "I don't know if it would have done anything," Dot admitted. "If you had been there with Liko, then you probably would have wound up being taken too. They were after the pendant, but that didn't stop them from taking Liko. If you had been there, then they would have wanted to take you too. The fact that you weren't there probably saved you from ending up in her position right along with her."
"But..." Roy tried to protest even though he knew Dot was right. Dot was sure that it wasn't going to be enough to fully convince him of his innocence though. After all, Dot had gone through this logic with themself many times before, and it had never been enough to persuade them completely either. They could drown beneath the waves of those what-if questions, and nothing ever seemed to grant them the reprieve they sought. Nothing would truly help them to feel alright again aside from Liko being brought back to the Brave Olivine safe and sound.
Knowing Dot was right and actually hearing her out were two entirely different matters though, and Roy couldn't bring himself to think that he deserved the latter. He hugged his legs a bit closer to his chest, seeking any warmth they were able to give him in a time where his heart felt like it was cold enough to freeze the rest of his body. "I still feel like I should have been able to stop this. I feel like any one of us could have stopped this from happening. I want to be able to find Liko, but I don't know where to start as long as she's in such an awful position. She deserves better than to have to spend the rest of her days with the Explorers, and yet, I... I don't..."
Dot let out a slow breath, trying to seem more stable than they actually felt. They knew what it was like to dive down the train of thought of how everything could have been different if they had only been there when Liko was taken. Perhaps the Explorers wouldn't have attacked at all if they saw that there was someone else there by her side... But Dot doubted that would be the case. The Explorers were ruthless, and if they saw there was someone else with Liko, then they would have just taken that as a cue to attack them both. No one would have been able to save Liko on their own, and the sooner they saw that, the better off all of them would be.
"We're going to bring her back," Dot assured Roy, though they weren't sure if their confidence on the matter was going to help him or make him feel worse. It was difficult to gauge much of anything when it came to the darkness of their circumstances. "She wouldn't just betray us to spend the rest of her time with the Explorers. We know from her reaction that they did something to her memories. We have to figure out what it is, and when we get to the bottom of it, we're going to save her and bring her back. I'm sure of it."
Roy hummed softly, but Dot could tell by his lack of an overt response that he wasn't sure if it was going to turn out to be that easy. "I really hope you're right," he murmured. "I don't know what to think of her memories having been tampered with though. I don't know how something like that could even be possible, much less how it could have happened."
"I don't get it either, but I'm sure that the Explorers did something to her. A reaction like that doesn't lie," Dot pointed out... Though if they were honest with themself, they were anxious about the thought of their assumptions on the matter being wrong. For all they knew, they could have been reading too much into what Liko had done at the end of that last battle, and they would find soon enough that they had been wrong all along. It would be miserable if that was the case though, so Dot was doing their best to not think about it. Their pessimism would only tear them apart in a time when it felt like everyone and everything was fighting to have the honor.
"I guess you're right," Roy relented. He finally managed to pull his legs away from his chest so that he could stare up at the ceiling overhead. "I don't know how we're going to break through to her if her memories have been manipulated like that though. Can we even be sure that we'll be able to reach her when there's so much trying to keep us from reaching her?"
"If the Explorers are going to give it their all to make sure that we can't reach her, then we're just going to have to try harder," Dot concluded. It wasn't an answer to his concerns, not really. It was just what Dot was trying to tell themself so that they didn't spiral down and lose their grip on everything. If they stayed focused on their determination, then they wouldn't lose their composure. This was a time of action, and if Dot couldn't stay focused, then Liko was going to suffer for it.
Roy seemed shocked by Dot's hope, and for a long moment, all he could do was stare at them with wide eyes. "I don't know how you can be so sure of yourself," he admitted. "When I think about all of this, I can't seem to calm myself down. It feels like we're just doomed to fail and that any time we try to spend not thinking about that is just... Wasted."
"If we think that we're going to fail, then we will. I'm not going to let something like that get in the way of us rescuing Liko," Dot said. They were on the verge of saying that they were afraid of what would happen if they were wrong too, but they couldn't do it. If they acknowledged the weight of everything happening, then they were going to crumble, and so, they chose not to bother. "I don't care how long it takes or how much effort we have to put in. I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure that Liko comes back to us in one piece. You can count on that."
Roy smiled, and a loose, poor excuse for a laugh left his laps. "Your hope is really nice to see... I wish I could bring myself to feel the same way."
Dot couldn't help but laugh in return, though when they did it, the sound was bittersweet and empty. "I feel like I'm taking a page out of your book honestly," they told him. "And aside from that, I'm just kind of winging it." They turned back to their computer screen, staring at the vague implication of their reflection in the lit monitor. "I don't know what any of us are going to do once all of this is over. I don't even know what we're going to do whenever we see Liko again... But I know that I have to hope for the best. I can't let myself think of what's going to happen if all of this goes wrong... So I just won't do it."
Roy processed her words slowly, forcing himself to nod as each one sank in. "I'm going to do my best to feel the same way," he eventually decided. "I know there's a lot that we still don't understand about all of this, but I want to do everything in my power to bring Liko home. I want to keep my hopes high. I don't know how I'm going to do this, but I want to try."
"I think that's a good place to start," Dot said with a small crack of a smile. They let out a slow, deep breath before they got back to typing at their keyboard again. "One way or another, we're going to bring Liko home. I don't care how long it takes or how much we have to fight. We're going to do it. I promise."
Roy nodded, determination fighting its way to the forefront of his irises even in a time when he was sure of nothing and feared everything. He wanted to hope more than anything, and it showed on his face. He may have been terrified of what had happened to Liko, and he wished more than anything that he could have been there for her during her hour of need, but he could not change the past. He could, however, fight for a brighter future though, and that was exactly what he was going to do. "The Explorers had better be ready," he murmured. "They won't know what hit them."
~~~~~
Friede had hoped that the next time he made his way to Lucca and Alex's home, it would be with Liko in tow. He had been dreaming for weeks now that he wouldn't have to go there unless he had Liko by his side. She would no doubt be unsure about what she was going to do when she saw her parents again, but Friede would reassure her that this was for the best. Even if she decided she wanted to keep investigating, she had to at least say hello to her parents before taking to the skies again. They deserved that much after all they had fought through in order to bring her home. They deserved that much after all the time they had spent worrying over something that never should have happened in the first place.
Friede had hoped more than anything that he would be able to bring Liko back home with a smile on his face, and while it wouldn't make up for his failures, it would at least do something to soothe them. Liko would be able to see her parents again, and Friede... Friede didn't know what he would say or do on the heels of his catastrophic shortcomings. Still, that had felt like something he could work out in the moment. He could talk to Lucca and Alex about it and figure out what to do from there.
But Friede's imagination was not what wound up happening. Instead, Friede was making his way to the home so that he would be able to tell them everything that he knew about what had happened to Liko recently. He was going to have to reveal to them that he knew where Liko was: with the enemy that had tried to capture her in the first place. Diana had stated the Explorers were dangerous and that they had gone after the pendant even after she passed it down to Liko, and she had been right to say that they were risky and willing to take chances even if it meant hurting people. They certainly hadn't hesitated when they were given the chance to steal the pendant off Liko.
And now, they had her along with the pendant. On top of that, Friede knew that look on Liko's face well as one that was devoid of all recognition. She didn't know anything about her old life, or at the very least, that was what he was assuming. The rest of the Rising Volt Tacklers agreed, and Friede was willing to trust their judgement on it. He hated the idea that something so horrible could have happened to Liko when he wasn't there to take care of her, but there was nothing to be done about it now. He would have to fight to get Liko back, and he would return her to her home once all was said and done. Until then, he needed the rest of her family to at least know what to expect.
Friede had thought that it would be best if he didn't bother with scripting out what he was going to say to Alex and Lucca in the end. They were going to find out the truth sooner or later, and Friede wanted it to be as genuine from him as it could have been. He wished he had asked Ludlow for a bit of help, but Friede doubted it would have helped. He probably would have forgotten all about whatever script he tried to make the instant he got there and was put under scrutiny from Lucca's gaze. Friede hated that he had let down his former teacher so much, and he hoped more than anything that he would one day be able to make all of this up to her... As much as he could have, he supposed, when he had been responsible for the disappearance of her daughter. It didn't matter that the Explorers had been the ones to take her; Friede felt like it may as well have been him with all the good he had done in protecting her.
Charizard settled down on the lawn just in front of Lucca and Alex's home, and Friede hopped off the Pokémon's back. Charizard retreated into his ball moments later, and Friede started toward the front door. Cap was sitting on his shoulder for a bit of extra reassurance, and Friede almost wondered if he would be able to pass off responsibility for explaining this to the captain of his crew... But he couldn't run from this forever, and he knew it. With that in mind, Friede reached up with one hand and knocked at the door.
It took a few seconds of activity before someone arrived on the other side. Alex was the one who pulled the door open, and his eyes went wide. "Friede," he greeted. "I didn't expect you to come by so soon." I didn't expect you to come by here before you found Liko, Alex didn't say, but Friede heard it anyway. "What brings you here?"
"There have been a few... Developments in the search for Liko, and I thought that you and Lucca had a right to know about them as soon as possible," Friede explained, his chest going tight. Developments was certainly one way of putting it, though it did nothing to explain the deep horror that surrounded this situation. "Can I come in and talk to you?"
Alex nodded. "You're lucky. Diana is here too. She was passing through the area and wanted to pay us a visit," Alex said. "I'm sure that she'll want to hear whatever you have to say about this too." After a few moments of silence, Alex looked up at Friede with something like hope in his eyes. "You... You haven't found her, have you?"
Friede hesitated. He should have known Alex was going to ask the question before he even got the chance to sit down and talk about the details of the battle that had exposed this ugly truth. How could he not? This was the only news he had received of his missing child for weeks, and Friede was there to deliver it in person. That meant something really good had happened... Or something had gone horribly wrong. There was no way of saying for sure in Alex's mind just yet. Only Friede would be able to answer that question.
"I... I'm afraid not, but we have an idea of where to look next," Friede forced himself to say, though each word came out heavy and uncomfortable. "I'll explain everything. I promise."
Alex's face twitched with the promise of coming rage, but he didn't unleash it at Friede. It was clear that he wanted to shout at something, but he knew it wouldn't do anything to bring his daughter back. Friede was the only one who had an answer like that, and regardless of how upset Alex may have been at him for his role in his daughter's disappearance, he knew that was one truth he could not disregard. Alex nodded, and he opened the door just a little bit wider. "Come in."
Friede nodded gratefully and walked inside, Alex pulling the door shut in his wake. The house looked exactly the same as it had the last time Friede was there. He would have to find an excuse to pay Alex and Lucca a visit one day when they weren't under such horrible circumstances. Friede would love to sit and chat with his old professor like he had before everything went horribly wrong. It really was a charming house, and the people who lived in it were kind and clever. They deserved better than to have to spend every silent moment thinking of grief for someone who was no longer there.
A dark part of Friede's curious mind wondered what Liko's bedroom looked like. He had seen it a handful of times on the Brave Olivine, but she hadn't been given as much time to truly make that space her own as she had at home. Friede knew that Mollie often stopped by Liko's room to make sure everything was in order, and if it was not, then she would clean it up. Mollie insisted on keeping the room as perfect as she could in anticipation of Liko's return. Mollie was certain it would happen sooner or later, and going into Liko's room to clean it up was the best way for her to deal with that grief. Friede had never known Lucca to be the stationary sort, but he had to wonder if perhaps Alex had gone up to Liko's room to chase any trace of her presence that had been left behind so long ago.
Much to Friede's surprise, Lucca and Diana were already in the living room, speaking to one another in hushed tones. Lucca's eyes were puffy and red from recent sessions of crying, but she was doing her best to keep herself held together in front of her mother. Diana wore the same expression of pure remorse that she had shown when she first arrived on the Brave Olivine to share what she knew. Not much had changed since then... Not much except for the fact that Friede was about to ruin both of their days. Liko being alive was good news to be sure, but the fact that she was with the Explorers after having her memories erased... That was bound to leave a sour taste in everyone's mouth, especially since Diana had said before that she was worried about what the Explorers were going to do to her.
Friede didn't get the chance to make out what Lucca and Diana were saying to each other before Lucca noticed his presence. "Friede," she greeted, her voice strangely airy and distant. She had always been so grounded in reality, a force to be reckoned with whether it was in the classroom or in her office where she conducted her research. Now though, she seemed far away, like a Drifblim that was only barely being tethered to the ground. If not for futile hope, she would have blown away entirely, and it would have happened ages ago. "What are you doing here?" What are you doing here alone? Where's Liko? Have you found her yet? Where's my daughter, Friede? How have you not found her yet? Where's Liko?!
Friede didn't respond to any of the unasked questions that hung in the air between them. Instead, he sat down on the couch across from Lucca and Diana, and Alex took a seat beside his wife. "There have been a few new developments in our search for Liko that you need to know about," Friede explained. "We... We figured out where she is, but she... She isn't anywhere good."
"You found her?" Diana echoed, her eyes wide. "If you've found her, then why isn't she here?" There was something self-deprecating to her tone, and Friede was certain that she had already figured out there was more to it. Friede wasn't going to keep Liko a secret when he finally found her. If she was there, then she would have already been paraded around while everyone exchanged smiles and sobs.
"She's with the Explorers just like we thought," Friede began. "But that's not all. We thought that she would be held hostage somewhere for the sake of studying the pendant, but that isn't what happened. We... We wound up in a battle with the Explorers a few days ago, and when we fought them, there was someone strange on the other side of the field. It... It was Liko. She was wearing a mask, and she was going by a different name, but it was Liko."
Silence fell heavily and uncomfortably between everyone, and Friede wished he knew what to say to try and fill it. He would have wanted to crack a joke had he been there under any kinder circumstances, but nothing seemed sufficient now. It never would be until Liko had been brought home safe and sound.
All Lucca, Alex, and Diana could do now was stare at Friede in shock and confusion. Diana was the one who spoke first, though it took a bit too long for her to regain her composure. "What are you talking about?" Diana asked, her voice soft and dangerous. "Why would Liko be fighting with the Explorers?"
"That's what we're still trying to figure out... Though we've started to suspect that someone tampered with her memories to make her think that she belonged with them instead of us," Friede explained. "We're still trying to work out the details, but... She didn't recognize us when she fought us. She stared at us and then grabbed her mask and tried to run. She didn't seem to know who we were. If she did, then she would have come running over, but she never did. She just... Ran."
"But how is that even possible?" Alex pressed. "No one should be able to simply erase someone else's memories, much less to force them to fight in an organization against their will! That doesn't... That doesn't make any sense..."
"We didn't think it made any sense either, but it feels like the only explanation that fits with everything we've seen," Friede sighed. "We don't know who did it or how they were able to pull it off, but we're wondering if it could have been the doing of a Pokémon. Maybe someone told their Pokémon to use a specific move that would wipe her memory. We're not sure about anything. All we know is that she didn't recognize us at all, and that worries me significantly."
"There must be some explanation for it... If you really don't think she recognized you, then that means someone is manipulating her," Lucca murmured, and Friede recognized the glint in her eye as the same one she wore when she finally realized something important about her research. She had likely been forced to put much of her research on hold to some extent or another while the search for Liko was taking up much of her attention, but this would give her a reason to dive right back into it. If she could investigate something that would help to bring her daughter home, then she had no reason to refuse it. "If it was a Pokémon move, then I'm going to get to the bottom of it."
Alex began to anxiously wring his hands together as he looked up at Friede with dangerous hope in his eyes. "Do you really think you'll be able to help her?" he asked softly. "Do you think there's a way that we'll be able to see her again?"
"We're not going to give up until we can help her and bring her home," Friede declared. "I don't know what happened for her memories to end up tampered with, and I don't know what the Explorers are trying to do with all of this either... But we're not going to let them get away with it. One way or another, we're going to bring her back. You can count on it."
"I'm going to keep investigating the Explorers however I can," Diana announced. "I'm not sure of what they could be trying to get at with all of this either, but I'm going to get to the bottom of it. If I can figure out where their base is, then I'll tell you as soon as possible. We can try to launch an attack on it to bring Liko home."
Friede nodded. "I don't know if the Explorers are going to be willing to do this again, but... They've let Liko out of their sight before. Well, not really, but... She has left the base a few times. This wasn't the first time we fought her, but we didn't realize that it was her the first two times. She was wearing a mask, and one of the Explorers was taking extra precautions to make sure we didn't recognize her. It was only through luck that her mask wound up getting knocked off for us to see her face."
"Then... Then the Explorers haven't just been holding her against her will. They've been making her fight too," Alex concluded, all the color long having since drained from his face. His fingers clenched into fists so tight they seemed capable of breaking the skin across the back of his knuckles. "They're disgusting... The instant we get our hands on them, I swear..."
"We'll keep you updated as we try to find out what's going on," Friede promised. He let out a slow breath, trying to ground himself the best he could when he felt like the weight of the world was going to tear himself apart. "I'm sorry that I couldn't keep her safe when all of this started. Now that I know where she is though... I'm going to do everything in my power to find her again. I'll bring her home, and she'll be safe. I promise."
Lucca had more hope in her eyes now than Friede had ever seen from her. She was wild, living on the edge between desperation and optimism, but she was doing her best to keep herself held together. "I don't know what happened for her to lose her memories, but I'm going to figure it out. I'm going to do what I can to bring her back to us." I'm going to do what I can to bring her memories back. Lucca was on her feet in an instant, all of the despair from when Friede arrived gone. She darted deeper into the home, off to begin whatever research she thought would help her most when it came to bringing Liko back.
Friede watched her go with a light smile on his face. He was glad that she could at least bring herself to have a bit of hope regarding everything to come. He just wanted to spiral toward the ground and find a way to wait until this mess was all over... But as long as that was not possible, he had work to do.
And he was going to find Liko. He didn't care how many members of the Explorers tried to get in his way or how desperate they were to ruin him. Friede was going to save Liko and bring her back. He had to.
~~~~~
Opal had come into a new hobby over the last few days.
After the battle against the Rising Volt Tacklers, she had found that she had an affinity for something she never would have expected: staring at the ceiling. It seemed like all she could do these days. Training had lost all of its shine, and it seemed to her less a beacon of freedom and more a bitter reminder of all the ways in which she had failed. She could get out of bed to go and try to push her strength harder than ever before, but she didn't know if there would be much of a point to it. She would tire herself out, and she would end up right back there in her room, staring at the ceiling and thinking about everything that had gone wrong over the last few days.
Opal had been trying for a while to make sense of it all, but she couldn't seem to do it. The Rising Volt Tacklers had looked at her and said the name Liko. All of a sudden, Liko wasn't just some distant idea that the Rising Volt Tacklers brought up when addressing the Explorers. She wasn't just a justification for a battle. She was a real person, and she was... She had something to do with Opal. She couldn't say for sure how she knew it, but Opal was confident that Liko had something in common with her. The Rising Volt Tacklers wouldn't have addressed her by that name if there wasn't a connection to be found between them.
Opal had to wonder if all of this had been planned somehow. It was a dark thought, and it made her miserable in more ways than she could ever hope to count... But she couldn't seem to shake it away. Liko was important to her whether she wanted to admit it or not. Opal was supposed to know about her, wasn't she? But if that was the case, then why couldn't Opal remember that name's significance to her? It was like a switch flipped in her brain each time she heard it. No matter how focused she had been previously, Opal would spiral down in an instant, unable to keep herself held together for any longer than she already had. Liko just seemed to break her, and Opal didn't know why she would be so dangerous in the first place.
Opal pressed her hands over her eyes, granting her a moment of reprieve from the sterile silver that had come to haunt her every waking moment. She felt like she was going to be sick the more she thought about this. She wanted to learn everything she could about Liko just to put all of this tension in her stomach to rest, but at the same time, she wanted to push the thought away for as long as she could. She wanted to forget that any of this had ever happened. She wanted to bury the truth deep into her stomach where she would never have to face it again. She couldn't do this.
But at the same time, Opal couldn't avoid it either. Liko was simply too tantalizing a thought for her to ignore forever, and she had always known it was going to come to this. Liko demanded Opal's attention, and Opal couldn't look away from her. She couldn't forget the looks on Roy and Friede's faces when they called out for Liko. When they looked at Opal, they did not see her at all. They instead saw the phantom of their friend, and Opal had no idea how she was meant to feel about any of it. She didn't know if she was even supposed to feel anything about it at all.
A knock at the door drew Opal out of her thoughts, and she tore her hands away from her eyes. "Opal, it's me," Amethio called into the room, and Opal felt herself relax immediately. She knew she should have at least tried to seem somewhat put together for his sake, but she couldn't bring herself to sit up properly. Instead, she forced herself to stare back up at the ceiling again and gave him the pass to come inside.
Amethio walked in slowly, pulling the door shut behind him. He had been around Opal less and less over the last few days, and Opal had come to expect his absence more than yearn for it. Amethio had a lot of things to balance right now, and it seemed the weight had only grown harder for him to stand ever since the battle where Opal's mask fell off. He had some excuse or another to go elsewhere in the base and take care of other business. Opal never said that she was missing him. She didn't know how she would form the word, and she couldn't stand to be selfish in a time when she was sure she had already caused more than enough problems for the rest of the Explorers.
It was that fear that she was causing problems for others that had kept Opal from pushing for the truth as hard as she could have. She didn't want to inconvenience anyone who was already dealing with more than enough because of her. Opal hated the thought of hurting those around her, and the Explorers had done so much to take care of her since she lost her memories. She couldn't stand the thought of putting more on their shoulders after she had made the mistake to lose her mask during the battle against the Rising Volt Tacklers.
But Opal couldn't seem to chase away the thought that she wanted to understand. She wanted to find a way to know who she was and how it potentially overlapped with the name Liko. Opal knew that it would inconvenience others if she forced them to tell her, but she couldn't get the thought of her head. She wanted to know the truth. She was terrified of it in a way that went well beyond words, but she still knew that she had to reach it sooner or later. She couldn't go on like this forever. Maybe she would feel better if she just ripped the bandage off and got to the bottom of it sooner rather than later. There was no way to know for sure until she went for it.
"How are you feeling?" Amethio asked. He looked tempted to sit on the edge of her bed, but he didn't commit to it just yet, instead quietly watching her and Sprigatito where they were both spread out across the mattress.
Opal should have tried to reassure him. Amethio was going through more than enough right now, and she was partially responsible for it. The last thing she wanted was to add more stress onto his plate... And yet... Opal couldn't find the words she needed to prove to Amethio that everything was fine. She simply didn't know where to search for them. All that was rattling against her mind now was that single name, and it wouldn't let her go until she forced herself to ask what it all meant.
"Who is Liko?" Opal questioned as she finally managed to pry herself off her mattress and into a seated position. Sprigatito was staring at her with wide eyes, and Opal wondered how much she had been worrying her partner since that battle. She didn't know if she would ever truly understand the depth of the damage she had done, and the thought terrified her deeply.
Amethio froze, and Opal found herself silently counting the seconds it took for him to regain his composure. The answer was four and a half. Amethio sat down next to Opal, staring at the ground in front of his shoes so that he didn't have to take the risk of looking into her eyes. "She is... Someone from the past," Amethio finally replied. They both knew that wasn't the answer Opal was looking for though. How could it be? She wouldn't have posed the question if she wasn't hoping to dive in deep and hard toward the truth.
Opal nodded vacantly, dissatisfied with Amethio's answer and trying to convince herself that asking anything else would have been selfish... But she was not able to persuade herself against it the way she would have liked. Instead, she pressed her hands together and squeezed them into a tight knot of fingers and flesh. "Do I have anything to do with Liko?" Once again, Amethio went silent and still, and Opal could already figure out what his answer was supposed to be before he said it. "That was what the Rising Volt Tacklers called me during the battle. All this time, they've been trying to ask for information about Liko. That seems to be the reason they're doing this, and they... They saw something of her in me."
Opal knew that there would be no going back once she asked this next question, but she couldn't hold it back forever. Over the last few days, she had been trying to tell herself that everything was fine. She read over the affirmations she had written in her notebook and willed them to become as true as they could have been... But she couldn't bring herself to believe it as much as she would have liked to. Instead, Opal found herself tracing over the letters and wondering how many of them were lies in some form or another. She didn't know how to put it to words, but the fear was overpowering.
In all the time Opal had been at the Explorers' base, she had never tried to push anyone for information about her life before she lost her memories. The others seemed to think that she would be better off if she didn't try to learn about who she had once been, and Opal wanted to go along with that so as to not rock the boat... But now, she had to wonder... Had she been with the Explorers before her memories left her? Her presence in the organization felt a little bit too new. There were many people who she had to be introduced to after she woke up there in the base. She should have worked with all of these people before, and yet, none of them ever said a word about what she had been like before she lost her memories. Most of them didn't even seem to grieve for the fact that she had been taken out of her old life. How could none of them care when they should have remembered her while she could not recall them?
Opal wanted to tell herself that everything was the way it should have been. She wanted to believe that she was reading too much into this, but her mind refused to believe it even as she begged it to go along with what she was being told. That nagging feeling that something did not add up simply refused to leave her alone. Why did no one want to acknowledge the person she had been before she lost her memories? Why hadn't anyone even mentioned what the old Opal was like? Was there even an old Opal for them to refer to? Or was the truth perhaps that...
Opal ignored every fragment of dread tearing her insides apart, forcing herself to speak the words that she knew would ruin her in an instant. "Was I Liko before I lost my memories? Who was I?"
Amethio went perfectly still in the blink of an eye, and all of the color drained out of his already pale face. He seemed as if he had been afraid of that question for longer than he could ever hope to calculate, and all Opal could do was stare at the terror dancing across his features. Amethio wouldn't look up to meet her eyes, and she got the horrible feeling that she had been right to ask the question.
It would make a lot of sense, wouldn't it? Opal hadn't realized until after she was called by Liko's name that she didn't know anything about the person she had been before. The Explorers had said that they saved her after she lost her memories, and that may very well have been true... But had she been a member of their organization before then? Surely the Explorers didn't just pick up any old amnesiac they happened to find. Opal had lost her memories and wound up as a member of the organization, but something must have happened for the past to flee from her mind and heart. No matter how she looked at it, she was certain that there was some foul play afoot. How could there not be? How could the truth not have been deliberately hidden from her all that time?
Opal's head was beginning to ache, and she knew that her body was trying to make her regret ever asking about Liko. Everything was fighting her to try and bury the truth again, but she couldn't extinguish the flame once it had started to burn. It was going to consume her the instant she gave it the chance, but Opal didn't care. She had to know the truth. She had to understand. If she had to lean into that which she feared more than anything else, then she would do it. She had to.
Amethio let out a slow breath, measuring the weight of the air as he forced it out through his nose. "I can't answer that," he said softly, and Opal wished she was surprised by what he said. She wanted to be shocked that he couldn't find the words to explain everything to her, but if anything, it felt like it just made sense. Of course Amethio couldn't tell her about what had happened for her to lose her memories. That would mean putting everything the Explorers had been working toward at risk. Opal couldn't turn into a rogue element when they were already fighting in such a grand battle.
"Do you know the answer?" Opal found herself asking, but all that did was make the pain in her head pound harder at her skull. She couldn't tell if Amethio knew the answer of what had happened to her or not. Was it that he couldn't talk about it because he didn't know? Or was it that he wouldn't talk about it because he had been told not to? The distinction suddenly mattered to Opal more than anything, and the rest of the world fell away in favor of pursuing whatever scraps of honesty she could pull from Amethio's fragmented words.
For a long time, Amethio didn't say anything, refusing to give her anything that she could take advantage of to find the truth. He wasn't supposed to be talking about this no matter how Opal looked at it, and after this conversation ended, he would come up with a plan to make sure that he was able to get away from it when she asked again. This question was going to come up in the future, and Opal wasn't going to let it go. Amethio could see it in her eyes. Opal could see it in his eyes that he was going to slip away from her the instant he found the chance, and this opportunity would vanish like sand between her fingertips.
Amethio let out a slow, careful breath. "I'm going to stand by your side no matter what happens next," he told her in the place of a true answer. It was nothing like what Opal was looking for, and they both knew it. Amethio wasn't going to give her the explanation she sought for reasons that were far beyond both of their controls. Instead, he took Opal's hand in his own, his fingers trembling from the weight of the world suddenly pressing down onto his shoulders. "You can trust me to stay with you from here on out. I promise."
Opal found herself staring down at the spot where her fingers interlaced with Amethio's on the bed between them. She could feel tears trying to tear at her eyes, but she did her best to keep her shoulders pressed together in a show of strength she did not believe in. She wanted to understand, but Amethio could not give her a blessing like that, and they both knew it well... But he was still going to be there for her. He was determined to stay by her side through thick and thin. It was a dangerous thing to say, and yet, Opal found herself relieved that he was willing to put so much of himself on the line for her sake. She hated that she was so alright with Amethio potentially getting hurt, but the thought of not being alone was too appealing for her to fully ignore.
Opal wanted to push him more so that he revealed everything he knew. She was desperate to ask him to explain all that he had ever been told to hide from her, to pull whatever scraps of truth she could from his unsteady gaze and shaking hands, but she couldn't do it. Her headache was splitting now, and her very brain seemed like it was being sawed in half. When she blinked, she could see flashes of a dark room explode against her eyelids. She felt phantom pain flood through her body, but it was unable to fully stagger her on account of her dulled senses. She was as distant from the world as she could have been, and all that mattered was the fact that Amethio was holding her hand to anchor her to something vaguely resembling the present.
Opal swallowed back her tears, but a few of them stubbornly slid down her cheeks anyway. "Thank you," she whispered. Opal felt Sprigatito rub her head up against her arm, and Opal began to stroke at her partner's coat gently. She was there between the person and the Pokémon who would support her through anything. They would keep her safe no matter what happened. They had vowed to stand by her, and Opal was selfishly glad they were willing to do so.
She wished with everything she had that it would be enough to save all of them... But she already knew the answer was going to be no. When it came to her, it felt like it always was.
Notes:
We're officially 75% of the way through this first arc! Time sure does fly, huh?
I've been holding off on showing Opal as much as possible over the last few chapters because... Well, because I like to make my readers suffer. I know everyone wants to see her after the scuffle in chapter twelve, so I decided to take that chance to embrace everyone else as they fought through the aftermath of the battle. Oops. Sorry to everyone who was missing her, but at least we got there in the end, right?
Opal is such a fun character to write. I just enjoy her a lot. She's quiet and introspective, but she wants to be more proactive than she is. Fear always holds her back, and she has a million guilt complexes about a million different things, but she's still just... A sweetheart. I love writing her dynamic with Amethio, and I'm very much looking forward to showing off more of what she can do in the rest of the story. I love her to pieces. Opal is the most special girl in the world, and she doesn't even know it.
Next time, we've got another big chapter as we hit yet another battle. Until then, I hope you all enjoyed this chapter. Feedback is appreciated as always. Have a nice day, everyone!
-Digital
Chapter 16: You're Holding All the Cards
Summary:
The Rising Volt Tacklers receive yet another message indicating danger.
Chapter Text
"You can't be serious."
Over the last few days, Amethio had been dedicating every spare moment to getting to the bottom of everything that was happening with Opal. The battle against the Rising Volt Tacklers continued to haunt him, and Amethio thought the only way to fix it was to try and find the truth. Opal was struggling with the weight of all that had happened, and the secrets of her lost memories would not stay hidden forever. She was on the verge of recalling who she had once been. The fact that she was asking questions about Liko was proof of it.
Amethio was surprised by how his loyalties seemed to lie closer to Opal than the Explorers he had grown up with. When given the choice, he wanted to help her more than anything. Amethio knew it was risky, but he couldn't seem to resist the idea of reaching out and guiding her out of the darkness. Opal deserved better than all of this, and Amethio was determined to prove it even if no one else agreed. The rest of the Explorers may have been fine with ignoring the pain that had settled upon Opal's shoulders, but Amethio would do no such thing. He would stand by her no matter what it took.
And as of now, standing by Opal meant giving her the chance she needed to recover. She was trying to rest however she could because there was nothing else she could bring herself to do. The battle had rocked Opal's entire world, and she needed to recuperate after all she had been forced to witness. Amethio was happy to let Opal sit alone in her room for as long as she felt was necessary, and he would go out and handle everything else the world may have asked of her. He would search for the truth behind her missing memories, and he would make sure no one tried to bother her.
Or at the very least, that had been Amethio's plan. He had been hoping that he would be able to cover the space that her absence may have left behind, and he was determined to see it through... But the world wasn't in much of a mood to listen to what he wanted, and Amethio could see it plainly now. He had been called to a meeting with Hamber, and Amethio had hoped that perhaps Hamber had changed his tune about keeping the secret behind Opal's missing memories. Maybe he would be willing to tell the truth about what he knew even if it wasn't enough to fully illuminate the past of Opal's struggles. Amethio knew better than to let his hopes get too high, but he had thought there was a nonzero chance that was how it was going to end.
But when he arrived, Amethio had been met with something far darker. Hamber hadn't wanted to give her any information about the recent battle or how Opal was meant to cope with its aftermath; instead, he was there to give Amethio a new mission. Not only that, but Opal was supposed to go on the mission too. She was still struggling to pull her life together after losing everything when her mask fell off, and now, she was being asked to leave the base behind to pursue another battle? Amethio didn't know how anyone could stomach such a cruel order, and the thought made him want to be sick.
"You've been tasked with going after the Rising Volt Tacklers once again," Hamber reiterated even though Amethio had heard him bitterly well the first time. "We fear they may be trying to attack the Explorers after the way the previous battle ended, and we need to nip that in the bud before it can grow into a severe problem."
"I understand that they may want to go after us after what happened in the last fight, but... You know that there's a reason for it. They know where she is now, and if they come after us, then it's going to be because they want to get her back after she disappeared," Amethio pointed out. "If anything, I think them wanting to come after us is justified."
"Regardless of if you feel it is justified, we have to act in the best interests of the Explorers," Hamber reminded him, and Amethio heard himself snarl under his breath. "You are being asked to check on the Rising Volt Tacklers so that you can see what they are doing now. We still have not gotten our answers as to the question of if they have other members of the Six Heroes, and this may be our chance."
"But Opal isn't in any condition to go on any mission right now," Amethio argued. "She's struggling to get out of bed right now, and you want her to go on a mission to the very people who scared her during the last battle? I would be more than happy to take care of this mission on my own, and Opal can stay here. I don't want her to put herself in danger after everything she has already been through."
Hamber's gaze took a turn for the critical, and Amethio fought to maintain his resolve in the face of it. "Do you think she is a lost cause?" Hamber asked, and Amethio went stiff. "If she cannot go on missions, then she may very well be deemed a pointless endeavor."
Amethio's heart skipped a beat. The Explorers needed Opal in order to activate the pendant, but they could do something else in order to bring it to life. They could take away all of her freedom and prove that she truly was a prisoner. It wouldn't be hard for them to snatch what little Opal had left out from under her feet. The Explorers would need Opal for the sake of their goals, but they did not need to give her any degree of freedom. They did not need to let Amethio continue to look after her. They could take away her connections to the outside world and leave her in isolation until the day she was needed once again. It wouldn't be difficult for them to do either. The Explorers' goals would be fulfilled whether Opal had any freedom to speak of or not.
Amethio couldn't stand the thought of losing her. He cared for Opal in a way he couldn't put to words, and it terrified him beyond imagination. She needed to be protected, and Amethio was one of the only person who was willing to stand by her. If she was proven to be unable to help out with missions, then Amethio could be taken away from her permanently. The Explorers did not tolerate failure, and if they felt Opal was going to do nothing but fail them, then...
"Your last few tests have not ended as well as our superiors would have liked," Hamber went on. "I believe there is a chance she will be found to be unnecessary, and if that happens..."
Amethio shook his head before Hamber could finish the thought. He already knew what that would lead to, but he couldn't let himself think about it. He knew it would make him crumble, and he was dealing with more than enough as it was. "I'll get her ready for the mission," Amethio forced himself to say through gritted teeth.
Hamber nodded, though Amethio could see the puppet strings that were holding him back from saying and doing as he truly would have pleased. "You will be leaving within two hours. I wish you the best of luck."
Amethio stared after Hamber long after he vanished around the nearby corner and deeper into the base. Amethio's heart was still racing in his chest, and he didn't know if it was ever going to slow down again. He couldn't get even a moment of peace, and he was beginning to regret trying to ask for it in the first place.
Amethio's body moved on its own as he directed his way back toward Opal's room. He already knew how he was going to find her when he arrived. Opal would be laying on her bed and staring up at the ceiling. If he was lucky, he would find her stroking at Sprigatito, but she would be wearing the same glassy look in her eyes either way. She hadn't been able to properly focus since before all of this began, and Amethio wished there was something--anything--he could do to make it easier for her to bear. Opal deserved better than everything she had been put through, and Amethio hated that the world was doing so much to keep him from proving it.
Amethio knocked at the door once he arrived in front of it, and he heard a distant murmur giving him permission to come inside. He pushed the door open, and just as Amethio had expected, he was met with the sight of Opal laying flat on her bed as she stared up at the ceiling. She hadn't been able to pull herself out of bed for longer than a few minutes at a time ever since the fight against the Rising Volt Tacklers. Hearing Liko's name in that context had knocked a few bricks loose in the walls of her defenses, and she had no idea of how she was meant to put everything back together again. Amethio was beginning to doubt that it was even possible at all.
Not for the first time that day, Amethio found himself overcome with a rage he could only describe as protectiveness. Opal had been through more than enough, but the world didn't seem to believe that. She was being dragged off to do something that she was not ready for once again, and her only choice was to find a way to smile and weather the storm. She was on the verge of realizing everything that had ever been sealed away out of her reach, and she was going to fall apart the instant the dam broke in full. Amethio would have no other choice but to stand there and watch it all happen, and he was terrified already. He hoped more than anything that he wouldn't have to put her through that, but the choice was well out of his hands. If it was his decision, then he would have done something to set it right ages ago... But he was stuck there just like Opal was, and there was nothing he could do to change it.
"We've been given another mission," Amethio began, and Opal forced herself to sit up even as the weight of the world tried to drive her into the mattress and then make it her coffin. "We're going to have to follow the Rising Volt Tacklers again."
Opal's face immediately lost all its color, and Amethio found himself darkly impressed with the fact that he could notice such a thing happening at all. Opal was pale even on a good day, but the problem had grown even worse ever since she returned to the base from that horrible battle against the Rising Volt Tacklers. Now, it seemed like she was going to fall apart the instant someone even looked at her wrong. If Spinel stepped in her direction, then she was going to lose her grip. Amethio was glad that Spinel had at least been merciful enough to leave her alone recently. If everything else was going to fall apart, then at least Amethio could say that Spinel was willing to stay out of her way.
"But... Why?" Opal choked out, the words clearly taking far too much effort for her to form. "I-I don't think I can..."
Amethio shook his head, the motion stiff and restrained. "I don't want to take you out of the base for something like this either... But this is the order we have been given, and we don't have much of a choice but to go along with it, I'm afraid," he said. "We're going to be leaving within a few hours." He paused for a long moment, and Amethio released a slow sigh through his nose. "I'm sorry for all of this. I didn't want you to be dragged into another mission like this, but..."
"It's not your choice to make," Opal finished for him, and Amethio nodded. Opal thought about how she wanted to respond for a long moment before she shook her head. "It's... It's not your fault. I don't want you to hold it against yourself when you didn't ask for this. I know that you want to take care of me, and I..." Opal forced herself to smile, but Amethio could see just how strained the gesture was. "I know I'm going to be alright as long as I have you by my side. I'll be able to push through this. I promise."
Even as Opal said those words, Amethio knew that she didn't believe in them at all. If she really thought they were going to be alright, then she wouldn't have had to fight in order to tell him that they would be okay. Amethio wanted to call her out on it, to say that he knew she was afraid and that it would be alright, but he knew there wouldn't be much of a point. After all, Amethio didn't know for certain that they would be alright. He wanted to believe it, but he wouldn't be able to establish with complete certainty that they would push through this until the battle was already over.
"We should get ready," Amethio suggested instead. He extended one hand out toward Opal, and she accepted it as she was pulled up to her feet. Her body seemed to shake beneath its own weight, and Amethio hoped she would be able to hold herself strong and firm during the battle. He didn't know what he would do if all of this failed. It was too much for him to even consider, and he hated it deeply.
"Yeah... You're right," Opal agreed with a small nod. She followed Amethio out of her room after scooping Sprigatito up into her arms. Amethio could tell by the way Opal was stroking at the top of her partner's head that she was trying to reassure herself that everything was going to be alright. It wasn't working as well as she would have liked, but she was willing to chase any small comfort she could find.
Over the last few days, Amethio had learned that everything was fragile. Anything could fall apart in the blink of an eye, and there would be nothing he could say or do to fix it. He wanted to help the people he cared for, but there was only so much he could try. The world did not care what he wanted. It only wanted to march ever forward, and Opal was going to be caught up in the tide and left behind if this path continued to hold true for too much longer.
Amethio wasn't going to let that happen though. He would fight for her however he had to. One way or another, he would keep her safe. If that made him an enemy of the rest of the Explorers, then... Then at least Amethio could say that he had chosen the path that made him happiest for whatever little that was worth.
~~~~~
Dot bounced one leg against the floor of their room with a heavy frown. They had woken up early that morning after a night of restless sleep, deciding to get a head start on the day when it became clear that rest was going to continue to evade them for a few hours more even if they tried to pursue it. Dot's eyes were starting to regret it, growing droopy and heavy at the corners, but they did their best to keep themself held together. They could do a bit more research before they tried to take a nap. They knew they were capable of it. One of the things they wanted to look into that day had to lead back to Liko somehow. They just had to hold out faith for a little while longer.
Just as Dot was trying to convince themself to stay upright, they heard a small ding sound come from their computer. They perked up and found that they had received another message. Dot's eyes widened. They had been receiving a lot of these anonymous tips as of late, and some of them happened to point them in the direction to find Liko. Dot still didn't know who was sending them, but they supposed they didn't have all that much room to complain. If it would get them even a little bit closer to Liko, then they had to keep pushing. They had to force themself to get closer, to reach out to Liko however they could. Something had to give soon. Maybe this would be the day they finally got the tip that would pull Liko away from the Explorers and back with the Rising Volt Tacklers where she had always belonged.
Dot clicked on the message, and they began to read it to themself quietly:
'The Explorers are coming to the Brave Olivine once again. I would suggest that you prepare yourself for a fight. I doubt they will back down unless they are given no other choice.'
Dot's heart skipped a beat. Of course it was another warning about a fight. They had received a few of these now, and the hints were always accurate... Though that only served to confuse Dot more. Who in the world was trying to reach out to them like this? And what reason did they have for pushing Dot in the right direction to figure out what the Explorers were doing? It didn't make any sense... But Dot supposed it didn't have to. If this was what it took to get to the bottom of everything going on with Liko, then they were willing to take the advice in stride and then use it to reach her a little bit sooner.
Still, Dot couldn't help their curiosity, and they began to type out a response. They doubted the person who was sending these tips would say anything back, but they figured they would at least try to find out who they were.
'Who are you? How do you know all of these things? I appreciate the help, but I still don't know how you've been able to pass all of this along.'
Much to Dot's surprise, a response came through a few moments later. They had grabbed their phone out of the air to send across a message that the Explorers were coming again according to their anonymous source of information, but they paused halfway through typing out the text. Dot turned to look at the screen once again to read the reply:
'I'm no one you need to concern yourself with. Just prepare for the fight. You'll thank me later.'
Dot sighed heavily. They didn't know if they would be able to thank someone who was trying so hard to stay anonymous. At least they could get ready for the fight. Hopefully, this would be the day something finally changed for the better. Dot was willing to pray for that with everything they had, and they didn't even pray most of the time.
They needed it to be true. They needed Liko home, and in order to do that... Dot was willing to do anything.
~~~~~
Opal would have done anything to not be there.
Her head had been pounding on and off ever since the last battle on the Brave Olivine. The Rising Volt Tacklers had been terrifying to her in more ways than one, and all they really seemed to do was give her a headache. Opal wanted to square her shoulders and declare that she was strong enough to push through the pain, but she didn't feel strong at all. She felt weak, and she knew she would only come to feel weaker the longer this fight went on. She would crumble beneath the stares of the Rising Volt Tacklers, and they would call her Liko again. How could she withstand something so horrible?
In theory, this may not have even led to a fight at all. The way Amethio had phrased it, Opal thought it was a matter of watching the Rising Volt Tacklers. They could have had something the Explorers needed, and now, it fell to Amethio and Opal to figure out if they had it or if they hadn't yet found what they were searching for. Opal didn't know why it was necessary for her to be the one to go on this mission. Surely there were countless other people who would have been a better fit for the job. Surely Opal wasn't the first choice for a mission like this when she knew she was going to fall apart the instant a fight broke out. She wasn't strong enough for this. She would never be strong enough for this.
But Opal didn't get a choice in this, and so, she left the base with Amethio and settled down on the ground not far from the Brave Olivine. Opal stared up at it with wide eyes. She had found the airship to be an impressive sight during the previous battle, but now, it just felt threatening. It could crush her in an instant, and somehow, Opal was certain a fate like that would be less painful than having to face the people who were waiting for her on the ship. The Rising Volt Tacklers had called her Liko. They thought she had something to do with their missing friend.
Opal still hadn't fully recognized the weight of something like that. She wanted to believe that they were wrong and had simply come to be mistaken about who she was... But they wouldn't call her that name without a reason, would they? Opal was certain they wouldn't have ever brought Liko up unless they thought she was important, and Opal... Opal didn't know what to do about any of it. She had asked Amethio if she had once been Liko, but she hadn't received a conclusive response. That only made her more afraid of what was going to happen when this battle ended. This wasn't going to end well. How could it ever end well when she was going to have to face the people who scared her most in the world?
Opal's fears only ramped up when she realized there was activity on the ship. There were countless rooms inside the airship, and yet, it seemed like everyone was outside and looking out at the area surrounding the deck. That didn't make any sense. No one was supposed to know Amethio and Opal were there. Why did it always seem like the Rising Volt Tacklers figured out that they were going to be there long before they arrived? The thought made Opal feel nauseous, and she had more than enough to feel sick about as it was.
Once she saw them though, Opal felt as if her choice for the rest of the battle--and then the rest of her life beyond that--had already been made. She couldn't let her fear of the Rising Volt Tacklers stop her. It didn't matter how anxious she was or what she could expect from this fight. She was one of the Explorers. She knew that. She had to be one of them. They had taken her in when she lost everything. The possibility of Opal being Liko in some other life did not matter anymore. She couldn't say for certain that she was Liko, after all. The Explorers gave her something a bit more concrete to cling to. What reason did she have to set aside all of her loyalties when the Rising Volt Tacklers had done nothing but push back and fight against those who had tried to keep her safe? She needed to stay with those who she knew would keep her out of danger. She could do that. She had to.
Opal wasn't entirely sure if that was the right choice to make, but she wasn't going to let herself back down from it now. She didn't know for certain if she was Liko. She did know about her life as Opal though. If nothing else, Opal wanted to stay loyal to the Explorers for the sake of Amethio. She cared a lot about him, and she was desperate to stand by his side even if the rest of the organization left her feeling confused and uncertain about the future. Surely that would be enough of a reason for her to find a home in the Explorers. If he wanted her to be with him, then she would be more than happy to oblige. That was what friends did for each other, and Opal was determined to be the best friend to him that she could be.
So Opal forced herself to breathe in through her nose and out through her mouth. "They know that we're coming their direction," she began to tell Amethio quietly. "But everything will be alright. I... I want to stand and fight with you. I want to do what I can to help the Explorers win this fight once and for all. If there's anything we can do to gather the information we're looking for, then I want to try it. That's the least I can offer."
Amethio had been so focused in staring down the ship that he barely seemed to remember Opal was beside him, so when she spoke, he jolted. When he processed her words, a storm of emotions fluttered across his face. The feelings blended together and tried to overpower one another, but none of them found the strength they were searching for. In the end, Amethio forced himself to nod. "If you say so." Opal already knew that she was going to have to ask to talk to him about this more later on. He was clearly unsure about this outcome, but Opal wanted to give him something to believe in. Once this fight was over, they could share their thoughts on it. Opal was determined to do what she could to help reassure him just as he had been there to reassure her so many times before. It was the least they could do for each other.
Opal looked back up to the airship's deck, and she saw that the leader of the crew--Friede, her mind supplied--was on the defensive and preparing for an attack. When she blinked, she realized that he was staring directly at her, and the Charizard by his side was waiting for his order to attack. Opal's heart skipped a beat. "Amethio--"
"I know." Amethio was the first to rise to his full height, and in an instant, he had boarded Corviknight and started off toward the Brave Olivine.
Just before Amethio could get out of reach though, Opal reached after him with shaking fingers. "I want to come too," she told him. "If there's anything I can do to help you in this battle, then I feel I have to try."
Amethio paused for a long moment, turning to stare down at Opal with wide eyes that saw nothing but the distance that had grown between them. After a few moments of contemplation, Amethio surrendered with a nod. He seemed to know that there was nothing he could say or do to convince Opal to stop this, so the best course of action for him now was to simply make sure she stayed out of danger. If that meant bringing her with him, then so be it.
Corviknight flew both of them onto the deck of the Brave Olivine, and Opal climbed off his back with a frown on her face. She could see the entire crew scattered around the deck, and all of them were staring at her in varying degrees of shock and concern. Opal's mind was stirring distantly like it wanted to give her their names, but she couldn't seem to pull the truth out of the haze that had settled over her skull.
In the end, it was a girl with purple and pink hair who spoke first, taking a small step toward Opal. "Liko--"
"My name is Opal," Opal countered, ignoring the tiny daggers of a headache driven into her skull by that horrific name. "I'm a member of the Explorers, and I'm here to learn the truth behind what it is that all of you are doing." Opal could hear her voice shaking ever so slightly, but she forced herself to keep as calm as possible. She wasn't going to win anything so long as she was letting her anxiety get the best of her. She was going to do everything in her power to win this fight and then claim the truth that was waiting for her on the other side of the battle. No one could stop her from helping the Explorers after everything they had done for her. Opal wasn't going to let them.
"But you're Liko!" Roy declared, and the sound of his voice only made the pain in Opal's head pound harder. "You're not supposed to be with them! Don't you remember all the time we spent together here? You're a Rising Volt Tackler! You shouldn't be standing with the people who have already done so much to hurt you!"
"I've heard enough." Opal sunk into a defensive stance, hoping it would cover for all of the anxiety that was trying to shred her skin and bones to fragments. "Sprigatito, it's time for a fight!" Sprigatito let out a meow of agreement, but when Opal looked closely, she could have sworn she saw her partner hesitating too. Could it be that Sprigatito agreed that there was something more to all of this than met the eye? Opal didn't think she had ever seen the cat looking this uncertain...
But this was hardly a time for her to worry about that. The woman with pink hair from the Rising Volt Tacklers was trying to step in her direction, and Opal's mind told her that the woman's name was Mollie. "Liko, stop it! You don't have to do this!"
Opal shook her head, forcing her emotions to stay tight and restricted so that she wasn't tempted to lose her grip on the fight. "My name isn't Liko," she countered even though she wasn't sure of how much she believed it. "My name is Opal, and I'm here to do what I can to make sure you stop fighting with the Explorers!"
Opal pointed ahead, and Sprigatito followed her command in summoning a Leafage. Charizard gladly fell down in front of the rest of the Rising Volt Tacklers to make sure that no one wound up feeling the sting of it. Friede clenched his fingers into fists. "Liko, what happened to you?" he demanded. "You have to know that you're not supposed to be fighting on the same side as the Explorers. Do you remember what they did to you? They took you away from us! They were trying to kidnap you for weeks before you went missing!"
Opal shook her head tensely, but she could feel her feelings trying to spiral out of her control. If she dropped her guard for even a second, then everything was going to change, and she couldn't let it. "I don't know what you're talking about. Stop asking me about these things I don't understand."
Deep down though, Opal knew that she knew a lot more about this than she wanted to admit. She would have loved to say that she didn't understand anything of what was happening before her or what she was being told, but she knew that was not the case. When she heard that she had been with the Rising Volt Tacklers at one point, she felt something in the back of her mind stir. It felt like one of her memories was trying to push through the thick wall that had blocked them off from the rest of her head. If she gave her mind the chance, then she was going to end up overwhelmed by the weight of everything she had ever hoped to escape. She couldn't let that happen. If the Rising Volt Tacklers had really once been her allies, then it didn't matter anymore. She couldn't let it matter anymore.
Opal knew that if she let her guard down for even a moment, everything was going to come rushing out to slam into her. She couldn't acknowledge what the Rising Volt Tacklers were saying. If she did, then she was going to lose everything she had ever thought she knew, and she couldn't let that happen. She belonged with the Explorers. She would fight as much as she had to in order to prove it. If it would make the pain pounding at the corners of her skull even a bit easier to bear, then she was willing to face it.
"Liko... You can't really believe that you're one of them," the girl with purple hair begged, and despite Opal's attempts to figure out who she was, she couldn't seem to figure it out. Even when it came to the rest of her strange memories of the Rising Volt Tacklers, Opal couldn't make herself remember this girl. "You're one of the Rising Volt Tacklers. You joined us to go on your first adventure. You're one of us. You started all of this because of your pendant. It gave you the courage to start this journey. Now, you... You're supposed to be here with us!"
"The Explorers were trying to take you so they could use the pendant and then you!" Roy agreed, clenching his fingers into tight fists. "They're still trying to use you so that they can take advantage of the pendant! We would never do that! If there's anything we can do to convince you, then we'll do it! All you have to do is say what it is you need!"
Opal hesitated for a long moment, and the pain in her head only grew stronger. It felt like the fight was trying to leave her body, but she forced it to stay in her blood and bones. She couldn't lose her grip now. This fight had to end in her favor. If she let the Rising Volt Tacklers get in her head, then she wouldn't be able to return back to her normal self... Not that Opal knew who her normal self was supposed to be as long as her memories were out of her reach.
For all she knew, Opal could have really been Liko. She had been entertaining the thought for a while, but she hadn't thought about what she would do if it was true. If she truly was Liko, or at least had been in the past, then what was she going to do? No... It wasn't going to change anything. She wasn't going to let them get in her head. She had made up her choice of becoming an Explorer. It didn't matter if she had once been a member of the Rising Volt Tackler. The present was all that mattered, and Opal knew what her choice was going to be. Her loyalties were to the organization that had kept her safe during the slow process of her finding her footing once again. Her loyalties were bound to Amethio. She knew that well.
Speaking of Amethio, he had been quiet throughout the entire argument, staring down at the ground with blank yet troubled eyes. Ceruledge was standing just beside him, but he wasn't attacking at all. Amethio didn't seem to have the strength to push for the battle to continue. Opal felt like she was the only one who wanted to do anything to force the fight onward. The thought filled her with dread, and she looked over at Amethio, practically begging him in the silence to say or do something that would make it so she wasn't facing all of this on her own. She needed his help whether he saw the truth for what it was or not.
"He was trying to take you away from us," a woman in orange--Orla--declared, pointing at Amethio with a glare in her eyes. "He was trying to kidnap you, but you didn't go along with him. He shouldn't be the person you're with now. If you would just give us the chance, then we could--"
"I don't want to hear any of it!" Opal yelled, her desperation boiling over all at once in an ugly surge that made her want to tear her ears off her head. She would do anything to not have to listen to the Rising Volt Tacklers. Hadn't they done more than enough to her? Couldn't they understand that she wasn't the person they were searching for? It didn't matter if she had once been Liko. She was Opal now, and Opal knew that she was an Explorer. The Rising Volt Tacklers could try to persuade her as much as they wanted, but it wasn't going to be enough to fully convince her to abandon her cause. She knew where she belonged, and if it went against what the Rising Volt Tacklers asked of her, then so be it.
"The Six Heroes," Amethio said, and Opal realized that he was getting to the point of this entire battle. It hadn't even been meant to be a fight in the first place; this mission had been there for the sake of Opal and Amethio finding the truth behind if the Rising Volt Tacklers had found any of those strange heroes. If the Rising Volt Tacklers hadn't been ready for a fight ahead of time, then none of this would have happened. "Have you found any others?"
Friede stared at Amethio in confusion for a long moment, and Opal felt new tension rocket through her head. "Is that what all of this is about? You came to ask us if we had found any other of the Pokémon belonging to the ancient adventurer?" he questioned. "No, we haven't found any. However, we do know that you have someone we want..."
"Stop it!" Opal suddenly snapped, and her head felt like it was going to explode to the point of ripping her apart. "I don't care who you think I was or who you think I'm supposed to be! Just... Stop all of this! Leave me alone!" Her distress made Sprigatito shout out in rage too, and Opal couldn't decide if she wanted to stay and prove her mettle in the fight or scoop up her partner and get out of there as soon as possible. Neither answer felt like it was going to truly save her, but it was all Opal could truly pursue in a moment when the world was on the verge of ending.
"I think that's quite enough."
Opal felt herself freeze at the sound of that voice she would have done anything to forget. She already knew before she turned to face the source of the sound that she would be met with blue hair and a strangely sweet smile, but it still found a way to catch her by surprise. Opal didn't know for sure when Spinel had arrived there on the ship, but he had found his way to the Brave Olivine at some point, and Opal hated it more than anything. He was supposed to be staying away from her. That was one of the first orders he had been given after she was brought back to the base. Why in the world did he want to keep pushing to get closer to her? Why couldn't he just listen for once?
Opal didn't understand why she was so distressed by this. She should have been fine with him, but she couldn't bring herself to relax when he was in her presence. She had been relieved when Spinel left her alone for a few days on the heels of the previous battles, and now... Now... There he was, and Opal's head felt like it was going to tear itself apart. Between Spinel and the Rising Volt Tacklers, Opal was going to die. Someone was going to kill her, and if it wasn't her mind and her memories, then it was going to be one of the other people on the field. Even Amethio felt like a threat now, like he was going to become the danger the Rising Volt Tacklers had been accusing him of being all along.
But the world would not freeze simply because Opal wanted it to, and Spinel continued his slow strut in her direction. "You should get out of here. This fight clearly isn't going the way that it should have, but all of that is about to change," Spinel said, his voice soothingly simple in the face of the hardship rocketing through Opal's skull. "You have served your purpose in this battle, and now, it is over. Go on. I will handle the rest of this."
"No!" the purple-haired girl from the Rising Volt Tacklers exclaimed. "Liko, stop this! You can come back with us! You don't have to do this! Stop it!"
The sound of that horrible name made Opal's head begin to throb again, and not for the first time, she found herself wondering if the world was setting itself up in the name of making her miserable. All of this seemed like it had been put together just to hurt her and push her down. She was a member of the Explorers. She knew that. But if that was the case, then why didn't it seem like anyone believed in it? Why did it seem like not even Amethio truly trusted the nature of their situation?
"Go on, Opal," Spinel instructed, and something about his rolling voice told Opal to pay attention. She wanted to flee before despite her efforts to prove her resolve, but now that Spinel had given her the order to leave... It was like her mind and her body refused to listen to her own desires. All that mattered was Spinel's voice and the commands he was passing to her. She had to listen. She could never pull away from the demands of someone like that. Opal had tried to outrun it, but she knew the truth of the matter: her soul would always be under Spinel's thumb, and she was kidding herself if she thought she would ever be able to change that.
The purple-haired girl on the other side of the battlefield snarled and pointed ahead. "Quaxly!" Her partner Pokémon jumped off the ground, trying to send out a blast of water at the ground to try and keep Opal from running. Before Quaxly could strike the floor of the airship though, Spinel's Umbreon appeared, releasing an attack to block the water and send it exploding into tiny droplets throughout the air. The purple-haired girl glared at Spinel, her eyes peering out from the curtain of her hair in pure, unfiltered rage.
Opal felt Amethio's hand wrap around her wrist, and he began to drag her away from the Brave Olivine. She looked over at him, and for the first time, she felt she truly understood what it was that was going through his head. He hadn't wanted to go on this mission, but he felt he had no other choice because of the people who were breathing down his neck from all angles. He wanted to keep Opal safe, and this battle would not give him the reprieve he sought to give her. Amethio may not have liked Spinel, but he was willing to take advantage of this chance so long as he thought there was a chance it would give Opal a bit of safety.
Opal's eyes were filling with tears as she stepped onto the ground at the base of the Brave Olivine's entrance ramp. She turned to look up at the airship one last time, but Spinel's order rang in her head. She had to listen to him in a way she couldn't ever hope to put to words, and it frightened her beyond imagination. Opal didn't let herself even entertain the idea of going against his commands, and she let Amethio pull her onto Corviknight so they could take to the skies once again.
Opal's world bled away, and she was distantly aware of someone trying to pursue them. She figured that it must have been the Charizard that Friede was close with, but she never looked over her shoulder to confirm it. She couldn't do it. Corviknight sent out a powerful wing beat to disturb Charizard's flight path, and the fiery Pokémon was sent backward, knocked away from the path Amethio and Opal were following.
Halfway up into the sky, Opal realized that she hadn't wanted to follow Spinel's order. She wasn't entirely sure of what she had wanted to do, but she knew that she wanted to stay on the battlefield... Even so, she couldn't go against him. She could never go against what Spinel told her even though she wanted to flee from him more than anything.
Opal's tears bubbled up, and she wondered just what was wrong with her... But if she was being honest, she didn't think she would ever find the answer to such a loaded question.
Her head pounded the whole way back to the base.
~~~~~
Dot's heart was racing faster and faster in her chest as her rage and grief multiplied upon itself again and again. "Liko!" she yelled into the sky even though she already knew she would receive no grace or mercy. If Liko was going to be persuaded to stay, then she would have been going by her name at all. If there was anything Dot could do to convince her, then it would have already started to work... But there was no peace to be found anywhere. There was on Opal's fleeing form on the horizon and Amethio who had helped her to run.
Dot didn't understand the point of any of this. Opal and Amethio had been sent to the Brave Olivine to figure out if they had any of the other Pokémon that matched up with the ancient adventurer's team, but they hadn't found anyone else. They knew about Arboliva, but Arboliva was almost certainly in the Explorers' hands since her Pokéball had been on Liko when she was taken from the streets of Levincia. The other five were still a mystery, and the black Rayquaza was perhaps the biggest question mark of all because of how far away it seemed to want to be from the rest of the world.
But for some unknown reason, the Explorers had found it important enough to send Opal and Amethio to get to the bottom of the truth... And the Rising Volt Tacklers had been told ahead of time that they were coming. Dot had been doing her best to not let it confuse her too much, but she couldn't get it out of her head anymore. Everything was just too much. There was a secret lurking beneath the surface of this entire series of events, though if Dot was being honest with herself, she thought that it went far beyond just what had happened that day. There was too much for her to consider, and she knew it bitterly well.
Friede tried to chase after Corviknight to see where Amethio was taking Liko, but he didn't get far. An attack from Corviknight sent Charizard's course spiraling out of the way of what was convenient, and beyond that, a blast from the Umbreon standing beside the man with blue hair deterred him again. Friede was given no choice but to direct Charizard back down to the base of the ship, though it was clear by the look in his eyes that he wanted to pursue Opal. How could he not want to go after Opal after everything that had happened over the course of that battle?
"It's nice to finally meet you all face to face," came the voice of the man with blue hair. He wore a smile that seemed sweet at a first glance, but Dot knew better than to believe it. If he had helped Amethio to escape with Liko, then he had no right to any degree of care or kindness. He probably wasn't even capable of it in the first place. "I was wondering when the day would come where we could see each other in person. There's only so much I can do through just sending messages."
Dot's eyes went wide as all of the pieces began to slam into place. "You... You were the one who sent the messages telling us where the Explorers would be!" she cried out. But that didn't make any sense. Why in the world would one of the Explorers be so fine with telling the enemy where they were going to be? The Explorers were against the Rising Volt Tacklers in every way imaginable, and yet, one of them had still passed along the information so the Rising Volt Tacklers could prepare for the onslaught. It didn't make any sense, and yet, Dot knew that it had to be the truth.
"Guilty as charged," the man smiled, bowing to the Rising Volt Tacklers. There was something mocking about his posture, but he didn't seem to care much for any pain he could have been causing them. "Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Spinel."
"And you're a member of the Explorers," Friede finished for him, narrowing his eyes in rage. "You've been setting all of this up for a long time, haven't you? If you were giving us tips about where Amethio was going to be, then you've been pulling the strings for a while."
"That is hardly my greatest achievement," Spinel replied with a loose shrug and a shake of his head. There was something about him that felt just a bit too casual for the circumstances, and it made the rage in the pit of Dot's stomach feel like it was going to tear her apart. "I think you're far more familiar with what I did to give a certain friend of yours a new life. Liko truly has settled well into her place within the Explorers... Or rather, Opal has."
Dot's eyes went wide. "You... You monster!"
Roy took a step forward, and Fuecoco let out an angry cry, ready to attack the instant Roy gave him the order. "What did you do to her?!"
Spinel laughed at the clear rage playing out before him, shaking his head coolly. "I was the one who gave her a second chance at life as a member of the Explorers," he reiterated, though he didn't go into any detail beyond that at first. "It was remarkably easy. All I had to do was set up a false advertisement, and she followed it all on her own. From there, I took her back to the base, had her memories erased, and created someone who would help the Explorers going forward. It wouldn't do if she was fighting us when we were trying to get her to use the pendant, after all. This was the only way it could end."
Dot's entire body was shaking beneath the weight of her rage, and yet, she couldn't bring herself to move at all. "What did you do?!"
Spinel let out another laugh, and he crouched down to tickle the fur just under the chin of his Umbreon. "I made sure that she became someone who would be willing to fight for the Explorers going forward. She just needed a bit of encouragement to go in the right direction, and now, she is down the correct path. Her memories of her old life are gone, and there is nothing you can do to convince her to join you. Surely you saw as much during the battle. She listens only to me and the other members of the Explorers. She couldn't have come back to you even if she wanted to. Opal is so very obedient, isn't she? Truly a master work of art."
"You're going to reverse what you did to her!" Roy burst out. "I don't care what we have to do in order to force you to bring her back! You won't get away with this!"
"Ah, but I already have," Spinel hummed. "There's nothing you can do to stop what has already been put in motion, and you will see it soon enough."
The air just beside Spinel began to distort and pinch together, and when the strange shift of the sky faded, a Pokémon had come into place next to Spinel. Dot recognized the Pokémon as Beheeyem, but she didn't get the chance to comment on it. Beheeyem raised its hands, and green, yellow, and red light flashed in quick succession before blending together. It had an instant, hypnotic effect, and Dot could feel herself starting to drift away even as Nidothing yelled for her to keep her attention focused on the moment at hand. No amount of persuasion was able to keep Dot's mind rooted in her body though, and everything fell apart like a glass window that had been struck by a sudden punch.
Dot only snapped back into her reality after the flashing light was gone, and she glanced around furiously, trying to ground herself in the present she had been forced away from. What in the world had just happened? What was she missing? Why was she out on the deck of the ship? Why did everyone else look just as confused as she was?
"He's gone!" Friede declared, rage boiling over in an instant. As soon as Friede spoke those words, Dot remembered all. They had been facing off against the Explorers, and the leader of their forces had gotten away. It was... It was Spinel. That was his name, wasn't it? He was the one who had...
He was the one who had taken Liko away.
Dot felt her rage start to tear at her insides, and the ocean of grief swallowed her stomach in the blink of an eye. Spinel was the one who had erased all of Liko's memories to make sure she joined the Explorers. It hadn't just been a matter of abduction. If that was all it was, then the Rising Volt Tacklers would be able to get through to her. They would be able to convince her that she was one of them and that she belonged with them.
But that wasn't it. The Rising Volt Tacklers hadn't just lost Liko. She lost her memories with them too, and it would be impossible for them to break through that barrier at this rate. Opal hadn't just been fighting with the Explorers because it was what she had been told to do. It was like Opal couldn't disobey the orders Spinel had given her. She had no other choice but to do as she had been commanded, and she knew it. Now, the Rising Volt Tacklers knew it as well as she did, and it was horrifying.
For a long time, no one knew what to say or do. Dot wanted to chase after Spinel and force him to undo what he had done to Liko, but he was long gone... And if Dot had to guess, she would say that she had a theory of what had happened for Liko's memories to abandon her in the first place. It was horrifying, and yet, Dot knew it was the truth. She didn't know what else could have been the truth in such a terrible moment.
"I think we finally understand," Mollie began slowly, choosing each word like she thought it had all the power in the world to destroy them. "I think I know how Liko's memories were taken away from her. It wasn't just a matter of the Explorers trying to take her."
"They used that Pokémon, didn't they?" Orla questioned, and Mollie nodded. "As soon as those lights started spinning, it was like we all lost the ability to fight or move. If he used that against Liko, then..."
"He could have done more than just erase her memories for a few moments. If he wanted to, then he could take all of it away from her in a matter of minutes," Murdock finished for her. "I didn't even realize something like that was possible, but if it happened, then..."
"I can't believe this!" Roy yelled, his anger unable to keep itself restrained for even a moment longer. "He... He did all of that just to control Liko! I don't understand how he can live with himself after what he did!"
"We're going to find a way to get her back," Friede assured Roy, though Dot could tell by the tension in Friede's face that he was just as angry as the rest of them. "I don't know what it's going to take, but we're going to figure it out. Liko's mother is trying to get to the bottom of everything that could have erased her memories, and if we can get Liko back, then we should be able to return her memories to her."
Dot wanted to believe Friede more than anything. She wanted to listen to what he had to say so that she could internalize his faith in the future... But she couldn't do it. There was a chance that Liko's memories would never come back. Spinel had been much more intense with using that memory erasing attack on her than he had been with the Rising Volt Tacklers. Was there even a way to pull her out of the darkness that she had been forced to drown in since she was taken to join the Explorers?
No... No. Dot couldn't think like that. If all of this had proven one thing to her, it was that she had to keep fighting. Liko was in danger, and Dot couldn't sit back and wait until that changed. If there was something she could do to bring Liko back, then she at least had to try. She had to get Liko away from Spinel. All of them did.
"I'm going to make sure he pays," Dot snarled, her fingers clenched tightly into fists. Her entire body felt like it was shaking, and she couldn't tell if the earthquake was consuming the rest of the world or if it was only a trembling within her heart. "I don't care what it takes or how long we have to fight. I'm going to make him pay for what he did to Liko."
"I'll be right here with you," Nidothing assured Dot from inside their mind. Nidothing hadn't been able to do much with their shared life recently on account of Dot being so firm about spending every moment she could to look for Liko. Now though, Nidothing was perfectly fine with doing whatever they had to. Any tiny thing that had the chance of reaching Liko would be worth it. They just had to keep fighting until something finally changed for the better.
When Dot looked around at the rest of the Rising Volt Tacklers, she saw the same resolve on all of their faces that she could feel etched into her heart. She didn't care what it took in order to bring Liko home. It would all be worth it in the end. Spinel had torn Liko apart in the name of fulfilling the Explorers' goals. He had deliberately erased her memories, and now, she was being forced to do things she never would have agreed to if she had been given the full understanding of her histories that she needed. She never would have done this if she knew the truth.
So Dot would do everything she could to make Liko see the truth. She would fight however she had to in order to make this right. It was what Liko deserved.
And Dot could only hope it was enough. She didn't know what she would do if it was not.
Notes:
We're 80% of the way through act one. Wow. Who would have thought?
I don't really have all that much to say about this chapter. I just kind of want to let it sit in the air if that makes sense. It's a heavy chapter, but I like the way it turned out. We're getting really close to the end of this segment of the story, and I'm excited to show you all how these tiny threads come together in the end. I just love this story. It's a lot of fun... Well, as fun as this angst fest of a story can be.
Next time, we're going to face the aftermath of this battle and gear up for the final fifth of this first arc. Wow. Time sure does fly. Until then, I hope you all enjoyed this chapter. Feedback is appreciated as always. Have a nice day, everyone!
-Digital
Chapter 17: Win the Game
Summary:
The Rising Volt Tacklers cope with what happened during the previous battle.
Chapter Text
Opal hated everything.
She liked to think of herself as a loving person, at least to some degree or another. She cared about others, and she wanted them to care about her in return. She faced the world with a smile on her face to the best of her ability, and while it didn't always work, she could at least say that she was trying. Her circumstances were far from perfect, but she thought that was fine. She would figure out who she was meant to be soon enough, and she would become the person that she had always been meant to be.
But now... Opal wasn't sure of what to do. She didn't know if she was right when she said that she was a loving person or not either. She didn't know anything about herself. That had been the case ever since she woke up and found that she had no memories, but she had been doing her best to deny it up to that point. If she let herself acknowledge just how little she knew about her own life and her circumstances, then she would end up wanting to tear herself apart. Her solution was to avoid it for as long as she possibly could, but the truth wouldn't let her run for any longer than she already had. Opal didn't know who she was, and it had become perfectly clear when she faced off against the Rising Volt Tacklers during that battle.
They were supposed to be the ones who had taken her memories away. Spinel had said as much, and Opal had believed him when he said it... But she wasn't so sure anymore. She couldn't stop thinking about what had happened when he arrived on the scene. He had given her commands to flee, and Opal had felt like she simply couldn't refuse. There was something deep inside of her that wouldn't let her disobey him as long as he was looking at her with that smile on his face. That was the way he always looked though. Opal was struggling to deal with him when he was just trying to exist in her general vicinity. What in the world was her problem?
And more importantly, why did she hate that she couldn't bring herself to ignore him? She should have been fine with that. In fact, Opal would go so far as to say that she was meant to be happy that she was listening to him. He was a higher ranking member of the Explorers, and she was an Explorer. When he gave her an order, then it was her job to listen to it and face the future with a smile on her face and pride in her heart that she was acting in the organization's best interests... But when Spinel looked at her like that, all Opal could think about was how much she hated herself. All she could remember was that she wasn't meant to be listening to him like this. She didn't know if she was meant to be listening to him at all if she was being honest with herself.
She had heard a few of his words when she was fleeing from the scene of the battle with Amethio. At the time, Opal had been trying to distract herself with the fact that they had finally succeeded in the task they had been given ages ago. They knew now that none of the Rising Volt Tacklers had figured out where the other members of the Six Heroes were. Opal didn't entirely understand the point behind such a mission, but she supposed none of it mattered. She felt like a horrible person for caring so little about the job that she had been given by the other members of the organization, and yet, she couldn't bring herself to change her mind. She wasn't supposed to be there. None of this was supposed to be happening.
Spinel... He had made it sound like the Rising Volt Tacklers weren't the ones responsible for erasing her memories. Opal hadn't heard much from him when she and Amethio were leaving the Brave Olivine so they could return to the base, but she had heard at least enough to be able to tell that Spinel had something else on his mind. Spinel knew what had happened when she lost her memories, and the boastful tone he had adopted in front of the Rising Volt Tacklers... It made it sound like he was the one who had been responsible for her amnesia.
But that wouldn't make any sense. They were on the same side, and they always had been... Right? No, that couldn't be true. Opal had been telling herself for ages that Spinel was acting in her best interests, but she had feared for just as long that she was wrong when she said it. Opal was not a member of the Explorers, or at the very least, she hadn't always been one of them. She had started out as a member of the Rising Volt Tacklers. She had been Liko at one point.
The thought made Opal's brain feel like it was being cut in half. She wasn't supposed to know anything about the Rising Volt Tacklers and they weren't supposed to know anything about her either... But when Opal looked at them, she knew them in a way that went beyond words. If they were truly her enemies, then they would have at least tried to attack her during that battle. She had given Sprigatito orders to attack, but they hadn't ever returned the favor. They wouldn't do anything to hurt her. They easily could have, and yet, they didn't bother.
They had continued to call her Liko. They kept saying that she belonged with them even though she didn't remember a thing about where she was meant to be or where she was supposed to belong. She wanted to shove all of those thoughts as far away from her mind as she possibly could, but it didn't work. None of it was working. The name made her feel like she was dying, and yet, it was all Opal had ever wanted. She did not know if she was Liko, at least not at present, but she found herself wanting to be. There would be nothing sweeter than being able to reach out for that shining image so that she could claim it for herself.
Opal paused in her pacing to look in her mirror, staring at her face and memorizing every tiny detail that watched her in return. Her eyes were hollow and seemed like they were on the verge of bursting into tears. Opal should have cried from the weight of what she had heard, but she couldn't bring herself to do it. Instead, she felt... Empty. It was like she couldn't unseal the dam that would have brought her to ruin. It was too much for her to ask. She couldn't even so much as cry without being given permission by someone else. What in the world was wrong with her?
And more importantly, why didn't she know how to fight it when her autonomy was being taken away from her? Why had she just listened to what Spinel said? If he was the one who had taken her memories away, then she would want to fight him. That was what she should have done. She had felt unsafe around him for a long time, and yet, she had never been able to fully resist him when he looked at her with that ominous smile of his. Why had Opal lost so much? And why did it seem like she couldn't even bring herself to fight back against the person who had stolen so much from her?
No... It had to be wrong. All of this had to be incorrect. Spinel couldn't have been the one who took her memories away. Opal wasn't going to let that be the truth. She didn't know how she was going to prove that she thought something else was true, but she had to at least try. All of this had to be some cosmic mistake that she wouldn't know to disprove until it was too late. She was losing her mind. She had to be. There was only one explanation, and it was not the one that led her to the Rising Volt Tacklers.
Even as Opal tried to convince herself that none of this made sense, she couldn't seem to believe it. She didn't feel anywhere near as unsafe around the Rising Volt Tacklers as she should have. Her memories could not have been gone entirely. They had likely been buried, but there were at least a few traces of them left behind even if they were hiding deep within her chest. If Opal's memories had really been taken from her by the Rising Volt Tacklers, then surely she would have wanted to turn and run whenever they were close by. Instead, she found herself feeling oddly drawn to them. Spinel was the one who had told her of their responsibility for her loss of memories, and if he had been lying, then it would explain everything. It would tell her why she hadn't been able to truly find peace since she began to pursue them as her enemies.
But there was only one other explanation if the Rising Volt Tacklers were innocent. That would mean Spinel had a hand in this. He must have known the truth if he was willing to bury it. Opal hated the thought more than anything. They were on the same side... Or at least they were supposed to be. She didn't know if she entirely believed that they were fighting for a common cause right now though. If they had been, then they would have gotten along far better. Spinel saying that the Rising Volt Tacklers were her enemies had never been enough to convince her, but Opal never felt fully safe around Spinel. She hated herself for it, and she always wanted to kick her nerves into line so they would comply with what she had been told was true, but it never worked. Nothing ever convinced her that she was able to breathe easily when Spinel was in the room.
Opal couldn't shake the feeling that she was being... Used. She wanted to say that all of these assumptions were wrong and that she was drawing lines between things that should have never been connected. She wanted to bury this deep into her chest and then never have to think about it again... But she couldn't do that. If she really was being manipulated the way the Rising Volt Tacklers claimed, then she needed to find a way to break free of it. That was what they would want her to do.
But Opal was an Explorer. She was supposed to be a member of the Explorers. During the fight, she had decided that she belonged there with the Explorers. She was meant to be with the people who had taken care of her since she lost her memories. It didn't matter that she had once been a Rising Volt Tackler if she was supposed to be with the Explorers now. She wouldn't be with the Explorers these days unless she was meant to be... Or unless the Rising Volt Tacklers were right about her having been kidnapped.
Opal stared at her reflection, and she wanted to tear her face apart so she never had to look at it again. Just who was she looking at? Was she Opal, a member of the Explorers who was training to become a stronger fighter? Or was she Liko, the friend the Rising Volt Tacklers had lost to the tides of tragedy? Was she a star of shining blue or a jewel that had been held behind bars as a secret from the world? Opal reached out to touch the glass, finding her fingers were shaking. She wanted to punch the mirror and scream so she had some excuse to think about something other than her fear. None of this was supposed to be happening. She didn't know what should have been going on, but she knew that this was wrong.
Spinel had said that he was involved with this. He had told the Rising Volt Tacklers as much when she was making her escape, and she was able to hear the implications of his words even when she ran. Why would he be honest with their enemies but not with her? Unless he was trying to force them against each other... But none of this could be happening. It all had to be fake. Spinel could have been wrong. He must have been. He took control of her life in all sorts of other ways, but he could have been wrong about this. She needed him to be.
Opal nearly screamed when she heard a knock at her door, and she slammed her hands over her mouth to make sure she stayed silent. Sprigatito meowed in concern, and Opal forced herself to sit down on the bed just beside her partner. Sprigatito pressed up against her to try and calm her down, and Opal struggled to find the words she needed to invite her visitor to come inside. "Opal?" Amethio asked, his voice muffled through the door. "It's me."
Opal felt like she could breathe again when she realized it was him and not Spinel coming inside to give her another order she could not refuse. "Come in." She didn't know if she wanted to give him permission to enter though. The Rising Volt Tacklers had told her that Amethio was meant to be her enemy. He had tried to kidnap her in the past according to them. He was her foe, and she had tried to run away from him countless times... But there she was, standing beside him like none of it had ever happened.
Opal's mind raced in the few seconds it took Amethio to open the door and step into her room. Amethio was said to be her enemy. That was what the Rising Volt Tacklers claimed... But he had been nothing but kind to her since she first arrived there at the base. He had been tasked with taking care of her. How could he be her enemy? How could he be dangerous when he had done so much to help her? She was supposed to be at her safest when she was near him. They were friends. He was one of the only friends she had, and the reverse was true as well.
But what if she was wrong about all of it? What if Amethio was lying to her just as the Rising Volt Tacklers had claimed? If he truly was her enemy, then he wouldn't want to say it when he was trying to win her trust... But Opal couldn't think like that. What kind of horrible person was she if she was willing to trust the Rising Volt Tacklers over what Amethio said? How miserable could she be for disobeying the people who had given her a chance when she lost everything? Not only was Opal struggling to figure out where she fit in as a piece of her greater reality, but she was doubting everything she had ever come to know too. what was wrong with her?
Opal's gaze caught on the notebook Amethio had given her where it sat on the desk on the other side of her room. She had written everything she knew about herself in it, detailing all of the stories of her life that she wanted to understand. She didn't know much, but she had jotted it all down so that she could remind herself of where she belonged and what she was meant to do. What if all of that was wrong? What if it was all a lie? Would she even know that it was wrong until it was too late? Would anyone tell her if she was wrong at all? Or would she be left to dance on the stage of liars until her body gave out beneath its own weight?
Amethio's voice was frighteningly calm as he settled down a few paces away from Opal, not closing the distance between them fully to give her the space she so desperately needed to breathe. "I spoke with Hamber and my grandfather about the encounter during the previous battle," Amethio began. "Spinel has been given yet another reminder to stay as far away from you as possible. He should have never been there in the first place, but since he was... It seems to me that he was trying to keep an eye on us despite being told again and again to leave you alone."
Opal's chest went impossibly tighter. Spinel must have been practically stalking her in order to know when it was that she would need help, and that terrified her. He was supposed to leave her alone. He had been told countless times to step back and let her take care of her own life without his presence, but he never bothered to listen. He didn't care about anything she said or did as long as there was something he could do to ruin her. Spinel was meant to be her ally, but if he truly had been, then he would have at least had the willingness to leave her alone. None of that seemed to matter compared to the harm he had done, but Opal liked to think he would have at least wanted to do right by her in the vaguest of senses.
Opal forced herself to speak with a small nod even though she felt like she was going to die when she moved. "Thank you," she murmured. She stared at Amethio for a long moment, and Opal felt her entire body cave in on itself the instant she realized he was there for her. He wasn't just there for the sake of looking after her as the job he had been asked to perform; he was there as her friend, and Opal wanted to be with him. He had been accused of such horrible things by the Rising Volt Tacklers, but he was still by her side, and that was enough to give her what she needed.
Opal pressed her eyes shut, and the heat of her tears burned at her eyelids with enough force to feel like she was being torn apart. "I think Spinel had something to do with my memory loss," she confessed, hating how clumsily the words tumbled from her lips. Her head began to pound like Spinel had implanted pain into the back of her skull. She wasn't supposed to say such treacherous things about the people who were taking care of her. They had given her the chance to rest and relax after all she had been through to lose her memories, and there Opal was, betraying the Explorers by saying that she thought one of them had brought her to ruin in the first place. What in the world was wrong with her?
Amethio remained silent for a long moment before he let out a slow, careful breath. "I had a feeling that was the case," he admitted, and Opal's eyes went wide. He had gotten the same impression? Then that meant she wasn't just losing her mind. If Amethio had come to believe that Spinel could have had a role in Opal's amnesia, then that meant she wasn't the only one who saw the strange way Spinel looked at her. That meant there was someone else who could see her discomfort, and they believed her on it too. She wasn't lying for the sake of feeling special or garnering attention; she was seeing the truth for what it was, and for the first time in ages, Opal found herself feeling sane thanks to that simple sentence from Amethio.
Amethio shook his head at the sight of Opal's clear shock. "I never found out much about what happened for you to lose your memories. I was given the order to take care of you and make sure you recovered, but I never knew what happened. I've tried to ask around the base to see if anyone else knows what happened, but I'm afraid I don't know what happened," he explained. "Still, I think Spinel has something to do with it. He was the one who supposedly found you and brought you back here. He went out of his way to keep all of it a secret from the rest of the Explorers though, so I never knew the full story behind it... But I've had a feeling."
Opal nodded slowly. Amethio had felt the same way she did. He feared Spinel could have been involved with her memory loss. Come to think of it, Amethio had been shocked when Spinel mentioned the Rising Volt Tacklers had been responsible for Opal's amnesia. Perhaps Amethio had suspected all along that Spinel was lying, but he couldn't bring himself to say it aloud out of the fear that it would cause issues for the organization. Now though, they both knew what Spinel had said, or at the very least, they knew the vaguest implications of it. Spinel had been responsible for the pain Opal had gone through, and anyone who was willing to look closely at what was happening to her now could see his hand in it.
Opal wanted to find a way to get to the heart of the matter. She wanted to reach for the truth and make it hers no matter what it took. She was desperate for it, as a matter of fact... But she didn't know if she was strong enough to try. Opal's body felt like it was betraying her each time she thought ill of Spinel, like her mind couldn't even begin to conceive of him hurting her without it destroying her first. It was a horrible train of thought, and yet, it wasn't one Opal could even think to escape. She wanted to find the truth, but she knew she wouldn't be able to do it herself. If she had been capable of it, then she would have done it ages ago.
So Opal looked up at Amethio with wet, unstable eyes. "Do... Do you think you could try to help me learn the truth behind what happened to me?" she asked softly. "I want to try it, but... I don't know if I can do it. I feel like there's just something stopping me from doing it."
Amethio studied Opal for a long moment, trying to figure out the nature of her inability to push back against Spinel. She was trying to get to the bottom of it too, but she didn't know where to start. All she could really say was that objecting to Spinel's commands was too much for her to stomach. Amethio, on the other hand, had no such reservations. He didn't feel bound by some distant law to follow the commands of what Spinel ordered of him. He was stronger than Opal, and she hoped that Amethio was willing to shelter her beneath that strength even though it would not help him in return.
"Alright," Amethio agreed. "I don't know if I can promise that I'll be able to solve what he did, but I'll try. Spinel has been keeping this secret for too long. There must be something that will point us in the right direction. There must be physical evidence left behind."
Opal felt relief wash through her like a tidal wave. Some distant part of her mind wondered if her body could count as evidence, if the pain she still felt in her soul could qualify as proof of something she did not know if she would ever remember. "Thank you, Amethio," she smiled in pure gratitude. "Is there anything I can do to repay you for this?"
Amethio did his best to respond to Opal in a timely manner, but the words caught in the back of his throat. She wondered for a split second if she was pushing him too hard, but she never got the chance to pose the question. Instead, Amethio shook his head. "I... I don't want you to thank me for this. I want to be able to help you. That's all there is to this." He started toward the door, and Opal wondered if he was averting his gaze so that he didn't run the risk of looking her directly in the eyes during one of his most vulnerable moments. "I'll do what I can to get to the bottom of this, and when I find something, I'll be sure to let you know. Until then... Stay here and try to get some rest. You've been through a lot."
Amethio's tone left no room for objection, so Opal watched as he left her behind. Once she was alone, Opal sat down on her bed and then laid backward. Sprigatito meowed for her attention, and Opal scooped the cat up into her grasp before starting to pet at the top of her head. Sprigatito purred into the palm of her hand, and Opal found herself smiling despite the weight of the world trying to smother her then and there. She felt like she was going to die, but she felt like she was going to be alright as long as she had a few people and Pokémon there by her side.
While she was petting Sprigatito, Opal's hand accidentally brushed up against her pendant where it was hanging around her neck. She frowned and fished it out of her shirt with her free hand. She held it up to the light, watching the way it sparkled blue, teal, and green in the limited glow of the overhead lights. Opal hadn't been given much time to think about the strange turtle that had appeared from it during a previous battle, but now, she had to wonder what all of it was supposed to mean. She felt like she should have known at least something about that Pokémon, but she didn't know where to start when it came to unraveling the details. Maybe that was one truth that had abandoned her along with the rest of her memories when they were taken from her.
Opal stared up at the lights after she set her pendant back down on her chest. She didn't know where any of this was going to go in the future. She didn't know what her role in the Explorers was supposed to mean nor did she know if she was meant to trust anyone from the organization at all... But she knew that she wanted to keep her eyes trained on tomorrow. Something would end up going her way soon enough. She was sure of it. All she had to do was breathe and hope that the pieces fell into place sooner or later.
Amethio was going to find the truth for her. Opal didn't know how he was going to do it, but she trusted him. He had been accused of trying to kidnap her in the past, but Opal wasn't going to let that stop her now. She cared about him, and she knew that he cared about her too. They were friends, and they were going to find a way to come out of this together. They had made it this far. Surely they would be able to push forward until the future arrived too.
Everything was going to be alright. Opal just had to believe it, and it would be so.
~~~~~
All of the Rising Volt Tacklers gathered together in the meeting room at the center of the Brave Olivine, the air between them uncomfortably quiet. They had been struggling to figure out what to say ever since the battle against Liko and Amethio had ended with the abrupt arrival of that Spinel character. Dot couldn't say she was shocked. She wanted to tear her skin apart each time she remembered what had happened too.
If nothing else though, Dot could say she was glad that all of this messiness had given the Rising Volt Tacklers the chance to come back together again. They had all split apart because of Liko's disappearance, but now, they were in the same room the way they should have been all along. They were comfortable with each other's presences. They still grieved over the fact that Liko was not there to enjoy the happiness of unity and friendship with them, but they had a guiding purpose now. If they kept pushing forward together, then they would be able to find Liko and bring her back home. That was good enough of a reason for them to come together as any other, and it was a common path they could all agree to follow when they had no idea of what else to do with themselves.
"So... Let's go over what we know," Friede declared. He was half reading off his Rotom phone and half just talking, and Dot got the feeling that he had already memorized the situation around their current struggle ages ago. He had gone over the details countless times to make sure that they were all able to understand it well, and he was happy to share that information again and again if he thought it would bring him even a little bit closer to Opal. "Liko is with the Explorers now, and she was taken there by a man by the name of Spinel. He has a Beheeyem, and if what happened during that last battle is any indication..."
"Then that's the Pokémon that was used to wipe her memories," Mollie finished for him, and Friede nodded. "It was a move that caused her to lose her memories of all of us. Spinel figured out how to use the power of his Beheeyem to control her, and he has her under his thumb right now. I don't know if she knows enough about us to even want to come back to us at this point."
"But there has to be a way for us to help her to get her memories back, right?" Roy pressed, a desperation unlike anything else pushing at the edges of his voice. "I don't care how long it takes or how many times we have to try to get through to her. I'm not going to let that be the end of this."
"I'm not entirely sure if there is an easy way to reverse it... There's not much precedence for Pokémon being used to control people's minds. I did as much research into it as I could after we finished up that last fight, but I haven't found anything that could help us just yet," Mollie told him. "I'm doing my best to keep looking for something that could change that, but we have to be careful. We don't know what exactly happened for her memories to be erased, and the last thing we want is to make it worse by accidentally hitting a nerve that could cause more damage than we ever intended to do."
"I'm going to get in touch with a few other Pokémon professors and see if any of them know how to undo a confusion caused by a Pokémon move like that," Friede said. "I don't know if any of them will know where to start with this, but at least someone out there must have done a bit of research into it. If I ask them for help, then surely at least somebody will be able to point us in the right direction. Lucca already said she would do her part to see about getting to the bottom of this. We just have to keep pushing on our own too."
Dot nodded along to Friede's words, but she didn't know if it was going to be that simple. Mollie and Friede both had a lot they could do to try and get to the bottom of this, but if they had both been coming up short everywhere they looked, then that couldn't have meant anything good. There was surely someone out there who would be able to help them to figure out what had happened to Liko, but if they couldn't find someone who could give them the truth soon, then...
What if they were never able to get Liko back? What if she was left to suffer like this for the rest of her life, never recovering the person and the past that she had once treasured so dearly? She had only just started to get onto her feet and figure out what kind of person and trainer she wanted to be, and now, all of that had been taken away from her by a man who would never dare to own up to what he did. The thought made Dot feel sick to her stomach, and she wanted to exact her vengeance against Spinel as soon as possible.
"I think we should try to counterattack at the Explorers' base directly," Dot declared, and everyone turned to face her in an instant. "I know that we don't know where it is yet, but I think it would be worth it to at least try and figure out where it is so that we can show them what we're capable of. If we let them think that we're going to give them the chance to escape, then they could hide Liko away from us forever. In order to rescue her, then we might have to go after them directly, and that means going right to their base to make sure we can get her back and keep her safe."
"I agree that we're probably going to have to go after them directly in order to find the truth, but I don't want us to get too far ahead of ourselves," Orla said. "I know what you're trying to get at with all of this, Dot. You want us to go after Liko as soon as we can so that we can make sure she is brought back home safe and sound as soon as possible... But if we rush into this, then we could end up in danger too, and no one will be able to rescue Liko as long as the Explorers are consistently getting in our way."
"But we can't just sit back here and wait until things change!" Roy cried out. "The only reason Liko has been let out of the base up to this point is because they've been letting her leave. She's been given reasons to go outside of the base to go on missions. That means that they could take away that privilege at any point, and we would lose our ability to reach out to her forever. We're going to have to figure out where the base is and then get strong enough to storm it to bring her back."
"If we're going to try that, then all of us are going to have to get a lot stronger in very little time," Murdock remarked, cupping one hand at his chin. "Most of us aren't hardcore battlers. Friede and Roy are the only ones who I think would qualify, and Roy is still training to learn how he wants to handle himself in situations like this. I think this is going to be a lot harder than we ever thought if we're going to have to make up for so much lost time in order to reach the Explorers."
"I'm willing to do anything I have to," Dot announced, pressing one hand against her chest. "It may involve becoming a stronger trainer, but that's something I'm more than willing to do. If it'll help us to get Liko back, then it'll all be worth it in the end. I'm not going to let the Explorers get the best of us if there's something we can do to save her. If that means that I have to get stronger in order to rescue her, then I'll do it."
"We can train together if you'd like," Roy suggested with a smile, though Dot could see there was something unsteady behind it. Roy liked the idea of being able to train alongside Dot so they could get to know each other through battles, but he hated the circumstances that were forcing them into this in the first place. "I think we could both get stronger if we worked together."
Dot nodded, and she pulled up her phone so that she could tap away at the screen. "I've been doing my best to narrow down the location of their base based on the direction the Explorers flee in from the battles that we've had with them," she declared. "I still don't know where it is specifically, but I think I'm getting closer with each passing fight they run from. With a little bit more pushing, then I should be able to figure out where it is that they're hiding out."
"And once we find the base, all that will be left is to raid the place and do what we can to get Liko back," Friede finished for her, and Dot nodded. "I'll do everything I can to get to the bottom of what happened with that Beheeyem going forward. There have to be at least a few professors out there who have done research into this. Pokémon aren't supposed to use their moves on humans, but there are a few cases of it happening, and hopefully, at least one of them will lead us to the truth."
Dot was praying with everything she had that Friede was right about there being a path for them to follow to the truth behind all of this. She hated the idea of another person having gone through the anguish of having their memories erased at the hands of a Pokémon, but if that was going to happen, then Dot hoped that there would be a solution to it. She hoped that there had been at least a bit of effort put into figuring out how to undo it so that Liko could be kept safe going forward. Liko had been through more than enough, and Dot wasn't going to let Spinel do anything to harm her eve again. He had done enough damage, and Dot would tear him apart herself if she had to if that was what it would take to stop him.
"When you figure out where the base is, I know you'll come up with a great strategy for us to use to rush in and rescue Liko," Orla told Dot. This was the biggest smile Orla had worn in ages, but it still looked tired and frayed at the edges. Orla had been throwing herself headfirst into her work over the course of the last few weeks so that she didn't have to think too hard about the pain that came with losing Liko, but when Dot saw her now, she saw Orla's pain for what it was. There was only so much Orla could do to bury it when she was actively unraveling the instant she gave herself time to breathe.
"I'll reach out to Lucca to see if she can get Diana to head in our direction too," Friede chimed in. "I'm sure that she would be more than happy to help us to storm the base once we find it. She's a strong battler, and I don't think she would miss trying to get Liko back for the world."
Dot nodded, trying to restrain her tongue from commenting that Diana had better help out after all she did to cause this. That wasn't a fair assessment, and she knew it. Diana hadn't realized that the Explorers were willing to go so far in the name of getting their hands on the pendant. If she had known, then she should have done something to take it back... Though she had known the Explorers wanted it. Maybe Dot was right to be upset with her. It was difficult to see where the line was in a situation like this. Rationality blended together so freely and miserably with emotion, and Dot was left wondering where she was meant to reside on the greater spectrum.
"We're going to need all the help we can get right now," Mollie agreed. "We have no idea what we can expect from the attack on the base. We don't know a thing about how the Explorers operate when they're inside of their hub, and we're going to have to be ready for anything."
"It's not going to be easy to get inside... But it'll all be worth it so we can get Liko back," Roy declared. He glanced over at Dot. "Do you want to go and train now? We're going to need to get a lot stronger if we want to get Liko back."
Dot nodded. "Sure." She knew she would have to go back to her room sooner or later so she could try to learn more about where the base was located, but for the time being, she was too restless. What she needed now was a battle. Dot wasn't a very experienced trainer, but she hoped that she would be able to change that by spending a bit of time with Roy. He was getting stronger on his own, and Dot wasn't going to let him leave her behind.
If this was what it would take to find Liko and bring her home, then it was worth doing. It would always be worth doing.
~~~~~
Roy and Dot ran out of the room moments later, their Pokémon trailing after them. Once the two kids were gone, it didn't take long for the rest of the Rising Volt Tacklers to peel out of the room so they could go to take care of the rest of their business individually. There was little reason for them to stay together when there was only one thing any of them would want to talk about, and it was going to make them feel worse than they already did.
Mollie was planning on going back to Liko's room after everyone split up so that she could tidy it up. She knew realistically that nothing would have moved since the last time she had been inside, but Mollie still liked to make sure everything was in order. Liko was closer than ever before to returning home, so that meant Mollie was going to have to make sure her room was ready to receive her. It wouldn't do if Liko had to worry about other things when she was recovering from everything that had happened to her.
Mollie saw Orla walk out of the room shortly after Friede departed, and the Pokémon healer found herself wanting to take a chance. She hadn't spent all that much time with Orla recently even though the two were good friends. It seemed like their various duties around the ship just took them in opposite directions. Beyond that, neither one of them knew how to handle grief, and it was clear in the way they carried themselves. It was hard for them to know how to speak with one another when they were struggling, and Mollie knew it far better than she wanted to have to admit.
Orla paused when she was far enough away from the center of the ship to no longer be worried about being listened in on. "Mollie," she began. "You want to talk to me about something, don't you?"
Mollie hummed distantly. "I guess I just want to talk with anyone right now." Normally, Mollie didn't like to have to think about what was going on. It felt too overwhelming for her to so much as acknowledge the pain pressing down on the Rising Volt Tacklers from all sides, so her choice was to instead pretend everything was as fine as it could have been. Talking about it would only make it feel more real, and Mollie didn't want any of this to feel real after all that had happened. "I hate that all of this is happening."
"You're not the only one," Orla agreed with a loose snort. She clenched her fingers into fists, and Mollie noticed that for the first time since Orla began to drown herself in her work, her hands were not covered in grease or black smudges. The recent realization of where Liko was and what had happened to her had been enough to pull Orla out of her head even if it was only for a short while. "She's just a kid. Liko shouldn't have to go through this."
Mollie nodded her agreement. Roy and Dot thought they were grown up, that they were able to take on the world if they wanted to, but the adults of the crew knew the truth. They were just kids, and they never should have had to put up with any of this. Liko shouldn't have been put in danger because of something far out of her control, and Roy and Dot shouldn't have had to chase after her. None of this should have happened. The adults in their lives were supposed to take care of them, and yet, they had failed. Everyone had failed, and the children were the ones left to face the greatest of consequences.
"She's going to be different when we get her back," Mollie said even though it was the last thing she wanted to have to admit right now. "Liko has already changed, and we can see it in the way she carried herself during the last few battles. She... She really thinks she's Opal now."
"I don't know how the Explorers were able to do it, but I hate everything they did to her to make her feel that way," Orla snarled. "I didn't realize it was possible to wipe someone's memories to make them into a... A puppet like that. Liko doesn't remember anything about who she was or who she's supposed to be either."
"We're not going to let that be the end of it," Mollie chimed in. She couldn't even begin to think about what could happen if she fell short and was unable to help Liko. If anyone in the world was going to deserve better, it was Liko. She saw the good in everyone, and she faced even the darkest of situations with a smile. Her time with the rest of the Rising Volt Tacklers had been brief, but Mollie still treasured it dearly, and she... She couldn't imagine anyone doing such horrible things to a child.
Liko was still just a kid. She had been drawn into the Explorers against her will after nearly being kidnapped countless times over the course of a handful of weeks. Her entire life had changed, and she had been forced to leave behind the school life she had come to know and love to keep herself safe. It was sickening to think that anyone was capable of causing harm like that, much less that they thought it was for the greater good. Opal was in too much trouble for someone her age. Ideally, no one would have to put up with anything that cruel and horrible, but Opal... She was a child. She may have thought she had everything figured out, and she certainly tried to make it seem that way when she was faced with the Rising Volt Tacklers during the battle, but Mollie knew that was not the case. It would be years before Liko truly knew what she wanted to do with herself, but how could she figure out her path when she had lost herself so completely?
It wasn't just that Liko had lost her memories. That would have been horrible enough, and Mollie would have wanted to help her to deal with the fallout of that however she could... But this wasn't simply a matter of amnesia. Mollie almost wished that was all it was. Instead, it was someone deliberately stealing her memories. Spinel had brainwashed Liko and erased everything she had ever been. She had very little autonomy now after she had fought to find a way for her to stand tall and proud in the face of her future. She had lost so much, and she didn't even seem to realize everything that had been taken away from her. She didn't see how horrifying it was for her to not know her own reflection or the people who cared for her so deeply. There was so much she didn't understand, and at this rate, it was beginning to seem like she never would again.
Mollie forced a slow breath in through her nose and out through her mouth. "I'll make sure that she never has to go through something like this again," Mollie said, her voice low and threatening. "I don't care how much we have to fight. I'll make sure that she stays safe going forward. It's the least we can do after everything she has been put through."
"And all of us will be right there with you," Orla agreed. "I'll destroy their base myself if I have to. No price is too low if it'll bring her home."
Tears burned at Mollie's eyes, but she didn't let any of them fall. She couldn't cry now. She had too much that needed to be done... And she would fight for the future with all the strength she could muster. Liko was counting on her to do it, and Mollie refused to let her down for anything.
~~~~~
Roy and Dot spent much of the rest of the day training. They focused on anything they could learn from one another, and while they were both clearly new to battling, they still gave it their all. Fuecoco and Quaxly were both getting stronger, and Roy felt like they were making progress by the time they were finished. He wanted to keep fighting for as long as he could stand, but he knew he was reaching the edge of his energy. If he was getting tired, then he knew Dot was even more exhausted. They were both running on fumes emotionally as it was, and Roy didn't want to make their situations any worse than was absolutely necessary. They needed to take a break if they were going to take care of themselves. They needed to proceed with caution if they were going to rescue Liko.
After the training session was finished, Roy followed Dot back to her room. Neither one of them said anything about wanting to spend time with each other, but Roy knew they wanted to stay by one another's sides even now that they were done with their sparring. They couldn't bear to separate when they knew of the darkness their minds would force upon them the instant they were left alone with their thoughts. It was too much to bear, and Roy didn't want to look in the eyes of those shadows.
Ever since the battle against Opal, Amethio, and Spinel, Roy had been filled with dread. Spinel was the one who had caused all of this, and he had deliberately taken Opal's memories away for the sake of using her. She didn't seem to know just what he had done to her, but she had been unable to disobey his commands. Roy wished he could have gotten even the tiniest glance into what was going through her head. Anything that would tell him what Opal was thinking would have been greatly appreciated, but he had no idea of where he was meant to start when she was so far out of his reach.
Roy wished he could have said how he felt about everything that had happened with Opal and Spinel. He was enraged with what Spinel had done, and he wanted to fight him with everything he had, but Roy didn't know where to start with putting it all to words. It felt like his rage was too much for him to bear, rattling against the cage of his ribs but never quite bursting free. Perhaps that was because his anger was dulled by something far greater: grief. It was a blanket made of frigid ice that seemed to try to smother the flame in his stomach completely. Roy didn't know which one would win out, and he was almost afraid of finding out. Either way, he knew his emotional state would be completely destroyed, and he had been struggling more than enough since all of this began. Every emotion felt like it was too much, and Roy feared he was going to be sick if he indulged any of it for longer than a few seconds.
As soon as they had arrived back in her room, Dot made a beeline for her desk. Roy couldn't say that he was surprised to see her wanting to dive back into her research as soon as she was in a place where she could return to it. Training was helpful for the both of them, but Dot still had something else that she wanted to take care of, and that started with looking into anything that could get them closer to the Explorers' base. It was up to Dot to figure out where the Explorers were keeping Liko, and it was not a duty that she would ever dare to take lightly.
Roy watched as Dot settled down and began to work, and he felt something in the deepest corners of his heart start to break. She deserved better than all of this. Both of them did. They shouldn't have been struggling with something like this at all, but there they were, and Dot was insisting on taking as much of the weight of the recent happenings with Liko onto her shoulders as possible. Roy didn't know if she would be able to stand something like that. He feared she would buckle beneath the pressure, and he would never be able to forgive himself if Dot splintered right in front of his eyes.
"How... How are you feeling about all of this?" Roy asked softly, and for a split second, Dot stopped typing. A moment later, she started back up again like Roy had never said anything in the first place. "I know a lot happened during the last battle, but I want... I want you to feel like you can talk about it if you're afraid of what we saw with Liko."
Dot hesitated for a split second before she let out a heavy sigh. "There's nothing I can do to change this right now," she murmured. "Talking about how upset I am isn't going to bring Liko back. If we want to truly rescue her, then we're going to have to keep pushing for as long as we can stand. I'm not going to let the Explorers get the best of us so long as there's something I can do to try and stop them."
"I understand," Roy assured her with a nod. "But... I don't want you to feel like you have to bottle all of this up. It's so much to hear about, and..." Roy stared down at his hands, doing his best to hold back the tears that were rising to life in his eyes. He had never been much of a cryer, but now, he couldn't seem to avoid it for longer than a few days. "Liko wasn't just taken in by the Explorers. Her memory was erased so that she could be made into a soldier for them. That's so much for anyone to hear about, but... I... I don't know how we're supposed to face any of it." Roy didn't say that they were just children and had no idea of what they were meant to do when forced to see a problem like this to its solution, but the implication hung in the air between them. If nothing else, he hoped that Dot could feel how strong his emotions were.
Dot hesitated once again, her thoughts playing out across her face as a storm of feelings she would always struggle to articulate. She eventually pulled her hands away from her keyboard, but there was guilt in her eyes because she had thought for even a moment that she was able to take a break to sit with her feelings. "I don't know what to do," she whispered, her voice fragile and threatening to break beneath its own weight.
"I don't either," Roy confessed. "I feel so guilty over the way everything went. I feel like everything would have gone so differently if I had been there by Liko's side, but... I don't know if it would have changed anything. I'm grieving for what could have been anyway, and... I think the best way to handle that is to talk about it."
Dot clenched her fingers into fists, and she slammed both of them onto her desk on either side of her keyboard. Quaxly, who was sitting on the table just before her, flinched when the desk beneath him began to rattle. "I hate that man more than I've ever hated anyone before," Dot spat out, her voice laced with venom with each word she spoke. "I can't believe he did such horrible things to Liko. She didn't leave us on her own. She was forced away from us, and he wanted us to be put against her. He must have been setting all of this up. He must have been pushing us toward this from the start, all because... All because he wanted to make us miserable. I don't know how he can sleep at night, but I'm not going to give him the chance to get away with it. I'm going to tear him apart the next time I see him. He won't escape after everything he did. I'll make sure he never gets the chance to lay a hand on Liko again."
Roy nodded, and he pressed one hand against his chest so he could feel his heartbeat drumming against his fingers. "I feel the same way," he told her. "I don't want to let Spinel get away with anything he did either, and if there's anything I can do to stop him, then I want to try. It might take ages before we're able to march to the Explorers' base, but I don't care. I'm determined to do everything I can to stop him and set all of this right."
"Then... Then I guess we'll be doing this together," Dot said slowly, chewing on each word like she didn't know what was going to happen if she dared to acknowledge their weight openly. Roy knew just how important this was to her too; she had grown used to doing everything on her own. She had been closed away from the world for years, hiding away however she could so that no one could even come close to understanding what she was like beneath her rough shell. Dot wanted to do what was right by other people, but she was still new to this, and friendship was a work in progress for her.
And despite it all, Dot wanted to be there with Roy. They would be there for each other in the face of horrors they had never wanted to face. The world may have been a dark place, but maybe it would be a little bit lighter so long as they were there together. It brought a smile to Roy's face, but all that did was make his tears spill over from the corners of his eyes against his will.
Roy forced himself to nod through it, and he reached out to take one of Dot's hands in his own. She turned to look up at him, and Roy saw the way the muscles in her face relaxed in slow motion. It was a beautiful sight. If they were going to struggle, then at least they could struggle together. "Yeah... I think that's the way it should be."
Notes:
The end of act one is finally in sight!
I can't believe we're getting so close to the conclusion of this first arc of the story. I've been working on Free Fall for well over half a year now, but it still doesn't feel real that we're on the verge of starting the second act. Wow.
I'm really happy with the way things have been turning out though. We've got only three chapters left, and things are really going to amp up from here on out before we hit the turning point of the story in chapter twenty. I'm vibrating from excitement just thinking about. I hope you're all looking forward to it as much as I am. This is going to be great.
Next time, we'll get to the third-to-last chapter of the first act and continue down this same path. Until then, I hope you all enjoyed this chapter. Feedback is appreciated as always. Have a nice day, everyone!
-Digital
Chapter 18: Your Soul, In Part
Summary:
Amethio takes matters into his own hands.
Chapter Text
All things considered, Amethio was not shocked in the slightest to know that Spinel was the one behind all of this.
It made more sense than he wanted to have to admit. Spinel was the one who had brought Opal back to the base after her memories were erased, but he must have known what was going to happen to her ahead of time if he was going to prepare for it like that. He must have been very aware of what was going on, and the best way for him to know about it was for him to have been behind it. Amethio had suspected that he was involved with this in an awful way from the start, but nothing could have prepared him for hearing Spinel say it upfront.
Amethio wished he hadn't been in such a rush to get Opal away from the scene of the battle. He would have stayed and listened to more of what Spinel had to say if Opal wasn't so distressed. It seemed as if she hadn't been able to disobey him, given no other choice but to go along with the orders she was given whether she wanted to or not. She seemed distressed by it in a way that went beyond words, but it was far from within her power for her to go against what Spinel commanded of her. It was terrifying to see just how easily Opal had fallen into line the instant Spinel had tried to tell her what she was meant to do.
And it was all the more reason for Amethio to want to get to the bottom of it. He didn't care how long it took or how much it made Spinel hate him. He was going to figure out just what Spinel had done to Opal, and he was going to give her the safety she craved so desperately. Amethio wasn't sure of how many other members of the Explorers knew the truth, but he figured he would have at least a bit more luck in asking them for information than he would in targeting Spinel directly. Spinel had only boasted like that to the Rising Volt Tacklers because he thought Amethio and Opal were too far away to hear what he had to say. Spinel wasn't going to say anything if Amethio tried to press him into honesty, so he was going to have to try something else. Amethio didn't know if the plan he had in mind was going to work, but he had to try. Opal was counting on him.
Though if Amethio was being honest with himself, he would have wanted to pursue the truth with everything he had even if Opal hadn't asked him. He couldn't just stand by and let her be torn apart by the weight of everything she did not remember of the person she had once been. If there was something he could do to alleviate her burdens even slightly, he knew he had to try. Amethio was curious about what had happened for her to end up turning against the Rising Volt Tacklers against her will too. He wanted to understand what had happened for him to end up as a pawn cut up in a web being spun by someone far out of his reach.
The thought of all of this made Amethio want to be sick. He hated this more than he could ever hope to put into words, but he knew he couldn't let that show on his face. Opal was counting on him, and Amethio wanted her to feel safe even if he couldn't muster the strength to believe they were going to be alright. He couldn't splinter when she was looking at him with such hope in her eyes. She believed in him in a way that went far beyond words, and she needed him to be strong until they were able to uncover her memories. Amethio was going to do everything he could to stand up for her until the pieces fell into place. He had to. Maybe he would feel like he was going to collapse in the process, but that would all be fine as long as he was able to do something to save her in the end.
Amethio called Zirc and Onia into one of the meeting rooms in the base once he managed to pull himself away from Opal. It was hard to leave her on her own when she was this anxious, but Amethio knew that he wouldn't stand a chance of learning anything else as long as she was by his side. The people who were hiding the truth of what had happened to her were going to keep lying as long as she was in the area, and that meant Amethio was going to have to try something else. Zirc and Onia would likely struggle in their own investigation because of how closely tied they were with him, but Amethio still had more faith in them than he did in trying to search alongside Opal right now. Something was going to have to give soon, and Amethio was going to be ready for it no matter what it took.
Zirc and Onia stood in front of Amethio as he let out a slow breath to try and ground himself in preparation for the conversation to come. None of this was going to be easy, and Amethio knew that, but it did nothing to make it simpler for him to say what he knew was going to have to come next. "I need your help with this," Amethio began, not bothering to elaborate on what he was referring to. He was sure both Zirc and Onia already knew. It would have been difficult for them to have not figured it out given what had happened over the course of the last few days. "I want you to do everything you can to help me figure out just what happened for Opal to lose her memories."
"What happened during the battle a few days ago?" Onia asked, her voice coming out hesitant at first. Amethio resisted the urge to flinch. He had told them that something had gone wrong during the previous battle, but he hadn't wanted to say just what it was since Opal was close by at the time. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt her, and that meant choosing his words as carefully as possible when he thought there was a chance she was listening.
"When we were running after the fight, Spinel appeared to cover for our escape. He said that he was the one responsible for Opal's memories being erased, and I need your help to get to the bottom of it," Amethio explained. He forced himself to keep speaking despite the overwhelming desire to pause and just sit in the weight of what he was saying. Spinel had done horrific things to Opal, and he thought it was something worth bragging about... But now wasn't the time to think about that. Amethio didn't know if there would ever be a good time to think about it, as a matter of fact. "I want you to look through Spinel's files if you can to see if he has anything written down that will tell us the truth. I'm going to try and speak with Spinel directly. If I can distract him for a while, then you should be able to get in, find something incriminating, and then leave before he realizes what it is that we're doing. He was excited to boast about what he had done during the last fight, and I'm hoping that I'll be able to push him into continuing to do that today too. I doubt he'll be able to resist it for long when I start asking him."
Amethio knew that relying on Spinel's ego of all things was going to be a dangerous gambit, but it wasn't as if he had much of a choice at the moment. He wanted to find the truth, and the best way to uncover it was to exploit the one weakness he already knew about. Spinel had felt safe enough to say at least something when he was covering for Amethio and Opal's escape during the previous battle, and if Amethio said that he had overheard it... There was no guarantee Spinel would reveal anything that could be considered even vaguely helpful, but Amethio knew he had to try. He couldn't let all of this fade away before he had the chance to put in the effort to pry the truth free of Spinel's jaws.
Zirc and Onia shared a worried look at Amethio's words. "Are you sure this is a good idea?" Onia asked, her voice shaking in a way that Amethio didn't think he had ever heard it. "If he realizes what you're up to, then he could--"
"We have to get to the bottom of this," Amethio cut in, doing his best to silence any fears that may have wanted to rise up in the back of his mind too. "Spinel has been keeping all of this a secret for a long time, and there has to be at least some evidence to back it up. I want to try and get him to boast about what he did during the battle, and if I can distract him for long enough, then you should be able to get what you want. Spinel has been keeping the truth of what happened to Opal a secret, and now that he finally said something about it... I think we can at least count on him being willing to reveal a few of the details."
Zirc nodded after a few moments more of thought, though it was clear that he was every bit as nervous about how this could go wrong as Onia. "If you think this is our best option, then we trust you," he assured Amethio. "And we'll do what we can to get to the bottom of this. We'll go into his office and see if there's anything we can find that might reveal the truth."
"Good." Amethio let out a slow breath, trying to remind his body that it was okay to decompress even if it was only slightly. "I appreciate your willingness to help me. I want to do what I can to find out what Spinel did, but I don't know if I'll be able to do it alone no matter what I try. Thank you for being here."
Zirc and Onia looked at each other once again before they stood up straighter. Amethio was rarely vulnerable like this, and that meant it was a moment they wanted to enjoy as much as possible. "It's an honor!" Onia exclaimed, her voice a little bit too loud for the room they were in.
Amethio nodded around the anxiety that had formed as a rock in the center of his chest. "There's no time like the present to put all of this in motion. If you manage to find anything, then I want you to let me know as soon as possible. I'll come and find you in the computer lab after I'm finished speaking with Spinel. I'll stall for time for as long as I can, but once you find something, I need you to get it and leave so that you don't run the risk of being caught."
"We can do it," Zirc assured him. "We won't let you down."
Amethio wanted to offer them a small smile of relief at the idea that they were so willing to help him with such a dangerous mission, but he knew there was no time for that right now. There was too much on the line, and they had to get everything in order as soon as possible. "I'll be looking forward to hearing from you. Good luck."
Amethio wasted no time in walking away from Zirc and Onia so he could trace his path through the base to Spinel. He had no idea where his target was going to be at this specific time of day, but he supposed he would be able to figure that out through a bit of old-fashioned legwork. Spinel had to be there in the base. Amethio didn't know what he was doing, but he had to be around there somewhere.
In the end, Amethio found Spinel in a room full of important artifacts within the organization. Only the administrators of the Explorers were allowed inside, so Amethio and Spinel both had free access. Spinel was standing at the center of the room and examining an ancient Pokéball, and Amethio recognized it as the one that had been taken off Liko when she was turned into Opal and brought back to the base. It contained a massive Arboliva that was said to have once traveled with an adventurer who set his sights on Rakua. The best way to enter the paradise now was to gather the six Pokémon that had traveled with him, now known as the Six Heroes. Amethio had been briefed on this information ages ago, but it hadn't been relevant since the discovery of Arboliva on Liko's person. None of the other members of the Six Heroes had been uncovered since then, and the Rising Volt Tacklers hadn't been searching for them either on account of their investigation into Liko's disappearance.
Arboliva had come to be something of a strange case since her arrival at the base for a variety of reasons. The first and most obvious was that she refused to leave her Pokéball. She could have come out at any point if she so chose, but she stubbornly ignored anyone who may have wanted her to depart from it. Amethio hadn't spent much time with Arboliva for a variety of reasons, but he had still heard that the others were trying to get through to her only for nothing to work.
Amethio couldn't say he was surprised. Arboliva likely thought of the Explorers as an enemy because Liko had been kidnapped in order to end up with them. Arboliva was doubtless aware of what had happened to Liko, at least in passing, and she refused to give any of the Explorers attention after all that had transpired. In a dark way, Amethio wished that he could communicate with Pokémon so that he could talk to Arboliva about what she knew of Opal's missing memories. Maybe she would have nothing to share... But maybe she would have held all the secrets that Amethio had been chasing unsuccessfully for all this time. Who could say for certain?
Amethio took a moment to wrestle together his courage. He wanted to hold off for as long as possible in approaching Spinel so that he could maximize the amount of time Zirc and Onia would need for their investigation into his files, and right now, that meant standing and watching. It was perfect for other reasons too, such as Amethio needing to soothe some of his rage before he would be able to stand saying a word to the older man.
In the end, Amethio spoke up when Spinel heard him shift his weight. Spinel turned to face the door, and Amethio narrowed his eyes, recognizing that the game of distractions had officially begun. "Spinel," Amethio greeted, his voice flat. "We need to talk."
"Do we?" Spinel asked, his voice bitterly casual. He knew exactly what Amethio was referring to, but he refused to admit to it on his own. Where was the fun in that when he could just as easily make Amethio fight for the information he craved? "I think I have other things to focus on right now. For example, Arboliva still refuses to come out of her Pokéball. I would have thought something would have changed by now. At this rate, we're going to have to force her to leave so that we can get where we need to be."
"This isn't about Arboliva," Amethio cut in, feeling rage start to tear at his heart. He had never liked Spinel much, but he had always thought he would be able to put that aside in the name of focusing on the business of the Explorers. That wasn't going to happen anymore though. He would never feel truly stable or safe around Spinel as long as there was even the slightest chance he was going to cause harm like this. Spinel had done so much to hurt Opal, and he didn't care at all for the damage it had done. How could he sleep at night knowing of all he had done? How could he stand there with a smile on his face not caring at all about the agony he had put Opal through in the name of some goal he still refused to define?
Spinel looked at Arboliva's Pokéball for another moment or two before he set it back down on its pedestal with a sigh. "Then what is it you want to talk about?" Spinel questioned. "I would prefer it if you would make this quick. I have other business that needs to be addressed today."
"There's nothing as important as what I'm about to ask you about," Amethio interrupted with a firm shake of his head. "It's about Opal. I... I heard what you said about her during that last battle. You were the one who erased her memories. You're the reason she's Opal right now at all. If not for you, then she would never be here."
Amethio observed every tiny detail of Spinel's face in the heavy silence that followed the accusation. For a moment, he thought he saw shock rise in Spinel's eyes, and Amethio wondered if Spinel had meant for Amethio and Opal to overhear the vague details of what he had done at all. He must have been intending for that boast to be heard only by the Rising Volt Tacklers, but it hadn't gone according to plan all because he let his ego get the best of him. Spinel waited to see if Amethio would say or do anything else, but when he did not, Spinel let out a low laugh that echoed in his chest and then in the hallway all around them. "I see that you're in the habit of listening to things that you were never meant to hear," he remarked. "I shouldn't be surprised. You've always been great at breaking rules and disobeying orders."
"What orders?" Amethio spat back. "You've been told repeatedly that you need to stay away from Opal because you're frightening her, but you never listen to a word you're told. Instead, you show up in the middle of a battle you know she's going to be involved with just for the sake of scaring her. You have to know that you can't just do that."
"I believe I can do whatever I want. Opal is not causing any problems for this organization, and it is all thanks to me that we have her here by our sides at all," Spinel countered. "Opal would never dare to go against something I told her anyway. You saw the way she acted during that battle, didn't you? She ran away exactly as I knew she would."
Amethio had been trying with everything he had to not think too deeply into Opal following Spinel's orders when he arrived at the scene of the battle. It unsettled him to remember the paleness that had seeped into Opal's features at the sight of Spinel, and Amethio didn't know if he would ever be able to calm her down enough to help her feel truly safe as long as he knew Spinel would be there. After every battle and at the end of every outing from the base, Opal would have to go back to find Spinel waiting at the base, and there was nothing she could do to escape him.
Amethio didn't rise to the bait of Spinel's taunts just yet though. He had something else he wanted to ask about first, and if he wound up learning more about Spinel ordering Opal around, then that would be a bonus. There was another reason he had come, and he refused to let it go. "What did you do for Opal to lose her memories?" Amethio pressed. "You were the one who erased her past from her mind. What did you do for her to forget everything about who she had once been?"
At first, Spinel's only response was a laugh, and that only fanned the flames of Amethio's deep fury. "You have no proof that I did anything," Spinel said. "You can say all you want that I was the one responsible for everything that happened, but unless you have hard, physical evidence, I have very little reason to believe you."
"I heard what you said at the end of the battle against the Rising Volt Tacklers. You said that you were the one who built Opal into the person she is today. You erased her memories and made sure that she would fight as a member of the Explorers from that day forward. Opal heard you when you said it too. We both know that you had something to do with what happened to her," Amethio pressed. "I've had enough of your secrecy. Just what did you do to her?"
Spinel stared at Amethio for a few seconds, clearly trying to assess how he should respond. He had very little way of getting out of a situation like this aside from simply telling Amethio that he had no evidence, but that wouldn't stop Amethio from continuing to dig with everything he had. Spinel should have been a bit more careful with his words and when he spoke them if he wanted to make sure Amethio and Opal didn't find out what he had done, but there was no taking it back now. All that remained was the ugly truth, and Spinel would have to face it long before Amethio and Opal could even consider it. "You shouldn't have been listening in," Spinel finally said, fighting to keep his voice level beneath a tidal wave of rage. "Those words were not meant for you."
"I had no choice but to listen to what you said," Amethio countered. "You never would have told me a thing if I asked you upfront. I know that because you've been continuing to hide the truth of what you did from me ever since Opal first arrived here." Amethio clenched his fingers into tight fists. "I need you to tell me... What did you do to her?"
Spinel once again contemplated his next response for a moment before he gave Amethio the dignity of a nod. "I was responsible for the loss of her memories. You are correct in saying that," Spinel began, his voice adopting a new edge that sent fear rushing beneath Amethio's skin. "In fact, I was not just involved with it... I was the only one who did it."
"What did you do?" Amethio pressed. Now that Spinel was on the verge of confessing, his heart was racing in his ears, and he found himself desperate for the truth in a way he never had been before. "How did you erase her memories?"
"Don't look at me like that," Spinel instructed, his voice suddenly edged in a way that cut Amethio to the core. "You were tasked with getting her to stand with us, and if that failed, getting the pendant away from her. In the end, you failed again and again. You could not act in ways that were fitting of the Explorers. You failed the organization, and you could not be allowed to continue down that path for any longer than you already had. Someone had to take matters into their own hands, and I thought I was the perfect person to step up and do it."
"You didn't need to do all of this," Amethio protested, but he knew his words were weak. If there was a way to convince Liko to side with them, then none of this would have happened. The Explorers had not been able to get through to her, and that had been clear from the beginning.
Spinel clearly knew it too, and he shook his head dismissively. "I did. She would not have gone along with what we asked of her if we continued to simply ask her nicely. In order to reach the paradise of Rakua, we needed the girl and the pendant she wears. You were getting us nowhere, and so, I took matters into my own hands. If she would not come with us willingly, then I would simply have to make sure that she changed her mind."
"And you erased her memories to do it?" Amethio asked. "How were you able to do something like that? How can you sleep at night knowing that you took her away from everything she ever knew?"
"How can you sleep at night knowing that you have failed the Explorers so completely?" Spinel countered. "You claim to have dedicated your life to this organization, and yet, the only reason you are still here is because your grandfather has taken pity on you time and again. If he was not as kind as he is, you would have been thrown out long ago. Instead, you're still here even after failing us more times than any person could ever hope to count. I did what I had to in order to secure the future of the Explorers. That is all there is to it."
Amethio could feel his rage rising in strength and intensity, and he forced himself to soothe it to the best of his ability. Everything suddenly felt impossible for him to push through, but he did his best to breathe through it. The people he cared for needed him to stay calm. Opal was counting on him whether she was willing to say as much freely or not. "How were you able to erase her memories?" Amethio questioned. "That doesn't just happen by accident. You must have done it deliberately."
"It was simple, really. I have been conducting minor tests into this for quite some time. There are ways of tampering with a person's memories so long as you are willing to apply your knowledge in the correct ways, and I figured out exactly how to do it." Spinel laughed once again, and the sound felt like poison to every nerve in Amethio's body. "I mastered it perfectly with Opal. I erased all of her memories along with her sense of self. She has enough knowledge to function, but she is essentially a blank slate... Or at least, she was when I was first conducting my tests. From there, it was simply a matter of using the powers of suggestion and manipulation to ensure she believed exactly what I wanted her to. The rest of the Explorers helped, of course. They were more than willing to go along with my plan when I revealed what it was that I was planning to do. Even you played a crucial role in this project, Amethio. Because of you, she now believes everything that we need her to in order to be a perfect member of the Explorers."
Amethio's chest had gotten tighter and tighter over the course of Spinel's explanation, but now, it felt like the lack of air in his lungs was going to smother his heart and keep it from beating ever again. Spinel had been planning for this. Everything that happened to Opal had been deliberate, and he was more than happy to use those powers of memory erasing and manipulation to ensure she played right into his hands. He didn't regret it in the slightest. If he did, then he would have at least been smart enough to not smile at Amethio when he spoke of all the horrors he had pressed upon Opal.
Spinel laughed again, and Amethio felt like he was going to die standing there and hearing of these atrocities that should have been beyond his comprehension. Unfortunately, they were not anymore, and he was beginning to fear they never would be again. "Liko no longer exists. She is no longer a mindless puppet either. Instead, she is a perfect member of the Explorers. Liko is gone, and Opal is all that remains." Spinel shook his head. "And all it took was a bit of experimentation and pressure in the right directions. The mind works to dull its own agony, and when you know that... It is possible to manipulate anyone into becoming exactly the hollow husk you need them to be."
Amethio didn't know how to breathe anymore. He was beginning to doubt he had ever known how to in the first place, but if he did, that ability was far out of his reach now. What Spinel was describing was torture. He hadn't given any of the gruesome details of what he had done to Opal, but Amethio could put together enough of the pieces to be fully aware that it was horrible. Spinel had put Opal through pain beyond what anyone should have ever had to endure, and here he was, explaining it all to Amethio with a smile on his face. It wasn't just that Spinel didn't care about the pain he had pressed into Opal's mind and body; he was boasting about it, and it was clear by the look on his face that he would have done it again and again if he thought that was necessary to keep the Explorers ahead in the race to Rakua.
Through the panic that was steadily settling as a haze over his mind, Amethio managed to glare up at Spinel. At first, the trembling had only been in his hands, but it had spread to his entire body since then, and he knew he was going to be sick the instant he was pushed even slightly in the wrong direction. "You're sick," Amethio spat out.
"I'm practical," Spinel corrected, his smile somehow even more frustrating and difficult to look at now than it had been moments prior. Amethio hadn't even thought such a thing was possible. Spinel's face hardened in a matter of seconds, and he glared at Amethio with an enmity unlike anything Amethio had ever seen from him. "And I'm practical enough to know that some secrets simply cannot find a way to get out."
The air next to Spinel pinched and distorted, and Amethio stepped backward as the figure of a Beheeyem came into focus beside him. The Beheeyem had teleported in the instant it realized Spinel was there to command it to do so, and Spinel snickered when he saw the fear etched across Amethio's face. "Don't worry. This won't hurt unless you make it." He extended one hand out toward Amethio, and the colored lights on the Beheeyem's hands began to spin together, blurring red, yellow, and green.
Amethio didn't know what he should have done in response to all of this, but he found that his body refused to follow his commands all of a sudden. Instead, he could only stare into the light and watch as it spun and glowed. His eyes felt dizzy, and the sensation soon spread to the rest of his head. In a matter of moments, he felt as if his body was going to give out on him.
And then, when Amethio next blinked, the entire world faded away, and all that remembered was a sudden block of endless white.
~~~~~
Spinel's office was a perfectly clean place, and both Zirc and Onia were glad for this as they slipped inside and began to look around. They wanted to say something so that they could at least try to reassure each other that they would find what they were searching for, but no words seemed sufficient right now. Nothing felt like it would be enough when they were in such a horrible situation. Amethio needed their help, and that meant it was time for them to step up and do everything they could to fill in the gap that had been left behind by Spinel's cruelty against Opal.
Onia was hoping more than anything that there was at least a bit of evidence that would help them to fill in the pieces of what Spinel had done. If he truly had been responsible for Opal losing her memories, then that meant there must have been proof of it left behind. Surely Spinel wouldn't have been able to do all of that without leaving any evidence. He must have taken at least a few notes so that he would know how he was meant to handle her going forward. It was an unsettling thought that he had written down all of the horrible things he must have done to Opal, but it was also the only thing that would make any of this make sense, so they had to cling to that faith with everything they had.
Spinel kept all of his files tucked away in their proper drawers, and that meant both Zirc and Onia were going to have to search in detail if they wanted to find what they were looking for. Zirc pulled open a few drawers on the desk and began to flick through them, and Onia took to the bookshelf to see if any of the covers seemed like they would imply knowing something about forcibly causing amnesia to turn someone into another person entirely. Nothing stood out to her immediately though.
She wanted to have faith in Amethio's plan, and she trusted that this was the best course of action if this was what Amethio thought was the optimal route to the truth... But she couldn't shake the feeling that Spinel wasn't going to let them find out what he had been doing so easily. Maybe he would have already buried all of his secrets ages ago to the point that they would stand no chance if they tried to find them. Onia hated the thought more than anything, and yet, she couldn't seem to stay away from it. If there was even the slightest chance that Spinel had managed to hide everything ages ago, then she was going to have to confront that. Amethio had asked for the truth, and if they found nothing...
Onia supposed that would still be helpful somehow. It wouldn't entirely tell them what they were meant to expect when it came to getting to the bottom of all Spinel had done to Opal, but it would at least tell them of one place that wouldn't hide the truth... But if there wasn't anything of value to be found in Spinel's office, then what were the chances of any other location having the truth? If Spinel had already buried his secrets long before anyone thought to look for them, then maybe the truth of what had happened to Opal was already out of their reach. The thought was nauseating, but Onia did her best to push it away. Amethio was counting on them. She couldn't let him down even if it felt like they were already failing.
Deep down, Zirc was having much the same thoughts as he tried to look through Spinel's files as quickly as he could. He had to read faster than he ever had before, and while he knew there was a chance he wasn't fully processing the information on the tabs of the folders before him, he couldn't bring himself to slow down either. He had to stay on top of this if he wanted to find out what had really happened to Opal. Surely there was at least one folder in the drawers that would tell him what he was looking for. Amethio was doing so much for them already by trying to distract Spinel and keep him away from his office, and that meant it was time for Zirc and Onia to step up and do their parts too.
Zirc and Onia had both been curious about what could have happened for Opal to become herself too. They hadn't been as open about it as Amethio, but they couldn't help but wonder just how Liko had been molded into someone so completely different from the way she had been before. They had only ever known Liko as an enemy, but that didn't change how unsettling it was to see her the way she was now. Opal simply was not Liko, and she probably never would match up with who Liko had been either. There must have been a reason for her to change this way, but until they were able to figure it out, all they could do was chase after the truth and wonder.
Spinel was the one who had done it though. That much they had both already suspected before this began, but Amethio had confirmed all of their fears when he overheard Spinel brag about what he had done during the previous battle. If anyone was going to be able to tell them the truth, it was Spinel, but he wasn't going to give it up without a fight. Zirc could only hope that Spinel had at least tried to hide some of the information away in his office rather than storing it all within his head. They wouldn't know until it was too late to go back, Zirc supposed, but he was keeping his fingers crossed as he continued to frantically look through everything that he needed to reveal the truth. Something in there had to reveal who Opal was and what had happened for her to become the way she was now. All he had to do was keep looking for it, and something was going to give soon. They both needed to have faith in that even if they couldn't have faith in much else at the moment.
As if on cue, Zirc let out a gasp, and he pulled a file out of the desk. "I think I found it!" he hissed, gesturing for Onia to come over and examine it with him. Sure enough, the file had Opal's name written in Spinel's perfectly neat script on the small tab sticking out from the side. Zirc and Onia could both feel the weight of the world rushing up to greet them, but they did their best to stay calm in the face of it. With that, Zirc pushed open the folder to reveal the pages contained inside.
Both of them had been hoping that this file would miraculously have all the information they sought. If Spinel was going to leave behind any evidence of what he had done, surely he would want to do it in his office where he could review the proof whenever he so chose... But Spinel was too smart for that, it seemed. There were no details to speak of in the file, and it was pathetically thin. The only real detail of value was on the first page, and it stated that her memories had been successfully erased so that her mind could be filled by something new. Zirc and Onia's eyes both tracked over the words at least three times over to make sure they hadn't missed out on a single implied detail:
'The objective was a success. Her memories have been completely erased. Her mind is now empty, and she can be told of the Explorers to become someone new.'
But that didn't tell them a thing, did it? They were already fully aware of the fact that Spinel must have had something to do with Opal's memories abandoning her, but that didn't do anything to fill them in on the missing details. Spinel must have known there was something more to it than that, but he wasn't going to leave the truth around for just anyone to find. Of course not. That would be too easy. There was no way for Spinel to figure out that Zirc and Onia were going to come by his office to try and see what he had written about Opal, and yet, Spinel had taken precautions against that anyway. He had made sure to bury everything that could have led to the truth before he ever had to worry about someone coming after the secrets he held.
"I don't understand," Onia murmured with a shake of her head. "He shouldn't have known to hide all of this from us, but he did... I wonder if he ever wrote down the truth of what he did in the first place."
"Or if he did, it's certainly not in a folder marked with Opal's name," Zirc finished for him. The files were very helpfully in alphabetical order, so he decided to look back through the folders for anything else that could have been related to Opal. He searched for Liko but found nothing. There were no folders discussing memories, amnesia, or manipulation either. The information must have been hidden somewhere, but they didn't have the time to fully ransack the office and take everything. If they took more than a single folder, then Spinel would notice it. For all they knew, he would figure out that they had taken the Opal folder too.
Onia reached for her phone, and she began to take pictures of the pages in Opal's file. The information to be found there was minimal, but it wouldn't hurt to at least have the papers on hand to share with Amethio and perhaps even Opal. Zirc took pictures of the other half of the pages so they were able to get through it a bit faster, and Zirc closed the folder once they were finished. They could share the images with each other once they had gotten out of there. The longer they lingered in Spinel's office, the higher the risk was of him coming back and deciding to get in the way of their plans to find the truth behind what had happened to Opal. Neither Zirc nor Onia had any way of knowing just how long Amethio was going to be able to distract Spinel first, but they couldn't take any chances with so much on the line.
"Let's get out of here," Onia said once the file had been returned to its original place in Spinel's desk. She didn't wait to see if Zirc agreed with her or not when she ran off toward the door, and he gladly trailed after her. No one was in the hallway to see that they had broken inside Spinel's office while he wasn't there, and they were silently relieved at their luck. They didn't know what they would do if they wound up caught for what they had done.
Zirc and Onia made their way back to the room where they had first spoken with Amethio about the mission. If he was there, then they would be able to tell him all about what they had found... Though at this point, it felt more accurate to say that they would be sharing what they hadn't found with him. There had been so little of value in Spinel's office, and what had been there simply didn't feel like it was enough to help them. Spinel knew how to keep his secrets well, and he had proven it and then some with the lack of information regarding Opal.
"Hello?" Zirc asked, knocking on the door to the room to see if Amethio was inside. When he received no response, Zirc pushed the door open and walked inside. Onia followed him quietly, and they both looked around for any signs of Amethio. He hadn't returned yet, and that meant they would have to wait until he was finished with Spinel to share what they knew from their search. It was for the best that he wasn't there yet since that meant Spinel was still distracted. Their gambit had been risky, but it seemed like it had paid off.
All that remained was to see just where Amethio was and what he was doing now... And Zirc and Onia would hope with everything they had until they saw him again that everything was alright.
~~~~~
For a long moment, Amethio's eyes were unfocused and blank, and all he could do was stare down at the ground in front of him. The world was blurring together into a stretch of white and silver that felt familiar in some ways but foreign in others. His head was pounding with more force than he had ever felt from it before, and Amethio felt like he was going to fall over. Just as this thought occurred to him, he stumbled to the right, and he leaned against the wall, trying to steady himself with his hand. Each blink brought him darkness, but when he opened his eyes again, he was met with light. Neither did much of anything to soothe him right now.
Amethio blinked more times than he could ever bother to count in an effort to remind his eyes how to focus again. When they finally solidified into something concrete, Amethio realized that he was in the Explorers' base. He was staring down at these floors that he had walked so many times before, but... He couldn't remember how he had gotten there. The last thing he remembered was... He had been there in the base, and he was going to speak with Spinel about something. He wanted to hear more from him about recent events within the base, but when they met... Amethio couldn't remember anything after he saw Spinel in the artifacts room examining the ancient Pokéball that contained Arboliva. Everything was simply... Gone.
But how could something like that be possible? Surely Amethio's memories couldn't have just evaporated. Something like that didn't happen without a reason, and Amethio didn't think there was any reason in the world that would truly help him to understand why he was as confused and out of it as he was now. His head was pounding, and the pain was threatening to spread to the rest of his body. It felt like there was some other emotion trying to break through the haze, but he couldn't quite reach it nor did he know where to start when it came to identifying it. Everything was too dizzying for him to even think of reaching for it. It was too much. Everything was too much.
"There you are!"
"Amethio, sir!"
The sound of overlapping voices snapped Amethio out of his daze at least as much as it could have. He looked up slowly to find both Zirc and Onia rushing toward him, and they looked incredibly worried. They were pale and seemed like they hadn't rested in ages, and that only made Amethio feel even more lost and confused. Just what had happened for them to get so worried? It made no sense.
"Where have you been?" Onia asked, looking at him from every possible angle to see if she could find an explanation for whatever it was that had struck her with such deep fear. "We were waiting for you to come back so that we could see Opal to talk to her about what we found, but you never came back!"
"We were starting to get worried that something had happened to you!" Zirc chimed in. "How did it go with talking to him? Were you able to learn anything? We found a few things, but we probably shouldn't talk about them here."
Right. That was right. Amethio had asked them to go into Spinel's office when they had the chance so they could look around for anything that would fill them in on what it was that he had done to erase Opal's memories. Amethio had taken up the duty of distracting Spinel for as long as he could get away with, and that... That was where he had been before all of this happened. Amethio didn't know what had happened for his memories to rush out of his grasp so suddenly, but he hoped with everything he had that it would lead him to the truth eventually.
"I... I'm fine," Amethio forced himself to say even though he wasn't entirely sure if that was the truth. If he was really fine, then surely he wouldn't have been put in such a horrible position in the first place. If everything was the way it should have been, then his head shouldn't have been pounding so badly that it wanted to rip him apart. "What happened? Were you able to find anything?"
"We were, but..." Zirc looked at Amethio from head to toe once again, and Amethio found himself suddenly uncomfortable beneath the scrutinizing gaze. "Are you alright? We were waiting for you for so long, and you never came back."
Amethio hesitated for a few seconds, unsure of how he was meant to answer that question. He felt like something must have happened for him to be left in a state like this, but he didn't know what it could have been or what had caused it. Why didn't he remember anything that had happened after he spoke to Spinel about everything that was going on with Opal? Why didn't he remember so much of that conversation? It made no sense. There should have been at least something, but...
"I don't know what happened," Amethio admitted. "I don't remember what I was doing. I went to speak with Spinel, but the details... I don't remember any of them."
Zirc and Onia shared nervous glances at that, and Amethio had to fight to keep the guilt from rising up in the pit of his stomach and then tearing him apart. He hadn't meant to worry them after all they had already done for him, but it seemed to be much too late for him to truly help to save them from their anxiety. Amethio shook his head so that he didn't have to acknowledge the weight of his faults for any longer than he already had, desperate to move the conversation along as soon as possible. "Let's talk about what you found," he said. He knew the distraction wasn't going to make his situation any better than it was now, but he still hoped that it would at least get his head to start pounding. Any distraction was more than fine for him right now.
Zirc and Onia nodded, though Amethio could tell just by looking at them that they didn't know how they were meant to address all of this. They wanted to be able to help him, but they had no idea of where to start as long as Amethio was in such an awful position. Standing around and talking about their fears wasn't going to help anyone though, so they walked back to the room where they had spoken... Earlier that day. To Amethio, it all felt like it had taken place so long ago. It was like the entire world existed on the other side of a thick layer of glass, and all he could do was try to reach through it, but he stood no chance. There was simply too much trying to hide him from the rest of the world, and all he could do was beat against the glass and hope that it eventually came to be enough to save him.
Amethio barely realized that his body was moving throughout the entire journey to the room. Zirc and Onia walked in first, and once Amethio was inside, Onia pulled the door shut behind him. "We were able to find one file about what happened with Opal, but it didn't have any of the details that could really explain what we're looking for," Onia explained. She pulled out her phone and began to flip through a handful of pictures that depicted the files she and Zirc had found and then investigated. "Her memories were wiped, and she was left as a blank slate, but the other details aren't here. If he had them written down somewhere, then he did what he could to hide them so that we wouldn't be able to find them."
Amethio resisted the urge to groan. He should have known it wasn't going to be that simple. Of course Spinel would have gone out of his way to keep the truth of what he had done a secret. That meant he had kept his notes in some other place where he would not be discovered for his crimes. He likely knew to bury his information in a spot where others would not think to look. Spinel knew well how he was meant to obscure something so dark and crucial, and what was left behind was too minimal to really inform any intruders as to what was really going on.
Amethio wished that he had known sooner how this was going to end. Spinel was a difficult opponent, and he wasn't going to drop his guard simply because Amethio was looking for the truth. He would never do that. Still... Amethio hadn't thought it would go quite like this. How could his memories of the day just be gone? It didn't seem like it should have been possible.
But... But that was what had happened to Opal, wasn't it? Amethio's case was a bit less extreme, and he hadn't lost his grasp of his entire life, but she had certainly lost everything she had ever come to know and understand about herself in the blink of an eye. She had become a blank slate just as the quotes from Zirc and Onia's photographs of Spinel's notes claimed. Could it be that Spinel had used the same method to wipe Amethio's memories that day that he had against Opal in the past? It felt glaringly possible, but Amethio didn't know if he would ever truly feel ready to entertain the possibility.
"We... We should get back to Opal," Amethio found himself saying before he could hold the words back. He didn't know what he was going to say to her when they saw each other again, but he was still willing to try and explain a bit of this to her. She was going to be scared, but Amethio wanted to give her a little something to grasp. She deserved it after all she had been forced to endure leading up to that point.
Amethio led the journey out of the room and back toward Opal's bedroom. Zirc and Onia followed behind him by a short distance, and Amethio did his best to keep from getting lost in the sound of their footsteps against the floor. Everything was so tiring all of a sudden, and it was a battle to keep from completely caving in beneath the weight of what he was going to have to tell Opal. How could he explain this to her? Spinel had erased her memories deliberately, and now, he had done the same thing to Amethio, albeit on a much smaller scale. It didn't feel possible. It didn't feel like it should have been real.
But it must have been, so Amethio knocked on the door to her room with dread in his heart. "Opal, it's me," he called out. He heard a muffled voice tell him to come inside, and Amethio gladly followed her instructions. He felt like his vision was still swimming. Was this how Opal always felt? He knew that she struggled sometimes with seeming attached to reality, but this all felt like it was too much for him to full get a grip on.
"What happened?" Opal asked, immediately sensing by the tension to Amethio's posture that something was wrong. She was certainly perceptive, though Amethio wished that she had never been forced to learn that skill in the first place. "Is everything alright? You look like you've seen a ghost."
"I... Something happened," Amethio began, unsure of how he was meant to start a conversation like this. What was he supposed to say? The idea of the truth was simply too much for him to bear, and it was only going to get worse the longer he had to stand there and think about it. "I wanted to see if I could learn anything from Spinel about what happened for your memories to be erased. I went to distract him while Zirc and Onia looked around his office to see if they were able to find something."
"We found the file about you, but it doesn't have anything that could help you," Onia explained with a shake of her head. "He erased your memories, but the rest of the details weren't written there."
"He must be keeping the notes somewhere else so that we wouldn't be able to find them," Zirc chimed in. "But we didn't have enough time to figure out where that other place was, so we couldn't look for them."
Opal nodded slowly, clearly struggling to process the weight of the words being shared with her. "What... What else happened?" she ventured anxiously. "I know there was something else. You wouldn't be this tense if that was all that happened."
Amethio bit back a wince. Opal had learned to read every tiny detail of his stance and his expression ages ago, and all he could do was stand back and let her strip his soul to scraps. "I wanted to distract Spinel so that Zirc and Onia could slip into his office, but I... I don't remember what happened after I went to talk to him. Everything that we talked about is just... Gone."
All of the color drained from Opal's face in an instant, and her blue eyes were the only traces of life in her suddenly hollow skin. "Your... Your memories are gone...?"
Amethio nodded. "I don't know what he did, but my memories are out of my reach now. He must have done something to keep me from being able to access them." After a moment of silence, he shook his head. "I'm sorry, but I don't remember anything that we spoke about. I can't even recall how it was that he erased my memories. If he has a consistent method for doing it, then none of us were able to learn anything about it."
Opal didn't wait for Amethio to apologize for his failures and inability to come back to her with the truth. She simply launched herself into his arms, pulling him in tight and burying her face in his shoulder. Amethio was too stunned to move at first, just staring at the ground behind her in the silence. Opal clutched at him tightly, and Amethio felt the first few drops of tears start to wet his shoulder through his shirt. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I don't want you to go through that again. If that means you don't go out looking for the truth anymore, then... Then that's okay. I would rather not know anything than you get hurt because of me."
She thought all of this was her fault. How could she not? She was the one who had been forced to suffer for so long because of things out of her control. No one had ever told Opal that she deserved to simply breathe for a while. She didn't understand anything that was beyond the range of her pain because she had never been given that chance. Any joy she felt was fleeting, and it was proven as such when the world began to crash down around her just as quickly as she had embraced the light. There was no liberation to be found in her life. There was only the sting of coming pain and defeat, and if it had not come for her yet, then she knew it would soon.
Amethio pulled her in even tighter. "Don't apologize," he instructed, not realizing that his voice was thick with the promise of tears until after he spoke. "It's not your fault. None of it is." The only person to blame for all of this was Spinel, and Amethio would prove it however he had to.
He would make sure Spinel paid. It was the least he could do, and Amethio would see it through no matter who got in his way... Including Spinel and his forcibly induced amnesia.
Notes:
So... That was a big chapter, huh?
The original idea of the huge twist in this chapter wasn't in the outline of the fic starting out if you can believe it. My partner came up with it on a whim by saying "that would be so messed up," and we loved it so much that we decided to put it in the fic. Poor Amethio. We have to kill Spinel with hammers for every little thing he has ever done. It is the least he deserves.
So this chapter was a pretty heavy one, but I'm very happy with the way it turned out. I love writing dissociation even if it means I am putting the characters in my stories through hell. It's just a fun thing for me to write. Which probably sounds awful since that's a horrible experience to go through, but... Oh well. I enjoy what I enjoy. Not much to be done about it now. This is The Dissociation Story, after all.
But we're almost to the end of this first arc, so I hope you're all ready for the grand finale as it fast approaches. Next time, we'll have the penultimate chapter of act one. Until then, I hope you all enjoyed this chapter. Feedback is appreciated as always. Have a wonderful day, everyone!
-Digital
Chapter 19: Tear the Chains
Summary:
The Rising Volt Tacklers and Explorers converge on the location of their common target: the black Rayquaza.
Chapter Text
Opal was beginning to fear she would never sleep again.
Realistically, she knew she would have to at some point. Sooner or later, she would close her eyes and drift off, and the world of dreams would take her away... But she already knew her dreams would be far from pleasant. Instead, they would be more like nightmares, trying to wear her spirit down until there was nothing that remained but sorrow and heartache. She knew it was coming, but that didn't make it any easier to face. In fact, Opal would say that being able to tell what her mind was up to only made it harder for her to grapple with. She didn't want to deal with any of this. She just wanted something that even vaguely resembled peace so that she could say everything was alright.
But there was no such thing as peace in her life right now. Amethio had told her after he went to investigate the truth behind her missing memories that something had happened to him. His memories had seemingly abandoned him in the blink of an eye, and he was left disoriented and dazed as he stumbled around the base. Amethio had gone off to try and talk to Spinel about the truth behind the secret that had taken away Opal's memories. It was because of her that he was in such a horrible position, and Opal hated that more than anything. She wanted to be able to breathe again, but she didn't think she deserved it so long as Amethio was suffering so deeply because of her.
Opal knew that a lot of valuable information had come out of the interaction between Amethio and Spinel. She didn't know if she would ever feel truly ready to face it, but she was aware of the truth that lived in her periphery, constantly trying to keep her away from it even though Opal couldn't help but want to look it in the eyes. Spinel was the one who had erased her memories so that she joined the Explorers. As for who she had been before that... Opal still didn't know for sure, but she had an awful feeling that it had something to do with Liko, that name that continued to haunt her every waking minute even now. Perhaps she had been Liko once upon a time. It wasn't something she was meant to know anyway. The Explorers were keeping the truth out of her reach for a reason, and Opal couldn't expect them to feel comfortable with just opening up to her about something like that. They had every right to keep their secrets.
Spinel though... He was one person who Opal wanted to learn more from. Spinel was the one who had erased her memories in the first place and then brought her back to the Explorers' base. He knew more about her than even she did, and all she could do was chase after him knowing that he would not reveal so much as a breath of it. He had done something to erase her memories, and if Opal's guesses were to be believed, then he had also done something to Amethio. He must have if Amethio was left so dazed after everything they spoke about. Amethio didn't remember a thing that happened after he went to talk to Spinel about the truth of Opal's missing memories. Whatever Spinel had done to erase Opal's memories was something he could activate whenever he so chose, and he had taken the path that would let him use it against Amethio.
And it was all because of Opal. If she hadn't been there, then Amethio never would have been put in a position like that. If she had been away from him, then he wouldn't have ever entertained the thought of standing up to Spinel. This was all because of her, and she couldn't even figure out how she was meant to apologize to him. Amethio was suffering in her name, and Opal didn't know what to do to assuage his fears. She wanted to tell him to stop worrying about it so that he didn't get hurt again, but she couldn't do it. She still wanted to understand the truth even though she knew she did not deserve it for the pain that she had already brought to the lives of those around her. She deserved nothing, and she knew it bitterly well.
When Opal closed her eyes, she could feel her hatred of herself deep in her body. It was not just an emotional wound anymore, and she didn't know if it ever would be again. Instead, the thought of all her faults made her feel as if she was being torn apart from the inside out. Every muscle in her body ached, and her bones wanted to cave in on themselves from the slightest bit of pressure. Opal was almost tempted to let them. Maybe she belonged there in the darkness, out of the reach of anyone who she could ever even come close to hurting. Maybe she had been selfish to think that she would ever be able to help the people around her. If she was meant to be capable of that, then she would have accomplished it ages ago. Instead, there she was, saddled with the knowledge that Amethio had been put through pain on her behalf, and she didn't even know how to help him through it.
A knock at the door pulled Opal out of her thoughts immediately, and she jolted into an upright position. She knew that knock did not belong to Amethio. She had come to memorize every detail about him in such excruciating detail since they came to be a pair of guard and guarded. Even when he was not present, Opal was doing what she could to learn more about him and then understand him. This was not Amethio though. It wasn't even Zirc or Onia. It was someone entirely different.
The thought sent fear racing beneath Opal's skin. What if it was Spinel? He could be there to try and erase her memories again. She had figured out the truth of what he was doing and how much he had hurt her, even if it was only in the vaguest of senses. What if his plan was to make sure she forgot all about it? She didn't feel like herself anymore because of the pain she had been put through, and she didn't know if she would have a sense of self at all if Spinel took everything away from her again.
A small meow from Sprigatito pulled Opal out of her silent panic, and Opal blinked rapidly in an effort to remind herself of where she was. Right. There was someone at the door, and even if she was terrified, she had a duty to answer it. There were people who wanted to speak with her, and she couldn't push them away simply because she was terrified. She pried herself off her bed and walked toward the door, fighting to keep her hands from shaking as she reached for the knob. She was going to be fine. She had to be fine. She just needed to find a way to believe it.
When Opal opened the door, she was beyond relieved to find that the person standing there and waiting for her time and attention was not Spinel. "Hamber," Opal breathed, not realizing that she had been trapping the air in her lungs until after she had finally released it. "What are you doing here?" Opal heard her voice shaking ever so slightly, but she did her best to control it. Hamber did not need to know about her fear. That would only burden him, and Opal had already burdened more than enough people that week.
"I come to you with news of another mission," Hamber replied, and Opal's chest went tight. She was being sent out on another mission. She should have been glad that she was being given the chance to reach for the light and the warmth of the sun again, but instead, all she felt was dread. What had these missions brought her but pain? Opal had once wanted to believe that she was better off in the light of day than she was by herself in the darkness of the Explorers' base, but now, she knew the truth. The Explorers had kept her there for a reason, and she was only delaying the inevitable if she thought she had a right to walk away.
Opal didn't say any of that though. She may have been under the impression that the Explorers were better off if she stayed there in the base, but there was nothing she could say or do to convince them. Whether she knew the truth behind her relationship to them or not, Opal knew for a fact that they had been taking care of her. She owed it to them to remain by their sides through thick and thin. They had done so much for her, and Opal wasn't going to spit on it just because her life had grown a bit difficult. "What's the mission?" she asked instead. Opal prayed with everything she had that it went even slightly better than the fights that she had grown used to over the last few weeks, but there was no way of saying for sure. Her only choice was to stand up as tall as she could and hope that the fight ended in her favor.
"For quite some time now, the Explorers have been pursuing a specific Pokémon, and we have finally found out where it is now," Hamber went on. If he noticed Opal's striking unease, he was choosing to not comment on it. Opal couldn't decide if she was grateful for his kindness in not calling her out on her fear or if she wanted to let all of her fear out in a single ramble. She didn't care if he was the one who heard her as long as it would do something to keep her calm, but there was no calmness to be found here, so she kept her lips sealed shut. "How much do you know about the black Rayquaza?"
A black Rayquaza... The name felt familiar to Opal in a way that she could not quite describe. She felt like she should have known more about it than she did, but when she tried to pull information from her mind, all she got was a jumbled mess that threatened to rip her brain apart. She knew something about that specific Pokémon, but it had nothing to do with the time she had already spent in the Explorers. She hadn't heard any of her current allies say anything about a black Rayquaza. If they had spoken up, then surely she would have remembered, but Opal didn't recall anything like that.
In other words, if she knew anything about the black Rayquaza, it must have come from before she lost her memories. There was something else out of her reach, and it had to do with the black Rayquaza. That was the only explanation Opal could think of... But it filled her with dread from the inside out. She didn't know what she was meant to know or not know about the black Rayquaza, but she knew that it was too much for her to bear. Her mind felt like it was going to splinter beneath its own weight, and all she could do was stand there and watch it with a hollow frown on her face.
"The black Rayquaza has been seen, and we believe that it will be coming in for an encounter on the ground very soon. You are being tasked with going to investigate it with Amethio, Zirc, Onia, Spinel, Coral, and Onyx," Hamber continued, once again choosing to not openly acknowledge the dread written on Opal's features. "You are to leave at once. I would suggest that you prepare for the mission as soon as possible. Your group will be departing within the hour."
Opal only snapped out of her trance once Hamber was gone, and she nodded to herself. She wished she knew how she was meant to feel about all of this, but she knew one thing for certain. She had to help the rest of the Explorers. Regardless of if she felt like she belonged there at all, Opal knew that these were the people that had taken care of her when she lost everything. The Explorers had been there for her when no one else was, and she had to remember that. If helping to make this up to them meant that she would go and fight the black Rayquaza, then that was just what she had to do.
Opal nodded to herself, trying to persuade her mind that this was the best course of action. There was a hesitation pulling at the back of her skull, and she recognized it as the tug of a memory that did not yet know how it was meant to break free and get her attention. She tried to breathe through it, but the pain was simply too much for her to bear. Everything felt overwhelming all of a sudden, like the mere mention of the black Rayquaza was going to destroy her from the inside out. She wasn't supposed to be thinking about this. She wasn't supposed to deal with any of this. It was out of her reach, and she should have known that.
Sprigatito let out a soft meow of concern, and Opal forced herself to shake her head. She couldn't get distracted now. She was fine. She was going to be alright so long as she was willing to keep fighting. The Explorers needed her help to defeat the black Rayquaza. She didn't know what it was that the Explorers wanted from the black Rayquaza in the first place, but that was a question for another time. She could worry about that once all of this had been resolved. She had to stand as tall as she could and then jump into the battle.
Opal forced a breath in and out of her lungs, and she approached her bed so she could scoop Sprigatito up into her arms. She didn't know what to expect from any encounter with the black Rayquaza, but she was willing to make the most of it however she could. The world was counting on her, and Opal wasn't going to let herself let anyone down. The Explorers had done so much for her, and even if she didn't understand anything else, she knew that she had to help them. It may have felt like it was going to kill her, but she knew that she had to try. There was simply too much on the line for her to ever hold back.
Opal was halfway to the door so she could leave when she remembered the list of names that Hamber had given her. Spinel had been among them, and he was going to be joining Opal on this mission. Of course he was. She should have expected that even before Hamber said it. If the black Rayquaza was truly as important to the Explorers as Opal thought, then it was natural that Spinel would be there. She would just have to find a way to deal with it and stand up straighter. Spinel couldn't scare her when there was so much at stake.
She could think about him later. For now, she had a mission to fulfill, and Opal wasn't going to hold back for anything.
~~~~~
Roy sat on the floor of Dot's room, wiping one hand across his forehead to try and chase away any of the sweat that still lingered against his skin. He and Dot had just gotten back from one of their training exercises, and that meant they were right back to their old routine. Dot had sat down in the chair in front of her desk so she could get back to researching all she could about the Explorers. Roy could have gone anywhere else in the Brave Olivine, but he chose to stay by her side, so he sat down on the floor and decided to watch her work. No company seemed suitable for Roy these days other than Dot, the only other person who could understand the depth of his grief and guilt.
The nature of their feelings was slightly different, and yet, Roy still felt that Dot understood it better than any of the other Rising Volt Tacklers. Roy felt guilty for not being there for Liko even though he knew there was nothing he could have done. If he had been with her, then he likely would have been kidnapped right along with her, and if that was not the case, then something similarly horrible would have happened to him. Roy was battling a grief that made him feel like he was being torn apart from the inside out, and he knew Dot was struggling with much the same. In her case, she felt horrible because she had never been given the chance to truly know Liko. During her time on the ship, Liko had gone out of her way to reach out to Dot and try to establish a friendship with her, but Dot hadn't opened the door. Now, it was too late, and when Liko returned, everything was going to be different. Their relationship would never be what it could have been in some other life, and the weight of that refused to leave Dot alone.
Roy wished he knew what to say to make this easier. He had always been the type for optimism, believing that he could pull through any situation so long as he was able to keep his head held high. The world may have been planning to put him through some nightmare or another, but Roy would not let that be the end of it. If there was something he could do to keep fighting, then he knew he had to try. He could endure and come out the other side all the stronger for it. He could keep smiling, and the world would find that it had made a mistake in trying to tear him to pieces.
But all of that had been before Liko went missing. Now, Roy felt that his words and his smiles were weak. They could not bring Liko back, and they could not restore Opal's missing memories either. There was nothing Roy could do to make this any easier, and he hated it more than he could ever hope to put to words. This was too much, and Roy's only option to make it easier was to sit with Dot and hope that it turned out to be enough to bring her peace. Maybe it would help them both if they were willing to be patient for a little while longer.
A small ding noise from the computer pulled Roy out of his thoughts, and he glanced up to find Dot pulling up her messages. She hesitated just before she could open the notification though, and Roy knew why. Up until that point, the only person who had been sending Dot messages had been Spinel. He had planned all of this out for some reason or another. Roy still didn't entirely understand it, but he knew that it was important to Spinel... Somehow. He wanted to put Liko through hell, and that meant making sure that all of her missions in the Explorers as Opal went horribly wrong. Spinel had not been trying to help the Rising Volt Tacklers as much as he had been trying to make Liko suffer.
Dot didn't understand the reason for Spinel's messages any more than Roy did, but they made her beyond angry. If there was ever a person who Dot wanted to destroy, Roy knew it would be Spinel. Not only had Spinel kidnapped Liko and put her through unspeakable pain in the name of some goal he still refused to define, but he had done all he could in the name of making her circumstances worse. There was no low that he would not sink to so long as he thought it would make Liko struggle even more. The thought was sickening, and Roy didn't know how Spinel could ever hope to sleep at night knowing all the damage that he had caused and would continue to cause as long as he went on down this path.
Roy was halfway expecting Dot to decide to not open the message at all on the off chance that it was another bit of communication from Spinel. Neither one of them understood why it was that Spinel did all of this, but they didn't want to think about it any more than was necessary. Sometimes, anger was a useful tool, but in times like these, it felt like it was too much for either one of them to bear. If they let their rage spiral out of control, then it felt like it was going to smother them, and there was no one either one of them wanted to be angrier at than Spinel. If they had to think about him any more than they absolutely had to, then they would feel like they were dying, and they felt like that more than enough without him needing to go out of his way to involve himself in their lives.
But when Dot opened up the message, it turned out to be something else entirely. In fact, it wasn't from Spinel at all. It was a chat log with a Nidothing fan, and Roy realized a bit too late that it had been sent to the inbox that Dot had for her online persona. Dot visibly sighed with relief at the sight of it, and she opened up the message before starting to read it in a whispered voice.
"'Did you hear? A few people saw a black Rayquaza lurking around...' What?!" Dot didn't even finish reading the message aloud before she cut herself off with a gasp.
In an instant, Roy was on his feet, and he leaned over Dot's shoulder to make sure that what she was reading was the truth. Sure enough, it was. One of Dot's fans as Nidothing had come into her inbox to say that the black Rayquaza had been spotted near Paldea, and it was near the ground level. Most of the time, the black Rayquaza seemed to spend its time high up in the atmosphere, making it nearly impossible for anyone to so much as catch a glimpse of it... But it was in the area now. It had come down from the heavens for some reason or another, and that was something to celebrate.
"What do you think we should do?" Roy asked, waiting until Dot turned to face him with a muted frown. "We can't just let the black Rayquaza get away if there's something we can do to catch up with it. I know you've been trying to see what you can find regarding Liko and the Explorers' base, but if the black Rayquaza really is close to the ground again, then..."
Dot hesitated for a long moment, working the skin of her bottom lip between her teeth. "I... I don't think we can pass up this chance," she admitted. "My search for information around the Explorers' base hasn't been making any progress yet. If there's even the slightest chance that we can learn more about the black Rayquaza through this, then I think we have to try. We'd just end up regretting it if we didn't try to reach it now."
"Then we should let the others know what's going on," Roy told her, and Dot nodded. She got to typing away at her Rotom phone a moment later, sending out a message to the rest of the Rising Volt Tacklers to say that the black Rayquaza had been spotted. It was certainly a stark change of pace, and Roy's heart was racing in his chest at the mere thought of it.
Roy had almost forgotten that the reason he started this entire journey was because he wanted to find the black Rayquaza. The ancient Pokéball had inspired him, and Roy wanted to learn more about the Pokémon that had been contained within it however he could. The black Rayquaza had only come out of hiding because of Liko and her pendant. Roy had set off on this journey because he wanted to do what he could to learn more about the black Rayquaza and the secrets it held. Everything that had happened since them had distracted him to the point of nearly making him forget, but now, the truth was closer than ever before. Roy was going to see the black Rayquaza during this next battle. He was sure of it.
"Alright," Dot declared once she finished out her message to the rest of the crew of the Brave Olivine. "We're going to have to get going as soon as everyone is ready. I don't know what's going to happen in this fight, but we have to try and get to the bottom of it."
Roy nodded. "And if we're lucky... Maybe we'll end up seeing Liko during the fight too." He wasn't entirely sure if that would be the case, but it was at least worth hoping for a little bit. The black Rayquaza had been targeted by the Explorers too, and Roy could only imagine that they wanted to try and get their hands on it when push came to shove the same way the Rising Volt Tacklers did. If the Explorers were after the black Rayquaza, then that would put them at odds with the Rising Volt Tacklers during this fight. In a perfect world, the Rising Volt Tacklers would be able to convince the black Rayquaza to stop running from them, and then they could come up with a plan to get Liko back once they had won a new ally.
Dot's shoulders went stiff at the mention of Liko, but she forced herself to nod around the dread in the center of her chest. "Yeah... That would be nice," she murmured. Her first priority was still to find Liko and then bring her back home, but learning more about the black Rayquaza was a nice bonus if nothing else. All that remained was to see if it would all end up in their favor or not.
Roy was going to hope for the former with everything he had... Especially since hope felt like the only thing keeping him even vaguely connected to Liko anymore.
~~~~~
It took a few minutes for the Rising Volt Tacklers to assemble, but when they did, they decided to meet up in the common area of the airship to talk about their plan. No one had any objections to the idea of going after the black Rayquaza to see if they could learn anything from it, but they had a few small logistical details to work out first. Roy's heart was pounding in his chest at the thought. He had been wanting to find and reach out to the black Rayquaza ever since he first saw it fly away after the battle on his home island. Now, everything seemed like it was finally going to fall into place again, and if all went well, he would be able to meet with Liko during this fight too. Roy was going to pray for that with everything he had even if others found it foolish of him to have such high hopes in something that was hardly a guarantee.
"Alright, team," Friede began once everyone was gathered in the common area. "If the black Rayquaza really is back on the ground, then that's something for us to go and check out. I'm just hoping that we'll be able to deal with the Explorers without too many issues when we get there. I bet they're going to be after the black Rayquaza just like us, and that means we have to be careful."
"Amethio seemed interested in it when we fought against him before, so I think that means we can count on at least running into him," Roy chimed in. "And if all goes well, he'll have Liko with him. After all, Opal has been by his side during every other battle that we've had to deal with in the last few weeks."
"We're going to have to be as careful as possible though," Dot cautioned. "The last thing I want is for any of us to end up getting hurt because of this. The black Rayquaza is really powerful, and if it feels attacked, then it could do a lot of damage."
"But we have to at least try, don't we?" Orla pressed. "I know that it's not going to be easy to get to the black Rayquaza, and it's not going to be easy to stop the Explorers either... But I'm not going to let the Explorers get away with everything they've already done. If this is the first step to getting them out of the picture so that we can find Liko and bring her home, then we have to do it."
"We should get ready for takeoff so that we can go and catch up with the black Rayquaza. If we're lucky, we'll even get there before the Explorers do," Mollie said. "It would probably be best if we started preparing to leave as soon as possible. We wouldn't want anyone getting in our way."
"I agree. Orla, you know what to do," Friede agreed, and Orla saluted before she took off and left the meeting room. "Everyone is going to need to be at the top of their game if we want to stand a chance at defeating the black Rayquaza or the Explorers that are going to be going after it too. We have to be careful, and we have to strike hard and fast."
"Then there's no time to waste! Let's get going, and let's show the black Rayquaza what we can do!" Roy exclaimed, but it was clear that there was something else on his mind. The black Rayquaza was the reason for him going on this adventure in the first place, but it was also not the most important thing to focus on right now, and he knew it. Liko remained his priority, and all of the Rising Volt Tacklers agreed. This would all be worth it if they were able to rescue Liko. Anything that happened with the black Rayquaza would just be an added bonus.
The Rising Volt Tacklers scattered from there, off to take care of the rest of the business that they needed to resolve before they could go to find the black Rayquaza. Roy lingered in the meeting room for a short while longer, planning on sticking around so that he could talk to Dot a little bit more, but he paused when he realized Murdock was there for the same reason. Roy and Dot had spoken countless times before about this subject or others close to it, so he decided he would leave Dot to speak with her uncle, especially since, as far as he could tell, Dot and Murdock hadn't talked about this nearly enough. Dot was so caught up in her ow research that she never spared much time for speaking with Murdock. Roy was the main person she talked to about this stuff, but he was still glad to see her trying to reach out to someone else. She needed that more than anything, and Roy would gladly move away if it would give her the peace she needed.
Dot watched as Roy walked out of the room, and she felt her chest go tight. There was a lot that needed to be done before the Rising Volt Tacklers would be ready to face the black Rayquaza, but she knew she wouldn't be able to do her part to prepare just yet. Murdock was still there in the room, and Dot could tell by the look on his face that he wanted to talk to her. Dot hadn't spoken to him all that much about everything that was going on for a wide variety of reasons. It was hard enough for her to talk about with Roy who was much closer to her age. Speaking with an adult about her fears and concerns... That was another matter entirely, and it was much more intimidating than the times when Roy sat on the floor of her bedroom as they did their own things in the search of their missing friend.
Murdock wasn't going to let Dot go without a fight though, and when he was certain they were alone, he let out a small sigh. "I know you want to do what you can to help out right now, but I want you to be careful, alright?" he asked, his voice carrying tension in more ways than Dot cared to name. "I know you really want to help Liko. All of us do. I just don't want you to end up hurt because you're pushing yourself too far."
Dot's chest went tight, and she fought off a strange emotion that threatened to swallow her entirely. She had never been particularly familiar with her feelings before all of this began, finding them difficult to articulate and even harder to understand. Liko going missing felt like it made things infinitely more complicated, and all Dot could ever feel these days was some ugly rage at the world and a similarly miserable grief for everything that she would never be able to truly share with Liko again. They had lost so much when Liko went missing, and even when she returned, there was no guarantee that anything would be the same again. Dot had been working herself up to talking to Liko about everything that could have existed between them. She wanted to close the distance and make a friend on her own terms for once... But that was all gone now. That desire yet lived on, but it felt like nothing when compared to the pain that had swallowed Dot completely.
"I know," Dot found herself reassuring Murdock even though her words felt weak compared to all that was happening around her. She could say all she wanted that she was alright and that she would endure in the face of such horrific odds... But she didn't know for sure that this was the truth. She didn't know anything anymore, and it was all because Liko had gone missing. "I'm going to do everything I can to bring her back, but I know that I can't push myself too hard."
"Good," Murdock smiled, his face relaxing with relief. "I... I know all of this has been hard on you, and I didn't want you to push yourself any harder than you already have. You're not doing this alone. All of us are here with you, and we don't want to let go of Liko either. We're here to take care of each other. That means we can look after you too."
Dot bit the inside of her bottom lip so she didn't say the horrible thought that immediately sprang to mind at his words. They were supposed to be a crew, but it didn't feel much like it these days. The Rising Volt Tacklers seemed to spend most of their time on their own, only coming up for air long enough to prove to each other that they were still alive. They weren't acting much like friends with everything going on with Liko. It was like none of them had realized that this was going to tear them apart until it was too late for their grief to be glued back together. They were supposed to be able to lean on each other in these trying times, but instead, Dot found herself worrying that they would never be able to rely on each other at all.
"I..." Dot began to speak without fully realizing the words were forming, and she realized a bit too late that Nidothing had taken over her tongue just long enough to say a few words. "I just want all of this to be over."
Murdock's face softened with an emotion Dot still could not define, and he pressed one hand to the center of her back between her shoulder blades. He rubbed at the spot tenderly, and much to Dot's own surprise, she didn't pull away from the contact. If anything, she found it comforting. "I know," Murdock murmured. "And we'll all be here for you however we can be. We'll be here for Liko too, and we'll bring her back no matter what it takes. We're not going to let the Explorers get the best of us for any longer than they already have. I promise."
Dot nodded, rubbing at her eyes with her sleeve to stop tears from starting to flow. This battle was going to set them on the right path. It had to. The Explorers would be there to pursue the black Rayquaza, and if recent themes were anything to go by, Dot knew that they would be bringing Opal along with them. Dot didn't know how she would get through to Opal through everything going on, but she was going to have to try. She couldn't let this be the end of it.
One way or another, she would bring Liko back home... And if that meant she had to do it while Liko was fighting her every step of the way, then so be it. They would be reunited again soon, and the Explorers would pay for their crimes at last.
~~~~~
Opal doubted she would ever truly be ready for this.
It wasn't as if she had much of a choice in the matter though. She was there for a single purpose, and she knew it. She had to help the Explorers to find the black Rayquaza. After that... She wasn't sure of what she was going to do, but Opal knew that she belonged with the Explorers. She knew what she had to do even when it seemed impossibly difficult. She had a job to complete, and she knew it well.
She had been preparing for the last hour for the battle against the black Rayquaza. They had to move quickly if they were to make it before the Pokémon took off to hide in the farthest reaches of the sky again, and Opal knew it well. Her heart raced in her chest each time she tried to think about the fight, but she couldn't let her anxiety hold her back. She had to get there as soon as she could. She had to play her part not only in helping the Explorers to find the truth waiting at the end of this path but so she could find some degree of peace in her own heart too.
Opal had been struggling massively lately with her purpose. She didn't know who she was meant to be or how all of this was going to connect to change her life. Spinel had done something to erase her memories, and yet... She felt she belonged with the Explorers. Maybe it was because of the words Spinel had told her when she was at her most vulnerable. Perhaps it was because she still felt a deep kinship with Amethio after everything that had happened. She still wanted to be with the people who had gone so far to take care of her. It could have been ill-advised, but Opal saw no reason to push it away forever. She wanted to be there, and she wanted to convince herself that this was the way it was meant to be too. She could keep her head held high long enough to push through this. She knew she could.
It would have been considerably easier to survive this battle though if Opal wasn't constantly paranoid about Spinel appearing around every corner to try and ruin her. She knew she was going to have to get over herself just enough to work with him in the coming battle, but that didn't make it any easier to stomach. She didn't know how to handle being in his presence, much less fighting alongside him. Everything about Spinel simply scared her, and Opal was going to have to fix it as soon as she could. She couldn't let her paranoia hold her back when there were so many people counting on her to pull herself together. She was better than this. She knew she could be better than this.
Whispering these reminders to herself did nothing to assuage the headache that always appeared at the back of her skull when she thought about Spinel though. Seeing him only made it worse. Opal had done her best to stand at the other end of the small crowd of Explorers that would be joining this battle so that she didn't engage too much with the person who made her feel so deeply miserable, but it was easier said than done. Spinel always seemed to have a smile on his face, and he didn't seem to care what he said or did that made other people uncomfortable. If anything, he almost seemed like he enjoyed it when he was able to make other people squirm. Opal wanted to say that she was just reading too much into it, but it was hard to persuade herself that she was safe when her body was screaming at her that she was anything but.
Of course she didn't feel safe around him. He was the one who had done so much to hurt her, and it seemed as if he had gone after Amethio too. No one was safe so long as Spinel was still out there with his ridiculous smile on his horrible face. He was willing to hurt anyone and everyone in the name of what he thought was for the best for the Explorers, and the very thought made Opal feel sick to her stomach. She didn't know how he could live with himself after everything he had done, but she knew it wasn't her duty to understand. She was there for other reasons, and... And while she didn't know what they were, she was choosing to believe that it was all in the best interests of the Explorers. She didn't know what she would do if all of this turned out to be against what she had thought was right.
"Are you alright, Opal?"
Amethio's voice cut through her thoughts like a knife, and for a moment, Opal was convinced that she had been stabbed clean through. She looked up at Amethio slowly, and she found that he was looking down at her in concern with a frown on his face. He still seemed rattled by everything that had happened when he spoke with Spinel. Neither one of them truly understood what Spinel had done to erase Amethio's memories, and yet, they were afraid of it. How could they not fear something that seemed like it was inevitably going to destroy them both?
"I... I'll be alright," Opal assured him even though she wasn't entirely sure if that was true or not. If she was really going to recover from this, then she would have found a way to do it ages ago, long before she ever started to look at Spinel with fear in her heart. She would have found a way to shove all of her fears aside and convince herself that things were fine. She wanted to return to the lie she had been living, to blame all of her problems on her own inadequacies and let that be the end of it. No one needed to know that she was struggling. She was the only one to blame for all of this even if it felt like it made no sense. It had to all be her fault. It felt like it was the easiest solution, and if she began to think about something else being the case, then she would feel as if her world was caving in around her.
"We're going to be okay," Onia chimed in with a smile, but Opal could tell that it was strained. Zirc and Onia had both been filled to the brim with worry ever since Amethio said there was a chance that Spinel had erased his memories on purpose, and they were doing their best to keep calm about it. If they let it slip that they knew the truth, then they would only make their situation worse. Right now, false optimism was the best any of them could truly ask for or muster. "We've just got to get through this fight. We're a lot more prepared now than we ever have been before. We're going to take down the black Rayquaza and bring it back here to the base."
Opal hummed her agreement, but she wasn't entirely sure of how reassuring that was. The black Rayquaza was clearly important to the Explorers for some reason, but she didn't understand what it was in the slightest. Then again, she supposed there was a lot she didn't understand about the Explorers and the rest of the world. She was trying to put together the pieces of her life when she was missing half the image, and there was only so much she could do with such incomplete knowledge. That was the way others wanted it though. That was the way it was supposed to be.
She was going about all of this wrong. She had to be. She was safe there with the Explorers, and they would prove it to her in any small way they could once this was all over. Spinel would be revealed to be someone she could trust, and she would have no reason to doubt him. None of them had any reasons to doubt each other. They were meant to work together, and if Opal couldn't remember that, then... Then she was going to have to make herself realize it. She could force this if she was only willing to apply the right amount of pressure, and she was happy to do just that for as long as she had to in order to set this right.
Amethio's hand found Opal's a moment later, and she looked down to find him squeezing gently at her fingers in an effort to comfort her. Even when they had so much else they could have been thinking about, he was worried about her and wanted to do what he could to help. He was always so kind, and Opal couldn't have asked for a better person to call her friend. "It will be alright," he assured her, though she could tell by the dark undertone to his words that he was trying to convince himself just as much as he wanted to persuade her. "I'll take care of you. If anything happens during this fight, then all you need to do is ask for my help, and I'll be there to assist you."
"I would advise against making promises you won't be able to keep."
Opal felt as if ice water was being poured down her spine when she heard Spinel speak, and she looked up to find him staring down at her with the same smile he always wore. He was surely aware of her discomfort and the sudden paleness that had set into her cheeks, but he didn't say a word about it. He wasn't supposed to be there, and he knew it, but he knew he would be able to get away with it too. What was the point in going on a mission if he couldn't have a little bit of fun? Today, that meant poking at Opal and waiting to see if she would end up snapping. It was miserable, but there was nothing she could do to escape it, and she knew it.
Amethio went stiff at the sound of Spinel's voice, but he couldn't seem to find the words to respond. His body seemed to be reacting in fear to seeing Spinel there too, like he couldn't hold back the same reaction Opal had been fighting away for ages. If Spinel really had tampered with Amethio's memories, then his body seemed to find a way to remember it even as his mind forgot. Could that have been the truth for Opal as well? Could her bones and muscles have found a way to recall even what her mind was trying to seal out of her reach?
Amethio shook his head, and he pulled Opal as far away from Spinel as he could. "Come on, Opal. We have other things to do." He didn't bother with elaborating on what those other things were or why he was supposed to be so focused on them. None of the details mattered so long as it would get him and Opal away from Spinel. They would be safer when they could say that they had managed to leave him in the past, and so, they would run for as long as they had to in order to get out from beneath his thumb.
Opal's heart rate began to soothe and slow once she was out of Spinel's reach, but she hated herself more with every step she took away from him. She had to be making all of this up. Why would Spinel hurt her? Why would Spinel hurt Amethio? Maybe this was all some cosmic misunderstanding. Perhaps she had just misheard Spinel when he was speaking with the Rising Volt Tacklers. For all Opal knew, she had nothing to do with any of this, and she was lying to herself to try and seem more important than she actually was. She had to be.
In the back of her mind, she wondered what it would be like to have faith in herself. Deep down though, she knew that the answer was not something she was ever meant to understand. Trust was not something she would ever be allowed to enjoy... Not so long as she could not even bring herself to place it in the hands of someone who she knew should have deserved it.
~~~~~
Following the trail to the black Rayquaza made Roy's heart scream in his chest from both anticipation and anxiety. He wanted to be able to say he was ready for all that was to come. He wanted to declare at the top of his lungs that he was going to fight with everything he had so that he could work with the black Rayquaza. He was going to prove himself and follow in the footsteps of the ancient adventurer that had once called the black Rayquaza his friend. Roy was determined to be the best trainer he could be, and that all started with showing what he could do that day in the fight to come.
But Roy couldn't bring himself to be anywhere near as ready as he wanted to be. It felt like his body was fighting him, like he couldn't stand to think of what was going to happen if this went poorly. The black Rayquaza was dangerous, and Roy knew that well, but he was far more afraid of everything that could happen to Liko if this battle took a turn for the worse. The Explorers had every reason to want the black Rayquaza to come with them too, and that meant Roy, Dot, Friede, and all of the others were going to have to dedicate everything they had to helping to take the Explorers down. This was not a battle about just proving themselves to a very powerful foe. They had to do their part to reach Liko too, and that was much easier said than done as the situation currently stood.
Roy wanted to say that he was going to do all he could to show that he had gotten stronger since their last encounter, but he didn't know where to start. Instead, he clutched tightly at the old Pokéball that had once held the black Rayquaza. For years, the black Rayquaza had called that tiny little space home, and Roy had treasured it with everything he had. But times were different now, and the black Rayquaza was something that Roy was chasing after. It wasn't just about him or the things he wanted to prove that he could do on his own. He was trying to protect people who needed help, and Roy could only hope that he was able to do his part in establishing his strength to those who were willing to listen.
The black Rayquaza was high in the sky when the Rising Volt Tacklers arrived at their destination. The sun had almost completely disappeared from the sky, leaving a full moon to sit in its place. Somehow, the moon felt particularly large tonight, and it made the black Rayquaza seem like it was glowing. Roy didn't know if he had ever seen a more majestic sight, but he wasn't just there to marvel. He had so much that he needed to prove that night. He was going to show the black Rayquaza that he was stronger than he had been when they last met. He was also going to show the Explorers that he was not weak and that he was more than capable of getting Liko back. He had fought to make it this far, and he would fight to end this too.
Roy didn't know if he was ever going to be strong enough to handle this. He didn't know if his training had paid off enough to help him to even turn the tides slightly against the black Rayquaza that day, but he had to try. If this was what it would take to get through to Liko even a little bit sooner, then it would all be worth it. Roy was sure of it.
"I want you all to be careful," Friede declared, and Roy turned to look up at him with wide eyes. "This fight isn't going to be easy, and I get the feeling we're not going to be trying to get the attention of the black Rayquaza alone." He gestured across the city, and Roy looked out over the countless buildings beneath him. The airship had dropped the group off on the roof of a tall building so they could get as close to the black Rayquaza as possible. They were high above the rest of the city...
But they were not the only ones. Another group of people was stepping onto another building from an aircraft, and Roy recognized them even from this far away. No one else would have a reason to rush into a fight like this aside from the Explorers. They had figured out that the Rising Volt Tacklers were there to chase after the black Rayquaza, and so, they had appeared as well... Or maybe they weren't there because of the Rising Volt Tacklers at all. Maybe the black Rayquaza was their only goal, and it was up to Roy and the rest of his friends to stop them.
No matter what, Roy was going to give this his all. His hopes may not have been particularly high, but he knew he had to try and win this. Everyone was counting on him, and he wasn't going to let them down. Things finally had to snap and give way soon, and Roy was hoping it would be that day.
He was hoping that it would be the day Liko finally realized the truth and changed for the better.
~~~~~
The sun was hanging low in the sky by the time the Explorers arrived at their destination. Opal didn't remember the vast majority of the trip to chase after the black Rayquaza. Her mind had been filled with static the entire time. She tried to look away from Spinel for as long as she could, to avoid the darkness that seemed to come with his smile, but she couldn't do it. He was always there just out of reach, and he was waiting with something strange behind his eyes. He was holding secrets that Opal would never be able to uncover on her own, and he was proud of it.
Opal looked up at the sky as she stepped off the ship and onto solid ground. The black Rayquaza was swirling around in the heavens just in front of the moon, casting its obsidian body in a gentle silver glow. It was majestic and beautiful... And Opal couldn't help but feel like she had seen it somewhere before. She didn't know how such a thing was possible or where she could have witnessed a massive Pokémon before that day, but she supposed there were a lot of things she didn't understand these days. The black Rayquaza felt familiar to her regardless, and there must have been a reason for it. One day, she would be able to recall it. Until then, she knew she would not be able to truly trust her memories, and she would simply have to deal with it.
The battle was set to take place in some city in Paldea. The Explorers were left standing atop one of the tallest buildings so they had the easiest access to the black Rayquaza they could get... But they weren't the only ones who had come there. Across the chosen battlefield for the night, Opal could see the silhouette of the airship the Rising Volt Tacklers called home. There were people standing on one of the other buildings too, and she could just feel them staring at her. So the Explorers were not the only ones pursuing the black Rayquaza. The Rising Volt Tacklers were too. Somehow, this did not come as a surprise to Opal at all. If anything, it felt like something she had known all along. She didn't know when she had forgotten, but she supposed it must have been around the same time that she forgot everything else about her life too.
"Fight with everything you have," Spinel instructed, his voice cutting through Opal's thoughts like a knife. She couldn't resist the way her body turned to look up at him with wide, vulnerable eyes. Nothing about her seemed to be able to pull away from Spinel when he gave her orders, and today was no exception. "Make sure that we are able to get the black Rayquaza to come back with us. We cannot let it escape."
Opal nodded, and she turned her attention down to Sprigatito. Her partner was staring up at her with wide, violet eyes, and Opal forced herself to smile. "We're going to be alright," Opal assured her, though she didn't know how honest it was. She and Sprigatito were so far behind the rest of the Explorers. They were stronger now than they had been when they first started trying to train and become stronger, but that didn't mean much against a Pokémon like the black Rayquaza. It would be an incredibly dangerous foe, and it would take everything the Explorers had to make sure they were able to escape this fight in one piece, much less bring their quarry back with them.
But Opal would not let herself be useless. If there was something she could do to keep fighting, then she had to try. She would show that she was a member of the Explorers regardless of what her fears had to say on the matter. She owed it to the people who had done so much for her to at least try and help them to win this fight. She could do that. She had made it this far, and she would not let anyone hold her back now.
This was her duty, and she refused to fail in it for even a moment.
Notes:
We're so close to the end. Wow.
This chapter is largely a transition into the finale for the first arc of the story. In case you can't already tell, this is going to be a big one. I have been planning the finale for almost a full year as of the time of this chapter going up, and I am so beyond excited to be able to share it with all of you. Buckle up, everyone. Things are about to take a turn for the wild, but that's just the way it should be with a story like this.
I feel so bad for Roy in this chapter. I feel like he has lost a lot of his confidence in this AU, and I feel horrible for him... Even though I wrote him like that on purpose. Oh well. I guess I can still feel bad for the things I'm putting him through. Either way, things will get better for him eventually. We have to go through a bit more pain in order to get there, but we will reach it soon enough.
Next time, we'll finish up act one at last and reach the moment of true free fall. Until then, I hope you all enjoyed this chapter. Feedback is appreciated as always. Have a nice day, everyone!
-Digital
Chapter 20: Your Wings Will End Your Free Fall
Summary:
And then, she was in free fall.
Chapter Text
Opal stared up at the black Rayquaza for a long moment, watching as the serpentine Pokémon curled and danced against the moonlit sky. The black Rayquaza was absolutely beautiful, nothing short of stunning. The sight of it seemed to make Opal's mind waver, like a few bricks from her history were trying to be knocked free of the wall they were hiding behind. It made her head feel like it was going to explode, but her body continued to move even despite that. The black Rayquaza wasn't going to defeat itself, and that meant she had to keep moving alongside the rest of the Explorers.
Opal had seen the Rising Volt Tacklers gathered together on one of the other rooftops in the city, and she stared through the distance at them. She wouldn't be able to do too much against the black Rayquaza from this distance, and she knew it well. Maybe her best course of action was to make her way over to the Rising Volt Tacklers and... And do something. One part of her mind told her that she could prove her resolve and her worth to the Explorers by trying to defeat the Rising Volt Tacklers once and for all. Another piece of her heart said that this was the perfect chance for her to learn more about them and the secrets they seemed to hold of her past. If the Rising Volt Tacklers really did know who she had once been, then Opal wanted to do what she could to press them into revealing the truth. She was tired of not knowing who she was or who she was meant to be. If this would change that, then she had to try.
"We need to get in closer," Spinel said, and Opal jolted out of her thoughts all at once. "Come on." Spinel wasted no time in starting to walk across the buildings that lined the street, and Opal was surprised to find that the rooftops were close enough to walk from one to the next without incident. This entire battle was set to take place high above the streets of whatever city they had found themselves in, and those on the ground would only see the distant attacks against the black Rayquaza as lights dancing against the sky. The thought was thrilling to Opal, but she did her best to shove it back into the pit of her stomach. Now was no time to be thinking about anything that would distract her. She was there to win, and she couldn't hold back now.
Across the skyline, Opal could see that the Rising Volt Tacklers had come to much the same conclusion she had about needing to get moving if they were to reach the black Rayquaza. Both groups were far below the spot where the black Rayquaza was twisting through the heavens, but they were going to need to get closer to it from below so their attacks had a higher chance of landing. Opal didn't know if Sprigatito would be able to do much, but if the Rising Volt Tacklers were distracted with trying to defeat the black Rayquaza, then maybe she would be able to do something else to strike at them. Maybe she would be able to pull their attention in a different direction while the more experienced combatants among the Explorers were able to help to win this fight in their favor.
Opal couldn't help but feel like a lot of her progress from training and learning how to fight had been evaporated the instant she looked up through the sky at the black Rayquaza. It was difficult for her to describe in words, but when she let her head tip back up to see the heavens overhead... She felt so small. She felt helpless in a way she never had before, like she would never stand a chance at proving herself to the black Rayquaza or the rest of the world it inhabited. That wasn't going to stop her from at least trying, of course, but she knew it was going to be much easier said than done to win.
As Opal got closer to the Rising Volt Tacklers, she could feel the dread and tension in her heart begin to multiply. She couldn't help but find the Rising Volt Tacklers much more terrifying than the black Rayquaza they had all gathered there to fight. Then again, the black Rayquaza wasn't going to be the one who held the secrets of her past. If anyone was going to know who she had once been or who she was supposed to be, then it would be the Rising Volt Tacklers, and Opal didn't know if she would ever be ready to hear what they had to say to her on the subject. They were on opposite sides of the same fight, and Opal... Opal knew she didn't have time to ask them for any information even if they had it. If anyone would be able to tell her of who she had once been or if she was supposed to fight on the side of the Explorers, she knew it was them.
No. She couldn't let her doubts get the better of her now. She was there as an Explorer, and it didn't matter if she had once been a Rising Volt Tackler. Now, she was an Explorer, and that meant it was her duty to stand alongside her allies to defeat the black Rayquaza. The Rising Volt Tacklers may have once been important to her, but that was all in the past, and Opal had to focus on the future. She may have once been Liko, but now, she knew that she was Opal, and she couldn't let her fears of that old, foreign name stop her from finishing out her mission.
But if she just so happened to get close enough to reach out to the Rising Volt Tacklers, then... Then Opal doubted she would be able to resist. Surely it would be alright to pose at least a few questions. The rest of the Explorers would be too busy with fighting off the black Rayquaza to notice it if she slipped away for a little while. Maybe the Rising Volt Tacklers would be able to bring her a little bit of peace. Even if she decided that she belonged with the Explorers, she wanted to be able to lay all of this dread in her heart to rest, and if talking to the Rising Volt Tacklers would help her to do that, then she saw little other choice for her than to try and establish contact.
Behind Opal, she could hear Spinel calling out orders to his Umbreon and Beheeyem so they would continue to attack the black Rayquaza up in the sky. Spinel's confidence in handling this battle was more than enough to persuade Coral and Onyx to join the battle as well, and Opal shot a quick glance over her shoulder. They were all much stronger trainers, and her only Pokémon was a Sprigatito. Surely she would not be missed if she tried to speak with the Rising Volt Tacklers for a moment or two. If Spinel was too focused on the fight overhead, then he wouldn't be able to give her those orders that made her blood run cold. If there was ever a time for her to try and learn more, then it was right now.
And Opal could only hope that her suspicions were proven correct.
~~~~~
The black Rayquaza was every bit as majestic as it was terrifying.
Friede had held this exact opinion back when he first saw the legendary Pokémon emerge from the ball that Roy had been carrying with him. Now, Friede knew that his initial impression had not only been correct but an understatement. The black Rayquaza was a horrifying foe to face, and Friede could only hope it turned out there was some way of reasoning with it... Though he supposed that if there was any way of trying to rationalize the actions of the black Rayquaza, then the Rising Volt Tacklers would have figured it out ages ago. Instead, they were standing there in every bit as much confusion and awe as the Explorers, and no one quite knew how they were meant to handle this fight.
But there was more to it than just the black Rayquaza. Friede and the rest of the Rising Volt Tacklers had a secondary purpose in being there: Liko. Friede could see the silhouettes of the Explorers in the distance, steadily getting closer so they would have a better chance of reaching the black Rayquaza to defeat it. Friede could see Liko--or as she had come to be known among the Explorers, Opal--standing among them. There was something almost hesitant about her posture, and Friede could see it even from far away. He wanted to be able to do something to reach out to her, but he didn't know where to start or even if she would want to listen at all. What reason would she have to want to hear out the Rising Volt Tacklers? She hadn't wanted to hear them talk in the past, so what could have changed now?
In the end, the black Rayquaza turned out to be the far greater target when it began to curl around in the air like it was coming in close to the ground again. It was a miracle it had come out of the atmosphere long enough to be seen from the tops of the buildings in the city, and Friede knew this chance could not be wasted. Roy's goal remained an important one even if it had taken a bit of a backseat due to everything going on with Liko. Now, Friede wondered if he and Charizard would be able to reach the black Rayquaza with any of their attacks. Surely at least something had to be able to make it all the way up there. The Explorers wouldn't have come if they were under the impression that fighting was pointless.
"Friede, it looks like it's going to come in low!" Orla exclaimed, trying to get his attention out of his head for even a few brief moments. "Do you have a plan?"
Friede did not, in fact, have a plan, but he wasn't going to let that stop him. He was there to try and do all he could to win this fight, and he wasn't going to let the Explorers get in the way of that. "We give it everything we have!" Friede adjusted the position of his goggles where they rested atop his head and turned to look up at the sky. "Let's get to it, crew!"
~~~~~
Opal shouldn't have been doing this.
With each step she took toward the Rising Volt Tacklers, she could feel her body fighting back. She wasn't supposed to be going with them. She was meant to be an Explorer. She was betraying the very foundation of the organization if she even entertained the thought that she could go with them. She was there to face off against the black Rayquaza even if she felt like there was nothing she could do to stand a chance against it. She had to find a way to win this fight. She was an Explorer, and she needed to show it to everyone who was willing to see her establish her true feelings... But surely it wouldn't hurt to do at least a little something to try and get to the bottom of all of this... Surely she could learn a few facts from the Rising Volt Tacklers so long as they were willing to speak with her...
"What do you think you're doing, Opal?"
Her blood ran cold at the sound of Spinel's voice, and she turned slowly to find him staring at her with an unimpressed frown. For a moment, Opal thought her heart was going to stop beating then and there. His voice made her freeze inside and out, and that wasn't even the full extent of the impact he seemed to have on her. "I would advise that you not try anything that would go against the mission of our organization," Spinel went on. He knew that Opal was terrified of him, and he was happy to exploit that as long as he thought it would keep her on his side. "You can't listen to a word any of them say. You belong with the Explorers. You can only listen to us. You belong with us."
A sudden flash of pain erupted through Opal's body, and she was glad she had gone too still to scream. Her vision blinked with black and white, and she staggered backward as if Spinel had physically struck her with those words. She... She could only listen to him. She belonged with the Explorers. This was where she was meant to be. She had been told those words before, hadn't she? And... And she could feel the pain deep in her soul that came with listening to them. This was not the first time she had felt this way. She didn't know when it had happened before, but she knew that it must have happened at some point.
Opal began to trip away from Spinel, blinking rapidly to try and return her mind to her body. She was alright. She had to be. She was in the middle of a fight, but she was safe. She was surrounded by the Explorers. They were there to protect her and take care of her. They weren't going to let anything happen to her. She... She just had to trust them... But how could she? There was no trust to be found in the pain that wanted to rip her apart. There was only suffering, and Spinel was the one who brought it to the surface.
"Opal!"
Amethio's voice pulled Opal out of her thoughts, and she barely had time to recognize what he was doing before her feet were off the ground. Amethio had previously been flying around atop Corviknight, trying to cry out with any attacks he could that would catch the attention of the black Rayquaza. Ceruledge was largely restricted to the ground until the black Rayquaza came down closer to the earth, so Amethio had to fight with Corviknight instead. Right now though, the fight between Corviknight and the black Rayquaza was the last thing on his mind. Instead, Amethio commanded that Corviknight swoop in low, and he pulled Opal onto the bird Pokémon's back just in front of him. Sprigatito jumped onto Corviknight, coming to rest just in between them.
Opal finally felt herself begin to breathe once she was out of the reach of Spinel. Her heart was still racing in her chest, but she was beginning to regain control over her body. She wanted to thank Amethio, but the words refused to come until after he dropped her off on another building. Amethio had realized that being so close to Spinel was only hurting Opal, so he decided instead to try and keep her out of the line of fire by placing her somewhere else. He may have had to fight, but Opal did not, and he wanted her to be as safe as she could have been while he handled the fight.
"Thank you," Opal whispered as she managed to dismount from Corviknight. Sprigatito offered a meow of agreement. Amethio cast them both a nod before he took back off into the sky again. Seconds later, he was left as little more than a silhouette against the silvery moon.
The battle quickly devolved to distant static that Opal knew should have had a greater impact on her than it did. She should have been at least trying, but she couldn't seem to find the strength to bother. All she could do was cradle Sprigatito to her chest and try to keep from shaking furiously. She was there to try and prove herself to the people who had taken her in when she was struggling beneath the weight of a pain she could never hope to put to words... But she was failing. She could feel herself failing each time she took a breath and found it filled with doubt that she could have ever been put through the things she feared in the darkness.
Opal looked up at where the rest of the Explorers were fighting. Onyx was trying to strike at the black Rayquaza from afar using his Garganacl, and Coral was gladly flying through the skies atop Glalie. Zirc and Onia were doing what they could from the top of the building they had been made to share with Spinel. As for Spinel himself, he was fighting alongside both Umbreon and Beheeyem. This fight was significant and dangerous enough for him to want to use both of them at the same time. That spoke volumes to how important this was, and yet, Opal couldn't bring herself to do anything to join the fight too. Her body was fighting her, and her mind was pounding with a headache with each second she spent watching Spinel.
She should have been focused on the fight at hand, or at the very least, on distracting the Rising Volt Tacklers so they would get out of the way of the Explorers. Instead, Opal's vision focused in on Spinel. She felt like he must have been involved with the loss of her memories, but she still didn't understand why he would lie to her. Why had he gone so far in the first place? If she was meant to be a member of the Explorers, then there was no reason to fabricate the truth or... Or do everything he had. Spinel would only need to go this far if she wasn't an Explorer originally, and Opal didn't know if she would ever be ready to face a thought like that.
The name Liko intruded upon her thoughts the instant she let her guard down, and when Opal blinked, she suddenly felt like she was no longer on the battlefield. Instead, she was standing at the edge of a vast ocean, staring out as the waves rushed against the shore. Each one of them felt strong enough to drown her if she gave them the chance, but Opal did not stir against the overwhelming force. If she moved even a fraction of an inch, then she was going to be consumed completely. She couldn't let that happen. If she was swept out with the tide, then she would never be able to fight her way back up. She would drown in the silver and the blue, and there would be no air for her to ever enjoy again.
Opal blinked again, and she was back in her body. Sprigatito was meowing loudly to try and get her attention, and Opal tried to find the words to respond. She didn't know what that had been, but she felt like she was going to die if she so much as considered the weight of... Of all of that for even a second longer. None of this was supposed to be happening. She was... She was supposed to be safe with the Explorers. She wanted being there to be her choice. Even if she hadn't always been with the organization, she wanted to be able to proudly declare that this was the path that she was choosing to take. She could decide on what happened in her future so long as she was willing to find the resolve.
But she wouldn't have made that choice at all if she hadn't been found with no memories... No, that wasn't right. She had been robbed of her memories, and for all she knew, Spinel had exacted the same pains against Amethio for daring to try and get to the bottom of it... Pains? How was she so sure it was painful? Why did she feel like she needed to run out of her own skin whenever Spinel looked at her? She was making so many assumptions, and yet, she couldn't seem to stop.
Opal looked across the battlefield at the Rising Volt Tacklers, fear rising up in the pit of her stomach. Why did she feel like she would be safer with them than she ever could be with Spinel? Why was her ally a greater threat to her mind than her enemies ever could have been? If they truly were foes of hers, then she wouldn't have even been considering reaching out to them. The name Liko would mean nothing to her, and she would be able to forget it had ever been spoken at all. None of this was supposed to matter, and yet... It did. Everything mattered too much, she would argue.
Opal swiveled her attention in the opposite direction so she was looking at Spinel and his two Pokémon. Umbreon was striking with waves of blue energy, and Opal felt her heart threaten to stop in her chest at the sight of it. She... She had seen those attacks before, but it hadn't been in the context of a fight. She never should have seen that before, and yet--
She could see the electric cyan energy rushing toward her, piercing the air and threatening to rip her limb from limb. If it hit her, then it was surely going to kill. She jumped out of the way on instinct, her heart racing in her body. Every piece of her was so, so tired. She almost wanted to just give up, but she couldn't seem to do it. Her adrenaline would keep her moving even when she wanted to curl up and just let the pain consume her. Her body wanted to live even though she did not.
Opal gasped and slammed back into her body the way she would run into a brick wall if she hadn't been watching where she was sprinting. The force of it made her drop Sprigatito, and the cat Pokémon immediately began meowing up at her in distress. Opal wanted to crouch down and pick up her partner again to prove that she was as alright as she could have been... But she couldn't pretend anymore. She felt like she was going to die.
All air in Opal's lungs grew thin and thinner with each breath she tried to take. Her body was rejecting the very concept of oxygen, and any attempts she made to breathe deeply and slowly were squandered before they could truly begin. Her heart was pounding once again, and she found the rhythm identical to the one that had guided her shaking body when Umbreon's attack was aimed directly at her... But that wasn't possible. Umbreon... Umbreon wouldn't have ever aimed at her. If it had, then she would have remembered it... But would she? Opal didn't remember anything else. Why was this supposed to be any different? If she could forget everything that had ever happened to her, then how could she be expected to remember it if Spinel had hurt her or not?
When she blinked, she was back in the ocean once again, staring out over the sea of gray. It wasn't just a silvery blue color though. When the waters began to crash against each other, they blended to become the same color as Spinel's hair. He was there. He was the one who was trying to drown her. If she gave in, then she was going to lose everything. He had already taken so much from her. Her blood was going to be in the water, and it would all be because of him. It was a miracle it hadn't already happened, especially considering--
The red, green, and yellow lights from Beheeyem's attacks blended together in Opal's mind, fusing to form a perfect white that exploded against her eyes. She... She felt nothing. When she saw those three colors come together, she felt absolutely nothing. It was like every emotion she had ever felt and every fear she had ever had was gone in an instant. She didn't even know if she was Opal anymore. Had she ever been Opal? Or was she just some idea that others had made up?
Overhead, the black Rayquaza lashed out with an attack that forced Coral to swerve out of the way. Charizard unleashed a massive wave of fire, and Fuecoco tried to imitate his idol by blasting up at the sky too. The black Rayquaza avoided both of the attacks, and its eyes narrowed in the direction of the Rising Volt Tacklers. For a moment, it seemed as if it was going to go after them, but a blast from Glalie was enough to pull its attention in the opposite direction. Umbreon struck a moment later, and the blue light
took over Opal's mind and left her back in the ocean. That color was dangerous. It was there to kill her. She could never embrace the blue. That was not her job. She was lifeless and had never been meant to contain anything. She was a vessel without a soul, meant to carry out the duties she was handed. To be blue was to be alive, and that was the reason she hid the underside of her hair and the color of her eyes by wearing her mask just so. She was not supposed to be there. She was not supposed to be able to breathe at all. The waters were going to take her over if she let them, and if she gave in, then she would be his plaything all over again. Spinel was the one in charge. She could never disobey him. She could never go against what he told her so long as he thought there was a reason for her to remain by his side.
The blue of Umbreon's attack snapped Opal back to the present again when it pierced the skies for a second time. Sprigatito was standing a short distance away from Opal, having almost entirely given up on staring at her partner now. Instead, she was staring up at Umbreon's attacks too, infatuated by them in much the same ways Opal was. Beheeyem's blasts of red, yellow, and green caught Sprigatito's attention too, and all either one of them could do was watch as the lights spun around. Opal's ears were starting to ring, and she wasn't sure if the distortion of sound was happening inside of her head or if it was real somehow. She wasn't sure if she wanted to know the answer either. It was too much. Everything was too much for her. She was going to die. She knew she was going to die. She could not stand to survive, and so, she was going to have to die.
The ocean's waves grew rougher, and Opal found herself dragged under for a long moment. She didn't think she would be able to breathe there beneath the water, but she could much to her surprise. Even more shocking, she realized the endless expanse of gray was not all that was waiting for her there in the realm of her mind. There was something beneath the waves glowing blue, and that was what was causing the strange color that seemed to want to kill her. There was an orb of muted cyan there at the bottom of the water, and it was trying to break free. It was like it had been trapped beneath the waves for longer than Opal could ever hope to calculate, but now, it wanted to escape. It just wanted her help to do it.
Opal resurfaced when the water pulled away enough for her to see the gray sky overhead. She stared out over the ocean, and her face felt like it was slicked to her face. She couldn't tell if she was drenched from the sudden waves of the sea or the sweat that was dripping down her body in the world she knew had to be more real than this one. Either way, she felt heavy. When she looked to the sky, she could see the fusing colors of red, yellow, and green, and each shade offered her a different piece of imagery of something she had thought she would never recall again.
In the yellow, Opal was standing in perfect darkness... No, she wasn't Opal. She simply existed, and the identity she was given came later on. She was standing in the shadows when a sudden burst of blue came rushing toward her. She thought it was going to kill her, but she barely managed to jump out of the way. When she looked up, she could see rings of gold breaking through the darkness. It was Umbreon. For some reason, Umbreon had attacked her... And Spinel was speaking about it somewhere else. She couldn't identify his words, but she knew it must have been him.
In the red, she could feel the press of a knife getting closer and closer to her skin. She knew that even the slightest bit of extra pressure was going to draw blood. She was going to melt into nothingness when she was hurt to the point of no return. Did she even still bleed at all? Could she have been considered human anymore? Everything felt so far out of her reach. She wasn't supposed to be alive. She wasn't supposed to think. She was supposed to do as she was told, and she had been instructed by her instincts to stay still and hope all of this ended soon.
In the green, she could hear Spinel's voice. The specific words he was speaking were impossible to make out above the crashing of the tides, but she knew what the impression was supposed to be. Her name was Opal. She was a member of the Explorers. She was to do exactly as she was told. The Explorers had her best interests at heart. She had to stand by them. She had lost her memories, but they would take care of her. He would let nothing happen to her. His fingers were kinder now than they had been when they commanded Umbreon to strike her or when they held the dagger that had almost killed her he had almost killed her and he was right there next to her and he could turn on her at any moment and he was going to destroy her and there was nothing she could do why wouldn't her body move why didn't she want to live why couldn't she fight him off why hadn't she been fighting why why why why why--
Every breath Opal took was catching on her lungs, threatening to smother her. She wasn't getting enough air, and yet, she couldn't seem to force herself to take in more of it than she already was. If she breathed too deeply, then she was going to die. Her heart was beating too fast, and she was breathing too quickly, but she couldn't stop any of it. Opal's fingers began to shift to her neck, and she tried to pull away the fabric of her collar from her skin to give herself a little bit more room--
But when she blinked she just saw that knife again pressed against her skin and she hadn't even tried to fight it what kind of person didn't even fight when their life was in danger was she even alive at all the answer had to be no she was haunting this world she was already dead and if she was not then she one day would be--
Opal's gaze slowly turned in Spinel's direction, and she found him watching his two Pokémon prepare to unleash another round of attacks against the black Rayquaza. When their two blows were successful, he allowed himself a soft smile that twisted his face. In the darkness of the night, it almost seemed like--
The darkness of the room that she had been in the night that he had almost ruined her he hadn't cared at all for the harm he was doing or how much it was going to destroy her he just wanted to get what he wanted and what he wanted was for her to be a shell she was not Opal she was not Liko she was not anyone--
Opal couldn't help the tears streaming down her face freely, but she did not try to stop them. She simply stared at Spinel with terror in her heart, threatening to kill her then and there if she did not get a grip... But there was no peace to be found here. It was just her, Spinel, and the endless ocean of grief he had created in her mind.
Opal dove back under the water, reaching one hand out for that glow of blue that waited for her beneath the waves. There was no safety or peace to be found for her there, and yet, this was all she could ever want. She needed it. She needed to prove that she was still alive, and this was the only way she could think to do it. She needed that light no matter what it turned out to be. She needed that glow of cyan to break through the haze and terror that had settled in her mind so she could show the world that she still had air in her lungs. She would not drown beneath Spinel's actions just yet. If she could keep fighting, then she could reach it. If she could keep swimming, then she could survive for a little bit longer.
In the sky overhead, the black Rayquaza was growing tired of the fight, and it let out a noisy cry that pierced the air clean through. Everyone went still as deep pink rocks began to appear over the head of the giant serpent. With one more cry, the rocks began to rain down from the heavens, fending off every trainer trying to get in close enough to potentially soothe the rage of the black Rayquaza. Friede and Coral were forced into quick retreats, and Amethio was quick to follow their leads in pulling back as far from the center of the fight as possible.
Opal was still staring up at Spinel, tears in her eyes and terror in her heart. She didn't know when she had wandered over to the edge of the building she was standing on, but she was dangerously close to tipping into the street below now. Even Sprigatito was a small distance away from her, too occupied with Spinel to truly get through to her partner.
That distance wound up being their salvation when one of the meteors from the black Rayquaza's attack struck the rooftop just between them. Sprigatito was sent sliding backward by a few paces, lucky to have been far enough from the heart of the blast to escape the worst of it. Opal, however, was not so fortunate, and the top edge of the building she was standing on splintered beneath the weight of the attack.
And then, she was in free fall.
Opal barely realized she was plummeting through the air until she was staring up at the sky as it grew farther and farther away from her. One hand rose up toward the moon, reaching for it like she thought it would be enough to save her. In the back of her mind, she knew she was going to die. No one would ever be able to survive a fall from this height... But if this was where it was to end, then she supposed it was as fitting as anything else. At least this way she would never have to worry about what she was accusing Spinel of again. She would be safe in the darkness of her own heart, and the world would take away everything from her just as it had once stolen away her memories.
Cyan light began to spark up at Opal's chest, and it expanded upon itself until a crystalline cage surrounded Opal. She stopped falling, suddenly suspended in the middle of the air by the power of the magic weaving itself around her. Hexagons colored with turquoise, green, and blue pressed against each other as a sphere that surrounded Opal on all sides. She slowly righted herself, standing on the bottom of the sphere as she reached out for a light glowing like a star just in front of her.
At the center of the light was a Pokémon Opal hadn't seen before... No, that wasn't true. She had seen it before the last time her pendant activated. It looked just like her pendant too with its shell of shining green and teal. The Pokémon was a turtle, and it had emerged from its gemstone shell to look up at Opal. Its eyes were wide and blue, matching the color of the glow that lived within Opal's mind at the bottom of that endless ocean. Cyan circles wrapped around the turtle's neck, feet, and tail, and the bulk of its body was a deep indigo color. A few jewels were pressed into the turtle's head, and each of them glowed with the same brilliant light that kept Opal safe.
For a long moment, all Opal could do was stare. She needed a better look at the Pokémon, so she reached up with one hand to remove her mask. The turtle continued to stare up at her with love in its eyes, like it had never known a more perfect moment than the one it was sharing with her now. It offered a small cry for her attention, and Opal's other hand began to stretch out toward it. This Pokémon wanted her to hold it. Out of all the people in the world, it had chosen Opal...
No. That wasn't right. It had chosen--
As Opal reached out for the turtle Pokémon, she continued to swim through the ocean in her mind. There at the bottom of the sea, she could make out the silhouette of a girl curled over herself in sleep. Opal pressed her fingers against the outer edge of the cage of light, and her hand passed through it a moment later. The girl at the center of the sphere began to stir, and her eyes opened. She looked just like Opal, but there was a life to her that Opal had never had. There was only one name for her, and it was--
Liko.
Memories flooded through her mind all at once, overwhelming every thought she had ever thought to have. Her eyes went wide in the world of the blue sphere she had come to be suspended in, and every sentence her hands had ever written into that notebook of hers was overwritten. She was not Opal. Her name was Liko. She was not an Explorer. She was a member of the Rising Volt Tacklers. She was on a journey to figure out the truth behind the pendant her grandmother had given her. It was not simply a relic she was meant to keep safe while it protected her in turn. It had given her the courage she needed to take her first few steps. Sprigatito was her partner, and they had been fighting to grow stronger alongside the rest of their friends.
Roy was Liko's newest companion, and they spent their time together on the Brave Olivine. They were very different trainers, but they still wanted to get stronger for the sake of reaching their own goals. They were friends who wanted to help each other no matter what. Friede had given Liko a chance to stay there on the ship with him and the rest of his crew, and she found light in their eyes that she had not been able to find for herself at school. She had even been starting to establish a friendship through Dot's door when she learned more about the hermit who called the airship home too.
But all of that had changed in the span of a single afternoon. Her memories of what had happened specifically were fuzzy, but Liko knew the gist of it. She had gone out to get a spice Murdock had been searching for, but when she arrived, she found the area empty with no spices to be found. She looked around to see if she could learn something about why she was in an empty alley without any information, but that was when she saw him. The man with blue hair... Spinel.
He had been the one to erase all of her memories. Liko didn't know for certain what he had done, but she knew that he had been responsible for all of this. He had taken everything from her and kidnapped her so she joined the Explorers. He ripped her away from the life she had known and loved. She had not been able to thrive because he had decided that she belonged somewhere else. He... He had told her she was someone else entirely. She was not Opal. She was supposed to be Liko.
And yet, even in that horrifying moment, she did not feel entirely like Opal or Liko. She felt like some miserable combination of the two. She was jaded and anxious just like Opal, but she wanted to be kind and sweet like Liko. She wanted to find a way to be herself again. She wanted to figure out who she had been before all of this was torn away from her, but she didn't know where to start. Spinel had fought to make sure she would never have the chance to discover who she truly was again. That was the reason for all of this. Spinel had wanted to mold her into the perfect puppet.
He had almost gotten away with it too. Until that moment when Opal reached out for Liko, he had succeeded in his aim. She hadn't known a thing about who she once was, and any fears she may have had could quickly be silenced by the words of him or the other Explorers. She had been told of her subservience, and then, it had become real. There had been no Opal without Spinel there to create her through force. It was as if Liko had fallen dormant within their mind, buried beneath the pain of something neither name could bring herself to remember. Then, when Opal finally saw the same weapons that had been used against her, she had to reach out for Liko. She couldn't stand it anymore, and she was able to close that gap between them.
That was right. Opal and Liko didn't remember exactly what Spinel had done, but they were certain that he had used his Pokémon against them. There was no other explanation for it. He had tried to bury them beneath the power of that which only he knew how to use, and... And he had done it. They didn't know who they were. Even in that very moment, standing there in the sphere of bright cyan light, there was no way of saying for sure if they were Liko or Opal. Which one was real? Which one was the person others were going to search for? The Rising Volt Tacklers wanted Liko, but Opal had established friendships for herself within the Explorers. She had to be able to find a middle ground between them, but... But that would erase both of her identities. She was not supposed to have a second name at all, but if that was the case, then why did silencing Opal feel like death?
Tears were streaming freely down Liko's face as she stared up at the turtle Pokémon before her. It was watching her with wide, beady eyes, seemingly trying to figure out why it was that she was so distressed. She wished she could have explained it all away, and she wanted to be able to reassure it that she was fine... But she didn't feel fine at all. She didn't know if she would ever feel fine again. All of this was simply too much for her to bear. She felt like she was going to die. Maybe she was already dying, and all she could do was simply let it rip her to pieces.
She... She had been missing out on so much of her life. She had been gone for so long. The identity of Opal had taken over her life, and while the memories were present, they all felt hazy and distant. It was like she truly had been taken out of her own skin only to be dropped right back in at the worst possible moment. She didn't belong there. She didn't belong to this life. It was not hers anymore, and it had not been for a long time... But this life did not belong to Opal either. It was not something either one of them could claim as their own. Liko was not sure of why there was such a line to be drawn between them, but the thought felt like it was going to destroy her.
The blue light around the turtle Pokémon began to flicker and fade, and it launched itself forward into Liko's arms. She accepted it slowly, and seconds later, the cage of magic disappeared entirely. Liko's eyes went wide as her feet left the ground that no longer existed beneath her. She let out a horrifying scream, the noise torn from her lungs as the air surged all around her. She was falling once again, and she was going to die the second she hit the ground.
Something softer than the earth swooped in to grab Liko out of the air, and she closed her eyes on instinct. When she managed to tease them open again, she looked up to find Charizard was carrying her in his grasp. He was cradling her gently, and Liko was holding tightly to the turtle Pokémon that had appeared in the air before her seconds prior. Liko held the Pokémon tightly against her chest, hoping she would be able to find some degree of peace in the touch of her new companion.
"Are you alright, Liko?!" Friede yelled out over the roaring of the wind all around them. That was right. Her name was Liko. For the first time in ages, she finally understood that. The Rising Volt Tacklers had not been trying to deceive her when they called out to her by using that title she had been forced to abandon when she joined the Explorers. "Talk to me!"
"I..." Liko wanted to say that she was fine. She would have liked nothing more than to be able to reassure Friede that she was as alright as she could have been, but the words wouldn't come to her. Instead, all that left her lips was a noisy sob, and it was not the last. Liko was crying openly in a matter of seconds, though she couldn't even begin to express what she was crying for. There was simply too much that wanted to push its way free of her in a show of grief that felt ready to destroy her from the inside out.
She was crying for all she had lost when Spinel decided to erase her memories for the sake of personal gain. She was crying for everyone she had abandoned without even remembering that she had left them behind in the first place. She was crying for the life she was going to have to return to without thinking she would ever be able to reach it. She was crying for the pain deep in her body that wanted to tear her to pieces over something she still could not recall. She was crying for the world that had left her to suffer and never thought twice about trying to bring her peace again.
Charizard dropped Liko off on top of one of the tallest buildings in the city, but Liko didn't try to stand when she left the Pokémon's grasp. Instead, she let Charizard set her down bonelessly on the rooftop. She was still staring up at the night sky, the black Rayquaza flying somewhere in the distance. It had stopped to stare when Liko's pendant activated, but now that the light was gone, the black Rayquaza saw no reason to remain. Liko was too tired to recognize the legendary Pokémon's interest in her, and the others on the battlefield were too frazzled by her sudden return to awareness of herself to realize what was happening either. The only thing that mattered was the black Rayquaza had grown bored of the fight, and it flew high off into the atmosphere where it disappeared from view as if it had never been there in the first place.
"Liko!"
Roy's voice pulled Liko out of her thoughts, but she couldn't do much aside from simply look over at him. He was sprinting up to her at full force, and a girl with purple hair was just behind him. It had to be Dot, Liko assumed, and she hated that they had met face to face for the first time under horrible circumstances beyond their control. "Are you alright?!" Roy cried out, sliding into a crouch just beside Liko.
Just like when Friede asked though, Liko had no answer to give. All she could do was cry and cry into the night sky, her sobs noisy and threatening to destroy her from the inside out. She couldn't do any of this. She didn't know how she had ever managed to survive this long, but it was all about to end. She was going to die there with the weight of the world pressing down on top of her. There could be no future for the girl whose past had been torn away from her shaking fingers.
All of this felt impossible. It couldn't have been real... And yet, this felt more real to Liko than any of her time with the Explorers had. She had felt like she was dying when she began to reach out for her memories, and now, they felt like they were enough to suffocate her. In a few ways, Liko wanted to just let it destroy her. She wanted to stop wasting her own time and let the grief simply flow out of her like the tides that had swallowed her within her own mind. All of this was too much. She couldn't do it anymore. She would never be able to live again as long as the world was this miserable and had done so much to hurt her.
On the other side of the battlefield, Amethio stood atop the same building that Liko had been on when she tumbled over the edge thanks to the meteor attack. Sprigatito was meowing after Liko in a panic, terrified of being separated from her for this long. Amethio crouched down beside Sprigatito, picking up both the cat Pokémon and the fallen mask that Opal had once worn. It was too late for her to ever go by that name again though. She was Liko again, and she would never be deceived into becoming Opal after what had happened.
Sprigatito looked up at Amethio with a conflict in her eyes, unsure as to if she was meant to trust Amethio or try to push him away. Once upon a time, Amethio had taken her captive for the sake of reaching Liko, or at the very least, that was how it had felt when it was happening. But since then, Sprigatito had come to care for Amethio in the same way Opal had. Sprigatito's memories had been tampered with in much the same way Liko's had been for her to become Opal. Much like Liko, Sprigatito seemed to remember everything now. She was far more present in herself and sure of her personality now than she had been back when she was with the Explorers. Spinel had dulled Liko's shine until she became Opal, and something very similar had happened to Sprigatito.
Once Sprigatito was in his grasp, Amethio climbed back onto Corviknight, and he started to fly over to the Rising Volt Tacklers. Zirc and Onia settled down behind him on the same building before he had the chance to take off though, and Zirc reached one hand out after him. "Sir, what are you doing?!" Zirc called after him. "We have to go back to the base! The black Rayquaza is gone!"
Amethio shook his head, not daring to turn to face either one of them. "My job is to look after Opal. That remains true even now. If she is to be going back with the Rising Volt Tacklers, then I will as well." There were too many thoughts racing through his mind for him to ever put to words, but he hoped that explanation would be sufficient for Zirc and Onia at least for now.
He was entirely unsurprised, however, when it was not. Onia started to prepare herself to go after him, her eyes narrowing in determination. "Then we'll come with you!" she cried out. "If there's anywhere we can be, then--"
"No," Amethio cut in with a firm shake of his head. "You go back to the base with the others. I'm going to... I'm going to figure something out." His mind felt like it was on fire from static aimed from a million different directions, but he knew one thing for certain: he could not go back to the Explorers after this. He had been looking for a reason to back down for quite some time, and this was just the push he was looking for. He was going to pursue Opal--or as she was now known again, Liko--and he would be happier by her side than he had been with the Explorers for a long time. He knew it was a horrible ending to his story and that he was going to end up in all sorts of trouble... But he knew he had to try. It felt like the only thing that was truly right anymore, and he wasn't going to walk away from that.
Zirc and Onia were too stunned to say or do anything, but Amethio didn't wait for them to speak up. "We'll be in touch." With that, he instructed Corviknight to take to the skies once more, and Sprigatito meowed from her place in his grasp.
Overhead, the Explorers were still looking out over the field as these events unfolded. Coral let out a snarl of frustration now that the black Rayquaza was gone, and she held onto Glalie while pointing forward with her other hand. "We have to go after them!" Coral exclaimed. "Come on!"
Before Coral or any of the others could even think of pursuing them though, Sprigatito began to growl quietly. When she opened her mouth, a mighty scream came out, and a massive Leafage exploded along with it. Amethio had to lean at a strange angle on top of Corviknight to keep from being knocked right out of the air from the force. The attack was overwhelmingly powerful, but it wasn't aimed in any specific direction. It was just a distraction meant to keep the Explorers from going after the Rising Volt Tacklers. Sprigatito had not done enough to protect Liko in the last few weeks when both of their memories were being tampered with, so her solution was to end it all here and now.
The Leafage lingered in the air for a long while, and Amethio took advantage of that chance to fly after the Rising Volt Tacklers. Charizard had picked up Liko once again, and the others were all moving to run into the airship. It had been positioned just beside one of the buildings so they could run up the ramp onto it without being disturbed. Liko was much too weak to even consider making the journey herself though, so Charizard handled it for her as she held tightly to the turtle Pokémon that was sitting on her chest.
Liko was still crying, her chest rising and falling with the empty promise of a breath she could never fully find the strength to take. She looked completely exhausted, like all of the pain and strife from the last few weeks was finally rushing in to ruin her all at once. She had been struggling for ages with the thought of who she had once been and who she was meant to be, and now, the truth was out there... But she did not want it to be. She was not ready for it, but if Amethio was being honest, he doubted she ever would be.
Now though, Amethio knew that he was making the right choice. None of the Rising Volt Tacklers questioned his decision as he delivered Sprigatito into Roy's arms and then directed Corviknight to fly onto the ship. Roy stared down at Sprigatito in shock, waiting to see if the cat Pokémon would react poorly to Amethio being near her, but she never did. That was enough of a reason for Roy to trust him, at least for the time being, so he ran up the ramp onto the airship a moment later, getting the crew one step closer to liftoff.
Liko stared up at the moon in the sky as she cried, her tears flowing out of her without her actively meaning for them to. She couldn't believe the way all of this had ended. It... It wasn't supposed to happen this way. She was supposed to... She should have been safer than this. She didn't know who she was supposed to be or why she had been mangled beyond the point of repair, but all of this was too much.
It felt like she was at war with herself. Ever since that hand reached for her in the depths of the blue sea... There were two sides of her. There was Opal, the member of the Explorers who had operated and lived and feared and cried and yearned in her absence. And then there was Liko herself, the girl who had seemingly been put to sleep as someone else lived out her life in her stead. It sounded impossible. It should have been impossible... And yet, Liko knew it had to be real. There was no other explanation for why it felt like there were two sides of her that would never be able to reconcile. She had lived an entire life without even realizing it, and now, she had to reckon with the fact that there were two pieces of her that had never been meant to coexist.
She had been with both the Explorers and the Rising Volt Tacklers. This battle had taken her to the far opposite ends of the same spectrum, and she didn't know where she was meant to belong. Even now, she felt like both the names Liko and Opal resonated with her in a way that went beyond simple familiarity. She... She was two in one. She was living multiple lives and was two people depending on the day and the time. She was not entirely Liko nor was she entirely Opal. She was trapped somewhere in the middle, and she feared she would never be able to find peace between them ever again. If she was meant to be able to rest, then she would have found a way to do it ages ago.
Instead, all Liko could do was watch as the moon changed its position in the sky. Charizard flew her onto the Brave Olivine, and Liko should have been relieved to finally be back in the place she had belonged all along. Instead, she closed her eyes the instant it entered her field of vision. Her energy bled away from her, and her exhaustion finally got the better of her as sleep claimed her.
This time, when she was laid to rest at the bottom of the sea, it was hand in hand with a name she had never wanted and would never understand.
Notes:
We're finally here... The chapter I've been looking forward to since I first began to develop the ideas for this story.
I've had this sequence in mind for a very long time, and I somehow love the way it turned out in writing even more than I loved my ideas for it. That's certainly saying something since I thought it would be a case of me building it up a bunch in my head only to end up kind of disappointed when I wrote it out. But I love this so much.
And that marks the end of act one. We've got a lot of different stuff waiting for us in the next chapter, including a new theme for chapter titles and a new series of events coming up. I hope you're all looking forward to it as much as I am. I'll explain more of it next time. For now... Title drop chapter. It's a big one, and I love it.
Next time, we'll hit act two at last. Until then, I hope you all enjoyed this chapter. Feedback is appreciated as always. Have a nice day, everyone!
-Digital
Chapter 21: Still of Fragile Lies and Bones
Summary:
Liko awakens to return to her old life.
Chapter Text
The light was overpowering.
She blinked slowly as strength returned to her body, and her eyes began to pry themselves open despite the light that threatened to swallow her completely. She was laying flat against something soft and warm, and she could feel a few soft objects pressing up against her legs. She did not remember how she had gotten there, but she knew that she was completely exhausted. Every muscle in her body seemed to complain from the mere exertion of waking up, and for a long moment, all she could do was stare up at the ceiling overhead.
Light was filtering in through a window, and the sun smiled down gently upon her even when she feared there was nothing for her to truly enjoy in that moment. She blinked slowly, her eyes burning from the agony of having to look at something so bright. She could feel one of the soft objects beside her brushing closer to her left leg, and she tried to force herself to sit up. Her body was too tired to even consider it though, and she had to settle for letting her eyes slip downward so they could examine the rest of the room she had found herself in.
The room was cozy and comforting, meant to bring peace to all those who were unlucky enough to end up there. It was the infirmary of the Brave Olivine, she remembered. She had been there before, but this was the first time she had ever found herself as the one hurt enough to be forced onto the bed. She could barely recall how any of it had happened. She wasn't supposed to be there, was she? She didn't know where exactly she should have been, but it wasn't meant to be there, was it?
Her gaze settled on a small cat Pokémon sitting off to the left side of her legs, and she recognized it as a Sprigatito. That was right. This was Sprigatito, her partner Pokémon. Sprigatito was sound asleep but taking comfort in her presence, trying to press as much of her feline body up against her partner's leg as possible. The girl smiled at the sight, and she began to feel her heart relax despite its previous screams about the danger she could have been in without realizing it. So long as Sprigatito was there, she was safe.
Next, the girl directed her attention to the opposite side of her legs. A turtle Pokémon was curled up there, its head resting on its front legs. The turtle was unlike anything she had ever seen before... No, that wasn't true. She had seen it before. It had been there in the center of that sphere of glowing light. The gleam had swallowed her, and in the blink of an eye--
She remembered.
The day before, she had been caught up in a battle between the Explorers and Rising Volt Tacklers. At the end of the fight, she was left in free fall, hurtling through the air only to be caught by Friede's Charizard. For the first time in weeks, she was back where she belonged. She had returned to the Rising Volt Tacklers after the Explorers had been keeping her as a member of their team for ages. They had told her that she was one of them, and they had called her by the name Opal... But now, she knew the truth. She was not Opal at all.
Her name was Liko, and she was a Rising Volt Tackler.
Liko slowly pushed herself up into a sitting position, but the room around her began to swim and spin from the exertion. She hissed at the pain assaulting the sides of her skull, and she tried to focus on the two constants on either sides of her body: the two Pokémon there with her. She recognized Sprigatito, and she knew the two of them had shared many memories together, but the other one was out of her reach. She didn't know what it could have been called, just that she had seen it before. It... It was a friend of hers. She knew it was. It had saved her when she was on the verge of falling apart the day before.
Liko couldn't believe what she was seeing. She couldn't believe she was back on the Brave Olivine after all that time... She had been kept in the Explorers' base for so long, and now... It felt like all of the memories from her time with them were being kept out of her reach. She was trying to reach through a thick layer of water, but she couldn't seem to find a way to break through it. She wanted to try, but at the same time, she was terrified of all that could have been waiting for her on the other side. None of this was supposed to happen. She was supposed to stay with the Rising Volt Tacklers all along, but instead...
Instead, she had been kidnapped. She had been in an alleyway searching for a spice to give to Murdock when he was unable to find it on his own, and that was when that... That man appeared. Spinel, was it? That was what he had called himself when they were working together as members of the Explorers. He was the one who had done this to her... But she couldn't remember the finer points of it. In a way, it felt like she had gone to sleep just before she met Spinel for the first time. After that, she woke up the night of the battle against the black Rayquaza. Everything from before the previous night felt like it was a haze that was far out of her control, and her chest felt like it was going to erode away at itself from the inside out the instant she tried to understand the details of it.
The door to the infirmary opened, and Liko flinched on instinct. She didn't know what had come to force her body to recoil when she thought she heard someone coming, but her limbs reacted regardless. She only began to unravel herself once again when she realized the newcomer was not a threat at all. Mollie was walking in from the hallway outside the infirmary, and she pulled the door shut gently in her wake. "Liko... I'm glad to see you're awake," Mollie greeted. Her face was soft and tender, but Liko could tell that she had not gotten much sleep the night before. It would have been shocking to her if anyone had slept well after what happened. "How are you feeling?"
Liko didn't know how to answer most of the questions that were racing through her mind, but that was one of the last ones she even wanted to attempt to reply to. She didn't know if she would ever be fine again when she felt like a stranger in her own body. She didn't remember falling asleep after the end of the fight. She just knew that she had started to cry after her memories began returning to her, and everything else was a blur. "I... I'm as fine as I can be," Liko forced herself to say even though she knew it was nowhere near the specific response that Mollie was searching for. "But... I feel weird. It's like... I don't know. I feel like I'm not understanding what's going on." She remembered that she had been found by the Rising Volt Tacklers again after the battle the night before... Or maybe she didn't remember it at all. Were knowing and remembering the same thing? Liko couldn't tell, but the thought made her head pound with a foreign pain, and she wanted it to stop more than she could ever put to words.
"That's understandable. A lot happened yesterday," Mollie said, but Liko felt like it was the understatement of a lifetime. There was a lot that had happened the day before, but just those words did not feel sufficient. They never could. Liko felt as if she had died and then been reborn again in the span of just a few hours, and all she could do was force herself to face the world again the following morning. How could she do that? How could she even entertain the idea of getting out of bed when it felt like all it was going to do was bring her even greater pain than she had already been put through?
Liko stared down at her hands, and she wondered if they had always shaken when she tried to examine them up close. Her entire body felt like it was trembling, like an earthquake had been set off inside of her, and now her only choice was to let the aftershocks consume her until there was nothing else left. She was going to die if she sat there, but if she did anything else, then she was going to die in a different way. The entire world felt like it was all too much, and Liko couldn't decide if she wanted to fight back or just let the enormity of her circumstances spare her the trouble and crush her now.
Mollie began to check Liko over from head to toe, searching for any signs of external injury. Liko already knew there would be nothing. She didn't know if she had sustained any wounds, but she was certain somehow that Mollie would not be able to find any evidence of the injuries that may have once been there across her skin or within her flesh. "What do you remember?" Mollie asked, her voice fighting to stay level beneath the tides of pure rage that came with acknowledging the misery of their circumstances.
Liko hesitated for a long moment, and she forced herself to breathe through the anxiety that wanted to crush her. "I... I was a member of the Explorers," she forced herself to say even though those words did nothing to capture the weight of everything that Liko knew she had been through. "I was forced into it. The person who did it was a man by the name of Spinel. When I was there, I... I was operating under the name of Opal. I don't remember much of what happened when I was with them, but... I'm back here now. I'm... I'm a Rising Volt Tackler again."
Even as Liko said that last sentence, she knew it wasn't entirely accurate. She had never once stopped being a Rising Volt Tackler. The Explorers could take her away from her home all they wanted, but they would never be able to take the piece of the Rising Volt Tacklers out of her heart once it had come to thrive there. Liko was never meant to be an Explorer, and she was never going to let a thing happen for her to feel like she had to become one again. She would fight with everything she had to prove that she was meant to be with the Rising Volt Tacklers. It wouldn't be easy, but it was all she really could do.
Liko forced herself to breathe as Mollie lifted up one of her arms to check it for any signs of injury. It was difficult to describe, but Liko felt as if there was a wound on her soul. Mollie could look all she wanted for proof that Liko had been hurt during her time in the Explorers, but she wasn't going to find anything. It was as if the only injuries that had been left behind had been forced into her heart, and Liko wasn't going to be able to find those no matter how hard she tried to search. She wanted to understand what had happened to her, but she couldn't seem to do it. There was something fighting her every step of the way, like her mind was trying to seal off the truth from her. Perhaps it already knew that Liko would not be able to bear all of the secrets that it kept.
It was strange to think about. Liko didn't think she had experienced this when she was with the Explorers... Well, that wasn't entirely true. She hadn't remembered her past life when she was there with the Explorers, but she also hadn't felt like her recent memories were so far out of her reach. Sometimes, the world felt like it was passing her by in a daze, but it wasn't ever quite like this. Liko couldn't quite describe it. She felt as if she existed on one side of a thick sheet of water, and the rest of the world waited for her on the other side of it. She could fight with everything she had to try and swim through it, but she was never going to find the success she sought. She was never going to find the peace she knew she needed if she was going to recover from this. Her mind was fighting her, and it wanted to keep all that she had been through far out of her grasp.
But Liko didn't understand why. How was she supposed to function at all when her mind was working against her to such an extent? It didn't seem possible. She wanted to find a way to keep moving onward, but how could she do that when she had no history to pull from? Liko supposed that she had found a way to do it when she was a member of the Explorers, but she would never go so far as to say that she actually felt alive when she was with them. She was surviving, but she was not truly thriving. There was always something that kept her from feeling like she could let her guard down enough to be comfortable, like her mind was trying to protect her in its own way. There was a schism between who Liko had been as Opal and who she felt like she was now. Realistically, those two versions of her were meant to be one and the same. She may have been brainwashed and taken over by something else when she joined the Explorers, but she was still herself. She still lived in the same body, and she still had the same reflection. Why did it feel like there was so much that she just wasn't meant to understand anymore? Why did it feel like she was never going to understand it again?
Mollie finished out the rest of her checkup silently, and Liko could tell by the look on her face that she was beyond worried about what she had found... Or more accurately, what she hadn't found. Liko didn't know what her symptoms were meant to be evidence of or what could have left them behind, but she knew that her clear skin and her warring mind were at odds with each other. These two truths were not meant to coexist, and yet, they were supposed to. Mollie was confused by it too, and she was doing her best to understand, but no one was ever meant to. This was a misery that Liko was going to carry by herself for the rest of her days. She could not expect others to save her, and the sooner she was able to snap herself out of expecting it, the better off they would all be.
Liko bit back a sniffle as she stared up at the ceiling for a few moments more. She was exhausted, but she was going to have to recover. She could pull herself together. If she chose to sit in her misery, then she would make everyone feel worse. She could do this. Liko didn't know how she was going to find the strength to face the world again, but she would do it. She had come that far, and she was only going to fight harder as time went on.
The world was counting on her to shed the skin of Opal and become Liko once more, and Liko knew she had no choice but to rise to the challenge.
~~~~~
"Can we go in?"
Outside the infirmary, Dot was wringing her hands together beneath the sleeves of her cardigan, staring at the door with a frown on her face. Roy was just beside her, and he couldn't seem to decide if he should be looking at her as he answered her question or looking at the door. "I want to," Roy said. "But I don't know if we can... Mollie could still be looking her over, and I don't want to get in the middle of that."
Dot nodded, swallowing as much of her anxiety as she could. She reached out for the door with a hesitant hand before deciding to bite the bullet and just knock. What was the worst that could happen? Mollie would say that Liko wasn't ready to see visitors right now, and Dot and Roy would just have to turn around and go back where they had come from. They would be able to return another time later in the day, and they could see how Liko was feeling then. Everything would be fine.
~~~~~
A knock came at the door a moment later, and Liko had to fight to keep her body from jumping six feet into the air. She suddenly wanted to escape her own skin, to leave it all behind, but she knew it to be impossible. She was going to get hurt again it was going to be that man with the blue hair the one who had ruined her he had come to her room before he wasn't supposed to be there but he always found an excuse anyway because he didn't know how to--
"Liko? Mollie?" Roy asked, the words coming out soft and anxious. "Can we come inside?"
Roy's voice was like a sudden dunk into a frigid ocean, and Liko found herself gasping when she realized the person who had arrived was not Spinel at all. She was safe. She was there on the Brave Olivine, and she was surrounded by people who cared for her. They would protect her no matter what happened. Roy was not going to hurt her. Neither were any of the other members of the Brave Olivine's crew. Liko was a Rising Volt Tackler again, and she was safe.
"Come in," Mollie called out. She had finished her examination of Liko's body, and she had started to write down a few notes on a clipboard. Liko found herself struggling to not stare as Mollie focused on her work. Liko was absolutely terrified of anything and everything that Mollie could have been writing, and she wanted to run from all of it more than she could ever hope to describe.
The door pushed itself open at last, and Liko looked up to see Roy and Dot standing there together. That was right. This was one of the first times Liko had ever seen Dot face to face. They had spoken a handful of times through a screen or a door, but this... This was different. Dot was there. She was real. She was worried about Liko, and that was the reason she was there now. It sent Liko's heart racing in her chest, and she wondered if it was inappropriate to feel this thrilled yet anxious about just looking at someone in person.
"I'm so glad you're alright," Roy went on once he was inside. He looked like he was on the verge of tears, but he forced himself to fight them back so as to not frighten Liko. "Well, as alright as you can be, I guess. There's a lot going on right now, but... If there's anything I can do to help you feel better, then you just have to say the word, okay?"
"Yeah!" Dot chimed in. "We want to do what we can to help you, and... We want to make this as easy for you as possible."
Liko forced herself through a short nod, and she looked down at Sprigatito where her partner was still curled up next to her leg. "I... I appreciate that, but I don't really know if I need anything right now," Liko replied, but her mind immediately told her that was a lie. "I-I mean, I don't know what I want or need. It feels like everything is just too much to handle right now. I don't understand how it all happened, and... My time in the Explorers feels like a giant blur that I still can't make any sense of. I'm glad that I'm away from them and back here on the ship with all of you, but I don't know what to do about any of this. It's all too much. I feel like it's going to crush me if I'm not careful, and I... I guess I'm scared."
Roy and Dot exchanged anxious glances at that, and Liko immediately felt herself struck with the overwhelming feeling that she had said or done something wrong. She hadn't meant to scare them, but she knew that was probably inevitable as long as her tongue was so intent on betraying her. "I know that a lot is going on right now," Dot finally forced herself to say. "But you're not doing this alone anymore. You're back with us. You're a Rising Volt Tackler again, and you're safe. We're all going to do what we can to make sure that never happens again. We're going to help you no matter what it takes. I promise."
Liko felt her chest grow lighter and lighter with each passing word Dot spoke. Somehow, they felt like a balm against her worst anxieties, proof that there was a brighter tomorrow waiting for her out there somewhere. Liko hadn't ever thought she would be able to find peace again after what happened even if she hadn't imagined it in terms quite that precise. Now though, Liko felt like there was a future for her to look forward to. She didn't know how she was going to reach it or what she wanted to try and get out of it, but she wanted to try. She owed it to herself to try and fix things. She could fight for something better.
Liko bit back a sniffle, knowing that she would only overwhelm herself more if she started to cry now. "Thank you," she whispered, but a voice in the back of her mind told her to not grow too comfortable. She had thought she was safe back when she was with the Explorers too, and that had gone horrifically wrong. Liko wanted to argue with herself that this was different, that she could count on the Rising Volt Tacklers even when she couldn't rely on anyone else, but her mind simply refused to listen.
"We'll make sure that nothing happens to you. We won't let any of the Explorers lay a hand on you again," Roy declared, his voice filled with such great conviction that it almost fully sliced through the haze of doubt that had settled over Liko's mind. There was a small waver of uncertainty at the tail end of his sentence though, and that was enough to give Liko pause for a long moment as she watched him silently.
Mollie sighed from her place elsewhere in the infirmary, and Liko was almost tempted to ask what they were both so worried about... But her memories offered her the information she sought a second later. She hadn't gone back to the Brave Olivine with only the Rising Volt Tacklers the night before. Someone else had joined her. Amethio... He had chosen to walk away from the Explorers in the name of coming with her. He had been given the choice to fight for the organization that he had been following throughout his entire life or to trail after Liko as she sought out something better for herself. In the end, he had chosen her. He had decided to leave, and...
Liko wished she knew how to feel about it. On one hand, she was glad that Amethio was there with her. He had been such a pillar of support when she was one of the Explorers as Opal. She may not have recalled many of the specific details, but she knew that he had done a lot to take care of her even when most others would not have bothered. He had been a source of care and kindness for her when she thought she was facing the rest of the world on her own. She was glad he had been there, and she was happy he had decided to come back with her.
But on the other hand, it didn't feel real at all. Amethio had been so dedicated to the Explorers, but it seemed like none of that had mattered much when he was given the chance to think about following Liko. He had once been planning to kidnap her to force her to follow what the Explorers wanted out of her and her pendant, but now, he was willing to leave everything behind to stand by her. It filled Liko with an overwhelming sense of guilt, and she had no idea how she was meant to handle any of it.
She hadn't ever thought Amethio would be capable of such kind things. When they first met, he had terrified her. He wasn't that much older than her, and yet, he was still intimidating. He had tried to take her back to the Explorers through force, and it was only thanks to luck and the Rising Volt Tacklers arriving to save her that Liko was able to get away. If not for them, she could have been taken ages ago, and she wouldn't have ever been given the chance to thrive on the Brave Olivine at all. She had thought Amethio was cruel in those days, and she was certain she would fear him for the rest of her life.
But when she was acting under the name of Opal, the exact opposite was true. The Rising Volt Tacklers had been her enemies according to the people she was living with, and Amethio was her only source of safety. They had grown so close when she was Opal, and it had been enough for him to want to walk away from the organization that he had been following for his entire life up to that point. Liko felt like the guilt was going to rip her apart. Amethio didn't seem like he belonged there, but he had chosen her anyway. She barely recalled what he had done to treat her with such kindness and grace, but he had walked away from the Explorers so he would be able to spend more time with her. He had done all of that just to make sure she was safe and alive after all that had happened.
"I... I have a favor to ask," Liko choked out, and she could feel the atmosphere of the room change as everyone looked in her direction. "Amethio... He's here on the ship, isn't he?"
Mollie glanced over at Roy and Dot, trying to figure out what they should say. That was all Liko needed to see though to know that her theories were correct. Amethio was there, but he was off taking care of something else after all that had happened. In the end, Mollie was the first to speak up with a slow nod. "He insisted on coming back with you after you regained your memories. He said he belonged by your side," Mollie explained.
Liko felt her chest go tight. She couldn't believe Amethio had said those things about her of all people. He had no reason to want to come back with her if it meant that she was leaving with the Explorers, and yet, he had chosen to do so anyway. She was glad for it, and yet, she hoped that he did not live to regret it. "I... I want to talk to him," Liko forced herself to say. She didn't know what exactly she was going to say or how she was going to phrase it, but she knew that she had to try and reach out to him. If Amethio really was there, then she had to talk to him. He had to hear what she had to say, and she had to understand just what had happened and why he was there at all.
Once again, Roy and Dot looked at one another, and Liko could feel the heaviness in the air between them. They had grown close in her absence, and she could see it easily. They could communicate so much with just a single glance, and Liko found herself wondering what else she had missed out on when she was with the Explorers. What other bonding opportunities had passed her by when she had no way of getting back to the place she wanted to call home? What other things would be out of her reach forever because of things that had been out of her control from the start?
"I... I'll go get him," Dot finally settled on saying, though there was a waver to her voice that told Liko she was far from feeling as confident as she was trying to make it seem. "He was given another room on the ship last night, and... I guess he's still in there." After a few moments spent staring at Liko, almost as if she was waiting for Liko to take her request back, Dot started toward the door. "I'll be right back."
The silence seemed to strangle Liko as she watched the door close in Dot's wake. She forced herself to exhale all of the air that she had been keeping trapped in her lungs, staring down at her legs where they were stretched out on the bed before her. All of this felt so wrong, and she didn't know how she was supposed to make it feel right again. It just seemed impossible and overwhelming. She didn't know why any of this had happened or how she could fix it. Liko couldn't help but fear there was never going to be a way to fix it at all.
She would try though. She didn't have much of any other choice. The world was trying to move on without her, but Liko would not let it without a fight. She had made it back to her life, and she was going to do everything she could to prove that it was hers... No matter how challenging it proved to be.
~~~~~
Amethio couldn't believe it.
When the battle first was announced, Amethio had been worried about it. He had seen the way Opal reacted to Spinel many times, and he was certain that having the two of them in the same space at all was risky, much less forcing them to collaborate on a battle as big as one that involved pursuing the black Rayquaza. All of this was dangerous, and Amethio couldn't even begin to understand why the leaders of the Explorers were so willing to put everything at risk in order to capture the ancient Pokémon. Opal didn't have to be there. If she did have to be there, then Spinel could have done something else. It didn't need to be this way.
And yet, that was the way it had been decided to be, and Amethio couldn't fight it. During the battle, he had done all he could to focus on the black Rayquaza, and in doing so, he hadn't realized what was happening to Opal until it was too late... But she wasn't Opal anymore, was she? When Amethio looked at her the night before, he had been certain from a single glance that she was Liko. He struggled to fully articulate the difference, but he was confident there was a distinction between the two, and the girl he was around now was not the one that he had grown used to taking care of and protecting over the last few weeks.
Amethio had been thinking quite a bit about what it would be like to walk away from the Explorers in the name of taking care of Opal. She had been through so much ever since she was told to join the organization, and Amethio had seen it for himself. He wanted to do what he could to help her regardless of how impossible it felt, and when he looked at her, he knew that he would choose her if he was forced to decide between her and the rest of the Explorers. Opal was struggling so much every day, and Amethio could feel it from a single glance, much more so through all of the other time they had been spending together. The Explorers were not the right place for her, and Amethio could see it even if Opal did not want to admit that something had gone wrong for her to end up there in the first place.
But when the moment finally arrived... Amethio couldn't believe that he had made this choice. He had been raised as part of the Explorers. For his entire life, he had been certain that he would be able to stand tall and proud, able to declare that he was doing what he knew was right in the name of the organization and the world... But Amethio didn't know if he believed in that anymore. He didn't know how he was meant to stomach having anything to do with an organization that let Spinel do such horrible things. Spinel had been running wild ever since he first found Liko and started to transform her into Opal. Amethio liked to think the organization was not truly rotten to the core, but it was difficult for him to believe it fully when he knew of how much was going on behind the scenes.
Amethio had seen the terror on Liko's face as she hurtled through the air, and he had recognized that something had happened far beyond what he could ever hope to control or help. Amethio knew he could have gone back to the Explorers, but when he saw Friede starting to fly away with her, he knew what he had to do. He knew that Zirc and Onia were bound to worry about him for as long as it took him to get back to them and explain why he had made the choice he had, but Amethio couldn't bring himself to care as much as he should have. He needed to be there for Opal. That was practically the only thing that made sense anymore, and Amethio wanted to commit to it however he could.
The night before, Amethio had decided that he was going to turn his back on the Explorers either temporarily or permanently, and he still wasn't sure of which one it was going to end up being. He had been haunted by the thought all night, and sleep hadn't come easily to him even when he was given a room to stay in for the time being. Everyone had been too tired to push or question him when he said he was coming with them. Amethio knew that hadn't been a wise decision on their part, but he was too grateful to the Rising Volt Tacklers for choosing to trust him that he couldn't bring himself to complain. He needed to be there. He couldn't just leave Opal behind. Even when the world felt like it was ending, he knew that much for sure. There were some truths that simply could not be questioned, and Amethio knew this to be one of them.
The night before, Amethio had seen his world end, and yet...
~~~~~
Amethio didn't entirely recall the hasty excuse he had passed off to Zirc and Onia before he took to the skies again. His gaze was locked exclusively on Friede, his Charizard, and where Liko was resting in the dragon's arms. Amethio could see the distant jolting of Liko's shoulders with every silent sob she forced out of her lips. She was exhausted, and if Amethio didn't know better, he would have thought she had died when she was sent crashing through the sky into Charizard's arms.
The Rising Volt Tacklers retreated from the scene of the fight after the black Rayquaza disappeared into the sky, and Amethio followed them. He had to urge Corviknight to fly faster in order to catch up with them, but eventually, he managed to fall into place beside them. The group had come to a stop just in front of the entrance to the Brave Olivine. Amethio found himself shuddering at the sight of the ship. He had been there before, but it had always been under the pretense of violence. He knew he should have been trying to fight even now, but he couldn't bring himself to care. All that mattered was Opal... Liko... Some combination of the two that Amethio feared he would never quite be able to understand.
Liko was silent and shocked in Charizard's arms when the dragon settled down on the ground. She was staring ahead blankly, seeming as if she had never truly seen the world in her life. Her eyes were glassy and distant, proof that she was nowhere near the scene of the battle that had threatened to destroy her so completely. Amethio's chest tightened at the sight of her. How was it that Liko and Opal were the same person but felt so completely different? How was it that they wore the same face but still felt like reflections of entirely separate ideas? How was it that they had managed to convince Amethio to walk away from everything he had ever thought he knew about his life?
Friede climbed down from Charizard's back, and he looked at Amethio with a frown on his face. "What are you doing here?" he asked, unable to keep the suspicion out of his voice. "Shouldn't you be with the rest of the Explorers?"
Amethio couldn't blame Friede for asking the question at all. He would have wondered the same thing if one of the Rising Volt Tacklers had come to him declaring that they wanted to stand alongside him and the rest of the Explorers from then on... But at the same time, he couldn't bring himself to leave. Amethio looked at Liko where she was exhausted in Charizard's grasp, and he swallowed dryly, the motion making the back of his throat burn. "I... I want to stay with her," Amethio said, though he couldn't help but notice how he hadn't referred to Liko by name. Somehow, it felt wrong to call her Liko after knowing her as Opal for so long. At the same time, it felt wrong to call her Opal after seeing her fall through the air in a way that did not feel like it could have matched Opal in the slightest. It was difficult to describe, and yet, Amethio knew that he would not be able to fully commit to calling her by either name until he was certain of which one she wanted to be referred by.
Friede exchanged glances with all of the other adults in the area. They looked beyond anxious and shocked by Amethio's words, but they didn't know how to protest when there was such endless resolve in his eyes. In the end, Friede was the first one who spoke up again, and there was a quiet fire in his gaze when he took a step toward Amethio. "Are you going to leave the Explorers behind then?" Friede asked, the words a challenge in a way that Amethio would never be able to describe. Even so, it sent a chill sprinting up and down his spine that threatened to tear him apart.
Amethio didn't know how he was meant to respond to a question like that. He still didn't know if he wanted to leave the Explorers fully. He had been with the organization for his entire life, and he wanted to call it home for the rest of his future too... But he couldn't do it. He simply couldn't bring himself to walk away from Liko after everything he had seen her go through. She had been struggling beyond words when she was with the Explorers, and Amethio couldn't leave her behind. He couldn't go along with the pain that he knew would come to her if she was forced to stay with a group that had done so much to hurt her both recently and in the distant past as well.
But Amethio couldn't say that he wanted to go back to the organization and try to find a way to set this right. He couldn't tell them that he still believed there was a chance the Explorers were good at heart. He couldn't say that he thought there was a chance all of this was just some cosmic horror brought on by the actions of a single man... Amethio had to earn the trust of the Rising Volt Tacklers if he was to stand by Liko, Opal, or whoever she had become within the last few minutes. He could not force the rest of them to trust him if they did not want to, and right now, that meant he was going to have to leave all of his true feelings by the door. He would have to do what was right to protect her, and if that meant he had to keep this a secret, then... Then he knew what he had to do.
"I... I do," Amethio finally forced himself to say. "I do want to leave the Explorers." His chest burned from the weight of the lie. He had hated having to hide the truth from Opal when he knew there was something horrible at play behind the loss of her memories, and he hated having to bury the truth from the Rising Volt Tacklers too. Amethio didn't know why he felt so bad about it; he knew he was going to have to hide things if he wanted to get them to trust him. He hadn't ever particularly cared about their opinions when he was fighting against them... So why did it bother him so much now that he was going to have to hide everything from them?
Friede hesitated for another few seconds before he forced himself to nod. "Alright." He clearly had more to say and much more on his mind, but he didn't say anything to try and deter Amethio from coming onto the ship. "Let's go. We have to get out of here before they get any bright ideas about following us."
Amethio nodded, barely able to believe what Friede was saying. He was being invited onto the ship. He was being invited to join the Rising Volt Tacklers even if it could hardly be called anything official. Amethio's throat was burning from the force of the dread that came with taking such a treacherous action, and yet, he couldn't bring himself to stop. If this was where Liko was going to be, then he knew he had to follow her. It wasn't just a matter of wanting to take care of the person who the Explorers needed in order to see their plans through. It was about the girl who had shown Amethio that something horrible was happening just under his nose. It was about protecting her when there were so many people who were more than fine with leaving her to suffer with pains far beyond their wildest imagination.
Amethio could not believe what he was doing, and he was certain he would come to regret it in some way or another... But he would not let himself think about it now. If this was what he had to do in order to protect Liko, then he would do it. That was his mission, wasn't it? He had been told to look after Opal. If he really thought about it, he was doing what he could to look after the person he had been told to protect. This was working with the Explorers' greater plan. It may have looked like a betrayal at a first glance, but Amethio knew better than that. Of course he did.
Or at the very least, that was what he was choosing to tell himself. The last thing he wanted was to find that he was betraying more than he ever wanted to acknowledge... But now was not the time for such fears. He had someone to look after, and he couldn't let that go for the world.
~~~~~
Amethio still couldn't believe what he had done. It felt impossible to imagine now, and yet, there he was within the room on the Brave Olivine that he had been given the night before. He had been allowed onto the airship, and for the first time, he didn't have to break onto its surface as an enemy. He had been invited there by people who didn't know if they could fully trust him or not, but they wanted to take the chance on him. They had seen that he was important to Liko, and Amethio was certain that was the reason they had even entertained the thought.
That was who it all came down to at the end of the day. Amethio wanted to take care of Opal, and in doing so, he had found a way to follow Liko onto the Brave Olivine... But Opal wasn't really there anymore, was she? At the very least, she wasn't there in the sense that Amethio had once known her to be. It was simply complicated, Amethio supposed. He wanted to be able to protect her, but she wasn't who he thought. Nothing was the way he had thought it was anymore, and he had no idea how he was meant to cope with any of it.
Amethio forced himself through a deep breath. He couldn't let his dread get the better of him. The Explorers were not rotten to the core the way he had come to fear. There was a small leg of the organization that was rotten, and that branch was centered entirely around Spinel. Amethio simply couldn't believe that it had been the will of the entire organization to have Liko kidnapped and brainwashed. Taking her so she could activate the pendant was one thing, but Amethio would not ever dare to say that his grandfather would condone brainwashing in the name of achieving his goals. Gibeon would never do such a thing. The Explorers were still the organization that Amethio wanted to spend his life with, and Spinel would not be able to ruin that simply because he was corrupted to the core in a way that no one else was.
Yes... That was right. The Explorers were still good. They had to be. That was all Amethio had ever believed, and he knew it was all he could believe now too. Spinel was a threat, and he was beyond dangerous, but he was the only source of true peril within the organization. Amethio wanted to push back against Spinel, but there were others who were safe. He trusted Zirc and Onia, and he wanted to rely on the ideals of his grandfather too. The Explorers were still good, and Amethio would prove it. One day, when he was certain Spinel had been taken care of, then he would go back. Perhaps he would even be able to convince Liko to come with him so they could handle this peacefully. The Explorers and the Rising Volt Tacklers did not need to fight. Liko simply needed to cooperate, and once Spinel was out of the picture, Amethio saw no reason for her to not go along with them. There may have been corruption, but it was all centered around a single man.
And Amethio was determined to do what he could to expose that. Spinel had been harmful and dangerous to Liko and Opal in the past, but Amethio was going to prove that he was dangerous and ensure he was never given the chance to be around anyone vulnerable ever again. All he had to do was prove to the world that Spinel was a threat, and the Explorers would return to righteousness once more. Spinel would be eliminated, and Amethio was going to be the one to do it. He wasn't going to let Spinel hurt anyone ever again so long as there was something he could do about it.
A knock at the door snapped Amethio out of his thoughts. For a moment, his heart rate spiked, and he had to wonder if whoever was there could somehow read his thoughts. He knew none of the Rising Volt Tacklers would want to hear what was going through his head, and Amethio hoped everything was fine... But his fears were silenced when he heard Dot's voice from the other side of the door. "Hey," she began. "Liko wants to see you. Can you come to the infirmary?"
Amethio nearly jolted out of his skin at Dot's words. In an instant, he swung his legs off the side of his bed and walked toward the door. He opened it to find Dot standing in the hall nearby. She refused to meet his gaze even once he was in view, instead opting to stare down at the ground. "Let's go," Amethio told her. Dot nodded, but Amethio could see the hesitation behind it. Dot did not entirely trust him. He couldn't say he was shocked by that. Of course she didn't want to trust him. He had done awful things in the past, and it was up to him now to decide what he wanted to do with that.
Mollie was walking out of the infirmary when Dot and Amethio arrived. Roy was still inside, sitting in a chair and staring down at the floor with a heavy frown. He pulled himself out of his head when Dot knocked against the doorframe. "Dot!" Roy greeted, but his face fell at the sight of Amethio. Once again, Amethio could not bring himself to be surprised. Roy had very little reason to trust him, and Amethio wouldn't have trusted himself if he had been in Roy's position either.
"Amethio," Liko breathed. She looked unnaturally pale even after a full night of sleep, though Amethio supposed that crying herself to sleep probably hadn't done much for her depleted energy in the first place. "Thank you for coming. I... I had a few questions for you, if you don't mind."
Amethio nodded, fighting his way through the knot in the back of his throat. He closed the door to the infirmary behind him, leaving him trapped with Roy and Dot. He could only hope neither one of them decided to express their lack of trust in a way that would hurt him, though he wouldn't have been shocked if they did. He was sure he would have deserved it if they did.
"Did... Did you mean what you said back when we were in the Explorers?" Liko asked softly. All of a sudden, she had lost all of her confidence, choosing to twiddle her thumbs together and look at the ground instead of turning to see how Amethio was looking at her. "You said that you were going to stand by me no matter what, and... I don't know. I guess I've just been wondering if you really meant that seriously."
Amethio nodded before he could even think of taking the words back, not that he would have in the first place. "I did," he confirmed. "You couldn't be around him anymore, and..." Amethio wanted to say more, but his words would not come to him, so he eventually let them go. They floated away like dandelions on the wind, and Amethio chose to stare at the ground too, almost feeling like Liko's gaze would rip him apart if he allowed it to get too deep into his head.
Liko's face softened into a smile, but there was still unspeakable tension behind it. "Thank you," Liko whispered. "I appreciate that."
For a brief moment, the set of Liko's face seemed to change, and Amethio felt as if all of the wind had been knocked out of his lungs. She looked less like Liko and more like Opal... But it was gone just as quickly as it had appeared. Amethio hadn't even realized just how different the sets of their faces were until he was given the chance to tell them apart right away. Liko and Opal felt like separate beings in his mind, but when he looked at their body now, he felt like they were truly different outside of his head too.
"I don't know all that much about what happened to me when I was with the Explorers," Liko went on, and Amethio realized she was still talking only when she looked up to meet his gaze properly. "But I know that I trusted you during my time there, and I think I can still trust you now too. So if you're going to stay here, then... Then I would really appreciate having you around, Amethio."
It was almost criminal how much things had changed. Once upon a time, Liko never would have trusted Amethio with anything. He could hardly blame her for it. When she hadn't cooperated with him and his request to come back to the Explorers' headquarters, he had tried to abduct her... But none of that seemed to matter anymore. Liko was looking up at him with such kindness and trust. She wanted him there because of the time they had shared as members of the Explorers. Her memories of her time as Opal seemed to be fragmented by all that had happened, but she still wanted to be with Amethio. She still needed to be with him. It was chilling, and yet, Amethio couldn't bring himself to look away.
Amethio bottled up and swallowed down every word that he wanted to share about how he thought the Explorers were still good at the end of the day. He pretended he did not want to go back more than anything and clenched his fingers tightly enough to leave behind crescent imprints on his palms. "For as long as you will have me here, I will stay."
Liko smiled like the sun, and Amethio bathed in its light like the moon. "Thank you, Amethio... For everything."
~~~~~
Liko opened her eyes slowly, and the crashing of waves echoed in her ears. She blinked a few times once she was certain of where she was... Or at the very least, she was as certain as she could have been. Somehow, none of this felt like it was even close to real. Every noise she heard felt distant and far out of her reach, and the world around her felt like it was going to slip between her fingers like sand the instant she gave it a chance.
The ocean stretched out before her, and Liko stared out over the expanses of water silently. The sea surrounded her for as far as the eye could see... Or at least almost as far. When Liko looked closely into the distance, she could see the opposite shore. There was a person standing there, and while she could not say for certain what she looked like at the moment... Liko almost thought the person waiting for her on the other edge of the sea was her. Their silhouettes certainly looked similar enough even though it was impossible to make out any of the details.
Liko began to walk forward, and her ankles were consumed completely by the water. The sand beneath her feet was unsteady and seemed ready to drag her down at a moment's notice. The sky overheard was dark and stormy, preparing to release a tear of lightning whenever she decided to cross the boundaries of this false world. The ocean was familiar to her too, but it was not because she had a particular attachment to this layout of the sea. The color of the water perfectly matched the shade of blue that she had been seeing in her silent nightmares ever since she joined the Explorers. The waves looked just like Spinel's softly curling hair. He was the one who had caused all of this, and he was going to--
Spinel's laugh echoed through Liko's mind, and all efforts to try and make it to the opposite shore and to her mirror image stopped immediately. Her hands flew to her temples, and pain rushed through her skull. Horrifying imagery flashed against her eyelids, but she couldn't make out any of the details that would even come close to implying what it was that she was seeing. All she really knew was that she was afraid and that Spinel was the person she was meant to be afraid of. She wasn't safe as long as he was there and he was going to come for her because he always did nowhere was safe when he was still out there and he would always be out there and--
~~~~~
Liko shot up in her bed all at once, gasping as she pressed one hand against her chest. She was still in the infirmary, she found, and Sprigatito and the strange turtle Pokémon from the day before were curled up by her ankles. Liko pressed her leg as far up against Sprigatito's warmth as it could go without disturbing her partner. She wasn't drowning the cold of the ocean. She was safe there in the warmth of the Brave Olivine. Her Pokémon was there, and she was going to find a way to be alright.
Liko's head was pounding when she forced herself to lay back down, and she tried and failed to massage the pain away with both hands. Spinel's laugh was still echoing in her mind, and she had to wonder if perhaps it was the reason she was feeling so horrible all of a sudden. Spinel was a horrifying man, and her headache was only going to get worse the more she thought about him. Everything would only get worse the longer she had to acknowledge that he still existed.
It was strange in more ways than one. Liko couldn't seem to recall what Spinel had done to her, and yet, her body still reacted with such primal fear whenever she thought of him. He was dangerous, but she couldn't remember exactly what he had done to teach her that he was a threat to be fled from and feared. She felt like she should have known, and yet, her mind was seemingly trying to keep its secrets from her even now. It was frustrating to think about. She was back with the Rising Volt Tacklers. Why couldn't she just remember that which she had been forced to forget when she was with the Explorers? She was safe now, wasn't she?
Liko curled over herself in bed, though she was careful to still keep herself close to Sprigatito for as long as she could stand. She didn't want to think about any of this. She wanted to pretend Spinel didn't exist so that she could shove his memory far out of her mind once and for all. None of this was supposed to happen. She was supposed to be safe... But if that was the case, then why did she feel like she was dying? Why did it feel like her pain still wasn't over even now that she was back in the place where she was meant to be protected and cared for? Why couldn't she just move on and focus on the future? Why was the past insisting on haunting her when she was doing all she could to flee from it?
When she finally got back to sleep, Liko dreamed of the sea again, and Spinel's laugh haunted her well into her waking hours.
Notes:
And there's the first chapter of act two! Woohoo!
For act two, we're going to be going over the remainder of arc one of the anime along with all of arc two. This segment is going to be twenty-five chapters long, and I'm very excited for it. Right now, we've got the introduction, and I love how it turned out. This chapter is on the slower side for a reason, and I think it fits very well with everything going on. I don't know. It's just special to me.
And we're starting to get our first hints of something being up with Liko and Opal. People who have read my other Horizons fics probably know where this is going, but for now, we're slowly getting closer to the truth coming out here. I'm really excited. This is what the fic is all about, after all, and it's going to be amazing.
Next time, we'll press on with the newly-started act two. Until then, I hope you all enjoyed this chapter. Feedback is appreciated as always. Have a nice day, everyone!
-Digital
Chapter 22: Forever, We Alone
Summary:
Liko connects with the strange new Pokémon that emerged from her pendant.
Chapter Text
Liko could still feel the cobwebs in her mind after she awoke from an all too familiar dream the day after her return to the Rising Volt Tacklers. She blinked to awareness slowly, fighting her way through the haziness that came with dreaming of the sea. It had been haunting her ever since she reclaimed her memories, but she couldn't quite put a finger on why. All she knew was that the shade of the vast sea never seemed to leave her alone. She tried to reach across the vast space between herself and the other shore, but she could never seem to fully close the distance. There was always something stopping her, and Liko wished she knew what to do about it.
Liko sighed as she sat up, rubbing at her head. She had slept in the infirmary again that night to make sure she was safe to return to her room. Now, Liko was certain she was as fine as she could have been. She was exhausted, yes, but she couldn't expect herself to snap out of feeling so deeply tired just after returning to her old life. She was going to need some more time to fully reorient herself in the situation she had come back to. Her exhaustion was no reason for her to stay in the infirmary forever though, and she craved the familiarity of her room on the Brave Olivine more than she had ever thought possible.
It was strange to think that she hadn't missed her time on the airship at all when she was with the Explorers. She hadn't even realized that was something she should have been missing in the first place, and so, she didn't search for the truth of who and what she had been before everything slipped out of her grasp. Liko had thought she was always meant to be with the Explorers and that her entire life had been spent with them even though she couldn't remember it at the time. Now that she was back on the airship though, all Liko wanted to do was go back to her bedroom and enjoy her own space. She wondered if it would be the same as she remembered it from all that time ago. So much had happened, and yet, Liko didn't know if it was enough to change the way her room looked.
Sprigatito meowed and stretched out as she realized Liko was awake for the day, and Liko smiled down at her partner. "Do you want to go back to our room?" Liko asked softly. The words felt foreign to her tongue, and all of a sudden, her mind felt like it was full of cotton. She was overwhelmed by everything, and all she could do was try to push through it to very little success.
Sprigatito meowed her agreement, and Liko started toward the door... But she was cut off by yet another small sound on the bed. She turned to find the small turtle Pokémon that had been with her for the last few days waking up, and Liko gasped in shock. The Pokémon had been asleep ever since Liko first saw it wake up when her memories returned, and she didn't know how to wake it up. As it turned out, she didn't have to do anything at all. The Pokémon yawned and then looked up at her with wide, curious eyes.
Liko patted at her pockets in search of her Rotom phone. It had been taken away from her when she was with the Explorers on account of being left in an alleyway--or at least, that was what Dot had said--but Liko still had the instinct to look for it. She didn't find it anywhere immediately though, and she realized a bit too late that it was sitting on the table next to the bed. Her phone was in remarkably good condition, Liko had to admit. Apparently, Dot had been taking care of it to make sure it was in the best possible condition it could have been when Liko finally returned. Dot had never given up on her once, and she was determined to make sure Liko's phone was ready for her when she came back. It was beyond sweet to think about. Aside from the tiny dent in the corner from when it had fallen to the ground, the phone was exactly as she had left it. She really did owe a lot to Dot for her kindness.
Liko reached out for her phone and held it up in front of the Pokémon, wondering if the Pokédex would be able to tell her just what strange creature had awakened when she regained her memories. In the end though, the app didn't have anything helpful to tell her, and Liko sighed in disappointment. She supposed she should have seen that coming. Why not add in another frustration on top of an already miserable situation of regaining her memories from the depths of the sea?
Still, her lack of familiarity with the Pokémon wasn't enough of a reason for Liko to pause in her previous goals, so she slipped her phone into her pocket. She hadn't even changed out of her outfit that she had been wearing in the Explorers because of how tired she had been the day before. Maybe she would be able to get a change of clothes when she got to her room. She was certain she would be able to find a copy of her favorite outfit there.
Liko scooped the turtle Pokémon into her arms and started toward the door. "Come on," Liko whispered. The turtle gladly settled down into her grasp, seeming to enjoy being lifted off the ground. Liko smiled at the sight, though she wished there was something more she could say or do to understand the situation. She didn't know a thing about this Pokémon, and she hoped that changed sometime soon.
The journey through the airship back to her room was familiar, and yet, Liko felt very strange doing it. So much time had passed since she was last there, but she still remembered exactly where to go. She had lost so much when she was taken by the Explorers, but her body still told her the path to follow. It struck her deeply, and Liko wondered if that knowledge would have faded if she had been stuck with the Explorers for any longer than she already had. How could she have forgotten so much? How could her memories simply be purged from her grasp like that? It felt impossible, and yet, Liko knew it had to be the truth. That was all her life seemed to be anymore.
Liko pushed the door to her room open slowly, and sunlight streamed in through the window. Everything was exactly as she had left it, and there was not so much as a speck of dust on any of her belongings. Her bed was neatly made, and her pillow still had a natural indentation from where Sprigatito had taken a nap ages ago. Her desk was clean too, and Liko brushed her fingers across the surface just to make sure nothing dusty had settled onto it. Someone must have been keeping her room clean while she was gone. That was the only explanation she could think of.
Liko set the turtle Pokémon down on the bed and turned to look at the mirror hanging from the back of her door. The rest of her room may have looked the same, but she looked very different. Her hair had grown longer than she was used to. She hadn't noticed it at all as Opal, but she was certain her hair had grown when she wasn't paying attention. She could have sworn she had gotten a little bit taller too. At a glance, she seemed the same, but Liko knew something was wrong. It was as if she had been torn out of her skin for weeks on end only to be dropped back into her body again. Could it even still be called hers when she had been unable to do anything with it for so long?
The sight of her outfit from her time in the Explorers made her feel even worse. Someone had taken her mask away from her after she was brought back to the airship. She couldn't remember exactly what had happened, and she didn't think she wanted to either. That night would remain in her memory for the rest of her life for all the wrong reasons, and Liko hoped she never had to acknowledge the bitterness that came with it again. If she was given a choice to forget about it, then she wanted to try. Everything felt like it was too much, and her uniform from the Explorers was perhaps the worst part of it all.
She barely looked like herself. Liko hadn't spent much time studying her own reflection when she was Opal, and she knew the reason behind it all too well. She didn't feel right when she was calling an outfit like this hers and letting it rest across her body. She wasn't supposed to be standing like this nor was she supposed to be wearing clothing this miserable. She wasn't Opal anymore. She was Liko again, and she wanted to forget everything about her time as Opal too. Maybe it was for the best that she couldn't seem to bring any of her memories of her time with the Explorers into focus. It would only make her feel worse, and she felt horrible enough as it was.
Liko turned away from her mirror with a sigh, and she changed out of her uniform as quickly as she could stand. Once it was off her body, she replaced it with the same outfit she had come to know and love as her own as a member of the Rising Volt Tacklers. Her hair was still a little bit too long when she looked back at her reflection, but she was well on her way to looking the way she should have all along. Perhaps she would be able to ask Mollie or Orla to help her with trimming off the bottom piece. Liko would feel much better trying to go back to the way things had been before, and returning her hair to its natural length felt like the best way to start that.
"Liko?"
A knock at the door pulled her out of her thoughts, and Liko looked up to find Roy peering in through the window. Liko pushed a few threads of her hair out of her face with a barrette before she approached the door, pulling it open. "There you are," Roy said, his face suddenly washed over with pure relief. "You weren't in the infirmary, and we were starting to get worried you had wandered off or something."
Liko's cheeks went pink with heat and embarrassment. She should have said something before she went off on her own. Of course everyone was going to worry about her when they realized she was gone. "I'm sorry," she said sheepishly. "I'm okay. I just wanted to come back here and change."
Roy nodded, and his smile softened when he realized she was out of her Explorers uniform. "I think this fits you a lot better than the other outfit you were wearing before." He dared not refer to it by name, and Liko was glad he didn't want to do that. She didn't want to do it either, and it had been her outfit to begin with.
Roy cleared his throat to move the conversation along a moment later, turning away from her. "Oh, yeah. The reason I came here to get you is because everyone is going to meet up in the central room of the ship. We wanted to talk about what we're going to do next," he explained. "We don't really have a plan for what we're going to do from here, so... We're going to figure it out."
Liko nodded. "Right. I'll be there soon." It made sense that the rest of the Rising Volt Tacklers had no idea of what they were going to do now that Liko was back with them. They had been forced to put their adventures on hiatus to search for her, and now that she was back, they had a lot of lost time to make up for. Liko felt guilty for doing so much to tear them away from their original plans, but she knew she would never be able to express it. The others would hate it if she felt bad for something that was so far out of her control, and Liko wasn't going to put that on them.
So instead, she silenced her fears and picked up the turtle Pokémon that had come out of her pendant. She followed Roy out of the hallway and back toward the meeting room, Sprigatito chasing after her heels. Liko could only hope the others were able to help her with identifying the turtle in her arms. She didn't know if she was going to be able to figure out who or what it was on her own, and the suspense was already starting to gnaw away at her from the inside out.
The Rising Volt Tacklers were all gathered in the meeting room just as Roy had said they would be, and Liko found herself smiling at the sight of all of her friends sitting around the same table. She hadn't known to miss them when she was with the Explorers, and yet, she knew that she had wanted to see them again even through the hazy filter put over her memories. She loved that she was back home again even if things were different now. She was one step closer to returning to her regular life, and Liko couldn't have asked for anything better.
The only true change from how things had been before was Amethio. He was sitting in his own chair at the table, his gaze downcast and settled on the floor. He only looked up when he realized Liko had arrived, and she could have sworn she saw relief flash in his eyes. Liko smiled and settled down in a seat just between Amethio and Dot. Roy sat on Dot's other side, and Liko thought she saw Roy's eyes narrow at Amethio in her periphery. She didn't get the chance to check though since Roy had turned away by the time she thought to look at him directly.
"Alright. Now that we're all here, it's time to figure out a plan for what we're doing next," Friede declared. He was standing at the head of the table with his hands pressed against the wood. Liko fought back a goofy grin at the sight of him. She had missed everything about Friede and the rest of the Rising Volt Tacklers, and it felt like she was seeing in color again for the first time in an eternity. "With Liko back, we can get in the skies again. We just have to figure out what we're going to start with."
"I think we should try to learn more about the pendant... Or whatever Pokémon the pendant has turned into now," Orla suggested, looking over at where the strange turtle was still tucked in Liko's grasp. Seeming to know it was being spoken about, the turtle babbled excitedly, its eyes full of stars. It seemed less like a Pokémon and more like a baby, and if Liko was being honest, all that served to do was confused her more on what it was meant to be.
Murdock turned to glance at Liko, his gaze settling on the turtle in her grasp a moment later. "Did you happen to learn anything about it when you were with the Explorers?" he asked. "The Explorers were after the pendant all this time, so I feel like they must have said at least something about what it was supposed to do."
Liko hesitated, trying to sift through what few memories of her time in the Explorers she had ready access to, before she shook her head. "I don't know anything about it," she finally told him. "I was told that it was going to protect me from danger if I wound up in trouble, but that was all I really knew. No one ever told me anything else."
"I never learned of its true purpose either," Amethio added with a frown of his own. "I was told to make sure she kept it with her at all times. We thought it would only activate in the way it did when she was the one wearing it... Or so I came to believe."
"Do you know what Pokémon this is?" Liko questioned, looking down at the small turtle tucked away in her grasp. The Pokémon didn't offer a concrete answer with the sounds it was making either, babbling away like it didn't have a care in the world. Liko wished it was willing to communicate with her a little bit better, though she supposed it likely didn't know how. It seemed young even by the standards of Pokémon, and yet, it had been involved with something ancient too if it was part of the pendant up until recently. She simply didn't understand any of it. "I tried to figure out if the Pokédex recognized it, but I couldn't come up with anything. Do you happen to know what it could be about?"
Liko looked around the rest of the table, waiting for someone to speak up and volunteer the information she sought. In the end, she settled for looking at Friede, and everyone else at the table did too. If any one of them was going to have the information they needed, then it would surely be a professor who had studied Pokémon for years. Unfortunately, Friede was every bit as clueless, and he let one hand come up to rub at the back of his neck. "If I recognized it, then I would have told you ages ago what it was supposed to be," Friede said. "I haven't got a clue, and I'm willing to bet none of you do either."
"Then we should try to figure out what it could be," Mollie declared. "There has to be at least someone out there who will be able to tell us what this Pokémon is. If none of us know what it is, then it can't be anything recent, especially if not even the Pokédex was able to identify it. We could have an ancient Pokémon on our hands."
Liko leaned forward, pressing her elbows against the table. "An ancient Pokémon..." she murmured. She supposed it would make a lot of sense if no one knew what they were dealing with after all this time. Surely at least Friede would have been able to help them to identify their new companion since he had spent years conducting extensive research into the world of Pokémon. If not even he knew what they were dealing with, then this was bound to be a much more serious situation than they ever could have imagined.
Liko had never imagined the pendant she had been given by her grandmother would be able to do so much for her, much less that it would house a being with such old power. The pendant had seemed like a perfect reason for Liko to set off on her adventure and take the first step into the great unknown, but this... It was far beyond anything she could have ever imagined, and it would be for quite some time to come, she was sure. Everything about it felt impossible to understand, and yet, Liko found herself wanting to unravel the mystery more than anything.
"Maybe we should go back to Liko's house," Friede suggested. "I might not be able to figure out what Pokémon that is, but we might be able to ask Lucca or Diana for help. If either one of them knows what's going on, then they would be happy to fill us in."
Liko's eyes went wide. Friede was right; her grandmother had been the one to give her the pendant, so if anyone was going to know about the Pokémon that had been housed within it for all that time, then it was bound to be her. "That sounds like a great idea!" Liko agreed, but she couldn't help the sudden spike of anxiety that raced through her body at the idea of going home. She hadn't spoken to her parents since she had woken up the day before, so caught up in everything going on with the Rising Volt Tacklers to really remember to call her mother and father. They had to know that she had gone missing, and they were no doubt worried about everything she had gone through. Liko was going to have to talk to them about it at some point, and...
And she hoped more than anything that she was able to come up with an idea of what she was meant to do when she saw them. Liko had just started her journey, and even though it hadn't gone the way she had thought, she wanted to continue traveling. She wanted to stay with the Rising Volt Tacklers even after everything that had happened. She had declared her resolve to travel with them back when she visited her home for the first time, and Liko wanted to stay with the rest of her friends from then on too. She belonged there, and she knew it deep down in her heart of hearts.
But would her parents agree? They were no doubt terrified of everything that had happened to Liko when she was kidnapped by the Explorers, and Liko wouldn't have been able to blame them at all for not wanting to put her in danger again by letting her leave to continue traveling. She wanted to stay with the rest of the Rising Volt Tacklers, but if her parents disagreed, then... Then...
"Last I heard, Diana was still with Lucca and Alex," Friede went on, and Liko wondered just how much she had spaced out since the mention of her parents frightened her into silence. "So we should be able to go by Liko's house to speak with all three of them at once. If they have an answer for us, then we can use that going forward to figure out what's going on with the little guy."
Liko nodded, and her gaze slipped down to her lap... Only to find nothing there. She gasped sharply, glancing under the table and then pushing herself to her feet. "The Pokémon... It's gone!" she cried out. How could she have lost her focus to the point of not noticing it when the Pokémon vanished right off her lap? Surely she should have been at least a bit aware of something that important happening right under her nose.
Liko supposed it didn't matter how it had happened though. The fact of the matter was that it had happened, and her job now was to set it right no matter what. She pushed herself to her feet, crouching down to look under the table in the vain hope that the turtle would be there and babbling up at her with its crystalline eyes. In the end, she found nothing, and when Liko turned to look at the door, she found it cracked just wide enough for a small Pokémon to slip through. She must not have been the only one distracted, but she must have been the most distracted if she was able to lose something that had been sitting right on top of her.
"We have to go find it," Liko declared. She wasn't entirely sure of what that strange Pokémon was, but there was one thing she could say for certain: it acted very young. The noises it made and the way it looked at Liko made it seem like a baby, and she knew that it was crucial to look after any creature when it was that small, especially if it was a tiny Pokémon that could get into all sorts of trouble on such a massive airship. "I'm going to see if I can bring it back. I'll be back soon!"
Liko didn't hesitate as she darted for the door, leaving the rest of the group to stare after her in surprise. Amethio was the first to react, and he trailed after her as soon as he was able to get a grip on himself again. "Liko, wait," Amethio called out, jogging a bit to fall into pace just beside her. "I can come with you."
"So can we!" Roy exclaimed, bursting out of the meeting room and into the hallway. Dot was close behind him, nodding her agreement. Both of their Pokémon were following them from the ground, and Sprigatito bounded off as quickly as she could stand to make sure she was able to catch up with Liko.
"I don't think we should all stick together," Liko said with a shake of her head. "It'll be more effective if we split up. We can come back together soon. Maybe we can go into two pairs of two? Amethio and I can look in one direction since he doesn't have the app, and you two can go somewhere else. That way, we'll all be able to stay in touch with each other."
Something indescribable flashed in the air between Roy and Dot, but neither one of them had the chance to protest Liko's suggestion. She was already off searching for the turtle Pokémon before they could even think of putting the words together. Amethio followed after her wordlessly, and that left Roy and Dot to stare at each other in shock. They hesitated for only a few seconds more before going off in another direction, determined to do their part to find the small turtle Pokémon... Even if it was clear as could be that they would much rather be with Liko at the moment.
~~~~~~
"Should we go search with them?"
Orla's voice cut through Friede's thoughts as he stared at the door that the four teenagers had gone through. He looked back to the rest of the table as Liko's suggestion rang in his ears about all of them needing to do their part to find the strange Pokémon that had emerged from her pendant. Rather than agree to Orla and Liko's ideas though, Friede shook his head. "I'm sure they'll be able to find it," he assured everyone. "For now, I think we need to do a bit of talking about everything that has been going on." His eyes went hard at that, and it was clear that no one was going to object to his proposal. They needed a chance to speak about the events of the last two days without the teenagers hearing them, and this was as good a chance as any to talk about it without being overheard.
"I agree," Mollie nodded. "If nothing else, I can say with a fair amount of confidence that Liko's memories have returned to her. I can't say for certain what happened when she was caught in that sphere of power from her pendant, but it must have done something to jostle all of her old memories free. Whatever the Explorers did to seal away what happened to her must have been destroyed by that."
"But she doesn't seem to remember things as well as she did before," Orla finished for her, and Mollie nodded once again. "At first, I thought I was just imagining it, but... She doesn't remember much of anything that happened during her time with the Explorers even though that should have been more than recent enough for her to be able to recall it. Why would she forget about something that happened to her so recently? It doesn't make any sense."
"Trauma can interfere with the memories of the people who endure hardship," Mollie told her. "I haven't done much reading into it since I specialize in helping Pokémon, but I can say that her memories could have grown hazy because of whatever it was she went through to lose her memories in the first place. I think it would be dangerous to force her to remember anything before she was ready, but..."
"She's going to have to bring it all into focus again one day," Murdock pointed out. "She's well on her way to remembering everything, but if there's still so much of it that she can't seem to bring into clarity, then that could spell a lot of problems for us. I don't know what could have happened for her to lose so many of her memories, but it must have been very bad."
"I think the best bet we have for learning more about what happened during her time with the Explorers is Amethio," Orla said. She sighed and pinched at the bridge of her nose. "I can't believe he came back here with us. I really thought he was going to want to run back to the Explorers, but after Liko remembered everything..."
"I wonder if his loyalty to Liko is stronger than his loyalty to the Explorers was," Murdock suggested slowly, but it was clear that he wasn't entirely sure if that was the case. It certainly hadn't been in the past. If Amethio really wanted to place his faith in Liko above the cause of the organization he had been raised in, then he would have chosen to back off the instant he was planning on abducting her ages ago. He wouldn't have gone so far in the name of trying to get his hands on the pendant.
But a lot had changed since then, Friede supposed. Amethio and Liko had been forced to spend a lot of time together when she was acting under the alias of Opal, and that could have altered his opinions in a drastically different direction. It was difficult to say what was truly going through Amethio's head. No one had been given the chance to talk to him one on one, but he seemed to want to be there for Liko. Friede had no idea of what could have changed between their first encounter and his decision now, but he was hoping he would be able to get to the bottom of it soon. The last thing he wanted was for Amethio to end up causing trouble for the Rising Volt Tacklers, especially Liko. She had been through more than enough at the hands of the Explorers.
"I don't like the fact that he's here," Orla declared as she tightened her arms across her chest in a crossing gesture. "Are we really sure that we can be trusting him? When we first met him, he was trying to kidnap Liko. We were assigned to help her because we thought there was a chance he was going to use force, and we were right. He might not have been the one to take her from us, but he still tried it, and that's enough of a reason for me to not want him around."
"I don't like that he's with us either," Mollie agreed. "Even if he changed when he was with the Explorers, we weren't there to see that. All we know is that he decided he wanted to kidnap Liko when we first met her. He asked her for the pendant once, and when she refused, he attacked. If we hadn't intervened, then he would have taken her back to the Explorers' base. They got her in the end regardless, and he never did anything to help her to escape. If he was really loyal to her, then he would have done at least something before the fight a few days ago."
"He doesn't seem to be planning on stabbing us in the back," Murdock said slowly. "Or at the very least, he's not planning it right now. If Amethio really wanted to betray us and take Liko back to the Explorers, then he would have done it ages ago. She was barely conscious when she came back with us two days ago, and she was weaker yesterday too. If he really had the force to kidnap her, then he would have done it already."
"He could just be waiting for the right moment," Orla argued. "You never know with someone like him. He already tried to go after Liko once, and I don't know if I want to take that chance again. He could end up selling us out to the Explorers too, and we wouldn't know what was happening until it was too late. If he was really wanting to do what was best by Liko, then none of this would have happened in the first place."
"I think we should be careful before we just kick him out," Friede declared, raising both hands before the arguing could get any louder or more aggressive. "For now, I think the best thing we can do is keep our eyes on him to make sure he doesn't cause any problems. We can figure out what it is he wants soon enough. I'm sure he'll be willing to talk to us if he really means to stay with us instead of the Explorers. The rest of the organization probably thinks he betrayed them. Liko regaining her memories was not in their plans, and I don't know if they would have known to send Amethio in as a mole ahead of time if they hadn't meant for that to happen."
"Then... We're just going to leave him be for the time being," Orla said slowly, and Friede nodded. She frowned heavily but said nothing on the matter. Friede knew that she had her doubts about if this was the right decision, but she didn't know how to voice them without going around in circles. There was little that could be said at that point that hadn't already been brought up by someone else.
The fact of the matter was that they didn't know what was going on with Amethio. They didn't know what he was thinking or what he could have wanted from all of this. The truth wasn't going to come easily, but they would find a way to press it out of him soon enough. Friede was certain of it. Until then, they would have to keep an eye on him and make sure Liko stayed out of trouble.
Liko was perhaps the greatest reason Friede was even considering letting Amethio stick around though, and when Mollie began to frown unhappily too, he decided to say as much. "Liko seems to trust him," Friede pointed out. "I don't know what happened between them when she was acting as Opal, but it must have been enough for her to want to have him around. If she trusts him, then that counts for something. He could have hurt her at any opportunity when they were with the Explorers, but he never did, and I'm choosing to believe that means something good."
There was a point no one could argue with. They didn't know much of what could have transpired when Liko was with the Explorers, but enough had happened for her to no longer want to turn and run from Amethio. She wasn't fighting with him either; she had asked for him to come and visit her when she was recovering from the aftermath of the battle. She wanted him there. No matter what the adults on the ship had to say about it, they knew they were acting on incomplete information. Liko was the only one who truly understood the situation, and that would no doubt remain the case for quite some time to come.
Friede just hoped Liko knew what she was doing with all of this. He really, really did.
~~~~~
Dot and Roy had been quiet ever since they left the meeting room behind. They had taken to wandering through the Brave Olivine in search of the strange turtle Pokémon that had emerged from Liko's pendant two days prior, but so far, they had found no luck. The creature was surprisingly fast for something that took such great inspiration from a turtle of all things. Dot couldn't believe it had managed to escape while all of them were distracted. She couldn't believe Liko hadn't noticed it when the weight on her lap completely disappeared either. Liko must have been less in touch with the world around her than any of them could have ever expected.
Dot was going to do her part to help with the search though, and she forced herself through another hallway in search of her target. She crouched down to look under a set of shelves, sighing when she found nothing. "How could that thing have gotten lost already?" she muttered. It really did seem like the newest member of the Pokémon crew aboard the Brave Olivine had no idea of what self-preservation meant. If Dot had known it would behave like a toddler, then she would have offered to look after it instead of Liko.
"I guess it's smaller than we realized at first," Roy replied as he peered in another room in search of their target. When he turned back to Dot though, the frown on his face told her that he had found nothing. Dot sighed once again and continued her shuffle through the airship, wondering if they would be able to go back and ask Rockruff to track it down. Maybe the turtle had been on its pillow in the infirmary for long enough to leave behind a scent. Surely that would be much easier than fumbling around the airship in search of something so small it could fit in Dot's arms, especially when that something knew how to move surprisingly quickly. What kind of turtle could run around that fast anyway? It was ridiculous.
A few minutes more passed in silence as Dot and Roy continued their search for the small Pokémon. Dot had to wonder just what it could have been named, but she wasn't sure if she would find an answer any time soon. If not even Friede had an idea, then she was probably going to have to do a lot of digging online, and that wasn't even guaranteed to help. Something was going to have to give way soon, and Dot was hoping she would be able to get to the bottom of it eventually. She was going to need to give a name to the shockingly fast turtle that had somehow found a way to bring grief to the Rising Volt Tacklers on only its second day of life.
"Hey, Dot?"
Roy's thoughts were clearly elsewhere though, and Dot looked up to find him watching her with something like insecurity in his eyes. It was so starkly different from everything Dot had ever come to expect from him, and it sent a shiver sprinting up and down her spine. "I wanted to ask you... Do you think we can trust Amethio?" he asked softly. "I know Liko seems to believe in him, and she even wants him around, but... I don't know. I'm just not sure of what to think of all of this."
Dot hesitated before she could offer her response. If she was being honest with herself, she wasn't sure of how she felt at all. Back when Amethio first appeared, he had been trying to kidnap Liko in the name of getting his hands on her pendant, but a lot had changed since then. These days, Liko believed in him, and she even wanted him around. Dot didn't know what could have happened between them for Liko to want him by her side to such an extent, but she couldn't stop thinking about it. Maybe she should just ask. That would make this much easier to bear... Though Dot wasn't sure if it would be considered too intrusive to pose the question. Would it be too much to ask Liko what had happened during perhaps the worst period of her life?
While Dot was left curious about what she was meant to think though, Nidothing was more than happy to offer their own opinions. "I don't trust him at all," they declared within the confines of their shared mind. "You remember what he did to Liko, don't you? It doesn't matter if he's different now or if she trusts him. Liko's a really nice person, and she might be too nice when it comes to this. He could put everyone on the ship in danger. What would we do then if he betrayed us?"
Dot couldn't even argue that point, but it wasn't for the reason one would expect. She didn't think she had ever heard Nidothing sound so... Serious before. Nidothing normally approached every situation with a goofy attitude and a smile on their face, but this was starkly different from what Dot had come to expect. Nidothing was confident they wouldn't ever be able to trust Amethio, and that was something Dot was going to have to think about regardless of if she knew how to feel about him on her own.
She didn't say anything related to Nidothing's feelings aloud though. No one else on the ship knew that Nidothing existed as a separate entity, and Dot wanted to keep it that way for as long as possible. Right now, Roy wanted to hear her opinions, so Dot was going to have to figure out what to say to him as soon as possible. "I... I'm not sure of what to think," Dot began. "I want to trust that Liko knows what she's doing. We don't know what happened when they were with the Explorers, but it must have been significant if she wants him around now. If she really didn't trust him anymore, then she would have tried to get rid of him a long time ago, but... She never did."
Roy hummed quietly, but Dot could tell by the look on his face that he didn't agree with her assessment in the slightest. For reasons she couldn't describe, all that made her want to do was double down and explain herself in more detail. "Liko didn't trust Amethio back when they first met ages ago, but she trusts him now. A lot must have changed since then, and... I don't know what happened between them, but it must have done something to help them bond. If Liko trusts him now, then that's a sign of something big. I want to ask her about it, but I don't want to pry either, so... For now, I'm just going to do what I can to trust her. If she thinks Amethio is a good person to have around, then I'm going to believe in that."
Roy sighed, and Dot became surer than ever even before he spoke that he had the complete opposite opinion. "I don't want him around at all," Roy muttered. "He didn't care about putting her in danger back when he first came after the pendant. He could have hurt her really badly, and he doesn't seem to care about what he did to her back then. I don't like that he's here. Liko is already in a bad enough position, and I don't want him to be able to hurt her again. She's been through more than enough."
Even though Dot had just said that she was choosing to have faith in Amethio even with all that was going on, she couldn't disagree with Roy entirely. He had a point; Amethio had done a lot of damage when he first entered the lives of the Rising Volt Tacklers. Even now, he was largely being kept around because of the goodwill the others had toward Liko and her opinions. He could have chosen to betray them, and they wouldn't know how grave of an error they had made until it was too late. Dot wanted to believe that Liko was making the right choice, but she also knew she couldn't cling to that completely. It simply wasn't an option for her.
Dot sighed and began to look under another set of shelves, hoping it would reveal the strange crystalline turtle to her. As per usual though, she came up empty. "We're just going to have to keep an eye on him," she declared. "I think that's the best we're going to be able to do right now. We'll make sure Liko stays safe, and if we have to fight back against him, then... Then that's what we'll do."
Roy nodded, a mix of resolve and uncertainty in his eyes. He still didn't like the idea of Liko being around Amethio at all, and it was written all over his face, but he knew that Dot had a point. Their best option at the moment was to simply play their cards carefully and see where it led. If Amethio betrayed them, then they could handle that when the moment arrived. They would handle it as needed. That was all they could really do at the moment.
Dot just wished she could feel a little bit better about doing exactly nothing of value, and so, she continued her search with a heavy heart and a heavier frown.
~~~~~
Liko didn't know what she was missing.
She could have sworn she had searched through the entire front half of the ship by now. Roy and Dot were taking care of the other half of the Brave Olivine, and yet, none of them had seen hide nor hair of their target. It was like the turtle Pokémon was just... Gone. She had looked everywhere, and nothing had even implied that the turtle was there at all. Surely... Surely it hadn't tumbled off the edge of the ship. Liko didn't even want to think that it had gone outside, much less that it had fallen off the side of the world of the skies, but... If she couldn't find it, then...
"Look!"
Amethio's voice cut through Liko's thoughts, and she looked up to where he was pointing. They were in the glass room overlooking the entrance to the training ground at the back edge of the ship. High up on one of the tallest spires of the ship was the small turtle, clinging to the ground and calling out into the sky. Each of its yells was being stolen away by the wind as soon as it made the noise, but Liko could still see what it was trying to do by the way its body moved. The small string of crystals at the top of its head flowed in the wind, and Liko's chest went tight. The turtle hadn't fallen off the ship yet, but if it stayed up there, then it was just a matter of time.
Liko knew she should have called for the help of Friede or anyone else on the crew who would be able to help get the turtle down. Maybe Charizard would be able to swoop around and pick it up without being put in too much danger... But a particularly brutal breeze nearly knocked the turtle clean off the platform it was standing on, and Liko knew there would be no time. If she wanted to reach it, then she had to move quickly, and her body sprang into action long before she could ever think to stop it.
Liko began to climb up the spire leading up to the turtle, and while she was distantly aware of both Amethio and Sprigatito calling out for her in a plea to stop, she didn't focus on their words. The wind stole it all away anyway, and Liko had to focus on her target. She wished she had a name to use to call out for the turtle, but she didn't know what it was yet, so she would simply have to find some other solution. "Hey!" Liko called out, but the turtle did not turn to look at her. Instead, it continued its cries up into the sky.
When Liko got closer, she realized there was something more to the way it was shouting into the open air. It seemed almost... Sad. There was a grief unlike anything else behind each noise it made, and Liko's chest went tight at the thought. It was upset. It was... Missing something. Liko wasn't sure of what it was missing, but she was certain that was the feeling controlling its actions now. It was crying out for someone or something that had been lost a long time ago, and the feeling made her heart seem like it wanted to burst free of her chest. She couldn't listen to it for any longer. The sound felt like it was going to kill her, and Liko wondered just where it had come to feel so familiar to her.
Liko wasn't sure of what changed in the time between her starting to climb the spire and her arriving close enough to reach out for the turtle with one arm, but the world felt like it had shifted ever so slightly to the side. "I know you're hurting," Liko's voice declared, but she wasn't sure if she was the one who was saying it. She must have been if it was her voice that was pushing its way through the turbulent air, but it didn't feel like it was her at all. She wasn't sure if she was in control at all or if she was pulling from some instinct she hadn't known existed, but it was enough to push her a little bit closer to the turtle. When she reached out, her fingers could almost touch its leg now, but she had to get slightly closer even still. "But I need you to be careful. You can't get hurt in your search for something else. You need to stay safe."
The turtle finally turned around when it realized it was not alone at the top of the ship, and its wide, shining eyes stared down at Liko with a light unlike anything else. For a reason she couldn't describe, Liko felt herself wanting to cry. It was familiar to her somehow, but she didn't know how. She felt like she had always been meant to experience this, always been meant to pull this turtle back from the brink with nothing but her shaking hands and her raw determination. This was where she belonged. Everything she had ever experienced was building up to this moment, and she couldn't believe she hadn't seen it until just then.
Her eyes swept closed, and for a split second she was no longer on the Brave Olivine. She was standing at the edge of the sea, staring out over the rough, churning waters. There was a silhouette that looked just like her on the opposite shore, and she knew it was everything and everyone she had ever been meant to become. The person there was her but also not at all, an ideal for her to aspire to but something she was never destined to reach. The water glowed from within, a gentle light that threatened to swallow her whole. It was as warm as it was terrifying. She did not belong to the light. She was meant to drown in the cold and the darkness, and the ocean was going to do just that if she gave it the chance. Despite the threat, she wanted to push forward. She wanted to swim, to push through the tides on the off chance that perhaps she was able to reach who she was meant to be. Perhaps it would destroy her in the process, but somehow, it all felt like it was going to be worth it in the end. She belonged there. She was meant to reach for this brighter future no matter how scary it was. She knew it just as well as she knew to breathe in around the salty air of the sea. This was where she had always been meant to end up, and the ocean was going to prove it however it could so long as it was given the chance.
When her eyes opened again, she was back on the Brave Olivine, reaching out for the turtle. "I know you're suffering," Liko whispered, her voice sounding mangled and distorted not by the wind but by her own soul. "But it's going to be okay. We're going to figure out what to do next together. We're going to get through this as a team. You don't have to be alone anymore. I want to be here with you. Please... Let me help you."
For a split second, Liko could have sworn she saw the shining of tears in the turtle's glowing eyes. It looked at her with a curiosity unlike anything else before it jumped down from the platform it had come to cling to. Liko stuck out an arm and somehow managed to grab the turtle, and with a relieved sigh, she began to climb back down the spire. Her entire body felt like it was shaking, and her legs were on the verge of giving out beneath her weight by the time she was on the ground, but she could still consider it a victory. Somehow, she had managed to save the turtle, and that was the best she could ask for.
"Liko!"
Amethio's voice echoed in her mind as she arrived on the ground again, and Liko blinked a few times, confusion starting to rise all throughout her body. Somehow, she didn't feel like that name was meant to fit her even though it was hers. She knew it was hers, but it was like she had stepped into someone else's skin for a few seconds, and no name seemed truly applicable to her. Liko looked back and forth between Amethio and the turtle in her arms, and she realized what she had done to rescue it a bit too late. She could have died if she hadn't been careful, and yet, she had chosen to take that chance anyway. Even now, Liko didn't realize she had courage like that hiding away within her heart. How could she have done something so drastic and dangerous and simply never realize how risky it was? What was going on with her?
Sprigatito ran up to Liko as soon as she was on solid ground again, rubbing her face up against her partner's ankle. That was enough to bring Liko back into her body, and she smiled as she crouched down next to Sprigatito. "It's alright," Liko whispered, trying to remind herself of all that she had ever been in a moment when it wanted to slip through her fingers like sand in an hourglass. "I'm okay. I promise."
"You..." Amethio stared at Liko for a long moment, an indescribable wave of emotions rushing through his eyes one right after another. Liko wanted to find a way to sift through the storm and understand what it was that he was struggling to articulate, but she didn't know where to start. There was simply too much there for her to try and comprehend, and all she could do was stare.
"Liko!"
Dot's voice yanked Liko away from any thoughts she may have had regarding Amethio, and she looked up to find Dot and Roy running out onto the deck of the ship. "There you are!" Roy exclaimed. "We were wondering if you had found the turtle yet... And I guess you did."
Liko nodded, and she tightened her grasp on the Pokémon in her arms. "I did," she confirmed. "And I think I've learned my lesson about letting this little guy wander off on its own." She wasn't entirely sure how she had found herself in this situation, but Liko had to wonder if perhaps it would be helpful to get a leash for her newest companion. If the turtle was willing to walk up to the very edge of the Brave Olivine in pursuit of something unknown, then Liko was going to have to find a way to keep it in check. She couldn't stand to see it get hurt as long as there was something she could do to help it, and Liko was going to dedicate herself to protecting the turtle from then on.
Even now, the turtle was babbling away, repeating the same set of syllables over and over. Liko tried to make sense of it with a small frown, and the best she could really understand was that it wanted something that it could no longer reach. She simply couldn't figure out what it was alluding to as long as it spoke such a wildly different tongue from her. Liko didn't know how she was going to be able to learn what the turtle wanted, but she supposed she would have to get there with time. Perhaps she would be able to find the answers with a bit more research. For all she knew, that information would be waiting for her in the same place as the name of the turtle.
"We should go inside," Amethio suggested as a particularly brutal breeze sent his hair splaying all across his face. "The wind is only going to get worse." He wasted no time in rushing for the door, something uncomfortable still written across his face. Liko reached one hand after him helplessly, wanting to close the distance that had grown between them when she wasn't looking but unsure of where to even start. Amethio was worried about something, but the details beyond that felt like they were too much for her to ever think of understanding.
Liko still followed him inside though, and Roy and Dot were hot on her heels. Liko only felt herself begin to breathe again once she was out of the wind and certain that no one was going to end up in danger of falling off the edge of the ship. She looked down at the turtle in her arms just to make sure it was still there, and Liko wondered for a moment if perhaps it would fit in a baby carrier that would strap to her back or her chest. If her only two options were to look a little bit silly or to let the turtle wander off on its own where it could have gotten hurt, then she knew she would take the former in an instant.
"Liko, are you alright?"
Roy's voice cut through Liko's thoughts, and she blinked rapidly, trying to remind herself that she lived in a world outside of the one within her mind. Against the backs of her eyelids, she could have sworn she saw the sea and a silhouette standing on the other shore. When Liko opened her eyes again though, there was nothing to be found, and she shook her head with a tight smile. "I'm alright," she assured Roy even though she wasn't entirely certain that was the case. She had acted so strangely when she decided to pursue the turtle, and even though those events had only just happened, they felt distant and out of her reach. It didn't matter how hard she tried to find the truth or how deep she searched through her memories of what had just happened; she couldn't seem to find it.
But if she wasn't fine in that moment, then Liko was just going to have to make sure she turned out to be fine in the future. She could do that. She would force herself through whatever hardships happened to come her way, and she would emerge from this battle as strong as she could be. There was no easy way of enduring all she had faced up to that point, but that wasn't going to stop her from trying. She could do this. She knew she could. She had just cheated death, hadn't she? She would be fine. She had to be fine.
And yet, the ocean haunted her far more than any fear of death ever could, and the waves consumed her mind in a hurricane of static and grief.
Notes:
And so begins the string of adaptations of content from the second arc of the anime! Woohoo!
The second segment of this fic is largely focused on splitting original content up with adaptations of content from episodes 17-45 of the anime, sometimes in order and sometimes out of order. Here, we have an adaptation of episode 26 which is taking place very out of order. I really like how it turned out though, and I'm looking forward to being able to explore other adaptations of anime content in the future. It's an interesting line to walk where I'm novelizing as much of it as I think will be interesting without one to one retreading the same steps as the show. I think it's fun, and I hope you all enjoy it too.
I think this chapter is pretty different from episode twenty-six for a few reasons, one of them being just where it takes place in the timeline. I thought this would be a good transitionary segment to have before we wrap up the rest of the content from the first arc of the show, so here we are. There's a lot of other good stuff coming up though, and I hope you're all looking forward to it as much as I am.
Next time, we'll dive into some Free Fall exclusive stuff and catch up with a few old friends. Until then, I hope you all enjoyed this chapter. Feedback is appreciated as always. Have a nice day, everyone!
-Digital
Chapter 23: Cannot Escape This Misery
Summary:
Liko returns home to see her parents for the first time since her abduction.
Chapter Text
It was amazing how much could change in so little time.
Liko supposed that she really didn't have much of a right to say that though. The last few weeks had become hazy in her memory, and it was almost impossible for her to truly sift through everything that she had endured when her mind felt like it was fighting her. It simultaneously felt like she had been with the Explorers for an eternity and that she was picking up right where she had left off with the Rising Volt Tacklers. It was a strange contradiction, and the more Liko thought about it, the less comfortable she felt.
Still, there was one thing she could say she understood regarding her feelings right now: she did not know how she felt about going home. That was one thing that had stayed the same even from before she lost her memories and became Opal. She had been delivered back to her home by the Rising Volt Tacklers once they managed to get away from the Explorers, and Liko had told her father that she wanted to travel with the airship's crew from then on so she could see the world and figure out who it was that she wanted to be. She had been proud of herself for expressing it despite her fears, and that was true now too.
But Liko didn't know if she was going to be able to convince her parents to let her continue traveling again. Before, Liko had been able to assuage her fears and theirs by saying that she was going to be alright and that the Rising Volt Tacklers were going to keep her safe... But that wasn't the case anymore, was it? They hadn't been able to protect her from the horrors that Spinel had brought into her life. For all Liko knew, she was going to end up going home only to be given no choice about what she did with herself going forward. Her parents could have decided that she needed to stay with them to be kept safe, and there would be nothing she could do about it.
Liko knew that going back to her house was necessary. She didn't like it, but she knew that it was. She wasn't sure of how she was going to react when she saw her relatives again, but she needed to speak with them about the strange Pokémon that had emerged from her pendant. She needed to understand why it called out into the night like it was grieving something that it had not seen in countless years. She needed to have a beacon to use as a guide in the middle of one of the darkest periods of her life. The only way she would be able to gather the information she required was to speak with her mother and grandmother, and Liko knew it well, but that didn't make it any easier to swallow. She didn't know how to face them, and it wasn't getting any easier the longer she thought about it.
Liko wasn't sure of what was going to happen when she got back, and if she was being honest with herself, she didn't know what she wanted to happen either. On one hand, she wanted to continue traveling with the Rising Volt Tacklers. She wanted to recapture the joy that had filled her heart when she decided to stand with them. She wanted to have the chance to carve her own path in a world that had come to threaten her. She wanted to take the first few steps into an adventurous life on her own terms.
But at the same time... Liko was so tired. She wasn't sure of when the exhaustion had appeared, but she thought it must have been at some point during the shapeless hole in her memory that marked her time with the Explorers. She was exhausted in ways she hadn't been before, and it felt like her very soul was trying to cave in on itself the longer she thought about what she had been forced to endure. She wanted to rest and to breathe, but she couldn't do that. She wanted to continue exploring, but her body seemed to be fighting her on it. When had she become such a collection of contradictions? Why was it so challenging for her to understand what it was that she wanted out of her life?
The land of Paldea stretched on outside Liko's window in every direction, and she swallowed back her anxiety to the best of her ability. Whether she felt ready for it or not, she was going to have to face this. It wasn't going to be entirely bad either. She would be able to see her parents for the first time since she was taken into the Explorers, and Liko missed them more than she could ever hope to express. She knew her parents were not the types to hold her to their chests as she cried and released every emotion she had never known how to speak aloud, but Liko wanted that more than anything. She wasn't even entirely sure of what she would be crying over or grieving for, but she wanted to let it go out of some vain hope that it would bring her a peace she did not understand nor deserve.
"Liko?"
Amethio's voice at the door pulled Liko out of her thoughts, and she turned slowly to face it. Amethio pushed the door open, and for a brief moment, the turtle Pokémon stared at him like it was going to get back to its noisy crying again. After a few seconds though, it settled down again on a pillow just beside Sprigatito atop Liko's bed. Amethio didn't even notice the turtle's silent strife as he closed the door behind him and walked into her room. "We're getting closer to landing at your house. How are you doing?" Amethio questioned, though Liko could see something dark pulling at the space just beneath his eyes.
"I... I'm not sure," Liko confessed, forcing herself to look back out the window in case this was one of the last times she ever had the chance to enjoy a sight like this. "I don't know what I'm going to do when we get there. My parents are probably really worried about me, and... They might want me to stay with them for as long as possible while I recover from..." Liko wasn't entirely sure what it was that she was meant to be recovering from even after seemingly remembering as much as she could, so she cut herself off with a shake of her head. Surely the details weren't as important as the sentiment. "I think they'll ask me to stay at home from now on."
Uneasy silence settled between them before Amethio finally found the courage to speak again. "Is that what you want to do?" he asked, and Liko's chest went tight. She wasn't sure of what she wanted, and she didn't know if she was going to find an answer to a question like that for quite some time. What did she want? When she set aside the desires of others, why couldn't she figure out what it was that she wanted to do with this path stretching out before her? And why did it feel like any desires she had ever held onto had been hollowed out of her the instant she had been taken to join the Explorers?
Liko was on the verge of choking out a response of indecisive fear, but before she had the chance, her phone buzzed. She did her best to not stare at the tiny chip in the corner from where she had dropped it on the date of her abduction. Friede's voice came through the speaker seconds later, and Liko was glad to have the distraction from her own miserable thoughts for even just a few shining moments. "We're almost there. Everyone who's going out should come to the front of the ship so we can go," Friede explained, and his voice dissipated from Liko's phone again just as quickly. Somehow, their arrival felt like it was coming too soon, though she supposed that not even waiting for the rest of time would help her to feel any better about having to see her parents on the heels of all that had happened.
Liko started toward the door, but she could feel Amethio's eyes watching her all the while, patient but expectant. She remembered his question just a little bit too late, and she knew she was going to have to find a way to answer it whether she wanted to or not. She didn't know what she wanted though, and she was certain that responding to him was going to become infinitely more complicated if she admitted that. "I... I don't know," Liko choked out against all of the tension knotted against her heart. "But I'll figure it out soon enough. I have to."
Liko knew that wasn't much of an answer, but she didn't have any time to push it. She was out of all opportunities to think this through, and her only option now was to go back home, speak with her parents, and... And do something to decide what her future was going to entail. Liko didn't know where to start, but she would figure it out one way or another.
She just wished she remembered how to make decisions on her own, but unfortunately, that power had seemingly bled away alongside all of the memories she had once lost.
~~~~~
To say that Roy was worried would have been an understatement. He was beyond concerned, and he hadn't been able to sleep much the night before. The Rising Volt Tacklers were on their way back to Liko's house, but things were going to be different that time. He was sure of it. They weren't just dropping by because the Rising Volt Tacklers had finished up the main part of their mission. They were there because of everything Liko had been forced to go through, and she was going to have to face both of her parents on the heels of a pain unlike any other.
Roy knew there was a chance that Liko's parents were going to ask her to stay with them. He couldn't blame them for that at all. They had been worried and then some when they learned that something had happened to their daughter, and Roy could only begin to imagine how hard it was for their child to be put in so much danger. The fact that Liko was back now meant they would be able to protect her, and the best way to do that was to make sure she stayed with them from then on.
But selfishly, Roy didn't want her to go. He felt awful for thinking of his own desires above what Liko may have wanted, but he needed her to stay there on the airship. They were friends in a way that went beyond words, and Liko... She had been the one to give Roy the first push to start his own adventure. She was stronger than she realized, and Roy wanted to see this adventure through by her side. What was the point of pursuing the black Rayquaza if the girl who had taught him how to do it wasn't going to be there? How could he find the strength to fight when she wasn't going to be by his side to help him to get stronger?
"Are you worried too?"
Dot's voice was entirely unsurprising to hear, and Roy turned to face her with a heavy frown on his face. He wished he could have said no, but he knew better than to lie to her. He and Dot had been getting closer and closer over the last few weeks, and these days, it felt like they almost understood each other better than they understood themselves. "Yeah," Roy confessed. "I know this is the best way for us to learn about the pendant. If anyone is going to know about it, then it's going to be them. Liko's grandmother is probably the one who can tell us more about it than anyone else, but..."
"I don't want Liko to leave," Dot finished for him, and Roy nodded slowly. Neither one of them wanted to even consider the possibility of Liko choosing to go. They doubly didn't want to think about what it would be like for Lucca and Alex to decide that Liko didn't get a say in what happened to her from then on. If their protectiveness and fear got the better of them, then that could have marked the end of their adventures. The pursuit of information was an important thing, but it could have been the conclusion of all of this just the same. Both the truth and the dread were terrifying, and Roy didn't know how he was meant to stand there and think about everything crashing around him so soon after Liko had come back into his life. It was too much, and if he acknowledged it too deeply, then it was going to rip him to shreds.
"I've been trying to not think about it," Dot went on, her voice dropping to a mumble just in case anyone happened to walk close enough to overhear them. "We just got Liko back, and... If she decides she wants to stay here, then we're going to have to say goodbye again. I don't want her to go. I know she'd be safer here than anywhere else, but..." Dot didn't say that there was a chance the Explorers would pursue her even there. That was even worse than every other brutal reality they had been forced to face that day, and it was too much for either of them to acknowledge openly.
"Her parents might want her to stay here, and I couldn't blame them if they did," Roy sighed. "But... I'm wondering if she even wants to keep going like this after what happened. I wouldn't blame her if she said that she didn't want to try this anymore. She went through so much, and..." All that had happened with Spinel and the other Explorers could have killed her desire to see the world and adventure into the unknown entirely. Roy wouldn't have blamed her at all if that was the case. He didn't know if he would have had the strength to keep going after going through such horrible things either, and he didn't even understand the half of what Liko had been through.
"It's her choice at the end of the day," Dot said, but Roy couldn't figure out if that was meant to be reassuring or the sign of an inevitable ending they would never be able to outrun. "Whatever she chooses to do... We're going to have to respect it." The tension in her voice betrayed her true feelings though, and Roy knew that all Dot wanted to do was pretend none of this was happening.
But they couldn't pretend. Reality had proven itself to be brutal and immediate, and their only choice was to find a way to face it. Whatever was going to happen that day was out of their control, and Roy and Dot could only hope that Liko would find some degree of peace at the end of it. By the time the sun went down, all of their fates would be sealed... But Roy couldn't figure out if it would be for the best or for the worst.
Liko, Amethio, and Friede were already gathered with their Pokémon at the entrance of the ship by the time Roy and Dot arrived. Roy chose to not look at Amethio directly, knowing that would only make him feel more upset in a time when he was distressed as it was. Roy was desperate to ask Liko if she was planning on leaving or staying, but when he looked at her, he knew that she didn't know any more than he did. Her head was bowed, and she was staring at the floor like she was looking at something many miles away. Roy's chest went tight, and he willed his heart to keep beating. Maybe he was wrong in thinking Liko was going to leave. He just had to wait and see what her decision was going to be. It was her choice at the end of the day, and Roy was trusting her to make the right one for herself.
If he let go of that faith, then he didn't know what he would do... So he simply never gave himself the chance.
~~~~~
The walk back to Liko's house felt less like a homecoming and more like a death march. Liko hadn't gotten in touch with either of her parents since she returned to the Rising Volt Tacklers. Friede was the one who had given the news, and Liko hadn't been able to bring herself to ask how they had reacted. She already knew the answer was going to be too much for her, so she never bothered with posing the question. Instead, she ducked her head and focused on reminding her body it had to keep moving. She could figure out what was going to happen when she got there. Until then, her best option was to be patient for the truth of her next steps to become apparent to her.
Liko's home looked exactly the same as she remembered when she turned her attention up to it. The house rested atop a hill, and the architecture was festive and welcoming as it always had been throughout her childhood. Liko's chest went tight as she realized this could have been the end of everything. For all she knew, she would set foot in her home again and be told that she would have to stay with Lucca and Alex from then on. For all she knew, she wouldn't even get to figure out what it was that she wanted to do with her life.
Perhaps the worst part of this realization was figuring out that Liko wouldn't even be able to blame her parents if they wanted to keep her there. They hadn't been able to protect her from the pain that Spinel visited upon her, and if there was something they could do to make themselves feel better on the heels of such horror, then it was natural that they would try. Liko wouldn't have wanted to let go of her child if she knew they were suffering with something like this. Lucca had always wanted Liko to get out into the world and make her own path, but she hadn't thought it would lead to something like this. That could have shattered Lucca's worldview in an instant, and Liko wouldn't realize the weight of what she had lost until it was too late for her to change it.
Liko's mind flashed back to the last time she had been there. It felt very recent, but at the same time, it existed on the other side of a warped mirror that had consumed everything she ever thought she knew about herself and the world she lived in. Lucca hadn't even been there when Liko arrived, and Alex had wanted to communicate with her but didn't know where to start. Liko didn't know what to say to him now either. How could she ever find the strength to speak in a world that felt like it was going to try and destroy her for trying? She had been through so much, and no one would ever be able to fully understand it. That included her whether she wanted to admit it or not. She was lost, and she didn't know if she would ever be able to root herself in the present or the future again.
Friede gestured to the door when the group arrived just in front of it, and he offered Liko a sad smile. He was every bit as worried about Liko having to stay there as the rest of the group was, but he was choosing to not say anything about it. He knew that would only put more weight on her shoulders, and Liko was carrying more than enough as it was. Liko was glad for his mercy, but at the same time, she wanted to be told to stay. She wanted someone else to make the choice for her, to reclaim her agency that she had lost so long ago. "After you."
Liko forced herself to step automatically toward the door of her childhood home, and she wondered how she could feel so much but so little at the same time. She was back in a safe place for the first time since she had been taken away to join the Explorers. She should have been glad to face the people who had been there for her throughout her youth. She should have been glad to have the support of her parents again. She should have felt something more than dread at the thought of seeing their faces after all this time.
But Liko didn't let herself express any of this, already knowing it would turn on her the instant she tried. Instead, she reached a shaking hand out and knocked against the door. She wondered how long she would have to wait to see her parents again. They had to be home, expecting her arrival and planning out everything they were going to declare would happen to her the instant they caught a glimpse of her. Liko could practically see them realizing the knock at the door was a sign that their daughter had returned. It filled her with a guilt and grief she would never be able to put to words, and when she blinked--
She was back in that horrible ocean again, staring at the opposite shore. She would never be able to reach it, and she was fooling herself if she thought such a thing was possible. She was trapped in an endless string of misery, and she knew it well now. She couldn't believe it had taken her so long to come to that conclusion. This was where everything was going to end... Assuming it hadn't ended the moment Spinel decided she was his piece of clay to mold as he chose. She did not belong there. She did not belong anywhere. The only place that could ever be considered hers was deep beneath the waves where all misery converged into a single point known simply as--
The door opened to reveal the face of Lucca, and Liko felt her heart threaten to stop on her then and there. She didn't think she had ever seen her mother this distraught, and it terrified her in a way few other things ever could. Lucca had always had a free spirit, believing it was for the best if she let Liko determine her own path rather than trying to chart one out for her directly. Liko didn't realize how much of that she appreciated until she was able to reach out and take the first step on her own to begin her new adventure. She needed to be given the freedom that would let her make her own choices.
But at the same time, Lucca hadn't been there. She wanted Liko to be independent, but she hadn't been there for her daughter anywhere near as much as she knew she should have been, and it was only becoming apparent on the heels of everything Lucca had not been there to witness. She had not acted in the ways a mother should have, only seeming to express her grief with her hands-off teaching style after it was too late to take it back. Liko knew that Lucca tended to avoid her problems with a smile on her face, but the consequences did not seem to matter until that moment when mother met daughter for the first time since this calamity began.
Lucca wasted no time or words before she rushed forward, pulling her daughter into a tight hug. Liko didn't know if she found it more comforting or suffocating, and she fell against Lucca's chest as soon as she was able to remember what a mother's love was meant to feel like. Somewhere in the distance, she heard her father gasp, and seconds later, a second set of arms wrapped around her. Liko let her own arms snake up just enough to hold at her parents' waists, and she wondered how she could have ever forgotten this. Spinel had taken so much from her, and she hadn't realized the extent of the damage until after she was given the chance to return from the apocalypse he had brought to her heart and soul.
"We were so worried about you!" Alex whispered like he had never uttered words more sacred. His grip was tight, and in his grasp, Liko felt the weight of all the distance that had ever grown between them. He had wanted for years to connect with her, but he simply didn't know where to start, and he didn't figure it out until it was too late. They struggled to communicate with each other in a million little ways, but there was little they could do to fix it now. So much time had passed, and so much had changed. They were not the same people they had started this journey as, and Liko could feel the dread in the pit of her stomach.
"Are you alright?" Lucca demanded, pulling away from Liko to look her over from head to toe. She spent a long moment searching for any signs of damage to her daughter's skin, but Liko knew she would not find anything. For reasons she could not define, Liko felt like all of the pain that she had endured had been pressed beneath the surface, left to rot away in the places were blood met bone. "What happened?"
Liko didn't know how to answer that question, and trying sent a headache ricocheting through her skull. She didn't know if she would ever be able to describe what she had been through as long as all of her memories of what had happened felt so distant and out of her reach. She could try to grab the truth all she wanted, but it never seemed to do what she wanted. It was never enough. Nothing was ever enough when it came to the misery Spinel had brought to her life.
"I'm glad you're home," Alex said, stepping back so Liko could enter their home in full. "It'll be wonderful to have you back here permanently again. We were so worried we were never going to see you again, but now... We'll be able to make sure nothing like that ever happens again. I promise."
Liko's chest went tight, and Amethio's question from the Brave Olivine echoed in her mind. She still didn't know what she wanted, but she could say without a shadow of a doubt what everyone else around her wanted. Her parents wanted her to stay with them until they could say this nightmare was in the past. The other Rising Volt Tacklers wanted her to find the strength she needed to keep traveling with them. Liko had to wonder where her ideas of her future had gone. It seemed like they had all gone out to rot the instant she was taken from that alleyway, and now, trying to get the truth back was like grasping at straws. She hadn't ever been given a choice when she was with the Explorers, and that lack of autonomy was haunting her even now. How could she answer the question of what she wanted to do with her life when it felt like the desires of others had become so much more important than her own when she wasn't paying attention?
"I... I don't know if it will be permanent," Liko choked out, not realizing she had spoken until after the words had left her lips. She hadn't meant to say that. If she was going to have a crisis over how to respond to all of this, then she should have done it in the silence, waiting until she was certain she knew what to do before she made any drastic choices. Instead though, her lips moved on their own, and every eye in the room looked at her in perfect shock. "I-I still haven't decided what it is I want to do now. I'm going to have to think on it more."
Lucca and Alex exchanged worried glances, and Liko wanted to melt into the ground just so she didn't have to bear the weight of their shame and guilt for even a second longer. "What do you mean?" Alex asked softly, something like betrayal lining his words even as he tried to keep it out of his voice. He was doing his best to not frighten her, but these days, Liko felt like she was afraid of everything. Somehow, that had come to include her own father too. "Do... Do you really want to go back out into the world after everything that happened?"
Liko's throat suddenly felt too tight for her to ever think of speaking again. "I don't know." She had scared everyone when she went missing, and her parents didn't know if they could let her go in good conscience after all that had happened. She couldn't blame them. She didn't know if she would have had the strength to let others go after something like that either. But at the same time... Liko selfishly wanted to take back any tiny piece of control over her life that she could. She had none of it when she was acting as Opal, and now... Liko wasn't sure of what choice she was going to make, but she wanted it to be hers. Maybe it would make her a terrible person, but it was all she could think to cling to in a world that had not made sense since she was consumed by emerald, ruby, and topaz.
Lucca was the one who took charge of the conversation from there, and she shook her head as she directed everyone over to one of the couches. Liko was seated in between her parents, and Amethio, Roy, and Dot shared the other couch on the opposite side of the room. Friede stood behind the three teens from the Brave Olivine, pressing his hands against the back of the couch silently. "Tell us everything," Lucca instructed of Liko, her voice stern and authoritative in a way that it only ever became when she was telling her students what to do for an assignment. "All of it."
Liko nodded slowly, and she found her mind racing with fear of all she knew she was going to have to explain but did not want to. She didn't want to scare her parents by telling them of what she had been through, but at the same time... They were asking for the truth of what had happened, weren't they? Liko wouldn't be able to keep it away from them forever. Lucca and Alex were worried about her, and the natural next step for them was to ask for the details of what she had endured. Still, it felt like it was too much. What parent would ever be ready to hear that their child had been tortured by someone who never should have been given access to them in the first place? It was horrifying at best, though Liko could think of another series of words to describe it too.
"It all started when I wanted to get a spice for someone else on the ship," Liko started, but the words barely felt like her own. She knew she had to be the one speaking them, but it was like she had lost control of her tongue at some point between arriving at her home and sitting down on the couch. The rest of the world felt like it was spiraling out of her control, full of cotton and static that she stood no chance of ever taming. She could try all she wanted, but it wasn't going to help her in the slightest. "I saw an advertisement saying that I would be able to pick it up at a shop, so I went to investigate, and when I got there... I didn't see a store at all. Instead, there was a man, and... Everything that happened after that is fuzzy."
Liko let one hand drift up to rub at her temple. She knew that something must have happened between her being found in the alleyway and waking up in the Explorers' headquarters. That was a fact that she would never be able to deny. Still, it was as if that entire chunk of her memories had been pulled out of her skull by other hands before she even knew she should have been searching for something. She had seen brief flashes of the darkness and the blending of different shades of light when she was... She was going through something, but the details were out of her reach. Whatever Spinel had done in the space between was gone, and Liko wasn't sure if she wanted to search for it. Would there even be a point when she knew it was going to do nothing but hurt her when she finally dug up the truth from where it hid in the depths of her memories?
"When I next came to, I was with the Explorers. They told me that my name was Opal, and they said that something bad had happened to me to erase everything I thought I knew about my life. They were going to take care of me from then on though. They were never quite clear about if I was always a member of their group or if I had simply been found. I guess they didn't want me to ask questions," Liko continued, but her voice was sounding more and more distant the longer she sat there and forced herself through the conversation. Was she even the one talking anymore? She must have been. There was no way for anyone else to take control of her tongue and force her to talk at that moment. That wasn't possible at all... But if that was the case, then why did everything feel like it was so far out of her grasp?
"I was taking care of her while she was with the Explorers," Amethio explained when Liko took a little bit too long to muster her thoughts for the next segment of her explanation. "We were assigned to a few battles against the Rising Volt Tacklers. I believe the other members of the Explorers were trying to check to see if they would be able to activate her pendant by putting her in danger. I'm not sure of the details beyond that. They wanted the pendant, and they seemed to think that Liko was the key to activating it. I don't know why it is the others want it, but they were very firm about wanting to get their hands on it."
"Always the pendant," Alex muttered crossly, and Liko found herself staring down at the turtle Pokémon where it had come to settle in Dot's lap. Dot had taken it off her hands at some point, but Liko couldn't remember when exactly it had happened. How could Liko have forgotten something like that when it couldn't have happened more than a few minutes ago? It was no wonders he had lost the turtle when it decided to crawl off her lap in the middle of a meeting with the rest of the Rising Volt Tacklers; Liko didn't know how to focus anymore. It was like she had lost more than just her memories when she was taken in by the Explorers. She must have lost her ability to think for herself too, and she hated it more than anything.
"But I'm back now," Liko forced herself to say hurriedly like she was trying to convince herself of it too. All of a sudden, there was a primal fear in the back of her mind that she was going to find all of this to be some distorted dream, and when she next opened her eyes, she would be trapped in the Explorers' base all over again. Her memories would be explained away, and she would be forced to become Opal again. There would be no hope for her just as there hadn't been hope for her for so long, and he only choice would be to deal with it. "I'm alright now. I... I promise."
No one in the room was convinced by Liko's poor attempts at persuading them that everything was fine though, and she could feel it in the way they all watched her. Could they see just how out of it she was? Could they tell that talking about the truth of what she had been through with the Explorers made her head feel like it was going to explode in a show of pain and misery? Her memories felt like they were being walled off from her somehow, and she didn't know where to even start when it came to reaching for them.
It felt like she was an entirely different person from who she had been before. It felt like she had morphed into exactly what the Explorers wanted, and now, she was trying to cram herself back into an old position she no longer fit. She was not Liko anymore; she was a glass imitation, and all it would take was one solid swing for her to be left shattered across the ground. How could it ever be possible for her to go back to the way things had been? It was too much, and it was only going to get worse the longer Liko tried to make this work when it was so obviously impossible.
"I'm glad you were able to remember everything," Alex forced himself to say slowly. Liko already knew what was going to come next before he could get the words out, and she found herself bracing for impact long in advance. "I know you don't want to hear this, but... I think it would be safer for you to stay here until you've made a full recovery. You've been through so much, Liko, and... I don't want you to go out again if it's going to get you hurt. You need time. I can tell. I don't want you to push yourself too far before you're ready."
Liko nodded dully. She knew where he was coming from, but that didn't make it any easier to say that she wasn't sure if she agreed with him or not. "I... I don't know what I want to do," Liko told him softly. "There's a part of me that wants to continue my adventures. I want to see the rest of the world. That was what all of this was supposed to be about, and there's a part of me that still wants it to be about that. But on the other hand... I don't know if I'm going to be able to stand up for what I want to do the way I could before. It just feels so much harder than it did before." Liko stared down at her hands, finding the creases across her palms strangely unfamiliar even though logically, she knew that this had always been her body. "I don't want to go out if it's going to get me hurt again, but I don't want to stay still forever either. I don't know if I'll be able to get myself to keep moving again if I take even a little while to breathe, so... Maybe I'm just going to have to..."
Liko cut herself off before she could finish. No matter how she looked at this, she just didn't know what she was supposed to do. Her parents would want her to stay with them until they were certain she was safe... But there was no guarantee of safety as long as the Explorers were still out there. They would come after her pendant again, and Liko doubted her parents were strong enough battlers to be able to keep herself. She wouldn't be able to take care of herself or the small turtle in Dot's arms if she was the only one who knew how to fight. She wouldn't be able to get back on her feet when it felt like the world was going to collapse on top of her. Everything was too much. She couldn't stay still, but she didn't know how to keep moving either. What other options did she have? It felt like all she could do was drown, and the ocean of her mind seemed ready to consume her the instant she gave it the opportunity.
"You remember everything now, don't you?" Lucca asked next, and Liko nodded. Well, perhaps saying that she remembered everything was a bit deceptive, but Liko couldn't bring herself to say it. Perhaps she was simply exaggerating how difficult it was for her to grasp any memories of who she had been before. She knew more than she had when she was with the Explorers. Her name was Liko, and she belonged with the Rising Volt Tacklers or her family. It was one of the two, and she knew for a fact that it had nothing to do with the people who had abducted her.
Liko's gaze dropped to the turtle Pokémon once again. "I remember as much about my life as I can. Everything that happened when I was with the Explorers feels a bit distorted, but..." She smiled as the turtle looked up at her with wide, shining eyes. "It was all because of this little one that I was able to get my old memories back. If it hadn't come out of my pendant when it had, then..." Liko didn't even want to imagine what would have happened, so she pushed the thought out of her mind with a shake of her head. Instead, she looked up at Lucca, and the reason she had come there to speak with her parents rushed back to her in an instant. "Do you know anything about this Pokémon?"
Lucca stared at the turtle for a long moment, but Liko already knew the answer was going to be no. If Lucca recognized it, then she would have said so the instant she caught a glimpse of it in Dot's arms. Sure enough, Lucca eventually shook her head, making her ponytail stir on the back of her head. "No... I don't recognize it at all," Lucca confirmed, and Liko fought to keep her shoulders from deflating in silent defeat. "If anyone is going to know about it, then it would be my mother, but..."
"She's not here right now, is she?" Friede asked, and Lucca nodded her confirmation. Liko couldn't help but gasp. She had gotten so caught up in speaking with her parents that she hadn't asked about Diana at all, and Diana was hypothetically the best person for them to talk to when it came to figuring out just what the story behind that odd turtle was. The other Rising Volt Tacklers had said they had last heard Diana was there at Lucca and Alex's home, but a lot could have changed since then. Liko was fully aware of how much of a free spirit Diana was, and if she decided the open road was calling her, then she wouldn't be able to resist it for even a moment.
"No... She left a few days before we got the news that Liko was alright," Lucca replied. "She wanted to do a bit of research on her own. She went to her castle in Galar to investigate the Explorers using the various materials she has gathered there over the years. If she knows about the Explorers though, then I think the best call for getting to the bottom of the mystery of that Pokémon is to ask her. The Explorers want it, and that means she must know about it too."
"Then that decides our next destination," Friede announced. There was a certainty to his voice that Liko could not say she understood in the slightest. Friede was so sure that they would be able to go to the castle to investigate whatever it was that Diana had access to, and Liko didn't know how she would ever be able to emulate his confidence. It simply felt impossible to her. She had been losing her grip on herself for ages, but Friede didn't mind it at all. He simply held his head high in the face of all struggle, and he was good at it in ways Liko knew she never would be.
Beyond that, Liko was amazed that Friede was confident in continuing this truth. Liko didn't know if she would want to keep on traveling with the Rising Volt Tacklers or if she would be better off hiding away in her bedroom until all of this was over. Friede had no such doubts though, and Liko had to wonder if he was even worried about her choosing to remain with her parents. Friede was worried about this, but it wasn't in any detailed way. He seemed sure that Liko would be staying with the Rising Volt Tacklers even when she didn't know what she could ever hope to want from this life again. It was as amazing as it was terrifying, and it sent electricity racing beneath Liko's skin.
The silence in the room grew to be a bit too much for Friede to bear, and Liko realized that she had been staring at him for a few seconds longer than was probably recommended. In the end, he scratched at the back of his neck, and his confidence seemed to stumble even though it did not entirely fade. "That is, if you want to keep traveling with us," he explained. "You don't have to come if you don't want to. The choice is yours at the end of the day."
For reasons Liko couldn't define, his words brought light and relaxation to her stiff heart. She had known she would have to make a choice that day, but she couldn't seem to restrain her fear at how others were going to respond. It felt like any answer she could have given to the options laid out before her would have been a bad one. She would either frighten her parents by leaving or upset the Rising Volt Tacklers by staying. She couldn't make everyone happy, and it was horrifying.
But it was her choice at the end of the day, wasn't it? Liko had felt like all of her autonomy and agency had been stripped from her the instant Spinel decided to take her back to the Explorers' base, but she was still a person, wasn't she? Surely that meant she had a little bit of authority over what she chose to do with her life. Liko may not have been entirely certain of what she was going to do with that blessing of peace, but she knew that she wanted to try and make something of it for herself. She deserved that much. She had escaped the Explorers so she was able to understand that.
Liko took in a slow breath and decided to stare down at the table at the center of the living room, not wanting to frighten or upset anyone by daring to look in their eyes. "I'm not entirely sure of what I want to do," she admitted. "After everything that happened, I... I..."
She still wanted to see the world. Deep in her heart, Liko knew that she wanted to travel and explore as much as she could. She wanted to take her life into her own hands. She wanted to stop being a passive participant in something she had never been able to make her own. The Rising Volt Tacklers hadn't just saved from the Explorers the day they found her at school; they had shown her what a person could do when they were willing to take life into their own hands. Liko was able to make her own decisions, and she could be her own person. She may have struggled to make it to that point, but she knew where her heart belonged. Nothing had made her feel more alive than flying through the sky aboard the Brave Olivine, and deep down, that was where she had always needed to be.
"I want to keep going," Liko declared, and in an instant, the ice that had settled in her chest thawed away. It was not a complete evaporation, but it was enough for Liko to feel like she knew how to breathe again. "I don't want to stop moving forward. I want to make my own future for myself, and... I feel stronger about that than ever before, I think." The Explorers had robbed her of the ability to choose, and now, Liko knew just how important a power like that was. She deserved to be able to take charge of her own life. For as long as she was alive, she wanted to embrace this chance. She wanted to live. She wanted to be happy, and this was the best way for her to do it.
Alex and Lucca exchanged glances for a long moment, and Liko felt her chest grow tight. She knew her parents wouldn't like the idea of her leaving. After all, it was because they had let her go the first time that everything had devolved so completely. Still, Liko could see it in their eyes that they did not want to keep her trapped there forever. Liko had never expressed true desire for something greater until she joined the Rising Volt Tacklers. She hadn't even known who she was as a person until she was given the chance to escape her shell and find out for herself. Lucca had always encouraged her daughter to follow her own path and become her own person, and even now, Lucca couldn't bring herself to stray fully from her own teaching methods. It would hurt, but it was still what she valued most, and she knew it well.
Alex was the first one who spoke, his voice heavy with hesitation as he looked up at Friede. "Are you sure you can do this?" he asked, and Liko could have sworn she heard danger in her father's tone for perhaps the first time ever. "I'm not going to let her come with you if I have reason to believe that something is going to happen to her again."
"You can't let that happen a second time," Lucca added, though she was nowhere near as intense as Alex in her response. She had known Friede for a very long time, and she knew what it would take to press him in the right direction to avoid a second grand tragedy. "If something else happens to her, then--"
"Then I'll consider this a failure and bring her back," Friede finished for her, and Lucca's shoulders relaxed ever so slightly. The difference was tiny, but it was enough to bring a smile to Liko's face. "Now that we've made that mistake once, I can promise you that we'll know to not make it again. I'm not going to let anything happen to Liko. We'll all take care of her, and we'll make sure she isn't ever left in a position where this could repeat."
"Good... Good." Lucca nodded slowly, and she looked down at the ground for a long moment before finally finding the courage to lock eyes with her daughter. "I want you to be careful out there. If this is really the path you want to follow, then I'm not going to stop you, but..." Lucca sniffled, and Liko felt her heart skip a beat at the sight of tears in her mother's eyes. Lucca had never been the kind of woman to cry, and this was the first time Liko had seen such a sight in more years than she could ever bother to count. "Come back to us. Please."
Liko couldn't stop herself from tearing up either, and in an instant, she rushed forward until she had wrapped her arms around both of her parents. "Thank you," she choked out around the knot that had formed in the back of her throat. There were a million and one things she wanted to say, but she couldn't find the strength to voice any of them. It was all simply too much for her, so instead, Liko concentrated all of her gratitude into the only few words that seemed to matter. "Thank you so much... I love you both."
Liko felt Alex's grasp around her body grow tighter, and she realized that he was crying too thanks to a small damp spot on the shoulder area of her shirt. Lucca let out a wet breath, and Liko smiled bittersweetly into her mother's torso. She stayed there for as long as she could stand before pulling away. She looked up at both of her parents and then pushed herself to her feet. Roy, Dot, and Amethio's faces were all filled to the brim with relief, and Liko was glad that she had been given the chance to make the choice she knew was best for her. She had no idea of where this was going to take her or what she was going to do with this new future, but she was looking forward to it. She was going to be alright. One way or another, she was going to push through, and she was going to be fine.
"I'll make sure she stays safe," Friede vowed with a firm nod. "I'm not going to let anything else happen. I would stake my life on that." There was a determined gleam in his eyes that Liko hadn't seen before, and she knew he had never been more serious about anything else before. He likely never would be after that either.
"We're trusting you," Lucca confirmed as she slowly pushed herself to a standing position as well. "But if it ever becomes too much for you, then you know that you can come home again, right? You don't have to stay somewhere if you're not happy there."
"I know," Liko assured her. She doubted she would ever choose to come home now that she had found out where she belonged and what she wanted to do with her life, but she was glad to have been given the option. Liko crossed the room to stand next to her friends, and Sprigatito meowed for her attention. Liko reached down to scoop her partner up into her arms, and the cat nuzzled at her hands affectionately. "I'll keep in touch. I promise."
"Good," Alex nodded. "We'll be rooting for you, Liko... Every step of the way."
Liko offered her parents one last smile and a matching wave before she started toward the door. She wasn't sure of what she was going to do from then on, but she knew this was the right choice. She was going to find a way to push through this, and she would be alright. She would get to the bottom of the mysteries around the turtle Pokémon, and she would do what she could to stop the Explorers too. They would not get away with all they had already done, and she would prove it however she could.
It was time for her to make her own choices, and Liko wasn't going to let anyone take that away from her ever again.
~~~~~
Long after Liko, Friede, and the other Rising Volt Tacklers left, Lucca and Alex stood in the doorway of their home. They looked out over the path leading up to the house even when their guests were too far away to be seen, Fidough standing on the ground beside their feet. "Do you think she's going to be alright?" Alex asked slowly, his voice soft and vulnerable in ways he rarely ever showed openly. He was a sensitive soul, but it was challenging for him to figure out how to express it in words rather than art. "I don't know if I like the idea of her going out there after everything that happened."
Lucca sighed and leaned against the doorframe as much as she could stand. "I think we both knew there was no way for us to keep her here forever," she told her husband. "If there was, then she wouldn't have ever left to go to school in the first place. She was always going to end up wanting to travel the world. She's got my blood in her, that's for sure." Lucca looked down at Alex, finally tearing her gaze away from the road that had taken her daughter off to her new future. "She's going to seek out any adventure she can find, and we're just going to have to find our own way to support her from back here."
"They had better hold true to their promise of taking better care of her in the future," Alex murmured. "I felt like I barely recognized her when she came through the door... She was so... Distracted. It was like her head didn't belong to her body anymore. I know Liko has always been shy, but she's never been quite that timid before. It... It scares me."
Lucca nodded, unable to stop herself from worrying either. She would have loved to give Alex the perfect words to lay his fears to rest, but she already knew that wasn't going to be possible. Liko was clearly different from what they were used to, and it was going to take a long time before she returned to her old self... Assuming she was ever able to. Lucca didn't know what exactly she had gone through when she was with the Explorers, but it was clearly something significant. Lucca would be there for her daughter however she could be from then on, but it wasn't going to be easy to recover fully from something like that. Liko was going to have to fight for a long time to return to the way things once had been, and Lucca could only hope that she was ready for it.
But she shook off the thought before it could settle in deeply enough to frighten her extensively too. "I'm sure she's going to be alright," Lucca said, unsure as to if she was saying it more for Alex's sake or her own. "Liko's a fighter, and she's not going to let something like this bring her down forever. She's going to keep going for as long as she can, and I know that she's going to find a way to push through this too. It might not be easy, but... She's going to do it. I know she will."
Alex looked up at Lucca for a long moment, trying to study her face for any signs of the emotions she never spoke about. Lucca had always been secretive with the way she truly felt, and Alex had grown used to sensing that years ago. Now, Alex could see that Lucca was afraid, but she was doing her best to keep her resolve firm and strong. Liko was going to keep fighting, and that meant they were going to have to give it their all to support her. It wouldn't always be easy, but being parents never had been, and that meant they were just going to have to try a little bit harder.
Alex returned his gaze to the path ahead, watching as the sun began to sink on the horizon. "She'll fight to come back to us one day," Alex whispered, his voice surer than he had ever thought possible. "And she'll be stronger when she does."
Notes:
New chapter time! Woohoo!
I'm really happy with the way this one turned out. Like I said before, this arc of the story is all about splicing canon events in between new content for this AU, and this is definitely new content. I think it's something that needed to happen though, and I love how it ended up. I didn't expect to spend so much time with Lucca and Alex in this story, but I'm glad I was given the chance. They're both really interesting to write under circumstances like these.
Aside from that, I don't have all that much to say about this chapter, so I'm going to leave you all here. We're going to gear up for another chapter in two weeks, and we're going to press on with act two. Until then, I hope you all enjoyed this chapter. Feedback is appreciated as always. Have a nice day, everyone!
-Digital
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