Spoiler warning again! Don't read past this part if you don't know much about Voltflare and his backstory!
(Or, if you don't care, read on xD)

*Basque's POV*

"Basque?" Arcadia half-asks, half-yells. I can tell that he's beginning to panic.

"We don't have any more time to waste here! Rex has already rigged this place to explode any minute now! If we don't go, now, we'll be buried, too!" he warns.

I nod, and he quickly runs back to the room's door and pries it open, barely wide enough that I'll be able to get though, since the Umbreon inside me is making travel quite hard.

He's heavy, no doubt, but he's much lighter than I would have expected... Like he doesn't have a whole lot of muscle mass. At least that makes him easier to carry around... I think to myself, slowly pushing myself towards the door and squeezing through. Sombra makes a small whimpering sound when I reach the other side and pushes against the walls of my stomach again, but the attempt to make me feel uncomfortable just incites more purring from me than anything else.

Outside is a long, dimly-torchlit hallway that sets the mood for the rest of this endeavor beautifully. Arcadia looks at me and, even in this critical moment, laughs.

"You really enjoy having him in there, don't you?" he pats me on the head.

"But we've got to hurry... Davian!" he calls down the hallway, waiting for a response.

A few seconds later, a loud call of,

"Arcadia!" and a shuffle of footsteps answers him. Davian quickly appears in the hallway in front of us, coupled by a large, humanoid Pokemon with four bulging arms. Bearing an absurd amount of bluegray-toned muscle mass, two thin red eyes, and a creased yellow lip, the Pokemon looks at flexes. Judging by the way it looks at me, the both of us could tell that its job is to carry me so that we can escape this place faster.

"We're here! And..." he trails off seeing my distended stomach for the first time.

"So what you were reporting to us was true...? Sombra is really inside that Vaporeon's stomach?"

Arcadia nods, looks at me, and smiles.

"Precisely. And Basque really quite enjoys having him there. The hard part is going to be getting Sombra out," he laughs jovially, petting my head again.

"Well, we'll cross that bridge when we get there, then," Davian continues to visually study me,

"Right now, we need to get out of here. Machamp, you know what to do."

He turns to the Pokemon behind him, which quickly walks up to me, gently slides two of its arms under my stomach, and begins to slowly lift me into the air. The Machamp's other two arms support my head and tail, and, pretty soon, I'm suspended between a pleasant-yet-sturdy casing of muscles and arms.

I'm slightly surprised at how gentle it carries me, especially with all its strength.

That thing probably has enough power to bust through the ground, itself, without breaking a sweat, but it can carry my entire body, as well as my bulging stomach, without so much as hurting me. That Pokemon has an exceptional level of dexterity, as well as enormous reserves of strength. If I ever saw one, out alone, even I probably wouldn't want to mess with it.

Arcadia and Davian turn and begin to run down the hallway, to stairs leading upwards and outwards, hopefully out of this entire black-walled place. The Machamp follows close behind with me in tow, giving me a curious glance every so often when the Umbreon's movement causes me to involuntarily purr again. Doors and other entryways fly by my vision, but I don't have enough time to assess what any of them are or where they lead.

The four of us round another few monotonous hallways, corridors, and stairwells, and I try to grasp, for a moment, just how big this place really was.

If this is Percival's lab, how did he create all of this?! It's... massive...

All of a sudden, the Machamp turns a separate corner, away from the group, and shouts,

"Champ! Ma..."

Arcadia and Davian turn around, surprised.

"Machamp, now isn't the time to be dilly-dallying," Davian starts to say,

"We've got to..."

The Pokemon ignores him, gently sets me down, and barrels down the next hallway towards what I later see is a slightly-ajar iron door about fifty feet from us. When the Machamp reaches the heavy door, it seems to shut on its own, but this doesn't even faze the Superpower Pokemon. It calmly grabs onto the door with all four of its arms and rips it off its hinges, casting it aside somewhere else down the corridor before entering the now-exposed room.

"Ma...? Ma... CHAMP!" the Machamp snarls at something unseen inside the room.

A few seconds later, the sound of a fist cracking bones, as well as the pained groan of another Pokemon reach my ears. Hearing this, Arcadia, Davian, and I quickly head into the room, and what we find isn't pretty.

There, in one corner of the room, slumped against a wall, is the broken body of Cassius. His two red eyes, once blazing with determination, have all-but been extinguished. A large claw wound on his chest gives up blood from under his red lab coat. One small manila folder lies in his hand, and he tries, desperately, to cling to both it and life at the same time.

Arcadia immediately runs over to him and places a hand on the man's forehead.

Knowing that Cassius is going to be in good hands, I look around the room for his assailant, and my gaze lights on Davian's Machamp, looming over a badly bruised... something. I can't even recognize what Pokemon that is...

I tentatively walk over to get a closer look who the Machamp smashed. From what I can tell, the Pokemon's blue body is reptilian in appearance, like a frog, almost. A large sac of something, probably an air sac, extends from the bottom of its downturned mouth. Nothing else on the Pokemon's head is even remotely recognizable, however.

Then, I look down at its body, and I gasp.

Look at the length of the claw on each hand! That must have been what caused Cassius' severe wound!

Anger burns in me towards the mystery Pokemon, but I hold myself back.

I can't get angry right now. If I do, I might accidentally hurt Sombra, and we need him alive to stop Percival!

Arcadia sighs in relief.

"He'll live, but not for much longer if we don't get help," he says,

"Davian, give me a hand with him. And Basque, you hold on to this."

Arcadia takes the manila folder from Cassius' hand and gives it to me. I clasp my paws as tightly as I can around it.

If Arcadia's entrusting this to me, it must be very important. Just like Sombra is to all of this!

Davian and Arcadia slowly lift Cassius into the air, one of the holding onto his legs, and the other, his head and chest. The two slowly begin to walk, when a buzzing sound is heard from the pocket of Cassius' lab coat.

*beep*

"Hey!" Rex's voice, clearly audible, comes out from the pocket. Arcadia quickly changes his grip enough to stick his hand in the pocket and produce a small metal device. He holds it next to his head by clasping it between his neck and ear, and the two men continue to walk.

"Hello? This is Arcadia speaking. Cassius is... A little beaten up, but we've got him. We'll be out shortly."

"Get out of there!" Rex's voice shouts from the device,

"That place is going to be buried in exactly one minute! Come on!"

Not wasting any more time, Arcadia and Davian quickly wheel Cassius' body out of the room and begin to drag him further up the stairs. The Machamp turns to me, punches the downed Pokemon in front of it once more for good measure, then slowly picks me up again, taking special not to hurt my stomach at all. Then, he runs after the others, spinning more "scenery" by my vision.

More flights of stairs... More hallways... More doors... How big is this place, exactly?!

"We're almost there! Keep going!" Davian breathes, straining, along with Arcadia, to carry their damaged comrade.

However, after we ascend the next stairway, one more obstacle immediately places itself in our way- another massive iron door. Davian quickly turns around and helps to position Cassius so he's not in the Machamp's way before turning to him.
Even before Davian asks, the Machamp sees the door, sets me down, and immediately pounds the steel frame to dust, punching it out of the way and spilling a large amount of early-day sunlight into the corridor. He picks me back up, and we step past the door- and into the outdoors once again, a world of green, and a few small wooden houses. Luckily, nobody else seems to be up as I survey them.

The Machamp sets me down on the soft grass directly in front of two figures standing there- one I already know is Rex, his green eye mysteriously sparking, but the other seems to be a massive Pokeball with a face on it. It smiles wickedly at me and returns my gaze with an eccentric movement of its eyes. I don't know whether to be happy or scared about seeing it, as I can't readily read its expression.
Arcadia and Davian painstakingly set down Cassius on the grass, and Rex turns to look at the Pokeball-like object.

"Well, it's about to get a bit... Explosive!" he shouts, grinning,

"Electrode, Light Screen!"

Immediately, the Pokemon, called an Electrode, rolls itself in front of us and begins to spin. I watch the Electrode work for a few seconds, and as I continue to follow its movements with my eyes, a large, prismlike screen begins to appear in front of it, curling itself around our group in the exact same pattern as the Electrode's movement.

Before I can ask about the screen's appearance, a massive boom deafens me, and the ground under us begins to shake violently. I look at Arcadia with a terrified expression on my face.

What's happening?! My mind begins to panic. I had never experienced anything like this before.

Arcadia already seems to know what I'm about to ask before I do, and he calmly pets my head with a smile on his face.

"Just Rex doing what he does best," he smiles.

As I watch, the doorway in front of me, where we had just come out of, begins to sink into the ground and collapse in on itself. Pretty soon, the entire door disappears from view, and the surrounding earth in a fifteen meter radius, begins to follow its same course.

Davian's Machamp quickly slips his arms under me and lifts me up, as the entire team stumbles backwards to get away from the eroding ground over the lab, while the crater in front of us continues to expand.

When we're sure that the explosion won't get to us, Cassius looks at Rex, unsure of whether to be angry or ecstatic.

"Well..." he smiles coyly,

"Percy's never getting that back. Or the Umbreon that he kidnapped."

Cassius looks at my bulging stomach and probably attempts to guess how I could possibly hold an entire Umbreon inside me like that.

"But," he continues, looking at Rex much more seriously than last time,

"With a crater like that, the International Police are sure to start investigation immediately. We need to get back to HQ before they start hunting us for this. If they get to us before we get to Percy, this entire endeavor will be for nothing!"

Arcadia nods, ruffles his hand over my skin one more time, then whispers,

"This is going to hurt for a second, but I don't want you to see the entrance to our base. If you know, it's one more Pokemon that Percival will target, and I don't want him to try to take you away from me."

Hurt for a second?

I turn around quickly to look at Arcadia, but, before I can ask "What do you mean?" a sharp pain erupts in the back of my neck, and an intense drowsiness quickly overtakes me.

...

...

"Hey, Basque?" Arcadia calls to me, while my consciousness returns.

...

"Basque? Maybe I gave him too strong of a tranquilizer..." he mumbles the last part out of earshot.

...

I yawn and slowly open my eyes, looking around at the familiar room around me- the place where I had first met all the members of the Cosmos. Everything looks the same to me- the darkened room, the five walled-in desks, and the cold floor. The only difference is in the corner of the room- where a large machine with a glass chamber had been set up. I could only wonder what it's for.

"Ah, there you are, Basque! I was almost scared I..." he trails off,

"Never mind. How's Sombra doing?"

He pokes my still-distended stomach, but no bulge from the other side answers him. A look of horror transfixes him.

"Basque, don't tell me..." he begins to say, but I cut him off quickly.

"Don't worry, Arcadia," I tell him,

"The Umbreon is safe inside here. I haven't liquefied a single black fur on him. Even so, while he's inside there, my stomach hasn't been growling at all. But, rest assured, I won't liquefy him until you say I can."

"I'd prefer it if you didn't," he muses,

"Sombra will be a critical piece of evidence in the downfall of Percy. The real question is, how do we get him out of your stomach?"

I look down at my gut and slowly tap it with my paw. This time, a bulge answers me, indicating that Sombra's awake again, and he begins to speak,

"Please, whoever you are, let me out! It's all wet and slimy in here..."

"Well," Arcadia looks at me expectantly,

"You heard him. You can let him go, Basque."

He smiles, but I'm already panicking internally, and my face shows it.

I... I don't know how to! I don't know how to let Sombra out of my stomach! What if I hurt him before I can find a way?... Arcadia, what should I do?!

Arcadia seems to read the shock on my face, and he moves his hand along my stomach.

"What's wrong, Basque. You know that... Wait..." he trails off, realizing the reason behind my face's paling,

"You don't know how to get him out of there, do you?"

He tries to comfort me with his gentle touch, while I continue to nervously tremble, not wanting to accidentally kill Sombra before I find a way to let him out.

Sigmund sees my shivering and laughs.

"What, is your little containment cell not able to heave? You did teach him to vomit, too, right?" he chides.

I shoot Sigmund an angry scowl, not able to see past his concealing black glasses, but Arcadia slowly turns my head to look back at him.

"Don't let him get to you, Basque," he comforts me,

"Sigmund just speaks the language of results. His skill with number-crunching and analysis is unparalleled, but he's not the best where relationships are concerned."

He looks at Sigmund and calmly instructs him,

"Don't be harsh with Basque, Sigmund. He's been through a lot, you know? Just be glad that we've retaken Sombra. That's 'success' enough for you, isn't..."

"Take a look at that bulbous gut of his for one moment, Arcadia," Signing interrupts,

"And tell me that we've 'reclaimed Sombra.' I still don't trust him until the Umbreon is right in front of my face."

He turns and walks back to his desk, sitting down and beginning to scrawl notes of his own. Arcadia sighs.

"Sometimes I think Sigmund is too rough with longer projects," he says,

"He wants results, quickly and easily. Defeating Percival will not be quick and easy, but Sigmund's skill still can't be ignored due to the many small-scale tasks like that which he can organize. Now, let's focus on your stomach and retrieving Sombra."

"I have an idea," Davian speaks up, and Arcadia immediately stops to listen. It seems that when Davian says something, it's treated as a sacred dialect.

"If he can liquefy himself to envelop another Pokemon, wouldn't the opposite be true? Could he just reverse what he did to engulf Sombra?" Davian asks.

Arcadia shakes his head.

"We tried something like that when I first met Basque. He can't liquefy himself completely if there's a Pokemon in there, or he'll start to digest himself," he says, sadly,

"And I'd rather not put him through that pain again."

Pain? Well, at least that little black ball of fur has stopped moving around again. Should make it easier when we finally figure out what to do...

Davian continues to press my Trainer, determined to help retrieve Sombra from my gut.

"Well, what if we could somehow liquefy only part of him? Like, perhaps, a part away from the enzyme's origin. From your notes, you made it sound like said enzyme is injected into the stomach. If we could find a way to bypass the trigger for that..."

Arcadia's smile lights, causing me to do the same.

"Then he could liquefy himself without hurting himself!" he cries triumphantly,

"Davian, that's genius! Except, how would we do that?"

"Perhaps I could help," Cassius quips, walking over to me and kneeling down.

"Both of you, can I have permission to feel Basque's gut? I should be able to determine a few things."

He slips on a small metallic glove with lights on it and presses a few buttons on it. A small symbol of a raindrop appears on its surface.

Before I can say anything, Arcadia slowly nods.

"You've finally perfected that thing?" he asks,

"Well, it looks like it's about to have its first test-run. Can I explain it to Basque, or would you like to do it, yourself?"

Cassius shrugs.

"Basque is your Pokemon," he answers,

"He'll probably take orders from you better than he will from me."

Arcadia nods and turns back to me, idly running his fingers over the three fins on my head, making me purr a little.

"Alright, do you see that device on Cassius' hand? The one that looks like a glove? That's a project that he's been working on for a few years now. He initially made a prototype to check for vital damage on his Pidgeot's wings while they were out on an espionage mission. But, now, he's altered the device so that it can effectively analyze the innards of any Pokemon, provided the type matches with the set image. Now, he's going to place his hand on your stomach, and it's going to feel a little bit tingly. But, don't worry- it'll only be for a second. Then, with luck, we should he able to retrieve Sombra. Alright?"

I look at Arcadia with a blank expression on my face for a few seconds.

That's quite a bit to take in. Analyzing the innards of a Pokemon simply by touching them? It almost seems impossible, but if Arcadia says it works that way... Well, it works that way.

I look at Cassius and nod.

"Alright, do what you need to do, and we'll get him out," I say with confidence.

"Although I'll miss the feeling of him inside there..."

I guess it can't be helped. This is to bring down Percival for Arcadia's sake!

"Alright," Cassius smiles warmly, placing his hand on my distended stomach and pressing down slightly. He takes his other hand and places it on top of his glove, and instantly, the tingling feeling that Arcadia had been talking about fills my insides, and I try to stifle a bit of it. At the same time, an intense throbbing, that sound quite a bit like my heartbeat, begins to channel out of Cassius' glove.

It takes me a second for me to realize, amazed and horrified at the same time, that the sound is my heartbeat. I'm taken aback at how something like that must work.

"He can... He can follow my heartbeat with a glove?" I turn to Arcadia and ask, and Cassius laughs.

"Works like a charm," Cassius beams,

"If your notes about the enzyme are correct, I know what we need to do."

He points to an area on my bulging stomach, just a little bit under my chest.

"That area," he says,

"Won't trigger the enzyme. I think we can focus on that area, but we need to get Sombra to cooperate with us."

I smile slightly, knowing that this is my time to shine. The entire success of the plan against Percival is based on whether I can successfully pull this off or not. I think about moving the water around inside my gut, just enough to get Sombra's attention. My plan works, and he immediately begins to paw at my stomach wall in a panic.

"No...! I thought you said that..." Sombra whimpers from his "prison."

"You'll be fine," I snap back,
"Now listen to me. I'm about to let you out now. But, don't get me wrong- one false move, and I'll envelop you again faster than you can think."

A small bulge is the only reply that I get, but it's good enough for me.

"Ready?" Arcadia asks me, before placing his own hand on the area that Cassius had pointed out.

I close my eyes and imagine myself enveloping myself around Arcadia's hand- the small, bony finger-tips sinking into water, and it begins to work. I can feel the area around his hand turning to liquid, a larger and larger radius.

It's working! We can do this!

"Sombra, do you see the hand in the stomach wall?" I turn my face to my gut and say,

"Go towards it, and walk through the wall that it seems to be coming from."
I can feel Sombra shifting around inside my gut, trying to desperately forge through the water, and I turn myself to make it easier for him to climb out.

After a few seconds. I begin to see a large black face poke out of my watery innards, quickly followed by more and more of the Umbreon- two inquisitive ears, a black, furry chest, two forepaws- and Sombra finally pulls himself, and the rest of his body, out of my liquefied stomach and onto the floor of this place.

Inundated and shivering, the Umbreon slowly walks forward and attempts to shake himself dry, to rid himself of the "unfortunate" time in my gut. His words are stuck in his mouth from fright, but he forces them out eventually.

"Where... Where am I...?" he whimpers,

"And..."

He trails off when he turns around to look at me. I just let my tail slither across the ground hypnotically, and it scares him.

"You're... a Vaporeon, aren't you?!" he trembles,

"Why did you... Why did you eat me?!"

I look back at the terrified Umbreon and laugh.

"Eat you?" I start,

"Do you really think that I could fit something of your size down my throat? Besides, it's still healing from that... Thing that was in it..."

I look back at Arcadia and give him a silent nod of recognition, before refocusing on Sombra.

"No, I didn't eat you," I tell him honestly, concealing a sly smile at the same time,

"But I did envelop and assimilate around you. That was all the water you felt piling on top of you back in Percival's lab."

He looks at me, horror-stricken and shocked at the same time.

"You... you envelop other Pokemon?!" he asks sharply. His ears fold back in alarm.

"And you can liquefy other Pokemon by doing that?! That's... That's mortifying!" he adds, slowly backing away from me.

I watch his black pawsteps trace farther and farther away from me, until he slowly bumps into Cassius' shoe and jumps a good three feet into the air. Once he settles down, Cassius slowly lowers a gloved hand to his head and ruffles it between his ears.

"Welcome to the Cosmos, Sombra," he announces with a smile,

"We'll be quite good friends by the time this is over..."

*Nathan's POV*

I stare at the unfinished electric circuit on my desk with a rather tired expression on my face. I had been trying to redesign the inside of a Pokeball for a few weeks now- to make it that much more comfortable to the Pokemon inside- but nothing I do seems to be working.

Hmm... Maybe if I switch this wire to this position here? Will it work, then? Well, I've got to at least try...

My hand unceremoniously moves the wire, connects it to a different transistor, and the entire immediately blows up in my face, coating it, and the top of my desk with black soot.

I clench my fist and try not to get angry. I could tell that I had been close- probably at least halfway to a complete circuit, and it just exploded all over my desk for the umpteenth time.

"Voltflare, I'm trying as hard as I can," I deadpan, trying to conceal the hidden anger at the innards of a Pokeball for making this so hard,

"But I just can't seem to get this circuit right..."

Immediately, I hear the gentle sound of soft pawsteps behind me, and I slowly get up from my chair and turn around to meet the noise.

A small crimson-colored head pokes itself from behind the wall, followed close by two red ears, highlighted with green rings. A stark lightning bolt streaks its way across the Pokemon's forehead and over his two green eyes. A smile crosses his face, and the rest of the orange body comes bounding over to me, soon nuzzling me like a housecat and almost knocking me over. Electricity crackles from his paws when he touches me, and I both wince and laugh at the static charge that he gives to me, even though it stings slightly.

"Voltflare," I smile, stroking his head behind his ears and smiling...

Even since the first day I saw and kidnapped him as a little Umbreon from the village where he lived, I could tell there was something that would happen between him and I that would change the world. Back then, I was a part of Team Rocket, and I just wanted him to use as fodder for Giovanni's machinations. Voltflare, although his body bears resemblance to an Umbreon, is actually a hybrid- a mixture of the genes of multiple Pokemon. When I kidnapped him, Giovanni had been working on what he dubbed "The Hybrid Experiment," and I was the main researcher. I suggested Eevee as the prime subject with which to experiment due to its expansive and adaptive genome, and, although I didn't pay the price for it, he certainly did. His name, back when he was still himself, was Jake. Then, Giovanni took my ideas and extrapolated them to dangerous extremes. One freak accident lead to another, and Jake ended up becoming combined with his parents, a Flareon and a Jolteon, to possess their qualities of life as well. Yet, he was still himself- a fully sentient Pokemon, not subservient to Giovanni. When I saw that... I gave up my criminal ways and saved the Pokemon that I later named "Voltflare." He's been my partner ever since, and I've never regretted any second of the adventures we've had. Fighting against Giovanni and countless other villains had been tiring and almost fatal, but I could always depend on Voltflare to give me the strength I needed to keep going. He's just... sort of that kind of Pokemon. Of course, that doesn't disclude the other members of my team, but I always have a special place in my heart for the hybrid.

"Having a hard time again?" he asks me, cocking his head slightly so my hand would pet a different spot.

I didn't even have to look at the translator on my wrist to understand what he was saying. I slowly nod in disappointment, displaying the charred remains of the Pokeball's circuit that I had been constructing. He pokes his head up and looks at it.

"Don't worry," he comforts me,

"You'll figure it out! You always do! Every crisis we've been in, I could confide in you."

I could already tell that he was trying as hard as he could to be reassuring, to save my dwindling spirits with this project of mine.

"I'm just not having any success lately... Do you really think I can pull it off...?"

A stern knocking at the door to my apartment interrupts me, and it throws my senses on high alert.

It's far past curfew for this place... Who could be wanting to talk to me this late at night?!

I instinctively grab three Pokeballs- that of Voltflare, my trusty Metagross, and Riku- a Shaymin, off my desk and walk over to the door. I quickly return Voltflare to his Pokeball, but, before I can turn the handle, the door opens, anyway. Apparently, the other person had a key to my room.

Could it be the owners of this establishment? Or...

"Nathan, we need your help again," the calm, commanding voice greets me as soon a the door swings open. The voice belongs to Looker, a member of the International Police that I had met quite a few times on my adventures with Voltflare, in his dutiful beige trenchcoat. His brown eyes, hidden behind a calm demeanor and frank black hair made him seem like an ordinary citizen at times. Sometimes, I think that he prefers it that way- it allows him, as a police officer, to go undercover quite easily.

"There's been a massive explosion outside Geosenge City in the Kalos Region," Looker quickly says,

"We've already sent a few others on ahead of you, but the blast's poignancy tells me that it was staged by someone or something, possibly a group of some sort. We need all the help we can get in identifying who or what could have caused the blast."

I nod and immediately turn to my messy desk, packing up everything on it that I could think of, but Looker quickly grabs my arm.

"There isn't time for that. We have a potential lead, and we can't afford to lose it! If explosions like that are allowed to run rampant, that Region could be in grave danger!"

I sigh, looking back at much of my materials and gadgets that I had been working on still on the desk. The only things I have time to pick up by the time Looker had practically forced me out of the room are the still-broken Life Tether, kept for sentimental reasons, a few spare Pokeballs, and another chip for my translator that I had been experimenting with.

...

As Looker guides me out of the Olivine apartment complex and towards the harbor, I can't help but ask,

"Looker, what are our leads? Who are we looking for, exactly?"

He nods in acknowledgement, but continues to dash towards a recently-docked vessel that I had never seen before. Its as big, if not bigger than the S.S. Aqua, but it looks much more fortified than any ship that I had ridden in the past. Sturdy iron beams undergird the sides of the miniature battleship, making it look much more fearsome than most likely intended. It's probably a pleasure cruiser when it comes down to it, but the outside tells me that the captain of this particular ship takes pride in his boat.

The ship's insignia reads, "S.S. Lucy," an odd name for a cruiser of this size. As we approach the ship, a large, burly man with a ripped sailor's vest, agrin on his face, and a jovial smile is just leaving the ship, whistling to himself. He sees Looker running with me right behind him and begins to make preparations for the ship to leave, again.

"You sure don't waste any time, Looker," he crows, in a deep, throaty voice,

"I didn't even have to set 'er down here before you've already got him. Well, should we be off to Kalos?"

Looker looks at the man, obviously the captain of the ship, and nods.

"Yes, we've got to leave immediately. Can you ship handle the voyage back?"

The man cracks an extremely wide grin and laughs heartily.

"Gyahaha, Lucy 'ere is the best o' the best!" he crows,

"She'll get us anywhere we need 'er to go! Climb aboard!"

He climbs up the iron ladder that adorns the side of the ship and motions for us to do the same. Looker gives me a glance of affirmation, while I grab the ladder and hoist myself up. He then follows me up soon after and gives the signal to the captain of the ship.

"We're all ready! Set a course for the port nearest to Geosenge Town!" he affirms, seemingly taking on a completely different persona at the time. For a moment, he has an adventurous, yet curious nature to him, and a large smile on his face, like he anticipates what we will find there in Kalos.

Perhaps he does... The thought sticks in the back of my mind,

Or he's just ready to apprehend whoever caused this explosion. One of the two...

Then, just as quickly as it appears, that enigmatic smile of his disappears, to be replaced by his usual demeanor as an undercover cop. However, before he can begin to speak, a loud rumbling sound, followed by the turning of an infinite number of metallic parts, signals the beginning of the S.S. Lucy's trip to Kalos, and the force of it throws me to my knees.

Immediately, the ship lurches forward through the water at an incredible speed, keeping me pinned down for a few minutes, but I eventually learn to cope with the massive turbulence caused by the vessel's escapades.

Looker watches me adjust with a slight smile on his face, but it disappears when he places his hand on my shoulder and begins to guide me towards the small door under the captain's quarters that leads deeper into the ship.

"Come, I have something to show you," he tells me, and he opens the door.

The hallway inside is much sparser than the carpeted corridors of the S.S. Aqua. Instead of red walkways and fancy decor everywhere, the insides of the S.S. Lucy are painted a barebones gray, with a little blue outlining around the three doors that lined the first hallway.

You know... For a ship that rivals the S.S. Aqua, it really isn't as big as I was expecting. But that would be assuming that this ship is a passenger cruiser, as well. Judging by the takeoff, Lucy is definitely built for speed, so much of the insides are most likely streamlined and lined with motors and other things.

However I didn't really mind the change in scenery, or the lack of that waiter that had snobbed at me for my Rocket garb the last time I had been on a ship. Funnily enough, thinking of that man makes me remember that my blue lab coat is exactly what I'm wearing. Albeit, the garb is a little torn in places, but it's served me well over the years, and I don't particularly want to part with it since it's one of my connections to Voltflare. If I wanted, I could probably have it mended and repaired- but that can wait until after we get to the bottom of this explosion by Geosenge.

I just hope that we actually will get to the bottom of this... If that blast was really strong enough to warrant the attention of the International Police, I don't want whoever caused it to target a city with it...

But my thoughts are interrupted when Looker stops in front of the third door and turns a key in its lock. He places his hand on the doorknob, but he doesn't turn it. Not yet, at least.

"There's a Pokemon that we found in Kalos that seems to want to meet you, Nathan," he turns to me and says,

"So, I figured that we could bring him along and get you two acquainted before all chaos breaks loose in Kalos. He's quite fluent in English for some reason, and he seems to be especially curious about Riku..."

"Riku?" I interject,

"What Pokemon would want something with Riku? He's so young...!"

"That's exactly why this particular Pokemon is so worried, Nathan. Because he apparently knows Riku from earlier in his life, and he doesn't want anything happening to the Shaymin."

He removes his hand and looks at me.

"Well, do you want to do the honors?" he asks.

Knows Riku from earlier in his life...? Just who could this Pokemon be?

My mind is abuzz with questions, but I pull Riku's Pokeball from my belt, anyway, place my hand on the doorknob, and open it.

...

Inside, the room is much the same as the kind of quarters I had aboard the S.S. Aqua: a single large drawer, probably big enough to hold an entire suitcase or other baggage, a small mirror on one wall, and a sheetless cot in one corner. As I scan the contents of the room, I don't really find anything out of the ordinary, until I look at the bed.

Expectantly sitting on the mattress, looking at me with wide-eyes, is a Riolu with emerald-green eyes and a small red bandana tied around his neck. I notice a miniature bulge under the bandana, but I don't particularly pay it any heed. I calmly approach the Pokemon with my hands at my side to seem less threatening, and I kneel down so that I'm at around the same eye level as the Emanation Pokemon.

The Riolu looks at me and smiles warmly, and I can tell, immediately that Looker had been right about them having a lead on this sudden attack.

If we're lucky... This Riolu has some connection to me that will help us track down the culprits. At least, I hope so...