THIRD PERSON

"I can't tell what it is." Sammy frowned as she wiped a freshly soaked towel against the Umbreon's forehead.

Vanta was quickly relocated to Hydra's office once the word was spread that he was coughing a lot of blood. Even though the large jackal wasn't there to man the station, Sammy was luckily knowledgeable enough to handle the medicine inside the cabinets.

"What could have happened?" Grace murmured, clearly on the brink of tears.

"He has the temperature of an average cold, but the symptoms of a deadly disease...I'm not sure I understand what this is." The younger Braixen paced around the room with a worried expression.

"I'll be okay...I just need to get this out of my system..." Vanta—with a very strained voice—tried his best to reassure the numerous Pokemon inside the room.

"Vanta..." Galant couldn't help but worriedly sigh at the sight of him. "Do you know of any illnesses you've had in your past?"

The Umbreon thought for a brief moment before shaking his head. "Not that I can think of."

"Ya think a sickness can pull somethin' off that quickly?" Sherwood humphed, seemingly finding trouble believing the idea.

"I've seen it before." Luster muttered as he trudged into the room with a large towel draped over his back. "My brother got deathly ill in just a day."

Sammy nodded at the Luxray as a 'thank you' before nabbing the towel. "Right now he just needs rest. I don't want to make any rash decisions until I'm comfortable knowing what he has."

"If only we had Hydra..." Galant muttered somberly.

As if everyone in the room didn't want to be reminded, there was nothing but silence after that. It'd been long enough for them to register that Hydra was most likely not coming back for a while, or worse, ever again.

By now, many believed he was dead—gone in the ashes of the fire. A few thought he was just missing. Most wanted to hope he was secretly alive, but the main issue is that he's gone now...and there's nothing they can do about it.

"Alright, well I have to go to bed." Luster stifled a yawn before backing up into the doorway. "You all should too...and someone should stay here to help him."

"As much as I want that, we can't watch over him every second. We need breaks too." Galant reasoned with a worried frown.

"I can stay." Sherwood offered. "I ain't gon' fuss about not getting much sleep."

"A-Are you sure?" Sammy turned to eye the Sceptile carefully.

"Yeah." The grass-type shrugged in response. "I'll jus' stay outside the door."

After that, everyone seemed a little more sure of the situation. Luster made his leave, Sammy checked up on Vanta's temperature before leaving, and Galant excused himself from the room.

"Uhm..." Grace hummed as she was one of the two remaining in the room.

"Take your time, kiddo." Sherwood offered the Eevee a reassuring smile. "I'll be waitin' outside when you're done."

After the Sceptile left, Grace found herself leaping up on the nightstand next to the Umbreon.

"Are y-you okay?" She stammered.

"Yeah...I just got a lot on my mind." Vanta frowned.

"Oh..." The Eevee exhaled. "Like..?"

"I might have overworked myself a little." He weakly smiled as his gaze was locked to the ceiling. "I always wanted to be a good leader for people."

"Y-You are, though. A lot of what we accomplished was only done with your leadership." Grace tried to reason.

"Maybe, but you could also argue I got a lot of us killed." The Umbreon shrugged. "But even more than that, I was just afraid of failure."

Grace didn't have much to say about that. She watched as the canine tried to adjust in the bed and provoked a coughing fit—which she quickly responded by passing him a dry towel.

"Thanks." Vanta croaked through his strained voice and managed not to get any blood on the mattress.

Seeing him in this state was painful for the Eevee, and the feeling of hopelessly watching the Umbreon deteriorate took a harsh toll on her.

"Grace..." He cleared his throat. "Would you mind writing me a small section on your book?"

"O-Of course not!" Grace nodded and leaped off the nightstand to quickly snatch her small bag off the corner of the room. She returned—this time on the bed next to the Umbreon—and prompted her pen. "Why?"

"I've always felt like writing something...but I'm not very good with my handwriting." Vanta answered with a small chuckle, his eyes watching as the fox tucked the pen in her maw. "How did you even learn to write like that?"

"Hmm?" Grace tilted her head in confusion.

"We're quadrupeds, we don't exactly have the limbs for writing on paper...so how'd you learn to write with your mouth?" He questioned.

"From what I remember, it was all I was good at in my life." The Eevee temporarily dropped the pen to speak. "I tried for hours trying to get it right...got so frustrated that..."

She stopped herself, a small sense of guilt settling in.

"Just...it was a pretty long road to get here." Grace concluded with a sad scowl.

"I understand." Vanta nodded. "You know, you remind me a lot of my younger sister."

"Really?" She tilted her head in surprise.

"Yup...I can't remember her name because of the amnesia, but all I know is that she's...dead." Vanta resorted back to blankly staring at the ceiling again. "It's sad, but I think it was a long time ago since I feel a little used to the feeling."

"That's...I'm sorry to hear that." Grace sympathized.

"Part of that reason is why I swore to protect you. Something tells me I failed back then, and I refuse to fail again." The Umbreon mindlessly vented.

A weird, complicated feeling took over the Eevee. A lot of questions were answered at that moment, and all she could do was pick up the pen again.

"You weady?" She uttered through her muffled maw.

Vanta nodded before taking a deep breath.

"Title it..." He thought for a moment.

"What I've Always Wanted to Say"

THIRD PERSON

About half an hour had passed before the Sceptile jolted awake at the sound of the door opening behind him. On the other side was Grace, who undoubtedly looked like she had just finished crying.

"Everything good?" Sherwood raised a concerned brow at the girl walking by him.

"Mhm..." Grace sniffled. "I'm leaving my book in there. Goodnight."

"Night..." The Sceptile questioned no further and locked the door behind her. He confidently planted his back against it before nibbling on his lucky weed. "Guess I'm waitin' here for a while."

Sherwood managed to start dozing off while leaning against the door, his mission being to prevent anyone from entering. Part of him wondered what Grace and Vanta talked about, but at the end of the day it was none of his business.

The next hours were spent in peace, the only sounds audible were the heaters that had been automatically activated due to the cold.

From the pitch-black night patrolled a Luxray, whose eyes could see clearly in the dark. He found himself in the garage after wanting to investigate a certain noise he had heard.

Luster turned his attention to the ceiling to find a layout of pipes and vents. The noise had stopped for now, but it was interesting to see how Sam didn't care about the complexities of the house being able to be seen.

"You're awake?" A voice called out to him from the garage connector.

He quickly turned to glare at whoever was there, but upon seeing a familiar Manectric, his gaze softened. "I heard something while I was patrolling."

"Oh..." Rayne hummed lightly and walked closer to him. "I see. What did it sound like?"

"Metallic, I only heard it for a bit." Luster sat on his haunches to think. "Isn't it dangerous for you to be out?"

"I may be more emotional now, but I still know how to defend myself." She answered with a stern gaze.

"Huh...no more emotionless bounty hunter." The Luxray shrugged.

"At least you didn't say assassin." Rayne chuckled lightly. "Also, the gem is still blinking...but it should be ending in a few minutes. Whoever received the memory wants to keep them."

"That really sucks, stuff like this is why the last murder happened." Luster groaned in frustration. "I don't know how Sam will ever convince us to use memory gems after thi—"

Cutting off the large feline as he spoke, a loud screeching noise coming from what seemed to be a speaker reverberated in the distance, yet clear enough to hear exactly what it was saying.

"I WISH TO FORGET." The distorted voice prompted.

"Holy..." Rayne uttered under her breath. "T-That was it, that's the phrase you have to say to forget!"

"Fuck! We have to get there now!" Luster growled and leaped forward to begin sprinting down the hallway. He refused to think for even a moment as the current information was far too important.

He made it to the living room to find that the gem was no longer blinking, and with Rayne following suit behind him, the two ran straight toward the kitchen.

Luster made a lunge past the living room doorway to finally peer into the kitchen with gleaming eyes.

And what he saw...

Was nothing.

"Shit..!" The feline cursed under his breath as the Manectric caught up.

"Why are you...so fast..." She panted lightly. "Did you see anything?"

"No, there was nothing." Luster muttered through his grimace. "Why could we hear that from here? Did they use the speaker?"

The Luxray turned to narrow his eyes at the microphone propped up to the wall.

"Why would they use it anyway? Wouldn't it be more stealthy to steal the gem and forget your memories that way?" Rayne tried to reason as she continued to search around the room.

Luster shoved the walk-in pantry door to find that there was still no one near the area.

"Strange..." He muttered lightly.

"They must have really ran for it, huh..." The Manectric frowned lightly.

A lot of questions were now running through the two's heads, but before they could think of anything...

"I heard the phrase!" Sammy—who was also out of breath from running—had her paw against the corner of the doorway. "Who is it!?"

"It's none of us...we ran here to check as well but couldn't find them." Rayne heaved a disappointed sigh as the vixen frowned.

"Wow...they left that fast?" The Braixen's eyes widened at the thought of such speed. "No way, right?"

"That's just what happened." Luster scoffed lightly. "I couldn't believe it either."

"They're still out there, though. The process takes about five minutes until they've fully forgotten." Sammy added.

"It's too late by now." The Manectric shook her head. "We don't know if they've returned to their room or are hiding."

"We could still check briefly..." The Braixen shrugged.

The options sank in on their heads before a consensus was reached. They didn't have much time to spare if they wanted to act fast, but at the same time...is not knowing who it is so bad?

Now that they've forgotten the memories, it was apparent to them that things were exactly like how they were.

"Maybe we should tell Vanta about it, I feel like he'd like to know things are okay." Rayne offered.

"You guys can, I still need to make sure who's in their rooms." Sammy mentioned before backing away from the doorway. "Let me know what he says."

After a nod of affirmation, the two electric types quickly jogged their way across the halls to trudge up the stairs.

So much was happening in the short span of what felt like a few minutes to them. First, someone uses the kitchen speaker to announce the exact phrase used to prompt the memory gem's forget sequence. Second, they practically disappear into thin air.

"Sherwood probably needs to switch with someone, he's been guarding it for a while now." Luster worriedly uttered as they reached the top of the stairs.

At the end of the long hallway they noticed the Sceptile standing slumped against the wall—and undoubtedly asleep.

"Arceus...he's certainly been here too long, let's wake him up." Rayne offered.

Unsure as to how to move him, they were forced to wake Sherwood up.

However, things would not go as planned.