Students chatted and chattered around the halls, from all around the region, swarming through buzzing colonies of boys and girls dressed in scarves, gloves, and leggings, all wanting to withstand the wintry weather.

  Lucas, Dawn and Looker made their way down the corridors, passing through an automatic glass door and found themselves in a room bursting with loaded bookshelves, researchers and students clicking away at desktops.

  "Impressive..." Looker put his hand on his chin. "This school truly is something special. It definitely feels like a super high-end research school."

  "Well yeah," Dawn said, "The government funnels money into this place like any other of the international schools."

  The sort of money it would take to fuel a school like this must have been taxing, Looker thought. He knew the schools were partly privately-owned, with the government having a fair share... but it was still quite curious where exactly all the money to fund such a complex school had come from. Lucas, on the other hand, was in awe, absorbing everything he saw like... not a sponge, more like an Absorb Bulb since this is a Pokémon story.

  Back on track.

  Dawn said they were looking for a tall, grumpy boy with purple hair who was also grumpy and had a grumpy attitude along with being rude and grumpy.

  Looker did what he did best and scoped the scenario out (watch out). The more he looked around, the more he realised how huge the room was. It was interesting... seeing all those people. Seeing all their movements. One group, comprised of girls, was huddled around a single monitor. Giggling. Gasping. One girl would loudly crack jokes. One would immediately burst out laughing. Another would stall for a second or two before laughing even louder as if to compensate. One wouldn't laugh at all.

  It was always so interesting. Seeing the many masks people wore and reading their cracks and crevices like a horoscope. Everyone was always much different than they appeared. Everyone always had their own... reasons.

  He wasn't one to judge.

  It took a certain type of person to do what he did. A certain wiring in the mind to get kicks out of reading between the lines around the clock, even when there was seemingly absolutely no need. It often isolated him. Like a lone Houndoom...

  ...or the lavender-haired boy sitting in an empty lounge, eyeing him with hard eyes.

  Looker smiled and pointed.

  "Is that him?" Lucas asked, but just as he saw the other boy, he was hopelessly pulled down a rabbit hole of awe and shock. "What the—who's that Pokémon?"

  Sitting next to Paul, a perfectly bored look on its face, with aloof, droopy grey ears hanging down without a care in the world: a blasé bunny. In a sudden, angered tweet, Tweety was caught in a wave of mental unrest, jostling up and down in frustration!

  Dawn sighed. "Yep. That's him. That's Paul... and that Raboot slouched next to him is... his partner."

  "A Galarian Pokémon, how interesting..." Looker said, giving Dart a smile, which the shrewd Toxicroak returned with a few croaky chortles.

  Paul watched them, staring them down.

  Who the hell was that random boy they were with? He'd never seen him in his life. He couldn't look away. Once he'd locked eyes with that middle-aged, Sherlock Holmes wannabe, he couldn't look away.

  As Looker walked toward him, past the other lounges populated by pupils, he kept his gaze as solid as Onyx.

  Soon they were all seated in the lounge. Paul gave Lucas a slanted gaze.

  "Who are you?"

  "I'm Lucas," he replied.

  "Okay, but who are you?"

  "Paul! Do you always have to be so rude?" Dawn shook her head as second-hand embarrassment choked her.

  But Paul stonewalled her like Max Rockfall, stirring up a sandstorm of frustration within her as he continued probing Lucas.

  "You're a new assistant?" Paul leaned forward, "I don't know anything about any newbies... you sure you're not smoking Sprigatito?"

  "What? N-no, the Professor asked me to help him research the legendary Pokémon! He must not have told you, but I met him two days ago and—"

  "Eugh, stop talking. What are you, a girl? All I did was ask a few questions and you're in fright or flight mode, chill out. I bet you and her are already real good friends. What, you sit around sipping tea and sharing your feelings?"

  "Wha... what the?" A mix of confusion and irritation steamed in Lucas's voice. He looked to Dawn, who already looked exhausted from frustration. What on Earth was this guy's deal? Not that he wasn't already well-accustomed to this sort of talk, having spent hours with Barry, but where the hell were all these other guys coming from? First Thorton and now this guy? What was up with every guy he met being so... mean? He'd also noticed the Raboot's dull red eyes fixed on him, as if unspeakably unimpressed by him already. That was when Tweety, his feathery chest puffed up like a proud Poffin, stomped up to the unamused Raboot and tweeted in a taunting tone. The rabbit remained completely unfazed by the Piplup; it was like its boredom had intensified as it simply burrowed its paws into its furry pockets.

  "Hey, knock it off, Tweety. We're not here for that, we have important stuff to do, remember?" Dawn spat, recalling the little bird back to her side. That Raboot was gonna get it one day, always so smug, always trying to play it cool—Tweety hoped that long-eared loser knew that the minute Dawn gave the order, he wouldn't hesitate to let loose. He was begging for reason.

  "How about you shut up, you Garbodor? You couldn't even get a simple task done, let alone stick up for yourself," Paul said.

  "There were three of them! She had Pokémon too; I couldn't do anything—listen, Paul, I know you don't like me and all, but are you gonna help me or what? I don't have time to be arguing with you and all this rude talk, I just need a yes or no, okay?"

  "So now you're telling me what to do?"

  Lucas felt the very Earth tremble seeing Dawn's face twist and contort with a ship's worth of distaste. In that moment, he had no doubt that she could melt Regice down to a pathetic puddle with her stare. With all this in mind, he couldn't help but wonder why she'd turned to him for help. It seemed counter-intuitive... or maybe... this guy was...

  "Alright, no need to be so harsh. It's not like things can't be undone for the most part..." Looker chimed in.

  "So you're finally speaking up? I was starting to think you were mute," Paul noted the foreign accent mixed into his voice like sugar in dark coffee. Who the hell was this old guy and where was he from? Dawn probably cried like the loser she was and dragged him into her mess like she did whenever she couldn't get anything done herself. Typical. People like her always infuriated him.

  "You're quite the enigma. My name's Looker, like your colleague Ms. Diamond said. It's a code name."

  Paul laughed to himself. Obviously it was a code name—what kind of Muk-brained dumbass named a kid Looker?

  Looker continued. "I work for the International Police. I'll cut straight to the point since I have a feeling you're a busy guy..." Looker said, noticing Paul's expression turn even harder than it was before. For a child, he wore quite a hard mask. "Those papers. I need to know what was on them."

  Paul leaned back, sinking deeper into the sofa and crossing his legs as a smirk crept onto his face. "A theory on evolution and some stuff about two artefacts."

  Looker nodded slowly. "What two artefacts?"

  "That's classified, mystery guy."

  "You've already shared a few details. Besides, I'm a member of the IP."

  "I didn't share any details with you. Just a vague recount," Paul told him. "Plus, the International Police doesn't mean a thing to me. They don't finance anything I do, so why should I care?"

  The smirk on Looker's face dissolved, substituted with a grave expression as his usually slick and smooth voice went deep and dire. "Because I have a hunch. And it's not a good one."

  "What are you talking about?" Paul's eyes narrowed on Looker's now-dire face. He wasn't going to let himself unravel just because he said something vague and mysterious.

  Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

  "Do you know why I'm here, kid? Do you have any idea what's going on in the world right now?" Looker asked.

  "What, the Coronation Series? That's the only thing that's been on the news; I'm kind of getting sick of it."

  "That's correct, but not exactly. You see, the press is putting pressure on the government due to the lack of control over the rampant rise in crime all across the world—"

  "Yeah, I was getting there."

  Looker shook his head. "My apologies." He panned his gaze on the children and their Pokémon. "More importantly, as I'm sure you've all deciphered by now, Dart and I are not from this region. In fact, we arrived just last week. Previously, we were deployed in the Hoenn region to handle the current situation... but things changed. I received word from one of my higher-ups that there was a situation. Here in Sinnoh. One involving Team Galactic, or 'Galaxy Gang' as I hear they're called locally."

  Lucas noticed a subtle distress seep deep and bleach Dawn's face when the detective chose to speak on the team of thieves—but slightly higher on the totem pole of matters: how strong was that Raboot? Where'd this Paul guy get it? He'd never seen any of those in Sinnoh. Well, he'd been planted like a tree in Twinleaf his whole life, but still. What moves did it know? He had to know... it couldn't wait.

  He wanted—no—needed to see what it could do. How he would do against him.

  Paul's eyes got webbed up in his curious gaze, but it wasn't long before the other boy's gaze grabbed a pair of scissors and snipped their contact.

  "There's always a situation here," Paul said. "What made you wise up all of a sudden?"

  "You're completely correct," Looker replied. "There was never any plan to deploy units here in Sinnoh. Our top priority has always been dismantling Team Rocket, although we were deployed to help handle the rising conflict in Hoenn, the gang wars between Teams Aqua and Magma have been getting more violent and so my mission there was to infiltrate and collect information on both in order to shut them down for good... that was until one of our special covert units tipped us off about a break-in at the Eterna Museum. I'm sure you'll remember that incident..."

  "Of course!"

  Everyone turned to Lucas, who'd been injected with a sudden dose of dopamine. Even the nonchalant Ash's eyes widened momentarily, though it wasn't that deep for him in the end.

  "What...? You guys don't remember?" Lucas became sheepish, sort of like a Wooloo, short of morphing into a Flaaffy.

  "Uhh... no, sorry." Dawn said. "I mean, they're always in the news so it never stood out to me much..."

  "Nobody was expecting you to remember, you airhead." Paul speared, his voice colder than spearmint, "They broke into the museum and stole an extremely rare artefact—a treasure—the type of thing that could go for billions—trillions if you sold it!"

  "Yeah, the Adamant Orb!" Lucas said in a breath of surprised excitement, "It's seriously rare, people are still trying to figure out where it came from, no one even knows what it's made of! The theory is that it came from a rift in literal time! But that's not even close to being the coolest part: apparently, it came from Dialga himself (or herself, we don't know). That's so cool that you know about it too, Paul!"

  "Yeah, that's 'cause it's my job to know, you idiot ?_?" The boy said, "As for why those idiots would keep something so unbelievably rare out in the open for anyone to see is beyond stupid, but leave it to the mature adults to make the mature adult decisions or whatever..."

  Looker observed the boy's shift in gears.

  Silence poured into the air. It was becoming clear that whatever was going on wasn't as dismissible as Paul had made it out to be. He knew this wasn't a trivial matter in the first place; otherwise, he wouldn't have stayed. This wasn't good. Not at all. It looked like the papers weren't as worthless as he thought... but the real question was—

  "Wait." Dawn finally spoke up after a bountiful absence of words. "What would those dumb crooks be doing with something like that?"

  "Oh my god, Dawn, that's literally what we're trying to figure out," Paul said.

  "What, I can't think out loud? Besides, it's not like I was looking for an answer from you, Paul."

  "You say that after crawling on the way here on your hands and knees begging me to pull you out the mud."

  "Fine then." she turned to Looker, "Since he's not gonna tell us what's on the papers, we don't need to speak with him anymore, do we? We have things to do too, Looker, remember? We can't waste time on this loner when Team Galactic's out there robbing other people! By the way, Paul, I changed my mind: I don't want your help anymore. I realise now that I was being far too desperate asking you two for help; besides, Toffee would vomit at the thought of getting help from you," Dawn pointed at the dull grey fur ball before she stood up, hoisting her bag strap over her shoulder.

  No, they couldn't sit and let time slip by. There were far more important things than Paul's childish attitude. Far, far more important. She couldn't lose a single second. They had to move, and they had to move now!

  "You may have a point, Ms. Diamond. I'm starting to pick up on how pragmatic you are; I like it." Looker said, motioning to get up, ensuring his intention to leave was palpable enough to trigger the timeout.

  "Stop," Paul said.

  "Why should we?" Dawn spat, folding her arms.

  "Shut up, I'm not talking to you. You can get lost for all I care, you useless Magikarp. There's something you didn't answer," Paul shot up from his sofa, "You didn't answer me, Looker."

  The detective raised his sharp, thick brows. "What's that?"

  "I asked you what you were talking about. I need an answer. What hunch?"

  Dawn scoffed. "Wow, you're so proud you can't even ask nicely after all that talk. You're the one who wasted our time, and now you're talking about what you need? So selfish... If there's anything I hate in this world (other than green), it's rude boys."

  "It's okay, Dawn," Looker faced her. But she wasn't having any of it.

  "No, it's not okay, Looker! They stole Toffee from me! I'm not gonna waste my time on this overly rude scumbag because he thought he was too cool to help us."

  But Looker simply shook his head. "Sometimes it doesn't hurt to give someone a second chance. We still have time."

  Paul sighed, running his hand through his dense lavender hair. "The lake guardians. They don't evolve... yet they're stronger than almost all other Pokémon. Professor Rowan and I partnered with Professor Oak to study the difference between standard, evolving Pokémon across Sinnoh and other regions, and legendary Pokémon. While Ash and I were in Kanto last year, we were focused especially on those that require contact with evolutionary stones. We were helping Professor Oak. That's when Rowan brought up two... other types of 'stones.'"

  "Those were the two artefacts you were talking about?" Looker asked.

  "Yeah." Paul's voice hardened like an iron-husked Kakuna. "The Lustrous Orb... and the Adamant Orb. At first, Oak didn't classify them as stones, but Rowan was all like: 'we have to be thorough, Oak. We cannot overlook things we don't feel are worthy' and stuff. That's when he told us we needed to take a deeper look at our native legends and study Palkia and Dialga. So we did. Eventually, he said it wouldn't be enough to read books; we needed to get hands-on. I told him Ash and I were ready, but he told me to wait a while and polish up what we had before he gave me the heads-up. Those papers had all the research we gathered here in Sinnoh on the lake guardians... and on Palkia and Dialga. They were supposed to be delivered to Professor Oak in Eterna today, of course, we all know how well that worked out."

  ...

  Looker's eyes went dim.

  Dawn wore a troubled expression on her face. "They've been watching me. They knew exactly what time I was gonna leave the building too. They knew about the papers... they knew. But how would they..."

  "You still haven't answered my question," Paul said, irritation flaring in his already mean voice.

  Looker went quiet for a few seconds, his eyes closed and his hand on his chin, deep in thought, until he hammered his palm with his fist like a judge. He had his verdict. "I've got it. I apologise for making you wait this long, kid. I'll tell you now... about my hunch. I have a feeling Team Galactic's leader has a terrifying plan. One that involves harnessing the legendary Pokémon to do something catastrophic... something that might change things, change the world. I don't know why, but I have a feeling. A horrible feeling that things are about to go wrong..."

  Lucas, his mind leaking little loads of memories, spoke up. "I think... I met him. Team Galactic's leader."

  Paul paused for a moment, eyeing Looker, who had his eyes on the boy, all the while Dart stared at them all, almost amused by the exchange of glances. Lucas told them of his and Barry's little encounter with a pale ghost of a man back at Lake Verity, an experience that iced his bones—one he couldn't forget even if heavy rain pelted his brain and rinsed it clean of all its memories. There were a lot of details that Looker wanted to delve deeper into, but the most intriguing of them all was how the man had asked Lucas about the history of the being of emotions, Mesprit.

  It was all like a trail of crumbs or a puzzle... and the entire thing made his heart hop and skip like a Hoppip—although that didn't make any sense upon deeper analysis since Hoppip didn't actually hop or skip.

  Looker put his hand on his clean-cut and shaven chin. "What exactly would Team Galactic's boss be doing at the lake? Why is he so fixated on the Pokémon myths...?"

  Dawn watched the stress blossom on his face like Bellossom as she massaged Tweety, who was sitting on her lap still drilling his gaze into that stupid Raboot.

  The feeling wasn't awesome, still tangling and twirling in her mind like an overgrowth of dangling weeds. Somewhere out there in the region, Toffee was with those robbers! Sitting there was in no way multiplying her comfort, only adding more piles of distress to an already towering mound. The Adamant Orb or whatever it was could wait; so could the papers—to her, those things were like faraway stars twinkling with tiny sparks of urgency, while her missing partner was a thousand suns circling the earth with giant eyes burning the surface! This was the polar opposite reaction of Lucas, who was still ruminating over the ancient artefacts, but the more he thought about it, the more it became clear as a brilliant diamond, even more so than before, that if he hoped to continue researching the Sinnoh Myths, if he hoped to be any sort of decent trainer:

  He was gonna need a Gym Badge.

  Now it was for certain. It was solidified. No more mucking around. It was time for Oreburgh. But first...

  Paul slid his hands into his pockets, letting out a heavy sigh of disappointment. His Raboot kicked into action, hopping laxly as he followed behind his partner, knowing better than anyone that it was time to take their leave. Paul pointed at Dawn, his finger like a boomstick or a rifle—whatever other weapon with which you wouldn't wanna trifle. "I hope you know that this is your fault. All this Galactic talk is giving me a headache; what a waste of my time—I could've been on my way to Snowpoint. Good riddance."

  Sick of the nonsense, Paul began walking away. Away from all the stupidity of the last twenty minutes, but before he could get away—

  "Wait!" Lucas went after him.

  "What do you want?"

  Paul's mean stone expression almost fell off seeing a Poké Ball pointed in his face.

  "I want... a battle. I want to battle you. I need to get stronger before I challenge the gym. Also... I need to see what your Raboot is made of..."

  Paul smirked, trading glances with his smoky rabbit. "What do you say, Ash?"

  The Raboot sighed, shrugging his little shoulders.

  Whatever.