The night had not been restful.
Mel could count on one hand the number of times she’d been in police custody overnight, and none of them had ever been pleasant experiences. It had only been her, too – nobody else was left on the scene, not even her family, who’d fled when the chaos first began. “I think I can recite my testimony from memory perfectly now,” she grumbled to Repeat. “If anyone else asks me to describe what happened in my own words, I think I might actually, legitimately, kill them.” She took a bite of cereal, her body running on automatic. She could barely even taste it, though she wasn’t sure if that was her senses being deadened due to lack of sleep or if it was just that she was eating Wheat Cubes, ‘the breakfast of flavorless champions.’ “Or,” Mel added after a moment’s reflection, “at the very least maim them.”
“Maiming’s the better option, chief,” Repeat said. He sat directly on top of the kitchen table; the Rylan family had long since given up the battle against Pokemon in the eating area. The newspaper he was reading was bigger than he was, and his journey from one end to the other to turn the page was exactly the kind of thing that captivated Mel’s sleep-addled mind. “Murder’s a harsher charge than assault, after all.”
The spoon hung limply from the corner of Mel’s mouth. “Yeah,” she said, draping her arms over the back of her chair and staring at the ceiling. “But if I’m gonna go that far, might as well go all the way, you know?”
“That’s definitely an argument you could make.” Repeat slowly lurched across the paper, following the story that had continued from the front page. The kidnapping of a gym leader, as expected, had made national news, and the rumors that a revived Team Rocket was behind it were enough to nearly send the country into a panic. As it was, Fuchsia was already flooded with reporters and hangers-on, all eager to get their bite of the breaking-news pie. “At least nobody thinks you were the one at fault.”
Mel’s mind didn’t shift gears quick enough. “Huh?”
“For yesterday, I mean. Yeah, you spent the night being interviewed by cops, but they know it wasn’t you who kidnapped Janine.”
“Small blessings. I don’t feel too optimistic about them getting results, though.” Another spoonful of bland cereal made its way to her mouth. “Help me out, Repeat. What’s on our to-do list now? My head’s not getting up to speed like it oughta.”
“Broadly speaking, we’ve got two tasks.”
Mel smiled. Only two. That almost sounds doable.
“The first is, we need to find and rescue Janine from those Neo Rocket people or whatever they’re calling themselves.”
Okay. That’s a little more daunting.
“The second is that we also need to figure out where the Mew-child has hidden itself.”
Also daunting, but that’s just research, really.
“And, of course, once we do that, we need to protect it from the Neo Rockets, those people in the robes from the power plant, and whoever else pops up out of the woodwork.”
Great.
“Not to mention that even finding the Mew-child means we need to get down into the Sevii Islands and find the professor Janine mentioned, which is no small—”
Mel put her hands up. “Okay, okay, I get it. We’re proper screwed, basically.”
“Aw, don’t say that, boss,” Repeat said. He crawled across the table and patted her arm with a single pseudopod. “One thing at a time, right? I bet this won’t be as bad as you think. Maybe we could go find some of the other gym leaders – I’m sure they’d jump at the opportunity to put the Neo Rockets to bed before they gain too much steam.”
“No.” Mel clapped her cheeks a few times, bringing the world around her back into focus as her mind started ticking a little faster. “No, we shouldn’t. We don’t know who we can trust. I mean, back when the OG Rockets were kicking around, one of the gym leaders himself, that Giovanni guy, was their leader. And there were always rumors running around that Koga and Sabrina and Surge and them were all sympathetic to the Rockets. Plus there’s that whole thing about how they have to be really careful about what they do in an official capacity… Janine told me about it once a long time ago. It sounds like more trouble than it’s worth, being honest.”
“If you say so, boss. So what do we do now, then?”
“I’m gonna finish this cereal and that pot of coffee so I can wake up some more. Then we’re gonna to go to Vermilion City and hitch a ride to the Sevii Islands. If this Silktree guy knows anything about the Mew-child, then we gotta assume that the Neo-Rockets are coming after him too. And if that happens, well, it gives us a shot at rescuing Janine, but otherwise we don’t have a lot of options for tracking her down yet.”
Repeat began the laborious process of folding the newspaper back up. “That sounds awfully optimistic given what happened yesterday, chief.”
“Well.” Mel let out a deep breath and looked out the window. The kitchen faced the backyard, and her parents were both outside in the morning sun, encouraging a Vulpix with a healing leg to take its first steps since its accident. “I’m not sure we’ve got much else but optimism in our corner right now.”
In a country adrift in change, from volcanos erupting to graveyards being torn down for radio stations to radio stations being subsequently torn down for the graveyards again, the Sevii Islands were an oasis of inertia. Mel had never before been there personally, but she found it telling that her Traveler’s Guide to the Sevii Islands was largely accurate despite having been published when she was a child.
Knot Island (or, as Mel refused to call it, One Island) still hosted all of the major tourist attractions that her guide said it did: the volcano Mount Ember, looming in the distance; the Network Center, gleaming hub of technology; Treasure Beach, filled with hopeful beachcombers eager to be the next to strike gold. The temperature was mild, not quite as warm as it was back home in Fuchsia, and there was barely a cloud to be seen in the sky.
“I can see why this place is so popular,” Mel said. “Wouldn’t mind vacationing here—hey!” A tourist, one from Unova from the looks of it, shoved past her to get to the Network Center without even a word.
“Maybe when we get some time off, we pick somewhere with less people, huh?” Repeat said. “So what’s our plan now that we’re here?”
Mel didn’t answer right away. They had stopped near the Network Center to get their bearings; Mel wouldn’t admit it out loud, but she had underestimated the size of the island. Everyone had always made it sound like the Sevii Islands were tiny and boring, but then, she supposed, that was the issue with asking people who’d moved away from there. The town on its own wasn’t any smaller than Pallet – and she’d been there often enough to know that Pallet’s podunk reputation was wholly unearned.
They crossed the street to a modest tea shop, its elegant aromas obvious before they even reached it. Mel pulled a plastic chair away from one of the outdoor tables, sheltered underneath a pastel-colored parasol, and sat, bridging her hands in front of her face. “Not sure,” she finally said. “I was kinda hoping that we’d be able to pick up a trail of our guy when we got here, but…”
“It’s too crowded,” Repeat said, keeping lookout from his perch on top of Mel’s head.
“Right. I wouldn’t even know who to ask.”
“Why not check the guidebook? Maybe inspiration will strike.”
“Can’t hurt, I guess.” Mel placed an order for a berry tea and spread The Traveler’s Guide to the Sevii Islands out on the table. “‘So you’ve made it to One Island!’” she read aloud. “Ugh, I still hate that name. ‘Oh, we’ve got seven islands, we’re going to name them one through seven!’ Shoulda gotten an art major down here, I swear.”
“Don’t get distracted,” Repeat said, rolling his eyes.
“Right. Sorry.” Mel cleared her throat. “‘So you’ve made it to One Island! Congratulations! There’s lots to see and do here…’ yada yada yada… Mount Ember, Treasure Beach… Oh, I didn’t see this before. ‘Local tech-head Celio is working to get the Network Center online as an expansion of the island’s Pokemon Center after efforts to build it in a separate facility failed. The site of the abandoned warehouse where Celio first tried to build it can be found on Kindle Road, outside of the town proper; Celio is on record as saying he gave up the original location after it was found to be sitting alongside an ancient burial site and that he, quote, didn’t need that kind of bad mojo.’”
The waitress arrived with Mel’s tea right as Mel’s head snapped up. “That’s it!” she yelled; the waitress jumped back and only barely managed to save the tea from spilling. In one smooth motion, Mel stood up, knocking the chair to the ground, grabbed the guide, and ran down the street towards the eastern edge of town. Repeat could only mime ‘sorry’ to the waitress the best way he knew how, hoping she understood.
Equal parts beachfront, ocean, and mountainous crag, Kindle Road stretched all the way from the town to Mount Ember in the north. Though still buzzing with people, especially visitors to the famed hot springs heated by the volcano itself, it was noticeably less crowded than the rest of the island. Mel supposed the terrain had something to do with that; if Celio hadn’t bowed out of a facility there because of the supernatural, the difficulty in getting around would have done the trick just as nicely. The building in question wasn’t too far out of the way, though; she found it nestled in a nook eroded out of the cliffside itself. Just as the guide said, telltale grave markers littered the area around it, looking only like oddly-smooth rocks to the untrained eye, though the half-dilapidated structure, all crumbled brick and corroded metal, seemed fitting, somehow.
“So when were you planning on telling me what’s going on?” Repeat hissed as they approached the building.
Mel grinned. The sleep she’d finally gotten on the boat to One Island and her sudden inspiration at the tea shop had done a lot for her mood. “So it’s like this, you know?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I asked, chief.”
“Okay, slow up a minute. I was gonna keep going. Anyway, so this place is on an ancient burial ground, and the guy we’re supposed to find is all into mythology. I figured, what better place to find myths and stuff than an old graveyard? Those kinds of places ooze myths.”
“Huh.” Repeat blinked. “That’s… pretty sound, actually. I’m impressed. So we’re going to…?”
“We’re gonna walk in and, fingers crossed, we’re gonna find him in there!”
“And if we don’t?”
“Well,” Mel said, “then we just leave and start looking somewhere else. There are seven of these islands, after all. Guy might be on a different one.” With Repeat on her head, she approached the warehouse and placed her hand on the door, ready to push it open.
Mel paused.
For a moment, neither she nor Repeat said anything.
Repeat broke the silence. “You feel it too, don’t you? Something’s wrong.”
“Yeah.” Powerful emotions welled up just beyond the door, way more than Mel could attribute to any single person. She knew Repeat couldn’t sense the same thing, but he’d always had a good gut instinct. The part that was really throwing her, though, was what the emotions were – hope, optimism, confidence, and underneath all of it, a deep, yet subtle, current of malice, nearly masked completely by everything else. “Maybe I won’t open this door right yet,” Mel said, more quietly.
“I think that’s a good call.”
Mel slowly took several steps to the right, careful not to put her foot down on anything that would make noise; she managed to avoid, in order, a twig, a discarded potato chip bag, and an old bicycle horn that someone had left there for reasons she couldn’t fathom. Once she rounded the corner of the wall, she looked up and down the length of the building. There were no windows. Getting around to the back of the building would be impossible, she realized, from how it butted up against the rock; from where she stood, though, she figured she could probably make it to what remained of the rooftop. It’s a one-story building, Mel thought, and it looks like there’s places where it collapsed in. If I can get up there, I might could see what’s going on, hopefully without them noticing me in the process. A pipe ran up the side of the wall, made from sturdy metal that hadn’t yet rusted all the way through. Mel ran a hand up it thoughtfully.
“Oh no,” said Repeat. “I know that look. You’re about to do something dumb.”
“Am not.” Mel grabbed the pipe with both hands and planted one foot on the wall. Even when she pulled at full force, the pipe, bolted firmly in place, refused to move.
“Are you about to climb the pipe?”
“Maybe.”
“I stand by what I said.” But Repeat nonetheless held tight to Mel’s head as she scaled the wall.
The Collected Journals of Septimus Reus, the omnibus of essays, notes, and other musings that together chronicled the life and times of the famed researcher whose name adorned the cover, went into excruciating detail concerning Reus’ encounters with legendary Pokemon – every single one of them accidental. As such, many aspiring trainers used the Collected Journals as a guide, hoping beyond hope that, if they followed his missteps, they’d stumble across legendaries just as often as he did.
This was not the case.
The true value in Reus’ research was in his comprehensive notes on what tended to put him in the most danger, Pokemon-related or not.
With that in mind, this is what Reus had to say on the subject of roofs:
“I cannot emphasize this enough. Stay off of rooftops. Trust me on this one. The first time I made my way up onto a roof, it was on an abandoned grain silo so I could better scope out any rare fauna in the area. Needless to say, I fell through a rusted patch and very nearly died via suffocation and/or being crushed in a mass of grain, which is a horribly indignant way to go.
“Or consider the time I found myself on the roof of Silph Co. I won’t go into too much detail, but the guardrails there are woefully insufficient. Luckily for me, I was able to catch hold of a windowsill on my way down and only severely injured one arm. It didn’t even require that much surgery.
“My point is that rooftops are dangerous. Please, don’t. Just don’t.”
Mel had read the Collected Journals, if ‘skimming’ counted as ‘reading’ – and it did, at least in her book. What she did not do was take Reus’ advice to heart, classifying it under the alarmingly broad category of “it’ll never happen to me.”
It didn’t happen to her. At least, not initially.
Just as Mel had gathered, there were holes scattered throughout the roof. She crept carefully across, kneeling next to the biggest one and gazing down inside. She could see into a wide room that looked like it had started life as a storage area for nondescript crates, most of which were still there, even if they had been pushed to the side. Simple wooden tables, long enough to seat at least a dozen on one side, were arranged in rows, and at every table, there were seated several people, all wearing…
“Off-white robes,” Mel muttered. “So there’s more of these guys.”
All of the people at the tables, though wearing identical robes, were immediately different from each other; many of them even still had their normal clothes on underneath. Mel could swear that one pink-haired woman at a table right under her was the nurse from the Pokemon Center. Every single one of them, though, no matter who they were, were transfixed on the speaker at the head of the room, standing atop a table of her own.
She wore a coat, long enough to almost be a robe itself, colored a rich, lush amethyst. Unlike everyone else in the room, whose robes reached down to the floor, her coat stopped just short enough that Mel could see heavy combat boots, not dissimilar from the ones she herself was wearing. The woman’s hair was cropped close to her head in a military cut, and it was pure white, even though she didn’t seem especially old. As she spoke, she paced up and down the length of the table, her stride steady and even.
“That means our mission is clear,” the woman said in a resounding, deep voice that reached the far corners of the hall, continuing on from some point she’d finished making just before. “What is our first goal?”
“Find the Mew-child!” came the answer, ringing out in unison from everyone else there.
“And our second goal?” asked the woman, pounding one gloved fist into the palm of her other hand.
The response came again, just as loud. “Exterminate the Mew-child!”
“Exterminate?!” Mel and Repeat both yelped. Mel physically recoiled, an action that shook the roof under her just a bit too much – and it collapsed, falling into the hall below them, taking Mel with it.
The fall knocked the wind out of her, but thankfully had no worse effects; with her eyes shut, Mel could tell that she’d landed prone on one of the tables. Repeat rested on top of her, seemingly no worse for the wear.
She opened her eyes, and immediately wished she hadn’t.
What seemed like the entire population of the building had crowded around her, including the woman leading everything. She stood by Mel’s head, her hands folded behind her back, with a grin on her face that she may have intended to be welcoming but only came across as predatory.
“Well, well, well,” the woman said. “Members of Genesis, it would appear we have a guest.”
Mel could count on one hand the number of times she’d been in police custody overnight, and none of them had ever been pleasant experiences. It had only been her, too – nobody else was left on the scene, not even her family, who’d fled when the chaos first began. “I think I can recite my testimony from memory perfectly now,” she grumbled to Repeat. “If anyone else asks me to describe what happened in my own words, I think I might actually, legitimately, kill them.” She took a bite of cereal, her body running on automatic. She could barely even taste it, though she wasn’t sure if that was her senses being deadened due to lack of sleep or if it was just that she was eating Wheat Cubes, ‘the breakfast of flavorless champions.’ “Or,” Mel added after a moment’s reflection, “at the very least maim them.”
“Maiming’s the better option, chief,” Repeat said. He sat directly on top of the kitchen table; the Rylan family had long since given up the battle against Pokemon in the eating area. The newspaper he was reading was bigger than he was, and his journey from one end to the other to turn the page was exactly the kind of thing that captivated Mel’s sleep-addled mind. “Murder’s a harsher charge than assault, after all.”
The spoon hung limply from the corner of Mel’s mouth. “Yeah,” she said, draping her arms over the back of her chair and staring at the ceiling. “But if I’m gonna go that far, might as well go all the way, you know?”
“That’s definitely an argument you could make.” Repeat slowly lurched across the paper, following the story that had continued from the front page. The kidnapping of a gym leader, as expected, had made national news, and the rumors that a revived Team Rocket was behind it were enough to nearly send the country into a panic. As it was, Fuchsia was already flooded with reporters and hangers-on, all eager to get their bite of the breaking-news pie. “At least nobody thinks you were the one at fault.”
Mel’s mind didn’t shift gears quick enough. “Huh?”
“For yesterday, I mean. Yeah, you spent the night being interviewed by cops, but they know it wasn’t you who kidnapped Janine.”
“Small blessings. I don’t feel too optimistic about them getting results, though.” Another spoonful of bland cereal made its way to her mouth. “Help me out, Repeat. What’s on our to-do list now? My head’s not getting up to speed like it oughta.”
“Broadly speaking, we’ve got two tasks.”
Mel smiled. Only two. That almost sounds doable.
“The first is, we need to find and rescue Janine from those Neo Rocket people or whatever they’re calling themselves.”
Okay. That’s a little more daunting.
“The second is that we also need to figure out where the Mew-child has hidden itself.”
Also daunting, but that’s just research, really.
“And, of course, once we do that, we need to protect it from the Neo Rockets, those people in the robes from the power plant, and whoever else pops up out of the woodwork.”
Great.
“Not to mention that even finding the Mew-child means we need to get down into the Sevii Islands and find the professor Janine mentioned, which is no small—”
Mel put her hands up. “Okay, okay, I get it. We’re proper screwed, basically.”
“Aw, don’t say that, boss,” Repeat said. He crawled across the table and patted her arm with a single pseudopod. “One thing at a time, right? I bet this won’t be as bad as you think. Maybe we could go find some of the other gym leaders – I’m sure they’d jump at the opportunity to put the Neo Rockets to bed before they gain too much steam.”
“No.” Mel clapped her cheeks a few times, bringing the world around her back into focus as her mind started ticking a little faster. “No, we shouldn’t. We don’t know who we can trust. I mean, back when the OG Rockets were kicking around, one of the gym leaders himself, that Giovanni guy, was their leader. And there were always rumors running around that Koga and Sabrina and Surge and them were all sympathetic to the Rockets. Plus there’s that whole thing about how they have to be really careful about what they do in an official capacity… Janine told me about it once a long time ago. It sounds like more trouble than it’s worth, being honest.”
“If you say so, boss. So what do we do now, then?”
“I’m gonna finish this cereal and that pot of coffee so I can wake up some more. Then we’re gonna to go to Vermilion City and hitch a ride to the Sevii Islands. If this Silktree guy knows anything about the Mew-child, then we gotta assume that the Neo-Rockets are coming after him too. And if that happens, well, it gives us a shot at rescuing Janine, but otherwise we don’t have a lot of options for tracking her down yet.”
Repeat began the laborious process of folding the newspaper back up. “That sounds awfully optimistic given what happened yesterday, chief.”
“Well.” Mel let out a deep breath and looked out the window. The kitchen faced the backyard, and her parents were both outside in the morning sun, encouraging a Vulpix with a healing leg to take its first steps since its accident. “I’m not sure we’ve got much else but optimism in our corner right now.”
In a country adrift in change, from volcanos erupting to graveyards being torn down for radio stations to radio stations being subsequently torn down for the graveyards again, the Sevii Islands were an oasis of inertia. Mel had never before been there personally, but she found it telling that her Traveler’s Guide to the Sevii Islands was largely accurate despite having been published when she was a child.
Knot Island (or, as Mel refused to call it, One Island) still hosted all of the major tourist attractions that her guide said it did: the volcano Mount Ember, looming in the distance; the Network Center, gleaming hub of technology; Treasure Beach, filled with hopeful beachcombers eager to be the next to strike gold. The temperature was mild, not quite as warm as it was back home in Fuchsia, and there was barely a cloud to be seen in the sky.
“I can see why this place is so popular,” Mel said. “Wouldn’t mind vacationing here—hey!” A tourist, one from Unova from the looks of it, shoved past her to get to the Network Center without even a word.
“Maybe when we get some time off, we pick somewhere with less people, huh?” Repeat said. “So what’s our plan now that we’re here?”
Mel didn’t answer right away. They had stopped near the Network Center to get their bearings; Mel wouldn’t admit it out loud, but she had underestimated the size of the island. Everyone had always made it sound like the Sevii Islands were tiny and boring, but then, she supposed, that was the issue with asking people who’d moved away from there. The town on its own wasn’t any smaller than Pallet – and she’d been there often enough to know that Pallet’s podunk reputation was wholly unearned.
They crossed the street to a modest tea shop, its elegant aromas obvious before they even reached it. Mel pulled a plastic chair away from one of the outdoor tables, sheltered underneath a pastel-colored parasol, and sat, bridging her hands in front of her face. “Not sure,” she finally said. “I was kinda hoping that we’d be able to pick up a trail of our guy when we got here, but…”
“It’s too crowded,” Repeat said, keeping lookout from his perch on top of Mel’s head.
“Right. I wouldn’t even know who to ask.”
“Why not check the guidebook? Maybe inspiration will strike.”
“Can’t hurt, I guess.” Mel placed an order for a berry tea and spread The Traveler’s Guide to the Sevii Islands out on the table. “‘So you’ve made it to One Island!’” she read aloud. “Ugh, I still hate that name. ‘Oh, we’ve got seven islands, we’re going to name them one through seven!’ Shoulda gotten an art major down here, I swear.”
“Don’t get distracted,” Repeat said, rolling his eyes.
“Right. Sorry.” Mel cleared her throat. “‘So you’ve made it to One Island! Congratulations! There’s lots to see and do here…’ yada yada yada… Mount Ember, Treasure Beach… Oh, I didn’t see this before. ‘Local tech-head Celio is working to get the Network Center online as an expansion of the island’s Pokemon Center after efforts to build it in a separate facility failed. The site of the abandoned warehouse where Celio first tried to build it can be found on Kindle Road, outside of the town proper; Celio is on record as saying he gave up the original location after it was found to be sitting alongside an ancient burial site and that he, quote, didn’t need that kind of bad mojo.’”
The waitress arrived with Mel’s tea right as Mel’s head snapped up. “That’s it!” she yelled; the waitress jumped back and only barely managed to save the tea from spilling. In one smooth motion, Mel stood up, knocking the chair to the ground, grabbed the guide, and ran down the street towards the eastern edge of town. Repeat could only mime ‘sorry’ to the waitress the best way he knew how, hoping she understood.
Equal parts beachfront, ocean, and mountainous crag, Kindle Road stretched all the way from the town to Mount Ember in the north. Though still buzzing with people, especially visitors to the famed hot springs heated by the volcano itself, it was noticeably less crowded than the rest of the island. Mel supposed the terrain had something to do with that; if Celio hadn’t bowed out of a facility there because of the supernatural, the difficulty in getting around would have done the trick just as nicely. The building in question wasn’t too far out of the way, though; she found it nestled in a nook eroded out of the cliffside itself. Just as the guide said, telltale grave markers littered the area around it, looking only like oddly-smooth rocks to the untrained eye, though the half-dilapidated structure, all crumbled brick and corroded metal, seemed fitting, somehow.
“So when were you planning on telling me what’s going on?” Repeat hissed as they approached the building.
Mel grinned. The sleep she’d finally gotten on the boat to One Island and her sudden inspiration at the tea shop had done a lot for her mood. “So it’s like this, you know?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I asked, chief.”
“Okay, slow up a minute. I was gonna keep going. Anyway, so this place is on an ancient burial ground, and the guy we’re supposed to find is all into mythology. I figured, what better place to find myths and stuff than an old graveyard? Those kinds of places ooze myths.”
“Huh.” Repeat blinked. “That’s… pretty sound, actually. I’m impressed. So we’re going to…?”
“We’re gonna walk in and, fingers crossed, we’re gonna find him in there!”
“And if we don’t?”
“Well,” Mel said, “then we just leave and start looking somewhere else. There are seven of these islands, after all. Guy might be on a different one.” With Repeat on her head, she approached the warehouse and placed her hand on the door, ready to push it open.
Mel paused.
For a moment, neither she nor Repeat said anything.
Repeat broke the silence. “You feel it too, don’t you? Something’s wrong.”
“Yeah.” Powerful emotions welled up just beyond the door, way more than Mel could attribute to any single person. She knew Repeat couldn’t sense the same thing, but he’d always had a good gut instinct. The part that was really throwing her, though, was what the emotions were – hope, optimism, confidence, and underneath all of it, a deep, yet subtle, current of malice, nearly masked completely by everything else. “Maybe I won’t open this door right yet,” Mel said, more quietly.
“I think that’s a good call.”
Mel slowly took several steps to the right, careful not to put her foot down on anything that would make noise; she managed to avoid, in order, a twig, a discarded potato chip bag, and an old bicycle horn that someone had left there for reasons she couldn’t fathom. Once she rounded the corner of the wall, she looked up and down the length of the building. There were no windows. Getting around to the back of the building would be impossible, she realized, from how it butted up against the rock; from where she stood, though, she figured she could probably make it to what remained of the rooftop. It’s a one-story building, Mel thought, and it looks like there’s places where it collapsed in. If I can get up there, I might could see what’s going on, hopefully without them noticing me in the process. A pipe ran up the side of the wall, made from sturdy metal that hadn’t yet rusted all the way through. Mel ran a hand up it thoughtfully.
“Oh no,” said Repeat. “I know that look. You’re about to do something dumb.”
“Am not.” Mel grabbed the pipe with both hands and planted one foot on the wall. Even when she pulled at full force, the pipe, bolted firmly in place, refused to move.
“Are you about to climb the pipe?”
“Maybe.”
“I stand by what I said.” But Repeat nonetheless held tight to Mel’s head as she scaled the wall.
The Collected Journals of Septimus Reus, the omnibus of essays, notes, and other musings that together chronicled the life and times of the famed researcher whose name adorned the cover, went into excruciating detail concerning Reus’ encounters with legendary Pokemon – every single one of them accidental. As such, many aspiring trainers used the Collected Journals as a guide, hoping beyond hope that, if they followed his missteps, they’d stumble across legendaries just as often as he did.
This was not the case.
The true value in Reus’ research was in his comprehensive notes on what tended to put him in the most danger, Pokemon-related or not.
With that in mind, this is what Reus had to say on the subject of roofs:
“I cannot emphasize this enough. Stay off of rooftops. Trust me on this one. The first time I made my way up onto a roof, it was on an abandoned grain silo so I could better scope out any rare fauna in the area. Needless to say, I fell through a rusted patch and very nearly died via suffocation and/or being crushed in a mass of grain, which is a horribly indignant way to go.
“Or consider the time I found myself on the roof of Silph Co. I won’t go into too much detail, but the guardrails there are woefully insufficient. Luckily for me, I was able to catch hold of a windowsill on my way down and only severely injured one arm. It didn’t even require that much surgery.
“My point is that rooftops are dangerous. Please, don’t. Just don’t.”
Mel had read the Collected Journals, if ‘skimming’ counted as ‘reading’ – and it did, at least in her book. What she did not do was take Reus’ advice to heart, classifying it under the alarmingly broad category of “it’ll never happen to me.”
It didn’t happen to her. At least, not initially.
Just as Mel had gathered, there were holes scattered throughout the roof. She crept carefully across, kneeling next to the biggest one and gazing down inside. She could see into a wide room that looked like it had started life as a storage area for nondescript crates, most of which were still there, even if they had been pushed to the side. Simple wooden tables, long enough to seat at least a dozen on one side, were arranged in rows, and at every table, there were seated several people, all wearing…
“Off-white robes,” Mel muttered. “So there’s more of these guys.”
All of the people at the tables, though wearing identical robes, were immediately different from each other; many of them even still had their normal clothes on underneath. Mel could swear that one pink-haired woman at a table right under her was the nurse from the Pokemon Center. Every single one of them, though, no matter who they were, were transfixed on the speaker at the head of the room, standing atop a table of her own.
She wore a coat, long enough to almost be a robe itself, colored a rich, lush amethyst. Unlike everyone else in the room, whose robes reached down to the floor, her coat stopped just short enough that Mel could see heavy combat boots, not dissimilar from the ones she herself was wearing. The woman’s hair was cropped close to her head in a military cut, and it was pure white, even though she didn’t seem especially old. As she spoke, she paced up and down the length of the table, her stride steady and even.
“That means our mission is clear,” the woman said in a resounding, deep voice that reached the far corners of the hall, continuing on from some point she’d finished making just before. “What is our first goal?”
“Find the Mew-child!” came the answer, ringing out in unison from everyone else there.
“And our second goal?” asked the woman, pounding one gloved fist into the palm of her other hand.
The response came again, just as loud. “Exterminate the Mew-child!”
“Exterminate?!” Mel and Repeat both yelped. Mel physically recoiled, an action that shook the roof under her just a bit too much – and it collapsed, falling into the hall below them, taking Mel with it.
The fall knocked the wind out of her, but thankfully had no worse effects; with her eyes shut, Mel could tell that she’d landed prone on one of the tables. Repeat rested on top of her, seemingly no worse for the wear.
She opened her eyes, and immediately wished she hadn’t.
What seemed like the entire population of the building had crowded around her, including the woman leading everything. She stood by Mel’s head, her hands folded behind her back, with a grin on her face that she may have intended to be welcoming but only came across as predatory.
“Well, well, well,” the woman said. “Members of Genesis, it would appear we have a guest.”