"I want my objection to this plan on the record, boss."
"Noted."
"I'm being serious. This is a bad idea, and I want no part in the blame when it blows up in our faces."
"I said 'noted', Repeat. What more do you want from me?"
"I want you to not be doing this, but I don't think that's in the cards. Why is this the plan we're going with? How do you even know that it's that piece of amber you have to get? All we're going on is Hyacinth's hunch and two dots that you happened to connect!"
Mel shook her head. The sun had long since set, casting all of Pewter City in the grays and blues of night. The moon provided the barest hint of light, enough for Mel to be able to see through her binoculars from her perch in a nearby tree. "I can't explain it," she said, watching the path one of the museum's guards took around the building. "I just know. This is something that just feels right."
"Uh-huh." Repeat clung to Mel's backpack, trying to ignore the piercing gaze of a Spearow less than a foot away. "Is it going to just feel right when we get arrested for breaking and entering?"
"We're not going to get arrested. At least not if everything goes right."
"Of course we'll be fine if everything goes right! That's what 'going right' means! I'm worried about when things don't go right!"
"Repeat, hush." Mel's words had an air of finality to them that Repeat wasn't used to hearing. "You think I don't know what could happen? I don't like doing this either. But I'm pretty sure this is the right call, and I'm sorry I can't tell you why. Unless you got a better idea rolling around in your head, this is what we gotta do. Now, you're a real important part of my plan, so if you wanna make sure we don't get caught, best thing to do would be to help. Are you in? Or are you just gonna sit there and complain about it?"
Repeat fell silent, at least for a moment. "I'll help," he eventually said. "We've got each other's backs. That's how it works, for good or for bad."
"Thanks, Repeat," Mel said, craning her head back and flashing a warm, genuine smile. "I swear. I'm gonna live up to your trust in me."
"Don't make promises you can't keep, chief," said Repeat, but he too was smiling.
Mel returned to her vigil. The patrol around the museum was light, and she suspected it had been that way for a while. Ever since the Rockets had fallen after their sieges on Silph Co. and then on the Goldenrod Radio Tower, thanks to a procession of blindingly competent children, the region hadn't seen the sort of unrest that plagued other areas. Sure, the Galactics in Sinnoh and the Magmas and Aquas in Hoenn had far-reaching effects with their attempts to harness the power of legendary Pokemon, but the Rockets had only wanted money – and since they'd disappeared, Kanto and Johto had been at relative peace. Seeing the local mafia get thrashed by a pair of preteens from out in the sticks had a way of making other would-be criminals wary.
There were three guards circling the building. Each one wore the same uniform and had matching flashlights. They obviously had their watches in sync – they stopped at set locations around the building in time with each other, then after a few minutes began their patrol again. Every so often, one of them would mutter something into a radio, prompting responses from the other two.
The patrol was regimented, but it still left significant gaps. Since there were only three guards, even with them spread out, there were plenty of places Mel could slip in without notice. She slipped down out of the tree without making a noise and watched from a bush as the guards stopped in place at their specified locations.
One guard stood at the front door to the museum, one stood around the back, and one stood at the eastern door that led into the back offices. There was exactly one door that remained uncovered: a closed, locked door on the western side of the building, used for loading and unloading, if A Relentlessly Thorough History of the Pewter Museum of Science was to be believed. Mel crept up to it and knelt down, setting her backpack on the ground and picking Repeat up. "Okay, Repeat, it's all you," she whispered.
Repeat nodded and eyed the door from his place in Mel's hands. It was a simple pin and tumbler lock, the kind that he and Mel had practiced opening many times before – sometimes hurt Pokemon were holed up inside locked buildings, abandoned or otherwise, and couldn't get themselves out. He squished a pseudopod into the lock and gently shaped it so that it lifted the pins to just the right height. There was a series of faint clicks and Repeat turned the lock.
"Good job with part one," Mel murmured, grabbing her backpack and letting Repeat climb up to her shoulder. "Now we just…" She turned the knob and opened the door just a hair.
In accordance with the law of dramatic timing, an alarm went off.
It only took moments for the nearest guard, the one around the back of the building, to appear; he threw open the door, one hand on a Pokeball set into his belt. Once he saw the person on the other side, though, he shook his head and relaxed his posture. "Dr. Fawcett. What are you doing back here so late at night?"
The other party involved in the conversation, a tall, strongly-built, tawny-skinned woman wearing a lab coat and an embarrassed expression, laughed sheepishly. "Oh, you know, left some important papers here. Wouldn't you know it, I forgot the passcode to turn off the alarms! Silly me! Forget my own head if it weren't attached."
The guard clicked his tongue disapprovingly, but punched in a rapid-fire series of numbers into a console near the door. The alarm immediately turned off. "You really need to be more careful, doctor," he said, turning to leave. "I almost thought you were trying to rob the place. Next time, just let one of us know before you come in."
"Oh, you know!" Dr. Fawcett trilled as the guard turned to leave while muttering something into his radio. "I didn't want to be a bother!" Once the guard had left, she let out a breath, then ducked into an office near the door. A backpack had been tossed in there, and Fawcett slid off her lab coat, hanging it from the hook she'd found it on, before picking the bag back up.
Fawcett's face – her entire face – began to ripple and change color, and then, seemingly without any transitionary state in between, it was a Ditto, one that jumped to her shoulder. Mel's face was underneath. "I think we actually pulled it off, Repeat," Mel muttered. "That went perfectly."
"Don't get complacent, boss," said Repeat. "You're just lucky that one of the staff here had the same kind of build and skin tone as you. Remember that time at the Celadon Game Corner?"
Mel scarcely needed to be reminded. They'd tried to sneak into the Game Corner's rewards center on a tip that an injured Pokemon had shut itself in there, but when Repeat tried his mask trick, they'd unintentionally chosen a person much smaller than Mel to imitate. It, to put it kindly, hadn't worked. "Yeah, yeah," Mel said. "I don't think it'll work twice here anyway. Someone's bound to notice that Dr. Fawcett is acting weird. Plus, even if we got a disguise on, I don't think they'll like us taking the fossil."
The patrol inside the museum was about as light as outside – only a couple of guards, haphazardly dotted through the exhibits. Mel's path to the Ancient Rarities exhibit was clear, and all she had to do once she was there was keep quiet and avoid the occasional flashlight when the guard for the wing stuck his head in.
"There it is, Repeat," Mel whispered, so low that she could barely hear her own words. "The amber. Let's grab it and get outta here."
"Boss?" Repeat hissed into Mel's ear. "What's the plan if there's an alarm or something attached to the fossil?"
"Then we grab it and get outta here, but faster."
"I don't like this plan."
"I know. Ready?"
"As I'll ever be."
With slow, patient steps, Mel approached the stand.
"Boss," Repeat whispered.
She slowly lifted one arm.
"Boss," said Repeat, more urgently.
Her hand neared it, shaking almost imperceptibly. Then it was within reach. She brushed her fingers along the cool surface, then took the entire thing into her grasp. Sparks lit up the darkness around the stand, emanating from where her skin made contact with the rock.
"Boss! What are you doing?!"
Flashing red lights broke Mel from her reverie, and a heartbeat later she became aware of the siren sounding. She turned her hand palm-up. The Mega Stone sat in it. How did I…? she thought.
Repeat tapped Mel on the back of the head. "Chief! Get moving! Someone'll be here any minute!"
"Right." Mel slipped the Mega Stone into her pocket, then palmed the amber and took off running.
The guard posted nearest to the western wing of the museum wasn't used to excitement, not anymore. His name was Harles Aristotle, pronounced air-is-tote-lay, which nobody ever got right, and he was an immigrant from the sun-baked region of Orre. After Orre's liberation from the Cipher criminal organization, Harles decided to move to a place that was altogether calmer before some other crisis reared its ugly head. His background as a security specialist gave him a foot in the door to a job as a guard in a museum in a sleepy town secluded away from the rest of the region.
It was, he had thought, perfect. And, for a time, it was.
Then Mel happened.
The alarm system was old and, frankly, outdated, but Harles hadn't minded the lapse up until that day, when he realized how nice it would have been to have had some kind of indication which sector of the museum the alarm had been triggered from. After making sure he hadn't had a heart attack from the sudden noise and lights, Harles asked a frantic question into his radio, only to find out that nobody knew what was going on. The only event that evening that had been out of the ordinary was one of the other guards having to disable the door alarm for Dr. Fawcett, and nobody had seen her since.
Then Harles saw her – a figure, one who looked vaguely like Dr. Fawcett, running out of the western wing. Harles endeavored to catch up to her, a tall order for a man who hadn't moved at a clip above 'leisurely' for years. "Ma'am!" he said in between breaths. "Ma'am! Hold on!"
The figure turned to him, and Harles realized with a start that she was in no way Dr. Fawcett. Fear and annoyance in equal measures flashed through the intruder's eyes, and she changed direction; Harles, completely unintentionally, was blocking the route out. She veered without warning for the stairs to the second level, and as she bolted away from him, Harles saw for the first time the Ditto clinging to her backpack.
Had Harles been a quicker-witted man, he might have been able to start putting together the pieces about then. As it was, though, he could only focus on not keeling over.
"Where are we going, chief?" Repeat said, holding on for dear life.
"Anywhere where there isn't someone chasing us!" grunted Mel, vaulting over a display of space rocks and ducking down behind it, giving herself a moment to get her bearings. Nobody was immediately on her tail, but she could hear footsteps coming up the stairway. Her first instinct, when she ran into the guard downstairs, had been to immediately change course, but she'd ended up on the second floor, which offered precious few escape routes.
Then Mel saw the shuttle. And past it, the window.
"Repeat, I have an idea."
"Oh no."
Space shuttles – or, more precisely, space shuttle replicas – were a mainstay of the museum, according to A Relentlessly Thorough History of the Pewter Museum of Science.The one currently on display, though, was the first one that patrons could actually go inside, which the directors had hoped would make it a bigger draw with younger guests. This turned out to be a flawed plan, as the shuttle had to compete with the allure of ancient skeletons, a notorious crowd-pleasure; despite that, the museum administration elected to keep the new replica on the grounds that it was too expensive to build for them to just get rid of. So it stayed, though in deference to new exhibits it had been pushed to the side to make room. The practical upside of this was that, since the shuttle had entrances on either side, while one door opened into the exhibit, the other opened right next to the bay window.
Before any other guards could follow her upstairs, Mel crawled across the floor and flung herself inside the shuttle, closing the hatch after her. "Quick, Repeat," she said through clenched teeth.
Repeat nodded; he'd caught on. He clung to the window set into the hatch and began to change. Ordinarily, trying to transform from memory was a no-go for him – he had to have seen the target recently, like in the case of Dr. Fawcett, who they'd gotten a look at when she left work that day not long before they broke in. But Repeat didn't need to memorize what he was trying to turn into this time.
He turned dark.
The footsteps Mel had been hearing coming up the stairs finally reached them. She couldn't see through the window anymore, but light streamed in through the hatch's seal – a flashlight. Her fists clenched and her fingers dug into her palms as a silent prayer bounced back and forth inside her head, wishing to anyone that would listen that her plan worked – that all the guard would see would be blackness behind the window, and that they wouldn't think anything of it.
The light disappeared.
The footsteps faded.
Mel breathed out. "Okay, Repeat, let's get out of here," she said. Repeat peeled himself off of the window; as he relaxed, his coloration returned to his normal pink. Mel quietly opened the other hatch, the one facing the wall, and from there unlatched the window. She held onto the ledge, lowered herself outside as far as she could, then let go. It was murder on her legs and knees, but it was far from the first time she'd had to make a drop like that.
With the museum guards still searching fervently for her, Mel disappeared into the night.
Mel didn't stop running, awash in a cloud of Repel, until she'd cleared Diglett's Cave and made it safely to Vermillion City. By then, the sun was already peeking over the horizon, a vivid pink and orange reminder that Mel had gotten no sleep. She sat on the pier, her back against an unused post, with her backpack next to her and Repeat in her lap.
"Are you feeling okay, boss?" asked Repeat, concern written across his face. He stole occasional glances at the mouth of Diglett's Cave, betraying his worry that someone was still coming after them.
"Yeah… yeah, I'm good." Mel dug through her pocket and drew out the Mega Stone; the amber was next, pulled from her backpack. She held one in each hand. The two were about the same size and weight, but those were their only similarity.
"Good. I don't mind telling you, I never want to do that again."
The familiar response – "Hey, we're alive, aren't we?" – boiled up inside Mel, but she bit her tongue. All she said, in spite of herself, was, "That's probably a good call."
If the sudden low-key answer surprised Repeat, he didn't show it. "You know when everything's over and done with, we have to return these, right?"
"I know." Mel held both stones up to the morning light. The amber glimmered, its natural color enhanced by the sun, but the Mega Stone only seemed darker, heavier. She could almost see sparks dancing around its surface.
"Hey. Chief." Repeat morphed a pseudopod into a rough facsimile of a human hand so that he could snap his fingers in front of Mel's face. "Don't go spacing out on me again. What made you take that with you, anyway? What happened?"
Mel felt a chill run up her arm, originating from the stone. "I…" she started before pausing. "I'm not sure." She was loathe to elaborate further: that her actions hadn't felt like her own, that she couldn't have stopped herself. "I think… I think the museum was wrong, though."
"How do you mean?"
"I don't think this is Aerodactylite. It's something else. Something big." Mel slipped the stone back into her pocket, trying to ignore the crackling sound it made when it left contact with her skin. "It feels… important."
Repeat frowned. "Boss, you're starting to slide into cryptic territory."
"Sorry, sorry. I mean something's up with this rock, whatever it is. And it just so happened to be right next to the amber that the Unown told me to get. I kinda get the feeling that maybe this rock is the one we were supposed to find all along." Mel felt the comforting weight of the stone in her pocket, coolness radiating out from it.
"And that doesn't… worry you or anything?"
"Oh, no, Repeat. What this rock was doing to me? That worries me more than anything else right now. But this…" Mel stopped and collected her thoughts. Yeah. This is right. "This is how it's supposed to be."
"Noted."
"I'm being serious. This is a bad idea, and I want no part in the blame when it blows up in our faces."
"I said 'noted', Repeat. What more do you want from me?"
"I want you to not be doing this, but I don't think that's in the cards. Why is this the plan we're going with? How do you even know that it's that piece of amber you have to get? All we're going on is Hyacinth's hunch and two dots that you happened to connect!"
Mel shook her head. The sun had long since set, casting all of Pewter City in the grays and blues of night. The moon provided the barest hint of light, enough for Mel to be able to see through her binoculars from her perch in a nearby tree. "I can't explain it," she said, watching the path one of the museum's guards took around the building. "I just know. This is something that just feels right."
"Uh-huh." Repeat clung to Mel's backpack, trying to ignore the piercing gaze of a Spearow less than a foot away. "Is it going to just feel right when we get arrested for breaking and entering?"
"We're not going to get arrested. At least not if everything goes right."
"Of course we'll be fine if everything goes right! That's what 'going right' means! I'm worried about when things don't go right!"
"Repeat, hush." Mel's words had an air of finality to them that Repeat wasn't used to hearing. "You think I don't know what could happen? I don't like doing this either. But I'm pretty sure this is the right call, and I'm sorry I can't tell you why. Unless you got a better idea rolling around in your head, this is what we gotta do. Now, you're a real important part of my plan, so if you wanna make sure we don't get caught, best thing to do would be to help. Are you in? Or are you just gonna sit there and complain about it?"
Repeat fell silent, at least for a moment. "I'll help," he eventually said. "We've got each other's backs. That's how it works, for good or for bad."
"Thanks, Repeat," Mel said, craning her head back and flashing a warm, genuine smile. "I swear. I'm gonna live up to your trust in me."
"Don't make promises you can't keep, chief," said Repeat, but he too was smiling.
Mel returned to her vigil. The patrol around the museum was light, and she suspected it had been that way for a while. Ever since the Rockets had fallen after their sieges on Silph Co. and then on the Goldenrod Radio Tower, thanks to a procession of blindingly competent children, the region hadn't seen the sort of unrest that plagued other areas. Sure, the Galactics in Sinnoh and the Magmas and Aquas in Hoenn had far-reaching effects with their attempts to harness the power of legendary Pokemon, but the Rockets had only wanted money – and since they'd disappeared, Kanto and Johto had been at relative peace. Seeing the local mafia get thrashed by a pair of preteens from out in the sticks had a way of making other would-be criminals wary.
There were three guards circling the building. Each one wore the same uniform and had matching flashlights. They obviously had their watches in sync – they stopped at set locations around the building in time with each other, then after a few minutes began their patrol again. Every so often, one of them would mutter something into a radio, prompting responses from the other two.
The patrol was regimented, but it still left significant gaps. Since there were only three guards, even with them spread out, there were plenty of places Mel could slip in without notice. She slipped down out of the tree without making a noise and watched from a bush as the guards stopped in place at their specified locations.
One guard stood at the front door to the museum, one stood around the back, and one stood at the eastern door that led into the back offices. There was exactly one door that remained uncovered: a closed, locked door on the western side of the building, used for loading and unloading, if A Relentlessly Thorough History of the Pewter Museum of Science was to be believed. Mel crept up to it and knelt down, setting her backpack on the ground and picking Repeat up. "Okay, Repeat, it's all you," she whispered.
Repeat nodded and eyed the door from his place in Mel's hands. It was a simple pin and tumbler lock, the kind that he and Mel had practiced opening many times before – sometimes hurt Pokemon were holed up inside locked buildings, abandoned or otherwise, and couldn't get themselves out. He squished a pseudopod into the lock and gently shaped it so that it lifted the pins to just the right height. There was a series of faint clicks and Repeat turned the lock.
"Good job with part one," Mel murmured, grabbing her backpack and letting Repeat climb up to her shoulder. "Now we just…" She turned the knob and opened the door just a hair.
In accordance with the law of dramatic timing, an alarm went off.
It only took moments for the nearest guard, the one around the back of the building, to appear; he threw open the door, one hand on a Pokeball set into his belt. Once he saw the person on the other side, though, he shook his head and relaxed his posture. "Dr. Fawcett. What are you doing back here so late at night?"
The other party involved in the conversation, a tall, strongly-built, tawny-skinned woman wearing a lab coat and an embarrassed expression, laughed sheepishly. "Oh, you know, left some important papers here. Wouldn't you know it, I forgot the passcode to turn off the alarms! Silly me! Forget my own head if it weren't attached."
The guard clicked his tongue disapprovingly, but punched in a rapid-fire series of numbers into a console near the door. The alarm immediately turned off. "You really need to be more careful, doctor," he said, turning to leave. "I almost thought you were trying to rob the place. Next time, just let one of us know before you come in."
"Oh, you know!" Dr. Fawcett trilled as the guard turned to leave while muttering something into his radio. "I didn't want to be a bother!" Once the guard had left, she let out a breath, then ducked into an office near the door. A backpack had been tossed in there, and Fawcett slid off her lab coat, hanging it from the hook she'd found it on, before picking the bag back up.
Fawcett's face – her entire face – began to ripple and change color, and then, seemingly without any transitionary state in between, it was a Ditto, one that jumped to her shoulder. Mel's face was underneath. "I think we actually pulled it off, Repeat," Mel muttered. "That went perfectly."
"Don't get complacent, boss," said Repeat. "You're just lucky that one of the staff here had the same kind of build and skin tone as you. Remember that time at the Celadon Game Corner?"
Mel scarcely needed to be reminded. They'd tried to sneak into the Game Corner's rewards center on a tip that an injured Pokemon had shut itself in there, but when Repeat tried his mask trick, they'd unintentionally chosen a person much smaller than Mel to imitate. It, to put it kindly, hadn't worked. "Yeah, yeah," Mel said. "I don't think it'll work twice here anyway. Someone's bound to notice that Dr. Fawcett is acting weird. Plus, even if we got a disguise on, I don't think they'll like us taking the fossil."
The patrol inside the museum was about as light as outside – only a couple of guards, haphazardly dotted through the exhibits. Mel's path to the Ancient Rarities exhibit was clear, and all she had to do once she was there was keep quiet and avoid the occasional flashlight when the guard for the wing stuck his head in.
"There it is, Repeat," Mel whispered, so low that she could barely hear her own words. "The amber. Let's grab it and get outta here."
"Boss?" Repeat hissed into Mel's ear. "What's the plan if there's an alarm or something attached to the fossil?"
"Then we grab it and get outta here, but faster."
"I don't like this plan."
"I know. Ready?"
"As I'll ever be."
With slow, patient steps, Mel approached the stand.
"Boss," Repeat whispered.
She slowly lifted one arm.
"Boss," said Repeat, more urgently.
Her hand neared it, shaking almost imperceptibly. Then it was within reach. She brushed her fingers along the cool surface, then took the entire thing into her grasp. Sparks lit up the darkness around the stand, emanating from where her skin made contact with the rock.
"Boss! What are you doing?!"
Flashing red lights broke Mel from her reverie, and a heartbeat later she became aware of the siren sounding. She turned her hand palm-up. The Mega Stone sat in it. How did I…? she thought.
Repeat tapped Mel on the back of the head. "Chief! Get moving! Someone'll be here any minute!"
"Right." Mel slipped the Mega Stone into her pocket, then palmed the amber and took off running.
The guard posted nearest to the western wing of the museum wasn't used to excitement, not anymore. His name was Harles Aristotle, pronounced air-is-tote-lay, which nobody ever got right, and he was an immigrant from the sun-baked region of Orre. After Orre's liberation from the Cipher criminal organization, Harles decided to move to a place that was altogether calmer before some other crisis reared its ugly head. His background as a security specialist gave him a foot in the door to a job as a guard in a museum in a sleepy town secluded away from the rest of the region.
It was, he had thought, perfect. And, for a time, it was.
Then Mel happened.
The alarm system was old and, frankly, outdated, but Harles hadn't minded the lapse up until that day, when he realized how nice it would have been to have had some kind of indication which sector of the museum the alarm had been triggered from. After making sure he hadn't had a heart attack from the sudden noise and lights, Harles asked a frantic question into his radio, only to find out that nobody knew what was going on. The only event that evening that had been out of the ordinary was one of the other guards having to disable the door alarm for Dr. Fawcett, and nobody had seen her since.
Then Harles saw her – a figure, one who looked vaguely like Dr. Fawcett, running out of the western wing. Harles endeavored to catch up to her, a tall order for a man who hadn't moved at a clip above 'leisurely' for years. "Ma'am!" he said in between breaths. "Ma'am! Hold on!"
The figure turned to him, and Harles realized with a start that she was in no way Dr. Fawcett. Fear and annoyance in equal measures flashed through the intruder's eyes, and she changed direction; Harles, completely unintentionally, was blocking the route out. She veered without warning for the stairs to the second level, and as she bolted away from him, Harles saw for the first time the Ditto clinging to her backpack.
Had Harles been a quicker-witted man, he might have been able to start putting together the pieces about then. As it was, though, he could only focus on not keeling over.
"Where are we going, chief?" Repeat said, holding on for dear life.
"Anywhere where there isn't someone chasing us!" grunted Mel, vaulting over a display of space rocks and ducking down behind it, giving herself a moment to get her bearings. Nobody was immediately on her tail, but she could hear footsteps coming up the stairway. Her first instinct, when she ran into the guard downstairs, had been to immediately change course, but she'd ended up on the second floor, which offered precious few escape routes.
Then Mel saw the shuttle. And past it, the window.
"Repeat, I have an idea."
"Oh no."
Space shuttles – or, more precisely, space shuttle replicas – were a mainstay of the museum, according to A Relentlessly Thorough History of the Pewter Museum of Science.The one currently on display, though, was the first one that patrons could actually go inside, which the directors had hoped would make it a bigger draw with younger guests. This turned out to be a flawed plan, as the shuttle had to compete with the allure of ancient skeletons, a notorious crowd-pleasure; despite that, the museum administration elected to keep the new replica on the grounds that it was too expensive to build for them to just get rid of. So it stayed, though in deference to new exhibits it had been pushed to the side to make room. The practical upside of this was that, since the shuttle had entrances on either side, while one door opened into the exhibit, the other opened right next to the bay window.
Before any other guards could follow her upstairs, Mel crawled across the floor and flung herself inside the shuttle, closing the hatch after her. "Quick, Repeat," she said through clenched teeth.
Repeat nodded; he'd caught on. He clung to the window set into the hatch and began to change. Ordinarily, trying to transform from memory was a no-go for him – he had to have seen the target recently, like in the case of Dr. Fawcett, who they'd gotten a look at when she left work that day not long before they broke in. But Repeat didn't need to memorize what he was trying to turn into this time.
He turned dark.
The footsteps Mel had been hearing coming up the stairs finally reached them. She couldn't see through the window anymore, but light streamed in through the hatch's seal – a flashlight. Her fists clenched and her fingers dug into her palms as a silent prayer bounced back and forth inside her head, wishing to anyone that would listen that her plan worked – that all the guard would see would be blackness behind the window, and that they wouldn't think anything of it.
The light disappeared.
The footsteps faded.
Mel breathed out. "Okay, Repeat, let's get out of here," she said. Repeat peeled himself off of the window; as he relaxed, his coloration returned to his normal pink. Mel quietly opened the other hatch, the one facing the wall, and from there unlatched the window. She held onto the ledge, lowered herself outside as far as she could, then let go. It was murder on her legs and knees, but it was far from the first time she'd had to make a drop like that.
With the museum guards still searching fervently for her, Mel disappeared into the night.
Mel didn't stop running, awash in a cloud of Repel, until she'd cleared Diglett's Cave and made it safely to Vermillion City. By then, the sun was already peeking over the horizon, a vivid pink and orange reminder that Mel had gotten no sleep. She sat on the pier, her back against an unused post, with her backpack next to her and Repeat in her lap.
"Are you feeling okay, boss?" asked Repeat, concern written across his face. He stole occasional glances at the mouth of Diglett's Cave, betraying his worry that someone was still coming after them.
"Yeah… yeah, I'm good." Mel dug through her pocket and drew out the Mega Stone; the amber was next, pulled from her backpack. She held one in each hand. The two were about the same size and weight, but those were their only similarity.
"Good. I don't mind telling you, I never want to do that again."
The familiar response – "Hey, we're alive, aren't we?" – boiled up inside Mel, but she bit her tongue. All she said, in spite of herself, was, "That's probably a good call."
If the sudden low-key answer surprised Repeat, he didn't show it. "You know when everything's over and done with, we have to return these, right?"
"I know." Mel held both stones up to the morning light. The amber glimmered, its natural color enhanced by the sun, but the Mega Stone only seemed darker, heavier. She could almost see sparks dancing around its surface.
"Hey. Chief." Repeat morphed a pseudopod into a rough facsimile of a human hand so that he could snap his fingers in front of Mel's face. "Don't go spacing out on me again. What made you take that with you, anyway? What happened?"
Mel felt a chill run up her arm, originating from the stone. "I…" she started before pausing. "I'm not sure." She was loathe to elaborate further: that her actions hadn't felt like her own, that she couldn't have stopped herself. "I think… I think the museum was wrong, though."
"How do you mean?"
"I don't think this is Aerodactylite. It's something else. Something big." Mel slipped the stone back into her pocket, trying to ignore the crackling sound it made when it left contact with her skin. "It feels… important."
Repeat frowned. "Boss, you're starting to slide into cryptic territory."
"Sorry, sorry. I mean something's up with this rock, whatever it is. And it just so happened to be right next to the amber that the Unown told me to get. I kinda get the feeling that maybe this rock is the one we were supposed to find all along." Mel felt the comforting weight of the stone in her pocket, coolness radiating out from it.
"And that doesn't… worry you or anything?"
"Oh, no, Repeat. What this rock was doing to me? That worries me more than anything else right now. But this…" Mel stopped and collected her thoughts. Yeah. This is right. "This is how it's supposed to be."