Callan slid beside Lars, peering out towards the crossing path. The two of them had been waiting for hours, their contact now three hours late. A knot of unease tightened in Callan's stomach, and he couldn't shake the feeling that something was terribly wrong.

"We need to find them," Callan muttered, his voice low and urgent. Fear begins to set in as he imagines the worst, influenced undoubtedly by the rift's emotions. The battles here echoed in his mind, but to be frank, he was beginning to get used to it. Still, it was a miserable experience.

Determined to gather any information, he released his Vikavolt. The electric bug Pokémon buzzed into the air, its compound eyes scanning the surroundings for any sign of their missing contact as it flies away.

"So much has changed in four months." Callan remarks, staring at the battlefields of Ultra Deep Sea. "It never stops does it, the fighting?"

---

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He thought he felt something itching the back of his ears, but he knew better than to look in the mirror. This realm—the inhuman, eerie vibes he could pick up from just being here was just. It was just out of this world.

He was pretty sure that the ‘gills’ behind his ears that had somehow formed over time would disappear when they got the fuck out of this place, but—the entire premise, the notion of this location… it was just…

Creepy.

“Not just them. Her too,” he quietly added, sighing. Heavy was the weight he had—he’d already sent out an all-League channel communication searching for his cousin, and if anyone would see her, or find her at the very least, to let him know.

Still, fact of the matter he had her ‘belts’ of Pokéballs wasn’t a good sign.

“I just wish, for five fucking seconds, this entire… this… this,” he continued, waving a hand at the entire situation, “…would calm down and let us rest. But knowing what happened out at the Mirage Islands, and then the appearance of these locations? I doubt we can even get one day’s worth of rest…”

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"Who?" Callan asked, his eyes narrowing in concern. Did Lars mean Elinor?

Callan felt a cold dread begin to creep up his spine. "She's been missing, how long?!" he exclaimed, his voice rising with alarm.

Taking a deep breath, trying to keep his emotions in check, Callan's hands shook as he reached for his ultra ball. "We'll split up and search the area. We have to be careful, though. Who knows what kind of dangers are lurking around here."

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“Not too long after we got separated. We were cornered by a couple of Rockets,” he shared, his mind flashing back to what had happened earlier—he could still hear the crackling of the flames.

“They may be dividing and conquering,” he continued as he closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on how much he could remember. After hightailing it out of the circle of flames, it had been one after another—several battles in succession; mostly ones where he’d barely gotten away with his life—or worse.

At the mention of splitting up, he felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle.

“And what, you get taken as well?” he went on as he absently scratched at the itchy gills behind his ears. “It’s bad enough she hasn’t been in contact, but if you insist…”

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Callan pressed his fingers against his temples.

"Lars," He begins. "Who the fuck are you referring to?"

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He had to take a breath and reorganize his thoughts.

“Nobody’s heard from Elinor Anderson in some time during this entire operation after we got ambushed by a pair of Rockets. Unsurprisingly, they had masks on. I’ve already attempted reaching out to the others on League-secured channels who aren’t busy fighting—or who haven’t been ambushed by Rockets running around thinking like they own the place.”

As if to emphasize the point—he then reached for something he was carrying around his waist and pulled out a recognizable belt of Pokéballs that weren’t his. As it was, Lars carried his team in shrunken-down marbles when they weren’t out on the field, nothing too fancy.

“Would these be with me if Eli wasn’t missing?” he continued in that deadly quiet voice. He then tilted his head down to the rest of what he carried, slung across his waist—the rest of her belts that had Pokéballs attached.

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He shouldn't have clarified.

Something lurches inside of Callan like a pitch black jolt of lightning, coursing through his entire body. It's like the death of a Pokemon, only much, much worse. He staggers, briefly against a stalagmite as tries to hold himself together.

"When did this happen?" Callan's voice was deadpan, silent with terror and fury. The thought that Elinor Anderson was in the hands of a terrorist organization was enough, but the imagination went wild. Torture, brainwashing, death, the worst possible outcomes flooded through him like a torrent of bile. And in fact, he felt nauseous.

He hurled against the floor as he staggered back up. Vomiting from the stress of losing Kamini and all the other Pokemon he had lost in these disgusting cavernous rifts. He needed to keep it together, she was still in here, somewhere. She needed to be.

The last time they had spoke, it was a text message. A breakup message. So many things were left unsaid, so many memories and thoughts and feelings he wanted to tell her. "We have to find her Lars." Callan replied his eyes incensed with grave resolution.

"Come on... let's search around together then." They walk across the caverns. Callan sends out his Eelektrik, which slowly floats and illuminates the caves in front of them.

How quickly one’s outlook changed when confronted with the ugly reality of everything. The look of fury that Lars initially saw flashing across Callan’s face turned to one of what he recognized as terror.

(And was there some kind of grief there as well? He couldn’t tell.)

“Shortly after the time we split from where we fought the Rocket agents. I have a feeling that the person she went up against—we were split apart due to flames—was someone she’d encountered before.”

While he didn’t explicitly voice out that he was aware of the person that she’d fought against was most probably someone she’d scrapped against in Littleroot while he was up in space, the possibility was there.

“They literally went for the divide and conquer strategy.”

A few moments later, a click of a Safari Ball revealed his Gardevoir, Lynette, who looked alarmed at the sight of the two men—before shooting Lars a rather dirty look.

“Lyn, I know you can cast a wider net than either of us. Can you try and search for her?”

He… normally he’d have asked Alpha to do this for him but due to what had happened while he was searching for her, the Lucario was out of commission.

(He had no idea that Alpha was still alive, though. What a surprise he’d be in for later.)

The dual-type could pick up the swirl of emotion emanating from Callan, and from within it, picked out a ‘thread’ and began to throw her ‘net’ out as far and as wide as she could—focusing on that ‘thread’ that was Elinor Anderson’s presence.

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They search. And search, and search and search. Callan takes every Pokemon he has with him around as they look for any sign of Elly.

Thoughts scroll through his head. How quickly his values crumble when there's any kind of pressure on him. How quickly he realizes that he hasn't developed one iota since he became an Elite Four, he'd just found other things to occupy his time.

Hours pass, and Callan's leg gives, he leans against a stalactite. "I love her, Lars." Callan says, hsi voice quiet. "But I'm no good for her. I'm no good for anyone." He drags himself across the edge of the cave, they'll need to get out of here. He takes a mysterious ore from a nearby fissure, as something rumbles behind him.

"Everything I've touched turns to ash." His career, his Pokemon, his girlfriend, his tenure in the League. A narcissism cuts deep into him, it was like he was cursed.

As if on queue, the Nihilego that had been chasing them finally break through the salt formations his Garganacl had come through. With bolts of poison firing towards them, his Vikavolt is knocked out as he tosses the Mysterious Ore to create a rift out of there. Where they ended up, he didn't know. He'd be fine with the bottom of the ocean at this point, where he belonged.

He dives face first into it. Recalling his bug Pokemon just before he leaves. He didn't know if Lars followed along. He spins, with just enough effort to look back towards his friend.

They land, flying out of the rift and into the air just above Oldale Town. Callan's Staraptor launches itself out of its ball and picks both him and Laurence Anderson up, landing them safely onto the ground. "If you ever have anything going on, let me know, I'll help with finding Elly."

---

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They do search.

Turning over every possible nook and cranny over, going through every possible route they’d both taken (backtracking more than a few times just to make sure they’d covered enough ground) however, they couldn’t find any hide nor hair of who they were looking for.

He turned his attention the moment he heard what Callan had said, and he couldn’t stop himself from giving the other a noogie—never mind if it exposed his scaly arm for the other to see.

Geez, the mutation on his arm looked so real it felt like part of him at this point.

“Idiota, don’t say that,” he began. “It’s—it’s the realm. The weird, creepy feeling’s getting to you.”

Pretty rich, coming from someone supposedly called ‘the Composed’, but was actually an internally screaming mess because of what had happened so far.

Before he could continue on his train of thought, the tentacle jellyfish monsters (he wanted to call them ‘freaks of nature’ but that was best reserved for something else much more terrifying) came bursting through the wall, and his Gardevoir’s aura flashed as she loosed a Moonblast towards the closest one—but got hit by its super-effective poisonous attack in the process—finally collapsing due to sheer exhaustion.

“Not you too!” he hissed as he pulled out her Pokéball and recalled her—they’d been searching for hours, and he was very sure that she was also exhausted—the Nihilego attack was the last straw as the dual-type was eventually knocked out of commission.

(At least she didn’t die. He didn’t want a hell-bent Gareth to go on a suicide mission to nuke every single Nihilego they came across in the future.)

Once the mysterious rift to…well, somewhere opened up, Lars took his cue and dove in after Callan, making sure to ready his own red ore the moment they’d emerged on the other side—thankfully, in very friendly territory, albeit in mid-air instead of on the ground.

His thoughts immediately went to thinking of not falling to his death—however a Staraptor comes in range and he quickly smashed the ore he had in his hand to close the spatial gap they’d come out of—and the rip closed on itself, while an angry horde of Nihilego end up crashing on the other side of the wall they’d just left, unable to get through the hole they’d escaped through.

The icy wings, while thinner and definitely smaller than normal, emerge from his back; and help with lessening the weight the Staraptor has to carry as they touch down on the ground.

Somehow, somewhat—he can’t help but feel that he failed her. That they failed to find her.

“I’ll let you know as soon as possible… if there’s any plan of rescuing her, I’ll get you at once.”

Because there was no fucking way he wasn’t going to be there when she was rescued.

They were family, after all.

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pd: comms
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10 ↠ incorporate a realm mutation (the ‘scaly growth’ on his arm)
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50 ↠ pkmn KO’d (Gardevoir)
100 ↠ comms thread completion
300 ↠ objective failed: unable to find Elinor Anderson!