Shalin was nothing short of terrified upon witnessing the realm before her. An endless cityscape with towers whose prism-like windows serving as the realm's only light sources, the streets beneath them were pitch black. Not even the comfort of her Sygna Suit calmed her down. Her Venusaur scooped her up with one of her vines, the Captain silding down to the cracker at the very end of it. She had to be careful with her suit's Infinity Energy discharges, given that her Hyper Beam burns around her elbows were still not fully healed. As much as she wanted to, getting her mind off the hell she was in by losing herself in her own adrenaline, her body as it was would not survive the extreme force behind Saria's cracking Vine Whip.

Instead, the Venusaur twirled her vines through the air. Saria didn't need to crack her Vine Whips to get Shalin's inner fluids pumping; the rapid peaks and troughs from the rapid circles the Venusaur was flinging her in made her move with dizzying speed. Even such a thrill would not get Shalin out of her cold, seemingly trance-like episode of terror. It was only the sudden reveral of the whirling vine's direction, the vine's cracker harshly flicking her, that caused her to snap out of it and shout a loud "YEEHAW!" that echoed among the destroyed buildings of the seemingly empty city.

Though it wasn't a full-speed crack of the vine, the spike of energy needed to keep the girl from going flying off it sapped far more strength from her than she expected. While it was an important motivator to get her in the right mindset to gather data for illeana reyes , there was no way she could do that a second time in her weakened state. Even so, it gave her the courage to press on, knowing that once her elbows and arms were completely healed, she would be able to withstand snap after snap of her Sygna Pokémon's vine.

The form of a shambling MEGALOPOLAN crawled toward Shalin, Robin, and the two Pokémon, the rider feeling the vine she was sitting on tense up. "Remember, Saria, I'm not 100% yet!" Shalin reminded her Sygna Pokémon. The Venusaur flourished her vines, whirling them about to try to intimidate the husk before them. The mindless creature did not back down.

Drawing on her suit, small POWER WHIPS sprouted from the backs of her hands. The white-knuckled Shalin held on tight as both the Venusaur's vines whirled faster and faster. The smaller vines growing out of the rider's hands cracked as the Pokémon reversed her twirling direction. One smacked the rotting husk before them. "Now, Robin!" Shalin screamed, though she wasn't sure how much the Ranger could understand, what with the speed she was moving at perhaps throwing her voice all over the place.

The HAMMER ARM knocked the wind out of the reanimated Megalopolan, sending it flying toward Shalin and her Venusaur. The vine she was sitting on and the two growing from the backs of her hands sliced through the rotting foe with a deafening crack that banged off the nearby buildings in triplicate. The loudest one came from the vine she sat on, but the other two may have been enough to scare off anything that saw the carnage she wrought. "We... got 'em!" Shalin dizzily said aloud, reeling some from the force of the snap, but not nearly as much as she did before opening the Infinity Energy conduit directly between Saria and herself. The bond with her Flygon simply was not strong enough to handle the feat she had just pulled off.

As the lumbering grass-type made a turn onto the remnants of a main thoroughfare, Shalin started to recover from the energy discharge that made riding a lashing Vine Whip possible for her. Saria stretched her vine around a corner, giving her trainer a good look at what was ahead. "Arceus..." she gasped, the blue and green Pokémon drawing her back. "Robin, there's a whole playground back there. Along with..." she trailed off, unable to adequately describe the horrors she witnessed beyond.

By the time Lathiel could catch up and jump into the fray, the Toxel's potent SHADOW RAVE had dispatched the Megalopolan husks crowding the haunted-looking playground. The giant spring holding a Naganadel statue off the ground, intended for kids to sit on and fantasize about flying, had been twisted to the point where the statue's hed was lodged in the ground. "I've seen one of these before," Shalin gestured toward the statue. "They're a Pokémon native to Ultra Space." Supposedly Toxrill would evolve into one. She had yet to unlock the secret of doing so, though.

"Neither was I," Shalin nodded in agreement, at last getting enough feeling in her limbs to slide off her Venusaur's vine and walk on her own two feet. "With everything being destroyed... I wonder what kind of awful disaster could have taken place here?" It was certainly post-apocalyptic looking.

Shalin withdrew her Venusaur, starting to feel the sting of the atmosphere even through her Sygna Suit. She wondered how Robin was holding up without one. As she led the way toward the school building the playground was near, a strange-looking vending machine with a diamond-shaped coin slot piqued Shalin's interest. The screens on them flickered, and many of the buttons had been defaced, making it nearly impossible to operate. "What is powering this...?" she mused, getting a closer look at the barely-powered device.

The machine appeared to be filled with beverages of some kind. Inserting several of the black crystals into its diamond-shaped slot, Shalin pressed two of the machine's buttons, and one of the drinks fell through a chute and to the outside. The drink was cold to the touch. "Amazing that they're still powered," the Captain noted aloud as she examined the can for an expiration date.

It was last year.

"I'm gonna take this back to Ever Grande for analysis," Shalin volunteered. "Plus, I'm tired. Even with a Sygna Suit, this place takes it out of you. Even more so than the rest of Ultra Space. I'm sure you're not feeling great yourself. Let's turn around before we get too sick to come back." She conveniently left out the detail of Saria's vine wearing her out, too. Being whirled about too fast to see was exhausting!