Soyeon had opened the door during a fairly mundane day of work. She was at home in the vast labyrinth of Rocket headquarters, shoving his perky nose into her lab work like a good Diglett would. Everything had gone according to plan and without any loose variables interrupting a decent schedule. That is, until a certain woman had made her way down into the laboratories and walked up towards her in particular. When Elisabeth had stopped in front of the other woman, she'd catch Soyeon halfway into a bar of chocolate and mulling over a report that was on its way of being sent to her supervisor.

Her work station was kept relatively organized in a broad sense of the word. A white board beside her desk had notes and diagrams of all kinds drawn out. The latest ones resembled some vague drawings of Area Zero and its parts. It wasn't anything that would get her into an art school, but some printed sheets resembling the anatomy of some Pokémon were taped to the sides. The desk, however, was a different story. Opened books and folders flooded every which way as corners threatened to spill off of the countertop. On top of this layer were five separate remnants of chocolate bars, eaten over the course of a day. Her trash can had two coffee cups inside that had a sickening sweet aroma creeping upwards.

"M-Ms. Fiorelli!" Soyeon stood at attention, with a smudge of chocolate still staining the side of her mouth that her tongue was attempting to work on before it was caught. "Ah-I wasn't expecting company today! Please, make yourself at home!" She was her usual mousey self, but she looked frantic. Flinching at every movement, eyes shifting away every so often before forcing themselves to lock onto hers, even that faint redness to her cheeks.

Once the underboss had gotten comfortable enough to talk business, they got to it. There wasn't really any surprise for Soyeon for somebody to take an interest in the topic, given the current goingons. "Oh, yes. I've been collaborating with some of my peers about our work there. I've been too...busy to go myself, but the items we're getting back are rather eye-opening."

Soyeon led Elisabeth a little bit further into her lab, where a microscope and several large scale photographs were awaiting them. On the mechanical stage was a sample of skin from one of the many Pokémon littered around the region. A hand raised to invite Elisabeth to gaze into the microscope herself as she began to ramble.

"I was originally sent to assist in energy signatures around the area, at least until we were sent back a portion of a deceased Pokémon from Area Zero, similar to Hydreigon. I was sent a portion to see if anything could be..." she paused, as if trying to search for a better word than what had been in the docket, "reused, when I decided to cut into its epidermis. Just like what you see, it's armor. Almost chitinous, but what's more amazing is its ability to respond to external stimuli. I haven't tested it on a live specimen, b-but I can safely speculate that it's a type of living armor. It's ability to regenerate and smooth over any damage sustained is extraordinary. But in more current news..."

She took a quick chunk of chocolate off of the bar in her hands before continuing on, pulling out a chunk of terra crystal that had been gathered from Area Zero. The light reflecting from it briefly flashed in front of both women's face. The weight wasn't overly hefty, but it was a considerable amount for a palm sized sample.

"It's heavier than a typical tera crystal. However, these are even more saturated in terastal energy, to the point where one doesn't even need a Tera Orb or any kind of reagent to utilize the terastallize method, though within reason."

Elisabeth Fiorelli

Her reaction was muted, much like most of her superiors that she had worked with. At the very least, Soyeon was happy that she was more talkative than Zev Harcourt usually was. The woman smiled so happily and wiped her fingers on her lab coat to remove any excess chocolate staining them before walking back to her desk and rummaging around. Books were upturned and flipped through while the lavender haired woman surfed through a sea of paper and ink while her boss would ask for her input regarding why this may be the case. “There was one report that better explains it…No, this is something else. Not this one…Aha!” Dainty fingers plucked a long piece of paper from the desk and pulled it over for Elisabeth to study from. The length of the print had caused the readings to gently float down the floor at both their feet.

These showed numbers and variables alongside charts and graphs of multiple kinds. All of which pointed to a Pokémon having been altered with the normal terrastalization method. "I had one of our scouts go into one of the private rooms and activate their tera orb here, free of outside influence on several of their Pokémon. It was a pain lugging all that equipment upstairs and more, but besides that, the readings I took showed a measurement of terastal energy inside of the Pokémon that we're temporarily calling terastal energy per Pokémon, or “TEPP”. It's measured by taking the size and area that a single Pokémon inhabits and taking the average size of a Tera crystal, then due to having to estimate the origins of the crystal, we have to…"

She babbled on about every finite detail that this mundane measurement could have been altered by, all while the beginnings of an elated grin graced her face. An energy the youth possessed when talking about a subject they were passionate about was painted clear as day on the canvas that was her scientific focus. Soyeon must have realized she was rambling on and on about and stopped herself by clearing her throat. "Er, but more importantly, the average Pokémon who undergoes any kind of method involving a Tera orb has a TEPP rating anywhere from a 0.18 for smaller Pokémon and 0.87 for larger ones. It makes sense, but then when I asked the subject to use only the crystal sample in your hand…" Soyeon flipped the paper on the other side for Elisabeth.

The Area Zero sample had far higher numbers and output than the previous side's readings. The difference was night and day, and Soyeon grinned while pointing out key portions. "The TEPP ratings increased dramatically, almost to 1.73 for something the size of a Cutiefly. That's nearly double of what they had before! The only drawback is that using the crystal originating in Area Zero without a Tera Orb defaults to one of the types the target Pokémon has, so it's not a complete upgrade. More of like...a sidegrade?"

Soyeon sat back down in her chair while looking up at Elisabeth. Beneath her desk, a small Bulbasaur laid napping in a small bed. She sat reverse way and rested her arms on the top of the seat. "As for why that could be, I'm not entirely sure. Perhaps the closer a tera crystal is formed to Area Zero, the more potent it is? Maybe it's something that we haven't discovered yet? For the time being, we just have the facts. That cavern system has a way of using tera crystals without a tera orb and is more dense in that method." She ended her speculation and spun around once in her chair. "What do you think, Ms. Fiorelli? You've had more time out there than I have. Your input matters as much as anyone else's."

Elisabeth Fiorelli

Compared to her own elation at the scientific process, Elisabeth was fairly unemotive and always kept that stern, potentially unpleased emotion on her face while Soyeon would ramble on and on about things. It had caused the woman some amount of flustering as she tended to look away away constantly or stumble on a word. Something about that cool minded, stoic look most of the Rocket administrators had always gave Soyeon butterflies in her stomach while they listened to her, though some small part of her had found the attention nice even if it was just formalities. The scientist listened to her superior talked and felt a smile sneak its way onto her lips while Elisabeth confirm her reports from before. Should she have cleaned her desk before she came? Would she think that she was some sort of slob for having all this useless junk on her desk? Her foot slowly closed the ajar compartment where she kept all of her chocolate at before any could be snatched away. Once she was done, Soyeon's gaze lingered on Elisabeth for a moment before fleeting away as she inquired about the effects of radiation in Area Zero.

"It's an understandable concern to have, one that a lot of people have been vocalizing since we arrived there, obvious reasons aside." Soyeon said while swinging around to pick up a tablet on her desk and scroll through some documents on it while standing up once more to face her superior. There were some readings of terastal energy on it, though it was much of the same information as the former papers that Elisabeth had been given. "But unfortunately, it's still too early to have any direct correlation between the two. Preliminary testing does give us some wiggle room to estimate its effects, but if you really do want a better answer..." Soyeon paused for a minute to consider her next choice of words. There was a lot of things that could be taken from the research most of the lab had assisted her in finding out. Yet there was still so much more that they hadn't even discovered or tested yet. This was a drop of information into the empty bucket that was humanity's understanding. She walked over to the whiteboard nearby and erased a good chunk of it. She wouldn't need most of it anyway, given the amount of paper on her desk, as her hurried and quick drawings on the whiteboard showcased her eagerness to teach.

With the squeaking of markers on the white surface, she drew a crude looking Voltorb in black marker, complete with the angry face. "I would assume that primal energy is more dangerous because it relates exclusively to the biology of a Pokémon. It's energy that's being absorbed into their body that creates a chemical reaction that usually produces a biological anomoly, I.E. What happened with MATIAS SILPH ." She switched to a red color marker and drew squiggly lines pointing inside of the Voltorb. Soyeon stepped aside and drew a secondary Voltorb beside the first one, then swapped the red marker for a light blue one. This time, the arrows circled around the Voltorb instead of going inside of it. "But terastal energy doesn't appear to share the same properties. It's not as volatile, for one. The energy is absorbed into their body, but as a second skin, in a way. Imagine a shield, but you can tune it to different frequencies to be effective against types you wouldn't normally be able to defend against. Once the effect ends, the energy gathered to enable its effects are broken down by the Pokémon's cells harmlessly."

She stopped to catch her breath and show her excitement before turning back to Elisabeth as an awkward laugh escaped her lips. "All that to say, "We don't know." I'm sure if you were to continuously terastalize a Pokémon for years on end without any breaks, there could be some kind of health risk. But for now, high amounts of energy won't end up causing a massive explosion." she finished, before adding, "Provided you have a proper containment procedure for them."

Elisabeth Fiorelli

"That's a good question, Ms. Fiorelli. One I don't have an answer to right now." Soyeon admitted freely to Elisabeth. Her eyes went over to the Tera crystal that came to rest on the desk as the lights within bounced off of the ceiling above. she hadn't really had any major ideas about what to test them with next, as she was still trying to study all these different areas of expertise with the scientific field. Just studying Dynamax energy alone had given her a migraine in terms of studying, so this was a definitive work in progress. "I have a couple of different things I'm working on right now regarding the energy signatures, but they're just theories for the time being. I don't really know…" Soyeon looked back at the crystal before picking it up and gazing down at its beauty. Her eyes moved to the center of the jewel as her mind began to wander. If these were inherently powerful on their own, perhaps there was something more to be said about Aera Zero itself. She made a thoughtful “hmph” while her thumb traced along the edges of the crystal. The samples in Area Zero were extremely potent in themselves, so surely there were answers within that cave?

"Actually…" She looked up at Elisabeth with a renewed interest. "I want to explore Area Zero further once the initial excursions return. If the samples originating from there are highly saturated in terastal energy, then there's a chance we may be able to find out where they originated from. Which could mean that we could find the source of this energy, or something else entirely."

Soyeon wanted to burst out of her seat with elation at the thought of exploring such an anomaly of the natural world. She made a mental note to start making preparations of supplies she might need out there for a solo expedition. Ink stained the corner of the page in her hand as she scribbled down a note to herself before turning back to Elisabeth. "If you would like to accompany me to Aera Zero on an expedition, please let me know. I would enjoy some alone time between us." The note taking stopped a second later before a hasty addition followed, "As colleagues. You seem to have more experience than I do of the area. I need a break from Ultra Space and the simulations anyway."

Elisabeth Fiorelli

Despite how hollow it may have seemed or sounded coming from a higher up in Soyeon's eyes, the praise did have a sort of comfort to it. Like it felt that her work was being utilized nicely. And it was fun instructing others about the work that some of the laboratories were doing in Rocket. Elisabeth's agreement to help in her research was just the cherry on top. "It would be an honor to have you assist in our research." The woman said with a pleased smile. It was getting harder and harder to believe that she could openly say that working in Rocket was anything but a nightmare. But their help with the things she wanted to do was quite enticing indeed.

"I'll have to get a few things in order before I'm ready to get started on any ventures down in Area Zero. But I'll be ready to go whenever you do call. And if you need any help, don't be a stranger! Call or just come in. I'll try and clean up next time." Soyeon walked back to her chair and came to a rest just as the small Bulbasaur had waken up from its nap and wandered out from her desk. He slowly climbed up onto a pile of books as a staircase that raised it to the surface of her desk. "Until then, Ms. Fiorelli, stay safe. I'll be hard at work here."

She waved the woman off and waited until she was fully out of the lab before fetching another chocolate bar from her drawer and chomping into it.

Elisabeth Fiorelli