The Chryssa John Sullivan had spoken to sniffed his pant leg curiously and then dove under the table to collect a lost piece of shrimp. "Glazzy," the real Chryssa's voice rose warningly nearby, "I asked you to practice behaving like the other humans tonight—oh, hello, John."

A rush of information, association, the unknown. Premonition. Disaster. Things there was no going back on. Things that had changed forever.

Something had changed, but Chryssa had always been hard to read. A moment of coolness or disaffection might be a precursor to a mental attack on God himself. When she spoke to Doug, her tone was airy as usual. "I should have known I'd find you with the refreshments. I hope you won't be starting another food fight—there's enough flying through the sky as it is."

She waved her now-empty skewer at the Litleonids streaking past overhead. Beautiful as they were, Chryssa found herself averting her eyes. The sight of so many spent wishes reminded her of her own.

Someone asked her a question and the girl seemed to light up at the distraction. She whirled on Andy Blackadder . "Squid-like," she said immediately, glowing with confidence. Her eyes gleamed as she leaned forward. "It was quite dark, so I couldn't make out any color, but I still saw it quite clearly. A pointed cap and a small, dangling body with three long, sword-tipped tentacles." She'd never seen Andy before in her life—Plate Club didn't register for some reason, perhaps because of its traumatic conclusion—and she relished the sudden attention from a stranger. 

Nearby, one of the Zorua clones shrank away, remembering the boy in much greater detail.

"It can breathe underwater, of course. It does live in a lake," Chryssa went on obliviously, "Like all the lake guardians. I assume it has gills, but I didn't notice any at the time."

Describing it in detail, the abject terror of the experience seemed to dull, replaced with something more comical. Comfortable.

The glaring words left in her mind seemed less and less important as she undermined their context. Chryssa didn't want to know what the message meant. It felt like something beyond her control.

"But its eyes..." Chryssa trailed off. The memory halted her for a moment. The sight of them rolling, searching, a mass of white sclera in her keyhole. The way they'd pinned her, huge and reflective, when she'd opened the door.

"...were also squid-like." 

"Where? Outside the—" Radio Tower, Chryssa thought, realizing she hadn't filled the redhead in on the details of her new part-time (full-time) job. Zac was an ally, her Champion, her fallback. It didn't cross her mind for a second that he might be a threat or sell her out to the League—he knew about Chu-e Choi , after all. But she still had an act to maintain.

"—Garden," Chryssa finished, having never grown a flower in her life (except for bitter-tasting Zarude vines). 

She did wonder what the man would say if he knew she was living in a radio tower, falling asleep every night to toneless strings of numbers and ululating Ecruteak monks.

Perhaps he'd say she'd dreamed it all up.

"Anyway, it left a bad taste in my mind," Chryssa went on, trying to shrug off the moment of indecision. It wasn't like her to hesitate. "I'm sure I can handle whatever's coming, but I'm not sure why I'm sure. It feels like divine interference to me." Her eyes narrowed slightly.

At that moment, a great ooh swept across the soiree, and she heard someone gasp nearby as the first streak of light passed across the sky. "Oh, it's starting!" Chryssa pointed her shrimp skewer up at the open night sky, voice ringing with random authority. "Hurry, appreciate it!"

The heavens were alight with shooting stars, one after another. Chryssa had never seen so many. Perhaps there were more than usual. Perhaps it was simply because the sky was so dark, every trace of interstellar light blotted out by something deep, something vast, something older than time and space.

Unbidden, unwanted, her wish rose to the top of her mind like scum on water.

I want to live.

Chryssa locked her jaw, gritting her teeth so hard she could imagine all the plates of her skull creak under the pressure.

"Ugh," Chryssa declared after mere minutes of waiting for the meteor shower to start. "I grow tired of this! Let's get something to eat."

Her rapidly shortening attention span was made more apparent by the bizarre number of people talking about the shrimp at the refreshments table. What's the point in eavesdropping when all anyone talks about is shrimp? Chryssa wondered, wondering if she should talk about shrimp too, just to fit in. Maybe it was a sociological experiment. Or perhaps a subliminally-charged shrimp commercial had snuck its way into one of her radio shows and poisoned the minds of the masses.

In that case, Zac Ramsay was certainly gullible enough to be entranced by the mystery. "Speaking of cephlopods," Chryssa said as she and her disproportionally large friend made their way towards the refreshments table. They passed by the bar, speaking loud enough for Locke Jamison to overhear. "...I had a visit from Azelf the other day."

She said it casually, but Chryssa had no misunderstandings about what she'd seen. Unlike most other Legendary Pokemon, she was quite familiar with the mythology of her home region. "It's one of the traditional Lake Guardians from Sinnoh. I'm familiar with its iconography, so I'm quite certain."

She zoomed in on a skewer of grilled shrimp that hadn't been gobbled up and seized it, waving it triumphantly at Zac. "It's supposed to be sleeping at the bottom of Lake Valor to preserve balance in the world. If it's out and about, delivering prophecies, I suppose that balance has been disrupted."

"Bra-vah," Chryssa called after Rowan Wrynn 's performance, leering at the perfectly nice young man from behind her hand like a condescending villainess. "But your basketball lizard won't be able to top our top-notch topping. That's what it's called when you add something fantastic on top of something frumpy."

She spun around, forgetting for a moment this was a Cool Contest and not a twirling competition where people tried to show off how good they were at smugly spinning in a circle. "Isn't language innovation amazing?"

Drew came pelting past her, water coalescing on her whiskers as she bunched her hind legs and vaulted into the air. A ball of water formed between the otter's paws as she somersaulted mid-leap, uncurling in time to adamantly dunk the watery basketball through an imaginary hoop. Twisting midair, the otter lashed out with a back paw to destroy it, sending a spinning blade of air carving from the impact. It scythed dangerously close above the heads of the audience before it hit the back wall and dissipated in a rush of wind, a cool breeze that ruffled fur, hair, and unchecked egos alike.

The Dewott landed, brushing droplets of water off her shoulders and sauntering back into the lineup.

Chryssa was fully aware of what lay beneath the church, though she'd personally never taken the stairs. She'd made heavy use of Teleport when moving the (sleeping) bodies between the chapel and the basement. They were sleeping, not dead. Innocents caught in the crossfire of an immortal war. They knew nothing of what Chryssa had fought. Who she was still fighting, even with a knife to her throat.

Neither did many of those who had come to help the cleanup effort, or so they claimed out loud. That, at least, could be remedied.

"Here you are. Educate yourselves, heathens," Chryssa said generously to luka chêne and Martín del Mar , passing out old copies of Vantage that she'd been hoarding as a testament to her brief moment of magazine fame. "I even have a quote. That's how you know how important I am. Anyway, I'll be heading down now."

Picking up her skirts, Chryssa ventured fearlessly down the stairs as fast as a person with a walking cane could venture.

She was confident she knew what to expect. The circular dais at the bottom of the stairs was just as she remembered. It had seemed as good a place as any to store the sleeping bodies while she waited for Plate Club to begin, since all four doors had been safely barred.

Chryssa watched the wide-open West Wing, her eyes suddenly wary. Wintery.

Something was different.
Something was wrong.

The tip of her cane clunked faintly on the wood flooring as she moved, compelled to approach by something beyond her sight, drawn to a story like a Mothim to a flame. "Something stirs," the girl said suddenly, clearly. At the same time, Senga's white fur stood on end and the Meowstic's ears unfurled, using FUTURE SIGHT.

Not soon enough.

Heat beaded like dew on the ground beneath her feet as Chryssa came face-to-face with the monster. Her back stiffened.

Despite the dangerously gathering heat, she felt like she'd been plunged into cold water. Her grip tightened on Muir and the cane came to life in response to her terror, its blue eye blazing like a summer sky beneath the threatening gaze of so many others.

Run. 

Before she could budge, however, neon green barriers came to life around the Meowstic as John Sullivan 's Pokemon burst into the fray. The growing fire was contained, walling off part of the archives and unfortunately cutting off Chryssa's escape route as well.

Pull yourself together.

"There you are," Chryssa said to her savior, managing to pull off an airy tone. "I was sure you were going to ignore me. Was it the piss rock?" Strange how some people didn't want to interact with it.

A slim, dark volume lay on the floor beneath the monster, scattered with the other ruined books there. Many of its pages had been torn, but as screams rang out around her and the wet crunch of fangs and flames sang in her ears, the title of one page caught her eye.

THE HOLLOW MEN

Chryssa's knack for spotting divine providence won out.

"Get that book," she forced out from lungs that still felt encased in ice, and the Meowstic dove forwards through the Protect barrier. The shield rippled like water as the feline's Infiltrator warped its surface, tearing a rift in the Protect that left a clear, unobstructed path for the growing flames towards Doug's Blissey.

Sailing towards the monster's belly—soft as silk—Senga's claws stretched out for the leather volume, coveting its contents.

"Oh wow—it's her!"

A voice in the audience raised suddenly.

"She's actually here? OH MY GOD, I can't believe it, we are SO. LUCKY."

Never mind that all the hubbub was coming from just one person, an innocuous-looking teenage girl in a flannel shirt. Whispers spread like static wherever she passed.

"Who is she?! I missed it!"

"Is she famous? I didn't know!"

"THERE SHE IS!"

Drawn in by the expertly-woven web of mob psychology, the women in the front row screamed, caught up in the excitement, as a lean, shaggy-haired Pokemon strolled towards the audience. Posture relaxed, Dewott sat on the edge of the stage with one leg tucked beneath her, the other dangling casually.

The otter's muzzle wrinkled, revealing a row of needle-sharp teeth. 

She smirked.

"SIGN MY JACKET!" Chryssa called, balling up her flannel and hurling it at the Dewott on stage. Barely glancing up, the otter snatched it out of the air with one hand.  A scalchop appeared like a switchblade in the other before there was a ripping sound and the coat sailed back into the front row, billowing in the air for a moment to reveal the name sliced into the fabric there.

Women screamed, enamored, and grabbed for tattered pieces of flannel. "DREEEEEW!" Chryssa shrieked girlishly through cupped hands, feeding into the frenzy. Once she had them worked up enough, the girl took to the stage alongside her Pokemon.

"You saw her yourself, ladies and gentlemen. This is Drew, I'm Chryssa, and we'll be seeing you after the show."

Tying a long scrap of red plaid around one wrist, Drew vaulted into the first row, giving high-fives, kissing audience members, and returning with a ballcap perched lazily between her ears that said 'Women Love Me, Fish Fear Me.'

Chryssa did not have an immediate answer to Doug’s last question. Saying she’d been “searching” for the plates to begin with was a stretch. After she’d found what she’d thought was the Splash Plate at the Slateport Oceanic Museum, she’d simply wanted to find out how many more were even out there in the region— how many relics of myth and magic were floating around in Hoenn, thousands of miles from the pillars of their ancestral home.

The answer had been all of them.

They were here for a reason, Chryssa was convinced. They were part of Arceus’s greater plan. That alone had been reason enough to destroy the shard of Insect Plate Doug had given her.

But now, one had saved her life.

Not for forever, perhaps, if the ‘foothsayer’ was to be believed. But Chryssa would take months, weeks, days, over nothing. Even if they were given to her conditionally. Even if it was a trap. Even if it meant her serving the very god she detested.

Her time, every second of it, was all precious. It was all real.

But was she using Arceus? Or was he using her?

“It’s not a curse,” Chryssa said as she climbed in through the window. She grabbed gratefully for the Honedge leaning up against the desk and used it to prop herself up as she wobbled across the room. She’d been on her feet almost all day while Dr. Footsy had been running his tests (or had she been the one running?). “A curse is meant to teach you something. Don’t you watch movies? A curse is a lesson. Or at the very least a punishment for rude behavior, like in Sleeping Beauty.” 

Remembering her purpose for being back in this room, Chryssa crawled over the bed to collect her phone and charging cord from the headboard. “I’ve had this diagnosis since I was ten years old,” she continued levelly, “And was wheelchair-bound for years before that. I had my bones re-broken and rearranged in infancy.” A steely edge entered her eyes, but not her tone. It remained calm, conversational. “How do you justify something like that for a child? A punishment? A parable? If it’s a curse, it’s for my parents—not me.” And what had they ever done except serve Arceus faithfully all their lives, blithely worshipping the ground beneath their god’s four holy feet?

“You know, they say when they torture people, they don’t do it all at once. A person’s pain receptors get used to it if it’s a continuous thing.” Chryssa tossed a set of sundresses into a large suitcase she’d had waiting. “They start and stop, then start again. It’s random. Unpredictable. They leave the prisoner in the dark, not knowing when the pain will return. That’s the real torture. Waiting, helpless, alone.”

The girl slammed her desk drawer shut, having just retrieved her wallet and Hoenn trainer card. She seemed far from despondent— if anything, she was even more resolved. “If Arceus chose to cure me now, it’s the same reason he cured my legs back then. Call it…” she searched for the right words to capture his malice, his indifference, his cruelty.

“Dramatic effect,” she finished.

Her bags packed, Chryssa sat down on the edge of the bed. The mattress springs squeaked beneath her weight. She looked tired. But when she spoke again, her words rang with conviction.

“Curse or not, I learned one thing: there are no miracles. And there are always consequences.”

The trio of Chryssa clones had been consistently present throughout the soiree, impossible to miss as they mingled and barked and scoured the refreshments table. Despite wandering the ballroom in their mistress' absence, they lacked the true Chryssa's mischievous drive, so they had fallen back on familiar faces.

Chryssa found her Zorua all meekly serving Zac Ramsay drinks when she returned from the Mossdeep Observatory, her shoes still wet with dew from the grass. Her eyes were filled with stars and secrets, and she looked nothing like the ordinary young women who all yipped in excitement at the sight of her.

"Oh, there you are," she said to the red-haired giant, trying to shake off the haze of events from the evening. She seemed to settle back into her old self, some poise and energy returning to her. "I mean, hah, it appears you've finally found me, Zac Rillaboom. Well done."

There was an announcement in the ballroom. About time, Chryssa thought. "I'm looking forward to the meteor shower," the girl said conversationally to Zac as the lights began to dim. She made no move to go back outside despite the professor's offer-- she had already gone and went, and the press of so many people around her felt reassuring after her isolating, illuminating experience. 

"Has anyone tried to go in?" Chryssa asked, kicking her legs like a child in a booster seat as everyone patted down their pockets for a conveniently missing skeleton key. "In my experience, people don't actually lock things nearly as often as they should." They fell back on social norms, assuming that ordinary people wouldn't go into a door marked 'Employees Only' or brazenly walk into a public facility after hours.  "They simply expect nothing will happen."

Chryssa floated forward.

"Until it does."

The door clicked open.

Brows raised, Chryssa glanced back at the others, face radiant with triumph. Her hand, hovering over the doorknob, settled like a dove returning to its nest.

She twisted. It opened.

Chryssa hadn't seen Lulu Flint 's shadow sliding through the cracks in the darkness. In that moment it merely seemed like providence, another coincidence perfectly lining up to place the three, no, four of them in the same place at the same time. 

Was this part of Arceus' plan?

How can I believe that, when we're searching for his light?

"Your voice sounds... familiar," the girl said to Killian Decker as the door to the observatory swung open. Chryssa's Lunatone drifted to the side, making way for her companions to proceed ahead of her. "Mr. Decker, was it?" The others seemed to know him.

Her eyes were large, misty. She gave him a wide-lipped smile, curved like a crescent moon. "You can join us, if you want."

The doorway beckoned, promising futures unknown.

"I'm only here to assuage my guilt in the unfortunate accident that destroyed this church," Chryssa Glasgow said loudly, sailing through the burned ruins of the front door with all the grace and poise of a paper airplane. "If that word means what I think it means, of course."

While she had planned a covert gathering of Plate-holders and insidious trap for the ever-watching Arceus, she actually hadn't been responsible for the explosion which had leveled it to the ground. She'd spent weeks in the hospital afterwards recovering from a broken neck. If it wasn't for a certain John Sullivan coming back for her, she might not have made it out of the burning church at all. That fact had been enough to convince most people that she'd known nothing about the attack or the scepter that had been stolen.

The disappearance of its caretakers, however—namely the Reverend Sister—well, that Chryssa knew a little more about.

Chryssa deliberately pretended not to see the hidden stairwell buried beneath the ash and stood in the ruined "doorway" instead, annoyingly blocking anyone trying to enter the church through conventional means. It made no actual difference—there was so little left of the once-hallowed walls that one could step over them like speed bumps. 

"There should be some residual power here," the girl said, nodding to her Meowstic. Senga had already scooped up a shard of stained glass and was inspecting it in the sunlight. Chryssa used the tip of her cane to nudge a piece of burned rafter. "If it is Arceus's will that this place gets cleaned up, he might as well help the process along."