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He doesn’t have the strength to move. He just sits there, motionless, as the icy water comes to wash out the grime. The aches and bruises stab him again under the bone-chill. The most Alba can do is be bitterly grateful they extended this small, taunting mercy.[break][break]

How many times will they go through this ‘manageable’ pain? Steadily being beaten down, until nothing remains? Will the other side start to forsake, now they know the kind of pain trusting will bring? Within the confines of the game, there's no way for them to win. The losing wards can either slowly die together, or kill each other quickly.[break][break]

On their feet they go, leaving the beast to its revolting feast. He doesn’t care to look back, just cringes at the sound of its smacking lips, and stares in disgust at the pulsating décor littered across the hallway.[break][break]

The new clothes are a kinder blessing, and the mochi is something Alba devours without hesitation, even as he knows its sweetness is to hide the taste of poison. If he eats it, he may die. But if he starves, he will die. It’s an easy choice, in the end.[break][break]

And then the dream comes. In that neon necropolis, the man breathes deeply, and basks in freedom away from mask and chain…

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Dusknoir’s eye opens wide, focused on something nobody present can see. The wind swirls and swirls around the group. It howls, and howls, slowly sounding less like the noise of the wind and more like distant, distorted screaming.[break][break]

Then it stops. Everything stops. The wind is still, and stagnant.[break][break]

“CHEEEEEEEEEEEESE?!” A loud booming voice rings out from the air, echoing as if it’s coming from the end of a long, long tunnel.[break][break]

“If it’s cheese you want, you can have it! I left my ripest, finest wheels in ‘that place’! All you have to do is take it!! Squeakakakakakakakakaka!!”

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What an interesting man Howard Slayte was.[break][break]

“Inexcusable…” Alba laughed at that, a sound devoid of mirth. “Yeah, we can call it that.” Their thoughts and feeling deviated, but they reached a similar conclusion in the end. A dead king of a dead kingdom… What right did a shambling corpse like that have to return from the grave?[break][break]

“A ploy? I don't know. Bear with me while I try and cover all of this…”[break][break]

“On Route 120, there was a battle between two forces. A pair of dog Pokémon — one wielding a sword, one wielding a shield — and two of the Ruinous Treasures. Admin jayden cross’s patron, and some Pokémon carrying a bowl, to be exact. The Treasures used some kind of power, which reacted with the weapons, pulling us into the dream.[break][break]

“Could it be a ploy? The Calyrex of hundreds of years ago, placing its trust in its vassals to pull it out of the memories lingering in Necrozma steel… It would make quite the story.” But his expression dulled, as if throwing away that fantasy without a second thought.[break][break]

“No, I don’t think so. I think our High King is just something that desperately wants to live; the stars happened to align, and it clung to that as hard as it could.” It was so fragile when its statue shattered. So full of blind fury and fear when its lifeline was severed.[break][break]

“Selfish bastard,” Alba muttered under his breath, without a single shred of irony.

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Right. Of course people would choose trust. Why had he expected any different? All that breath wasted on arguing his point, and nobody had given it a thought.[break][break]

“Well, fair enough.” Alba brushes past DESIREE BLOOMS’s vitriolic spiel and Laurence Whateley’s disagreement as best as he could, thankful this stifling mask of his hid his darkening expression from the rest of the ward. She’d sure yelled about serpents and hell loud enough… loud enough for the opinion to take root, maybe.[break][break]

Well, whatever. If by trying to forsake the other ward, he’d ended up forsaking his own, he’d just rely on himself and nobody else. Why worry about the other Krabby in the bucket? Alba would make his way to his own freedom, and consider everyone else after that.[break][break]

…The thought of that howling in the night comes to him unbidden (Ettie)—[break][break]

And any more thinking on that is cut short by the group being herded onto the elevator like sheep. Time for the punishment… Alba feels more like a bundle of straw than a person as the lumbering hound of a jailer tosses him to the floor. Then he feels painfully human as his surroundings strike at his senses.[break][break]

The first thing he notices is touch. The floor is sticky, covered in lumps of something soft and malleable that tangles with his hair. Then comes smell; the cocktail of sickly sweet and acrid copper swirling together. He doesn’t need to look to know what he’s landed in, but he does so anyway. Human remains and half-eaten mochi; he takes a deep breath to steady himself, only to gag on the stench and the Toxic Chain still tight around his throat.[break][break]

But this is manageable. Clean the floors, hold yourself together, wait for the next opportunity to come out on top on this game of theirs—[break][break]

His blood stills at the sounds of screams and footsteps. It churns into panic as his bindings force him to the floor, force him to pray rather than run. Alba’s own scream joins the echo as their tormentor finds him, before he clamps down his teeth and curls up amongst the filth, powerless to do anything other than tremble.

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He sat down, like he was an extension of Jayden’s sweeping hand. The seat was cold to the touch, on the precipice of frosting over.[break][break]

“They’re interesting, don’t you think? The bond between an avatar and their patron is completely different to the bond between a trainer and their Pokémon. I’m sure you understand that much better than I do…” Alba’s eyes drifted towards the hateful cat, curled up and sleeping away as if it wasn’t a creature of incredible power.[break][break]

As if it hadn’t been the one to set off that dream…[break][break]

Blink. His eyes flickered back to the Admin, putting the rest aside.[break][break]

“I think it’s safe to call avatars one of the stronger forces at play in Hoenn. The more we know, the better we can use that force, or fight against it. I’d like to help pursue that knowledge, if you’ll have me.”

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The Dummy Ward was living up to its name, because Alba was surrounded by a bunch of gormless idiots. All those people, hoisted into the air like thieves at the gallows… What a waste. He wasn’t planning on staying in this hellhole forever, but he wasn’t going to suffer because of some harebrained scheme to steal some crystals, either.[break][break]

But the worst of all the idiots was the idiot trying to talk about the vote. At least the Tera thieves were only shooting themselves in the foot — this guy was holding a gun to each and every one of them.[break][break]

“And why the hell would it do that? If you seriously think the warden will listen to you, that chain must be cutting off the circulation to your brain. Look at what happens when you try and break the game they’re playing; don’t eat the mochi, and you die horrifically. Try and steal, and you get your Pokémon killed. What are you gonna bargain with? What could you possibly offer, when the wardens are here to make us suffer, and when you only have the clothes on your back?” Alba forces his voice to be even as he speaks. Look level-headed, look in control… look like more than just someone trying to avoid the crack of the whip.[break][break]

“The most logical choice in every situation is to pick ‘forsake’. No matter what we pick, there’s always a fifty-fifty chance we get the harsh punishment, but we can only completely avoid it by forsaking. I know Mr. Martyr over there was talking about loved ones in the other wards… but we don’t know that, and they don’t know that.” The most logical choice in every situation is to pick ‘forsake’, therefore, they had to assume that the other ward would also pick ‘forsake’. In that case, it didn’t matter what they picked; they’d always have to suffer the harsh punishment. But that didn’t really help with the sell, did it?[break][break]

“Not to mention… it’s a punishment, not an execution. They’re keeping us alive so we can work, and there are what, a few dozen people in this ward? Why would they kill so many people, so many workers, just because of a single vote?” So many assumptions, none of them making sense… The worst kind of idiot was an idiot with a cause.[break][break]

With his ramble to the rest of the ward over, Alba turns to look at Laurence Whateley. “You get where I’m coming from, right? You get why we have to forsake?”

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“Alba. From the looks of things, we’re in prison… somewhere. No windows for me to tell where, though.” There’s still the dying jitters of panic in his Opelucid accent, but the more he talks and paces about, the more they fade out. Panic wouldn't do him any good. Focus, focus…[break][break]

“There’s got to be something… Some way for us to break out of here— Hey, something's happening out there.” Alba’s train of thought is interrupted by something descending from the ceiling. Their captors? They're draped in Toxic Chains, the same way both prisoner and guard are, but they're clearly higher than both in the order of things. The monkey stays, but the bird continues down into the darkness below; so there are even more cells than these.[break][break]

“Wronged you? It was self-defence; haven't done anything worse than what you tried.” He's mostly just talking to himself as he gazes out of the bars of his shared cage. He hadn’t even been in Hoenn for the Three Day War; all the scientist had done was get caught up in their affairs while hunting for monsters. Poor, innocent him.[break][break]

Dissent and defiance cry out from across the ward, but it’s a feeble rebellion. And like all rebellions that cannot hold up the sky, it is crushed.[break][break]

Whatever that started the uproar is not human, just some offal strewn across the ground. Alba watches it turn from a person to a thing, unblinking til the end.[break][break]

“What’s your name, by the way?” He asks as the copper stench of blood reaches their cell. His voice is even, but his fingers drum against his thigh as he reaches for the mochi. “I told you mine, seems only fair you tell me yours.”[break][break]

It’s sweet. It’s too sweet, because it’s pleasantly sweet; a gentle ray of light breaking through the gloom. There’s a fairytale like this, isn’t there? A gingerbread house in the woods, fattening up children for the witch to eat. But what else can he do but chew at its bricks and mortar, to stave off the cauldron for another day?[break][break]

Work begins. The promise of reward and fear of execution work to keep Alba’s hands moving, even as sharp edges bite into his skin. Are they trying to recreate their ship, like they tried and failed to at Route 119? And if the Megalopolans can turn their dreams into reality, then…[break][break]

“Please, help me be free,” he speaks to the shards in his hands, hoping the weeping cuts on his hands carry his words far enough.

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It’s a confidence that’s earned, really. Who else could possibly be more knowledgeable about Shadow Pokémon than the avatar of Lugia itself?[break][break]

…Herself. Just in case.[break][break]

If there’s one thing Admin Quinn is also an expert on, it’s apparently flattery. He’s impressed; Alba inclines his head and smiles to graciously accept the compliment. It was the only choice he could have made, of course. Purification wasn’t for the likes of him and Musharna.[break][break]

But this meeting was more than just an ego trip.[break][break]

“Shadow Pokémon created from this dream share the same traits as already existing Shadow Pokémon, like Lugia. So the question is, do they share the same cause, or is this something different, capable of making the same effect?” This wasn’t his area of expertise, but it was his job to research and development, without concern or discrimination.[break][break]

“Do you mind explaining what Shadow Pokémon are, exactly? Maybe that’ll help shine a light on what exactly is happening here.”

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“Aromatisse could whip something up, maybe…” Alba rubbed his nose at the thought of that particular Pokémon. An anonymous gift (Hyakkaryōran Tsubaki) that had appeared on his doorstep one day, and had threatened to burn out the nosehairs of anything within 10 metres… Breaking it in had been a unique challenge, given that he’d had to order in a full-face gas mask to stand being near it for long enough.[break][break]

…There was still work to be done if he didn’t want to lose his sense of smell, though. [break][break]

But the conversation turned to a new topic, one tied to the far-stretching roots of the colossal tree they watched over.[break][break]

“Yeah, I was there. It’s a little hard to cover twenty years quickly, so excuse me if I skip out some details…” Alba had spent half his life in that dream, or it had at least felt that way. How could he cover all the oak rings he had grown in that time? No, Admin Fox would only want the bigger picture, the things that would be useful for the glory of Rocket.[break][break]

Because the only way to speak of tree rings was to take a bonesaw to your soul.[break][break]

“Have you ever seen Eternatus’ poison? It’s like sludge. Nothing’s perfectly safe from it; if you’re not careful, it gets into your mind, makes you see things, makes you forget. It was everywhere, when we first arrived. Seeping into the land, clogging up the heart of the king, just over there,” he says, pointing across to the other side of the trunk.[break][break]

“We’d been thrown into the middle of a war between the Black Knight and the Skeleton: Necrozma and Eternatus. Looking back, I think it had been feeding off the stories we told — the stories we lived — even then.”

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When Alba wakes up, he feels like he’s buried six feet under. The chain locked around his neck cuts off his breath, only giving him the last dying gasps of a corpse. It affixes a coffin lid to his cadaver, gripping it tightly enough that he can barely feel his face.[break][break]

At first, he assumes it to be one of Musharna’s borrowed nightmares; a harmless thing that would slip from memory as soon as he woke up in that cold sweat. As he slowly rouses to full consciousness, as his stay in this dismal dungeon continues, he comes to realise this has nothing to do with his Pokémon. His Pokémon aren’t even here.[break][break]

The first stage of panic sets in. His body tries to hyperventilate, but the Chain doesn’t let all the air through; all the Rocket scientist is cough and splutter until his mind clears. In the next cell over, a girl howls into the empty air.[break][break]

And outside the cell… it’s them. Of course it’s them. The aliens from Route 119…[break][break]

“So this is where you went.” What even was this place? Some dilapidated prison they’d taken and turned into a base of operations? A glorified butchery for them to keep their prey? And the Chains: shackles to some, badges of honour to others. Something had to have been brewing in the shadows of Hoenn for months, now.[break][break]

Finally, Alba’s attention properly turns to the inside of his cell — something he really should have done before now — though there’s not much of note except for the other guy in the same mask and foreign clothes.[break][break]

…He should probably talk to him.[break][break]

“Hey, do you remember anything from before you woke up here?” His tone of voice suggests he isn’t expecting much, or anything at all. Still, it’s worth a shot, right?

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A monkey is the freest thing in the world,[break]
Always swinging from[break]
branch

to

branch

[break]
Never touching the earth.[break]
If that's why it's free, better to be a bird,[break]
But you see,[break]
A monkey has the ‘key’.[break][break]

…That fever from Poison Patrol was doing terrible things to the brain.

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There's no way they can drag this back with them… Not that Alba had been expecting to be able to going into this, but it’s still a little disappointing.[break][break]

No, the real Important Scientific Studies comes in the form of… a fancy looking high-tech camera. The next best thing to stealing the adorable predator away is giving the lab team a detailed recording of it. He presses a button, and…[break][break]

WHIRRRRRR, FLASH, CLICK![break][break]

“I think it’s time for us to go. Right now, actually.” Because it turns out the complex machinery involved in an Important and Scientific camera is very, very loud.

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