The place was way too quiet.
Gladion snuck through the halls, clad in dark clothes, donning a hoodie that covered his bright blonde locks, determined not to be seen.
He was twelve years old now, so he could start his Island Challenge.
It had just been the day before that he had overheard his mother-who-didn't-deserve-to-be-called-that, Lusamine, on a phone call. With the hated Faba, no less.
Yes, that Lusamine, the Lusamine.
The charismatic, enthusiastic, attractive, earnest social figure who often appeared on reality television shows, holding a microphone and twirling it like a strand of spaghetti around a spoon, never staying still, gushing and chattering on and on endlessly and passionately about what she was known for— Aether Paradise. The 'safe haven' she had founded for Pokémon that had no homes.
Which was such a joke, considering what she was doing now.
Lusamine was bubbly on TV screens, like an overflowing Coca Cola can, and her children, on the rare occasions they were dragged along, seemed sullen and taciturn by contrast, like soda cans gone flat.
In real life, Lusamine was ruthless and manipulative. Evil, even. Calculating. Cold. Cut-off. And an absolutely horrible mother. There was no end to the list of adjectives. In short, Lusamine sucked. She was not a mother in any way that mattered. Not a mom. A far cry from her persona upon the TV screen.
Which was why it had always been Gladion's job to protect Lillie, since their father disappeared in an Ultra Wormhole experiment gone wrong. He was her brother, after all, and older. He'd taken on a parental role too, since their parents weren't exactly up to the job. Totally crappy. One lost and irresponsible and abusive, one disappeared and supposedly dead.
No kidding, it sucked.
Anyway, Gladion had heard Lusamine —he refused to think of her as Mother, the very word made fury fester in him— sitting on her desk despite the many times she'd admonished her children for doing so in her private office (not like he'd want to enter anyway), one hand's fingers tapping the cherry wood with her Pyumumuku pen, the other's fingers curled around a pink Lovedisc cell phone, one finger sporting a oversized bold brass ring, a Corsola coral necklace clinging to her throat, her shining set of pearly whites practically blinding Gladion, legs swinging.
None of these details really mattered, but they were what Gladion noticed first— and he noticed a lot, especially what others didn't. The next words she spoke, however, washed away all such thoughts faster than the speed waves crashed on Alola's various beaches.
"Type: Null is of no use. None at all. We have just one of it now, but we can try to come up with a better version. Two more. This first one is a failed experiment. Get rid of this prototype. What? Faba, I don't care what you do with it. Just rename it Type: Null, 'cause it's good for null, get it? And kill it, abandon it, dump it in a PC Box to rot. I'm not picky."
Then Lusamine laughed her obnoxious, too-loud, slightly-malice-laced TV laugh. As though what she had just said hadn't upended Gladion's world.
There was no slight to the malice intended now.
Lusamine's slender legs swung her down from the desk and swung her out of her office. Gladion barely hid in time. He ended up having to dive in a file cabinet by the door, absolutely covered in paperwork and looking like he'd gate-crashed a mass production at a paper-making factory. But that didn't matter.
Gladion's heart thudded with a steady rap, thud-thun-thud-thun-thud-thud-thud, his blood roaring in his ears, giving him an oddly ethereal emotion.
Type: Null had saved Lillie's life once. Three years ago, when she had wandered too deep and too far into the facility, and almost... Gladion didn't like to think of it. But ever since then, Lillie had been unable to touch Pokémon, and she squealed when they got too close, terrified and traumatized by what she truly didn't remember. And Lusamine had engineered the encounter as one of her vile experiments— one more of ample reasons supplied to Gladion to hate the woman who gave birth to him from the bottom of his heart. The woman who fell apart when she should have been gluing her children back together, or at least herself, retreating so far into herself and her sinister work that her children didn't know her anymore, until they didn't at all. Fearful, they were left to raise themselves. Which they did. Even if they didn't do it as well as it could have been done.
But Type: Null saved Lillie, which was enough to earn Gladion's eternal protectiveness. And it was so innocent, having done nothing, and just had the misfortune of having people who cared about nothing more than themselves and their ambitions than it. Type: Null had been created to fight Ultra Beasts, which it did, but nothing except the biggest and the brightest and the best was tolerated when it came to Lusamine and her imbecilic mindless lemmings.
So a plan was mapped out.
Gladion would spirit away Type: Null. Start a new life. He'd always wanted to leave Aether Paradise anyway —its shadowy halls, evil operations happening undercover, shadowy people, evil people under cover and misleading name— and all.
This was just two days ago.
As Gladion slunk past the thirteenth worker he'd seen, climbed his seventeenth cold steel wall and crossed a ledge and forbidden path or two, he was struck by the realization for the millionth time in forever—
Now had come his time to act.