We were really about to spend the night in the Great Crater of Paldea. I had to let it sink in. I should be terrified, but the adventure sounded so exciting! No one was permitted around the gates, and heading there went against everyone's constant advice. It felt like a classroom dare we would push each other to do as kids, but this real. The last time I went against my own morality and deviated from what I was told—
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I frowned. My thoughts hadn't been violated by that pest of a mother since I had let go of my guilt. I hadn't let her bother me, but now she was, and now that I was thinking about it, did that count as letting her get to me? Was I relapsing? Would I fall back into the torment I've been trying to escape since my mom left me alone?
The elevator opened and made me jump. I started walking to my dorm. I was thinking too much again. I always thought too much. It's what got me so paranoid. All the time. About everything. Was that what it was? The voices? Were they going to haunt me forever as long as I was conscious? Was my mental state faulty for the rest of my life? Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Stop thinking! Stop thinking! I was breathing quickly, and I could hear my heartbeat pounding in my chest. I had to stop thinking about the past before it consumed me and I froze up again.
"Woah! Are you okay?" I blinked and saw Penny at my door. I had forgotten she said she would meet me there.
"Yeah, I'm fine," I lied and scrambled through my bag for my ID.
"You know I'm always here to talk about anything."
I unlocked my door and opened it, holding it open for her to come in. "I know, but I'm fine." I opened my backpack to take out all my school materials to make room for what I wanted to take.
"If it makes you feel any better, Director Clavell said I could go with you and that Nemona girl," Penny stated.
"That's good," I said, blankly. "Did you pack everything? Sweaters? Blankets?"
"Yep." She turned around and shook her backpack to make its eevee tail wag. I shoved in my smallest pillow, blanket, a change of clothes, a toothbrush and toothpaste. I stood in the kitchen for a moment.
"Arven'll probably bring the plates," I excused.
"Who's Arven?" Penny asked. I pondered whether it would be wise to tell her. All of us would be stuck in one place for a while, so if I told her now, Nemona would likely hear about it. I was going to let Arven decide when he wanted the school to know about us.
"One of the students coming with us," I answered.
"Dang. How many people did you invite?"
I chuckled, noticing my previous panic had faded away, "Just three."
"Well," Penny shrugged. "I guess we're going on that silly stone adventure you've been wanting to do." I remembered the idealized fantasy I made up around the time I found Umbreon. We had both grown so much since then.
"Yeah, I guess so." I zipped up my backpack and hauled it onto my back. "Ready to go?" Penny nodded, and I did one final count of my Pokémon on my belt before we both left for the elevators.
After a warm goodbye from the staff at the academy entryway, Koraidon let himself out, knowing we were about to travel. "What's it doing?"
I hopped onto his back and held out a hand. "We're not walking all the way over there." Penny seemed shocked, but she complied and let me help her on. I pulled in really close to Koraidon's head, making sure he heard me. "This is very important, Koraidon. Don't you dare pull off what you did last time. No jumping, no climbing, no flying, got it?" The reptilian beast agreed, disappointed.
"Flying? Did you say flyi—iiieeeeyyeee!" Koraidon dashed off, pounding down the stairs and kicking dirt up in the air behind him. Penny held onto my backpack for dear life, screaming.
"Hold onto his waist with your legs," I advised. I felt my backpack move as she shifted into a more comfortable position behind me and stopped freaking out. I followed the landscape as it faded from the south province, Cortondo, the west province, Asado desert and the town of Cascarrafa, to the border of the north province around the town of Medali.
"Wow! That thing's fast!" Penny and I looked back and saw Nemona catching up on a cyclizar.
I pulled on Koraidon's whiskers and slowed down to talk to my friend better. "Since when did you have that?" I gestured to her ride.
"Director Clavell let us borrow some for the commute." Us? She must be talking about—
Arven appeared in the distance, his cyclizar racing to catch up to us two. "Ah, I thought I lost you!"
Arven waved. "Wait up!" We steadied our pace until all four of us were together, trotting in a line on the path to the gate. I smiled at my boyfriend, but he gave me a stern look, eyeing the other two girls. Right. I can't let them know. I turned my attention to the road ahead. We got closer to the mountains of the crater, following the base until it flattened out into a shallow, grassy slope. "Follow me," Arven commanded. "I know how to get there." He took the lead and started the climb upwards to the ledge I saw by the top. The mountains flattened out to a small plateau before sharply rising towards the sky, but there was a small, man-made tunnel with an underwhelming, flimsy, locked gate. We all stopped at the entrance.
Arven was the first to dismount, then Nemona, then Penny and I. Nemona gave her cyclizar a rub on its snout before it gave a short roar and bounded off, Arven's cyclizar following it. "Hm, I guess this is it," Nemona huffed. "I wonder how we're gonna get inside though."
"I have a key, obviously," Arven growled, holding the accessory out for her to see. He jingled the key in the lock and pushed the gate open with a grating noise. We funneled in, slowly walking through the tunnel towards the blinding light on the other side. It was breezy, a vented chill washing over us from the enormous crater. We were all wearing some sort of warm sweater, but I shivered with what could be waiting for us on the other side.
The tunnel opened up to a single, small ledge, and I had to blink rapidly to adjust to the light. It was a huge drop. It was certain death if anyone were to slip off. I looked off in the distance on the other side of the hole and saw the sharp outline of the very top of Naranja Academy's towers. There was a rusty laboratory in front of us that Arven was already heading towards. Nemona had a massive grin on her face, skipping around, observing everything in the place we'd all been prohibited from exploring. Penny was more reserved in her fascination, her hands in her sweater pockets, staring out at the view. Arven punched in something at the metal laboratory door and it opened to a dark, futuristic room, computers lining the walls, flashing small, green lights. I walked with him to the center of the floor, the other two going directly to the machines to poke at them.
"Kinda dark in here..." Arven mumbled, crossing his arms.
"Does your mom usually leave them on?" I asked him. He seemed very uncomfortable, a scowl on his face, fighting to feel empty. I wanted to hold him. I wanted him to know I would be there for him no matter what we were going to face in the crater, physically. I was frustrated at our restriction. I guess he understood that mentally, anyway.
"They were on the last time I was here."
At that moment, the lights flickered on, shining us with a sterile, white glow. "Well now the lights are on!" Nemona commented, gleefully, hopping over to join us.
Penny came out from behind some machines. "I... I turned them on. Seems like they were on power saving mode. I... hacked into the system controls and overrode the settings..." She chuckled, glancing over at me. "It's what I do." Everything connected together, remembering all her slip-ups, avoiding the slightly illegal practice. It was how she contacted the original Team Star members. It was how she found my dorm room. She must've planted something the day I gave her my phone number. She was good.
Nemona leapt in surprised recognition. "Oh! It's you—the kid with the fluffy eevee bag. La mascarada.... You never told me your name," she asserted.
Penny spotted her fluffy backpack straps. "Um... I guess?" She clearly didn't remember ever meeting Nemona outside the group chat. "My name's Penny," she introduced.
Nemona smiled. "Well, hey! We never got to actually talk! I'm Nemona! I'm in class 1-A! You must be some kind of tech whiz! Do you like Pokémon battling, too?" She babbled.
Penny backed away, bombarded with Nemona's hyperactive demeanor. "Urk. You talk, like... way too much." I snorted. Nemona's attitude was definitely an acquired taste, like sushi. Arven saw my entertained stance at my friends' dynamic and looked to want to share it with me....
"Biometric identification in progress..." A voice echoed from the ceiling. We all looked up, trying to find the source. Koraidon seemed especially interested. "Hello, Lugosi, Arven. I have been expecting you. And it seems you have gathered a group of formidable allies as well." Nemona blinked at us, and I knew she had put together that Arven and I had, for some reason, begun the quest on our own... with each other. The revolution really wasn't helping keep our secret a secret.
"Uh... Sorry, who are you?" Penny said to the walls.
Arven tensed and looked down at the ground. "That's... my mom," he muttered. "Probably..." I wanted to ask what he meant by that, or would that be too personal?
"What? That's Professor Sada?" Nemona exclaimed, starstruck. She fell into a battle stance instinctively in excitement.
"Nemona. Student ID number 805C001. And Penny. Student ID number 803B121. I thank you for coming," the unseen speakers analyzed.
"Of course, Professor!" Nemona jumped. "Oh my gosh, it's such an honor to meet you in person! I mean, maybe not 'in person' exactly, but I've heard so much about you in class. I've been going to Naranja Academy since I was old enough to go to school—" She droned on, and Penny turned to us.
"Arven, did you... uh... tell your mom about us?" Penny did have a point. How did the professor happen to have their student numbers on hand? She didn't know they were coming... unless Director Clavell told her last minute and, for some reason, she decided to take time out of her studies—or whatever she was doing down in the crater—to look them up.
Arven also acted to notice the oddity along with her strange mannerisms. "When would I have done that?" He had just met Penny after all and rarely talked to Nemona, only occasionally passing her at school and throwing some variation of an insult, like at the lighthouse.
"To begin with, I'd like to ask you all to make your way down into the Great Crater of Paldea," Professor Sada addressed us all. "You can reach the lower chamber using the elevator you can see to your right." We hadn't seen an elevator coming in, but before anyone could ask about it, a room behind us opened, its metal door spiraling to reveal the hidden elevator. Nemona excitedly raced inside with Penny following close behind, watching out for her safety, Koraidon dashing through to enter the fray. I started to join them, but I noticed Arven was still staring at the ceiling.
"Um... Mom?" He asked, shyly.
"Please proceed below," Professor Sada ordered, monotone, seeming to ignore the presence of her own son. Arven winced. Every muscle in my body wanted to run over and hug him tightly and tell him the same mantra that echoed from my dream. Moms have a way of letting you down. I glanced over at the new room to see if anyone was watching, but Nemona was peeking her head out to beckon me over. I clenched my fists to force my cravings down and started towards my friends, and shortly after, hearing Arven coming, too.
All of us inside, we felt the lift lower us down for a while before stopping. The speaker spoke to us again: "Biometric identification in progress... Identities confirmed. Access graded to lower level." The door opened back up to a launch pad, overseeing the crater, fog even closer to us now. I squinted at the roof of the elevator. The voice was definitely of Professor Sada's, but it was so mechanical and precise. It didn't seem human. I figured she had spent so much time alone and isolated from humanity that she lost part of her social cognition. There was no other reason why she would speak like a textbook.
Nemona, unsurprisingly, didn't care enough to notice the foreign way of speech, and, instead, was enthralled by the lab's technology. "Oooh! It opened for us automatically!" She cooed.
"Not quite... Looks to me like someone's controlling this thing remotely," Penny corrected.
"Once you step through, you will be above Area Zero," Sada explained. "Arven, you have brought Koraidon with you?" My Pokémon puffed up straight, hearing his name.
Arven shifted uneasily. "Actually, Lugosi has had him." Nemona was very enthusiastic learning that I was in possession of one of the great professor's personal Pokémon.
"I thank you for bringing it with you on your many adventures. If you utilize Koraidon's gliding capabilities, you should be able to descend into the depths to reach Area Zero."
Penny flinched, remembering her earlier scare from riding Koraidon earlier. "What? Isn't there, like, an elevator or something?"
The professor ignored her. "When you reach the bottom, I will get in touch once again. I hope your trip is uneventful." There was a quiet, subtle click from the elevator, officially ending the two-way communication.
Nemona was pumped. "I can't wait to see what Pokémon live down in Area Zero! Let's go!" She ran to the edge, frightening Penny with her insane optimism.
She looked at me, wide-eyed, wondering how I came to be such close friends with the dragapult of a human. "That girl... is she, like, incapable of fear or what?" I shrugged and joined Nemona at the edge. All four of us and Koraidon looked down into the abyss and shuttered, either from nervousness or, in Nemona's case, overwhelming excitement.
Arven turned to me, giving me a forcefully platonic smirk. "Ready for the worst?"
"We've come this far," I answered.
"Just what we needed to hear!" Arven placed his hand on Koraidon's neck, and he cowered down.
Nemona frowned. "What's the matter with it?"
Arven stroked the lizard's head, comforting him, until he stood back up and nuzzled into his chest. I could say I was pretty jealous of my Pokémon at that moment. "Hmph, scared of heights. That's what I'd say!" He jumped onto Koraidon's back, leaving plenty of room for everyone else.
"Well, no wonder!" Nemona bayed, mounting Koraidon behind him. "But no need to be scared if we go together!" She patted Koraidon on his side.
Penny rolled her eyes, but joined them anyway at the very back. "How does that logic work?"
Arven held out his hand to me. "You're not chickening out this far into the adventure, are you?" The wind made him look so beautiful. His glittering eyes, and his shy, but determined grin. Nemona and Penny were also smiling, awaiting their last member to join them on the plummet. It was the big adventure I've been wanting. This was finally it. I set my hand on Arven's palm, and he carefully pulled me up, seating me in front of him to hold into Koraidon's shoulders. I felt his arms around my waist, and I tensed, wondering if the others would suspect anything. It was such a lovely, comforting feeling, his body wrapped around mine. I couldn't tell if my heart was pounding because of him or because Koraidon had begun to teeter at the edge of the platform, preparing his terrifying jump.
I held on tightly, and felt Arven squeeze me around my sides. Koraidon sank down, and I felt my stomach drop as he leapt into the air, and I felt gravity pulling us all down to what could easily be our deaths. Koraidon's tendrils flew open into his colorful, magic wings and guided us safely into our descent. It didn't stop our horrified screams of panic, however.