We headed back inside after our hearts settled down from the moment, the two girls staring at us, poorly acting as if they had no idea what had happened. "The volcarona are gone!" I announced. "Who's ready to knock this last research station out!"
"Let's gooo!" Nemona threw her arms in the air and skipped outside to take a look at the path ahead. The crater tunneled down into what looked to be a cave. It was pitch black, looking towards the bottom. We would likely have to use a Pokémon as a light source. The tunnel was radiating a soft glow, so we'd be able to see the outlines of each other, at least for a little while. Arven paid the third research station a final glance before joining us, all in a line, excitedly, though anxiously, into the dark. The tunnel was wide enough for us all to walk shoulder-to-shoulder. As our clothes darkened to black, I felt our group clump together to avoid any of us getting lost. I felt Arven's hand brush against mine, and I held it tightly. It was too dark for anyone to see us anyway.
The air turned especially cold, and the walkway started to open up. There was a purple glow coming from inside the crater, and we kept pressing forward. The crater lit up with teal blue light that was casted by huge, white crystals that protruded from the walls and ground. It was stunning how the lights danced on the crater walls. We stopped at a fence that ended not far from where we came out. We were finally able to see the bottom of Area Zero. It was still far down below us, but I could see water shimmering on the surface.
"Oh my gosh, look at all these huge, gorgeous crystals!" Nemona leaned over the railing to look deeper. "They go all the way to the bottom!"
Penny pulled her back. "One slip and we can kiss our short lives goodbye."
Nemona steadied herself. "Oh, good call! Watch your step!" Penny rolled her eyes.
Arven brought me next to where Nemona was peeking over and reclined more safely on the barrier. "So the professor's down there somewhere... waiting for us. And that's... fine. Totally fine." He swallowed, nervously. I put an arm around him. We would be meeting his mom today. She was just a few minutes away. I was starting to feel a bit anxious as well. No one had any idea what Professor Sada wanted, and no one in Paldea had heard from her in years.
"Are you ready to go?" I muttered to Arven, not wanting to push him forward when he wasn't ready.
"Yeah... yeah, let's go." Arven put on a confident demeanor that I could see straight through, but he began to lead the way down anyway. There was no longer a railing at the sides, and the ground beneath us was a slippery, moist stone. We all followed in a line as close to the center of the walkway as possible. Pokémon around us were more abundant, but every single one of them were foreign to us. There were altered jigglypuff, volcarona, magneton and the floating pokemon we fought earlier. They had attached themselves to the wall and were surrounded by what looked to be their pre-evolutions. They looked like tiny flower buds that were unopened. Along with all the familiar unfamiliarities, I noticed misdreavus, amoonguss, and a single sighting of a salamence gliding above us. It was strange how only a select few species of Pokémon inhabited the area. Unlike the rest of the island where regional species commonly blended into each other, the crater past the first few research stations were exclusively populated by a countable variety.
"So Koraidon came to our age through the time machine," Nemona pondered. "Then it lived here awhile with the professor? Along with another one of its kind?"
Penny was following behind her, at the tail of our pack. "That seems to be the story."
"So we brought it back home, kind of! Or to its second home, at least!"
"I guess this place should be familiar to it, sure."
"Awww, that's great! A chance to unwind and bask in the familiarity!"
"That doesn't exactly jibe with how it's been acting all spooked since we got here," Arven interjected. "It doesn't seem eager to come out of its ball anytime soon, either." Koraidon was, in fact, still curled up beside my belt.
"Really? I thought it was just scared 'cause we were so high up," Nemona said. The shiny ground was rapidly growing closer. The fall would probably be survivable.
"Huh? Who said it was scared of heights?"
Penny squinted at him, Arven forgetting what he had concluded earlier. "Given how Koraidon was acting earlier, I think something bad happened to it here. Sometimes you get all shaky just seeing a place that you've got bad memories of." Arven shivered. I remembered my house. It had been weeks since I had stepped foot in that haunted place. Just being within view of its neat roof tiles sent my spine into a trembling tension. I understood Arven, and I understood Koraidon if this was also the case for him. Trauma was a hard obstacle to learn to live with.
"So maybe it got hurt down here in Area Zero, just like Mabosstiff?" Arven inferred. It was certainly a possibility. He had been significantly weaker when I had first come across him until he received the same Herba Mystica treatment.
"We can't know for sure," Penny dismissed.
Nemona frowned. "But that's so sad! We gotta do something to make it feel better! And no, I'm not just saying that 'cause I super badly wanna battle Koraidon myself!" Nemona shot me a pair of huge, deprived and desperate eyes.
"Seriously?" Penny snapped, but groaned, defeated by her friend's pestering enthusiasm. "Well, at least you said it and not one of us."
"Nemona, you're kind of unbelievable," Arven muttered, but waited a moment to add: "in a mostly good way." He was slowly warming up to her. Though the journey was stressful, everyone seemed to be getting along with each other, occasionally bickering over little things, but my fear of there being a massive argument between them all subsided. We were all extremely different, but we all had some things in common. All of us felt isolated in some way or another. Even Nemona suffered from the pressures of her family, though not as much, but she grew up with me, and she understood.
The final research station came into view, and it was a lot more tattered and worn down than the rest. It was a struggle opening the door, and small, petal-like Pokémon hurried outside after we prayed it open. Papers were strewn about, and deep claw marks scored the walls. I felt the shredded metal carefully with my fingers. Nothing we had seen so far could've caused such immense damage.
"Woah, what happened?" Nemona breathed. "This place is a mess!"
"It looks like something went berserk in here," Penny observed, collecting papers off the ground and trying in vain attempts to read anything.
"Yeah, but what?" Arven asked.
There was a piercing static that came from the walls, like broken wires fighting to keep its electricity under control. Something must have torn through the system, too. We all stood together in the center of the room, the ceiling snarling at us. Penny held onto Nemona's arm, frightened. "Hello, children," a familiar voice croaked. We all jumped.
"Gah! Professor! Y-you scared us," Nemona laughed, sheepishly.
"I'm sorry," Sada pressed coldly, monotone, uncannily robotic as if she were reading from a script. Then silence. Unsettling, creeping silence.
Nemona, unsurprisingly, was the one to break it. "Why is everything in here all busted up?" I could hear the shakiness in her voice. For the first time in this journey, she was uneasy. Her voice alone made us realize something was definitely wrong.
"I'm sorry. Hello, children," Professor Sada repeated, exactly the same way she had done before, monotone and scripted.
"Come again?" Arven blinked. Silence, again. There was an eerie tremor in the atmosphere that we were all feeling. I could hear my own heart down in my chest.
"I'm s-s-s-s-s-sorry. Sorry. S-s-s-s-s-sorry. I-I-I I-I-I-I'm ssssssssorrrrrrrrr-rrrrrry-eeeeee— Hello, children. Hello. Hello," the voice exploded in distorted static. The professor's voice no longer sounded human. It was broken and grating and mechanic. It sounded like a shattered disc on a record player.
Arven backed away into me, shouting, "What the he—"
"Stop that! You're creeping us out!" Penny cried out, interrupting the noise with her terrified, shrill voice.
Sada pestered on, "Hello, child. Childrenen. Childnen. Childeren. Children." She was making unintelligible words that wavered between gibberish and inhumane noises. Nemona hugged me from behind, her head on my shoulder. Penny grabbed onto her. There was a moment of clarity where Professor Sada finally stopped her intercom for a moment before we heard a clear and calm, "Initiating restart," and everything went quiet.
"The professor must be having some... some weird connection problems or something, huh?" Nemona gulped, squeezing my arms, anxiously.
"Well, it was definitely weird, at least," Arven breathed. He glanced down at his feet. "Almost like...." He was thinking deeply about something before his eyes went wide, and he shut them tightly, breathing what sounded to be defeat. "I dunno...." He opened his eyes mournfully, staring blankly at the wall in some sort of acceptance.
"If she meant it as a joke, it wasn't funny," Penny scolded. She held out her arms and pulled back one of her sleeves. "I've still got goosebumps and all."
Professor Sada's voice didn't come back for a long time. We began to scatter and search around the destroyed station as we waited. "I guess she's not coming back," Penny concluded, picking up something from a pile of broken glass, blowing away the dust. "You're the last of us, Arven. Wanna help us out with the last lock?" There had been four locks and four of us. The final one would unlock the path to the professor. Arven would be the one to make the last decision to keep going. He meandered to the control panel, quietly, and hovered a hand over the button for a moment. He was glaring at it, angrily but somberly.
Penny made an inquisitive noise, studying the panel she had picked up. I began my way over in curiosity, and we heard the system shut down as Arven finalized his choice.
All locks disabled.
The intercom cackled. "Ah, ah, ah. Hel|o. Can you hear me now?" Professor Sada asked, voice still cracking but now comprehensible. "Please ffffvforgive my previous transmission. There seems to be some signal interference."
Arven loosened his grip on the defused button, eyes narrowed on his fingertips. "That's not what that was," he growled.
"What do you mean, Arven?" Nemona asked. He didn't answer her.
"The locks have all been disabled at last. Please make your way now to the Zero Lab which lies at the very bottom of Area Zero," the professor commanded and shut off her communications with a click. No one moved a muscle. We were all frightened and confused about what had happened. I was beside Penny who was still holding a wooden frame, glass broken out.
I touched the edge of the picture frame. "What's that?" Penny allowed me to adjust it upright to my frame of vision. Beneath the pointed and shattered glass was an old picture that was wrinkled and torn at the borders. In the photograph was a proud Professor Sada standing upright and modest behind a young Arven, her arm on his back. Arven was barely 10 in the capture, almost as small as the maschiff jumping on him in excitement, his tail a blur, wagging too fast to be photographed clearly. They were all so happy, all three of them. I looked up from the frame, seeing that Arven was still hunched over the panel in hurt. Professor Sada's voice seemed to echo in the tattered chamber. Mabosstiff was still barely recovered, sleeping in his Pokéball at his master's side. There was so much more going on we didn't know about. We had no idea what was waiting for us in the Zero Lab.
"Are you... alright to get going?" Nemona mainly asked Arven, cautious of his fragile emotions.
Arven stood up straight, hands on his hips. "Yeah!" He announced. "I'm finally going to see my mom." He turned away from the panel and marched out of the room, not checking if any of us were following. Nemona went out after him, steadily. Penny took the broken picture frame and balanced it on a table, leaning against the station's wall. The papers that had once resided there were scattered all over the floor beneath it, leaving the picture frame alone in the center of the table, barely intact. We locked eyes for a second before coming to a silent understanding and leaving the wreckage alone to join our friends.