Welcome to Gaia! ::

The galactic cat hybrid chuckled as she returned the fist bump of her friend, before raising an eyebrow as darts left befre letting her get a word in, leaving her with his mail. With an eyeroll and a resigned sigh, she made herself a small light platform to sit on, deciding to lightly rummage through the mail, just to see senders. "The more things change..."

"Yeah, of course he's gonna ditch you with his stuff. Now who's getting voluntold?" Apolla and Kairos followed her over, with the Espeon putting her paws on the light chair.

"Sure. Doesn't mean I won't sate any curiosity. He said to watch it and make sure it doesn't run off. Doesn't mean I can't look through the envelopes and everything." Crystal had a smirk on her face as she rifled through the manila folders. "Now, would you like me to bring out the Chingling again so soon?"

"Please no! I would appreciate getting a little more time to prepare," Kairos pleaded, floating away somewhat.

"...Fine. I'll stop..." Apolla landed on all fours again, ears lowered slightly in annoyance.

"Thank you." She crossed her legs as she continued glancing at the folders and the tubes. Those were some of the more interesting things to look at. The tubes with the seals especially. Something was wanting to activate in that brain of hers... Right now, at least, she knew better than to open it.

"Physically, only the two of you, thankfully." Sol looked away in that moment. "Reno was quick to get Sub and I over there when he picked up on Aden's presence, and Blizzard and a couple of others arrived too. To tell you the truth, though... I have firsthand experience with too many of Ein's experiments and none of them prepared me for anything as espeluznante- sorry, nightmarish- as laying my eyes on the Ziton for the first time. I'm still struggling to comprehend what I saw a few days ago."

Shortly after the explanation, a light moan could be heard followed by Aden stirring. Sol looked over for a second, noting the first real... anything out of him besides a pulse since the crater he'd formed in the attack. He didn't say anything just yet for fear of startling him, or if the stirring was just that. But he'd see Aden slowly try (and fail) to sit up, gasps and grunts of pain thanks to now-cauterized wounds and burns limiting his motion.

And then coughing, lots of coughing, with Sol quickly and carefully hugging him when the coughs calmed down for a moment.
"Aden! I'm so glad you're back." All at once, it felt like a weight had been lifted from the Ho-oh hybrid's shoulders, though he'd let go of the hug to get a cup of water ready alongside a straw, not unlike Blizzard only a few moments prior. "Here, take it easy."

Aden would take a few sips, grateful for something to make his throat feel a little less dry. He still tried to move slightly, stopping when it was clear the attempt woudn't be going anywhere for now. "We're- I'm... at HQ?" A look around revealed Tristen nearby in another of the beds, but apart from him and Sol, no one else seemed to be accounted for and he feared the worst.

"...dad? Where's everyone else? Where's the Ziton? What happened-" He coughed, panting for a moment. "...what happened to Tristen?"

"You'd be better off getting those answers directly from him," Sol replied. "Everyone else is still here. Not sure if I can truly say they're alright, but we're alive. The Ziton... no one that could sense it could find it after the fight. At the very least, it was driven off."

Thinking back to that day, Sol sighed and was just glad that Aden was awake and alive. "Doc should be back soon enough, but how're you feeling?"

"Cold," Aden remarked. "Like I'm sitting out in..." He paused, as if trying to remember. But for failure to come up with anything more specific, he'd describe it in a way that made his head hurt less. "...like I'm out in the snow or something."

Sol gave a silent nod. It tracked with how Cera was describing his energy lately, even if Aden's response sounded like it wasn't how he wanted to describe it. "You've been out for a few days after the fight, but with the energy you unleashed, it's likely yet to recover."

Aden was quiet for the moment, the sheets seemingly doing little to give him back any meaningful warmth. He had a lot of questions, but he was curious about the other patient in the Medlab today. "What about you?" He asked, doing his best to look over at Tristen. Clearly something happened for him to be laid out here himself, probably whatever happened at the Academy before the last thing he wanted to see in the Fairy Realm.

---




Cera gave a confused look when GRAY's voice came from the small computer, her eyes shifting towards the fun-sized Stakataka acting as a mobile unit. With the beep that followed, she did have to admit it was a lot cuter than the far bigger version she fought before. "Oh. That's... a relief, I was worried another one got in and we were gonna have to fight that one too." She said, giving out a sigh of relief and easing up. "As long as STAK isn't going to fight us, we're fine. Though that aggression... if STAK can ease up on it, I wonder if others could. I just figured Buzzwole eased up because of the whole, um, courting thing."

She'd watch Darts suddenly leave the defense of his mail- and admittedly a sick Rayquaza design- to Crystal right after she'd left defense of a tiny bell to Kairos and Apolla. She'd be lying to herself if she said she wasn't curious too, but didn't dare touch them either. "Wonder how much of it's verbal pitchforks," she remarked offhandedly.

Aile bit her thumb nail as she listened to Reno speak about his moments. The first two events weren’t ringing any bells(What was a Deoxys anyways?), but she definitely remembered the third one. “I remember that last one, or at least one bubbling point… Not terribly long after we finished dealing with Ein finally, if I remember correctly, where some of it started. I suppose I wouldn’t have counted that personally, as nothing came of it in the end. The other two, though… Maybe I might remember something in the newspapers, but I normally didn’t pay much attention to issues outside of the region. Never thought I’d leave Kalos on a more… permanent basis.” She shrugged before continuing. “I guess, though… Blackmail and then mindscrewing, as compared to mindscrewing and… hostile takeover? I guess not too terribly different.” Aile would lean into Tati now, arms crossed and eyes closed. “I... guess it’s a bit reassuring and helpful to have someone else who can empathize with you. Better that we never had to go through it in the first place, but we’re not the ones capable of rewinding time.” She opened her eyes with a small grin on her face, not judging at all. Glass houses and all that, though the grin would drop as a more inquisitive look popped up on her face. “Though… What is a Deoxys? Never heard of that one in my studies growing up, and that was never in the brochure that we received once joining.”

A big sigh, half huff half resigned to failure sort of sound came from Darts as he crossed his arms, not quite looking Sub in the face as he relived the last couple of months, thinking backwards. "Rumors...? Some half stories? Like you just said I very much got the sense they didn't want to be found, and any time I picked up anything that looked like a promising lead the trail would go cold really quickly. Darts flips his SNAG out, setting it to the Map function. "Here and here," He says, tapping the screen with his finger to indicate the towns. "I got a lot of stories about something that lead me to believe they had just been in that area, but when I tried to inquire further things got.... snarled up. I don't know if they were protecting them, but... I couldn't get much more than just that, rumors. By the time I investigated any of the leads they were long gone, and no sight of hide nor hair of them. I talked to everybody from the village idiot to the kids playing in the street..."




As Crystal, Apolla, and Cera voluntoldedly looked after Darts' mail, they would certainly notice the labels on the manila folders, all of them seemed to be dossiers on towns in the Orre region: Phenac, Agate, Pyrite... Whatever Darts had been off doing, it had certainly at the very least involved the desert Region. The scrolls and other mail tumbled around as Crystal rifled through it, giving away little else from the outside. The Rayquaza-ouroboros stamped scroll stood out amongst the group but there were other carvings too, maybe less elaborate, in the shape of other Dragon-types like Dragonair and Baxcalibur's head.

"At the Academy, no one else did beyond that car exploding. But we found a more concerning thing. Apparently the one... driving? Controlling? The one using the car was acting very weird when she briefly came to afterward, and some mushroom was found on her. And several others between Team Star, other academy students and even some of the faculty. Even a shadowfied Nincada Aile found when some of us were dealing with the titans. Our information on what- rather, who- was behind it has been frustratingly limited, but we were able to deal with the more immediate issue. Still, the most we've had to go on is Reno managing brief correspondence with them before it being severed, that and the mushrooms on others and in the basement."

"The Fairy Ring?" Aden had a hand on his head, wishing he didn't have to remember those events.

"That's what those circles are called?"

"They're anchor points to the Fairy Realm. Aile and I couldn't figure out why one was there, but thought it was related. There were signs of something going through the part of the realm we ended up in too. We thought there'd be a trap too, but don't think finding it qualifies..." A cough aside, Aden felt an unnatural chill, beyond the one he was already feeling as it was.

“Maybe in the standard pile,” she offhandedly said, looking at the tubes. The Rayquaza one was rather amazing looking. Her eyes would drift off to the dossiers, though, head tilting even more. “Orre… Why would you need information on those places?” The question now… Did she open one of the manilla folders? No, she knew better, she knew better, she knew better.

The manilla folders would gain a light blue aura and float down to Apolla’s level, she herself looking at the folder. “...What would Darts want with this podunk region? These are files, not mail.”

“Apolla!”

“What? You can’t tell me that you’re not curious yourself.”

“I mean, I am,” Crystal grumbled, arms crossing underneath her shawl again. “Curiosity killed the Skitty, though.”

“But satifaction brought it back,” Apolla retorted, a smirk on her face as she began to open the one labeled for Agate. “Isn’t this where Sol and Aden are from? …As well as you, Cera, now that I think about it?”

Crystal’s eyes narrowed, attempting to swipe the dossier from her Espeon. “Apolla, no, we don’t need to be getting into that. Come on!”

“Stop being a stick in the mud… Cera, you can’t tell me that you’re not curious about any of this stuff,” she’d ask the Mew, looking over at her.

"You don't..." Tristen stared in confusion. Did those two get away? Again? "The Zoroark hybrids were out there on the field when the attack happened...Sub had them tied up before anything happened. One was Hypnotized by Sub's Spiritomb, and I fried the other one with a Thunderbolt. And that was the second time I fought those two in two days." Tristen said. "They were with...what was her name...Mela, another one of the Team Star leaders. They were trying to get at me to...get at Blizz..." Tristen looked towards the door for a second then sighed. It was probably a good thing his adoptive father got dragged out of the room by Freth just a little bit ago. "Malva was supposedly in the region...Mela even called her a mistress. I was...thinking Sub might have found something out by now..."

Giving a shrug at the response, he said, "Well, most of those incidents were more internal than anything else. Almost forgot how much of my time here you weren't around, thought you had been around for at least some of those." Preparing to start walking inside with Aile, he would come to a halt as he heard the questioning about what exactly Deoxys was. Man, he needed to really check over what exactly most members were able to access, since he might've been letting top level secrets slip out like they were gone over in orientation with GRAY. "Right, right. Deoxys is the name for a unique Pokemon we found. It came down in meteorite fragments, kinda gave psychic powers and power boosts to anyone with a piece of the rock. We eventually collected it all and this crazy Pokemon came out. We managed to capture it in our own made Pokeball after the Kalos stuff when we concocted a ebonite Pokeball with a little extra punch to it. We....wait, we put some of the cocoon in it."

Pausing for a moment, Reno would just stare at the ground before loudly shouting, "SON OF A! That's how he ended up channeling!"